Max thumped on the ground, having been rolled unceromoniously from bed. For some reason, the plunging wake up call gave him deja vu.

“Rise and shine, Mook!”

“What the fuck, George?”

Dates and times percolated through his groggy mind as he tried to remember what week it was. Had he missed an appointment? His roommate was a laid-back guy and didn’t pull dumb pranks like this. He rose with the steadiness of a drunken sailor and groped the top of his nightstand for his phone to check the time.

And he realized that George had turned into a tall, athletic blonde girl with a huge grin.

Yesterday’s events rushed back into his mind as if a sluice gate had lifted. It took him a moment to process the outlandish events. Another world . . .

Max looked down. He was wearing nothing but his boxer-briefs.

“Fuck!”

He pulled a sheet over himself for modesty. “What’s with you and tossing people on the ground!”

“Breakfast is ready, sleepyhead. Don’t make Scarlet wait too long. Oh, I forgot this!”

Bending down, Mari plucked a thin wooden stick out of the plush carpet before leaving. Max listened to her heavy footfalls descending the stairs.

He pulled on his Lord of the Rings graphic t-shirt and jeans — gross — he’d rewear jeans but not t-shirts, and especially not ones steeped in sewage — they’d better have baths here — and then he gazed out the window.

A sliver of orange sky separated the Sun from the horizon. There was no way he’d slept for eight hours. Were the Red Handers early risers? Did this world not know that nine hours of sleep were optimal for a healthy body and mind? He’d have to spread the good news.

Also, the Sun was red. Not the firey orange-yellow of a rising or setting sun, but actually red, a bright, blinding red. Max hardly noticed how the star was obviously not the Sun he knew, and how the entire city seemed dyed in red light, as if it were one giant nightclub. All perfectly comprehensible with modern science. The sun here had to be a red star. It didn’t bother him. It wasn’t a jarring reminder of how far he was from home. Not that he knew how far he was from home. Another world, a red sun, he’d take it all in stride. Adapt, survive, overcome, and min-max. That would be his motto.

Doing his best to ignore the red sun that made the city looked like it was drenched in blood, Max compared the city to his expectations for a fantasy-world city, now that it was visible in the perfectly normal daylight and no aerial extravaganza distracted his gaze upward. His extensive background in such matters expected a medieval village, but this city was undeniably a city. Although there were no skyscrapers — nearly all the buildings were limited to one or two floors, save for a few important-looking buildings scattered in the distance — in every direction, Max saw buildings. Most were wooden and painted. He was no architect, but they looked well-constructed, with no obvious holes, and they didn’t sway in the wind. Sturdy. He complimented the new world builders on their competent work.

The street below had a good number of pedestrians and carts of varying sizes, some pulled by horses, some by people.

Shouts rose at one end of the street, and the ambling pedestrians milled and parted like a stirred beehive. A carriage careened dangerously around the corner and shot down the street, weaving around carts, pedestrians scattering before it and cursing after it.

Except the carriage had no horse. Strange.

He picked up the pen on his desk and skimmed through the note he’d written last night. It was written in tiny, cramped handwriting, since they’d only left him one page for some reason. Was paper expensive in this world?

Dear Kristoff,

Today I was transported to another world. It’s got a level system like real-life D&D. I’ve seen magic, fought thieves in the sewer, and got taken in by these crazy chicks, as well as a cat dude who seems to hate me, along with their leader, not sure why. They’re also thieves, but I think they’re decent people underneath. At least, I don’t think they’re going to kill me. And get this: they like me because I min-max! Min-max Max baby! Eat my ass. Also, the lead thief chick is crazy hot . . .

He nodded in satisfaction at the slightly embellished account of the previous day’s events, although he’d struggled to describe the transmigration. If words could describe the process, he wasn’t sure which ones they were. Alien, perhaps. Literally mind-boggling. Nauseating for sure. Skipping to the end, he added a few sentences.

… saw a horseless carriage. Maybe the horses are invisible like thestrals? Will investigate.

The aroma of freshly cooked eggs wafted into the room, and Max’s grumbling stomach, realizing it had been a very long time since it had last been filled, dragged him from his penetratingly insightful study of the city.

His nose led him out into the hallway, which opened up to a small mezzanine, down two flights of curling stairs, and through the over-decorated living room in which he’d been interrogated yesterday to the dining room.

Really the artwork in the living room was ridiculous. How did the Red Handers hide their criminal activities from visitors? Wasn’t it obvious that the paintings and furniture were all stolen? Did they have no visitors? Or were they local crime lords, and the Red Handers flaunted their stolen goods, and visitors oohed and aahed and complemented the gaudy decor with equally overwrought compliments.

The walls of the dining room, painted a subdued green, lacked the extravagant artwork of the living room. Max supposed the Red Handers hadn’t yet “collected” sufficient paintings to decorate both rooms.

“Morning, Mook!”

He considered reminding Mari that his name was Max, but at the present his stomach held a monopoly on grumbling.

The dining table, made of a dark wood, was large enough to seat twelve. Its polished finish reflected enough light from the open window to form a ghostly window of light on the opposite wall. The legs of the dining table curved and spiraled with wooden flourishes, forming carvings of animals’ heads at regular intervals. A lion, a dragon, a . . . fat eagle?

Boss emerged from the kitchen in a plain gray-brown shift and slippers, her hair and arms streaked with dirt. She looked like a street urchin. A stunningly beautiful —

Max averted his eyes as Boss’s lips curved downward.

“Nerran will handle you today. Obey him. Come, Mari.”

After debating whether saluting the woman in charge was possible without looking at her, Max settled for a nod directed at the table. At the other end, Mari shoved the remnants of her breakfast in her mouth, waved at Max, and followed Boss out of the house.

Max sat and scooped a generous serving of eggs onto his plate. No sooner had he taken his first bite than Scarlet pushed a piece of paper and a pencil toward him.

“How’s your algebra?” she asked.

Max responded by shovelling food into his mouth. A pop quiz? During breakfast? Sacrilege! Breakfast was the most important meal of the day. Pop quizzes were traumatizing.

“Scarlet will test you on your math,” Nerran answered in between bites of his eggs. His eyes were trained on Max in a way that made him uncomfortable. Didn’t most people have to look at their food as they ate it? “Why’re you nervous? You said you’re ‘great’ at it.”

Dear Kristoff, I’m in another world and I’m … taking a math test.

A math test. A few years ago, Max had finished his final college math exam and, immediately afterward, had jubilantly tossed all his notes into the nearest recycling bin. Then he’d gone out drinking to celebrate never having to take a math exam again.

“My algebra’s great,” Max replied confidently. “By the way, I love math. No problem.”

That’s right. This was not a test of math, but the hero’s first trial. The three-headed dog guarding the entrance to the underworld. With courage and cunning, he’d conquer this test and prove he was worthy to join the Red Handers on their quest!

“We’ll see about that,” Scarlet said.

They certainly would. Confident he was no longer in danger of losing consciousness due to hunger, Max cracked his knuckles and produced a few small, disappointing pops.

It was the intent that mattered.

Once again, only a single sheet. Was paper that expensive? Or would it be a short test?

He sized up the black-haired girl sitting across from him. In the words of Sun Tzu, if one knew the enemy and themself, then they need not fear a hundred pop quizzes. What did he know about this pallid girl?

She’d seemed interested in him, unlike the actively hostile Nerran and Boss, but her curious gaze felt more like the gaze of a scientist toward a unique labrat, or a gold miner at a fist-sized chunk of gold than the warm gaze of a friend. He’d have preferred to stay with Mari, although she was with Boss, who — crap, was she out of range yet?

“Don’t we need more paper?” he asked Scarlet, trying to focus on the task in front of him. Test. Paper. Test. It felt like the room was spinning. Breathe — he felt light headed. Could he have a quick time out before starting the test? “Will the...will the test fit on one sheet?”

Scarlet blinked several times before realization dawned on her face. “The pen’s erasable, dimwit. Do they not have erasable pens where you come from?”

A wooden pen? Erasable pens? He picked up the pen and examined it more closely. It was made of wood, polished smooth, but unpainted. A metal nib protruded from the end of the pen, like a fountain pen. It had a metal cap on the back end as if covering an eraser tip. Max tried to unscrew the cap.

“Are you trying to break it?” Scarlet reached for the pen with a concerned expression as though he were a toddler who’d picked up jewelry and tried to eat it.

Max quickly pulled the pen out of Scarlet’s reach. “No, just, uh, checking. We have erasable pens, but they’re, uh, a bit different.”

Max tried writing on the paper. Ink flowed easily from the tip, as it had done last night. He flipped it over and erased what he’d written.

“Not so hard!” Scarlet exclaimed, making Max wince. “Dead gods.”

He’d torn a hole in the paper.

To the side, Nerran was watching and chewing, his gaze uncomfortably intense as usual. His expression hadn’t changed, but Max got the feeling that his value hadn’t risen in the cat man’s estimation.

“How learned could he be if he can’t use an eraser?”

Yep.

“Don’t press,” Scarlet said in a patronizing tone. “Drag the eraser lightly over the paper.” She demonstrated, lightly dragging the rear end of her pen over her paper.

He tried again, letting the metal cap rest on the paper and dragging it over the dried ink. His scribbles vanished from the page. Max’s jaw dropped.

“Ha!”

Magic. It was unmistakable, undeniable, genuine, bona fide magic. A grin blossomed on his face. It was his first enchanted object! Last night, he’d written with an enchanted pen and he hadn’t even noticed!

“Congratulations, you’ve caught up with the five-year old farmgirl you’re replacing.”

Tch. He’d teach that grouchy cat man a lesson. A math lesson.

* * *

They encountered an obstacle immediately — yet another obstacle. While the mysterious force of Aver’s Will translated Scarlet’s speech and writing so perfectly that he had to concentrate to recognize that she was speaking and writing in a different language, it did little while he was writing. While Scarlet and Max could read and understand the others’ written numbers, it gave them headaches working on the same problem with two different systems of symbols. Scarlet explained the numbering system, mathematical operators, and a few letters to Max, who found it surprisingly similar to what he knew. To his relief, math, it seemed, was the same in all worlds.

As they started on the first set of questions, Nerran pulled out a small sack and poured out what seemed like a large number of shiny golden coins. He began counting them into short stacks. Max pretended he didn’t see the big guy’s disturbingly endearing, poorly hidden, intrigued glances at Max and Scarlet when they discussed an answer at length.

It turned out that his algebra was, indeed, great. Max didn’t mean to brag, but it was laughably easy. Middle school math? It was like asking a pro basketball player to dunk on a kiddie 3 ft basketball hoop.

They moved on to advanced algebra, geometry, and trigonometry.

As time passed, he stopped stealing bites of eggs to concentrate on the increasingly difficult problems. Wasn’t it inhumane to teach high schoolers this kind of stuff? Were his memories of being able to solve these kinds of problems figments of his imagination? Had he been in a coma for the last twenty years? Was he still in a coma?

“Come on,” he complained, “Do people really memorize this stuff? I learned this, but I don’t remember exactly how to solve it.”

She’d asked a question that he was pretty sure required either the law of sines or cosines to solve, but even if he sat and stared at the problem all day, he wouldn’t recall those esoteric theorems. They were tools you looked up when you needed them. This world might not have Google, but surely there were reference books. Or reference spells. Skills. Something besides rote memorization.

“Fine, you said you know calculus?”

“Calculus? Yeah.” He reached to push up glasses that weren’t there. If he were wearing a pair, they would have glinted at Scarlet. “And post-calculus.”

“Teach it to me.”

Max had worked as an instructional aide several times throughout undergrad and grad school. He’d never taught a math class, but he’d spent years learning calculus. At the very least, he needed a semester to teach it. Not to mention, he wrote the new number symbols as slowly as a grade-schooler learning to write.

The hesitancy must have shown on his face.

An exasperated left the pallid girl. “Just convince me that you know it.”

Max tried to recall his first calculus class. Basic derivatives and Riemann sums were straightforward, and they shouldn’t be too difficult to understand given Scarlet’s background. Plus, they made extensive use of plots, which transcended language barriers. Pretty pictures were worth a lot of words and all that.

He moved to the chair next to Scarlet and began drawing diagrams.

A little while later, Scarlet raised a hand.

“That’s enough, I believe you.”

Nerran, who had finished counting coins and swept them all into a smaller purse, and then had been eating and watching for a while now, raised his head. Scarlet raised her eyebrows, as if daring him to question her assessment.

“Something to say?” Scarlet waited, and then she rolled her eyes as Nerran finished chewing.

“If he really knows it, Scarlet, you should have him teach you this calculus.”

“Fuck, no.” Scarlet spat her reply, sending bits of eggs flying.

“If it’s useful, you should learn it.”

“Just have him do it. If I wanted to learn calculus, I would’ve learned it at Crinivet’s.”

It wasn’t hard to sympathize with her. Math was incredibly dry and boring. While he’d liked math in high school, in college he’d struggled with all his proof-based classes and had quickly realized there was an upper limit to what he could learn, somewhere below what was required for even a math minor. Max enjoyed what math could be used for, applying it to solve real-world problems. That’s why he was an engineer. But if math made him invaluable to the group, he’d do math all day. Half the day. A few hours a day, at least.

“It’s no trouble,” Max said to Nerran.

“All right, let’s get this over with.” Nerran got up and held the door open like an impatient butler. A cat man butler.

Max opened his mouth to protest. He hadn’t had a chance to eat with those ridiculous rote-memorization questions. His most recent serving of eggs sat half-eaten on his plate.

But before Max could how to politely let Nerran know that Max wasn’t finished eating, Nerran spoke again. “Come on, I want to beat the afternooon rush.”

That bastard knows what he’s doing. Max gave his unfinished eggs a final forlorn gaze as he pushed back his chair. “Great, looking forward to it.”

“Don’t die,” Scarlet said as a farewell as they crossed the threshold.

A Max stepped, for the first time — excluding his unsanctioned escape the night before, and at that time he’d been too enraptured by the sky to take notice of anything else — into the city.