Stovepipe and I went out to get the water. I wanted the others to have every protection they could get, thus Astra was left behind.

  Stovepipe didn’t need to be directed to move out of sight once we were in the room with the pool.

  “You trust these people?” Stovepipe asked, “They put my hair on end.”

  “We gave our vows. The peace will be kept.”

  “Vows can be broken.”

  “Peace will be kept.”

  Stovepipe slapped my arm and chuckled, “Hard to impress when you sound like a teenage girl, eh?”

  “Peace will be kept.”

  Stovepipe jumped, then laughed, “There it is. Come on, let’s not leave the others alone. They might need my protection.”

  ***

  We slept uneasily that night, with the bone wall between ourselves and the cousins as Jatasura had suggested.

  When we woke, both were gone.

  Conan studied the ground where they’d lay down to sleep, “I don’t see any tracks. No signs of struggle. It’s like they vanished.”

  I readied my makeup pen, “We’ll continue the plan as before, but don’t drink any water not already in our waterskins. Perhaps they were attacked, but they might also be planning sabotage.”

  “Why sabotage after spending so much time trying to win our trust?” mused Cillian.

  “Maybe so that we wouldn’t suspect them,” said Stovepipe.

  I let politicians debate while I set down to write a new spell.

  Quick Teleport

  Quick Teleport II: The caster and his gear moves 150 ft over the course of four seconds, but does not exist in the intervening space.

  Brace’s crew was ready to leave by the time I finished writing my spell. Attar shared his food with me to break our fast and then we were off.

  The ambush happened in the room just before the stairs.

  Seven pale skinned and blind Trogodytes fell on us with their cutlasses, clicking and screaming. I noticed them thirty feet out, which was more than enough time to cast barrage of spells.

  “’Ware!” I shouted, “To our left!”

  Soldier’s Swords

  “Execute!”

  I’d summoned the swords at neck level, as one, four heads fell to the floor.

  At the same time the Trogodyte necks were being severed, I was casting my other spells. The Trogodytes before had managed to save each other from any wound.

  Handcannon

  Scorch, Sword, Scintillation III

  Scorch, Sword, Scintillation II

  Of the three, another head fell, and one exploded. Neither rose again. The remaining Trogodyte was sliced to ribbons by the power of ten blades acting at once with such force the body was sent back in a thunderclap. Ten fireballs burned with a heat which soon made the room feel like a forge. I quickly—as fast as possible without harming our own—sent the fireballs out of the room. Flesh and stone alike bubble where they passed.

  Everyone but Attar was looking at me in shock. Even Astra had been caught off guard. They hadn’t seen what a Magi could do at the extent of his power. They still hadn’t, but hopefully they’d never know that.

  That said, Attar’s nonchalance was misplaced. I hadn’t meant to do that.

  I warily eyed the blades I’d manifested. Figuratively eyed them. They were invisible, after all. And I could hardly see for the bright fireballs I’d just dismissed the and dancing swarm of lights still in the room.

  A cautionary poke pressed one of the blades into the stone floor like a needle in a cushion.

  A quick scan of the rune I’d written revealed it was unchanged. These spells would be temporary.

  I would take advantage of it while I could.

  “Keep those weapons ready. Let’s move! We’re making a lot of noise. Expect more attacks to occur. I will defend you as best I can.”

  The first tunnel on the second floor took half an hour before everyone was through. I suspected it would be theme going forward. Everyone had a large amount of gear and each person alone took over a minute to pass through the hole.

  Strangely, though the stairs combined with the tunnel took more than an hour to traverse after our brief encounter with the Trogodytes, my swords still remained. If I had to guess, every aspect of the spell had been increased by ten times. Given that the swords last two hours, I’d have the spells for nearly a full day, possibly enough time to record them if I was lucky.

  The lift was where we left it, which I was immediately concerned by.

  “Give me a second to test the lift before we move on,” I warned the others.

  I stepped onto the lift and began engaging the crank.

  As I descended I carefully pressed the flat of one of my blades against the lift, which groaned in protest as I added pressure, but the lift held firm against the initial pressure. My base swords alone could nearly overwhelm the lift, so I didn’t want to push it, but the strucuture appeared as sound as ever. Jatasura had not sabotaged us.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  I threw the brake and rode back up to the waiting crowd.

  “It is safe. We will go in two groups. I will descend with the first group. Attar and Astra will remain behind. Gunhild, you will be in the first group and then bring the lift back up. You are probably the strongest among us for your weight.

  “The group waiting will need to be patient. It is a three hour round trip, maybe longer. This will be one of the longest, if not the longest, legs of our journey.”

  Thus sorted, we gathered on to the lift and began our descent.

  There was nothing to assault us in the narrow tunnel except our own thoughts and fears, but those were easily dispelled by the silent company we kept. We talked little, not by my own order, but a shared instinct of stealth when moving through foreign domains.

  Even the voices in my head were as silent as they could be, with no new whispers being added to my already straining mind.

  The lift ground to a halt mere minutes after Cillian announced the approach of the second hour. His timing was uncanny.

  My swords, as well as the will-o’-wisps I’d left strung in a long line down the shaft to light Gunhild’s path still remained. My ten times duration theory was proving likely. Even the jack-o’-lanterns looked brighter.

  We poured off the lift in every direction, and then Gunhild threw the brake and began a much faster ascent back up the shaft.

  “Make yourself comfortable. I don’t want anyone wandering far from this room or falling in the shaft. There are strange teleportals scattered about this place, and they may be commanded by a sorceress named Myrra. I don’t trust her to change them and lure others to her house. The house itself may attempt something; it is alive.”

  Conan leapt up, in defiance of my warning, “That’s why my maps made no sense. We never could find the fifth floor and it felt as if we were turned around at every corner.”

  “Perhaps. Your map did not map on to the path I myself took. I’m not sure what to make of it.”

  “Could you stop her?”

  “I have enough enemies. If the time comes when I must defend you from her I will, but I will not seek her out.”

  We talked quietly until Cillian announced the hour, “She should be back up top now.”

  Should she?

  Why?

  Who?

  Slime Call

  Well. That was going to come in handy.

  I didn’t appreciate that the voices were now conversing with each other in my head. I was tempted to cast some of the spells just to make them go away. No doubt warlocks fell for the same temptations.

  Cillian announced the rest of the wait in half hour increments. The final thirty minutes had me catching myself grinding my teeth. I forced my jaws to relax. Attar could handle anything on his own, let alone with the support of others.

  Sure enough, they arrived safe before Cillian announced the second hour, though they were all strangely huddled in the middle of the lift except for Attar who was sweating at the winch with his ogress looming over him.

  The moment the lift ground home the passengers fled.

  “Step back from the lift!” Attar called, “One of those beetles is walking around the edge of the shaft.”

  The empty tarn.

  Being crushed by one of those beetles would have been the least of their problems. It probably would have gone straight through the lift. I sent my swords upward in a rough net. They couldn’t cover the whole space but they could give us a chance.

  Ceiling “secured” I stepped back onto the lift and raised it four feet then leapt back down to the floor.

  “Attar and I will go ahead this time. I want him to secure the landing, but I’ll have to go with each group.”

  Lift

  I gestured to the black platform, “Here we are, same groups as before except Cillian and Attar will switch. We should only be a few minutes this time.”

  I lead the way, followed my Attar then a cautious Conan who kept looking back up the shaft at the lift above us.

  “My swords are blocking the way,” I said, “should slow down any plummeting insects enough for the lift to catch them.”

  The landing pad was clear of threats. Attar and the others filed out while I sent the lift back up the shaft to grab the second group. No beetles fell on my head on any of my three excursions. In less than fifteen minutes (nine according to Cillian) we were all together on the sixth floor.

  Now they dangerous part of the journey could begin.

  “Strange Jatasura and Hidimbi vanished,” Astra said, “They can’t follow us down here. Perhaps they were taken by monsters.”

  I wasn’t confident they couldn’t find a way down, but there was other explanations, “They may have decided to try their own arts against the rift. They showed little fear being left on the far side of our wall last night. They have power.”

  I reviewed my notes, “We have a lot of tunnels to crawl through, we best get started. Be careful, at least two cockatrice were seen on this floor.”

  Brace paled, “Two?”

  “They’re dead now. But it was a close thing.”

  It was an hour and a half to make the short distance from our room to the start of the seventh floor, but we made the journey unassailed.

  A few eyes were thrown at Attar and Astra in the room declaring “The short one will betray you”, but no one commented on it. Once through the tunnel on the other side we had a ten minute walk over the long stairs leading down the eighth floor.

  Remarkably, we weren’t attacked on the stairs either. We made it to the eight floor.

  “Don’t touch or take anything. Don’t slow or falter. The mystical and the fantastical wait on this floor. We’ll pass the corpse of a titan and a singing tree. There is that strange statue of a baby I mentioned. Don’t get to close to any of it, no matter how curious you are.”

  We walked past the broken door directly across from the stair case (why hadn’t we gone in there?) and took the two left handed turns which led us past the titan and into the room with the fountain and the singing tree.

  I didn’t slow nor look back to see if my orders had been obeyed. Either they had, or they were lost. Looking back would only guarantee our downfall. My trust was rewarded by the sound of two dozen footsteps still following as I led the way across the abandoned pyramid, into the room piled with skulls and out through the winding corridor leading to the apes’ lair—

  Solar egg unbroken.

  I turned us around to head back to the pyramid with the whispers in my head mocking me all the way.

  Time. Time could get us all killed. We can’t afford mistakes.

  A spell of mapping. Is your soul more valuable than every other combined? What price is too high for their safety?

  Screaming Sphere

  Wonderful. I’d be sure to use it if I got lost.

  It was a spell I could abandon, but though I was resolved to avoid the use of dark magic, every spell would be needed.

  We walked to the room with the mosaic of the progenitor of monsters, then down the hall to the room where Attar had disappeared, and finally to the small thirty foot by thirty foot room which would be our new base of operations.

  “Are we here?” Conan asked. He raised his waterskin to his lips, frowned, and stopped halfway before attaching it back to his belt.

  “We are. All comforts are taken care of.”

  Brace shivered, “Something about it scares me. Are we truly safe here?”

  “As long as the statue is left alone. Whatever darkness it conceals is limited to its own hungry grasp.”

  “Everything has a price.”

  “The price was already paid. All we must do is act in accordance with Nature. Then all will be provided.”

  Erin tilted her head, “You’re not talking about the statue, are you?”

  I smiled, though they could not see, “Not just the statue.”