The boy, whom Bollio discovered was named Ezekiel, would not leave him alone. They had to abort their expedition to bring him to a hospital in the Centerland City. He seemed to be insane.

“Where is my quest? Where’s my blue screen?” he shouted, clearly delirious. 

Bollio watched him, restrained by thick metal manacles. He felt a little bad now, watching the miserable creature thrash about. He had seemed to mistake the magic of the Centerland as one of his ‘Outworlder Powers’.

“Release him. I can take him elsewhere,” Bollio sighed.

He had been debating this for a while, and concluded that the man, strange as he was, was from a different world, and had huge misconceptions about this world. Misconceptions that he could exploit. He wouldn’t do evil, and he wouldn’t push this to far, and wasn’t he doing Ezekiel a favor anyways by getting him accustomed to the situation, anyway?

Those rationalizations pushed down his guilt, as well as thoughts about himself, and his new purpose. He was a sorcerer of the Ground now, but he didn’t consider himself one.

Bollio led Ezekiel out of the stifling room and talked to him. “Now. I did something for you by getting you out of there,” he said, pausing to word the next bit carefully, “I would like for you to go on a ‘quest’ for me.”

Ezekiel’s eyes lit up. “I knew it! I knew this was an RPG world! What’s the quest?”

“I need you to deliver these papers to the City Affairs building,” he said, “Here’s a map to it.”

He looked less jubilant than before, but he took the papers. Valtar had gathered the rest of the data while Bollio was in the hospital with the strange boy, and now they needed to deposit it for the City Planners. They were looking for workable stone to create walls in different places, which was one of the only scenarios in which Bollio’s expertise would be useful. He hoped Valtar didn’t screw up the measurements.

Bollio, after leaving Ezekiel, returned to his temporary residence in the city. He sat there for an hour or so, just thinking, until he decided to walk over to the mirror that hung in his bedroom.

An unfamiliar face stared back at him. Strange swirling rock patterns crossed his hardened skin. His hair was gray now, though not with age. The most important change was not visible: his magic.

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He dug through his right pocket on his blood-stained tan trousers, and pulled out a rock, a deep blue one with a black layer in the center. Now, as it came to him naturally, he absorbed the rock’s essence, its spirit.

Most likely due to the strata, which had taken pressure to form, and had leased him the power as such, he closed his fist and the window shattered. Glass sprayed across the room, cutting him. He didn’t have any of those pink rocks to heal him though.

He left the room, sparing one last glance at the broken window frame and the now bland rock that sat upon the drawers next to the mirror.

This wasn’t made for him. Magic was for fighting or battles, and his magic destroyed the only thing he cared about, rocks. Well rocks were maybe not the only thing, Valtar was sometimes nice to be around.

Maybe he could use this power to get rid of Ezekiel. Not in a killing sort of way, but a distraction sort of way.

Well, once he’s back I’ll see, he thought. He should be soon...

Bollio hadn’t given him directions to the inn. To the City Affairs building, yes, and back to the hospital, a terrible mistake on his part. He just hoped the boy wouldn’t end up doing something stupid.

***

If Zeke knew he was going to be magically transported to a fantasy world, he would have worn his GOT or LOTR shirt instead of the Star Trek one. Or maybe he wouldn’t have, he really loved his GOT one, and his current outfit was in a pretty terrible state from all the dust, then the barbaric medical instruments of the ‘doctors’.

He was grateful though; his life back home had been pretty boring since his mom and dad had banned D&D until he fixed his English grade.

Zeke had always been told one word had described him: nerd. And now, all those hours reading lore books and studying medieval weaponry might be useful. He might be useful for once in his life.

He had a purpose, a quest: to deliver the papers. Truthfully, it wasn’t as exciting a quest as he had expected, but it had gone without a hitch. Now he realized he’d been deceived.

Zeke didn’t know how to find the man again.

And he’s a man, right? A human? he thought. There were those fantasy races walking about, the blue guys, red guys, and yellow guys, but he looked human. Except for the skin patterns.

Honestly it was some of the most boring world building he had seen, and slightly racist, as from what he could tell the powers were based off of what their skin tinge was. Or maybe the powers gave them that tinge or something. And why humans? The scientific probability of humans evolving the same way as on Earth was infinitely miniscule.

Zeke could find other quests though, yet the sorcerer man probably had a large reward for his quest. So, he began asking people if they had seen a ‘Ground’ mage. The red tinged men – the Fetleens, he believed they were called – were very interested in the man, and he now had another quest, which was coincidentally tied to his first. He had to find Bollio.