A tall, distinguished old man entered the room, his presence commanding attention. His thick fingers shut the door with such a cure that Brian couldn’t hear it closing. He clasped his hands together, mirroring Carmen’s prior gesture. “Greetings, Pioneer. May I step in?” After a moment's pause, the butler interpreted the silence as consent and cautiously advanced into the room, taking a tentative step forward. His polished shoes inched forward until he resumed with a comfortable stroll. Brian hid his body behind the wooden frame of the bed as he watched the old gentleman. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Alain. Whenever you feel comfortable, you may tell me yours, if you have one, of course.” He passed a gloved hand on top of a chair, the spotlessness of his white gloves didn’t change. “We have a couple of minutes of freedom.” Alain approached the crumpled carpet with a slight smile. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing powerfully built muscles that would’ve put to shame most professional athletes back on Earth and evened the creased fabric, straightening its floral motif as intended to be. He had gray skin.

Isn’t he… taking me somewhere? Is he just going to clean the room? It’s already immaculate!

“My… name. Is Brian.” He reluctantly spoke, hoping it would prompt the butler to leave. Instead, Alain merely nodded and smiled, before resuming his work. It appeared he had no intention to depart any time soon. After he was done with the carpet, he moved to the drawer near the bed. Brian sharply skiddered away, careful to not step on another tapestry on the floor, so as not to give the old butler any additional tasks to fix.

The tall gentleman picked up the clothes sitting on top of the drawer and smiled. “Brian. A charming name.” His bright red mustaches swirled over his lips each time he talked, as if possessed by a wind spirit. “Sir… would you prefer me to call you such or is Brian just fine?” He folded the cloth with masterful ease and continued talking after Brian kept quiet. “I’ll just stick with Sir, then. More habitual for me." He opened a cassette and carefully placed them there, then again closed it without it making a sound. “I see you’re wearing lady Arnese’s clothes, were they not to your li – Oh! I apologize, sir, they must have been several sizes too big. I didn’t really have much time to prepare in advance. I wasn’t expecting…” He let the sentence hang in the air as he moved to the bed, then pickpocketed the note on it. He started straightening the sheets as Brian observed him from the other side of the room. He considered going for a run as he didn’t hear him locking the door, but his brain set on fire for a moment, so he reconsidered. Alain was done after only two sharp strokes. A Skill?

He finally stopped moving and placed a hand on his chest as he closed his eyes, his gray skin made him look like a statue wearing clothes. “Sir, yesterday afternoon I was assigned by His Majesty as your personal butler, guide, and advisor – effective immediately. You will meet your teacher later today. If there's anything you require, and I mean anything, as long as it is within the laws of the citadel and ensuring the well-being of other people, I shall provide it for you. His Majesty will pay for it, after all." he chuckled. "Certainly not me. This task puts me a few notches above a normal household Butler. Well, above a royal butler, too, which is already something, but –” It was impressive how he wasn’t out of breath from that. When Alain opened his dark eyes, they sparkled with youth. Still talking, he was already closing the curtains near wall length size windows. After that, he polished the handle of the wardrobe he had accidentally scratched with a napkin. Definitely a skill. He talked and cleaned, moved and gesticulated. A real force of nature. This wasn’t Brian’s natural habit.

He continued on talking. “Sir, I couldn’t help but notice you didn’t touch the amenities I have provided for you.” he cocked his head to the side like a dog. “They are perfectly good, I picked the best looking ones from the Royal Garden myself.” He was weirded out to the point that he could feel his Skill correcting his emotions from the inside, pulling them together as they were starting to peel off and drift away.

It wasn’t even five full minutes since they had met each other and Brian already felt overwhelmed. What the hell is it with this guy?

The old man’s fingers gracefully spun a wooden chain around as if it weighed nothing. Gracefully placing his straight back on the soft cushion underneath, his gloved hand disappeared on the inside of his light coat as he pulled out a… steaming tea set. Complete with cutlery and all.

It couldn’t get more ridiculous than this. Or maybe it could. He hoped not for his sanity. Going from survival of the fittest to this… was too disorienting.

Brian didn’t notice how but the redhead now held a pocket knife as he peeled the fruits on the table, producing minimal waste. Alain’s gaze turned solemn for a moment as he opened his mouth, no trace of the usual smile on his face. “Sir, I’m afraid I’ll… need to act as an intermediary to keep the envoys in check. Hopefully envoy. One of them is already a hassle to handle. Be aware that I will not be able to interfere unless they breach protocol – and it won’t be pretty if they did. I’m glad you called me here soon enough, otherwise I would have had to storm in and potentially wake you up. That was a nasty blow you got. They should be here…” He checked his ticking wrist watch – Brian’s eyes dilated, he could only hear now the ticking of the watch. It wasn’t there before. “They should’ve been here 5 minutes ago. Sure, it’s not like it’s a matter of utmost importance.” He sighed.

A full display of fruits was in front of them: Apples, pears, kiwis, bananas, and even some mangoes, all fruits he very much remembered. Alain put a handful of each in a porcelain plate, already diced. His hands moved with mastery, unable to spill any juice even if he wanted it. He put a piece of tender orange near his crimson mustaches, and slowly chewed on it.

"Are we… really underground?”

The old man blinked with a piece of orange stuck in his mouth and silently gulped, his Adam's apple swinging like a pendulum. “Sir, that is a good question.” He started peeling more fruits, this time even faster, but his eyes never left Brian’s, which made him retreat a bit further down his makeshift hiding spot.

“You are correct, we are, in fact, under the ground! Quite a few minutes away from the surface on horseback, too. Probably several tens of minutes. We usually just teleport in if there’s a capable mage in the group.”

That didn’t make sense. He could see live grass, the sky, and clouds moving. Furthermore, Alain had just peeled some fruits that developed in different seasons in the world, and he doubted they had supermarkets here. There must’ve been a production or a farm somewhere. Brian knew how challenging that was underground when even the lack of oxygen wanted to kill you. He had been there from experience. “But.. how?”

“Well, sir. I’d answer you, but then I’d have to marry you.” The butler heartily smiled and then deflated comically. “I apologize. I see my joke to lighten the mood has failed, please do not take it to heart. For starters…” He raised a finger high, and Brian realized after a moment that he wasn’t urging him to look up. He lowered his gaze from the ceiling as he continued. “Our spell carvers – the most esteemed of mages – founded by our king – have been going at it for several years, but no real progress about it has ever been made, unfortunately. All we know, well, not all we know, but we don’t have much time – is that the weather down here mimics everything above. If it rains there, it rains here, if it hails there, we pray here. Stuff like that. It’s something beyond what we can currently achieve with pure magic.” He pointed at Brian, “You, my friend – I apologize for the colloquialism – are one of the potential… breakthroughs to that. And more.”

Alain withdrew the knife and eyed the peels and pits he had carved off. With a swift motion, he picked them up and swallowed them all. Varied squelching sounds could be heard from the different consistencies of the fruits. He swallowed. “Sir, please don’t look at me like that, it’s hurtful. I’m only doing it because my old bones need vitamins.”

The revelation took him Brian a bit. “You know… about vitamins?”

That look of bewilderment couldn’t be hidden anywhere. If Brian could feel embarrassed, he would. “Of course I do, why, is it so strange?”

Brian really could not gauge their level of innovation. They seemed to be traveling on horseback and had either melee weapons or crossbows and bows while out in the open. He was in a medieval styled room – the old fashioned dresses and wristwatches certainly didn’t help to paint a picture. And they knew about vitamins.

Brian tentatively convinced himself that the food in front of him wasn’t poisonous. He cautiously left his hiding spot and approached the table in the open with tentative steps, posture permanently hunched low. His Skill had told him there weren’t threats, but he was not going to buy it like that. Just because it had been accurate in the past it didn’t mean it would continue to behave this way – variables did happen, just not in the way he often understood. The young man neared the table while Alain’s unblinking gaze trailed him. Brian extended a thin arm, skewered a lemon and retreated. A sweet aroma surged in his nose. He was interrupted just as he was about to bite into it whole, peel and all.

“Ah, please, Sir. Don’t. I’ll have to clean the carpet afterward. Here, I peeled one for you. The other ones are for our tardive guests.” Brian stopped still. Again, he was sure there wasn’t lemon on the table already peeled, especially not on the edge of the table facing him, neatly arranged in a pile. He scrunched up his forehead.

That was most puzzling. He took a bite anyway.

Alain sighed and started eating those cubed lemons himself as Brian’s slurping and dripping juices fell on the soft fabric like a muffled rain.

The young man’s jaw compressed as he munched on the peel and crushed the seeds embedded in it. The tangy taste hit his tongue, and he was driven to a sort of ecstasy.

He couldn’t help but smile as he wickedly bit it again with his sharp teeth. He ripped pieces of lemon as if they were strands of animal flesh. It was a taste he hadn’t felt in a decade, maybe more. They weren’t abundant in Cape Verde, but even if it was something he didn’t grow with, it was still a taste of his Earth. His beloved Earth which was now currently gone.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Brian cleaned his mouth with his forearm, staining the red fabric. Without warning he sidestepped and feigned a lunge sideways – then changed directions midway and snatched a banana. The wind pressure almost rocked a chair. Alain placed a foot on it at the right time from under the table, preventing it from rocking over. “Sir, I’m not going to do anything to you, please do not feel alarmed. Kindly, don’t rip a banana peel like that, it is too fibr – nevermind.”

Creamy! Buttery! SOFT! Brian savored each bite as pieces of banana embedded in between his fangs, it was a treat to lick them off with his tongue. For comparison, it almost had the exact same texture as fresh spleen. It was far tastier than it, though. No metallic taste, no film that lodged itself in between your teeth, and no screaming victim that looked at you with terrified eyes as if you had been eating its spleen as they watched you from the floor. Ok, maybe that was a bit personal. Before he realized it, it was gone. His satisfied burp reverberated through the spacious room. He was about to dash again, but he hunched low as his head sharply turned to the right. He quickly backtracked again against his beloved furniture.

Someone was coming beyond the door. Two people, one light and one heavy. They had appeared from nowhere.

“Sir, you surprise me more each time that passes. This time in a positive way.” Alain got up and placed a chair on top of the lemon stain on the carpet Brian had made. His clever positioning to hide Brian from that angle wasn’t lost on him. The butler turned around as the guests burst through the door. It swinged loudly, the door hinges creaking almost to a point of breaking down. If someone lay there when it was opened their head would’ve burst open.

Two forms unfolded in the shifting lavender light of the day.

The figure at the back stood broad and thick muscled, wearing a luminescent brass mask on his face – it depicted the visage of a screaming young lady, eyes rolled over and mouth agape, terrified, her brass hands pulling at the skin near its cheekbones. He was clad from heat to toe in black robes, like a nun. His left hand carried a black tome with glowing golden pages. Brian couldn’t see very well from the back of the room what was written on it. Long strands of white hair revealed themselves swaying through the gaps in the tunic.

The only visible part of his skin were his black lips under the mask and his ashen wrists. He looked like a corpse collector… like death incarnate on steroids. His frame barely fit in the door as he had to enter slightly ajar due to his sheer width.

The one that kicked the door appeared ahead of him, leg still raised high.

Frail and minute, she looked anything but imposing – she seemed outright normal, if not for the shifting halo of water on top of her head, following her movements. She lowered her leg and presented them a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Alain, why do I have the utter pleasure to have you here?”

Brian wondered if they were the bad guys.

According to the royal butler two of them were a pain in the ass. He braced for the worst. The envoys?

As usual, Alain’s face did what it knew best, and he smiled, pointy mustaches perking up. “I’m here for people like you, of course. I’ve heard, and I’m pretty sure Elias is a reputable source – that the last time was not pleasant. I’d rather avoid that.”

“Who the hell is Elias?” She inquired. “Also… as if you can do anything about it.”

He ignored her while he sipped his tea with a curt, sincere nod, and greeted the big man behind her. The masked man returned it and approached the table in three big steps. He sat next to Alain and picked up a handful of fruits with his free hand. Brian didn’t know wooden chairs could groan like that. “Also, unlike you” his graying red hair stood up as if pushed back by an unseen wind in the air “I have been sent here by the King. Do not push your luck.”

The room seemed to freeze in time. Brian certainly did. His Skill activated and tried to keep him in check – it barely worked. If he co–

A thick hand gently pressed on Alain’s shoulder, and the masked man shook his head. Instead of what might be expected, the mask spoke instead of him, metal croaking as it moved around by itself, and the voice of a young woman left his body. “Do not.” Alain’s hair slowly descended and everything returned to normal. So, a good guy and a bad g – Girl.

“Hmph. Learn how to control yourself, geezer.”

“Apologies, master Ur. It seemed it got the best of me. Please, do sit, Esenaji.” Alain continued to sip his tea in peace, as if nothing had happened.

Esenaji did not sit.

What she did, Brian would probably never forget in his lifetime. She pushed her arm inside of her halo, and it vanished there. He thought it had disappeared, but then she withdrew it and pulled out a cloudy orb from it. It was shifting with a strange energy, he felt a strange connection to it. “I’m gonna use it right here, right now. Any objections? Of course not. Good, then brace for it.”

Brian grasped the soft sheets of the bed, he could feel something – no, he could feel moisture being drained from the room as it approached the halo. Some of the fruits scrunched up and dried up. He shielded his eyes with his hand, they were burning.

Alain put a hand over his cup of tea to prevent it from flying away toward the growing sphere.

The orb spinned faster and faster, and when it started to blur from the speed, it crumbled to dust on her outstretched palm. Plenty of the dust fell on the floor, sticking in the gaps of the floorboards and creases in the carpets.

Her water halo slowly turned to ice. She sidestepped as it fell dead on the ground, avoiding smacking her head by a breath. It shattered to a thousand tiny pieces on the floor, wetting it. With a hum, they pulled themselves together and reformed in the shape of a tiny child wearing a hat. Transparent and fractal like, it was a proper lifelike statue. So lifelike it actually moved.

It comically bowed towards Esenaji and immediately walked in the direction of the fruit plates. Its frame was shorter than the legs of the table itself. A pair of meaty hands stopped its wake. The ice sculpture screeched and tried to push itself forward but Ur’s veins thrashed like worms underneath, and the ice man retreated to its master with a yelp. “G-get that abomination out of my face! Why did you summon me with one of them in the room, Najji?!”

Alain sighed. It seemed to be his other usual trademark. “I’m glad you’re with us. Thank you for sparing some of your time.”

“No problem. Peel me some more fruit if you’re grateful.”

She ground her teeth but composed herself rather quickly. “Shut up. No one told you to go there for the fruit. Do your job." She pointed to Brian’s hiding form behind the bed’s wooden canopy. “Get the Pioneer’s status and report it back to me!”

“What? But I don’t want to!”

She looked down and grabbed him by the neck. With a flick of her hand, the ice sculpture went flying toward Brian with the alacrity of an arrow. The wind whistled.

“Alain! Butler, do something!”

"Bwahaha! This is fun! I’m going to catch you!” Brian reacted by instinct. His thoughts slowed, and so did the world. He couldn’t see the creature well, but he didn’t need to. Near the bed, he grabbed at the now pristine bedsheets and raised them. That was everything he managed to do before the small projective flew at him, tangling itself in the blankets and denting the wall. “Ouchie!” In a second, he was on top of it, gathering the sheet like a sack, trapping the thing between it and the ground. The young man could barely pull it, let alone lift it. His arms buckled under the sheer weight of the entity.

“HEY! I can’t see! Not fair!”

It casually ripped off the sheets of fabric as if they were tissue paper, and its blue hued head popped up like a mole from the side. The moment Brian could confidently recognize its location in the tangled mess, he struck down with his foot. He didn’t want to touch it directly, so he aimed for the chest, which was still layered in the cloth like an onion. All it did was to skid it backward a couple of paces like a spinning disk.

“That hurt... Or maybe not!” it grinned as it transformed the torn sheets into ice. A heavy step bombed, shattering the shards across the whole room – none hit Brian. Alain sighed audibly, is no one going to help me?! Brian couldn’t feel his right foot at the moment. This situation was worse than anticipated, he felt as if he kicked one of his tunnels itself. His opponent was tougher, faster, and stronger than him. It also possessed a strange ability to turn things into frost. He could only exploit its childish nature. With his mind panicked, the young man then did the only sensible thing he could think of.

He tried to jump out of the window, shoulder tackling the glass.

Yet, the ice sculpture just raised a hand and his shoulder dislocated upon impact as frost had covered the window. The glass hadn’t budged. No groan left Brian’s mouth.

“Hehe, tricked!”

The masked man hastily jumped up and tried to approach him, his book in his hand, he looked furious. Brian didn’t notice as his attention was utterly stolen by the task at hand, but Alain shook his head and blocked Ur’s arm.

“Stop playing with him, Majin! Get it over with!” Esenaji’s voice resonated through Brian skull with vigor. Right. He pushed his body to his limits and whooshed toward her, past the carpet, past the table and past the two men that had stood up at some point.

“Boohoo! You’re no fun!”

Brian’s eyes couldn’t keep track of the surroundings as this vision became hazy. As he arranged his grip in a knife-hand position, something frigid seized his already bruised leg and forcefully plummeted him to the hard floorboards, knocking the wind out of him, scraping his skin against the wood. Every bone protested with a chorus of different agonized creaks. “Got you!” His will commanded him; he pushed against the ice sculpture, but his fingers bent at unnatural angles, slipping on its slick surface. Pain flooded as brian thrashed even more, his skill was trying to convince him that everything was okay, pushing him to—

“And that's enough.” Slowly, Alain walked forward and put a hand on the creature’s shoulder, back bent down, reminiscing of someone petting a dog, his glove now slick with water. “You have more than fulfilled your purpose. Leave your filthy hands away from him. Now.”

“Weeh? Eeh? But I have j –” As it spoke, bubbles formed inside of its joints, boiling him from the inside.

“Majin! Do as the old man says!” It finally let go of his calf. Bian wept invisible tears as he looked at his right leg, the lower part looked decompressed, like a deflated balloon. Exactly as if a truck had run him over. This thing wasn’t going to heal any time soon.

The creature skittered away, crying beads of ice that rolled on the floor as it approached her. She picked him up with ease as the floorboards creaked under their combined weight and patted him on the back. It let out a little burp. Within visible moments, It began to boil until only a puddle of water remained on the ground. Now in liquid form, it climbed on her body like a snake. It hopped and positioned itself over her head, becoming a water halo again, hovering there.

She turned toward them with a haughty smile. “It’ll take a bit for Majin to digest the information. See you, or not. I don’t really care.”

Brian coughed – she hadn’t even looked at his supine form on the floor as she slammed the door, whistling a tune.

He swiveled his head toward Alain, who was flanked by the other man as they advanced toward him with apologetic looks. "Explain." he demanded, his voice devoid of human emotions.