It’s strange, because the last thing I see is the flash of a gun going off in my face—the next, I’m hearing telephones going off inside an office. I look around, smacking my lips and drawing my forearm across my mouth, wiping away saliva. Have I been asleep? I shake my head and look around. It really is an office of some kind, maybe something like a high school principal’s office? Don’t really know honestly, never been inside of one. Those old-timey movies and shows made them look this way, as well as that one kinda meh superhero comic I read when I got sent to juvie.

  I never did finish that thing, because my brother said it was for wimps, even though he had the x-rated issues under his pillow with the girls in skimpy red, white, blue and golden costumes. Bastard probably stole ‘em.

  Like he does with practically everything, sucking the fun out of life as he lives and breathes.

  I look over my shoulder at the wooden door behind me, at the blinds covering the glass partition and the offices muffled by them both. Where am I? Shouldn’t I have a hole in my face right about now? I stand up, and I’m still wearing the same white overalls, just missing my sidearm and sword. Not a good start. If this is heaven, then I don’t want to sit in an office trying to file a complaint with some pencil-pushing worker Angel that only really sees me as some kind of digit on their to-do list, so I try to open the door, but it doesn’t budge. I try knocking on the glass, but the figures beyond it are blurry and distant. Vague outlines of people and distant imitations of talking and calling, mumbling and laughing. I try to force the window open: nothing. I pick up a chair and throw it hard.

  It bounces off the glass, clatters onto the floor, and when I blink, it’s behind me again, back in place like I didn’t just try to use it to smash through what should be a thin little office window. Great, some kind of labyrinth.

  Because this is what it’s got to be, right? Those pay-by-the-foot kind of labyrinths that HexInc put on display at the mall where you can enter one for free as a pretty lady tries to sweet talk you into buying one for your home security, because there’s no better security than trapping someone for all eternity in a hellish pit of your own creation, is there? For extra, you can even pay for your personal labyrinth to link up with the ruins of the real one that, according to rumors down on the streets of New Salem, are still scattered around the Wastes, still festering and boiling, stewing in pools of its own blood, magic and acids. Remnants of the World Eater, they say. And you think HexInc is gonna just let you connect to the real deal for just any price? No way, you’ve got to be very filthy rich.

  I’m talking about the kind of rich to make someone—me, I’m talking about me—wait for damn ages. At some point I get so bored that I find myself lying down on the paper-scattered desk, arm behind my head and my party mask on my chest. I try to take a power nap but the mutterings and mumblings from the offices beyond keep me awake, so there goes my beauty sleep. Then the door finally opens, and I turn my stiff neck to look over at it.

  A woman in gray sweatpants and a pizza sauce-stained t-shirt comes in and shuts the door behind her, and wow, she looks like one hell of a mess. She’s barefoot and has slightly hunched over shoulders, frazzled hair kept in a tight bun atop her head, and smudged glasses sitting awkwardly on her little button nose. She doesn’t even pay me any attention when she goes around the desk and fishes through the many drawers, finally finding a sign that says, Not In The Office Right Now, which she takes back outside, then returns without it, seemingly now satisfied.

  But not any calmer, because she’s still got her back pressing hard against the door, like she’s afraid of me.

  Or deeply in trouble and trying to hide from someone, maybe her supervisor or whatever.

  “Gonna stand there and give yourself a heart attack, or…?”

  Her eyes dart over her shoulder, then she says, “I’m just the intern.”

  “Okay?” I swing my legs off the desk and sit on the edge. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Great question!” she says, then clasps her hands. “I’m not at liberty to answer that, though.”

  I tilt my head, reading the name written on a post-it note stuck to her chest. “Well, Judy, a few moments ago I was about to eat a chip of iron with my forehead, but now I’m here all of a sudden. Mind telling me why?”

  “Well…” She looks over her shoulder again, pries open the blinds, then turns back around and skulks a little closer to the desk. “My boss usually answers those kinds of questions, but she’s currently not in the office right now, which I hope you can understand. I can take a message if you like. Just need to grab a pen and some—”

  “Judy,” I say, hopping off the table and standing in front of her. “Where am I?”

  “I… You know, I can make you some amazing tea, it might calm you—”

  “You’re pissing me off, and I don’t like people who do that. Got a short fuse. Blame it on my grandma.”

  “You’re, um, how do I put this?” Judy keeps fiddling with her fingers, and I know she’s probably just as tall as I am, maybe even a little taller, but she’s hunched over like that baggy white rag of a t-shirt is keeping her closer to the floor than the rest of us. “Well, you recently signed a contract with us, right? And I’m in no position at all to speak about any long-lasting contracts with any of our clients, but what I can say whilst avoiding legal problems I might soon find myself in if I disclose anything I totally don’t know about is this: your claim just got accepted.”

  “My claim?” I ask her, folding my arms. “What am I claiming?”

  She lowers her voice and whispers, “Your Knight Blessing.”

  My throat dries. I put her at arm’s length and say, “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Legally? Yes, of course, this is all one big joke, but…for real?” She shrugs. “Congrats.”

  “Hooooooly shit!” I say, running my fingers through my hair. “HOLY SH—”

  Judy slaps her hand over my mouth. “Do you want me to get punished?”

  “Don’t you mean fired?” I mumble from behind her kinda sweaty palm.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Oh, please, being fired would be a blessing,” she mutters. “But that’s all I’m gonna tell you, because that’s all I’m allowed to tell you. Your Helper, the woman who’s supposed to be sitting at that desk behind you, is kinda maybe sorta on a business trip that she’s been on for the past ten years, and she’s the one who’s meant to talk you through all of the legal framework, the Negotiations Board you’ll have to go through, the Investment Committee and the Board of Gods as well, and I’ll be really honest, if I do any of that, I am fucked. So here’s a rundown, since I’ve been doing this for everyone else that keeps popping up in this office every other freaking day, seemingly. God, what’s with you people and dying so frequently, anyway? Must be those microplastics in the water, I swear.”

  “Judy?”

  “Yep?”

  “Get to the point, kinda in a rush trying not to get my hairline painfully receded.”

  She snaps her fingers and says, “Right, of course,” then digs through more drawers behind the large oak desk, a deep brown piece that screamed old-money and elegance, stained by nothing at all except the faint spillage outline from the bottom of a bottle of some kind of liquor in the corner of the desk. I trace my fingers over the small wooden animal carvings on the sides of the table, the lion heads and the dragons chasing after birds, all spiraling around the desk in slow-moving spirals. Dad would have loved something like this. A table this pristine would have looked great with him sitting in that cushy leather chair, but he would have said it was all too much for someone like him. Too loud and expensive. He’s better off with a piece of plywood and some cinder blocks any other day.

  But if you ask me for my humble opinion, I think my old man kinda deserves it.

  That’s if I ever get the balls to go and see him again.

  Finally, Judy slides a piece of paper across the desk. I look at her and she waves at it, resting her fists on the desk and waiting for me to pick it up, so I do just that and read through it, nodding along, then passing it back.

  “So?” she asks me. “That’s a rough outline of your current contract standing with us. Pretty cool, right?”

  I shrug. “If I was able to read and understand most of it, yeah, sure, that’s pretty damn awesome.”

  “It’s…in English.” She checks the paper again. “I was pretty sure you could read. You can read, right?”

  “Yeah, of course I can, nerd,” I say. “Just not the kind of English that reads like an old-timey book.”

  “Not one for the arts I see,” Judy mutters. She reads off the piece of paper for a moment. “In summary, your contract with us is currently live, and thus means you’re liable for any actions caused upon others, whether that be in good faith or any other unsavory light. Your actions will be judged accordingly in due time to see whether your contract can be further pushed upward, remain the same, or be fully terminated and evaluated so another holder can take your place.” She reads some more. “Legal stuff, legal stuff, oh, and if you manage to get killed again within the contract’s live standing, then you’ll be held for questioning. You’ve been chosen by Arcadia Prophecies & Co as the best standing candidate for this contract. If you fail your ultimate objective, you will be liable for death and torment to a degree previously unknown to any living being. Succeed, and your bounty in the afterlife will be large and plentiful. Assistance requests are currently not available for your base-line contract, though your action will be held subject so as to further hold negotiations with investors who may find interest in your exploits as a contract—”

  “You’re gonna need to summarize this stuff for me to understand what you’re talking about.”

  Judy shrugs and says, “Keep slaying Monsters and you’ll be fine. We’ll have an audit in a few months’ time to see your overall performance—not me, of course, that’s for the legal department to deal with—and if you’ve done enough, you’ll get a better contract, if you haven’t done enough, then you might stay the same or get slid.”

  “Slid?” I ask.

  “Office talk for getting slid aside for someone else to be given a shot.”

  “But I thought you said I was the best candidate for the job?”

  “I mean, technically that’s true, sure, but prophecies work in a weird sort of way, too. The Board is given a rough outline of who might do what and what their personality might be, and you seem to fit the bill, but there’s billions of people on Earth and a few of you tend to overlap in personality here and there. You’re a first draft pick.” She rummages around in her pockets and pulls out a small confetti cannon, spraying me with the stuff. “Congrats.”

  I let my head stop pulsing for a moment before I can speak again, because this is a lot of information for someone who barely knows what’s going on. “So…what am I meant to do? You said something about objectives?”

  “Basically just things you need to do,” she says. “I don’t know ‘em. Just the intern, remember?”

  “So what can you tell me?” I ask, a little exasperated and almost swallowing bits of colorful plastic.

  She slides the piece of paper back inside the drawer and thinks for a moment. “Well, considering you’re on the most basic contract offerable, your soul was used as a down payment for most of your abilities. But there was apparently some kind of issue in accounting when they were running the numbers, and your soul is kinda bleh in total, so we could only use half of it. Good news is that you’ve got cooler magic now. Bad news is that usually, you’re given a Training Period of about a month to get everything under control, preferably with a previous holder of your contract—you met one, Andrea?—but since your soul was kinda iffy, you’ve got about a day and a half to get them down before you actually need to start paying for all your snazzy new abilities. Oh, and no Andrea, too.”

  I’m hung up on about all of what she just said, so I ask, “What?”

  A shout from beyond the door makes us both flinch.

  “Shit,” Judy mutters. “Been away from my desk for too long. I swear, she just had to take a holiday during our busiest season in millenia.” She walks around the desk and puts her hand on my shoulder. “Look, all you really need to know is that you’ve now got more magic than a lot of people can even dream of, but you’ve got to earn it, and you don’t have access to almost any of it right now. You get a sword and a shield and a lasso if you’re lucky, but that’ll only be for a day like I said. Then you’ve got to start killing Monsters. Bigger kills equals bigger rewards and more things you can do. Impress a couple of gods and dead heroes and they might be willing to invest in your contract and help you along. Now, I’ve gotta run. If you need me, call me. Dial 0-100-Arcadia & Co, ask for Judy, and you’ll get me in a heartbeat. I’ll be sending over a Familiar in a few hours once I find one compatible, cool?”

  “No!” I say, grabbing her wrist before she can leave. “No, that’s not cool, dude. I don’t know what’s going on or what you just said! Am I, like, some kind of goddess now? How do I know if I’m even doing the right thing?”

  “Why’re you so hung up about this?” she asks, cocking an eyebrow. “You literally signed the contract, didn’t you read it beforehand?” And you know what? I don’t like her invasive questions, thank you very much.

  “...sure I did. I just need a refresher.”

  “What’s with you contract holders and skipping over fine print?” she mutters. “Look, I’m gonna get in a lot of trouble if my supervisor finds out the lady meant to be sitting in the leather chair has been missing, so I’m gonna keep this short: do your best, and everything else will fall into place. If you’re confused, just use this thing.” I watch her reach into her back pocket and pull out an entire backpack, almost like the one I had a few days before I got iced in Dogway, and…How the hell? Where did she even get that thing? “It’s got a training manual, some snack bars I stole from the vending machine, power-aid and magic-aid gummies, the green ones, and a company dagger.”

  I take it, because she forces it into my hands the moment a darker, larger outline begins heading toward the office we’re in. Before I can ask Judy why Arcadia & Co has a company dagger that she somehow has, she’s gone.

  But not before she gives me a thumbs up and says, “P.S., you’ve got this. And duck when you get back.”