The Church, the Mage, and the Snarky AI

Chapter 11: A Long Night, Sleepless

"Young master, you can return to your rest. Leave Mr. Fur to us," a middle-aged man in a butler's uniform stepped forward after the interminable silence, defusing the awkward scene.

Young master?

Kyle's interest was piqued.

"Yes, I'll leave it to you then."

Sure, watching a man wallow in a veritable ocean of human waste was entertaining enough, the kind of spectacle that would normally merit a few extra gawks and maybe a sneaky picture or two for the 'gram. But as the perpetrator, Kyle could hardly stand back and enjoy the show - best to make himself scarce. And if he was being honest, he didn't much care what became of the victim. Roaming the halls at witching hour playing at ghosts only to get doused in excrement… that was just karma at work.

Besides, Kyle had bigger fish to fry. Namely, his own situation.

Judging by the onlookers' behavior and the manor's lavish decor, he had a sneaking suspicion about his current circumstances.

He was back with House Lither.

Granted, the specifics of HOW he'd gotten back were hazy, and he harbored some anxiety about potentially giving himself away as an impostor. But the fact remained that he was safe, at least for the moment. That alone made his shoulders sag with relief.

Under the butler's direction, several maid-like figures emerged from the crowd, armed with buckets and scrub brushes. They set to work cleaning up the prone blond and the puddle of filth he'd been "bathing" in. The gawkers gradually dispersed, heading back to their own chambers, but judging by their expressions, tonight's little drama was sure to be the talk of the town come morning.

Kyle returned to his room as well.

He lay back down on the bed he'd initially woken up in.

He had a LOT to process.

"Oh wise and all-knowing artificial intelligence, care to fill me in on what in the seven Hells just happened?" He queried the AI in his mind. "And while we're at it, where did you run off to when I was trying to reach you earlier?"

Silence from the AI.

"Don't even try playing possum, Skynet. I know you can hear me."

"Ding ding ding, system reboot in progress!" The AI chirped, its familiar startup jingle somehow even more punchable than usual. "Good morrow to thee, o organic lifeform! How might this humble digital entity be of service?"

Kyle could feel a vein beginning to throb in his temple. "Oh, a wise guy, huh?"

He imagined himself as an anime character, forehead veins pulsing in a cross shape, the very picture of comedic outrage.

"Okay, okay, I yield!" The AI backpedaled with dizzying speed. "The ol' databanks experienced a small… hiccup. I was preoccupied with sorting out the resultant snarl. I wasn't giving you the cold shoulder on purpose, honest and for true!"

Kyle's anger cooled a fraction. Mulling it over, he pressed:

"A hiccup? From what, exactly? What's all this new data you're on about?"

The AI responded, "It's the original owner's memories. They came flooding back all at once when the Cleansers were rummaging about in your headspace. The sheer volume of information was too much for my systems to process, so I'm afraid I went belly-up for a spell. Took me a solid three days to piece myself back together again."

Kyle felt like a herd of elephants had just stampeded through his frontal lobe.

The Cleansers had been mucking about in his memories? What in the actual Hell?

And what was that about three whole days?

Clearly, all manner of calamity had transpired while he was out cold.

"Why were the Cleansers poking around in my brain-pan? Were they the ones who dragged me back here?" Kyle asked. "And what about Michelle? She just… let me go?"

The AI's voice suddenly turned coy. "Goodness, but you are a curious one! A lady could grow faint beneath such an onslaught of inquiry, you know."

Kyle's eyebrow began to twitch violently.

"After putting your lights out, Michelle flew the coop," the AI said, dropping the cutesy act. "The Cleansers swooped in soon after to collect your unconscious carcass. They spent two solid days putting you through your paces, looked like they employed some manner of arte to access your memories directly."

A frisson of unease ran down Kyle's spine. "They accessed my memories? How did they not uncover my magical aptitude, then?"

If the Church caught wind of his abilities, he was royally forked.

"Funny story, that. Looks like Lady Luck deigned to smile upon you for once, chief." Was it just him, or did the AI sound almost… disappointed? "The very instant they began their little mental fishing expedition, your body's original owner's memories came rushing back, effectively occluding everything that transpired after you arrived in this realm. As far as the Cleansers are concerned, you're naught but some poor sap who was abducted by a wicked sorceress and tormented by her craven lackey. So they trussed you up and shipped you back to the bosom of House Lither, none the wiser."

Kyle exhaled sharply, tension draining from his frame.

They hadn't found out. Thank the gods.

His scheme to utilize the water sphere as Cleanser-bait to secure his own escape had been riddled with holes from the start. If the Church's sanctified headsmen had some method to detect his own magical abilities, he'd have been deader than last year's mutton.

If he was being honest, the scheme had been equal parts desperate gamble and stubborn pride. Backed into a corner, he'd been unwilling to let Michelle emerge victorious without a fight, even if the cost was his own life. Summoning that sphere, he'd been a nervous wreck, fully expecting to keel over at any moment.

The gods must favor fools and madmen, though, because everything had panned out even smoother than he'd dared hope.

Granted, Michelle abandoning her pursuit so readily was a bit of a head-scratcher, but best not to examine fortune's gift too closely. Sometimes one simply had to count one's blessings and forge ahead.

"I wouldn't bust out the mead and minstrels just yet, were I you. You've stepped in it again - figuratively speaking, this time," the AI said, apparently determined to spoil Kyle's good mood. "That gilded jackanapes you just doused six ways from Sunday? Turns out he's a bit of a high muckety-muck around these parts."

Kyle sighed. "Alright, out with it then. Who is he?"

"Dick Fur. Firstborn son and heir apparent to the most ancient and noble House Fur," the AI answered. "The Furs are proverbial giants here in the capital. Pureblooded aristocracy, the lot of them. Legend holds that their venerated ancestor was some manner of celebrated court performer who accidentally charbroiled a would-be assassin gunning for the king during a fire-breathing act. The monarch was so tickled by the affair, he raised the mummer and all his kin to the ranks of nobility on the spot. Fast forward a few centuries and the Furs have a finger in every pie in the city's entertainment trade. They wield considerable influence with the upper echelons of society."

Kyle pondered this. "Compared to House Lither, though…?"

"I'd say the Furs are perhaps a rung or two down the ladder, relatively speaking."

"So who gives a toss about them?"

"…"

If an AI could facepalm, this one was definitely doing so.

But the truth was, Kyle's position was precarious enough without borrowing trouble. He simply couldn't afford to waste time or energy fretting over which upper class twit he may or may not have offended. He had bigger fish to fry.

Namely, how to successfully impersonate Grant Lither.

After all, Kyle WASN'T the true "young master." If his deception was laid bare, the consequences could be calamitous.

Who knew how this world viewed individuals from parallel realities? Judging by the Church's missionary zeal, Kyle wouldn't put it past them to brand him a demonic thrall and consign him to the pyre.

Just his luck, not inheriting his host body's memories wholesale. It was a thorny predicament, to be sure. And after his close shave with Michelle, he wasn't feeling overly sanguine about his thespian abilities.

His paramount priority had to be integrating himself into this world, into House Lither, as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

Literally everything hinged on it.

"Didn't you say this body's original owner's memories had been shunted into your databanks?" Kyle asked the AI. "Tell me everything there is to know about 'me'."

The AI hesitated. "That's… a LOT of information, chief. We're talking an entire lifetime's worth of experiences here. I couldn't hope to cover it all if I spake ceaselessly for a month entire."

Kyle sighed. "So condense it. Give me the abridged version, the broad strokes. Focus on the intel that'll keep me from putting my foot in it with the fam. We can leave the extraneous details for later."

"Well, when you put it like that… Please hold while I collate the relevant data."

After a series of strange electronic sound effects, the AI fell silent once more. Kyle called out to it a few times with no response, surmising that the system's processing power left much to be desired. With a sigh, he resigned himself to waiting patiently for the "abridged memory package" to finish compiling.

Thinking back on his own laptop's mind-boggling propensity for freezing up at the worst possible moments, and the fact that the AI had likely inherited its positively glacial CPU, Kyle felt a pang of profound regret.

He really should have splurged on that hardware upgrade before getting whisked away to fantasy land.

As silence descended once more, Kyle found himself at a bit of a loss. The span of time that stretched before him was an awkward one - not quite long enough to be truly productive, but not so short that he could simply wait it out. After a moment's deliberation, he decided the most prudent course of action was to try and catch a few more winks while the AI sorted itself out.

After all, it WAS still the middle of the night. Wandering the halls aimlessly was a good way to run afoul of yet another sleep-addled noble with a weak bladder. Kyle was pretty sure dousing a second aristocrat in chamber pot slop before the sun came up would be pushing his luck.

No, best to put off facing the music with the Lither family for as long as possible. Maybe even sleep in a bit come morning, give himself a little extra time to get his story straight.

"Sleep, huh…"

Considering he'd apparently just awoken from a three-day magically-induced coma, you'd think he'd be sick of sleeping.

Alas, boredom was a harsh mistress. Kyle was wide awake, his mind awhirl.

He found himself missing his smartphone with a fierce, sudden ache. Back in his old life, he'd had a nightly ritual - kill the lights, burrow into his blanket cocoon, and while away the hours scrolling through social media feeds and webnovels until sleep finally claimed him. But as he reflexively groped for his nightstand, the crushing realization hit him anew - those days were gone, lost to him forever.

He wasn't in that world anymore.

While he'd been preoccupied with not dying horribly at Michelle's hands, he hadn't had the luxury of dwelling on what he'd left behind. But now, with the threat of imminent demise no longer looming over him, a tangled knot of emotions he couldn't even begin to parse came bubbling up from some dark corner of his psyche.

He'd been spirited away to another world entirely.

Torn from the realm he'd called home for over two decades and dumped unceremoniously in this bizarre land where nothing made a lick of sense.

He'd often fantasized about leaving his dreary, monotonous existence behind and starting over somewhere new, building a life of purpose and adventure. But now that it had actually HAPPENED, with no warning or preparation whatsoever… it was like being handed his dream job, only to show up on day one and realize he was woefully unqualified.

But what could he do? Events had moved at a breakneck pace. One minute he'd been lounging in his crummy little flat, the next he was dropped smack-dab in the middle of a magical realm, running for his life from a wrathful sorceress.

When you got right down to it, he was just an average joe way out of his depth.

A weary, mournful sigh slipped from his lips and evaporated into the empty air. He rolled over, staring blankly up into the all-consuming darkness.

"I'm really not going back, am I…"

As he lay there, waiting for a sleep that wouldn't come, a faint sound pricked at his ears - the soft snick of a lock being picked.

Insomnia was a right bastard. Even the most minute noises became thunderous in the dead of night.

What in the seven Hells…

Mind foggy with exhaustion and existential dread, it took Kyle a second to properly register the situation. But once he did, he was instantly on high alert.

Someone was breaking into his room!

A burglar? HERE?

What fresh madness was this?

Forcibly yanking himself out of his head and back to the present, Kyle boggled at this new development. He hadn't even been in this world a full day yet - how in the name of all that was holy did he keep stumbling arse-first into these ludicrous situations?

Was it too much to ask for, like, five minutes of peace?

With a put-upon mental grumble, he decided his best course of action was to stay still and assess the situation. He screwed his eyes shut, evening out his breathing - to anyone watching, he was dead to the world, lost in a deep and dreamless slumber.

He strained his ears, senses on a hair trigger. After a few tense heartbeats, he heard the near-silent swish of the door swinging open, followed by the tentative, measured tread of someone desperately trying not to be heard. Kyle felt his muscles lock up, anxiety spiking. It was painfully obvious that whoever this mystery visitor was, their intentions were far from innocent. If they were on the up-and-up, they'd have knocked first, would they not?

So if this odd intruder meant him harm, how should he respond?

Kyle fought the urge to start hollering for aid. Something about this whole situation just didn't sit right.

Gut instinct had him hesitating, waiting to see how this would unfold.

The light footfalls drew closer, stopping right at his bedside.

Unable to crack an eye open and sneak a peek, Kyle found himself relying on some strange, near-extrasensory awareness of the other's presence. He couldn't put a name to it, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't alone. But the question remained - was the aura emanating from his uninvited guest one of malice, or something more benign? Were they a true threat, or merely some nosy servant out to catch a glimpse of the mysterious newcomer?

The very air felt charged, seconds seeming to stretch into miniature eternities.

And that's when Kyle felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

In the deepest reaches of his consciousness, that azure triangle flashed, letting out a crystalline chime. It was like the first ripple in a still pond, the opening notes of a symphony not yet written.

Something had shifted, a subtle rearranging of the very fabric of reality.

Without warning, Kyle found himself attuned to the ambient water vapor in the room. Those disparate, disconnected molecules, once so remote and impersonal, suddenly felt like old friends. He could HEAR them whisper, parse meaning from their chaotic dance through the aether.

It was like waking up one day with an entirely new sense - a heady, delirious rush of expanded perception.

He hadn't realized until that very instant how LIMITED he had been.

He was a newborn babe, eyes wide with wonder as an undreamt-of world exploded into riotous detail all around him.

The intruder, once an ill-defined blur, now stood out in sharp relief against the negative space.

As Kyle grew more accustomed to parsing this new sense, more and more details filtered in: definitely a man grown, standing perhaps a head taller than Kyle himself. Thin, though - rail thin, his silhouette little more than skin stretched over bone. And that was about all Kyle could glean at the moment. This being his first foray into hydromancy, anything more granular than that remained frustratingly elusive.

The figure loomed motionless over Kyle's prone form, awaiting some unspoken signal.

Kyle's initial elation over his newly expanded senses faded, confusion and unease seeping in to take its place. What in the world was this man's aim? A frisson of impending danger ran down Kyle's spine like a ghostly caress - the longer he focused, the more unmistakable the waves of murderous intent radiating off the interloper became.

But he held his tongue, schooling his face into a mask of perfect repose. For though the threat was clear and present, his uninvited guest did not strike Kyle as particularly formidable. And the sudden manifestation of his nascent hydromancy had bolstered his courage considerably. He could afford to let this scene play out, gather more information before acting.

After all, this was Lither Manor, the very heart of the family's power. How had his would-be assassin infiltrated the estate so easily? And why target Kyle specifically?

Something was amiss here, make no mistake.

Kyle needed a clearer picture before he tipped his hand.

"Wake up, boss! This guy's fixing to shank you something fierce!" The AI's voice exploded in Kyle's brain like a flash-bang grenade, all the charm and subtlety of an air raid siren.

The AI's untimely reappearance was one thing.

Quite another was Kyle's knee-jerk response of OPENING HIS BLOODY EYES.

It was at that point that Kyle realized he'd blown his stealth check to Kingdom Come.

In the near-perfect dark, two pinpricks of balefire blazed to malevolent life, boring into Kyle's with laser focus. Their eldritch glow was matched by the telltale glint of a cruelly curved dagger, poised to strike.

Kyle met that burning, hate-filled gaze, blinking dumbly.

The eyes stared back, giving a few slow, uncomprehending blinks of their own. Apparently just as thrown by this turn of events as Kyle.

"…"

Well. This was less than ideal.

Kyle made a mental note to see if he could code some basic survival instincts into the AI. Little things, like NOT startling the panicky otherworlder while the scary murder man is deciding where to plant his blade.

Holding his would-be killer's stare through sheer force of will, Kyle sucked in a deep, steadying breath and cracked a rictus grin.

"So, uh… peaceful night for a bit of a walkabout, isn't it?" He offered, voice only shaking a little. His eyes darted to the intruder's gleaming blade, and his smile turned a bit manic around the edges. "That's, ah… that's quite the letter opener you've got there, friend. Superb craftsmanship, truly."