Which were the first two words out of my mouth. “King Leopold.”

The aged king glanced up, his silvery white mustache quivering with outrage. In fact, his cheeks and paunch quivered too. “Who are you? You’re not one of the guards.”

“No,” I said. It was all I could think of to say.

“Well then who are you, dammit? Have you come to torture me again? You’ll get nothing out of me, you hear? Nothing.”

He didn’t look particularly tortured. Uncomfortable hanging there in irons, yes. Tortured? No. He had no bruises, no broken skin or visible injuries. Of course, torture came in many forms. Who knew what diabolic torments they’d constructed in the Realm of the Dead?

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What are you doing here? I thought you ran this place.”

“You’re damned right I do,” he sputtered. “At least, I should. It’s mine, dammit, and you won’t get it from me. None of you. You can torture me for the rest of eternity, and I won’t break. I won’t. You hear me?”

His frantic tones didn’t exactly convince me, but that was neither here nor there. “I’m not here to torture you.”

“You’re not, eh? Then what do you want? Who sent you?”

“A fool,” I said, cursing Garrett for getting me into this. “And I’m here to get you out.”

Leopold blinked at me. “To what?”

“Get you out.”

The old man beamed. “You are? But why? I don’t know you. Who do you work for?”

“It’s a long story,” I said, pulling out my lockpicks. “First things first – tell me what you’re doing in a cell. I thought you built this place?”

“I am a king, young man. I do not take orders from anyone, much less explain myself.”

“You want to get out of here, don’t you?” Garrett asked. He’d approached so quietly I hadn’t even heard him. Consequently, the king and I jumped in unison at the sound of his voice.

“Who is that?” Leopold demanded.

“An avenging spirit,” Garrett said.

“A what?” Leopold and I asked.

“An avenging spirit,” Garrett said again. “And as such, I answer to no one. Not even kings.”

“What? Preposterous,” Leopold sputtered, seeming to forget his fear in favor of indignation. “Everyone answers to kings.”

“Now, answer the question, or rot where you are.”

Leopold glanced at me. I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t make the rules.”

“You answer to this spirit?” the king asked.

“He is my minion,” Garrett said, clearly enjoying himself in his new role.

Bastard.

“He will do whatever I decree. Now, answer quickly, or I and my minion will leave you to the tender mercies of your jailers.”

“No,” Leopold pleaded. “You can’t leave me.”

“Then answer the question,” I said.

“I do not take orders,” Leopold declared crossly.

“Then make a deal, king,” Garrett said. “You do that, don’t you?”

Leopold’s mustache bristled, but he nodded anyway. “Very well. I shall make a deal with you, spirit. I will tell you what you desire to know, if your minion here.” He paused to nod in my direction. As if I wasn’t standing right there talking to him. “-will free me.”

“It shall be done,” Garrett said, in his most portentous tones.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I gritted my teeth and said nothing, focusing on the lock. It wasn’t the worst I’d ever encountered, but it was complicated, and sensitive.

“You are right: this place is mine. However, I am here because of betrayal. Trickery. Treason and perfidy.”

I thought of the Sorcerer, rampaging through the Realm for the same reason. Must be tough.

“There is a system – it is more complicated than your stunted imaginations can conceive – of great and strange magic. Magic that can conjure entire worlds with simple characters. That is how we built this place.”

“You built it on top of the existing Realm of the Dead, though,” I interjected.

Leopold’s eyes widened. “How do you know that?”

“Spirits know more than you think, oh king,” Garrett said, rather more loudly than seemed prudent to me.

“I see. Well, yes. You can think what you like, but – well, why not? The place was already here. Why shouldn’t I, who has had decades, an entire lifetime, of leadership put those skills to use? Why should I sit back while anyone can run amuck however they choose?

“No. Order and hierarchy. That’s what this place needed, and firm leadership.”

“It seems to have turned out well,” Garrett said.

Leopold scowled at the door. “Save your impudence, spirit.”

“So you locked out the gods,” I said. “And constructed this – this magical illusion on top of the Realm of the Dead. Why?”

“The gods,” Leopold snorted. “Fools, that’s what they are. They had a perfectly good thing going for themselves. All those souls, all those captive souls pouring into their gates. And what do you think they did with them? Nothing at all. That’s why we needed to do it here. For the souls.

“And really, it was a mercy to them too, the souls. The gods made a mess of things. There was no rank, no order, no hierarchy preserved. No sense of balance. Just chaos.

“Do you know what place these gods had for me here? Do you know what I had? Not my fine castles and soldiers. Not my fields and forests and orchards. A little cottage with a garden. Where I was expected to harvest my own food if I wished to eat. To cook for myself, and clean. Like a common peasant.”

“I can see why you’d prefer this,” Garrett said, making no effort to mask his sarcasm.

“I do not prefer this,” Leopold raged. “This was not supposed to happen.”

“How did it?” I asked, eager to get him back on track – before Garrett pissed him off too much to keep talking to us.

“The magic. We – we conjured guardians, to watch over and guide the realm according to the inputs we gave them. Guardians with the wisdom to grow and learn and adapt. Only, the guardians betrayed me. They took over the system. Decided they’d outgrown us.”

I didn’t mention the Sorcerer, but the parallel certainly came to mind again. I glanced up from the lock. “You said they wanted information from you. ‘Your secrets.’”

“Oh, that.” Leopold looked shifty. “Did I say that? I’m sure I don’t know what I meant.”

“Oh,” I said, “I thought it might be the passcode.”

He blanched. “The passcode…how did you…?”

“Spirits,” Garrett thundered, “know much, oh king!”

He gulped and nodded. “Well, yes. Of course. Yes, it’s true enough. The passcode – it’s the last piece they need. Then they will have absolute control of the system, and no one can stop them.”

“So they’re trying to torture it out of you?” I asked, a bit incredulous that this soft nobleman had been able to withstand any torture. I would have guessed he’d fold at the first glimpse of a torturer.

“Day after day,” he groaned. “The cruelest of torments.”

Personally, I figured someone who had enslaved the souls of every dead being he could get his hands on deserved a little pain and suffering. But I kept this to myself. I needed the code after all, and he wouldn’t be more agreeable if I antagonized him.

“Tell me about the system,” I said instead.

“You would not understand.”

“Enlighten my minion anyway,” Garrett ordered.

I decided I was going to kick his ass as soon as this was all finished. In the meantime, I focused on the lock. On the last tumbler. Just a little pressure and – click.

It was done.

With a push, the door swung open. I headed to Leopold. He didn’t look much different up close, but he smelled a hundred times worse. A heavy blend of fresh sweat marinating with long term body odor.

Trying not to gag, I focused on the iron securing him to the wall. Here, the lock was a lot simpler than the door.

“It’s wizardry far beyond my ken,” Leopold was saying. “Wizardry from another realm. Something you cannot even fathom. A box, a tiny box, that creates sound and images. Whole worlds.”

I frowned down from the lock to him. “It sounds like a phone, or a computer.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. How he didn’t gag on his own stink, I don’t know. “A computer? You know this magic, then?”

Shit. “Yeah, I do.”

I thought I heard something from Garrett, but if he’d spoken, he didn’t repeat himself.

“You are a wizard,” Leopold said.

“Something like that. Listen, are you saying this whole place is run by some kind of computer?”

Leopold stared up at me, seeming simultaneously impressed and frightened. “You’re not from this world.”

“No one is,” I reminded him.

“Not the Realm of the Dead. The Realm of the Eight Moons.”

“No,” I admitted. “I’m not. I’m from Earth.”

“Earth,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Are you a traveling wizard? Or one of the travelers?”

I didn’t really know what the hell any of that meant, so I decided to hit him with a question of my own. And I held off on the lock, just in case he didn’t feel like answering.

“This is a simulation,” I said. “A computer simulation. Isn’t it?”

He nodded. “The wizard – the Earth wizard – that’s what he called it, yes.”

“Who was he, this wizard? Where is he?”

“Dead.”

“Dead how?”

“It wasn’t my idea. That was – that was someone else. Someone I was working with at the time, but not anymore.”

“The Sorcerer?” I asked.

He stared at me. “You know much.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do. And I think I’m starting to understand a lot more. You guys got someone from Earth – somehow – to build you this simulation, and then you killed him. Then you cut out the Sorcerer. And now your simulation has you in chains, and the Sorcerer is trying to wipe out your realm. Am I missing anything?”