After being dragged through the door behind the podium. I was led through a labyrinthine series of narrow rock corridors deep in this place. The keep they called it. I was beginning to believe that the supposed keep was underground. I had not seen a single window the entire journey, nor had I seen another living thing on the way.

The forced walk ended in a dark and gloomy room with many tunnels in the walls, there were some beings in it. A little green man with a beard, a snake with human-sized arms, a small gray humanoid thingy with big hairy ears and a snouty mouth that I thought might be a goblin. In the background was some kind of armadillo the size of a hound. And hanging from some pipes in the ceiling was some kind of gorilla, but it was dressed.

They all quickly hid in the corners as soon as they saw the armored soldier enter. The soldier pushed me into the room so hard that I fell face first to the floor, hitting my jaw. He turned and left.

I carefully picked him up and looked carefully at the door, when I was sure he wasn't coming back I turned to look at the others. The gray goblin crawled down another small tunnel and disappeared. The gorilla glared at me, pointed his thick hairy finger towards a sort of wooden trunk in the corner and deftly climbed up a series of pipes extending through the ceiling of the room, exiting through a trap door I could never access with my poor skills. The snake approached me raising its head to my eye level, stared at me for a second as I stared back at it. My legs were shaking as I held the toolbox to my chest like a shield.

"Ho, ho, hello..." I managed to squeeze out a greeting despite my fear.

"Human..." spat the snake sticking its tongue out "take an orb from the drawer" it pointed with its scaly hand to the same trunk the gorilla pointed to. "Follow the instructions and repair whatever is indicated on the orb," he pulled a glass orb the size of my fist from a pouch on his back and held it up in front of my eyes "If it breaks, you're dead. If you don't fix it fast you're dead and if you fix it wrong, you're dead".

He turned around, stared at his orb with his large vertical pupil eye and crawled into another small tunnel in the far wall.

"T-th-thank you..." I managed to stammer. I took a deep breath to calm myself, my nerves a bit numb from the whole situation, and remembered what the snake said. That I take an orb from the drawer. I walked over to the wooden trunk in the corner and lifted the lid, inside were lined up dozens of glass orbs of varying sizes. From the size of a marble to the size of my head.

I wanted to take one at random but then hesitated. These orbs looked just like the ones the black-armored soldier and the green-robed woman had. Those orbs couldn't just be pretty lights, they had some function, so I thought carefully. The snake told me that the orb will tell me what to fix, so it's like a radio, or maybe a phone, and he also said if it breaks I'm dead right? It's probably expensive.

I know for a fact that the bigger the easier it is to break, assuming they are glass and not some other material. So I shouldn't take the bigger one, a smaller one would work fine and I could hide it in my pocket.

Yes, I'll take the small one.

So I took the smallest orb, about the size of a marble. As soon as I took it out of the trunk, some mysterious force repelled me from the trunk and the lid slammed shut, I tried to open it again but could not. It seems I can only take one.

Well, I got it, now what?

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I held it against my ear but heard nothing. Then I spoke to it.

"hello! can anyone hear me?" but the marble didn't do anything.

Well... maybe it's just that there's nothing to repair?

I sat down on the floor against the wall, put my toolbox in beside me and tried to think about things so far.

I was in a strange place who knew where, surrounded by all sorts of terrifying monsters. No one explained to me carefully what I was supposed to do, but from the context, I was like some kind of slave to something called the Keep. Although I still didn't understand if the Keep was some kind of organization, this physical place where I was, or something else.

The old man at the podium then said that my assignment was 'maintenance staff'. And from what the snake said, the marble was supposed to tell me what to repair. I looked at the marble in my hand....

I was screwed... wasn't I?

I put the marble in my shirt pocket. Then I felt hungry, how long had it been since I had eaten, I opened my tool box. It's one of those expensive boxes made of metal with separate compartments that can be removed to see more spaces underneath, in the largest compartment are all the standard tools of an electrician. A roll of 220V cable. A box full of screws of various sizes and cable clamps, screwdrivers and cross screwdrivers of different sizes, a small hammer, an analog voltmeter, tweezers, pliers, lighter, knife, cutter, wire stripper, current detector, tape (you can not miss the tape), etc. all very professional. There are also some spare gloves and a protective mask.

In the smallest compartment on the side I had a soft drink and a cheese bread, my agency sponsored lunch. I always hated it but now it felt like heaven, I unwrapped the bread, uncapped the soda, and ate it slowly. Savoring every bite. When I realized I was shedding tears as I ate. I finished my meager lunch, or was it dinner? I put the empty bottle and bread wrapper back in the box and closed it. Then I hugged my toolbox tightly and waited for that damned marble to do something.

I was awakened by the annoying sound of a buzzing noise, I checked my pocket as I wiped my eyes. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked it. It was 3:00AM the next day, but it wasn't the phone that was making the annoying buzzing sound, I took the opportunity to try to call 911 but there was no reception either.

I checked my pocket again and pulled out the marble, it was glowing, buzzing, and there were tiny letters written on its surface.

It can't be, I thought.

I thought the marble would sound instructions like a radio, not put them in text, it doesn't look like a screen. How am I supposed to read this. I brought the marble close to my eyes and tried to read what it said, but it was too small. Maybe at 10 years old I could have read that, but not at that time, at 36 years old, I saw sight wasn't what it once was.

I looked at my hands, I had my phone in one and the marble in the other. Then I had a small moment of brilliance. I opened the camera app and focused the marble very closely on the cell phone camera. I snapped a picture and examined it....

Nothing. It's all blurry. Sure, the camera is designed to focus on things a little farther away. Not glued to the lens. It's not a microscope. Then I thought of that microscope I had when I was a kid, it had a light underneath that went through the sample and you could see it on the lens.

Then I had another moment of brilliance. I turned on the cell phone flashlight and put the marble attached to it, then focused it on the wall. I had to try moving away and closer to the wall until I found the ideal distance, where the shadows of the enlarged letters were projected, a little blurry, but legible.

It said: "Broken magic conduit, reconnect" and there was a drawing of a map with a blinking dot in the center and an arrow pointing to a path on the right. All written in an unknown language, the same one the woman spoke. I knew what it was right away, a kind of guide arrow like in the map application, but on a marble. More and more I regretted not having taken a bigger ball. I tried to open the wooden chest again to change the marble but I couldn't open it. So I focused the flashlight with the marble on the ground. And I followed the map.