When Bel awoke, he was enveloped in darkness face down on a floor he didn’t recognize. Slowly pulling himself up on all fours, he could feel the dried saliva stuck between his cheek and the smooth ground. He closed his eyes tightly, then opened and closed them again, repeating the process several times until the world came into view.

The best description of his surroundings that he could come up with was like something between a holding cell and the waiting room at a dentist’s office, but only designed for one person. The floor was bare concrete, though it was clean and dirt-free. There was a single chair, lightly padded with high arms and a floral print that reminded him of something his grandmother might have owned. In the opposite corner, there was a small pot. Bel assumed it was a toilet, though privacy had been merely an afterthought. Three of the walls were open, but barred, like a prison cell with an open floor plan. The exception being the wall behind him and the ceiling above, which appeared to be the same concrete as the floor below.

Light was sparse, primarily filtering in from the hallway that ran in front of his “cell”. It was artificially blue, like dim fluorescent, or what movie directors tell you moonlight looks like. The other rooms next to his were all in the same configuration, but none of them held another person.

From the corner of his eye, under the chair, he caught a slight movement. His heart stopped, and he held his breath. It moved again, and Bel bent slowly forward to look underneath.

“Meph!” Bel realized his voice was gravelly, but he didn’t care. He ran over to the snake and held his arm down. Meph slowly crawled out, flicking his tongue and looking side to side before crawling up Bel’s arm.

“Holy shit, bud. I am so glad to see you.” Bel ran a knuckle under the serpent's chin. For the briefest moment, he forgot about everything else. Some small piece of ‘normal’ had returned. The snake slithered upwards across Bel’s back and found a place hanging over his shoulder, like he would when they would take their walks around his apartment. Bel’s head sank, and he looked at the floor, catching sight of his Blockbuster shirt, and all of his positive thoughts collapsed like a Jenga tower.

“Ugh. Fuck me, Meph. Where the hell are we?” He hesitated for a moment before stepping towards the front of the cell. There was nothing to block his view in any direction down the hall, and he was sure he was alone, but he still didn’t like the idea of making big movements in the off chance someone was watching him from a camera feed or something.

From the edge of the cell, he could get a better view of the hallway and the cells across from him. The others were the same as his; flat concrete, a single chair, a chamber pot, and nothing else. Above each of them, a label: ‘Humanoid, Tier 0’. Looking up and down the hall, he could see there were easily fifty or more of the cells in both directions before the hall terminated at a door on either end. All of them were empty. He looked back at the label above the cells.

Humanoid?

Bel risked touching the bars; they didn’t budge. He pushed harder, but they were cemented into place. He turned back into the cell and slowly paced, trying to find any sense to make of this.

Then, he smelled it again—that smell—like barbecue and smoked meat. It drifted through his cell.

“What in the f—”

His words were drowned out by the panicked screams of a small boy, no more than eight or nine, in the cell next to him. Bel’s head swung around. He was absolutely positive there had been no one in that cell just a moment ago, but he was there now, and there was no way to miss him.

The boy was burned. Not a minor burn like Bel used to get in the kitchen, but burned head to toe and covered in charred and smoking flesh. He screamed again, a wail of pure agony, until his lungs gave out. He took another ragged, rasping breath and screamed again.

His eyes didn’t look towards Bel, and he wasn’t sure if they’d been damaged by whatever had burned the child, or if he was blinded by pain. The most disturbing part of the child’s appearance, though, was that the clothes were fully intact. Like someone had dressed him after he’d been burned alive. Blood and other fluids seeped through them, clotting and staining, but the clothes were otherwise untouched by whatever fire he’d escaped.

Bel ran to the barred wall between the cells and yelled to the boy, “Hey! Hey, are you OK?”

It was a pointless question, he knew, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. The child didn’t answer, he only continued his screams. Bel tried to shove his arm between the bars, but the gap was too narrow and the boy too far away.

The lights in the hallway brightened, and from the far end Bel could hear the door open, then the sound of shoes jogging on the floor. A moment later, and a gaunt man, taller than Bel, but probably barely out of his teens, stopped at the barred wall at the front of the child’s cell. His clothes were nondescript; a simple white uniform with blue trim. It was vaguely military, but not in an authoritarian kind of way. He held out a hand to the bars, and they separated like a sliding door, but Bel wasn’t able to see any track that they slid on, nor where the seam in the bars was to even allow for a door to appear.

The child continued to scream while the man looked at him from the door, seemingly assessing his state. After a brief moment, the man stepped forward and crouched down by the boy, holding his hand out the same way that he did towards the door. Bel’s blood froze in his veins while he watched as the young boy’s flesh turned from the charred pink and red to a clean and healthy whitish-pink. The man stood up, turned, and walked out of the cell without a word, leaving the boy behind, now unconscious. The door slid closed behind him and reformed the cage. Bel listened as the man’s footsteps continued back down the hall until he heard the door close. The lights in the hall dimmed to their low blue again, but Bel barely noticed. He was too focused on the child.

“Are… are you OK?” Bel’s voice croaked out weakly.

There was no response from the child. He looked to Bel to be in a deep sleep, and Bel figured it was probably for the best. Whatever had happened to this kid was more than anyone should have to deal with, and coupled with being locked in a cage… Bel didn’t want to think about the trauma that could cause someone.

Meph flitted his tongue, and Bel looked down at him on his shoulder as the snake waved back and forth stretched in the air towards the bars. Bel had almost forgotten he was there, and he pulled the snake slowly back towards him and turned back into his cell.

“Where the fuck are we?”

He walked over to the floral print chair and sat. It was precisely what he thought it would be. Some wooden chair with thin padding under his ass and floral fabric covering it, exactly like something his grandmother would have had. He leaned back in it, looked up towards the concrete ceiling, and drew in a deep breath before slowly exhaling.

A few minutes and a much needed mental break later, Bel leaned back up in the chair. The child was still asleep in his cell, and Bel didn’t want to wake him. He decided the first course of action would be an inventory. Take stock of everything on his person, and then work out what to do once he had a better grasp on what was where.

He pulled his wallet out. Twenty-six dollars, one credit card with an interest rate that was just barely allowed by law, and his driver's license, which wouldn’t expire for another two years. He remembered the debit card he was missing, which led to The Glass Slipper, which led to Sera. Bel sighed and shook his head. He wasn’t sure what was going on, or if she was safe, but he hoped she was.

Then he felt the ring in his pocket. He went to reach for it, but stopped and thought better of it, remembering the words of the old man, Melchior. He traced his finger around the shape of it in his pocket. It felt unremarkable, like a simple ring. That didn’t stop his heart rate from climbing, though. He took his hand away and tried to push it out of his mind.

Sadly, the only other thing he had on himself was his phone, not even his keys. He pulled it out of his pocket and tried to tap the screen to turn it on, but it didn’t activate. He held the power button, and the screen flashed as the phone powered up. The familiar ‘G’ popped on the screen as it booted, but then the rest of the logo appeared. Where ‘GOOGLE’ would have once been, it now read ‘GASPAR’, but still in the blue, red, yellow, blue, green, red text.

The fuck?

The phone continued to boot, and loaded up the home screen. It was blank, with only a search bar across the bottom. The time read 11:49PM, and the bars showed no service. Bel tried to bring up the app menu, but it was unresponsive. He pressed other parts of the screen and eventually rebooted, but nothing changed.

He was fidgeting with his phone when the lights outside of the cell turned red. He looked up and out to the hall, which now glowed eerily. The door to his cell and every other slid open silently. He waited, not sure if he should expect the man in white to reappear, or someone else. Then the alarm sounded.

High pitched and warbling, like a World War II klaxon, it drilled into his skull. Bel reached up and shielded his ears while Meph tightened across his shoulders. He looked over at the child, but the boy was still unconscious.

Slowly, Bel stood and walked towards the door. He pushed his hand where it would have been, half expecting there to be some kind of force-field or something like Star Trek, but there was nothing. He put his hand through, and then his arm, and then finally took a full step out, monitoring both of the doors at either end of the hall. When no one came, he knew he had to make a choice. As rash as it may have been, he didn’t think about it very long.

“Fuck this place. I don’t even know where the hell I am.”

Bel turned and started down the hall, but then stopped. He thought about the child in the cell. Should he leave him? Was he going to survive? He’d been asleep the entire time, but his wounds were, to put it lightly, gruesome, even if they seemed to have been healed. He looked back towards the boy, still curled up in the fetal position. The only sign that he was alive was the subtle shift in his back as he exhaled.

Bel couldn’t do it. He knew it was a dangerous move, but he couldn’t leave him. If he woke up in the cell with his most recent memory being agony and terror as his body was burned away… Bel couldn’t let that be something that anyone had to deal with on their own, kid or not. Bad idea? Probably. But the thought of leaving the boy to wake up alone, after what he’d been through, was unbearable.

He walked into the cell and thought about picking him up over his shoulder in a firefighter’s carry, but then he thought about Meph, still tightly draped across him. That wouldn’t work. He gently set Meph on the ground and quickly took off the Blockbuster shirt. Tying one of the bottom corners to a sleeve, he created a small sling and quickly slid Meph inside of it. Then, he worked it across his torso like a messenger bag, and kept Meph up front pressed against his chest.

“Don’t get bite-y on me, OK, bud.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

With his new snake holster in place, he bent over and lifted the child. He seemed lighter to Bel than he should be, but he chalked it up to the adrenaline that was crashing through his veins. He stepped back out of the cell and looked at the door in the hall. One was the way the white uniformed man came from, and the other was completely unknown. He opted for the direction of the mysterious man. One last look at both of the cells, no turning back, and he walked down the hall. The door opened outwards, and Bel peeked around the corner. For the first time, he began to grasp where he was.

Beyond the door, the hallway stopped in a t-junction, and a walkway ran to the left and right. On the other side of the walkway, there was a small railing and a sheer drop of what Bel guessed was a hundred feet or so. At the bottom of the drop was a large courtyard, and in the middle of that was a central spire-like panopticon that stretched up from the ground to well above the prison walls. Looking up, Bel could see he was near the bottom of the complex, and there were another twenty or more floors like his above him. All circling this massive prison yard and spire, and all with doors wide open like his. High above, the sky was immense, and the inky black night was dotted with stars.

Bel drew in a sharp breath as he put his hands on the railing. “Holy shit!”

On the floors above, and from doors nearest where he was, he could see a steady stream of people all doing the same as him, peering out, gathering their surroundings, and yelling. Towards the courtyard, he heard more shouting, and he looked over and viewed a battlefield from above. There were two distinct forces. Coming from the walls, the prisoners like himself were rushing the central spire from all sides, and from the spire a seemingly unending stream of men in the same white uniform as the previous man appeared. Bel noted that all the prisoners were dressed like himself, in so far as that they did not have any uniforms, just a wide variety of standard clothing.

On his left, a man burst from the next door down. He looked left and right, confused and startled, but then saw Bel, shirtless, carrying the boy. There was a moment of indecision, but then he waved towards Bel to follow him. Bereft of any other ideas, Bel jogged towards the man.

The two moved down the walkway until they reached an inset hall that turned into a staircase. The man looked back at Bel briefly, and Bel noticed something strange about the man’s eyes. They were purple. Not just the iris, but the entire eyeball. They were cartoonishly purple. The man turned around again before Bel could study them, and he just shook his head, blaming the night and the energy of the moment.

Down the stairs, Bel had to steady himself on the railing to not let the weight of the boy throw him off balance. He was continually impressed with himself insofar that he didn’t feel tired after carrying him all this way. He wondered if he was in better shape than he assumed. Absent-mindedly, he reached down and ran his hand along Meph through the shirt. Thankfully, the snake seemed to be happily docile in his carrier.

At last on the ground floor, Bel stopped to catch his breath, but found he didn’t really need to. The man he was following didn’t seem to be bothered, either, and they both moved ahead, keeping to the outside of the central ring to avoid the fighting.

Bel was now finally able to get a better view of the battle at eye level. The smell of the conflict was overwhelming; blood and sweat, iron and salt. The yells and groans of prisoner and guard were a cacophony of violence. He watched as unarmed prisoners were beaten down by club wielding men in white coats. Some prisoners held their own, going blow for blow, shrugging off the hits like they were being overrun by pool noodles. Others weren’t so stout.

An older man who seemed more disoriented than aggressive took a hit to the face and crumbled to the ground, blood pouring from his right eye. Bel was immediately concerned that the man would be trampled in the crowd, but the prisoners moved around him, forming a wide circular area where he fell. Bel saw they did it for anyone who could no longer fight, which was strange to him, but relieving. Unfortunately, it left enormous gaps in their defense, though, which were quickly exploited by the better armed guards. Maneuvering in like worker ants, the guards took every advantage they could, moving in, flanking, and controlling the fight if not with superior numbers, then with a more agile strategy. It was going to be a slow slaughter, but a slaughter nonetheless, and the prisoners were only buying time before they were systematically taken down. Bel felt a knot of hopelessness weigh down his guts.

From the spire, another group of guards walked out, though these were dressed in heavy armor, carrying some kind of riot shield, and wearing ballistic padding. Bel watched as they moved as a unit, fanning out but maintaining a barrier, until behind them, another group appeared. These wore the same uniforms as everyone else, but instead of clubs, they carried white staffs. They filed in behind the armor, and all raised their implements. From the tip of the instruments, a white light glowed brightly and crackled like a downed power-line, but only for a moment, before the light blasted outwards.

A rush of concussive force washed over Bel, followed by a blinding, pure light. His ear drums pounded, and his eyes felt as though they had melted in their sockets. The cacophony wasn’t a single blast, but a thousand sharp daggers in his ears. A few agonizing moments passed before the pain waned, and the sounds of battle returned, but now accompanied by a high-pitched ringing in his ears. He looked up just in time to see the guards in back raise their staffs and…

Bel thought for sure he was deaf and blind this time. There was no world but white light, and there was no sound but pain. The blast nearly knocked him to his knees, and it took several deep gasps to return his lungs to working order. The effects lasted longer this time, or maybe it only seemed that way, but Bel was sure that another blast like that would send him to the ground.

What the hell was that?

Cautiously, he opened his eyes. The battle had transformed. Most of the prisoners, especially those closest to the wall of armored guards, were on the ground, many bleeding from their eyes and ears while convulsing. They’d taken the worst of it, and it showed.

Bel heard a thumping from behind him, like a steam engine train getting fired up, and the clank of chains. The sound rattled up from the ground, creating vibrations that left his legs feeling like jelly. Then, on his right, a man—no, a giant—stepped forward onto the field.

Bel estimated him to be at least seven-and-a-half feet tall, and built like Andre the Giant if Andre had skipped leg day and only worked his lats and biceps. Top-heavy was an understatement. The man was eighty percent upper body. He wore nothing but blue pants wrapped in a thick steel chain that hung broken and clanged as he walked. Around his wrists, the other half of the chain dangled from manacles like the Ghost of Christmas Steroids. Last, around his neck and slung across his bare back, another thick slab of steel rested over the knotted muscle. It reminded Bel of a yoke for farm cattle. The man turned and looked down towards him, and Bel thought he had never felt smaller. It was terrifying in a way that he’d never felt before. The man’s size was unnatural. There was something in his eyes, though—anger, to be sure—but something else.

He looked back and forth between Bel and the child, then nodded before speaking with a voice that would ground mountains to dust. “Tonight, all chains are broken. Follow me, kin.”

Bel didn’t need to be told twice. The other man he had been following before had disappeared into the fray, and Bel hadn’t been sure what to do next. Following the Jolly Green Giant into battle seemed like the most Viking-ass thing to do in the moment, so he nodded and stepped behind the man.

The colossal man trudged ahead, appearing to move in slow motion, but his tremendous stride made quick work of the distance between them and the wall of guards. He slowed and reached up around his neck and lifted the yolk from it, brandishing it like his own club towards the guards. Bel watched as the giant called his shot like Babe Ruth aiming for the fences. The guards didn’t waste a moment, and were on him like a swarm of angry wasps. However, for all their effort, they looked like toddlers fighting King Kong. If any blow landed, it was shrugged off. If any guard got too close, he was knocked swiftly to the side by a well-placed blow off the yoke. Bel watched the merciless beating of the guards until, one by one, they all fell to the might of the giant, bloodied and broken in heaps at his feet.

Bel was in awe.

With the light work out of the way, the big man turned towards the heavily armored guards. Bel looked behind the phalanx, wondering what had happened to the staff-wielding flash-bangers, but they were nowhere to be seen. The guards tightened their formation, locking into place like an impenetrable wall. The giant swung his yoke against the blockade, but it only rattled off of their shields like an out of tune xylophone.

He raised the yoke above him and brought it down with all the momentum of the previous swing, and the central guards raised their shields up for protection. It was the exact response the big man had wanted. He pushed forward into them, bowling three of them over as they were caught off balance and they in turn brought to others down to the ground with them. That was enough to upset the formation, and the giant went to work. He brought the yoke down, again and again, crushing their armor like aluminum cans. Behind the giant, and behind Bel, the prisoners left standing began to cheer and yell. The tide was turning.

It all went quiet, though, as the doors to the spire opened once again. This time, the guards weren’t in white uniforms, but red as arterial blood, with black fabric masks that hung down their faces like veils. Three of them walked out of the doors like the avatars of death themselves, and Bel felt a wave of unnatural fear wash over him. The crowd behind him screamed, and Bel soon understood their terror.

Fire spewed from one of the guards. Bel couldn’t tell from where. There was no gun, no grenade toss, no flame thrower. It was a gout of fire that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Vietnam War film. The big man held his ground, though, as the flames passed over and around him. However, as the flames of one died out, another burst of flames started from the others. Bel could only watch. The giant braced himself against the inferno, but they pushed him back as they roasted him alive. Bel glimpsed the man’s face, charred black, cracked and boiling. It reminded him of the child still slung over his shoulder. The flames were unyielding. As one died off, another started up, one after the other, in an unending stream of hell. Seconds felt like eternity as Bel watched, locked in a horrific trance. The giant’s skin melted away, revealing muscles torn and broken, and then the white bone beneath. The big man fell to his knees, but he never screamed. He collapsed in silence, and the fire stopped. For the first time since the battle had begun, there was no sound. Nothing but the sharp ringing in Bel’s ears.

He looked at the red suited guards and they stepped forward. A renewed sense of terror collapsed on him like a crumbling building. He stumbled backwards and nearly dropped the boy from his shoulder, but regained his balance. They continued their march, now with eyeless masks locked on him. He braced for the end and watched as the flames leaped from their hands.

But they never touched him. The fire stopped a foot ahead of him, as though held by an invisible pane of glass. Bel watched as the flames reached higher and burned hotter, but never closed the gap.

He felt the air change—a sudden stillness that cut through the screams and fire. Then, a voice, commanding and thunderous, shattered the silence.

“Stand down,” it demanded.

The red-suited guards didn’t respond, their bodies rigid as if bound by some unseen force. The fire continued to pour from them, unyielding, unthinking. Bel turned to see where the voice had come from.

Ten feet behind him stood a young man with long, dark brown hair, brown eyes, and olive skin. He wore an ornate purple cloak over some kind of garb that Bel had only ever seen worn at Renaissance festivals. The man looked straight out of a fairy tale. One of his hands was held high above his head, and Bel saw rings on his fingers. Five on the hand held up, and five on the hand by his side. They glowed in the same way that Melchior’s had, with some ethereal light that seemed impossibly luminous. The man walked calmly towards Bel, looking at the boy slung over his shoulder.

He gave a smirk to Belmont. “I think you should put the child down now.”

The commanding but gentle tone of the younger man caught Bel off guard, and he slowly set the boy on the ground. The child was still completely immobile, but for the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

The young man turned around to the crowd of prisoners, as well as some guards that had stood back up. The red guards behind him were yet unrelenting with their fire as it continued to be held at bay by some invisible force.

He called out, once again his voice demanding attention. “Is this what you wanted tonight? What was your plan? To climb the tower, and then, what? This is a Tier 1 holding. These men behind me are Tier 3. What happens when they send a Tier 5 to settle you all? Go back to your cells. This battle was never yours to win.”

There was a grumble to the crowd, and to Bel’s amazement, they turned and began walking away. He turned back towards the man, who was now facing the three red guards, standing next to the burning corpse of the giant.

“Stand down! On the order of an Advocate of Passage.”

The guards did not comply.

“Stand down!” The young man’s voice boomed like thunder with otherworldly authority, but the guards would not relent.

“Very well.”

Suddenly, the flames erupted from where they were held back, but only so far as to reach the man. They washed over and around him, as they had the giant, but he was untouched. In a flash, he produced a short sword from some hidden depths of his cloak. There was a glint of steel and three slashes across one guard. Speed, control, and precision met in one as the blade slid across the soft cloth of the red uniform. The guard fell, though if there was blood, it was lost in the crimson fabric. Then there came three more cuts, as cunning and precise as the former, and the next fell. Three final slashes, and the last guard collapsed by his companions. The young man sheathed his sword into a scabbard that hung hidden in his cloak before turning to Bel.

He sighed. “I gave them their chance. Let this be a lesson that zealous dedication is often a one sided arrangement.” He looked down at the child and frowned. “Belmont. You did a dumb thing, bringing him here, and there is no nicer way to put it. He, or you, or both of you, could have been hurt or killed. It was stupid. Noble and kind, but stupid.”

Bel looked down at the child. “I can live with that. Will he be alright?”

The man smiled. “Yes, he’ll be fine as soon as he gets back to his cell. He has been sedated, nothing more.”

Bel looked up at the man and judged his young features. There was a kindness, but also cockiness, that curled on his lips.

“Who are you?” Bel asked.

The man just smiled warmly. “I am Balthazar, your Advocate of Passage. Come, we have a judge to convince, and much to answer for.”