They crept into the boiler room.
In the virtual version, the room looked more like the bowels of hell than the guts of a public high school. Just as the halls had grown macabre with vines and cracks, the furnace of the boiler room pulsed orange like a demon’s eyes through the joints and seals of the heating pipes. The fire glowed like teeth through the grating.
They held their phones in front of them and watched the room through the tiny cameras, reanimated on their screens. Then they saw the little man in the shadows, smiling at them.
A deformed creature, he was perched atop a stool in the corner. In reality, there was only the stool. But on their screens, the little man was cross-legged atop it, one foot hanging limply down, mangled. In his hands, flat across his lap, was a small hammer-like tool.
His voice came through the speakers on their phones: “Greetings. What brings you here?”
“Oh, no way,” Vanhi said.
He spoke with a spunky, funny-old-man voice, straight out of a vintage Saturday-morning cartoon, like the Crypt Keeper or Dungeon Master. He looked like a beautifully rendered video-game character, realistic but slightly comical, perfectly at ease in the center of the very real Vindicators. The way the little man’s voice echoed from all their phones at once gave it a nice illusion of coming from within the room.
“This is wicked,” Alex added.
“Talk to him,” Kenny said, poking Peter. “You’re the cool one.”
“You’re the Bible expert.”
“I don’t think this guy’s from the Bible.”
“I am Hephaestus,” the little man offered, ignoring the way they were rudely talking about him as if he weren’t right there.
“I am Kenny.”
“Well done,” Peter whispered.
“Hephaestus, what are you doing here?” Vanhi said loudly, as if she were talking to a child.
“I think he’s virtual, not retarded,” Alex whispered.
“I see you knew the code,” Hephaestus said. “Two one three one. My number, however, is two two one two.”
“Okay. Good to know,” Vanhi said. They were having fun.
“I am the god of smiths,” he chirped. “The Egyptians knew me as Ptah. To the Norse, I was Wayland the Smith. The Ugarit knew me as Kothar-wa-Khasis. And of course Hephaestus in Greece.”
“I’ll call you George,” Peter said.
Ignoring him, the little man hopped off his chair and steadied himself with a walking stick he had leaned against the wall. He limped over to the furnace. Each time his cane clicked the ground the sound of tapping came through their speakers. The illusion was marvelous. He tapped the furnace. “Welcome to Mount Etna. Do wish to see the Breath of God?”
They answered yes.
“Hmm, just one problem.” Hephaestus scratched his chin. “I already told you my number. I think I’ll need something else, instead. Yes. I think so. What could it be?”
He seemed to think it over, and the lame little blacksmith was almost cute, despite his deformities. Then he grinned ear to ear, as if an idea had just occurred to him, and the smile was bright and chipper, with a slightly sinister undercurrent.
“I know!” he said cheerfully. “How about a sacrifice?”