I led the charge. The pixie would only alert the ogres without providing a threat, and Attar couldn’t survive a blow from the creatures.

  I led with force.

  Four sets of eyes stared at me in fear as my light flooded the room.

  Barricade

  ?Push VIII?

  Fireball III

  Handcannon

  Scorch, Sword, Scintillation II

  The door to my left swung open—a connection to the final quarter of the pyramid if I had to guess—and a skeleton strode out, casting my second spell the same time as I did.

  The ogress crumbled like a rotten log.

  Like a dryad corpse.

  I forced the memory away. I needed all my focus.

  The second ogre’s head was aflame. The fireball moved to match his thrashing and screaming. It wouldn’t be long. The third was already dead, his skull a shattered mess. The fourth’s head was also on fire, but less so. A wound was open over her heart, where her armour had failed to stop my invisible blade.

  The thrashing one didn’t manage a single step before my superheated flame consumed him and he died. I hadn’t even needed my barricade. The fight was over.

  By the time Attar followed me into the room (we’d agreed on waiting 15 seconds in case there were mages) the ogres were all already dead. I would have thought the bodies would revulse him, as they did me, but his regard was elsewhere.

  “That is the vampire,” there was fear in his voice.

  I looked over at the skeleton. Now that he mentioned it, it was about the right height, though it was missing all of its skin, muscle, and flesh.

  “Did she attack you again? Are we not free of her?”

  “We laid the body to rest. You yourself performed the ceremony,” my mouth twisted, “It is her corpse, nothing more. Animated by the dark magics which taint my spells.”

  “I laid her to rest, but I am no fool to believe I understand all which is possible in this world and the next. Especially at the interplay between the two. But I am calmed. Somewhat.”

  It was disturbing when your ally trucked in the same twisted arts as your foes. I myself was disturbed.

  “Look at their armour,” I said, drawing attention back to the ogres, “The same skirts and layered armour as the other two. Only the first lived as savages.”

  “And these have treasure as well,” Attar said, pointing, “rather than a pile of rot and bones.”

  I lowered my barricade so the three of us could approach the ogres’ hoard. The treasures were not ogre sized, nor even were all of them useful to ogres. Much like the other two lairs we’d discovered, these were objects stolen and robbed from their many victims, or curios found abandoned in the dungeon, and collected for the ogres’ own enjoyment. I couldn’t blame them, not really; I’d collected quite the collection of my own.

  Example number one of the ogres’ inherited ownership was a small woman’s coat which covered far less than it revealed. I was noticing a theme among a number of the objects in the dungeon. As both warlocks I’d encountered had been male it raised questions about their guests—voluntary or otherwise—and about their hobbies when they weren’t abducting princes, necromancers, and Magi.

  Attar was small enough to brave the coat, but it was only magical so far as its wearer induce the sense in the viewer. Attart might have done the trick, but Attar merely looked chilly.

  There was a scroll my dress (hadn’t I discarded that a day ago?) identified as containing a word of power. Words of power were a concept born in the lands east of Attar’s home. A man of great wisdom and knowledge could speak one of the words and the world would change. Unlike dark magic, the change did not deny nature, rather, it made nature aknew. Each word was a lifetime of study. Even the wisest Master only knew two or three. The words could be bound. Rolled in a scroll and marked with the word and the seal of the Master. When unrolled, the Master’s voice would speak, and the world would change. This one was marked “Web”.

  I put it in my pack without hesitation. Such things were not found by accident. If any rivalled the Magi in our knowing, it was the Masters.

  There was also 50 feet of chain which I wanted, but which would destroy everything else in my backpack if I carried it and so I left it, and nearly a hundred feet of rope which I kept.

  Knickknacks such as a tin plate and a bronze candelabrum were tried and discarded. There was a grappling hook carved from opal, which was absurd and I wouldn’t trust with the pixie’s weight, let alone mine, and a foreboding onyx amulet which filled me with such a sense of dread upon donning it, I promptly discarded it.

  The necklace of teeth, taken from an extremely large predator, perhaps a giant bear, was interesting, but ultimately decorative. I left the pouch of berries untouched, as I didn’t recognize them, and any berry I didn’t recognize was poisonous.

  There was a link of sausages which smelled delicious which I left behind. Ogres were man-eaters by definition. I didn’t trust any meat in an ogre’s lair.

  Strangely, the ogres had a book on oration. I couldn’t imagine them giving a speech but I read a few passages before I remembered the last series of books I’d idly flipped through. Not that I had a choice with my ring activated. I turned off the sight, thankful I’d at least remembered in time not to physically open it.

  Ogres, it turned out, were voracious readers as well as eaters. I had to pass by a book on criminology, art, and a royal prayer book.

  By far the most peculiar of the ogre’s treasures was a bottle of red liquid. I lifted the bottle to get a better look at it, and I as rotated the front to my face, the colour and shape of the bottle changed. It was far heavier than it appeared. Further rotation revealed additional shapes, sizes, and colours, as though many bottles of liquor were wrapped up in one. I’d have taken it out of interest alone if it wasn’t so heavy. I could barely lift it with one arm.

  I took the nine foot pole as it was useful whether it was magical or not (it wasn’t) and left the shoes as they were for someone Attar’s size—perhaps the owner of the coat—but were fitted wrong for his feet.

  A glass jar, its barnacle, a needle, a beautifully made horsebow, an ivory pipe, a pair of ear trumpets, a brooch, and a rotted compass were discarded.

  There was also another one of those strange chest veils. The ogres seemed to collect them, or someone they warlocks had kept in their dungeon had had a supply. The warlocks’ tastes were becoming more repulsive with every revelation.

  “Don’t touch that,” I pointed at a scroll. Neither the pixie nor Attar were anywhere near it. Attar trusted my lead, and the pixie let me sort out of politeness. I didn’t know why I’d said it. Something had come over me. Something was wrong with the scroll. Unnatural. Myrra’s knowledge once again guided me, but the goddess kept me safe. Kept me feeling safe.

  I needed to remember there was a difference.

  There was a robe which gave the same feeling as the scroll, and I avoided it the same.

  I didn’t even bother with the blouse. The colours, the cut, the nature—there was nothing which wouldn’t clash with everything I’d ever worn or own. This wasn’t a remnant of the etiquette book influencing my mind. Even the pixie looked disgusted.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I found an amulet depicting the sun which radiated power. The Magi had no true idols, suggesting this was an object of the druids.

  I immediately donned it. The druids had already provided for me a dozen times over. I felt lighter immediately, buoyed by some druidish magic.

  I took the calligraphy form potion with some trepidation, and the monk’s vow without hesitation.

  I surprised even myself.

  It happened while I was reading the label on the potion. A man spoke in my ear, calm, calming, kind, and just.

  When you need it most, I swear, you will not go unarmed.

  Attar didn’t see the spirit. Perhaps there wasn’t one. But the man’s voice had rung with truth. I wasn’t about to turn down an unexpected boon.

  The pixie knew when we were done.

  “Not much further my friends. We go north, and north, and north again! Like birds returning for summer. The portents are with us!”

  I couldn’t argue with that, but I could wait until the little man opened the closer of the two doors on the right wall (the north wall, presumably). The door was harmless. Ill fitting, but that was to be expected in these dungeons. Somehow the little pixie tugged it open on his own. I wasn’t sure if I could with the wooden squeals running up and down my spine.

  The door led to a little hall, and the little hall to the pixie vanishing mid step. Another teleportal.

  We followed swiftly after, finding ourselves at the far end of a room. The pixie waited to our left, hopping on the spot with both hands on the door handle in front of him.

  “Be ready! I don’t know what awaits us. I have only instinct and memory to draw on.”

  He should have been worried about what waited behind him.

  ***

  What was surprising was how well Attar took it.

  He raised his sword, as did I my spear, but he did not immediately attack nor summon his ghosts to tear the room’s inhabitants to shreds.

  It helped that they were on the far side of the teleportal, but we couldn’t be sure it stretched across the entire room.

  It also helped that the gnomes were smiling. They wore little red hats and brandished no weapons against us. Nor had they tried to ambush us, which they would have been able to do, as I’d failed to reactivate my ring, which I did immediately.

  “Ho there!” called one of the gnomes through his thick moustache—they all had thick mustaches, “where do you wander?”

  “The floor below,” I replied, “we are seeking the depths, and the warlocks’ end.”

  Five moustaches curled into smiles, “Travel well. Mind the treasure ahead. It is trapped.”

  “By your own hand?”

  “Naturally. Leave it be and we will get along wonderfully. We have no love for the warlocks. Few do.”

  “We were attacked by gnomes earlier.”

  “And the warlocks were human.”

  The acorn landed in rich soil. It was hard to separate individuals from their kin. Especially when you’d been betrayed by others. It was dangerous, even, to forgive every fresh face anew. That was how the snakes and spiders struck true.

  Gnomes, clearly, were not snakes and spiders. Or their morals were complicated enough to confuse the issue. I had little experience with elementals. But the earth in one place was dry, and poisonous in another. Wet to the north, fertile to the south. If every bit of earth had gnome, they’d be a divisive species indeed.

  “Do any other dangers dwell beyond?”

  “The ceiling is unstable. Mind that you don’t call it down upon yourselves.”

  “With noise?”

  “With poorly placed steps,” the gnome harrumphed. Such steps were not made by gnomes, clearly.

  I had no doubt they were made by pixies.

  “Lead the way, pixie friend.”

  The pixie forced open the squealing wood door. Took several steps forward. And was promptly flung backward faster than a hawk dives.

  He vanished back through the teleportal under the solemn gaze of the gnomes.

  “We’ll have to reset that,” one of them grumbled.

  “Can you navigate the teleportals?” I asked.

  “No,” said the gnome, “but they will not always be here. We can wait.”

  A wail rose from directly beyond the gaping door. One I had heard for months now. One of those poor souls in chains in the warlocks’ dungeon.

  I readied my spear. The enemy of my enemy was not my friend.

  I stepped forward into the dark, bringing the light.

  The room was round. A single chandelier hung darkly from the right half’s ceiling. A large block hung from the centre on a chain, matching a missing section dead ahead. It had been this block which had sent the pixie flying. The wail was louder, sobbing, scared. Yet the room was empty.

  I activated my soul sense, that sense I’d borrowed from the little necromancer. Still I saw nothing.

  “Attar, can you sense anything?”

  Attar joined me at the entrance, “Yes. It is another memory. The one who was tormented here left long ago. Only their pain remains.”

  “I’ve heard it react. When I am loud, far, far, above, it howls, I’m sure of it.”

  “This and many more. Pain is reaction isn’t it?”

  I let my eyelids slowly close. It was. Yet surely, surely pain wasn’t enough? How had the warlocks etched it into the very stone?

  “Can we do anything for it?”

  Attar’s mouth opened, then closed and he bit his lip. He shook his head, “No. For a moment I thought... but this one is too far gone.”

  “Try?”

  He smiled sadly, “Of course.”

  Time passed and all was still. The phantom continued to howl and moan, quieter now that we were also still. The pixie joined us from wherever he’d be banished to and Attar once more shook his head.

  “Nothing.”

  It was worth a try. You’d die if you tried to fight every storm, but if you had the time and the energy, it was worth testing your humility against your strength. Often I’d found, I had more power than I thought, and victory was closer at hand. The only price was failure, failure and having tried. It burned deep.

  “Straight across sir,” Immortals, ironically, learned not to dwell on things, “I cannot lift the portcullis there.”

  My sword was still active. From the time I’d woken less than two hours had passed. It always felt like longer.

  My sword chopped the wooden gate to pieces. The gate led to a sharp left turn and a door. The door opened under the pixie’s touch and led to a room.

  The room contained a well against the wall far to our right, and a chain hanging from the ceiling ahead. The pixie skipped blithely to the top left corner to try his hand at the door there, while Attar and I followed more cautiously. My caution was rewarded. Where my eyes failed me, my ring detected a strange collection of metal slivers in the ground below.

  I held out my hand to stop Attar, then traced the machinery holding the slivers—needles—back to the trigger hidden beneath one of the flagstones. I pointed it out to Attar. It was right in our path. The pixie had only avoided it by chance.

  The upper floors hadn’t had trapped rooms, and they’d been exceedingly rare on the subsequent two floors. Here, as we descended deeper, it appeared the traps were in full force. The alternative was that the most direct route between two floors was also the most trapped. Or coincidence, but I’d given up believing in such outlandish notions many years prior.

  The new door was another the pixie struggled to open on his own, but managed all the same. One of the few benefits of the dungeon architect’s “style” was that the path the pixie opened would remain open. Those doors weren’t swinging shut under their own power.

  The door led to a hall which branched after thirty or so feet and the pixie took the right hand path without hesitation. Halfway along the new corridor was set a door, and it was this door the pixie opened.

  “Nearly there my friends,” said the pixie, “Keep your courage and wits about you.”

  The room was pentagram shaped, the shape of magic; one side for each of the elements, and the fifth for the transcendent. Pillars ran in two rows against two of the walls, seven in all. Two and seven equalled nine, the mortal portion of the tetryarchy. Magic bound to mortal purpose. Dark magic.

  Subtle.

  “Is it safe?” asked Attar.

  I waited to watch the pixie dash across to the far door before answering, “I don’t know. Stay well behind me.”

  Then it was my turn to traverse the space, slower than the pixie. The traps had been getting more frequent, and not just hidden in doorways.

  When I made it across in one piece, Attar made to follow, but I urged him back, returning myself. I’d only discovered that we could follow. The pixie still had a door to open.

  The door was iron and neither trapped nor stuck. Even seeds in a desert sometimes found enough water to take root.

  There was a door across the revealed hall a mere ten feet beyond the first, but the pixie ignored it in favour of turning to our left and travelling another twenty or so feet before opening the door there on the same wall. Both appeared to lead to same room. Given the pixie’s blithe unconcern regarding traps, I wondered what made him choose one door over the other.

  If the choice was for our benefit it was a sound one, for no needles, pendulums, lightning, or swords leapt out of the walls to greet us.

  Instead, Tom was.