The massive, carved wooden doors of the entrance to the library were so well counterbalanced that the guard opened one with the push of a finger. Past the doors was the entrance room of the library, which exhibited various shades of marble, the floor a map of not only the kingdom of Kathelon, but also the eleven other kingdoms on the massive continent. The colors of the different marbles intrigued me, as I had not seen cut marble in those shades before. The vibrant walls were accentuated by finely carved wood trim that matched the themes presented by the brilliantly worked stone.

  “Hey New Guy!” Harper called at me. “No time to look at the pretty pictures—keep up!” She was waiting for me down the hall, and I jogged to catch up. The hall opened into a massive cathedral, dedicated to presenting untold millions of bound pages. Maybe billions of pages. The shelves went up three stories, the rows only broken by two higher floors jutting out from the walls. They looked wide enough for three lanes of traffic, yet from our low vantage point it was still easy to see most of the shelves. It was a temple to knowledge.

  The scope of the library was amazing, with the bottom floor littered with sitting areas, rows of freestanding shelves, and wide tables. Other than the shelving on the outer walls of the massive room, the layout seemed almost chaotic. It seemed more organic to me because, instead of causing stress, it felt comfortable.

  I wondered what Arilyn would think about this place, which led me to wonder how she was doing. I hope she is okay. Wherever her destination, she is with the goddess Missana and the rest of her troupe. It was doubtful she was thinking of me, a random guy from a different world. God, I hoped she was, though. I hoped with all my being to see her more. I wanted to lose myself in her beautiful eyes and sun-kissed hair again.

  Harper and I caught up to Juan and the guard captain escorting him, and I brought my focus back to the library and away from the memory of Arilyn’s smiling face. The guard captain led us past massive, sweeping staircases that mirrored each other, going to opposite sides of the second floor. I noticed little oases of reading nooks with comfy, overstuffed chairs here and there as we got closer to a smaller set of doors that matched the front doors. Our escort knocked on the door before entering, Juan on his heels.

  “Yes? Who’s there?” came a voice from an old man in a fine red robe and disheveled, wispy white hair, who looked up from some old papers. “Ah Captain! I was hoping to talk with you—” The old man stood up quickly. “Juan, you old goat! How are you? It’s been years. When did you get so old?” He rounded the table and embraced Juan warmly.

  “Eric, my friend. It is good to see you, hermano! How’s Elana?” Juan replied jovially.

  “She’s good! Our tenth grandchild was born two months ago, and she is happier than I’ve seen her since our daughters were born.” He looked at Harper and me and raised his arms in greeting. “Harper! It is good to see you too. Does my eye still freak you out?” he asked, grinning before he turned on me. “And a Mage! Juan, you brought me a Mage!”

  The captain placed his hand on his sword and turned to face me, his eyes wide with fear, putting himself between me and the excitable old man while drawing his blade. He held it shakily in front of me, the flat side up and the point mostly aimed at my throat.

  I put my hands up. “Whoa, whoa! No need to draw on me. I’m not that kind of Mage!” I announced quickly. He didn’t put his sword away at my words, but stepped forward fearfully. The point of the blade was only inches from my throat, causing me to freeze in place.

  “Be at ease, Captain,” Eric commanded. He walked forward, putting his hand on the flat of the sword, pressing it down. “Juan wouldn’t have brought him if he weren’t still a good person. I can see it in his eyes.” The captain slowly lowered his blade, yet did not sheath it.

  The old man walked up to me, his hands behind his back. He studied my face, then started walking around me. “What are you, early twenties? Are you working toward your bachelor’s? Yes. Hmm. Tell me, what drove you to choose to be a Mage? What part of the Midwest are you from? Minnesota? Chicago? No, probably Eastern Colorado by your accent. Hmmm. No, I’m sure you are not a threat right now. Hmm.”

  The rapid-fire questions overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t form answers fast enough. Like Sherlock-motherfucking-Holmes, he read me like I was an open book.

  He continued to quietly circle me, and finally I had had enough. “I’m sorry, but who are you? And why are you studying me?” I demanded.

  He laughed. “My name’s Eric. Wizard. Researcher. You are what I have been waiting for all these years. A Mage that hasn’t changed yet!” He grabbed my right hand in both of his and shook it vigorously. I grinned uncertainly and looked at Juan, who shrugged. Juan expected this.

  “Nice to mee—” I had started to say when he pulled me into a hug. I felt slightly uncomfortable, though I had friends who were huggers, so I didn’t protest. He released me and walked back to the table, where he grabbed a couple of strange, cube-shaped items. I followed him past the guard captain, who still looked like he wanted to skewer me. Though he had finally put his sword away, he still watched me warily.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Eric handed me one of the items. “Hold this. I’ve got to take a few readings,” he said, attention focused on the one in his hands.

  I held the curious item, a sort of cube with multiple cubes and gears within it. It seemed to be made of brass or gold, but I couldn’t be certain. The old wizard began muttering under his breath. The cube he held as well as the one I held started glowing. He stopped muttering and manipulated his cube and muttered some more. After a minute, mine stopped glowing.

  He took it from my hands and put it on the desk. “There we go! Okay. I just need to plug this into the reader. Give it a moment and we’ll take a closer look at your class coding,” the wizard said excitedly. He went over to a massive stone rectangle that looked almost like a coffin and an altar had a lovechild. “The goddess of knowledge helped me find this wonderful device. Just wait until you see what it does!”

  He gestured for everyone to come over and once we had he pushed the glowing cube thing into a square hole at one end of the massive thing. The huge slab began humming and the gears in the cube turned, along with what I had wrongly thought were smaller cubes.

  Spots of greenish light popped into the air above it and tilted, becoming lines and curves. He muttered some more making some adjustments, and those lights coalesced into a floating picture of me in 3D, with a list of letters and numbers beside it. It took me longer than necessary to recognize them as my stats. Next up were my spell list and skills, followed by my inventory. A series of formulas that were indecipherable to me appeared on a scrolling screen next to everything else. The collection of skills was surprising to me, as I had never seen it.

  “I’ve been able to get readings on two other Mages, but both of them had gone all ‘Evil Spock’ by that point. You are the first Mage in decades that I’ve been able to study. And you haven’t gone bad yet.”

  I looked at everything displayed above the rough-hewn magical stone thing. “What’s the difference between their readings and mine?” I asked. The magical and/or technological display fascinated me.

  “Hold on a moment and I’ll show you.” He wandered off to a dusty shelf with many odd items on it. The very amount of dust showed how nothing on the shelf had moved in years. That said something about them, something important. On one shelf there were just two cubes, like the one used to take my ‘readings.’ He looked at the two and reached for one, then stopped for a few seconds before grabbing the other. He hurried back. “This was a man named George. He allowed me to take a reading in exchange for a couple of spellbooks. Useless to him, as they were for wizards, and he didn’t know the difference. But…” He pulled out my cube and stuck George’s cube in. “… as soon as it loads up, you’ll see the difference.”

  The ‘loading up’ of the other man’s information, which sounded so insanely out of place here, started out like mine. Only the color was different. Where mine was greenish, this was orange bordering on red. George was similarly dressed to me, making me think I should buy some new clothes next chance I got, but he was short and plump. His level, 22, implied some time spent here. But the spells—he had a lot of spells, like 60 of them. Some of which were not legible. Where mine had formulas, he had weird symbols.

  And then the entire display stuttered in my eyes, like the whole light image just turned off and back on again. For a moment, I had an afterimage burned into my retinas of some tentacled thing in a vast darkness. Ancient and disturbing. It was an image right out of my nightmares. I shuddered, even though the whole thing happened so fast.

  “As you can see, his information is corrupted. And it had been when I took a reading. I got readings of people from our world and people from around here. All of them look normal, like yours. But George was abnormal. Like the first Mage I examined. She had been corrupted like George, but I didn’t know it at the time. I don’t know why, but you are different. Why are you different?” the old wizard asked.

  “I don’t know. I chose the Mage class without knowing what the fuck it was,” I replied, looking at the strange symbols with morbid fascination.

  “He didn’t finish the tutorial,” Juan added. “If that helps.”

  “Interesting. So, you had no desire for the power offered by your class? Didn’t know about the Surge ability specific to Mages?” Eric asked. He seemed startled by my answer, making me fear my situation and choices were not normal.

  “No! I didn’t know about any of that! I just want to get back to my life. To my family. All of this — this bullshit — is too much! Don’t care about this world or having power or whatever. I just want to go home.” Then I stopped, realizing I’d started yelling. I took a few breaths. “And I don’t want to become a monster. I don’t want to have control over anyone else. Please, can you tell me how not to go all evil and stuff?”

  Despite Eric’s right eye drifting, he had a concerned look on his face. “I don’t know yet. I’ve been studying people’s classes and the formulae underneath it all ever since this magical artifact came into my possession. There’s just so much information,” he said as he pulled out the corrupted mage’s cube and slipped mine back in. “You are the first Mage I’ve been able to get a good reading of, and I’ll finally be able to study the Mage formulas thanks to the data from your examination. Which may give me some clues as to why your class is so different from the others. Maybe it’ll point me in the direction of what the turning point is for Mages.”

  “We ran into Missana on the road before we got here, and she told Finn a story. It contained some clues as to why Mages turn,” Juan said.

  The wizard’s eyes bulged. “She didn’t know? But she’s a goddess! How do the gods not know?” he exclaimed. “That suggests that this is something they had nothing to do with. What did she say?”

  “She told New Guy that it could be a demon or the nature of the magic itself. Maybe a Wyrm?” Harper said. She was looking at the image of me and my stats and was probably to avoid looking at Eric’s lazy eye.

  “A demon, you say,” replied Eric. He tapped his chin and then snapped his fingers before rushing out of the office quicker than I would have expected for his age and appearance. “I might have an idea of how to check that!”

  Wizards, am I right? And yet another deity is on our radar. I think that's three?

  No matter. Wizards, at least this one, have a certain eccentric nature that can make them delightful and/or terrifying. That's why they're so fun. Though, their magic takes more preparation, special words, ingredients, etc. So having a place to work and study is a must for them.