The first stop was the library.
Why the library?
Eastiel's description of his experience in this mirrored reality had been a clue in itself. He'd described it as a piece of metacommentary on the world's very fabric. A dizzying mix of all of his identity, his essence, bent and refracted through a simple prompt.
Eastiel, but a bully, in a high school setting.
Everything else, he'd said, the common facts of his life, his memories, his relationships, were poured into this new mold, filling up the blanks itself. His memory and logic had rushed in to rationalize the prompt, to build a consistent history around it.
That explained the amplification. In the real world, Eastiel at eighteen had been formidable, respected, a young king-in-waiting with the same aura of dangerous potential that Arkai had carried at his own age.
