They put me under guard in a small room in the Council Headquarters, off the hallway to the connected big tent. Fortunately, it wasn’t a holding cell, with its comfy chairs, padded benches, refreshments, and paintings. A waiting room. They put me in a fucking waiting room. The worst thing was that I couldn’t hear anything—as soon as the door had closed, all the sounds from the hallway just stopped. The silence was eerie.

  I tried staring at the paintings, but quickly got bored with them. Art has never been the biggest thing for me, and the circumstances were distracting me from giving the pieces proper consideration. I finally sat down, pulled out my only spellbook and flipped it open to where I had left off. I had hoped to find something in it that would give me a clue about how to upgrade the spell. Two of the sections, one on spell size and the other on poison intensity, jumped off the page at me, so I focused on those parts.

  After maybe half an hour of studying, a polite knock came from the door. It startled me, and I slammed the book shut. The guard poked her head in. “They are ready for you, sir. Please come with me.” I put my book away and followed the tall, well-armed woman down the hall that led to the large tent connected to the headquarters. The guard stopped before the entrance and motioned for me to go through. It had a shimmer, like a soap bubble, that prevented me from seeing or hearing anything on the other side of it. I stepped through what felt like a sheet of ice-cold water into the large space of the tent and the noise that had been being blocked.

  The sound of the council members arguing washed over me as I took in the area. The tent flaps that had been open when we arrived were now closed tight. Most of the chairs and benches had been stacked on the far wall, and the dais had tables with the twenty members of the Council seated behind them. I noticed four empty chairs among them and wondered about the missing members. I recognized the faces of the Earthborn council members who had questioned me earlier, seated among twelve unknown faces. Harper and Juan sat at a table to the center-right of the raised platform. There was an enclosure of shiny metal, with an open gate facing me, smack dab in the middle of the area in front of the Council. This resembled a trial, and I got the distinct feeling I was about to be judged. I had suspected as much. But to see it so blatantly laid out was a kick in the stomach.

  A strict-looking man sitting in the center of the group banged a gavel. “Order! Representatives, we must have order! Will the prisoner please step forward?” he said. Next to the man sat Meghan, who put a hand on his arm and said something I couldn’t hear. “What? Oh, right. Young man, against my better judgement, you are not a prisoner. However, because of the conflict we find ourselves in, and the nature of your class, I would ask that you allow yourself to be enclosed in the cage you see there. It will nullify your magic and allow us to converse without worry.”

  I looked sharply to Juan, and he nodded his head, a pained look on his face. His judgement was good, and I had come to trust it. The door clanged loudly behind me, causing me to flinch before I sat down in the simple wooden chair within. The cage’s color turned from silver to a greenish-black, as if it had suddenly become tarnished. There was pressure that hadn’t been there before on my mind and body; a coldness crept through me as well, none of the sensations pleasant.

  The chairman of the Council, because what else would he be, smiled when the door closed. It was not what I would call a friendly smile, and that worried me further. “Now that you are no longer a threat, would you state your name for the Council?”

  I looked curiously at the man and complied. “My name’s Finn.”

  “Your full name, please.”

  It’s going to be like that, huh? It is a fucking trial. “Finnegan Walsh, Mr. Chairman, may I speak?” I knew Robert’s Rules of Order pretty well, so I was going to use what I knew. In college, before my dad had passed, I’d took part in the parliamentary debate club and really enjoyed it. They had given me a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order, and I spent some time studying it.

  The chairman nodded. “You may, and it would be appropriate to refer to me as Chairman or Chairman Stin. As it is customary to allow an individual called before this body an introductory statement, you can speak for ten minutes if you need such time.”

  I smiled. This was a game I knew how to play. I cleared my throat. “Thank you, Chairman Stin. And thank you, members of the Council. Since time is of the essence, I will attempt to be brief. I am not your enemy, nor do I want your power or position. I have no belief that I deserve anything more than I have or I can earn. There is no question, based on my treatment, that you all have been informed of my class. Yes, I am a Mage. But only out of ignorance.”

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  I looked at the faces of the council members, one by one. “I doubt there is anyone here who couldn’t subdue me, but having heard stories of Mages, it is quite understandable why I am being treated as a villain or a monster. Where I come from, there are two types of people we put in cages: those we fear and despise, and those that are found to have harmed society in some fashion. People often mistake the first for the second because of widespread bias and fear of those who are different,” I said.

  I was unsure what kind of bigotry they had here, but I had to gamble that there was an awareness of it, with so many people having come from Earth. “Racism is prevalent, even though there are only humans on Earth versus the many races of people here. It has been so bad that several groups of people live with generational trauma and fear worldwide. Just because they are different. I look around this room and see an amount of variety that would cause apoplexy in many people who look like me. It’s not right, but will take generations to change.”

  I took a moment to gather my thoughts, since I could tell I wasn’t getting through to most of them. There were some thoughtful faces among both the native representatives and the Earthborn, but it wasn’t enough. The hate and fear inspired by past Mages was several generations instilled and reinforced. They saw a monster in me instead of a man. And the novelty of a friendly, non-threatening monster lasted about as long as a peace deal with a fascist dictator.

  “And holding onto the spirit of keeping this brief, I have the riddle quest from the Voice. As long as I do not make a deal with the demon that has been corrupting Mages all these centuries, I’ll continue to follow through with it. This quest will open a way home for me and, I assume, all the other people from my world. All I want are two things, and one of them is to go home to my family, and the other involves spending more time with this amazing woman I just met on the road to Kathelon. Believe me, if I never have to see the faces in this room ever again, I would be a happy man. If I could live without ever hearing about magic or wizards or fucking dragons, I would sleep easy at night. Thank you for giving me the time to speak.”

  My words were greeted with silence. It wasn’t a win, but at least I had said what I had wanted to say. Plus, I had given them something moral to chew on. If I got another chance to speak, I might try the emotional approach, which had always worked well back home.

  “Thank you, Finnegan Walsh,” Chairman Stin said. “Thank you for your… insightful and enlightening words. We have several questions for you, primarily about some things you spoke of in your opening statement. As the chairman of this august body, I would like to start the questioning. Finn — may I call you Finn?” At my nod, he continued, “Finn, you mentioned you received the riddle quest. What proof do you have of this?”

  “I don’t know how to prove that I have the quest, other than my word and the word of General Venegas and Harper. All I know is that the Voice gave it to me,” I said. While giving my little speech, I hadn’t really noticed the spreading ball of emptiness within me. That, plus the headache that had just started, was making it harder to focus.

  “And Finn, do you know what the Voice is?” Chairman Stin asked silkily.

  “An annoying busybody that leaves me alone when I have questions and corrects people on pronunciation when irritated?” I replied, letting my mouth get ahead of my aching brain. The emptiness spread and made me shiver.

  Chairman Stin banged his gavel. “I will not tolerate that tone, Mage. You will show respect to me and the rest of the council members. Do you understand, Mage?” he said coldly.

  Oh, fuck, I made a big mistake. I had let the pounding in my head prevent me from being calm and collected. It didn’t matter whether I had made inroads with Stin over the past few minutes, he was letting me know how wrong I was and how much power he had over me. I focused through my discomfort the best I could. “Yes, I do. And no, I don’t know what the Voice is,” I replied, frustrated with myself and my situation.

  “And if I have a choice in it, you will never know,” the chairman snapped. “I’ve heard enough. Are there any other Council Members that would like to ask questions?”

  For the next hour, I found myself in the position of many individuals called before a congressional hearing back home had been: having to sit there while several members monologued before maybe asking a quick question. Mostly, they used my presence as a point of contention and a pivot to put forth an argument about things like class registration and regulation I wound up zoning out, like when watching Congress at home. I’d made one mistake early in the proceedings, and they’d clearly dismissed me as not worthwhile. And likely it meant we wouldn’t get any help.

  At that point, I didn’t think I cared. My body felt numb except for my head. The throbbing, piercing pain continued to increase in intensity, drowning out the raised voices. Whatever the cage I had been put in was doing to me was more than just keeping me under control; the damned thing was a torture device, and I had entered it willingly. Anger at myself and anger at the people in charge here filled me, warming me. The anger helped me focus, and suddenly there were some things that were very clear.

  With or without enough soldiers to handle the Steel Falcons, I was going to move forward with getting past the mercenaries. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t stronger or did not have a high enough level. I had something that all the other people from Earth, something all the previous mages lacked. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but I was going to blunder ahead anyways. My studies had fallen by the wayside when I’d let my grief rule me instead of dealing with it.

  I would not make the same mistake here.