The training chamber resembled the inside of a mechanical beast that had swallowed several centuries' worth of technological detritus and then forgot to digest any of it. Exposed piping snaked across the ceiling like metallic intestines, while the fluorescent lights suffered from a chronic case of indecision—bright one moment, dimmed to sepulchral gloom the next. The concrete walls, scarred from countless previous sessions, stood as silent witness to the many battles fought within their confines, few of which had drawn blood, but all had consequences far beyond the room itself.

  Cassandra stood at the center of this technological digestive tract. Galatine was unsheathed and glowing with a pale luminescence that drank in the room's flickering light rather than reflecting or adding to it. Not a single strand of her crimson hair could escape the tight ponytail she wore, and Cyrus felt that if a single strand obstructed her vision, it would be dealt with excessively.

  “This is not a game,” Cassandra announced, her voice echoing slightly in the cavernous space. “The dungeon won’t give you a second chance, and neither will I.”

  With that declared, she pressed a sequence into the control panel embedded into her wristband. The chamber instantly responded—panels slid open in the walls to reveal an array of mechanical arms, each tipped with weaponry that ranged from blunted blades to energy projectors.

  Cyrus looked down at his clothing. All black. A simple shirt, pants, boots. None of which would offer him protection against the arsenal she had revealed. I must look like a man who wandered into the wrong room by mistake and couldn’t be bothered to find the right room.

  Before Cyrus could mention his lack of protective harnesses, safety equipment of any stripe, or even safety glasses, Cassandra fiddled with her wrist thing again.

  “Begin sequence,” Cassandra commanded and swung Galatine in a precise arc that seemed to tear a small slice from reality.

  The first attack emerged from directly behind Cyrus—a mechanical arm extended with impressive speed, the blunted blade aimed for the small of his back. He made no move to turn around, yet the blade never reached him. It stopped midair as if it had struck an invisible wall, trembled for a moment, then bent with a metallic groan before retracting.

  “Nearly too slow,” Cassandra commented lightly, not quite criticism, but not praise either.

  The next series of attacks came simultaneously—three projectiles from different angles, each moving at speeds that would have made evasion impossible for ordinary reflexes. Cyrus raised his hand almost leisurely, and the projectiles froze in mid-air. With a gentle flick of his fingers, he sent them flying towards the metal targets mounted on the far wall. Each projectile struck with pinpoint accuracy and produced a shower of sparks on impact. Cyrus couldn’t help but muse that the dancing sparks looked like fireflies with existential angst bashing themselves into concrete.

  “Better,” Cassandra praised him, this time. Then Galatine moved in a complex pattern that seemed to fold space around her. “Now adapt.”

  The chamber’s lighting systems failed utterly, and the room plunged into darkness, pierced only by the ethereal glow of Galatine. In what should have been the sudden blindness, mechanical arms surged forward from multiple directions in non-standard attack patterns.

  Cyrus, unknown to Cassandra, could see in the dark. But to be a good sport, he closed his eyes. While it seemed counterintuitive, he didn’t need his eyes to sense his surroundings. His field of view shifted backward, giving him another view as if he were looking from a drone hovering just below the ceiling. With his hand extended, palm outward, he projected a ripple of invisible force that blossomed into a shockwave. The mechanical arms shuddered and strained against the moving telekinetic barrier. The servos whined in desperate protest.

  The arms rapidly retreated one by one, unable to overcome the force opposing them. When they all withdrew, the lights flickered back on, revealing Cyrus still standing in the same position he had started, his expression calm and no trace of exertion on his face.

  “That is some impressive control, my friend,” Alor remarked from the view window overlooking the chamber. Although short, his bright pink hair stood out in stark contrast to the utilitarian gray of the equipment around him. “Most telekinetics I’ve met could stop a projectile or two, but you can create full defensive barriers? That is most rare.”

  His voice only had a minor distortion over the speaker. Alor tapped at a sensor module next to him, its unhealthy series of beeps and clicks coming over the speaker as well. “Of course, it would be nice if our equipment could actually record your output levels without having an existential crisis. I’ve never seen these symbols before!” Alor muttered in disbelief.

  The problematic sensor sparked dramatically, causing Alor to jump back and swear in dwarvish.

  “Sorry?” Cyrus offered, lowering his hand since Cassandra hadn’t resumed the training. “It seems technology and I have a… complicated relationship.”

  “Complicated,” Alor snorted. He pried open the sensor’s access panel to examine its inner workings. “That is like saying black holes have a complicated relationship with passing starships. They function perfectly until you get within range, then suddenly they’re performing interpretive dances with their internal components.”

  Maija watched the exchange with a carefully neutral expression. She stood near Alor, manning the auxiliary systems. She only looked down at her hands when she had to perform a minor transmutation to fix damaged equipment components. Under her touch, cracked casings sealed themselves, warped circuit boards straightened, and corroded connectors were freshly soldered.

  “The equipment failures could be an advantage if we could weaponize it only to affect the Dungeon. Perhaps you will even cause them to deactivate.” Maija mused.

  “Or they might malfunction unpredictably,” Cassandra countered. She ran her thumb along the hilt of Galatine in a habitual gesture that betrayed her unease. “Which could be substantially worse than functioning as designed.”

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  Cassandra gave Cyrus no time to respond. The training sequence resumed without warning. A massive hydraulic ram extended from the floor, aimed directly at his position with enough force to send an unprotected person straight to a hospital.

  Rather than stopping or dodging it, Cyrus redirected its momentum. With a graceful gesture reminiscent of a conductor guiding an orchestra, he curved the ram’s path into a wide arc that sent it crashing into a target dummy on the far side of the chamber. The dummy exploded in a satisfying burst of padding and synthetic fibers that felt like a direct reminder of his lack of protective gear.

  “Oh, nice trick,” Matti called from the sidelines. “My turn?”

  With a nod from Cassandra, Matti stepped forward. He held one of his metal discs, and a wave of transformation flowed over his body—a mesmerizing process that seemed in defiance of natural laws. A second later, Matti stood as a solid metallic humanoid, his skin casting the chambers harsh light everywhere.

  “Always a metal with a luster, this one,” Alor commented over the speaker.

  A new training sequence was initiated, with beeps emerging from Cassandra’s wrist device. Hidden compartments opened, and high-velocity projectiles were launched from previously non-existent vantage points.

  Matti didn’t dodge. Instead, he planted his feet and braced himself. He was a living shield. Physical projectiles struck his glistening metallic body and reflected into the ground—or turned into a dark splat of metal that stuck to Matti. It sounded like a mixture of musical chimes and bells.

  Cyrus waved a hand before him, and every projectile he could see stopped mid-air, then fell to the ground with a dull thud.

  “Complimentary defensive styles,” Cassandra observed, satisfied with the display. “A moving wall of a man, and a catcher. You would synergize even better with Maija and her ramparts.”

  The sequence escalated, introducing elements designed to challenge both defenders simultaneously. Energy discharges—visually impressive but relatively harmless—arced toward them from multiple angles. They were too dispersed for Matti to block entirely, and many telekinetics could only deflect energy blasts via barriers.

  Matti glared at his hand, and his body shifted metal types.

  Matti thought I could reflect it all if I could get it all to my hand.

  Invisible funnels redirected the blasts towards Matti’s hand. Cyrus had progressed beyond wondering if he could do things and had shifted his thought process with his powers to assume that he could do anything, he just had to believe it. When the balls of electricity hit a funnel and shunted towards Matti, one after another, he felt vindicated in that belief.

  True to his thoughts, Matti caught the blasts with his hand and threw one large ball of amalgamated energy at a receptacle on one of the walls when they had them all.

  “Effective,” Maija conceded. Her tone might as well have been a compliment to the comfort of the utilitarian chair in the control room rather than the impressive combat manuever.

  Alor had no such reservations in his assessment. “Fantastic! Brilliant!” he exclaimed, bouncing on his toes with excitement despite the sensor module in his hands choosing that moment to emit a final death rattle before it went permanently offline.

  “With that level of coordination, we might make it past the first floor!” Alor cheered, but his ‘might’ hung in the air like an uninvited guest that everyone else was too polite to acknowledge.

  The training sequence ended there with a few presses on her wristband. Cassandra made a showy gesture, casing cascading light reflecting off Galatine’s blade as the various mechanical implements retracted into walls. A few more lights kicked on to lessen the feeling they were auditioning for theater roles.

  Cyrus arched a brow at Cassandra’s grand gesture, and her cheeks burned crimson as if she hadn’t meant to indulge in whimsy or, at the very least, hadn’t meant to get caught doing it.

  “Your control has improved,” Cassandra murmured. This would be effusive praise if Cyrus didn’t think she was merely trying to gloss over her getting caught up in the moment. “Your coordination with Matti was unexpected.”

  “He broadcasts his intentions quite clearly,” Cyrus answered.

  “Broadcasts? You can read the physical ques of someone you just met so easily?” Cassandra seemed exceptionally impressed, but not doubtful.

  “Yes, amongst other things,” Cyrus replied with a vague shrug. His gaze drifted away from Cassandra’s piercing green eyes to view the monitors with the session’s metrics. As if responding to his attention, they suddenly cleared themselves of static and displayed a perfect record of his performance—reaction times, force applications, even estimated energy expenditures. The numbers were impressive enough to draw a whistle from Alor, and a deepening glare from Maija.

  What the screens couldn’t show—what Cyrus hadn’t volunteered—was how he had perceived not just Matti’s physical movements but the shape of his thoughts: the clear, structured patterns of a mind preparing to transform, the plans of angles and vectors, and the interaction and exploitation of rare, magical metals properties. It wasn’t that he stuck an ear into Matti’s thoughts, it was that Matti broadcast to the world who and what he was, his mental architecture open on display for any passerby. It allowed Cyrus not just to react, which he had done, but also to anticipate Matti. What he lacked in experience and team work, he could make up for psionically—at least with Matti.

  “These numbers would be more reassuring if we had a baseline to compare them against. You remain an unknown quantity, Cyrus.” Maija spoke after staring at the screens through narrowed eyes.

  “Don’t we all, in the proper context?” Cyrus replied. This earned him a sharp glare from Maija.

  “Philosophy won’t keep us, or Lyessa, alive in the dungeon,” Maija countered, but it lacked her usual edge.

  The weight of unspoken thoughts pressed against his mind—Maija’s spiraling anxiety barely maintained under control, Cassandra’s strategic recalculations, Alor’s excited speculation about treasures to be found in a preSystem dungeon, and even Matti’s unwavering confidence that somehow, everything would work out. Each of their minds had a distinct flavor, a unique pattern of cognition that he could quickly identify, but that didn’t mean he could comprehend them.

  The screens monitoring his performance flickered when his attention wandered. Why did he and technology have such a strange dance? Sometimes, it responded to his will; other times, it rebelled against his very existence. Worst of all, he had no idea if this was a minor inconvenience or a core mystery to his existence.

  “They should have our ride loaded up by now,” Cassandra announced. “Alor, make sure the scanning equipment is properly shielded this time. I don’t want a repeat of the Vermilion Depths incident.”

  “One equipment meltdown, and they never let you forget it,” Alor muttered good-naturedly before he gathered his tools and headed for the exit.

  “Your performance was adequate,” Maija commented over the speaker. “Just remember there is no pause or reset button in the dungeon.”

  Cyrus stared at the control window, even after Maija followed Alor. One of Matti’s large, meaty hands patted him on the shoulder.

  “Don’t mind my sister,” Matti begged. “Her default setting is ‘preparing for catastrophe’. It’s saved our lives more than I can count, but… it can be a lot for new people.”

  “I don’t mind,” Cyrus assured Matti. “Caution is appropriate when facing the unknown.”

  “You kind of are the walking definition of unknown, huh?” Matti chuckled and nodded towards the door. “It’s time for adventure.”

  Alone, the screens displaying his metrics flickered one last time. A single line of text appeared.

  REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE

  Then, as if embarrassed by a momentary lapse into melodrama, the screen returned to its usual self, leaving Cyrus to wonder if he had imagined the message or if some fragment of his forgotten past was reaching out through the same technology that seemed to fear his touch.