Leopold finished his story while I worked on his manacles, taking my time as I went. The Sorcerer had been the one to open a portal to Earth. Some kind of realm-traveling magic, that was apparently quite hard to do. He’d created single use devices.

Single use devices that, the more I listened, sounded a lot like the shiny rock I’d picked up on that beach, so many years ago.

Tiny, portable portals to bring someone on a one-way trip to the Realms.

At the time, that had been the extent of the Sorcerer’s ambition. He’d figured out that other worlds existed, and wanted to explore what he could. That meant bringing people back with him.

Unfortunately for the first kid they brought over, one Daniel Burr, he’d been some kind of computer whiz. By Leopold’s description, I figured he must have been a software engineer, or maybe game designer.

At any rate, Daniel been duly impressed with what he saw – and Leopold and the Sorcerer had been more than impressed by the tech he carried. “The worlds he held in his palm.”

Over time, the plan took shape. A computer-generated world based on the Realms, to defeat the great equalizer, death. A place where Leopold and the Sorcerer could rule jointly, forever. No more being constrained by a single lifetime, or the laws of physics or even decency.

No more being mortal men. They would be gods, in their own world.

Supreme rulers.

The kid from Earth hadn’t known all the details, but he’d gone along with what he did know. “The Sorcerer can be quite persuasive, if you take my meaning, when he chooses to be,” Leopold said with a shudder.

Once it was finished, the Sorcerer offed the kid. Then Leopold pushed the Sorcerer out. “We shared a passcode. But the boy, he’d shown me how to change it. So when I did, no one else had access. It was all mine.”

Which had been the start of the most recent war.

The AI that ran the new Realm of the Dead, meanwhile, had been doing their own thing, and they’d decided that Leopold was an unnecessary addition to their neat and tidy management. He saw it as betrayal, but I figured they saw him as contrary to the – admittedly warped – ethics they’d been programmed with.

Not because he was too good for the place, but rather because even by the warped standards they modeled, he fell short. His behavior in life would have landed him in one of the lesser sectors, either damned or working his way to redemption.

And yet, he expected to be judged by an entirely different standard. Much as he’d lived.

At some point, the computer had just thought better of that, and decided it, rather than Leopold, could rule better.

It was probably right.

Not that I liked the way the computer ruled, but a pitiless and evenhanded approach to absurd rules couldn’t be worse than a capricious, temperamental one.

All of this, I kept to myself. An idea had been formulating as Leopold talked, and if it was going to work, I needed to keep him compliant.

As I slipped the last manacle off, I said, “Come, great king. The spirit and I will aid your escape, and help to hide you from unfriendly eyes.”

“We will?” Garrett asked.

I shot a warning glance over my shoulder. “We will. We can do no less for such a great king.”

Leopold rose with an effort, demanding, “Hide me? I have no intention of hiding. I’m going to confront these blackguards.”

“How?”

“How? How?” Flecks of spittle caught in his mustache, and a few escaped to shower me. “How dare you question your king?”

“I only mean, majesty, that these overlords are cunning and powerful. And should they find us before we have a proper plan, we will be overpowered.”

“And you’ll end up back here,” Garrett added.

“Well, I don’t mean to hide away forever, I can tell you that much.”

“Of course not. But, as you say, I am a wizard. I know computers. I may, once we’re out of sight, be able to restore control to you.”

“Oh.” His face brightened. “You think you can make sense of their interface? I confess, I’m damned if I can. It’s why we needed that fellow from Earth. What’s his face? Not that he’s any use to me now. Damned fool went and got himself killed.”

“I’m quite certain I can make sense of it,” I said. “I am a wizard, after all.”

I thought I heard a snort from the far end of the room, but I ignored it.

“This place you’re talking about, it’s well – suitable?”

“Quite suitable,” I said. “A veritable palace.”

“Oh. Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.” He fixed me with a fierce stare. “Food. Have you got any food?”

I grinned, feeling absolutely zero compunction as I lied my ass off. “As a matter of fact, we do. We’ve got a man in the ascended district who smuggles food to us.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Well, why can’t he just smuggle me over?”

Good question. “Ah, it’s not so simple as that. He’s able to get the food over the wall through a glitch in the program, but he doesn’t actually come into our sector. The glitch, it’s not big enough for people to cross.”

“Oh.” Leopold sounded disappointed, but not suspicious. “Well, as long as you’ve got food, I’ll go.”

“A feast,” I lied.

“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s depart at once.” Without waiting for anything further, Leopold strode to the door.

“Careful,” I called after him. “We need to move slowly, and quietly.”

“What? Oh, yes of course. Don’t want those damned guards discovering I’ve gone, do we? Not until I regain control of this place. Then they’ll be sorry.”

Leopold regaled us with the specifics of how the guards would be sorry as we headed to the staircase, and for the duration of our descent.

There would be executions and dismemberments, beheadings and disembowelments, amputations and so on. He had a twisted imagination, which his time in captivity only seemed to have fueled.

He seemed to take no notice at all, but the trip down the stairs was nerve wracking for me. I suspected it was similarly challenging to Garrett.

For starters, the king was about as stealthy as a rhino. Even when he took a break from running his trap, he huffed and puffed and wheezed. He walked heavily, and grunted and groaned about his knees and joints as he went.

“Getting old is hell, I can tell you. That’s another thing I wasn’t supposed to have to worry about in this world.”

“We can fix that,” I promised. “As long as we get out without being caught.”

“Damned nuisance, how things turned out, I can tell you. Can’t depend on people anymore.”

Particularly rich from someone who’d put as many knives in people’s backs as he had. But I just nodded along.

Finally, after several breaks for Leopold to catch his breath, we reached the second story. Garrett opened the door and I followed after him.

“What?” Leopold asked. “Where are you going? We’ve still got more stairs.”

Apparently, he expected to march out the front door. Trying not to sound incredulous, I said, “We have a subtler escape route, King Leopold. One the enemy will not expect.”

“Oh. I see. Very well. Lead on.”

Rolling my eyes, I did. Behind me, Leopold’s footsteps rang out loud on the marble, until he reached the rug. I cringed but said nothing. We’d gotten this far alive. If our luck could hold just another few minutes, we’d be okay.

We’d taken a few steps when I heard a sharp intake of breath. Turning, I saw the king studying a rather grotesque oil painting. It featured very naked men and women, elves and orcs, humans and dwarves, satyrs and angels, in a full-blown orgy. If the subject matter wasn’t dicey enough, the art style elevated it to the truly appalling with its exaggerated features, lopsided, leering grins, and really ugly people. Despite a lot of prominently featured body parts, there wasn’t a single attractive subject in the painting.

“The treaty of the Twelfth Sun,” he said. “This painting was one of the treasures of my family’s collection.”

I wrinkled my nose in distaste.

“It’s been missing for generations.”

“A true loss,” I said. “Anyway, we’re just over here.”

Leopold seemed oblivious. “I wonder how it got here.”

“It’s probably part of the illusion.” I figured if he looked around, he’d find lots of lost treasures. Actual or so-called. Naturally, I didn’t suggest this, as he might just take me up on the idea.

“We must make haste,” Garrett said, as portentously as ever.

That got the old bastard’s attention. He started slightly, then looked around, and finally nodded. “Of course. Lead on.”

On we went, Leopold pausing now and again to hiss or mutter about some treasure. Some were as hideous as the painting, but several were genuinely remarkable.

There was a suit of armor that belonged to some king way back when, who had saved a bunch of lives at the battle of something or other. Some at least of Leopold’s family weren’t quite as worthless as the king himself. Then there was a marble lady holding a star aloft, another piece with a history steeped in Realms mythology. It had been sculpted by a famous artist a thousand years before, and lost to time.

I stopped turning, as my pauses only seemed to encourage him to linger. Instead, I marched on with nothing more than a, “This way,” or, “Almost there.”

We were, in fact, almost there when a piercing shriek split the air.

A siren of some sort, that seemed to echo from the very walls themselves, from the floor and ceiling. An alarm.

We’d been discovered.

Instinctively, I dropped to a crouch, glancing all around as I did so. And so I saw the source of the noise, the reason we’d suddenly been detected.

Leopold held a gold and porcelain vase in his hands, something he’d lifted from a little display table. He stared with wide, stunned eyes, as if at a loss to understand what was happening and why.

“You stupid son of a –” I started. But a new noise joined the fray, something almost as loud as the alarm.

A high, mechanical shrieking. “Intruders. Intruders. Kill. Kill.”

It was like something out of an old sci-fi TV show, a stereotyped evil robot voice. Except, there wasn’t just one. Oh no.

There had to be at least a dozen of them.

And at the same time, humanoid voices joined the fray. “This way.”

“They’re on the second floor.”

“Get the king. Kill the others.”

“Shit,” I said. This time, the zap jarred me to my senses. Leaping to my feet, I screamed, “Run!”

I didn’t particularly care if Leopold followed me or not. The AI could keep him if they caught him. Yes, I’d made Salvidora a promise. But that was before I met this dumb mf’er.

A dozen shiny metal bodies rounded the far corner of the hall. Not robots, but men in head-to-toe armor. Behind them came half a dozen bulbous metal figures, trundling along on tracks and emitting big puffs of smoke.

Definitely robots. Steam powered robots, by the look of it.

But it wasn’t the steam that held my attention.

It was the blades.

Lots and lots of blades. Each robot had multiple arms, for lack of a better term, and each arm either held or terminated in some kind of blade.

Long, slender blades. Circular saw blades. Chain saw blades. Something that looked like a cross between a sword and a hedge trimmer.

“The bone saws,” I screamed.

At the same time, I felt Kharon’s thoughts in my head.

<<<<>>>>

New phobia unlocked: Fear of bone saws

<<<<>>>>

Leopold screamed too, though I have no idea what he said. I was too busy wondering why the hell phobias were a thing that could be unlocked, like some kind of warped Charlie Brown skit.

“I got a perk.”

“I got a skill!”

“I got a phobia.”

But even Garrett let out some kind of noise that might very well have been a scream. Three sets of footsteps set out at once toward our escape route, without delay.

At the same time, the paladins and robots thundered toward us. We reached the door and I slammed it shut after us, turning the lock.

A moment later, our pursuers converged on the door. I heard the revving of a saw and wood splintering behind me. That, and Leopold, screaming louder than ever

But I was too focused on escape to look back.

The flea trap was where I’d left it, propping open the window maybe half an inch. But it was a precaution that saved our lives, for the steel lock had turned again.

Harmlessly, thanks to that extra half an inch.

I threw the window open and urged Garrett, “Go. Go!”

Before either of us could do anything, however, Leopold charged into our midst and flung himself out the window. Garrett grunted, muttering, “Stupid bastard.”

“Go,” I said.

I felt the rush of air as he darted past. Behind me, the door crashed open. A moment later, a spear flew through the windowpane.

I yelped and threw myself out the window.