“Image is nothing,” I replied, opening my GuideBook. “Character is everything.”

“Appearances are everything,” Joshua retorted, his voice as cold as death.

“Truth is everything,” I countered. “Virtue is everything. Appearances are falling leaves, blowing in the wind, here for a moment and gone forever. Truth and character are what remain.”

“Truth and character? They do not matter!” His voice oozed with scorn.

“Truth,” I said, “is something you know nothing of. Character is what you are in the dark, when no one but the King is looking. You, Pretender, what are you when no one is looking?”

I smelled sulfur. I tasted bile. I felt the burning fire of dry ice put to my face and violently ripped away. Despite my bold words, I shook with fear. I heard howling, saw an insatiable beast, a wild animal more intelligent and vicious than any man, flies swarming around his head.

Suddenly, I saw Gabriel again, calm, warm, attractive. “Do not sell yourself short, my comrade,” he said to me in an enchanting voice with a melodic lilt that drew me to him. I felt that he earnestly wanted to be my friend, that perhaps I’d misunderstood him.

“Let me sing you a song of how the King taught men to find the best in themselves.”

He sang a haunting seductive melody: “Adam’s choice fulfilled destiny, allowing man to become the best he could be. Thuros was transformed to a paradise of choice, so that man might forever speak in his noblest voice.”

His words drew me in like the swinging gold watch of a hypnotist. I felt my TravelGuide in my right hand. I held it up to him and shook it in his face. I saw him flinch, and it emboldened me.

“Impostor!” I shouted. “You hold out the skin of truth stuffed with the guts of lies! You are the bender of men. You make lie-tellers teachers, life-haters doctors, King-betrayers religious leaders! You train them to mouth your lies.”

“You believe this slander about me … and you?” He sounded genuinely shocked and hurt. I backed down, wondering for a moment if what I’d said was unfair.

“Don’t you see?” he said. “The King knows your potential and is threatened by you, as he is by me. He doesn’t want you to succeed. The most you will ever be is the King’s errand boy. I offer you a captaincy in my army … and upward mobility from there!”

I paused, feeling the struggle within my chest. Finally I spoke.

“What choice should I make?” I asked, then laughed aloud. “Would a starving man choose to eat a banquet or choke down dirt and gravel? I am the King’s son, and he promises I will reign with him. But even if not, I would far rather be his errand boy than a four-star general of the doomed troops of Erebus!”