The world lurched to the left, and James was wrenching himself out of the Elder’s grip, falling to his knees to dry-heave. He fought another wave of nausea as he pressed his cheek to the cold stone under him. Through it all, the Elder watched impassively, as James found himself relearning how it felt to be a whole body rather than innumerable fragments. He licked his teeth, breathing hard. The bitter taste of bile followed. 

“Where are we?” he asked.

“My Sanctum,” the Elder rumbled, voice clear despite the ringing in James’ ears. “A disciple will take you to rest. We will begin on the morrow.”

With that, James listened to the Elder’s soft footsteps fade, leaving him alone in an unknown place. Or not quite alone, because-

“Hey! I heard you’re the new kid!” A little girl, who could not be older than five, skipped up to him and waved her hand in his face. James winced at the pitch of her voice. “Mister Erebus says you’ll be staying with us now. What’s your name?”

Erebus. There was a name for the Elder now. Who would have a name like that, though? This was all very strange. James pushed himself off the ground to rest on his haunches, eyeing the little girl warily. She was dressed in all black, just like the Elder - Erebus. 

“My name is James Gr-” he paused. “My name is James.” What use was his family name when they were all gone?

“Hi James! Nice to meet you. I’m Zoe! What’s your power?” the little girl - Zoe - said, rapid-fire.

“What power?” he asked, feeling a sense of deja vu.

The girl furrowed her brows in confusion. “Your power - you know, your- your special ability! Everyone has one! I’m really good at seeing in the dark, and Mikey can jump really high, and Big Tom is really, really strong. So, what’s yours?”

“I- I don’t know.” 

Limbs moving on their own, faster than he can process. Fists, hitting so fast they’re a blur, hitting so hard that even bone falls apart under them. The salty-iron tang of blood in his mouth, the burning in his lungs… time slowing to a crawl around him… 

“I don’t know,” he settled on.

Zoe crossed her arms, thinking hard.

“Well, I don’t think Mister Erebus would bring you here if you didn’t have a power, so you must have one - and Mister Erebus is never wrong!” she said, with all the confidence of a child.

“If you say so,” James sighed, already weary of this conversation. Had he been like this, once? Smiling and confident and care-free…

Zoe chattered on as she led him through this Sanctum, still chirpy despite how late it surely was. James dragged his tired limbs along, making small noises of affirmation when she paused for breath. Torchlight flickered in his periphery, casting long shadows on the dark stone walls. They wound through narrow passageways that seemed more suited for a dungeon than a temple, until the passageway widened into a dark chamber. 

James clenched his fists without meaning to, coming to a halt before the doorway. The chamber was silent. All he could hear were his own breaths and the quiet pitter-patter of Zoe’s footsteps. He listened to her footsteps slow, and then rapidly return to him. A small hand wound around his wrist, giving it a little tug.

“Sorry! I forgot you can’t see in the dark,” Zoe whispered, as James felt his cold sweat dissipate. 

She led him forward, then guided his hand down to rest on scratchy fabric. His other hand rested on a wooden post. It was… a cot?

“Your bed,” Zoe whispered. “Good night!”

Feeling around the fabric, he mapped out the structure and dimensions of the bed with his hands. Still, he hit his head against a bedpost before he figured out how to arrange his limbs to lay down. Without bothering to take his shoes off, James fell into a fitful sleep.

In what seemed like just mere moments, though it was certainly several hours, the chamber suddenly flooded with light. James grimaced, squinting against the bright light that seemed to suffuse every stone and mote of dust. The chamber was smaller than he had thought, James realized as he adjusted to the light. There were cots like his arranged along the walls of the rectangular room, each belonging to a child no older than himself. 

Were all of this Elder’s disciples children, or were the older disciples housed elsewhere?

Zoe skipped up to him, already energetic.

“C’mon, James! Mister Erebus said you get to come watch the Judgement today! He always looks so cool when he’s doing it.”

Calling something “the Judgement” made it sound so very ominous. James let himself be led outside the chamber, through another complex set of passageways, through the main hall, and finally, out through the main doors. The other children he had seen that morning followed, chattering excitedly to themselves. 

James shivered as the cold morning air hit his exposed skin. The sun was just a pale wash of light, creeping up over the trees and other temple-like structures, looking similar to the one he had just emerged from. Zoe led him down a gravel path, pointing out different buildings as they passed.

“... and that’s the Infirmary, where the people with the power of healing work,” Zoe was saying. 

Where Henry might be, James thought to himself. But if the disciple did what I asked him to, Henry won’t remember me anyway. 

“... ooh! And that one over there is the Armory, and the big field next to it is the training grounds. Mister Leo is the one who trains all the people who want to fight, but he says he doesn’t let little kids be his disciples. Because we ‘don’t understand what war really is about’,” Zoe pouted. “But I’m not even that little anymore! We do get to watch the battles, though. It happens once a month in an even bigger field somewhere through the forest… all the disciples who want to join get put into teams, and they fight to see who’s the strongest!” She clapped her hands, clearly excited about the whole prospect.

“Do- do people get hurt?”

“Duh.” Zoe stuck her tongue out at him. “But Miss Vaerra and Morgan are always there, so nobody dies.”

Nobody dies. 

James felt vaguely sick as he tuned Zoe out. If he was as powerful as this ‘Vaerra’ and this ‘Morgan’, would he have been able to save his sister? What about his mother, or grandmother? All of these people here had incredible powers James had only heard of - never seen. What did they do with it? Kidnap little kids and fight each other in fake battles?

He was so lost in his thoughts that he bumped into Zoe, who had come to a stop in front of him. She did not comment on it, though.

“We’re here,” she whispered, almost giddy with excitement.

They were at the foot of a small hill. James could see the top of another temple from where they were, some sort of pale stone or marble. Around them, the other disciples were arrayed, some quietly murmuring among themselves, and others looking up the hill in anticipation. With a start, James realized that not every disciple present was human.

Briarcliffe, the coastal town he had grown up in, was a fairly homogenous fief. Everyone he had known was human. Orcs, elves, and goblins were the stuff of fairytales and horror stories, told to get children to bed and to keep them from venturing too far from home. James watched an orc grin, its mouth full of pointy teeth, and an elf, with features stretched to the point of being inhuman, suppress its laugh, its slender body shaking with the effort.

He noticed it more and more as he continued to look. Horns, hidden under thick, curly hair. Humanoid hands, with claws for nails. A bit too much fur here, a strangely bent spine there - there were creatures here he had never even heard of.

His dawning horror was cut short by a flash of light at the top of the hill. The disciples around him stilled, turning their attention towards it. Zoe pulled him along as they followed the throng of disciples up the winding staircase carved into the stone on the side of the hill. 

“I hate that we always have to watch these,” a disciple was saying, as they passed. “They always make it worse than it needs to be. Why can’t they just do it in the dungeon?”

“It’s supposed to send a message, dumbass,” someone replied, clearly irritated by a lack of sleep. “Our Master has said it a hundred times by now.”

“But it doesn’t make sense-”

James silently echoed that sentiment. 

As they crested the hill, they entered an amphitheater, more than large enough to contain everyone present. Zoe tugged on his hand, leading him up to the highest rows. From this high vantage point, he had a clear view of all the disciples assembled, as well as of the entirety of the grounds they had just walked through. He could see the dark stone of Master Erebus’ Sanctum, the wide expanse of the forests around them, and a deep blue lake to the south of the amphitheater. To the north, he could see the snow-capped peaks of a mountain range. Where on the continent matched the geography of this place? Try as he might, James could not identify it. 

When a black-clad man stepped out into the center of the amphitheater, the assembled disciples quieted down immediately. The tension in the air was palatable, and James could nearly feel the attention of every creature in the arena focusing on the Elder. 

With a wave of his hand, several disciples emerged from the shadows, dragging a creature bound hand-and-foot in thick chains. It snapped and snarled at them, before schooling its expression into something more genteel when it noticed the large audience. The contrast was jarring. 

One of the disciples cleared their throat and unrolled a scroll. James watched their mouth move for a few moments until they remembered something and pointed a finger at their throat.

“... by the judgment of the Council of Elders, the accused, Seskel of Fen, is found guilty on all counts.” The disciple’s voice, magically amplified, boomed out to fill the amphitheater. “For eighty-seven counts of direct murder, orchestrating the annihilation of the Gaavii peoples, and razing four towns in three different kingdoms, we sentence you to death by the sword.” 

It was an execution. James watched the creature’s calm mask morph back into something more beastly. The disciples pulled hard on the chains, holding the creature still. Meanwhile, the Elder held out his hand, and a short, steel sword materialized in it. The sword whipped around in a blur, severing the creature’s head from its neck. It was clean, a far less gruesome death than the criminal deserved. James thought it akin to breaking the neck of a rabbit - putting it out of its misery, in a sense. 

James blinked away the afterimages as the sword disappeared, still looking as pristine as it had when the Elder summoned it. A disciple carefully picked up the head and placed it into a box, which was sealed with a flash of magic. Around them, the disciples began to leave.

Zoe was tugging on his arm.

“You saw that, right? Mister Erebus is just… so cool.” She mimed holding a sword. “One stroke - bam! It didn’t even catch on that bad guy’s bones or anything!”

An elf sitting behind Zoe was looking fairly sick, eyeing the girl with something bordering on horror. 

“You aren’t… bothered? That you just saw someone die?” James asked.

“Bleh. That was a bad guy, so death was the only option! Let’s go down and say hi to Mister Erebus.”

How could a little girl think so little of death? And not a quiet death, either. It was an outright beheading, but she seemed excited about it. Were all of Master Erebus’ disciples like this? Beneath them, a disciple was holding up a silver basin of water, into which the Elder dipped his hands to wash them. 

“Zoe,” the Elder intoned, when he saw them approach. “You ought to be taking the newest disciple to his morning lessons.”

“Whatever. It’s not like he can learn anything about his power if he doesn’t have one.”

The Elder nodded. “That is so. Come then, James. There is a different lesson to be had.”

“But- wait, Mister Erebus, I-”

“I will ask Valan of your progress this evening, Zoe. Do not disappoint.” 

With that, the Elder began walking away. James cast an incredulous expression at his back, then hurried to keep up with the Elder’s long strides. 

“Where are we going?”

“The dungeons,” the Elder answered, without preamble. “Tell me, young James, what did you think of the Judgment today?”

He weighed his words carefully before he spoke.

“It was… less than what the creature deserved, I think. If he really did commit such terrible crimes, he ought to have died far less… cleanly.”

The Elder shrugged. “I would have been amenable to a more drawn-out execution, but the Council decided upon a beheading.”

The chill of the dungeons crept up on James as they descended into the darkness. Torches flickered to life around them, tiny spots of light that were quickly swallowed up in the cavernous interior. The Elder led them down a dark tunnel that branched from the main chamber, and James was soon feeling incredibly lost. While the twists and turns were just as confusing and convoluted as the Elder’s Sanctum, the darkness here felt more… oppressive than just cold.

“There are spells worked into the stone to keep the prisoners dormant,” the Elder spoke, answering his unspoken question. “We do not employ outsiders to guard the dungeon, in any case.”

The Elder stopped in front of a cell marked simply with the number 4237. There was no door that James could see, only a small row of bars at head-height with the Elder. But when the Elder touched the stone, it parted beneath his fingers. 

“The prisoner in cell 4237 was a serial murderer, terrorizing several counties nearby. He had a preference for young women and girls. Because his crime is not significant enough for a public execution, he will be put to death by a disciple within the next month.”

The prisoner blinked up at them, his mouth stretching into a lazy grin. In the darkness of the cell, he held an uncanny resemblance to the warlord’s son that killed James’ sister. His hands itched to do something.

A plain steel dagger appeared in front of him. The Elder was looking down at him expectantly. James hesitated for only a moment before he snatched up the dagger. This man was already condemned to death. If James could sate even a little bit of his anger at a dead man on this person…

James drove the dagger into the side of the man’s neck. The man’s eyes went wide, hands coming up to scrabble weakly at his throat. Blood spurted, hot and thick against his skin. He tried dragging the dagger across the man’s throat, but it had caught against the man’s spine. Steel ground against bone as the man thrashed weakly. James finally got both hands on the dagger and pulled, feeling muscle and sinew give under the blade. He gasped for breath. The dagger disappeared from his hands, and the man fell to the floor of the cell, lifeless eyes staring at nothing. 

“And if I told you the man was innocent, that he had been wrongfully accused?” the Elder said, already leaving the cell.

James blanched, looking down at his hands, slick and red. The Elder laughed without humor.

“Be cleaner about it, next time.”