The house was taking a long time to burn down.

  The smoke was also starting to become a problem, so I retreated back the way I’d came, back past the bodies of the warlocks, down the long hallway and into the room with the demonic women.

  The room had two exits worth exploring (a third was simply another route back into the hallway I’d just entered from). One was wood, and one was empty air.

  I sent my sword at the wood while I had it, but did my own exploration in the opposite direction. The archway was a formality, a divider between two adjacent rooms with no hallway connection. The door popped free behind me as examined the room before.

  The room would be ideal as a forward base. It was a large, maybe sixty by thirty feet in length. The only occupants were a few blobs of wax (which I took, I needed a new crayon) and a large red box. After verifying nothing was coming from the forced open door behind me, I carefully approached the box and scanned it with my ring.

  The box was complex, with gunpowder and a number of mechanical devices worked into its frame, all wired into the latch. I wasn’t an engineer, but it was obvious something would happen if I tried to open it, probably something explosive.

  Not that there was any point in opening it. The box only contained a slip of paper with the word “bugge” on it. The whole thing was a trap, or a very dangerous prank.

  The room also contained another door on the same wall I’d entered by, but not leading to the same room. It was worth checking, but first I had to check the door on the other side of the devil-woman room.

  It turned out to be uninteresting. Merely a hallway leading sharply to the left and back to the torture room I’d passed through this morning.

  The prank room door exploded easily enough, breaking so fast I wasn’t sure if it had been latched, locked, stuck, or even free standing.

  Crow Dream

  Indeed.

  The spell refused to be released, so I stored it in the echoing abyss of my mind along with the others. Maybe I could give a loaf of bread nightmares.

  The door led to a hallway with a door about halfway down its hundred foot length.

  The door broke with a twisted screech, but though the denizens howled in response, none came closer to investigate.

  The room beyond was...

  A blur. Fleet dream. Riches. Gold. Gems. Twisting corridors. Passages which appeared when I looked away and vanished when I paid attention. A slide into the depths. A ladder to the heavens.

  When I woke from my stupor I found myself standing on a perfectly clean carpet in the middle of a large, empty room. The floor was covered in tiles twisting into a labyrinth as far as my eyes could see. Three doors and a portcullis awaited. Holes through the walls promised hints at what was beyond.

  I had no idea where I was.

  ***

  My mouth was dry and my legs were tired. I took a sip from my waterskin. I’d clearly been walking for hours.

  It was rare to be completely lost. Normally, such as when hiking between the leys or adrift at sea, if I became somewhat lost I’d study the stars, seek high ground, or follow a stream to the ocean. I was even a fair hand at using a sun stone and the patterns of the moon.

  There was no moon, no elevation, no sun, no high or low ground. No animals to track, follow, or flee. The nice thing about being completely lost was it didn’t matter which direction I went. I’d either stay lost or become less lost. I couldn’t lose.

  Following from that, the easiest path was the best, as all paths were equal.

  Sword Storm III

  So I sent my sword to nearest door, while I retreated back into the corner of the room and hoped for the best.

  The door swung open, unlatched.

  Beyond was a room filled with iron cages, some locked, some open, some shattered. If anyone had been held here after the rift was opened, they’d escaped.

  The room had two exits. The wooden one shattered, the stone one popped open after enough force with my sword.

  The lack of locks and traps had me on edge.

  The stone door was closer, but it only led (as it turned out) to the portcullis in the room I’d just evacuated. The wooden door led instead to a long hallway which split forward and left after fifty feet. I took the left hand path to not leave unexplored routes at my back.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The hall continued on for another fifty or so feet before turning, but just before the turn, I noticed a cut in the wall, a small hole pointing back into the room with the clean carpet. That was fine. I widening spiral would increase my odds of stumbling across a place I’d already been.

  Thirty more feet led to a sturdy looking wooden door which my sword dashed from its housing.

  The smell of blood, and the starting hints of decay, hit my nostrils.

  On the far side of the room was scrawled on the wall “Ready thy spear and they shield.”

  I preferred my spellbook, but my other hand raised the Dead King’s spear.

  I looked up to the ceiling, knowing already what I’d find there. I couldn’t forget what I’d already seen.

  The corpses were still there, impaled on the ceiling.

  I wasn’t lost anymore.

  ***

  I wasn’t a fool now and I hadn’t been a fool then. There was only one sensible way corpses ended up impaled on a ceiling, and that meant I wasn’t entering the room fully. Therefore, I could assume I had also not entered the room before, and instead could focus my efforts down the other fork of the hallway.

  150 feet later I found an old friend.

  In the middle of the hallway, which still stretched into the distance as far as I could see, directly above the pathway, was a vat of acid, waiting for me to dump it on myself.

  I carefully avoided the trigger set in the floor. I didn’t have my ice... shell? shield? whatever it had been anymore.

  15 minutes later I was presented with another choice of paths. This time an iron door directly in front of me and a wooden door 20 feet further on.

  I chose the wooden door first, as it allowed me to duck around a corner to break, whereas there was nowhere to hide from any direct lightning bolts should they come from the iron door.

  The wooden door revealed a large room with a pile of bottles on the far end. A door near the bottles stood ajar. I carefully approached the open door. Beyond it was a much smaller room. To my right, the ceiling had collapsed, creating a pile of rubble. Straight ahead, a doorway had been filled with earth from top to bottom.

  In front of the earthen wall were the bodies of two gigantic dead frogs.

  I was home.

  I returned to the remains of the wooden door in order to direct my sword to force open the iron door I’d passed on the way in. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the correct way, but it was worth trying while I was in the area.

  The heavily sealed room was full of shards of bone, which paired the larch with the tamarack, but didn’t recognize them as the same.

  Beyond the door on the far side of the bone room, was a small round room. In its centre, was the dwarf goddess.

  I stumbled forward until I was kneeling at her feet.

  I bent my head and prayed.

  ***

  The collapsed ceiling room led to the room full of statues, a room I’d passed through in darkness and on my knees, and now standing in full light.

  Opening Cascade

  Keeping the spell was a choice. In a dungeon of locked doors, I made it.

  I took the right hand path, through the door and down the short hallway to the place where the bodies lay and I’d been chained.

  I drank from the upstream portion of the water, and refilled my waterskin I’d sipped from throughout the day.

  I’d jokingly thought I was home when I returned to that room where the frogs had kept me pinned, and I’d made my base of operations while I lay wounded and weak, but the sick thing was the prison cell actually felt like a return. I’d spent so long in the dark and depths that familiarity had become familiar and thoughts of my home in the sun had become alien.

  My memory was strong, but the halls were vast and twisting, all the stone and wooden doors all blended together. I could follow the path of open doors, but many doors had been open. I found myself in the room with the demon mirror by accident or false memory, but the Watcher merely smiled at me in encouragement.

  She had gone from my weakness to the core of my strength.

  It took over an hour, but I eventually found my way to the wailing room. My screams echoed more silently than they had in the past. Those voices which could hear mine and howl in turn had been stilled.

  I remembered that paths both to the north and west would take me to the stairs, but the north path took me past the evil tree and carried the risk of the freezing fog which had nearly killed me when I’d first started my escape.

  The left hand path was a twenty minute path to Tom’s house, and a ten minute path from there to the top of the stairs.

  Night was drawing in, and my legs and eyes were both beginning to tire. I’d have to find shelter soon and sleep, but I could make it one more floor.

  ***

  Deafening Crown

  I was greeted with the spell upon reaching the landing of the second floor. I let it stay. I could plug my ears with my hands, but I could think of times when my hands would be needed, or when I needed to deafen others. There were a number of creatures in the Painted Lands alone which could control others with their voice, and the warlocks had gathered a menagerie from much further afield.

  The dead end hallway past the former mosaic room made a perfect place to pitch my tent. I surrounded my tent with the bone wall rather than just the front, as I’d seen both spiders and gnomes which could swim through the earth. Stone was less of an obstacle than I’d like.

  It was also one of my motivations for sleeping in the tent rather than on hard ground. I climb up to the third tier bunk bed. It was high enough to avoid most surprise attacks, yet low enough for my ring to warn me of any attempts on the other two bunks.

  Still, I was one of the Magi, and paranoid by nature. Each bed in the tent received a simulacrum of my sleeping form made of pillows. The worse an assassin’s odds at a successful first strike, the better my own.

  I settled into the bed with a sigh. I preferred prickly grass and soft dirt to furs and down, but the tent’s mattress was far more comfortable than the unyielding stone. The crackling fire, and warm covers lulled me into a strange mixture of peace and guilt. I’d rarely felt such comfort.

  I was worried I’d let my guard down.

  But death was coming one day, no matter how I stressed and made myself miserable. Better twenty days of joy than a thousand of fear. With the destruction of the warlock’s mosaic, even jealously guarding my own life seemed mean.

  Sleep came easily.