"Soothe"!

And just like that, Leo's pain faded. Not completely, but enough that he could once again begin to put together thoughts.

He was sitting on a bedroll in a small room that smelled like a gym, full of stale sweat and body odor. Five of the seven people in the room were gathered around him in a semicircle, watching him. One was lying on a bedroll, apparently unconscious. The final person was kneeling in front of him, a dark-skinned, balding man who appeared to be in his early thirties. He was holding his hand out toward Leo's burned chest, but not quite touching it.

"Better?" said the balding man. Leo nodded, shuddering as he scrubbing the back of his hand against his still damp face. The memory of the pain was slower to fade than the pain itself. He couldn't meet the eyes of the girl who had cast the Firebolt.

"I'm going to cast Mend next, so I need you to put your hands down and sit up straight," the man said. The man had a tone of voice that reminded Leo of doctors. A good bedside manner, he thought, rather inanely.

Leo followed the instructions, and the man looked to the wound. He half-cupped his hand, slowly moving it back and forth along the length of the wound, a look of concentration on his face. The moment dragged on until Leo wondered if the man was already doing something, but he managed to keep himself from looking down, instead locking his gaze on the top of the man's head. It had a few locks of brown hair combed over, in a futile attempt to cover the gaping bald spot.

"Mend".

Leo's hands twitched. He wanted so badly to scratch. The wound was suddenly itching like it was one enormous mosquito bite. He controlled his hands, looking down instead.

The wound appeared more or less the same. Maybe a bit less red?

Harald had slumped back, looking drained. He sighed, shaking his head. "It will take some time to heal, and there will be a sizeable scar. Mend isn't instant healing."

Leo nodded. The look of the burn deeply disturbed him, but he could try to ignore it for now. And there were other important things to pay attention to. Like the matter of his... captivity? He supposed there was no need for him to be in chains if he was, in fact, a prisoner, since there were so many of them and just one of him. On the other hand, the assembled people looked more concerned than hostile. It occurred to him to just ask.

"Am I a prisoner?"

The others immediately looked to the large man. That probably meant he was the leader.

"No. But you are not free to go, either." He paused. "We have many things to speak of. Are you hungry? Thirsty?"

Leo thought about that for a moment, then nodded. He didn't know anything about their culture, but sharing food was usually a good sign.

Nothing more was said while someone fetched him a cup of lukewarm, overbrewed tea and some jerky. Leo looked at it uncertainly before taking a bite. The long, uneven strips looked handmade, and he thought he even spotted some fur on one. Definitely not Jack Links. But at least caffeine existed. He wondered if there was coffee.

Both the jerky and tea tasted divine, at least at that moment. And chewing helped distract him from the urge to scratch at his chest.

After he'd had a few bites, the large man motioned around the circle. "I am Nemtal, the leader of this expedition. Harald here is our healer. These others are Janso, Lidya, Karn and Suzat, and she," he waved toward the prone figure on the bedroll, "is Tanya. May we know your name?"

Some of the names sounded familiar to Leo, similar to American names but subtly different, while others he couldn't quite place. He swallowed his jerky. "I'm Leo. Leo Bailey."

"Now, may we know why you ran away when we summoned you, Leo? And stole Lidya's pack?"

Lidya was the girl who had burnt Leo and, apparently, whose clothes he'd stolen. So he was wearing her underwear? Now that was embarassing. He glanced quickly at her but couldn't quite meet her eyes.

"Umm... sorry about that. It's hard to explain. I'm from a different world--"

There was a murmur from everyone at that, but Nemtal silenced it with a short motion of his hand.

"I got summoned, I think. But then I was in a, um, dark place for a long time, then there was a voice. Then when I, ah, arrived? Was summoned. There was this ball of light and it seemed to want me to leave. And I didn't know who you were or what part you had in summoning me. You looked, er... Well, in my world, if you're wearing clothes like those," he paused to gesture at the robes everyone was wearing, "you might be a bit dangerous. Or at least strange."

Nemtal was leaning forward. "A ball of light? It wanted you to leave?"

"Like the ball of light you had when I ran into you in the hall. But a bit different."

Nemtal frowned at him. "That is a Light spell. I'm afraid they don't wander around on their own. You're certain this was real?"

"It was the only way I could see to walk around. It's dark here, right?"

"It makes sense, Nemtal," Harald chipped in. "We all ran out of mana before the ritual was over, right? Something must have helped it to finish. Maybe it was the owner of this Light."

"Also, it led me places," said Leo.

Now Nemtal was leaning forward so intently he was in danger of tipping over. "What places?"

Haltingly, Leo explained his adventures with the orb of light. When he reached the part about the testing chamber, the expedition members began looking at each other in excitement, but they otherwise stayed silent. He described running from the worms and seeing the expedition members fight them off; Nemtal grimaced at him. Then he began to talk about the Chamber of Attunement.

"Hold there a moment," said Nemtal, cutting him off. "Are you telling me that before this Chamber, you never had a magical proficiency?"

"Um. In my world, we don't even have magic."

"What!?"

There was a moment of pandemonium as the expedition members made excited exclamations, shifting about. Leo realized that, besides Nemtal and Harald, they all looked rather young. Nemtal was waving them to silence.

"I have to explain something to you about magic. You see, it is not learned in a moment. All of us you see here have practiced from childhood. And yet, you're telling me that the spell you cast on us was something you learned hours before?"

Leo nodded.

"How is this possible?"

"The golem in the Chamber of Attunement, it said it could shape my soul, and it mentioned something else it was based on called Cognition Tomes. I don't understand exactly what happened, though. In my world, I don't think we have souls, either?"

Harald was nodding. "Cognition Tomes are real. It's rumored the royal family has one, or even several. And we knew the School had some better way of training new mages than we've been able to replicate."

Nemtal shook his head, bemused. After a moment he went on.

"If that's true, this place is an even greater treasure than we thought. But let us hear about your world. We thought you were summoned, perhaps, from some other nation of men in this world. What is this world you come from? With no souls and no magic?"

"Well, um. We had technology." Leo paused, gathering his thoughts. How do you explain a completely different world in a few sentences? "We had myths of magic, but I don't think any of them were true. But over thousands of years, we learned to build things. Tools and machines and medicine to make our lives easier and better. It's all very complicated, so we have to go to schools to study the field we choose. I was a university student." He trailed off.

"This sounds familiar, too," said Harald. "Supposedly, Archmage Adnan came from a world with no magic."

"I believe I've also heard that legend," said Nemtal, nodding. "Adnan the Outsider, that's the inscription on his statue in the Great Court. But this matter of Leo learning his magic in a day, and an art lost to us, is the most important detail. The value of such a thing is incalculable. More than ever, we must unlock the secrets of this school." The other expedition members nodded, looking excited.

"By the way, um... where am I?" asked Leo.

"This building? It's part of the Arkfel School, to the northeast of our kingdom of Charun. We're an expedition from the kingdom to reclaim the school, which was lost to us two hundred years ago during the Fall of Great Charun. We aren't the first expedition, of course, but we have survived the longest, so far."

"Survived? Are there a lot of monsters like those worms?"

Nemtal snorted. "The Eaters? They're barely a nuisance. There is much worse here. But the true problem is that Arkfel seems to be warded against outsiders. We've run into traps, guardians and wardens that may be similar to those golems you met. We've only survived by mapping out a few safe routes around the school, and that leaves us with less than a fraction of it explored." He trailed off for a moment before continuing.

"In fact, that's why we summoned you. We found the summoning ritual primed to begin but never completed, and we believed it might summon something that the school would recognize. And from your story, it seems that the school does recognize you as a student."

"Me? I guess, well... Nothing besides the Eaters attacked me, and there is that ball of light."

"Yes. Perhaps it's a manifestation of one of the golems, although I do not know how they would guide the spell from a distance. Also, there have been several rooms we have been unable to enter or even force our way into. Those may have been rooms with golems in them, or something else of value. Having you with us may allow us to enter the parts of the school that have been barred to us."

Thinking, Leo absent-mindedly reached up to scratch at his chest. Then he winced, as Harald leaned forward to smack his hand away. Looking down, he saw that the skin was pink with several puffy, fluid-filled blisters, as if his severe burns had been healing for days.

"There's something I don't get. How is the school even standing? And how big is this place? If it were a building in my world, I think it'd be in a lot worse condition after two hundred years of being abandoned."

The expedition members glanced at each other. Suzat, a pretty, ash-blonde girl with curves that showed even under her shapeless leathers, spoke up for the first time. "We expected it to be more ruined, too. I think there might be someone still living here. Or some thing. Something that takes care of the school."

Nemtal gave Suzat a look before glancing back to Leo. "To answer your other question, it's massive. This building alone is larger than the Royal Palace in Adinok. There are other buildings, though they are in worse shape. And legends about the school suggest there's even more to it. Catacombs, we're fairly certain exist. There's even an old tale about a forest inside of the school, although I'm not sure how or where it would be."

"I remember something about, um, the book that summoned me from my world. It said something about Arkfel being a microcosm of your world? It mentioned a bunch of monsters, and it said students had to be clever."

"A book?" Nemtal was looking at him blankly. Then Leo had to explain the book, all while Nemtal shook his head. "Our ancestors truly had magic beyond our understanding."

"Why was Arkfel abandoned? You said something about the Fall of Charun?"

"Great Charun. It had the same name as our kingdom of today, but our forefathers were vastly more learned and powerful. And they expanded its borders over many generations, against the outside world. As they grew in power, they invented art and magic that are now forgotten and lost. They didn't build Arkfel itself, but after they claimed it from the Elven Aristocracy, they greatly expanded it. And then..."

Nemtal sighed, looking down. He twisted a ring on his finger, looking rather pensive.

"In five years of flame and terror, the Fall happened. First, the Host of Dagurath attacked from the west. The Titan Balfages expanded his territory, to the north. Then from the east came the wraiths and the King of Tears. In the last year of the Fall, Arkfel's students, professors and archmages gathered for the final defense of Adinok. They lost, and the city was destroyed, without a single survivor. The Host withdrew, but the King of Tears spent another ten years hunting down human survivors outside the capital. The kingdom was reduced from millions of people to a handful. The Thousand, we call them."

Silence reigned after Nemtal finished speaking. Leo shivered. The expedition members all seemed so depressed by the story that he didn't want to ask more questions about the Fall, but he'd already learned an important difference between this world and his own. He didn't know what wraiths were, or a Titan, or the Host, but whatever they were, they were terrifying enough to wipe out a powerful kingdom of humans. Here, humans were apparently not the top of the food chain.

After a while, Nemtal spoke again. "Well? What else would you like to know?"

"I have a few more questions. First... why do you think we speak the same language? We're speaking English, right? That's my own language, from my world."

"This is simply Manhuil, not English," said Nemtal.

Harald shook his head. "Perhaps it is the same language," he said. "Charun is distant from the other human kingdoms, but we all speak the same language. My teacher believed that it's because the memdexes have kept the language from changing, since ancient times."

"Oh, right," said Leo. "One of the golems asked if I had a memdex. What is it?"

In answer, Harald reached into his robe, unbuttoning an internal pocket and pulling out something that looked like a small, slim book. He held it toward Leo, but quickly retracted it when Leo reached out to take it.

"Ah, no, sorry," said Harald. "It's impolite to touch another person's memdex. I'm just showing you what it looks like. A book. Even if you opened it, you wouldn't see anything but blank pages. But when I open it, I can read about my soul, at least in a manner of speaking."

Leo blinked at the book, looking between it and Harald's face. "So it's magic? Is there a way I can get one?"

"Not magic, no. They are a blessing of the Gods. Not everyone has one, but we'll certainly try to find one for you."

"The Gods," echoed Leo. He started to ask, then shook his head, sighing. His head was already spinning from information overload.

Still, something was bothering him. "We don't have anything like a memdex in my world, either. English is just the language that we speak in my country. Other people have different languages. Even our ancestors spoke differently. English is only something that exists in a specific place, at a specific time."

"That's interesting. But perhaps you only think you're speaking English? Maybe the summoning changed the language you know."

Leo thought about that for a moment. He felt like he was speaking English, but how was that something you could prove? If another language had been transposed for English in his brain, he'd remember the words as if he'd always spoken them. Perhaps there was some test. Like... poetry? Something that had rhymed in English? On second thought, he didn't know any poems. But he might be able to remember some song lyrics.

But that line of thinking brought up other questions. What if this was all some kind of simulation? Or, like he'd thought right after he was summoned, a mental break? Wouldn't details like the language he was using prove that it wasn't real?

Nemtal derailed his train of thought.

"Plenty of time to discuss such things in the future. But it's not material to our current problems. You see, Leo, this expedition was originally twelve people. We've lost five so far, and would have lost Tanya yesterday if not for Harald. We are slowly running out of people, and supplies."

"And you think I can help? But I only just learned magic."

"Yes. We need to find a way to make peace with the golems, or whatever force still drives this school. Perhaps you can be our envoy to these creatures, since they seem to recognize your presence."

Leo thought back to what Nemtal had said when the conversation began. "You told me I'm not a prisoner, but I'm also not free to leave. So I don't have a choice whether to help?"

"No." Nemtal regarded him evenly. "Perhaps things are done differently in your world, but here, it is your duty to work for the benefit of humanity. And because we summoned you, you are Bound."

The way he said the word put Leo on edge. It wasn't that he had any plan of turning these people down; their story was reasonable, their need was obvious. But what the hell was being Bound? That sounded like...

"Does that mean I'm a slave?"

There was a general shaking of heads around the semicircle of people. "No," said Nemtal. "Humans cannot be slaves to other humans. To be Bound means a life debt is owed, in your case because we summoned you here. Because we are an expedition of Charun, you are Bound to the King."

Leo frowned. It still sounded bad. After all, he'd come from a place where "freedom" was a sacred word.

"I didn't ask to come here. In fact, you jerked me out of my life in my own world and forced me to come here. It's like you robbed me then told me I owe you money!"

Suzat sucked in a breath, recoiling slightly, and Nemtal gave him a thunderous glare. "That is not the case. It can be an honor to be Bound. Both Suzat and Karn are Bound to the King as well, and they have little to complain about."

"What's so honorable about being a-" he almost said 'slave', then stopped himself. He took a deep breath. "You still haven't told me exactly what it means."

"Hm, that is true. Well, Leo, this is how it is. In this world, all humans must work to improve the fate of humanity, as a whole. That is true even if you are a farmer, or, let's say, a tailor. Each finds a way to contribute."

Nemtal glanced around, and the others nodded, seemingly approving his phrasing.

"But for you, your life must be dedicated to actively improving the lot of humanity. As such, you will lead a privileged life, free from ordinary drudgery. Think of it as if you are in an army -- you have those in your world, yes? But that means you must follow the orders of those whose duty is to guide humanity. Perhaps someday you will report directly to the King. But in Arkfel, I am his representative."

Leo chewed that over. The expedition members seemed satisfied with Nemtal's explanation, as if he'd succinctly explained the basis of morality. An eleventh commandment, to put it in Christian terms. Thou shalt not murder; thou shalt serve humanity.

But they were wrong. The injustice of it all just grated on him. He hadn't asked for any of this, and they had, at best, glossed over the reasoning behind his being Bound.

On the other hand, he got the feeling that further arguing his case wouldn't get him un-Bound -- and worse, it would make them begin to view him negatively. And without their help, he might not survive. And, to add one more point, if Nemtal was their leader, he would have ended up following Nemtal's orders anyway.

Leo wasn't a conniving person, by nature, but he felt the sudden need to be diplomatic. So he swallowed his arguments.

"How long am I Bound for?"

"It is not a thing to seek to end or escape," said Nemtal. "In Charun, the Bound are honored above ordinary citizens. But to answer your question, it is for the rest of your life."

Wrong, wrong, wrong! Nemtal's answer had set him off again. There were arguably slaves who weren't complete slaves: indentured servants with a five year term, for example. But this was permanent!? He was a slave. In a damned magical world!

But he bit back his reply, reiterating to himself: be diplomatic. Don't fight a battle you can't win. And, for the first time, he truly understood a basic fact of life he'd heard before: people with power made the rules.

And that simply meant that he'd have to become one of the people with power.