Leornal’s bow was nocked and drawn, but though he aimed straight ahead at the imposing figure in the middle of the room, his eyes wandered upwards to where Mason floated, arms spread as if crucified. The panic on Leornal’s face was obvious, and a stark contrast to the peaceful expression on Mason’s, and the calm, controlling look on the man in the middle’s own.

“Put-put him down,” Leornal stammered out, trying to rally his confidence in the face of a man who put off a more powerful aura than he had ever felt in his life.

“Why?” The man asked with a sincerity in his voice that would have been hard to fake. “Would you first put down the bow? I lifted your friend with hardly any effort. Do you really think I can’t stop a simple arrow?”

Leornal felt a tug, and the arrow was pulled from between his fingers and into the air. It had moved so fast the fletching cut his fingers, and a small bead of blood flowed out despite his callouses. Clearly at a loss, Leornal placed the bow slowly on the ground and raised his hands in a sign of defeat.

“Good, you’re a smart man. I can see that in you. You weren’t happy in your own world, but you were always very clever. I think these... “ there was a flash of light as the man thought, and then he finished, “Trials, as you call them, have served you well. Your young wife would have been proud of who you’ve become.”

“Who the hell do you think you…” Leornal initially roared out before going quiet and looking down as a wave of energy passed through the room. He couldn’t let his anger get the best of him in front of this man. He’d only experienced one other person that could create such an oppressive aura, and she was strong enough to raze an entire city.

The man just considered him impassively, so Leornal spoke up again, “I’m sorry. I am not here as an enemy.” When the man made no move, he was emboldened, “I am Leornal of the Darkest Night, and New Marra, and that is my friend and charge that you have up there. You are the first person we have come across in this city with their wits about them.” He wanted to challenge the man for his sudden assault, but what could he do when he was so clearly outmatched?

“Yes, my people are dead. I can see that in your memories too. I should thank you- if you had not restarted the mana generation in this city, I might have remained in stasis so long that I, too, turned into one of those beasts,” the man explained as he begun to walk slowly toward Leornal.

Leornal eyed him warily. The man was easily nine feet tall, and very thin. His skin had a pallor that betrayed his use of the soul stasis ability, but he had an incredible amount of mana stored in his body, and he seemed to be able to read Leornal’s thoughts and control anything in the room with less energy expenditure than it took the archer to swallow. Would this man be the ruin of his whole people? Surely not even Sorynel could match him in a fight…

The man chuckled, “I’m not quite that powerful. In fact, you could say I lack even certain capacities that you take for granted.” He stopped an arm’s length from the archer, then crouched down to better look him in the eye. “There’s no point in hiding it from you. I’ve read your memories and your mind- you are no threat to me.”

“I cannot ever leave this place,” the giant mage stated simply.

Leornal sighed in relief, but he remained skeptical. “I suppose you’re going to do something horrible to fix that, then?”

The man laughed again, a boisterous thing which Leornal had only heard from drunks in the past, “No, no. There’s no fixing that. I’m more concerned with fixing that,” he said, rising to his full height and pointing at Mason, whose Demon glamour was now flashing intermittently.

As Mason poured another potion into the basin, he was of two minds. The first felt conspiratorially as if he were onto the truth of this place, and the connections between the scenes in each of these memories. The other was merely in awe, enraptured as each potion brought on a scene that felt intimately familiar.

He could see his own dark hands tapping against a table in an office building, staving off the boredom that threatened to consume him. Mana wriggled in his gut, tracing half-heartedly around a force rune he was certain was powerful enough to knock his desk right through the wall of the office. How many months had he been stuck in this dimly lit room?

A man walked up in a uniform with a friendly and familiar face. He couldn’t remember the man’s name, but was certain he knew it. His own voice spoke the name his mind couldn’t remember, “Get me out of here, Bansel. I need to get back on the streets. I didn’t study in the academy to be filling out paperwork for other people’s cases.”

“You know I can’t do that, Mowrytal. You’ve only got another few weeks. Enjoy the rest,” The man tapped on his table and started to walk away and Mowry considered aiming the force blast at this infuriating man. Then the man stopped, turned, and added, “You know what? Finish your paperwork, run the nightly checks on the storage room, and then you can go hit the training center until your shift is over. Can’t have you getting rusty.”

“Sure you’re not worried I’ll harm someone again?” Mowry asked sarcastically.

Bansel scowled, “Don’t joke, kid. You crossed the line and you’re doing your time for it. If circumstances hadn’t been what they were, we might have…”

Mason was pulled out of the vision and his mind reeled as it tried to put that memory in place with the others. He had seen himself as a pale, thin kid in the other memories. But there he was, skin black as night, sitting in an office because he had gone too far on a case and let several people get hurt.

A piercing pain went through his mind, and for a split second he saw himself as a slightly sturdier version of the skinny kid, but stuck on his knees, arms bound at his sides, wrapped around a very dark staff with a very prominent green gem. Standing before him was… himself? The dark version, and his face was contorted in a snarl, and he was yelling, or would have been if the scene had been cleared.

He had thought of pouring more from that bottle to see the rest of that scene, to try and make sense of these familiar visions, but that angry visage warned him not to dig deeper. So he replaced it on the shelf and pulled out another bottle. This one was covered in a thick layer of dust, and the fluid in it seemed to almost be more congealed than the others.

It poured into the basin in a thick ooze, and the vision filled the room not as an all-encompassing awareness, but as a hazy display like a projector playing through fog.

He saw himself as a gray, flat-faced boy, with narrow shoulders and only a fine layer of definition to his muscles. He was several inches taller than the skinnier him, but a large part of that was due to the confident set of his neck and shoulders.

He stood in a line of ten boys who looked much like him, while a rotten, wrinkled old man in full battle regalia paced at the front of the wide room.. As the man looked at each boy, his eyes narrowed, daring the boys in turn to react in any way. Finally, after several minutes, the man called out, “Geralt, step forth.”

The pale-faced boy took a long stride forward, but kept his head held high as he was inspected. “You have been chosen, but I cannot begin to fathom why. Three of the boys in the room show more promise than you in terms of martial strength. Four others exceed you in spellcraft. Almost all of them are of more respectable parentages. When the Trials first brought our people into this plane, a talentless boy like you would have been consumed straightaway.”

Unarmed, the old man still held himself as if he could end Geralt’s life with a single motion, and he stood close enough that Geralt could taste the scent of his decaying life force. Soul arts could only maintain a body for so long, even in someone as powerful as the Magnificent Maledite, the man who had trained almost every warrior strong enough to leave their original plane.

“I suppose that is why we send weaklings like you to the other planes anyways. You either change, or you die. You will escort the Lord Arlon, and he will continue your training until the two of you are ready to pass through the passageway. You will serve him with your life, and if he dies, you will not be allowed to return.”

The scene shifted, and Mason felt a strong hand wrapped around his chin. His eyes looked up to see Geralt- the real, current, and much scarier Geralt- give him a look which sent flames of fear into his gut. His head held fast, his eyes glanced about the room and he realized he was bound once more, in an endless white room with several strange glowing lights pouring from high above to down below.

“Enough of this farce!” Geralt roared in Mason’s face. “You cannot walk freely in the branches of someone else’s Tree of Memory. You do not deserve to see Arlon in his youth!”

Geralt screamed, but having seen the strained look of concealed fear on his younger face, Mason couldn’t help but see those same traces buried in his anger.

Then he slipped from Geralt’s grasp and found himself back at that rosewood table, a bottle still in his hands and a curiosity to dig deeper.

“You want to fix,” Leornal questioned, “Mason?”

“You have another name for him, don’t you?” The old mage said mischievously. “Don’t mince words with me, I know your mind. Demon,” He said, looking up at the floating figure. “It’s a fitting name for someone who broke all manner of tradition, rules, and honor without even so much as the grace to feel guilty for what he’s done.”

“Are you saying he’s actually evil?” the archest asked skeptically, “He apologized to Torysen, and she even accepted it. And I’ve seen the way he fights and solves problems- the staff does most of his work for him and he just hopes for the best,” Leornal spoke defensively, even as he was uncertain of why he was suddenly on Mason’s side.

“Isn’t that what makes a Demon? Under the influence of powers he knows nothing about? Acting without a second thought for the consequences beyond his own immediate needs?” The mage paced around Leornal, always keeping his eye on the archer to gauge his reactions.

Leornal turned to try and keep up with the movement, “Nevermind that. I’m not a judge, I’m an accountant and a member of Torysen’s roving band. I don’t make decisions, I do what I have to as well. And I have to get out of here and return to my band, and while you perform your voodoo on my friend, that is much harder.”

The man looked sad for a moment and stopped in front of Leornal. “I cannot return to my people, so why should I let someone so much weaker and less significant leave here? I could carve out a chunk of your soul, allow you a semblance of immortality as my slave here in the library, and who could stop me?”

The mage motioned with his hands and a large stone gateway rose from the ground swiftly. Even as it formed, Leornal could make out an incredible amount of mana swirling around it. The stone was a polished and beautiful green and blue marble, and the runes carved into it were inlaid with what looked to be solid gold. It reached its full height and the energy condensed in the center of it, forming a swirling mass of energy that Leornal knew to be a portal.

He also knew that the power required to raise a portal through normal means was very costly, and a team of powerful spellcasters would have to work with engineers for weeks to get it right. This portal had risen in seconds.

Leornal fought the urge to bow, but instead looked the mage square in the face, “Who are you, and what do you really want?”

“I am the last survivor of this great city, keeper and condemned of the library. You can call me Artorias.”

“There were two parts of my question,” Leornal reminded.

With another boisterous and very fake laugh, Artorias responded, “You are right. I am looking for revenge, and unless I feel like waiting for several thousand years, I am hoping that your Demon may be my best chance to attaining that.”

“You plan to attain this by… fixing him?”

“Inside that frail body are three souls, all of which have been manipulated and bound by the Trials. That means three unstable energy signatures. Three distinct identities. Three distinct branches of the Tree of Memories,” Artorias’ eyes were fixated on Mason’s form as it shimmered with Glamour.

“It’s a wonder he’s even alive,” mused Leornal, following the mage’s gaze.