Chapter 5: Chapter 5 The second discussion

It turns out that Davrar does not reward lying to inanimate objects. That was fair. And included golems as ‘inanimate’.

Not long after he’d finished failing to convince the wall that it really was in fact, made of small particles of silica and was not a contiguous solid, the door had opened and a golem had walked through, carrying a plate of roasted vegetables.

Nathan had done his best to act like a confused world-traveler with no knowledge of how he had gotten there, asking random questions starting with “Where am I”, moving on to “who are you” and ending with “what is this place”. The golem had ignored him, placing the food on the table and removing the now-empty bowl of fruit. When Nathan made a halfhearted move toward the door the golem had sped up, quickly moving to the door before closing and barring it.

Nathan inspected the meal, and was quite pleased to note that the roasted… zucchini? had come with a fork. A two-tonged fork where the tongs were nearly an inch and a half apart, but still a metal utensil. Huzzah! He sat down on ‘his’ side of the table and quickly scratched three words in small text into the side that faced him. “You’ve been neuralized” was pretty close to “You’ve been mindwiped” but the extra level of obfuscation through pop reference seemed like it could only help. Added to his terrible handwriting and potentially unknown language, it was unlikely Taeol could read it even if he found it. Unless there was a [Translate] spell that worked on cultural references. Man, magic was bullshit. The kind of bullshit Nathan badly wanted to be able to do, but that was looking less likely as his plans firmed up.

He sat down to munch on the plate of grilled green veggies. They weren’t bad - cold and a little soggy, but naturally a bit peppery in a way that combined nicely with the crisped edges. Nathan could only hope it didn’t contain allergens that would cause his throat to close up. He was almost done with the plate when he heard the door being unbarred again.

Nathan did his best to look up in a hopeful and confused manner when Taeol entered the room, the golem a stride behind. Taeol was in another orange robe, this one decorated with shiny stones around the hems and sleeves. As he was sliding into the chair, Nathan asked “Can you please tell me what is going on?”

Taeol looked gravely at Nathan. “My boy, I do apologize but I must be clear as flawless gems with you. First, allow me an introduction. I’m Taeol dho Droxol, a researcher at the Ascendent academy. You find yourself in a new world. As much as it twists my thumb to admit, my understanding of what occurred is limited. I believe that some cosmic force moved you across dimensions to this world. I was conducting an experiment to probe dimensional quasi-resonance and my utter harmonic went out of control. Entirely beyond expectation, and much expensive equipment was destroyed. But right where the primary phase-resonator had broken I found you, lying on the secondary tuning rod. And before we continue, may I ask your name?”

That sounded to Nathan like techno-babble intended to confuse him. Magi-babble? Regardless, it seemed like Taeol was trying to sell Nathan a story where he’d appeared here by chance, and destroyed valuable equipment in the process. He had to pretend to believe it and play into the effect that Taeol was going for. He wished he could take back telling his name to Taeol earlier in case it gave him some magical advantage, but he’d done it while trying to stall Taeol before the memory purge.

“Oh, that is a lot to take in. My name is Nathan Lark. Thank you for the answer, but I’m still so confused. I’m sorry to hear that I destroyed some valuable equipment. This is all a big shock for me, I was going mad with panic earlier trying to figure out what was going on. I have a lot of questions. You must have incredible technology to be working on something like dimensional science”

Taeol seemed satisfied with the answer, and smiled gently. He gestured with a hand, and Nathan saw the spell coming before the word left Taeol’s mouth.

[Charm]

Nathan let his eyes go unfocused for a moment, the same way it had happened the first time. He took a long blink, focusing his thoughts to notice and banish the seductive foreign thoughts as they flowed into him with a prickling sensation.

---