**** Elysium 1986 ****

The storm had continued throughout the night. At first, the TRAP agents had assumed that they would be able to continue on their way after dinner. But that hope had been dashed, and they had been forced to spend the night in the inn, which fortunately had a room directly under the roof where they could find shelter. They had barely been able to sleep with the roar of wind and thunder. Harry was the first to wake in the morning when a few thick drops of water fell on his face. The storm had taken its toll on the roof, which was leaking in several places, one of them right above him. The light of dawn shone through the holes, revealing the dust flying around. At least Abigail hadn’t noticed how dirty it was up here last night because of the darkness. Tired, he got up from a bundle of blankets the innkeeper had kindly given the group so they wouldn’t have to sleep on the bare ground. Then he woke the others, who were quickly on their feet after a brief orientation.
“So what now?” Abigail finally asked the group. She longed for a shower and fresh clothes, even though she knew it was all an illusion. “We haven’t made any progress and we’re running out of time. The storm has cost us at least half a day.”
“Now we go down one floor first and then we climb out of window so we don’t have to leave house past counter on the first floor,” Yuri explained calmly, shouldering his heavy axe.
“W-why is that?” Abigail asked him in astonishment and Harry was taken aback as well.
“It’s simple: so we don’t have to pay the bill for food and lodging. None of us have any money, remember? I’m sure the landlord is waiting for us downstairs at the bar,” Yuri replied, completely relaxed and just shrugging his shoulders.
“Excuse me?! But you said yesterday that in these fantasy worlds the heroes never pay for their food?” the programmer hissed back.
“I was wrong. Landlord told me yesterday before we went up here that he wants twelve silver coins for everything, and I put him off until today. I said we’d pay right after breakfast, everything very simple. It’s just a shame we will miss it. Today they have honey cake…”, Yuri explained and made his way to the stairs as quietly as he could with his weight. He hoped the old wooden floorboards wouldn’t creak too much.
“He’s not serious, is he? Harry, say something!” Abigail ordered Harry, shaking her head as if she expected him to defuse the situation somehow. But he made a dismissive gesture with his hand and then quietly followed Yuri.
“When you sneak, always bend your knees and cushion your steps, then you’ll be quieter. And make sure your huge shirt doesn’t get caught on the shutters when we climb out,” he replied as he walked past her, winking at her. She was about to say something in reply, but she let it go and shuffled angrily after him.

About ten minutes later, they were far enough away from the inn to be reasonably certain that they would not be discovered by the innkeeper or his employees. There were large puddles in the streets and alleyways, and roof tiles and other items that had been carried by the storm during the night were scattered almost everywhere. Many villagers were busy cleaning up, and the renewed heat made for a sweltering climate. The TRAP agents looked around, eventually reaching the edge of the settlement that bordered the vast forest. A large crowd of people piqued their interest. From the chatter around them, they learned that a group of people had just returned from the forest. They had brought a wagon piled with all sorts of things, which they were now distributing among the villagers.
“What’s going on here?” Harry asked an extremely cheerful lady who was about to leave with an ornate vase in her hand.
“Rurrik and his brothers plundered the hermit in the forest. His hut couldn’t withstand the storm and was probably half burned down by one of the first lightning strikes before the rain started,” she explained, not seeming to care much about his fate. Apparently, this hermit was not very popular when his possessions were plundered immediately after such a disaster. “At least this beautiful vase wasn’t damaged. Once I clean it properly, it’ll have a good place in my living room. Why don’t you have a look around, maybe you’ll find something useful?” she encouraged Harry to take a piece of the loot for himself. Then she left the group.
“Rough customs here in village,” Yuri nodded, running a hand through his beard in thought.
“Well then, we carousers fit right in,” Abigail muttered, trying to get a better look at the wagon, but unable to do so in the dense crowd and with her small size. Yuri and Harry nodded to each other and squeezed into the crowd, making room for their companion to approach the brothers and their quarry.
“Greetings, fair maiden!” Abigail was greeted by one of them, who gave her a winning smile.
“Hello, I hear there’s something free here?” she replied innocently, looking at the rest of the items. The best items had apparently already been distributed, the rest looked like leftovers from a flea market in the northern part of Elysium. The man looked at her with interest, then lifted a stool and a weaving board to one side and pulled a round mirror from the pile.
“This might be something for you. It might take some getting used to, but surely a lady could use a mirror?” With that, he handed it to Abigail. The piece was about 60 centimeters in diameter, and as she reached for it, she knew immediately what the man meant. The frame was forged of black metal, made up of small snakes woven together to form a ring. The heads of the snakes seemed to stare at the viewer of the mirror, giving the object an oppressive, almost sinister aura. As she reached for the frame, she realized it was cold. A chill ran down her arms and she got goosebumps, as if her hands were slowly freezing. But she tried not to show it.
“Oh, uh, thank you, that’s very kind. I’ll hang it up at home right away,” she said to the man, grinning slightly wryly, curtsying and walking back to the other two.
“Somebody take this thing off me right now,” she whispered as they walked away from the crowd. Harry took the mirror from her and looked at it.
“It looks rather morbid,” he said, turning it in his hands so that Yuri could look at it. The surface was flawless and had a slight silver sheen.
“It’s freezing cold! How can you hold it so easily?” she said in amazement, rubbing her hands on her thighs to warm them again.
“Cold? I don’t feel anything, if anything it’s slightly warm,” Harry replied, feeling the frame in various places to understand his colleague’s statement. Yuri touched it now as well.
“He’s right, mirror is warm,” he confirmed.
“How can that be?” said Abigail, coming closer and this time only touching the frame with two fingers. It was like before, only much more frightening. Icy cold shot up her hand, through her arm, her shoulder, and into her head. For a second, the sight of the mirror blurred before her eyes, losing its surface, revealing itself as a mere three-dimensional object without color or texture in Harry’s hands.
“What’s wrong?” she heard him ask and recoiled, pulling her fingers away from the frame.
“There’s something wrong with this thing,” she confirmed. “When I touch it, I even get a display error here in the simulation.”
“So what do we do with it?” Yuri pondered. Harry looked at it more closely.
“I think… I think I know now why you didn’t get a weapon when we fell into this world,” he finally said to Abigail.
“What makes you think that?” she looked at him questioningly.
“In that TV show, the main characters are either warriors or mages. It’s the same with the Ulthrard action figures Yanny collects, it seems to be part of the marketing strategy. I just hadn’t thought about it in the context of our entry into this world. You are the only one who can see something extraordinary in that mirror. So you must be a sorceress in this simulation, that’s why you weren’t given a weapon,” Harry explained.
“I’m supposed to be a sorceress?” Abigail looked down at her hands in disbelief. “But I can’t do anything special, can I?”
“You probably can, you just have to figure out how,” Harry said.
“Um… okay, but how does that help us right now?”
“This mirror is the first really conspicuous object we’ve found. It’s also connected to last night’s storm, otherwise it wouldn’t have come into our possession. So I suggest…” Harry continued.
“… we investigate remains of hermit hut,” Yuri finished the sentence and crossed his arms.
“That sounds like a plan,” Abigail nodded. Before the three of them set off into the woods, they asked two passing men for the approximate direction to the hermit’s home, which, according to them, was not too far from their current location on a clearly visible path. Harry simply carried the mirror under his arm for lack of a bag. They quickly found the recommended path and followed it into the dense forest. At least it was much cooler in the shade of the trees than in the village and they made good progress. Still, Abigail kept looking around anxiously.
“This all seems so familiar,” she finally told the others. “In the simulation Yanny was in when she met the other cyborg, she was also in a forest. It looks very similar to this one in terms of its structure, the types of trees, and the rocks lying around.”
“What else do you remember? Any useful details?” Harry asked.
“Well, she was like a fish in water, of course, in a world like this. Or should I say almost godlike? After all, she was able to change the environment at will,” Abigail explained, tugging at her earlobe, lost in thought. The street samurai piped up.
“Well, she’s a computer herself, if you will. But do you know exactly how she did it?” he asked.
“Well, she was connected just like we are now, exploiting a vulnerability and then adding her own lines of code to the existing code,” Abigail continued. “All at breakneck speed.” Harry nodded.
“Then why don’t you see if you can do the same? You know how to program and you can hack into other systems,” he said. She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.
“And how am I supposed to do that without input devices?” Then she held out her empty hands to prove her point. Harry just shook his head and smiled.
“You have a computer with you, metaphorically speaking. We’re all connected to it, already plugged into the interface. There must be a way to use it, right?” Abigail made a face that was hard to interpret and pondered his words.
“And… And how? How do I control it? I can’t see anything? No keyboard, no screen, nothing. I’m human, unfortunately I need such aids.”
“Just try to control it with your thoughts,” Harry mused, now sure that this idea must work. If she could change the environment with her thoughts like Yanny, then in this simulation it was nothing else than the magic that was also omnipresent in the TV series.
“Okay… I’ll try,” Abigail replied and was about to stop and close her eyes when she heard Yuri’s voice.
“This is it,” he remarked as he spotted the largely burnt remains of the hermit’s hut among the trees. The villagers’ descriptions were correct. The hut, whose wood must have been old and dry, had burned down almost halfway and then been extinguished by the rain. Two of the four walls and large sections of the roof were missing, and the floor was charred. You could clearly see where the looters had been at work. And they had been thorough. The TRAP agents found nothing of interest. It was only as they continued to circle the house that Harry made a gruesome discovery.
“Look at this,” he called to the others, pointing to the half-charred body of a man lying in an unnatural position on the forest floor. His left arm was outstretched with an open hand, and his head was turned in the same direction. It was as if he was trying to grab something or point at something as he fled the fire. When the other two reached Harry, Abigail turned away, unable to bear the sight, her stomach almost churning.
“Was this hermit?” Yuri wondered aloud, bending down to examine the body more closely.
“Almost certainly. If the hermit were still alive, he would have scared off the looters and would be retrieving his belongings from the ashes himself,” Harry nodded. When Yuri finally turned the body over, he noticed a silver pendant in the shape of a crescent moon that the man wore on a thin chain around his neck. He carefully opened the clasp and showed the find to his comrade.
“Villagers must have missed pendant,” he muttered with satisfaction.
“Did you find anything on the dead man?” asked Abigail, who was waiting a few feet away with her back to the other two. Breathing slowly and with concentration, she calmed herself and controlled the nausea she felt. Yuri walked over to her and handed her the pendant, which began to glitter softly as she took it and held it in her hand.
“It’s really beautiful…” she said, examining it carefully.
“Why don’t you wear it,” Yuri said simply. “Hermit don’t need any more and it looks much better on you than on charred corpse.” Abigail grimaced at the strange compliment, but then slipped it around her neck. The pendant still glittered and looked extremely valuable. Harry had now taken a few steps in the direction the dying man had tried to flee.
“Come over here, I’ve found something else,” he called to the others. His instincts had been right, the hermit had obviously wanted to escape to a certain place. In the middle of the forest stood an almost grotesque metal construction, consisting of three spiked poles that ran towards each other and held a crescent moon open at the top. This crescent also had thorns that looked like very sharp coat hooks and were much larger than the thorns on the poles. The three-legged construction was about one and a half meters high.
“That’s real ugly,” Abigail remarked, circling the structure. “It looks like something out of that modern art exhibit the mayor opened in the center the other day.”
“It’s certainly not a work of art, it must have some kind of function. It’s not just standing here in the woods for nothing,” Harry replied. As he was about to move the mirror he was still carrying from one hand to the other to give his arm a rest, he suddenly had an idea. He took the mirror and placed it on the thorn-like hooks of the crescent. It fit perfectly and was held at a slight angle. Its surface immediately began to glow and shimmer, just like the amulet Abigail wore around her neck. The other two approached to take a closer look when they suddenly heard a gurgling voice behind them.
“Very good, it’s back in its place.” Even as they turned to face the voice, Harry saw an unfamiliar projectile heading straight for his chest. Cold fear gripped him, but there was no time to warn his friends.

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