Success? How wonderful. What fabulous news.

Except what the hell was I supposed to do now? I was still pinned to the altar. Also, still in pain and on the verge of panic.

What was going on?

Where was I?

How did I even--

Accept Gem? 100% Chance of Implantation.

The message reappeared. I didn’t know what it meant, of course, but ‘implantation’ scared the shit out of me. I didn’t want some creepy temple’s skull-crushing gem implanting inside me. Sounded like that scene from Alien. So I didn’t say the word ‘accept.’ Hell, I didn’t think the word ‘accept.’

Instead, I tried squirming to the side, to escape the pressure of the gem clamping my head in place.

I tried moving just a fraction of an inch, to loosen the vice-like tightness ... and I failed.

Accept Gem? 100% Chance of Implantation.

Screw off. As my eyes swam with tears, I tried again to scrape my head to the side again. I failed again, and again, and again, as a migraine agony pounded through me.

So eventually, I gasped, “Accept.”

In a single heartbeat, the gem dissolved through my skin.

The migraine faded, the light dimmed.

The ceiling wavered through the smoke, shimmering like the overheated air above a Los Vegas highway. My head pulsed, but with not with pain anymore. No, my head pulsed with something else: with pressure or energy. Or, I guessed, with implantation.

The smoke thickened above me, turning from black to white, swirling roiling billows of smoke that filled my vision and then filled my thoughts until nothing else remained and ...

I gasped and opened my eyes.

I was still lying on the altar, but there was no gem-embedded-stone clamping my head. Which was, you know, a huge improvement. Through my teary eyes, I saw the domed ceiling again, fifteen or twenty feet above me.

My heart pounded as my blurred vision cleared. The stone wagonwheel was back in place in the center of the ceiling ... but there was no gem there anymore.

Which didn’t exactly surprise me. Given ‘100% chance of implantation’ and all, I figured I knew exactly where the gem had gone. Which was fine. Everything was fine. I didn’t mind the alien egg in my head, probably starting to hatch ...

Panic touched me ... but then faded when I realized that the smoky ropes were gone, too. My arms and legs were unbound, and so was my chest. I was free!

The instant I realized I was no longer tied down, I rolled off the altar. I landed awkwardly on the stone floor, but I didn’t care. I was free. I lay there for a few seconds, then rose to my feet. Trying to stay calm, even though hysterical sobbing sounded pretty damn appealing at the moment.

I touched my forehead, almost expecting to feel the gem sticking halfway out of my skull. I felt nothing but my skin. Okay. Was the gem inside me? I didn’t want to think about that, so I breathed a few times, then looked down at the waist-high altar.

The smooth black stone was polished nearly to a mirror finish. I saw a blur of my face, and when I looked closer, I still looked like myself.

Which was oddly reassuring.

The altar was a mostly-featureless block of stone. There wasn’t even a hole for the linchpin anymore. Which freaked me out all over again. Where the hell had the hole gone? At least I ... I had a suspicion where the linchpin itself had gone.

And sure enough, at an inward query, a notification re-appeared:

Domain:

1 linchpin

So, yeah. That had really happened. I’d shifted a copper bar into my thoughts. With a twist of mind, I ‘saw’ the linchpin in this ... nonexistent space that I somehow controlled. I had the distinct sense that I could withdraw the rod into the real word, too, like taking an item from an inventory in a computer game.

Oh! Just like that, yeah. Yeah, an inventory. Okay, I understood those, at least a little.

I didn’t retrieve the copper bar, though. Partly because I was afraid of doing anything, and partly because the smoke from the braziers still swirled around me, obscuring my vision, filling my lungs.

Time to get the hell out of here.

I groped forward a few steps, shambling through the smoke toward the wall, then stubbed my fingers on one of the white stone columns.

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Well, this just kept getting better and better. I took a deep breath to calm myself, but even as I inhaled smoke, the air started smelling sweeter. Like the smoke was as pure as a mountain breeze or like ... like I belonged there.

At that thought, the smoke vanished completely.

I could see clearly. The rounded wall of the temple was about ten feet in front of me, curving to both sides. Mosaic tiles covered the floor between the columns and the wall, and an empty bookshelf stood to my left. Mostly empty, at least. There were a few candlesticks and a small bowl on the shelves, and what looked like a book or ledger.

Hard to tell in the dim flickering light of the braziers. At least smoke wasn’t pouring from them any longer.

Except it was.

The braziers still burned, the smoke still rose and thickened in the round room, the temple of ... what had that text box said? The Billowing Ones, the Formless Flames? I knew the smoke was still there, because I could see transparent movements in the air, like currents of clear water.

The difference was, I could see through the smoke now. Which was an improvement.

“Okay,” I said, sounding almost unafraid. “Thanks for that, billowing ones. Way to, um, billow?”

There was a ‘No Smoking’ joke to be made, but I wasn’t in a joke-y mood. I was more in a don’t-even-think-about-what’s-going-on-or-you’ll-fall-apart mood.

I crossed to the bookshelf and saw that the ‘bowl’ was an incense burner, and the ledger was a ledger. When I lifted the top page, the paper tore. It was brittle and smeared with soot. It was impossible to make out the letters on the stained paper within. So I couldn’t read a single word, even if I knew the language, which struck me as doubtful considering ...

Considering what?

Considering I’d been summoned to an altar in a ruined temple. Where smoke turned as thick as steel and messages appeared in my mind.

I slid down to the floor with my back against a column and indulged in a brief period of hysteria.

Maybe not so brief.

I mean, I knew what was going on. At least, I knew what wasn’t going on. This wasn’t some elaborate prank. It wasn’t a hallucination or delusion. This wasn’t how those worked. And I was pretty sure this wasn’t the afterlife, either. God, I hoped not.

I’d read the books. I’d seen the movies. This was a parallel universe or a different plane of existence. One with magic. And apparently I’d been summoned here by something.

But what?

And why?

I needed help.

I desperately needed help, so I said, “Help?”

To my utter lack of surprise, nothing happened.

When I stopped trembling, I stood up again and explored the round room. The chamber. The temple. Whatever. I walked in a full circle around the wall. The area was maybe twenty feet in diameter inside the columns, with another five feet from the columns to the wall. High domed ceiling. Everything was stone, including the smoking braziers. The flames inside them cast the only light, yet somehow the entire space was well-illuminated, at least now that smoke wasn’t a problem.

I poked around for a few minutes, avoiding thinking about the one thing that mattered most: an exit. In particular, the fact that there wasn’t one. How the hell was I supposed to get out of here?

QUEST: You find yourself within the Temple of the Billowing Ones. You should probably leave before you die of thirst. A good first step would be unlocking the door. With the key. Which is how locks often work.

REWARD: Minor expoi.

FAILURE: Lethally parched.

What the hell? First I’d been summoned, now I was being snarked at?

“Also, there is no door,” I said. “What door? What key?”

No answer appeared in a text window.

I checked the walls again. Still no door. So I checked the altar. No door. So I sat on the floor and cried for a while. Screw you. Don’t judge me. Do you honestly think you’d just roll the punches after finding yourself locked in a temple in another dimension where a stone almost crushed your head like a grape?

Here’s a little tip: you wouldn’t.

A while later, I checked the walls for a third time.

That time I found hairline cracks, tiny seams, and a dozens of pockmarks ... one of which turned out to be a hole about the width of my pinky finger.

An exact match for the copper ‘linchpin.’ Was that the ‘key?’ Was I supposed to withdraw it from my ‘domain’ to insert it into the keyhole? Was this whole thing a ... a training run, of some sort?

“It’s like a goddamn tutorial,” I muttered.

Then I did some loud thinking:

Tutorial.

Help.

Quit?

Quit!

“Well, fuck,” I grumbled, when nothing happened. Then I looked at my palm and said, “Appear, linchpin! Linchpin, emerge! Uh ... come out? Manifest? Domain on.”

Nothing happened except I felt like a moron, so I called the image of the linchpin to mind again--

Domain:

1 linchpin

--and looked at it for a while. I tried to get a sense of the weight of the narrow copper rod, the feel of the hatchmarks. I hadn’t needed to say anything to load it into my domain. I’d simply used my need. So there probably wasn’t any magic word for recalling it.

I focused on wanting it to emerge. I used my desire to--

The linchpin appeared in mid-air, with the end touching my fingertip, then fell to the floor with a CLANG.

A shockingly loud clang. The sound echoed in the stone temple as the copper bar bounced and struck, bounced and struck, like a drumroll on a gong.

The clamor continued until I stomped on the linchpin. Silence fell. Which was great, but a little late: everything within a goddam mile must’ve heard that. So I stood there for a minute, listening for ... I didn’t know what. Howls, shrieks? The scratch of claws, the roar of monsters.

I didn’t hear anything other than the rush of blood in my ears. Okay. Okay, I should probably leave before I died of thirst. I hadn’t been thirsty at all until seeing that ‘quest,’ but now my throat felt parched. Just the power of suggestion, I thought. Not any actual ... power.

I thought.

Anyway, I lined up the linchpin with the hole in the stone wall. With the keyhole. And then ... I didn’t put it in. Instead, I sat crosslegged on the floor and held the linchpin in my right hand. I focused on it and tried to pull it into my invisible, untouchable domain. On my third attempt, I succeeded. The copper bar vanished from my hand, and I felt it in the domain.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s freaky.”

I knew it might happen, but actually seeing a chunk of copper disappear still blew my mind. On the other hand, it looked as much like a magic trick as like real magic. So for reasons of media overexposure or modern cynicism or something, it didn’t absolutely floor me. I mean, I’d seen videos of people doing more spectacular ‘magic’ on sidewalks.

I tried to recall the linchpin into my left hand.

It reappeared in my right.

Huh. I zapped the bar away and back a dozen times, until domaining it came easily. I moved it into and out of my domain from my hands, then my ankle, then my neck. I could grab it anywhere it touched my skin--but when it returned, it always returned to the same point of contact. I couldn’t move it around while it was inside my domain.

Which was interesting.

Sort of.

Mostly, though, I was just putting off opening that door into the unknown. Sure, maybe there was a kindly wizard waiting for me, with twinkling eyes and a bowl of jellybeans. But this temple didn’t look like a happy little arrivals lounge. And ‘the Billowing Ones, Those Who Linger’ didn’t sound much like ‘Grandpa Gandalf’s Social Club.’

Either way, I was fucked. That quest notification was right. I couldn’t just stay here. I needed to rip off the bandaid and ... and hope it wasn’t actually a tourniquet.

“Good job, Alex,” I muttered to myself. “Great talk.”

Then I shoved the linchpin into the keyhole.