Simon desperately flicked back and forth between trying to understand the game and looking for the fourth woman he expected to be here, but it was only when he approached the table and the silent women standing behind it that he finally figured out what he needed to do. All of the women had been chosen at least once already, but those, as it turned out, had been the wrong choice.

“I’ll have…” Simon hesitated before picking out several seafood delicacies he hadn’t had the chance to eat in ages. That was the easy part. Next, he waited for the red lion-masked Magi to ask him who he wanted to serve it to him.

He paused then, for dramatic effect, and raised his hand, but instead of pointing at any of the women in question, he paused and then looked at the Magi as if he needed reassurance. “Anyone?” he asked.

“Well, it’s generally beneath a Magi to serve you,” he said, making the man behind the green bird mask chuckle, “But if you want me to—”

“No, not you,” Simon said, faking an involuntary shudder. “Her.”

Simon pointed past the man, the statue that stood there against the wall behind the table. There was no indication that it was a person. Simon wasn’t sure if they’d accomplished that through illusion magic or very clever body paint and clothing, but either way, she was a perfect disguise.

Despite his absurd choice, the Magi didn’t mock him. Instead, he paused before asking. “Why would you pick her instead of anyone else?”

“I… Uhhh… I thought it would be clever,” Simon lied. He knew what this really was.

This feast was a distraction from the real test. They wanted to know who could see things that weren’t there, like statues that were actually people. While Simon couldn’t do that without a little help, this time, he could at least fake it convincingly.

“You sure there’s not some other reason?” the Magi added as he gestured to the woman. “Something deeper?”

As the red-masked man signaled her, she came to life, making the other children gasp in astonishment or squeal with delight. Simon could see that. It was rather miraculous to see what had been a marble statue suddenly come to life and start serving him some of the most delicious food he’d seen in years. It made him feel like this was a fever dream. Even so, he couldn’t ignore the Magi’s question.

“She seemed, uhm… safer,” Simon said finally, deciding to act like he was afraid of sharing his secret.

“Ah, I see,” the red-masked man said, leaning close enough that Simon pretended to flinch away. “And is that because she was brighter perhaps? Tell me, child, do you see the lights?”

“I… Uh, not all the time,” Simon stammered. “But sometimes.”

“Very interesting,” the man stepped back, seemingly satisfied.

Simon had no idea if his performance was enough to make him pass their test, but as the red Magi retreated to confer with the blue one, he took his platter and ate with the rest of the children.

That was the first time they spoke to each other, and all of them squealed with excitement. “Can you believe we’re all going to be Magi?” one girl gasped. “This is incredible! I’ve always wanted to know magic!”

Everyone agreed, even Simon. Some insisted that they wanted to serve the God-King, but most of them were just excited that they would be rich or powerful. He knew the truth, though. Most of them wouldn’t remember this. Hell, I might not remember this, he told himself. It was hardly a sure thing. He’d figured out one trick, but there was no indication that his soul had been special from that orb in the first tent.

Simon didn’t let his doubts slow his efforts to devour his fried shrimp and sweet breads, and he definitely didn’t let them dissuade him. There was nothing he could do differently anyway. All he could do was play this to the end.

The Magi gave them ample time to eat. It was only after everyone had gone back for seconds, and a few of them had gone back for thirds, that the masked men finally gathered them up and took them to the next tent.

This one was the smallest of the three and had a hole in the roof to let in daylight. There, each of the children was given a slate, some paper, or an easel, and given simple instructions. “Make us a picture of our beloved ruler,” the green bird-masked man ordered.

“But I’ve never seen him,” the youngest boy pouted. “How am I supposed to know what he looks like?”

“You’ve seen statues, haven’t you? And mosaics. Surely you know what he looks like,” the Magi countered.

That much was true. Simon had seen many public works of art of the man. To him, all of them looked just different enough that he was pretty sure that whoever the ruler was, he didn’t look like any of them. Simon had no way to prove it, though. It was just a suspicion and, for the moment, an irrelevant one. What really mattered was how he wanted to handle this. Should he paint them a masterpiece? Obviously not. There was no way he could explain that.

For this test at least, though, he was pretty sure he knew what they were looking for. They’d already tested his soul and his sight, but unlike the rest of these children, he knew how important imagination was to the casting of spells, and that was obviously what this was.

Simon didn’t try too hard to make his art good, but he did try to make it interesting. He picked up half a dozen hues of pastels and got to work. While some of the other children were still arguing that they weren’t exactly sure what to do, he was busy drawing a crude version of the city, with its rings of walls, a workable skyline, and, of course, the ziggurats. Once he had a crude, smudged version of that in place, he drew a semi-transparent version of the God-King towering over the whole of the city with his hands stretched to the heavens, just like they were on most of the statues around Zurari.

While Simon had been one of the first ones to start his little art project, he was one of the last ones done, and even though he’d deliberately tried not to make it look too good, it still looked worlds better than any of the other children’s efforts. This one was a stick figure, and that one was an angry face. Only his drawing had shading and composition.

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He almost immediately regretted it, but the two men he was with seemed thrilled by it. Though they took away all of the artworks for study, they studied his the longest. That was comforting because when they were done and returned to the original tent with the orb, they put all the other kids who had gone through these strange trials with him to sleep with a whispered word.

Magic,

Simon’s mind screamed. Magic I don’t know! He felt fear go through him then, but even more than that, he felt a thrill. There was so much here that he could learn.

Despite his secret certainty, though, Simon remembered to act panicked. One second he’d been sitting, and the next he was on his feet looking left and right like a cornered cat.

“Be still, my child, be still.” the green-masked magi told him. “The others will be fine and will be released when we are done. They have had a good day, but they don’t have half the potential that you have.”

“Potential?” Simon asked warily. “Potential for what? Magic?”

“Potential to serve,” the green man asked. “I just have one more question for you.”

“You don’t even have to ask,” Simon blurted out. “I want to serve. Especially if I get to eat regularly.”

The man in the red lion mask asked. “We know you will serve. The question is, how far will you go.”

“How far?” Simon answered with feigned confusion. He knew exactly what this was. This was a deal with the devil, and unfortunately, it would only be the first of many when dealing with people who had souls as black as this. “For our God-King, I’d—”

“Anything is a big word,” the man said. “It’s easy to say but harder to do.”

“Without this city and him, I’d have less than I already have,” Simon insisted. “I’ll do whatever I have to to prove it to you.”

“Would you kill them?” the green-masked man asked, gesturing to the children. “Would you kill them while they are helpless and sleeping?”

Normally, Simon would have hesitated, but he knew that there were survivors. More than that, he knew that the same number of people that went into these tents each afternoon came out each night. So, instead of questioning whether he might have to actually do it, he simply reached back and pulled the knife he always carried from his belt. Then he raised it up high like he was about to stab the first boy to fall asleep.

It was all an act, of course. If they didn’t stop him, he’d pause at the last moment and take care of them instead. He couldn’t kill them while they were in such close proximity to these kids, but he could make them wish they were dead, and that was almost as good.

Fortunately, he never got that far. That was the moment that one of the magi whispered something behind him. In an instant, he felt the unnatural exhaustion stealing across his mind, and he began to slump down on the cushions next to the other sleeping children; he knew that they’d used magic on him.

Is this where they wipe my memory of all of this?

He thought with a growing sense of dread. Did I go too far? Although he was sure he’d passed some of the tests, he had no way of knowing if he’d failed this one in his eagerness any more than he knew what word they’d used to incapacitate him.

Still, even as he slumped bonelessly to the ground, he fought the fatigue that suddenly wrapped around him like a warm, fuzzy blanket. Simon knew the effect was magical. He knew he could probably cancel it with a word of lesser nullification.

If he did that, though, he was also fairly certain that the orb they’d just used to test him, along with any number of other indicators, would flare to life to betray him, and that would end this adventure before it started.

More than anything, he was worried they might make him forget all this. The idea of losing his memory was vastly more terrifying than the idea that they might imprison or even torture him. He couldn’t do anything about that without ruining everything, though. All he could do was trust in their bland, slightly interested expressions as he was dragged into the darkness.

He was fully aware that it could be a giant mistake, but even so, he struggled against it. He lay there as the masked men discussed the situation, and a few words percolated through his fitful slumber.

‘Not sure about this one… Something is off… that picture… vicious… Good enough to become an acolyte at least...’

Each of those echoey words came from somewhere far away, and that distance stripped them of all their meaning before they reached him. Still, Simon’s drowsy mind struggled to put together the pieces. Were they going to choose him? Were they going to pass him over? Was this all a ruse to cover some other hideous fate?

‘All three… the brightness of the orb… plans later…’ Were those different voices? Was it a single speaker? He couldn’t say. Everyone sound the same as his grip on the last threads of consciousness slowly lapsed.

He had no idea, but the longer he lingered in this unnatural sleep, the more the world around him faded. Eventually, Simon could hear nothing at all. He might have laid there for another minute or the whole night, and he wouldn’t have known the difference until he awoke with a start by the man with the green bird mask.

Simon yawned as they awoke him. It annoyed him that he’d been put to sleep by a word of power, but it annoyed him more that it had been said too quietly for him to hear and learn it. Still, nothing bad seemed to have happened while he lay there, and when he woke, he was still in the same spot, and no one had slapped him in chains or anything.

“Come with us, young Nijam,” the man said as he shook Simon’s shoulder.

“Where are we going?” Simon asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. As he stood, he noticed they hadn’t even taken his knife from him.

“You are an orphan, yes?” the man with the Golden Lion mask asked.

“I—I am,” Simon agreed, not sure where this was going.

“Then there are no parents to pay or agreements to be made,” the Magi said. “You can come with us directly to your new home. You’ll find more food and warmth there than you ever could on the streets.”

Simon couldn’t exactly hesitate at that, not without suspicion. Instead, he forced himself to smile widely as he nodded and was escorted out of the tent. The third Magi stayed behind to whisper something to everyone else. They won’t remember any of this, he thought to himself triumphantly as he was led by the remaining Magi toward the Ziggurat of Lesser Miracles. They won’t, but I will.

Simon smiled to himself a second time as he was escorted alone through the dark streets. This second smile wasn’t forced like the first one had been. It was a small, secret thing that he kept to himself.

Despite his glee and the fact that there was zero sign that he’d done anything to arouse suspicion, he was still cautious. Indeed, there was every indication they considered him a marginal candidate. ‘Good enough to become an acolyte, at least,’ were the words they’d used to describe him, and for Simon, that was perfect. He wanted young Nijam to be no one special.

That was the best way he’d worm his way into the center of this place and learn what he could while he figured out how to cripple them from the inside. Simon didn’t want to kill people at random, of course, but it was probably going to take a certain amount of killing to stop the industrial slaughter of criminals, slaves, and other undesirables that powered this strange city, and Simon wouldn’t shy away from that. Something would have to be done.