No one else woke at their passing, but even though the man wasn't particularly quiet, the way that his peers lay completely still implied that magic was involved. Have they put me to sleep like this often as well? Simon wondered. He was often awake for part of the night, but if someone were to place a sleep spell on him, he'd never know.

It galled him that he still hadn't learned that word of power despite all of his meddling. However, at the moment, such a piece of knowledge was the least of his worries. Right now, his thoughts were racing. Was this a minder or someone more sinister? Did they know what he'd been up to? Where was he being taken? Was he being disciplined or promoted?

Simon had long prepared to use a greater greater word to end his life if things turned ugly. Inside the pyramid, he'd planned to use an amplified word of force to bring the whole thing down on his head. Outside of it, he planned to use an amplified word of fire, if he had to, to make his body explode. While he couldn't be sure that such a thing would keep them from having some grip on his soul, it was the best he could do if things got dire.

Simon was led outside into the chilly night without a word. It was late enough that the arboreal plaza was empty and filled with shadows instead of drunken Magi, and the only clue he was given was that they moved steadily toward the Pyramid of Lesser Miracles. That told him nothing, though. Whether he was moving a step further in this diabolical food chain, or they planned to sacrifice him on some cursed altar, all roads would lead here.

The first surprise came when they reached the base of the giant structure, and they didn't go up the stairs. Instead, they entered the lowest tunnel and then took stairs down into the bowels of the earth.

Simon had long known the place was a mound of rooms and tunnels stacked on top of each other. He had no way of knowing exactly how many there were, of course, but he suspected that the deeper they went, the more diabolical they got. They made it a hundred yards and three floors before Simon heard the first scream distantly, but he ignored it and instead followed the black-robed man more by the sound of his footsteps than by sight.

"You have learned the basics of reading and writing, yes, Nijam?" the man asked as they walked through the dark. "And the importance of clean, precise lines when honoring or beseeching our God-King?"

"I… I have," Simon agreed, sure that's what he was supposed to say here.

"Good," the man answered, not sounding particularly pleased. "Very good. Then you know enough of the basics to become a shadow, at least. You shall wait here in quiet contemplation until someone comes to collect you. You are not to speak to anyone. In fact, once they collect you, you are not to speak again. Not ever, until you become a true acolyte. The things you will learn in the coming days and weeks are dangerous, and if you attempt to repeat them without preparation, it might very well kill you. Do you understand?"

"I under—" Simon started to say, but the air was stolen from his lungs as the Magi accompanying him used a lesser word of force and sent Simon flying to one side. He'd been pushed into some kind of shallow cell. He slammed against the wall and then fell to the ground, gasping.

"I told you not to speak. Someone resurrected by the God-king himself should know better," the magi chastised him. "That was your last warning. Now, wait here until someone comes to collect a shadow. Then, listen and learn as much as you can, but say nothing until the time comes to take your next vows."

A few words from me and you'd be nothing but paste, Simon told himself silently as he lay there gasping. He was probably supposed to be terribly afraid to be left in here for an uncertain amount of time, but he was mostly just angry.

Simon still hadn't recovered by the time he heard the man walking away, but he was too busy berating himself to notice. He should have suspected it was a trap. Everything here was. Everything was a trap, and everything was a show. At this point, somehow, this place embodied the worst elements of a cult and a military boarding school. He didn't dare say that out loud. He didn't even sigh in annoyance. Instead, he sat up, and after he felt around enough that he was satisfied he understood the shape of the room, he sat there and meditated, listening to the world around him.

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For months now, Simon hadn't known true silence. That was impossible when he slept in the same room as dozens of other boys his age. Even his time in the depths of the pyramid recovering from his own faux-death hadn't been completely silent, and tonight was no different.

Simon tried to listen to the distant chanting and, more rarely, the echoed cries of pain, but mostly, he just reminded himself that this was all meant to make the inducted members of the cult feel a certain way. This time, he decided it was more fear than honor or awe that they were trying to induce.

What if they forget about me? Simon decided that most boys his age would think if they were left here for this long. What if something happens and they never find me?

While Simon's thoughts weren't quite serene, he wasn't exactly about to piss himself with fear. He knew this was part of the show, and he waited patiently for his hunger to rise and then fall, telling him what time of day it was. The noise picked up some time after he estimated it was breakfast, which tracked.

There were definitely times in his life when waiting like this and staying perfectly silent and still would have killed him. Fortunately, he wasn't that person anymore. He had eternity these days, and it was time to start acting like it. Besides, he was pretty confident they'd keep him here for less than a day. If he was supposed to stay longer, he would have heard the other people who had been left here from the day before or the day before that. They'd be whimpering, or at least breathing, but they weren't, which meant he was all alone.

Or they're all dead, his mind whispered to him, but he ignored it. He'd been locked in caskets and frozen in stone for decades; sitting here for a couple of days was nothing.

Simon's logical conclusions were rewarded later that day. Sometime later, after his hunger started to wane, they came for him; this time, it wasn't Magi, though, but older acolytes.

Simon's hunger, or lack thereof, told him it was night and that eighteen hours had passed, but the boys tried to make it seem like days had passed as they hazed him. "Really? We came all the way down here so you could get a shadow this sad and pathetic?" One of the boys asked with a sneer.

"It's not like I get a say in it," the second boy said glumly. He carried a lantern, and once Simon could see past the glare, he saw there were five of them.

That made sense. The fact that only three of them spoke while the other two lingered sullenly behind them also made sense. Two of these boys had shadows, and one of them was there to pick him up. They were all slowly moving up this demented pecking order, but somehow the Magi managed to make all of them feel like shit about it the whole way.

The three boys who could speak bickered a bit and found a dozen ways to criticize Simon. He was dumb. He was ugly. He looked poor. They seemed to be doing their best to provoke him, but he was sure that nothing good would happen to him if he so much as looked angry. After the way the magi had launched him against the wall, he was pretty sure that these three had all the authority in the world to beat the shit out of him.

He found out just how true that was later that night. Not personally. He watched acolytes beat the shit out of two other boys. One in the mess hall when he cursed because he wasn't getting any food, and once in the bunk room when someone cursed after they stubbed their toe.

Simon took back everything negative he'd ever said about the way the other brown-robed initiates had treated him. The brown-robed initiates might have been little barbarians, but the acolytes he was with now were little monsters. They were always fighting and struggling with each other for scraps of anything. Food, blankets, and especially recognition. They acted like stray dogs, not like little boys and girls, and Simon struggled to keep his disgust off of his face.

That night was rough; he barely got any food, and he wasn't able to sleep well at all on the cold stone floor, but he made do. It wasn't until the morning that his acolyte gave him the facts of life while they waited for the doors to be unbarred so they could run across the plaza for breakfast and lessons.

"You seem to have figured some of this out already because I haven't had to put you in your place yet," the boy said to him without bothering to give Simon his name. That disrespect offended him a little bit because he could very easily beat the snot out of the rail-thin boy, but Simon reminded himself this was all part of the game and nodded instead of scowling. "But there are a couple of things you need to know."

"First," he exclaimed, "Is that until last night you were nothing. You were literally so useless that you didn't even cast a shadow. Now that you can read and write, that's all you are. You're just a shadow for your betters, and that's all you'll be until you're ready to be tested and take the oath. You—"

Simon could tell he had a whole speech worked out, and he was fairly certain it was the same one that was given to him weeks or months before. It was hard to create awe and wonder on an assembly line, but the Magi were certainly doing their best.

"And if you slow me down, and we don't get anything to eat, I'm taking it out of your hide!" the boy finished as the doors slammed open, and nearly a hundred boys and black robes started running across the plaza in the same mad dash he'd grown used to in his first months here.

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