“Pause,” I said, holding my hand up. The NPCs all seemed annoyed by my interruption, but we had bigger problems.

“Joe,” I said, turning to face him, “we have to resolve this before the second wave of keys goes out.”

“Why?” asked Lindsey.

“Slavery is on the proscribed subject list,” Joe explained, “We can’t legally give people keys if there is slavery here.”

The elders seemed taken aback by this proclamation, clearly reading the context. They exchanged words in terse, clipped bursts, speaking in a language that didn’t sound even remotely familiar to me. Their words carried the faint buzz of latent power, a lesser echo of what happened when the tutorial NPC had delivered her exposition. Sadly, the game interface did not feel the need to translate their exchange. The small male turned back to us and spoke.

“Surely, travelers, there has been a misunderstanding,” he pleaded, “We were given material to learn these languages by the great sorceress, that these would be the languages of the travelers we would meet here. We have learned them and taught them to our children to the best of our ability, but it may be that we have learned some words wrongly.”

Some of the hostility that had crept into my and my companions’ expressions faded. The elders seemed genuinely stunned by our strong reaction, so a mistake was certainly possible.

“What, then, do you think that it means to be a slave?” Lindsey asked. She seemed rather more interested than offended by the whole exchange. I had learned in school that the Europeans had a different history relating to slavery than we did, but it was wild to see it.

“A slave is a person that is owned by another entity, either to care for and protect them, for economic purposes, or both. It is the concept of a pet or a work animal, but for sapient beings.”

I groaned, my head falling forward into my hands. I looked inward, to give myself more time to think. My personal star burned happily in its pen, its metallic hue bobbing back and forth between gold and a rich, red copper. My pigeon sat in his office, diligently scratching notes into paper. Would he count as a slave?

[I am more like a component of you that has been deliberately allowed to retain independence. Please allow it to remain so.]

Well, that definitely wasn’t reassuring. It had pulled my attention away from the clusterfuck that was about to unfold around me, though. Given me enough distance that I could try to tackle the problem calmly. I returned my attention to my surroundings, raised my head and addressed Joe.

“This can double as testing the persistence of this zone. If we can make changes and they stick, then we’re killing two birds with one stone, if not then things will get really messy.” He nodded his agreement.

“Now, just a minute. We are certainly excited to see the sorceress’s plan come to fruition after all this time, and are happy to perform our part, but you can’t simply come in here and start demanding that we make nonsensical changes as you see fit!”

“Look,” I said, “our coming here is clearly important to you for reasons you will no doubt feel compelled to explain to us. Certainly that very important reason is more important than continuing to practice slavery, right?”

“It is not that simple,” the man said, exchanging a worried look with the pale woman. The elf just looked irritated.

“It might need to be,” I continued, “if it ends up that we can just circumvent your town and access deeper areas, then our leaders will mandate we do that. If that isn’t possible, they’ll consider increasingly extreme measures to lock you out of interacting with any of our travelers.” They might even wipe this whole place off the map, if they could find a way to. No, they definitely would, if it meant avoiding such a massive roadblock in their plans for this game. No matter how lifelike the NPCs were. No matter how genuinely intelligent they probably were.

It was the small woman who responded.

“We can’t just suddenly turn them loose, that would be unethical,” she said. Our reactions must have been clear enough to cue her in that this was perhaps not the correct tactic. “I… I understand that you two must be martial artists of some variety, to have made the journey here. I am not disparaging your accomplishments. Learning to make use of your essence at all is admirable. But humans cannot awaken their essence. Please trust me that there are things out there that you won’t ever be able to contend with, things that require an awakened who has been growing for some time to even have a hope to drive away.”

She punctuated her speech with a sad shake of her head. I turned to Joe once more.

“I guess we are supposed to get an infodump here, regardless of how the conversation goes. Creative AI though, working it into the conversation,” I said.

“Mmm,” Joe rumbled, presumably in agreement, “Do you think they’ll actually let us short circuit whatever quest we are supposed to do for this, just from the threat of being banned? That would be strangely meta. And impressive, in its own way.”

“You are not taking this seriously!” the female elder interjected, looking legitimately distressed, “I do not know what sort of strange doldrums you hail from, but I can’t just turn out a bunch of helpless people to be eaten by what horrors may stalk these plains and beyond, simply because you are uncomfortable with the reality of their situation! I don’t think you even begin to appreciate how precarious your position is, either.”

She had stood from her seat as she ranted, though given her small stature her eye level was hardly any higher than when she had been sitting down. She sighed deeply, turned to the elf, and spoke again, “Mi Sha, show them.”

The elf, tallest among these elders, had been sitting with elbows on the table, her head resting in her hands, ostensibly watching and listening. A bland smile had adorned her face, she likely didn’t care about this nearly as much as the other two. Now, however, we had her full attention once more. Her expression twisted, a cat who had cornered a particularly tasty mouse. She leaned forward, raising her head and bringing her elbows together. The effect was… minimal, as she was more lithe than curvy. Her skin was flawless, though, and her features were somewhere between exotically beautiful and eerily alien. She was also showing a wildly inappropriate amount of skin. The effect was quite distracting.

“You,” she said, locking eyes with me.

“Stand.”

Her word vibrated in the air. Ethereal chains lashed out from her, one after another, sinking into me. They were hooked and barbed, and each was a different shade of pink. I could feel the majority of them latching onto my uncomfortable attraction for the elf, which I was desperately trying to suppress. They seemed able to hook into other parts of my mind, though far fewer of them did so.

I felt good. Relaxed. What had I been doing? Everything seemed to be happening very slowly. Idly, I noticed that I was in the process of standing up.

[We are being manipulated! Resist!]

I felt some measure of focus find me, but I was still locked out of control of my body. I watched in slow motion as my legs straightened. My eyes still locked with the elf, seeing her smug smile made my blood boil. My power flashed out, overlapping the mass of chains. Unfortunately, my power could not simply wash away hers. As it was, I was trying to arm wrestle a hydraulic press. So I stopped pushing.

I could feel that the entire mass of pink magic was far too much for me to simply pull into my inventory. The spiritual weight to it all was clearly out of my league, so I focused on the form. Chains. What did they say about the weakest link? I wrapped my power around a single link and pulled. It was still a significant expenditure of power, but it was well within my ability.

The severed chain, apparently under some metaphysical tension, snapped back as soon as it was broken. I could see the elf flinch as the chain whipped back into her and dissolved. I didn’t hesitate for a moment, targeting a link from each chain connecting us. My pigeon had seen what I was doing, and was directing his attention to the next link in the next chain to be broken, allowing me to handle them as quickly as my power could lash out. Ten, a hundred, a thousand spiritual chains were shattered and returned to sender.

By the time I had reached my full height, standing eye level with Joe’s sitting form yet towering over everyone else, I was not the blank-faced thrall who had been ordered to stand. I was the stormy foreign mystic who had been attacked to prove a point, looking down my nose at the fool who had dared. I leaned forward and slammed my hand down onto the massive table, my power ripped it free from its current position. My assailant, who had still been leaning forward on her elbows, clattered to the stone floor.

[Do not relent. She is angry, not yet cowed.]

I looked, and I could see the fury in her eyes as she scrambled to her feet.

“I do not like mind control. Apologize.”

She clenched and unclenched her hands. I could sense her power boiling just beneath the surface, so potent that a mist of pink energy was diffusing into the area around her.

“Maybe I should give the table back? Do you think your powers could convince it to fall more gently?”

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That got her attention. Uncertainty cut through fury. The male elder took the opportunity to interpose himself between us, ending our magical stand-off.

“Whoa! Stop, stop, stop!” he shouted. His magic flared, marking a makeshift wall between the two sides. There was no physical manifestation of his power, not yet, but I could somehow tell that he was on the very precipice. There was no visible cue, his power appearing as a dull, even grey, but I caught a brief scent from his magic. Mountains and… neutrality? Man, mystic senses were weird.

He turned to Joe, opened his mouth, and paused. He shook his head and turned to address our group as a whole.

“Travellers, please allow me to apologize for Elder Erien, she cares deeply about the humans, it was her clan that owned them originally. And Elder Mi Sha…” his expression darkened as he turned his head to look her way, “Elder Mi Sha is a blunt instrument. One who will apologize.”

“I will not apologize for the nature of my—”

A sharp glare from the still unnamed elder silenced her, or at least that particular thought. She spoke again, her voice dripping with syrupy sweetness.

“I’m sorry that you are so offended by the nature of my awakening,” she said, as if she were talking to a child, “And that you awakened as some kind of thief. Your awakened ability represents your inner self, you know.”

“Mi Sha, that’s enough!” he said. I could see a disturbance ripple through his power, though he calmed himself in short order. “If you cannot take your responsibilities seriously, then return to your chambers.”

“Fine! I’ll just go… entertain myself,” she said, arching her back and turning her head slightly to the side, as if she were posing from some invisible camera. She strode towards the entrance she had come from, swaying her hips in an exaggerated manner. As she reached the doorway, she looked over her shoulder and met my eyes again, wisps of pink magic floating around her..

”You could come with, you know,” she said, in a much lower tone of voice, “I’ll make it up to you.”

I raised my hand towards her and reached for my solar pocket. As the interface between the physical world and my personal space thinned, sparks of radiant energy sputtered out in a corona around my hand. The elf turned and sprinted the rest of the way out of the room.

I relaxed my power, and the elder who had interceded relaxed his as well.

“Elves,” he said with a shrug, as if that explained away this situation. Maybe it did. He sat back down on his block of stone, and motioned to the area where the table had been, “Could you possibly…”

[I would like it. It will be great in our future board room.]

“No,” I said, “I will be keeping it.”

[Show dominance and remind them of their debt.]

“The price for attacks on my person may not be so easily paid, should it happen again.”

He looked annoyed at first, but took a deep breath and seemed to calm himself.

“Very well,” he said, “I suppose I can simply make another. Perhaps we should begin this meeting anew. I am Elder Eru Ardan, the head of the house of Eru.”

“I’m Elder Erien Eda, matriarch of the house of Erien,” the woman, Erien Eda, said.

“You place your family name first?” Lindsey asked.

“The Er people do, yes,” the woman answered, “but other kinds have their own preferences. Elves name their children with sounds which they find pleasant, no family name to speak of.”

“This is a gold mine for you, Lindsey,” I said.

She nodded, and said, “I am Lindsey Auclair, I am training to become a diplomat between my people and your creators.”

Elder Erien’s eyes widened to an almost comical degree.

“You seek an audience with the Principle of Hierarchy? Well, that is certainly an ambitious goal.”

“It is,” Lindsey nodded, “a task for the future.”

I shared a look with Joe, who seemed to be deferring to me on this one.

“I’m Will, and this is Joe. We are testers. Explorers who also explore the rules of reality.”

“You are sorcerer aspirants as well?” asked Elder Eru, his eyes narrowing.

“Define it.”

“One who learns the deeper truths of reality, with the hope that they may one day adjust the world as they see fit.”

“Yes,” I said, “that accurately describes us.”

The two elders leaned back, with shocked expressions. If their skin hadn’t been stark white already, I expect they would have paled.

“This, it’s… It’s unimaginable,” the woman said.

“Why?” I asked, “What is the issue you seem to have with humans?”

“We have no problem with humans,” Elder Eru clarified, “it is just that humans cannot awaken their essence. This is well established truth that has been known for centuries.”

“The Principle of Hierarchy has even stated it, and she has never been incorrect,” Elder Erien added.

“If it has been known for centuries, perhaps the knowledge was not recorded or passed on accurately?” Lindsey suggested.

“No,” the small woman shook her head, “things that the Principle of Hierarchy has said cannot be recorded incorrectly, in any form.”

I narrowed my eyes. This was starting to sound disturbingly religious.

“How do you know that?” I asked. Lindsey shot me a look, but I wasn’t really sure what to take from it.

Elder Erien squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and then spoke, “Humans cannot awaken. It is how they are made.”

There was essence woven into the words, but not the elder’s. An echo of something primordial, reaching from before the beginning of time and space as I knew it, granting structure which could not ever be bent or broken. The words, no matter how they were rendered, would always be pure and crystalized truth.

I massaged my forehead. Exposure to that essence had afflicted me with a headache and slight nausea.

“You’ve really never heard the words before, you must be from somewhere truly far away,” Elder Erien said. She had pulled a rich, red handkerchief from a pocket in her robes, and was pressing it to her nose. “In that case, I would strongly suggest against trying to say them yourself.”

I nodded. I guess it’s fine to be religious if the object of your worship can effectively beat you over the head with words spoken centuries ago.

“So we are getting off track. This is starting to sound like story stuff again. We really, really need to address this slavery issue,” I said, “Our leaders will absolutely take measures to ensure that none of our kind can visit you if we can’t sort this out somehow.”

The elders looked unhappy again. After a moment’s consideration, Elder Erien spoke up.

“How many awakened humans are there?” she asked.

“I don’t know for certain, but at least… fifty?” I looked to Joe for confirmation. He was much more familiar with the reports than I was. He nodded.

“And you have the secret to awaken humans?” she continued her line of questions.

“Yes, though it requires the use of a special catalyst,” I said, “One of our primary objectives here is to find a reliable source.”

“Would you be willing to share your method and some of this resource once you find some?”

I looked at Joe. He seemed surprised too. I hadn’t expected keys to serve a purpose inside the game as well, but it made sense given how it tried to integrate its systems and setting.

“I’m afraid we are contractually obligated to give what we find to our leaders.” I said.

“All of it?” she asked.

So much had happened since I had signed my contract, I had to take a moment to think about the terms. I was pretty sure that there was nothing like that in my contract, just the three keys I needed to turn over every two months.

“No,” I said, “just a fixed amount for a given interval.”

“Then perhaps you could agree to sell us a portion, once your other obligations are met?”

“I will sell my portion,” Lindsey said.

“Really?” I asked, somewhat surprised by her declaration.

“Yes,” she affirmed, “I have no need for the additional keys. We are discussing subscription keys, right?”

I nodded.

“Then yes, I will sell mine, once we have secured some. I have no obligations and no other use for them.”

“Excellent,” Elder Eru said, clapping his hands for emphasis, “Now, how many sorcerer aspirants are there among you?”

I hesitated for a moment, but ultimately didn’t see the harm in sharing generalities, “At least twenty, but depending on what other groups are doing it may be closer to thirty or fourty.”

“Wow, they don’t do things in half measures where you’re from.”

“They certainly don’t,” I agreed.

“How far along are you, on your path?” he asked.

“We have both been trained to understand and control worlds like this one. We have decades of experience and have already worked our way through dozens of smaller and simpler worlds each. I have some forms of training that Joe lacks, and he has more experience than I do.”

“Already capable of localized manipulations? In multiple different locales? Interesting.”

[He is desperately interested in this.]

I couldn’t see it. He looked just as calm and serene as ever.

[He has already hidden his reaction. If you offer him this knowledge, he will give you what you want.]

“So,” I said, “how about we teach you our methods, and you put an end to your practice of slavery?”

“Me? No, no, not me. I don’t have the drive for sorcery. Or the spine,” he said with a brief shudder, “But if you will train with our aspirants, show them your methods, then I will present your idea to the full council, and ensure that they understand the value of what you are offering.”

“Will, do you think that will actually work?” Joe asked me, obviously excited, “I mean, just train up a whole bunch of NPCs as testers? It can’t be that easy.”

“It’s worth a try,” I said, “They are tier ones as far as I can tell, should be able to do anything we can.”

I turned my attention back to Elder Eru, “We agree to your proposition.”

“I still think there has been a misunderstanding,” Elder Erien said, “and I insist that we at least go together to see the slave pens first.”

“We can do that,” I said.

“Good,” she said with a smile, “I’m sure we will be able to resolve this little mix up. But if you’re certain that it’s what you want, and you can offer us a way to awaken humans, then I will tentatively withdraw my moral objections to ending slavery.”