"A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze."

― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

"This way, let's go!"

Dante picked his way through the chains like a drunk, each step taken at random. Ven suppressed his frown and followed, careful to stay within the man's purple shield.

"Can't we just go straight..."

"That's boring," Dante laughed, teeth exposed in a freakish smile. "The best journeys take a crooked path!"

"Yeah, no," Ven snorted. "The best journeys might be crooked and twisted, but this is a walk, not an adventure."

"Fair point!" Dante snatched Ven up by the hood of his robe. "Let's take the shortest path!"

The world streaked, stretched into lines of spotted light. Sanity returned with a retch of horror as Ven fought to keep down his lunch. They stood before a cocoon of chains, a solid lump that radiated a brilliant light.

"Here you are" Dante dusted Ven off. "Now I'll take my leave!"

The bizarre man vanished, along with his protective shield. The chains rustled, but didn't advance, held back by the dragon's light.

"Dante you bastard," Ven shouted into the forest of metal. "We had a deal!"

"Indeed we did," The man's voice appeared from the air. "And now it's done!"

"Done my ass, get back here!"

"I promised you passage to the dragon, nothing more," Dante laughed. "But I'll be waiting... if you make it back outside!"

"Come on!" Ven stomped his foot in the air. "We could make another deal!"

"I wouldn't..." A voice smoothed Ven's rage, a soft flow of the freshest stream. "You're lucky to have survived one encounter with The Wanderer, it's better not to test your luck."

"The Wanderer?" Ven turned to the luminous cocoon. As the woman spoke it dimmed to a subtle glow, no longer a mighty beacon.

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"Dante has been in this place longer than I have," The dragon whispered. "He might be older than the current Lord of Hell."

"Well, he's very annoying," Ven shrugged as he approached the bundle of chains. "So... how do I get you out of here?"

The dragon was still hidden, sealed behind the ravenous chains. He could see no way to free the beast, not without touching the metal.

"Move around, there's a lock..."

Ven obeyed, to find a lock the size of a man, fused with the black-iron chains. Unassuming and plain, the dull steel gave off an air of insignificance.

"Destroy it..."

Ven frowned. Such a thing was easy to say. This lock might seem harmless, but it survived contact with the chains. He drew a stylus from his pouch, an aid to his focus as he began to draw on the air.

Come on runes, don't fail me now!

Several hundred thousand years of practice had forced mastery upon him, yet... each time he drew there was a hole in his gut. The runes he'd learned were incomplete, Cain's beloved spells were the scratches of children.

A vast collection of silver-white symbols slid and twisted, assembled into a single, ominous word. Ven smiled, a flick of his wrist enough to finish the work.

"Open."

The murmur escaped his lips, and a trumpet sounded. The rumble of the world as it turned its eyes to his work. The chains around the rune pressed back, spayed apart by its intangible ripple.

A single concept seems to be more effective than a complex spell...

He should have realized it before. Ooulin's mighty spell was a construct that formed a single rune. His work had to be the same. His useless teacher had taught him nothing beyond the basics, all he'd wanted was for Ven to repeat his one-off spell.

The rune pressed to the lock and the world howled. A dirge that slipped past his guard and rattled his soul. Raised into the air, closed tight against the world's demand, the huge lock resisted.

A black rune rose, pressed against Ven's spell. The construction twisted the eye, but his knowledge was enough to read it. The word 'Closed' engaged in a battle with his hand-crafted message.

"No you don't..."

Ven returned his stylus to its place and extended his aura. The years spent under Cain's tender care had brought another benefit, his aura had grown. A vast storm front, darker than the depths of space, poured from his shoulders. The dense black mist charged, hungry for the new energy within the enemy rune.

A slither, a second of reversed flow, twitched his head. The chains had tried to soak up his aura. Their failure brought a grin to Ven's face.

"If you can't eat me, then I can eat you!"

The black clouds sank their teeth into the lock's runic display, a steady flow of energy that caused the magical object to groan. Corrosion spread like a cancer, its surface reduced to a ruddy copper.

Ven's rune had no more opposition to its slow crawl. Determined and steady, it touched its face to the shadow-bound lock.

A shriek, the wrathful bellow of a man betrayed. The last gasp of the tattered device. It exploded in a rusted mist, ashes, and bitter rumbles were all that remained. The eyes of the world turned away, and Ven's rune faded to nothing.

"I win, you piece of... ough, ough!"

A fine spray of blood lept from his mouth alongside his cough. The strain of the world's will was still a bit much for him. Ven traded some of his lifespan for his spell, a cost no runemaster could avoid. Ooulin had done much more, but it had also turned him into a husk.

"FINALLY!"

The pillar of light soared anew, brighter than the sun. The mountain of tangled chains separated at their links, shredded by an explosive force. The wings of a dragon, longer than the breadth of the sky, unfolded around Ven like a storm.

"WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG!"

An eye, larger than a small moon, loomed above like a natural disaster. Ven's voice was lost as he gaped up at the behemoth. Something that big shouldn't have fit inside the cocoon... The dragon ignored Ven's paralysis and continued her complaint.

"I knew my descendants would come eventually, but how many millennia does it take to mount a rescue expedition?"