There was a table in front of him, a desk, with a single face-down card laying on it. That was supposed to be the most important thing about what was going on. Even being in his soul space for the first time, the space where he could build his deck of cards and grow his abilities, wasn't seen as much of a big deal as his Reveal was. But the room around Dryth was just so strange to him that it stole all his attention away form his Soul Card that was waiting for him.

  The desk was a solid piece of wood at least an inch thick sitting on top of four metal legs that didn't have a single tool mark on them, they were just solid pieces of rectangular metal. Dryth didn't know much about metalworking, but he'd never seen anything as smooth as that! There were three drawers handing underneath the top of the desk with polished metal handles that were equally as smooth as the legs, and when he opened them almost unthinkingly they were filled with strange objects. One was entirely filled with what he somehow knew were writing utensils, but he didn't recognize any of them. All of them were made of some unfamiliar material that was clear or in a variety of colors. Some had small lids on the ends, while others had open spaces and large buttons on the opposite end. He slowly picked one up and clicked the button with his thumb as if he'd done it a million time before, revealing a small metal point with a tiny drop of ink on the tip.

  "What..." Dryth slowly looked over his shoulder at the rest of the room, somehow unsurprised that he didn't recognize anything he saw. "What is this?"

  There was a mattress on a wooden frame that looked unlike any other mattress he'd even seen, but kind of matched the description he'd heard from other students with wealthier families when they'd complained about the beds in the school dorms. Next to it was a small wooden table that didn't look too outlandish, but there was a small black rectangle with a cord running from it to something that was poked into the wall. There were art pieces above the wall with figures on them, the middle of which was a blond man wearing white clothes holding out a blue bar that came out of a hilt like it was some kind of fantastic sword.

  There were shelves across from the bed that held more books than Dryth had ever seen in one place, outside of the library at the school and he'd only been allowed access to one of the shelves there, so he felt like this still counted. The shelf was as tall as he was and every part of it was full of books of all sizes, with colored spines that he'd never seen on a book, with lettering across most of the spines. Some were tall, thick books that stood out as imposing sentinels watching over their smaller brethren. Some were fat, some were thing, some had only one word on the spine, others were covered in them, and a few even had strange characters that didn't look like language to Dryth accompanied by colorfully drawn people that didn't look real. Their eyes were too large and their facial expressions were strange.

  There was a window behind the desk with thick curtains drawn over it, blocking the view and making the only source of light the glowing dome stuck in the ceiling. It looked like fogged glass Dryth had seen in a few places at school or from a distance during the walk through the Association campus to get to the amphitheater, and there was something inside of it that glowed brightly. Directly across from the window and the desk on the far wall was a closed door. Something about both the door and the window was mildly alarming to Dryth, looking at them invoked a sense of dread. No, not dread, just... impending change. Like opening either would change his world in some unknown but far reaching way that would leave nothing the same. It wasn't inherently good or bad, it just was.

  Glancing around at everything with growing confusion, interest, and curiosity, he began to notice that he knew things about the items in the room, but between one second and the next that knowing vanished, It was like for a brief second he had all the information about the thing he was looking at, but in the next it was all gone and all he could remember was the moment when he did know. The words on books and the art against the walls had meaning, he could tell you what the color sword in the man's hand was called, he knew what the contents of one of the larger books was, he could explain why the ceiling dome glowed.

  The flashing moments of knowing to not knowing and feeling somehow empty from the lack started to get overwhelming, and he had to close his eyes. Not looking made the ebb and flow of information stop, but it only highlighted something else. It was too quiet. There should have been noise coming from outside the window and faintly through the door, especially at this time of day. He didn't know how he knew what time of day it was in the room, or that it wasn't the same time as when he'd sat down in a chair across from two mages, or how he knew that there should have been more noise, but he knew, and the lack of it was disturbing, even though he didn't know what the noises were that were missing! Keeping his eyes shut he slammed his hands over his ears to keep out the overwhelmingly deafening silence.

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  This was supposed to be the inside of his soul, the place where he could be most relaxed, most himself, according to everything he's ever learned and read, why was is so overwhelming? Why was it so strange?

  Feeling like he was losing it, Dryth tried to figure out what to do, how to deal with this, but there was so much happening even though nothing was happening, it was like something else was pressing in on him, the feeling of uncontrollable and irrevocable change was pressing down on him from inside the room now and he knew he had to get away from it but he didn't want to. It was the most welcome, staggering, unhelpful, delightful, oppressive, all-consuming, all-encompassing thing that had ever happened to him and he wanted it but hated it but feared it but beckoned it closer but-

  A hand slammed down on his shoulder while another pressed itself over his eyes. A pair of lips touched the edge of his hear and the most familiar voice he had never heard whispered to him, "Sorry about this. I don't know how this is supposed to work anymore than you do, but I'm a little less confused than you are, not that that makes any sense if you have any context to what's going on. And I'm just making assumptions, but they're working so far. Anyway," The hand squeezed tight on Dryth's shoulder. "I'll handle this part, you handle living, and I bet we'll come out of this just fine. Not that that makes much sense either but..." The voice trailed off as it faded away into nothing.

  Dryth's eyes snapped open. All of the feelings, all of the intensity had vanished. His head popped up and swiveled about as he searched the room. He had this odd feeling like someone had just spoken to him, but he couldn't remember seeing or hearing anyone. It was impossible for someone else besides him to be here, anyways, so where had the feeling come from? It was relieving that all the pressure was gone and the confusion and odd longing with it, but why would he think someone had talked to him? And why did that feeling come with not only relief from what had been happening before but also a feeling of relaxation?

  He had no idea what had just happened, or why his soul space was so strange, but he knew one thing for sure, he wasn't going to be sharing this with anyone. One's soul space was considered a private thing that you only shared with those closest to you or not at all which was a perfectly acceptable excuse not to talk about his in any detail. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down and the student that talks about strange events in their soul space gets taken aside by teachers to have very intensive and prying questions asked. Now that he was actually an adult that would probably be Association mages not teachers, but that was actually worse.

  Standing up, Dryth went over to the desk and looked down at his Soul Card. That was what he was here for so that was what he was going to focus on. He could address the rest of his soul space later. He ignored the strange items behind him, he ignored the window and the door, and he ignored the lines of dust that outline where something normally sat on the desk. He reached down, grabbed his soul card, and flipped it over.

  There was a face looking back at him, a face he knew better than any other except his own but he knew it just as well, except it was backwards and-

  Dryth blinked. A tiny portrait of himself looked back at him with a calm smile on his face. He was dressed in robes that vaguely matched the style of those the Association mages were wearing, but the trim was slightly different and the sleeves didn't billow as much. In one hand the small him held a quill that had a faint glowing outline around the edges of the feathered end and in the other he held a piece of parchment with lines of colored text on them. The Dryth in the card bowed his head at real Dryth and a series of shadows flashed behind the small version of him, shadows of other people, of strange beasts, of things he didn't recognize, and shapes he couldn't identify. Card Dryth preseed the quill into the sheet of parchment. The quill vanished into the parchment which gained the glowing outline from the quill, and then the glow filtered inward to cover the entire page.

  It began to glow brighter and brighter until it was all glow and it became a glowing ball that floated aobve card Dryth's hand. Card Dryth paused dramatically, then closed his fist around the light before immediately opening it. The light flared as it traveled away from his palm, forming a glowing robe that became a chain that became a ribbon that became an ethernet cable that became a DNA helix that became a string of numbers that became a light that flowed toward up toward real Dryth and filled the card until the only thing that wasn't glowing was the deep blue border. The card warmed under the force of the glow until it was almost burning his hand, before it faded all at once, the card immediately becoming the same cool temperature it had started with as the light vanished.

  As the glow faded away it revealed that where there had been an image was now text. The first section was a burnished gold color and the second was in a glittering silver. At the top, in bold, was the name of Dryth's Soul Card, which was also the name of his Class.

  "Contractor."