We walked the edges of the square, looking at the ramp's heightened activity. It went much faster than the first day, mainly due to more people participating.

  "If we go by fake names, I call dibs on Brains," I joked. "You can take Brawn."

  "You think we should go by fake names?" Kenny asked. "Or was it more nonsense from the High Priestess?"

  "I have a sneaking suspicion that her knowledge comes from her fake sorority coven," I guessed. "Or from folklore. I don't think she had any abilities before yesterday, so it must be all as new to her as it is for us."

  "But she could still be right?" Kenny asked.

  "Everything is possible," I shrugged. "Maybe a person that doesn't use their true name becomes powerless after a month, or maybe if your fake name is shorter than eight characters, you get cancer."

  Kenny stared at me.

  "We don't know anything for certain. We'll have to check it for ourselves," I said. "Until then, let's take precautions, but I'm not going to believe everything that comes out of her mouth."

  "We should teach everyone," Kenny suddenly stated. "About the healing spell. We shouldn't hold it back when it can help so many people."

  I balked at that. Not only did it cost us a lot of effort, but it would erase any advantage we managed to gain over everyone else. So I had to dissuade him in a way he would understand the problem with his naive approach.

  "How do you think Claire would respond to it?" I asked.

  "Why does that matter?" He asked. "It's the right thing to do."

  "So when she starts whispering and stabbing a creepy little doll that looks a little bit like you, you'll be pleased with your decision?" I asked.

  "We don't know if she can do that," he countered. "And I'm not going to be bullied into staying quiet if it means everyone suffers for it."

  "I don't know if she can do it," I agreed. "But I am pretty sure she can do something."

  I thought over my arguments.

  "And if you are not afraid for yourself, think about this one," I pressured. "When everyone can heal, what do you think is going to happen? Who did you really help?" I asked rhetorically.

  He looked askance at me.

  "What's going to happen is people will notice that healing comes from their own energy, and nobody wants to risk their life with the ghouls or wherever the witch gets her energy from. I wouldn't." I was getting angry over the discussion, and my tone kept rising. "So someone less scrupulous than us is going to pressure others to heal them. That's what's going to happen. You will make it happen. The strong will be preying on the weak. Until they drop dead, probably. It's a hell of a lot safer to beat someone up than it is to go out and get eaten by a ghoul. And you'll keep telling stories about how much you don't like bullying."

  Kenny looked hurt, and I cursed my short temper. The lack of sleep was getting to me.

  "I'm sorry. I know you mean well. I shouldn't have said that. Not like that," I apologized.

  He stayed silent, looking deflated at the ground.

  "No, you're right," Kenny replied, downcast. "I'm just sick of feeling so powerless. I want to help, I want to understand it all, and I want to get out of here, but there's nothing I can do."

  I looked at the ramp. So far, it had been the only project that had any chance to help everyone. The mysterious monolith was at the center of everything. I didn't believe we would find a way up to the surface from there. Our dealings with magic made it clear that there was more at play here than just being stuck underground, but we had to explore it to know for sure.

  "What do you say we help out with the ramp?" I proposed. "I don't have any better ideas," I admitted.

  ***

  The effort was finally organized. Instead of bringing one rock at a time, a line of workers snaked its way around the Pillar to a ruined building.

  Kenny joined the people that looked for smaller rocks to salvage from the ruin while I found a good spot in the middle of the line. The work wasn't too hard. It was monotonous and left a lot of time to think.

  We were making good progress, and I contemplated taking another break when we heard shouts from the group nearest to the pillar opening.

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  "I am telling you. This thing is chock full of them!" One man shouted, pointing at the opening.

  "Sir, calm down," Officer Douglas was talking to him.

  Douglas looked as disheveled and rumpled as everybody else. His hair was messy, and his uniform shirt was unbuttoned.

  "Just look, they are gonna rain down from there and attack everyone in their way!" He kept shouting. "Didn't you see the thing?"

  I looked at the opening but couldn't see anything in the dark, not even the slightest movement.

  The cop finally gestured for his hangers-on to take the guy away, but people nervously crowded around, talking and speculating whether he had just lost it or if ghouls were waiting in the dark.

  "Back to work, people," The officer commanded. "We are nearly done. Keep at it!"

  I didn't see Douglas himself work, but I guess he counted his bossing as actual labor.

  I walked aside to find a place to rest and noticed another cluster at the far end of the plaza. People were surrounding a crying man. His clothes were sprayed with blood, but otherwise, he seemed unwounded.

  "I couldn't do anything. I had to run," he was justifying himself. "It was so fast. It was on him in seconds. I had to run."

  "Where was it?" I asked. I had to know if a ghoul attacked the nearby guards or if this man went to look for trouble elsewhere.

  "He didn't say," an older man answered. "They left hours ago, and he came back alone."

  I nodded in thanks.

  "It just started eating him," The man continued to wail. "It sucked on him like an overgrown leech. I could see the life going out of him. I couldn't help."

  I didn't want to hear more of that, so I left them.

  I gave up on returning to the stone line and leisured away, noting the comings and goings in the square. Several more groups left to look for ghouls. I didn't like their chances, but they were desperate.

  ***

  Kenny found me lazing around. He carried with him several small stones.

  "Are you ready to continue testing?" he asked.

  "I am so tired. Why don't you do it?" I asked.

  "Because I planned it," he answered. "I need you to do it blindly to know for sure."

  "How long will it take?" I sighed.

  "Couple of minutes," He reassured me. "You only need to heal yourself, and only for small scratches. Energy-wise, that's the cheapest way to go about it."

  I relented, and we moved to a private location again.

  "Test number one," Kenny presented the first stone to me. "The ancient Egyptians lived thousands of years ago, and they numbered in the millions."

  I listened to him attentively.

  "But our modern—Western—civilization numbers hundreds of millions of people," He trailed the scratched lines on the stone. "Our recognized symbol for healing is the rod with two snakes coiling around it. You probably saw it on paramedics and hospitals."

  I looked over the stone. It had a simple design with one straight line and two coils around it, and it seemed vaguely familiar. When was the last time I noticed the details of this logo?

  My hands were full of new scratches from all the work I did. I held the stone in my hands and cast the spell on a single one.

  "About the same amount of energy as the Ankh," I measured roughly by feel.

  "Great," Kenny took out a second stone. "This is the Chinese symbol for life," Kenny explained its significance. "More than a billion Chinese people would immediately recognize it as connected to medicine. If I'd have to judge purely by numbers, more people would recognize this symbol than the first one with the rod."

  I didn't recognize this one, so it was a good thing Keny was so knowledgeable about this stuff. I tried again with a different scratch, and it healed as effortlessly as it did with the first one.

  "Same thing," I reported.

  "The third stone," Kenny presented. "It's similar to the first, but there is only one snake around the rod. It represents money or something unconnected to healing or life but is visually similar to the two-snake design."

  This time the spell took out of me much more, about as much as trying without the sign.

  "Okay," I said. "So now we know symbols from other cultures work, but a sign with a different meaning won't work, even if it looks similar."

  Finally, we had at least one thing we knew about magic that Clair didn't. That's what I would call a win.

  "Ohhh, we can do so much more," he smiled. "Now listen to the real results."

  "What do you mean real results?" I asked. I just took part in his little experiment, so it's not like I missed something that I did. "I healed, didn't I? What else is there?"

  "You did more than that," Kenny said. "Sure, you thought that you cast a spell with a different sign that means health, life, or medicine. But at that point, we already knew that the symbol is used as a placeholder for meaning. We just didn't know how the meaning is connected to it," he gestured excitedly.

  "So, what else is there?" I asked.

  "What about a symbol for fire? Or to fly? Or to create a black robe?" Kenny asked in rapid succession. "Where will we get those from?"

  "Well, the robe one, we could probably steal from Her Highness the High Priestess, as we did with the Ankh," I said mockingly. "The rest we'll need to wrack our brains to remember if we ever saw something close to it. Maybe ask around if someone knows symbols we don't, like your Chinese symbol."

  "We don't need to anymore," Kenny said excitedly. "The Chinese symbol was a fake. You and I are the only two people who would look at that gibberish and recognize it as something that means life."

  "What do you mean?" I asked. "But it worked."

  "It worked because you thought it meant life," Kenny stressed. "That's what gave it the meaning, your belief."

  I was speechless, trying to understand the consequences of this.

  "What's more, the two symbols with the snakes," Kenny continued. "I swapped them around. The one with the two snakes has a different meaning, and the single snake stands for medicine. We talked about it in class. But their real meanings didn't matter, only your perspective."