“Come on, you gotta get up. If one of the guards catches you on the ground, they’ll make you start the line all over.” I barely managed to process the words. They were the first I’d heard since my brain had settled back into my skull. Or at least they were the first I had managed to comprehend. I was fighting through waves of nausea as well as the pain of what I was sure were several broken bones.

  “Just leave him. We don’t have time for this,” a voice different than the first said.

  “Can you help me? Everything hurts. Something, maybe orcs attacked me, don’t even know where I am,” I groaned as I forced down another attempt at vomiting and finally managed the herculean effort needed to open my eyes. I needed to see where I had been sent. Instead, my vision was blocked by the person who had been speaking to me.

  I blinked, trying to clear any fuzziness from my eyes as the man, assuming that was what he was, who stood before me now reached one of his four hands down, offering help. I reached out with my good arm and was quickly pulled to my feet. The pain briefly jarred me again from focusing on what I was looking at.

  “Thank you,” I said, finally looking up at his faces… He had two heads. Both the voices I had heard earlier in my daze had belonged to him or maybe them. I had no idea.

  “No problem. Name’s Cecile and the grouch is my brother Elicec,” the left head said.

  “Thanks, I’m Dave. Where am I? And what do you mean by going to the end of the line?” I asked, somehow managing to keep the panic out of my voice. I was still working on getting my bearings. Now, on my feet, I was better able to get a good look around. Everywhere I looked were lines of creatures, some human, some so alien I couldn’t easily compare them to any fantastical creature I knew of, and everything in between.

  What I didn’t understand, though, is why I could understand the multitude of signs I could see. Each one seemed to be written in plain English, but that was the least pressing question of the many in my mind. For now, it was probably best that I just accept the small blessing that it was. My anxiety was threatening to shut my brain down at any moment, and with the fight just to stay on my feet, I couldn’t let my brain be overwhelmed with questions.

  “This is the Spire, specifically the line for new Arena fighters, but you should know that. You’re already on the third floor of the line,” Cecile said. He looked down at me with a raised eyebrow. Both of their heads looked human enough, which led me to the feeling that he was growing suspicious of my presence. The glare on his brother’s face made me decide to go with the truth as far as I knew it. I desperately needed help, and all the other races seemed to be pointedly ignoring me.

  “My planet was attacked by a faction of orcs, and as I was about to die, a bird froze time and sent me here, saying it was the only chance I’d have to save the world. He said he was going to mark me with his insignia, but I have no idea where that is, or I’d show you,” I said, knowing how insane every word that had left my mouth sounded. I was leaning my weight onto my right leg. It was getting harder to stand on my left at all.

  “Oh, that explains it, you’re a newbie. We’ve never met one before. So, if you have an insignia that explains how you cut the line. Most of us just have to buy our way in…” Cecile was cut off by his brother.

  “Some of us have to work for our chance,” Elicec grumbled.

  “Hey, don’t be mean. Would your rather our whole family be dead to some asshole orcs as the reason we are here? Do you think Dave wanted any of this to happen?” Cecile asked his brother.

  Elicec’s glare finally lessened as he answered. “No, you’re right, I’m sorry, Dave. You didn’t deserve that. It’s just that there are a lot of shady people around, and we have to be careful. It took a long time for our families to get the funds to send us here.”

  “It’s alright, I get it. Everything I said sounded completely insane to me, too. But I’m so far out of my concept of sanity that I have no idea what to do. Is the insignia important?” I asked, wincing in pain several times. The bird had said something about using it to gain access, but I had no idea what he meant or even how to see it.

  “Maybe, not really sure. We’re pretty new here, too,” Cecile answered.

  “Open your right hand and concentrate on who you are,” Elicec answered immediately afterward, looking back to his brother after he spoke and shaking his head. He had a look of disappointment on his face.

  Ignoring the pain, I held out my arm and stretched out my fingers. Then, I focused my thoughts on who I was: Dave Imogen. I felt something in my hand, almost like a thought on the tip of your tongue that you can’t fully grasp, but somehow centered in my hand. I considered who I was beyond just a name, everything about myself: I was a father. I was once a husband. I’d spent years of my life as an engineer. I was a hermit, and now I was a refugee of the planet Earth, and somehow the only hope to save my kids.

  The sensation on my hand changed; it grew warm for a second. And then words appeared written on my palm. There was a symbol that just looked like a bunch of meaningless scribbles. Below the symbol seemed to be my address of sorts.

  Name: Dave Imogen

  Origin: U-1.9392912^10e37 Earth-107I2T112

  Origin Status: Unincorporated

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Affiliation: Error

  Class: N/A

  Ranking: N/A

  “Should it say error like that?” I asked, confused about what most of it meant. As soon as I stopped focusing, the information vanished from my palm.

  “I don’t think so, no,” Elicec answered. He cocked his eyes at me, and I suspected he once again doubted my story.

  I coughed hard, sending waves of pain through my chest. The broken bones were becoming too painful to stay standing for much longer. “Is there a doctor, or is there something similar I can see? I’m pretty sure several of my bones are broken, and it’s starting to hurt to breath.” The pain was moving from vomit-inducing to barely able to suppress a scream. I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to stay in this line, required or not.

  “Here, take this. It should help,” Cecile said, pulling a pill out of his pocket and pushing it into my hand.

  “Dammit, Cecile, we don’t have many of those restoration pills, you can’t give them away like that!” Elicec’s voice had shifted from annoyed to angry.

  “You can have it back; it’s alright, but if you can point me to a place to get some medical attention, that would be great,” I coughed into the hand that wasn’t holding the pill after I said this. My hand came away from my face speckled with crimson splotches. That was an increasingly bad sign, and both of the brothers had spotted it.

  “No, Elicec, just because we aren’t on the farm doesn’t mean we are going to lose our manners. Dave clearly needs our help, and you aren’t the kind of man who just leaves someone to die like that,” Cecile said. His voice had become utterly serious.

  “Dave, take the pill right now, forget what I said, do it, or I’ll have to force it down your throat,” Elicec said, his glare dropping again.

  Not having much choice in the matter, I shoved the alien pill in my mouth and swallowed. Instantly, I felt a rush of energy throughout my body. It reminded me of the first time I’d ever had an energy drink. I felt like I could do anything, but as quickly as that feeling came, it vanished. It left behind a body devoid of pain. Either it was an amazing painkiller, or it had instantly healed my bones. The latter seemed nonsensical, but considering I was in another universe talking to a two-headed creature that towered over me, I figured it was well past time to argue what was possible and what wasn’t.

  “Okay, I ugh, I feel amazing. How did that work?” I asked, blinking rapidly, still shocked at the pain being completely gone. Even the usual aches I felt in my knees and back seemed to have vanished. I lifted my cracked glasses off my head; sadly, the world turned blurry. The pill hadn’t fixed everything.

  “It was just a mid-grade healing pill, nothing special. Good enough to knit bones back together, but can’t do much beyond that. Have you never had one before?” Cecile asked.

  “There isn’t anything like this in my world, no magical healing or whatever this is at all,” I replied. The bird had said something about that, hadn’t he? How he’d been surprised anyone would come to our universe with its complete lack of mana? Did that mean other worlds were full of magic or mana, if that was somehow different from magic? I probably shouldn’t assume they were the same.

  “That sounds awful, and I’m sorry you came from such a hellish world. Stick by us, and we’ll do what we can to help you through registration, though I don’t know that we’ll know much more than you. Our planet is pretty unconnected from the greater Spiral itself,” Cecile replied, once again offering a hand. This time, it looked to be for a handshake. Were those somehow universal?

  I reached my hand out to grasp his, and he squeezed once and twice and released. Okay, that was different than the handshakes I was used to, so not quite universal. “I appreciate it, and thank you again. I’ll try to find a way to repay you for the healing pill if I can,” I said, and I meant it. For all I knew, they were here trying to save their own planet, too, and had just wasted one of their precious few resources to help me. That was a debt I had to repay.

  “Don’t worry about it. As much as Elicec might be a bit of a grump, even he knows making some friends and allies here is a good idea, especially someone who already has an insignia. You really don’t know who gave it to you?” Cecile asked.

  “I only know him as Big Bird. I found with a broken wing once, and up until minutes before I ended up here, I didn’t even know he could speak. Oh wait, I just remembered he gave me something else,” I reached in my pocket and pulled out the small orb Big Bird had spat at me.

  “What is that? It doesn’t look like a mana orb.” Elicec asked, looking at the orb with confusion.

  I dropped it back in my pocket before speaking. “I think he had called it refined experience. Does that help at all?” I asked, having no clue what a refined experience orb was.

  “That would have to be a lot of experience to solidify it into an orb like that. I think I read about something like that, but why did he just give it to you? Did he tell you what to do with it all?” Elicec replied with his own question.

  “We were short on time, all he said was that he thought I’d find it more useful than him right now,” I answered.

  “Interesting, I guess it’s possible you could use that to jump-start your leveling. Might have to be pretty careful in how you use it, though. I’d guess that’s enough to burn out a core,” Elicec replied. What the hell was leveling? Or a core, for that matter?

  Before I could ask about either of those things, a voice behind me spoke up.

  “Form twenty-nine C, please,” I turned and found the words had come from an older not quite human not-quite-human-looking woman behind the counter. She had far too many teeth.

  “Uh, what?” I asked back. I had apparently stepped in front of the brothers at some point and was now next in line.

  “Show them your Insignia, Dave,” Cecile whispered behind me.

  “Did you lose your form? You will have to go back down to the first floor…” She had started explaining before I cut her off.

  “Sorry, I have an insignia right here, see?” I raised my hand to show her the symbol and words below it.

  She studied my hand for what felt like much longer than she needed to before speaking again. “Are you two with him?” she said towards the brothers behind me.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  They both said this at the same time, causing her to glare at them. “Alright, I want all three of you to follow me. You’ll be getting a private meeting with my boss. There’s something off with that insignia, and I don’t like it,” she explained as two extremely large elephant-like creatures walked up beside her. They were dressed in a way that screamed security guard to me.

  “Yep, we heard you. We don’t need any problems. We’re coming,” Cecile nudged me forward after her as he and his brother followed behind. I guessed that meant they were some sort of security guard. Was the insignia fake? Had the bird been lying to me for some reason? I hated being so far out of the loop on information that I didn’t even know the right questions to ask. So I just shut up and followed her silently into the hall.

  The Spiral, assumingly named after the pattern they make, are the universes that are connected to the System and aligned as though spiraling around a column that both ascends and descends forever into the infinite expanse of space between worlds. This space is not empty, though, as it is where the infrastructure, personnel, and, most of all, the bureaucracy that is needed to administer something so large are housed in an ever-expanding tower.

  An excerpt from A Visitor's Guide to the Spiral Tower by Greg.

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