I got plopped down right in the middle of a group of criminals. Well, fine. The system could hate me but I’d just hate it right back. But while the system was responsible for all the problems in the universe, at the moment I had a much more tangible subject on which to focus my hate.

He was old and bearded and carried a staff with an enormous crystal at its tip. He was some sort of wizard, though the criminals called him an Aelon and just gave me weird looks when I asked what that was, and when I persisted I got his attention.

That was a very bad idea.

Apparently, Aelon can zap you with magic bolts that send every nerve in your body into screaming agony. I felt extraordinarily lucky when I finally fell unconscious. Maybe it was my bad luck, or the system, but that seemed to be a demonstration. He never hit anyone else as hard as that, and everyone stayed roughly in line. We were caught, no matter that I hadn’t even had a trial or anything, and that was that. Whispered voices while we were huddled together in an oily rain told me we were going to some place called a Hellmouth. We were going to be put to work harvesting some sort of rare material.

That was all I got before I fell asleep. As it turned out, walking was hard. Especially when your shoes had worn down days ago and your antibiotics were on another planet. During the day, a sun much redder but also much bigger than Earth’s beat down on us while the chains linking us all clinked and a few guards trooped alongside us.

They weren’t the real threat. The wizard was. Or Aelon. Whatever he was, I hated it.

The night was freezing and the sky had two moons. One was blood red and looked like it had a bite taken out of it. It never changed phases, and I could see scattered chunks of it strewn next to the shattered part. The other moon was silvery blue and completely whole, but much dimmer. A bunch of the criminals seemed to worship that one, while they spit at the red one. How they managed to take the time to do so before falling to a dead sleep on the ground I didn’t know.

When we reached the work camp, I stayed awake through the haze of exhaustion and longing for sleep long enough to get an idea of how things were run around here. There were small buildings called bunks in various states of disrepair surrounding a central clearing of packed dirt. We were expected to get together in small groups and make more bunks together before we could have shelter if we didn’t take an empty spot in one of the ones already there. I was one of the ones left outside, but the dirt felt like a mattress to me. In the center of the clearing was a large stone combination of a storehouse and sleeping area for the guards and overseers. We’d bring in something called tenebrium from around the Hellmouth and they’d give us credit that we could use to buy things. A bunch of the other newcomers were muttering unkind things about the prices. Then I flopped to the ground and slept deeply without dreams.

I woke to a boot in my stomach.

“You’ll wake at dawn or you won’t wake at all,” a gruff guard said. I scrambled to my feet and eyed him, but he held a spear warningly. And that Aelon from before was in the guardhouse. I backed down.

“Fine. What am I supposed to do, then?”

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“Get someone else to tell you. My only job right now it to make sure you’re not dead.”

He stomped off. He had a pretty distinctive vest, and the helmet covered nearly all of his face. If I jumped him and stole his stuff, I might be able to just … walk out. I tabled that plan. For now I’d play along.

There was breakfast at the guardhouse. It was a disgusting gray mash and I had no desire to know what it was made of. I spent the trek out to the ominously-named Hellmouth trying to shoot fireballs out of my hands or do something magical. I had nothing of the sort. Damnit, this was supposed to be my fantasy world. I’d never have agreed to leave behind a life in the modern world with a comfy office job if it meant this.

Whatever. I was going to learn magic, I’d just have to work a bit harder for it. First I’d quiz the rest of the captives. They all seemed to know who that Aelon with the staff and painful magic was, maybe they had some magic instructions. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be asking the Aelon any questions.

It turned out we were gathering tenebrium. The poisonous material could only be gathered if we covered up completely. The guards allowed us to go into debt for some robes. How nice of them. I found out that tenebrium absorbed mana, so it was extremely useful for anyone who needed to fight Aelon or Awoken, which I gathered were this world’s names for different types of mages. I still wasn’t clear on what those differences actually were. When we got back from a grueling day of hauling the dull black rock back across the uneven landscape, three people had died. They’d stepped on some without knowing and got tiny slivers in their lungs. It seemed like tenebrium was kind of like asbestos, but a lot deadlier. I hadn’t even known the names of the dead. We had to cart their bodies back behind us. At least they let us have burials.

After a short funeral which consisted of looting the corpses for everything they were worth (and reminded me that these people were hardened criminals) and then dumping the bodies in shallow graves, I cornered a short man with shifty eyes named Ahrem and made him tell me everything he knew about Aelon and Awoken for a small bribe of five credits. I claimed I’d hit my head on a rock and didn’t remember much, but I don’t think he believed me. Not that it mattered. He told me what he knew.

The former were basically wizards. They used mana to create spells which could do basically anything, except that inventing spells was such a chore that an Aelon usually only created a few in their entire lifetime. Instead, spells were traded, sold, or given in exchange for apprentice contracts. Awoken were versions of Aelon that used mana to create their own personal styles and spells that no one else could duplicate. They were superhuman warriors but needed to go through ‘trials’ to get more powerful instead of needing any sort of training.

Then he got to the most important part. You needed mana to Awaken or become an Aelon, and then you could use magic. I could just go right to the Hellmouth we were harvesting tenebrium from, but the red mana it spouted out was the entire reason tenebrium was so deadly. I needed to find a soulstone with a Domain that would let me use its mana. And if it didn’t create a mana crystal for me, I wouldn’t even be able to use any magic once I left.

The magic system here was terrible. To get any access at all I needed to make friends with a rock. I wasn’t any good at even making regular friends. I suppose I could always kill the wizard and take his mana stone, but if I could do that I’d be too powerful to even need to. Though I’d probably kill him anyway. What he did was definitely cruel and unusual punishment, even if everyone else here had been fairly convicted, which I really doubted.

My surest route to finding a soulstone was to get my freedom. Freedom was actually listed in the guardhouse too, for a price. A really large one. If I just brought in enough tenebrium, I’d be free to go wherever I wanted and get my magic. My tentative plans at the moment were to just play along unless I saw an opportunity.

So for the next few days, I got to work.