Cole and Lucy exited the portal to find themselves in a cool, dimly lit room. Checking his new surroundings, Cole noted that the ovular wall encompassing them was again composed of a rough cobblestone. The room had a variety of exits, all branching off into cavernous tunnels.

The portal was quick to close behind them, revealing a thin pedestal behind it. Looking closely at its surface, Cole noticed a large, thin circle engraved into the pedestal. This circle ended in a smaller oval at its base that sank deeper into the pedestal’s surface. Six pin-like holes penetrated deeper into the sides of the oval, giving it a distinct look. Put together, it quickly became apparent what it was for.

“This must be where we have to put the amulet,” Cole said, recalling IQ’s instructions.

Tapping on his system band, Cole was hoping for some form of direction. Unfortunately, nothing was displayed outside of a single rectangle that read ‘concede trial.’ Scanning back across the wall, Cole counted a total of eight paths to be taken, each with a faintly lit torch beside it. The room resembled a large cave, living up to Cole’s initial idea of what a ‘dungeon’ would look like.

“Which path should we take first?” Cole asked.

“You can pick,” Lucy replied.

“I figured you’d say that.”

All eight paths looked nearly identical, so Cole simply chose the one that was directly behind the pedestal. Cole walked over to the tunnel he’d chosen. Like all the other paths, he couldn’t see too far in before the dim light faded to black.

“I don’t suppose you know any magic that will light our path?” Cole asked. “Or do you?”

“I can think of something.”

Lucy joined Cole at the path's entrance. She placed both of her hands out in front of her, and closed her eyes to concentrate. Cole eagerly waited to see more of Lucy’s magic. A few moments passed, and Lucy’s right hand suddenly swung out and to the right. Cole’s attention snapped to it, only to see her grabbing the torch directly beside the entrance. She pulled it out of the metal frame that held it, bringing it back to where she’d initially put her hands out. She opened her eyes, pretending to be impressed by the simple feat. Lucy turned to Cole with a poorly concealed grin on her face.

“I did it.” She said, passing Cole the torch.

“Yeah, very funny,” Cole replied sarcastically.

Lucy may have been making a joke, but the sentiment wasn’t off the mark. The torch was dim yet quite usable. Even if Lucy could use some form of ‘light magic,’ there was no guarantee they wouldn’t be separated. In which case, Cole would need something of his own to light his path.

Looking back to Lucy, Cole had expected her to take a torch of her own. However, she began walking into the opening. Cole briskly followed, not wanting to lose sight of her. His torch may have been lighting their path, but it wasn’t by much. It only managed to light up their immediate surroundings. The walls around them stayed a consistent distance apart, pivoting neither right nor left.

The two walked in silence, following the route before them. As the light from behind them began to fade away, they came across a split in their path. It forked perpendicularly in both directions, leading left and right.

“Let’s go left,” Cole said, not seeing a difference in the options.

As they both turned to walk down this route, they saw a faint light in the near distance. Approaching carefully, Cole walked ahead slightly. The light grew as they approached, revealing to them a new opening for them to enter. Lucy and Cole reached the end of the passage only to find themselves in a starkly familiar room.

Faced with a pedestal and seven other pathways, Cole became immensely confused. If each path led to another set of paths, then how would they ever find the amulet? Cole was uncertain what to think. The passage opposite of theirs was even missing a torch, furthering his suspicions.

“Strange,” Lucy said, seeming to share the sentiment.

“It couldn’t be the same room, could it?” Cole asked. “We only took a single right, and the rest of the path was completely straight.”

Cole walked towards the pedestal at the center of the room. He checked its surface, wanting to compare it between this room and the last. As Cole predicted, the engraving was the exact same. He hadn’t looked at it for very long, but the two pedestals were definitely one in the same. Either their trial was to navigate through various mirrored rooms, or they’d somehow been spit back out into their starting room.

With how accurate the engravings imperfections were, Cole believed it to be the latter. However, he planned to check his theory first. Cole put his hands together, collecting a small amount of mana into a cube of ice.

“We should go back,” Cole said. “Maybe there’s a difference between the two rooms we can’t see.”

Lucy nodded her head in approval, turning back to the passage they’d just left. Cole placed the cube at its entrance, leaving an indicator for the room they were currently in. With this preparation done, they made their way back into the path. They were soon confronted with another fork, again going both left and right.

“Wait,” Cole said. “Shouldn't this go straight and right, not left and right?”

Looking left and right, Cole could see a dim light at the end of each path. If his reasoning was correct, both directions would lead him back to the room they’d just left. There was no indication of which way he should pick, so Cole decided to at least remain consistent.

“Should we go left, again?” Cole asked.

Turning to Lucy, he saw her looking back in the direction they’d come. It wasn’t that she looked confused, but Cole rarely saw her focus on anything for very long, outside of the ceiling.

“Sure,” Lucy said, turning to go left.

The two turned to the path, following it straight to its end. They exited into another room, yet again identical room to the first. To Cole’s surprise, the cube wasn’t at any of the other seven entrances, but was at the one they’d just exited from. Not only had they been returned to the same room, they’d somehow returned to the same entrance.

“Now that’s weird,” Cole said, grinning slightly. “Let’s try going right.”

Cole was becoming increasingly fascinated by their new trial. With apparent alternatives, Cole decided to check each of the passageways. Following the same path again and taking a right led him to the path three entrances down. Lucy allowed Cole to take the lead, examining the paths as she followed Cole through each of them. Checking all of the other routes took time, but it told them, definitively, that none of them led to another room.

“I guess we should start thinking of another plan.” Cole sighed, lamenting over the wasted time. The first few tunnels had been fun to enter and exit due to the odd way they’d spat them back into the room, but it’d grown tedious over time.

Ultimately, Cole wasn’t sure of what to try next. As far as he could tell, the only paths to take were the eight obvious ones across the wall. His arm had begun to get tired from carrying the torch around. It hadn’t gotten dimmer since they initially left the room, burning a consistent orange hue. Bringing it back to the one empty holder on the wall, Cole tried to put it back. He was having trouble getting it to slide in properly, making him wonder how Lucy had pulled it out so easily.

Putting more force behind his push, Cole managed to get the torch back into place. As he did, he felt the sconce that housed the torch move down. A strange clicking noise accompanied the motion, ending after the fifth click. The sconce stopped moving, either by its inability to move farther or by Cole letting up on the torch. What was that?

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Cole stepped to the side of the torch, examining the part of the sconce that connected with the wall. He hadn’t looked at them closely until now, as they merely metal rings fixed together and attached to the wall. However, this sconce had six subtle grooves next to where it connected to the cobblestone. These grooves were accompanied by crudely engraved numbers, ranging from zero at the top to five at the bottom. A small triangle extruded from the metal piece connecting the sconce to the wall. It pointed perfectly at the bottom-most groove, indicating to Cole its usefulness in solving this puzzling trial.

“Lucy,” Cole said, “you should check this out.”

Lucy joined Cole in examining the sconce, watching as he started to push it up. The sconce clicked each time it moved, constantly snapping the triangle to one of the grooves in the wall.

“I think I found our missing piece.” Cole smiled.

“Good work,” Lucy said, nodding her head. “Now what?”

“I have no clue.” Cole proudly admitted.

Looking to the sconce of another entrance, Cole walked over to examine it as well. Since Cole had pushed the first torch back to its original position, both sconces were again at the same angle. Similar to the first, this sconce had six grooves beside it, marked from zero to five. This held true for all six of the other entrances as Cole quickly checked behind each of their respective torches.

Cole wracked his brain for ideas. Each path seemed to spit them out randomly among the other entrances. This eliminated the possibility of finding connecting paths and matching their grooves. This was made especially true by the two paths that somehow connected back to themselves. From where he positioned his cube when he’d started, he also knew that none of the paths led to one of the other paths. If he were to label the entrances from one through eight, starting from the position of the cube and going clockwise, that would make entrance eight the oddity. Every other entrance had at least one path that led to it.

Deciding upon this labeling system, Cole went around to each entrance drawing their numbers on the floor to its front. He accomplished this by allowing ice from his finger to solidify on the ground instead of his hand. This effectively turned his finger into a magical crayon of sorts. Satisfied with his ingenuity, Cole stepped back to the pedestal, taking in the entire room once more.

What could the grooves mean? Cole continued to ask himself, looking over each of the entrances. His gaze came back to the cube he’d left in front of the first entrance, one of the two that connected back to itself. To its left was the entrance with zero paths leading to it. As Cole lost himself in thought, something occurred to him. Zero paths lead to entrance 8.

“Lucy, do you remember where all the paths lead to?” Cole asked.

“I do,” Lucy replied, occupying herself by juggling a few balls of ice.

“Wait, really?” Cole asked, surprised. He thought they’d have to go back through each of the paths to test his new idea.

“I have a decent memory.”

“Decent, huh?” Cole said, walking over to the first entrance. “How many of the paths led to this entrance?”

“Three.”

“And that one?” Cole asked, pointing to the second entrance as he moved the first sconce to the groove marked with a three.

“One.”

Going around the room, Cole adjusted the sconces to point to the number reflecting the number of paths leading to their entrance. This was the only logical option Cole could come up with, as he couldn’t find any other relevant use for the numbers.

“What about this one?” Cole asked, pointing to the seventh sconce.

“Four paths lead there,” Lucy replied.

Cole moved this last sconce into place. He stepped back, waiting for something to happen. Already knowing the position for the eighth path was zero, he didn’t have to move it. A few seconds passed. Cole waited patiently, but seconds only turned to minutes as nothing notable happened.

“None of the paths went to this one, right?” Cole asked, pointing to the eighth entrance.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Lucy said.

Was I wrong, then? Cole asked himself. He couldn’t think of anything else to solve their predicament. Having faith in Lucy’s memory, Cole didn’t want to bother with the idea of recounting which paths lead where if he didn’t have to. It was possible that the paths that lead back to their own entrance didn’t count, and it was an easy enough idea for Cole to test.

Unfortunately, this yielded the same result. However, it did still remain odd how the paths lead back to themselves. Cole thought this over as he readjusted the position of the two sconces he’d changed. It probably wouldn’t work, but Cole had another idea.

“I’m gonna go back to the first entrance,” Cole said, keeping Lucy informed.

“Good luck,” Lucy said, adding an additional ball of ice into her juggling.

This time, Lucy didn’t bother to follow along. Cole jogged through the first entrance, hastily making his way to the intersection at its end. Instead of taking either path, Cole turned around. If taking the left lead back to the same entrance, then where would going back the way he came take him? Cole made sure he was standing in the middle of the intersection before testing his idea, as he still wasn’t sure how this strange dungeon worked.

As he came to exit back into the room, Cole smiled to see no cube in front of him. Instead of being taken back to the first entrance, he’d been brought to the third. Placing his hand on its sconce, Cole pulled the entrance’s indicator to read five instead of four. Lucy watched as he repeated the process for each of the entrances.

Cole exited the last entrance, having come from the eighth. Eagerly moving its indicator to the subsequent groove, Cole waited for something to happen. He’d discovered something new, but there was no telling whether or not this would be the last step.

Right when Cole began to consider alternative options, something strange happened. The dimly lit torched erupted into large, blue flames. The change in color left the room lit brightly with strong shades of blue. Cole took this as an indication of his success in solving the puzzle, waiting to see if they’d be presented with the amulet.

After waiting for a short period of time, Cole walked over to the pedestal. The amulet was still missing, meaning there was something left to do. Cole looked around for anything that looked new, but all he could discern were the newly flared torches.

“Let’s see if there’s anything different in each of the paths,” Cole said, grabbing the closest torch.

He walked over the third entrance, as that was where Lucy had wandered to while concentrated on the several balls she juggled. Together, they made their way back into the darkness. They walked for a while, no longer confronted with a split in their path. Instead, the passage continued onward, revealing a faint light off in the distance. Cole hoped they wouldn’t have to repeat the same process for another room, but was glad enough to have made some form of progress.

As Lucy and Cole neared the source of this new light, they saw a new cavernous opening. Unlike the first room, the only entrance was the one they were coming from. The walls were more jagged as well, reaching up into a concave ceiling.

Looking across the room, there was someone already there. Lying on the ground, there was a girl who looked a couple years younger than Cole. Her head rested against a small sack as she laid asleep. Lucy and Cole reached the center of the room before deciding how to proceed.

“We should wake her up, right?” Cole asked

“That’d be best,” Lucy replied.

“Okay.”

Cole waited patiently, as he’d expected Lucy to take the lead. However, Lucy continued to concentrate on juggling, seemingly expecting the same of him. Cole hadn’t expected Lucy to be such an avid juggler. She’d started at just three, but was easily handling five as they’d made their way through the tunnel.

Smiling awkwardly, Cole got Lucy’s attention before gesturing towards the girl. He figured it’d be less weird if Lucy were the one waking her up.

“Alright,” Lucy said, allowing the balls of ice to drop to the floor.

Lucy bent down next to the girl, vigorously shaking her shoulder, holding little back. Cole couldn’t help but chuckle at the strange sight. It looked like Lucy was shaking down a freshman for lunch money.

“Hu-what?” The girl said, abruptly waking up.

“Where’s the amulet?” Lucy asked, continuing to shake her shoulder

“Who are you? How’d you even get here?” The girl asked, ignoring Lucy’s question. “And stop shaking me!”

“We’re looking for an amulet,” Lucy said, removing her hand. “Have you seen an amulet?”

“No, jeez.” The girl replied, looking back and forth between Cole and Lucy. “Are you two climbing The Tower as well?”

“Yeah,” Cole said. “We just cleared part of the trial. I’m Cole and she’s Lucy. It’s nice to meet you…”

“My name’s Kate. Let me guess. You two had to choose between eight paths and eventually found your way here.”

“Yeah,” Cole said. “You had to do the same?”

“Yup.”

Cole wasn’t expecting to run into another adventurer so soon after clearing the first stage of the trial.

“Well,” Kate said, “be ready to stay here for a while.”

“Why?” Cole asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” She sighed. “We’re trapped.”