I had to pause for a moment to take in everything as I stood in the middle of what I’d assumed was Ethan’s tent. In addition to the machines and windows into the world immediately outside, I had to take a moment to think about what had been happening. I’d escaped from a faerie circle and while I will always say it was my genius and ingenuity that let me escape, I had no memory of how or what I did to escape. Then I discovered hunger that I had no control over and food that didn’t fix that problem. Which led me to meeting Ethan and getting set up here.

There were the faeries and the elves, forest animals, Borrowind the bear and Wander the gnome. There were more than that, which gave me some hope to recover my magic and powers, but there was nothing certain. The reason I was in Ethan’s structure, what I thought had been a tent, was the result of me agreeing to use a special sword to separate his head from his body. His head had unexpectedly burst into flames.

And now I was in Ethan’s space and feeling violated because he could see into my tent and around my tent and there was a better than even chance he’d known I’d left the tent the second and third night and had talked to a jackalope on the first night. While escaping a faerie circle was definitely a highlight in all of this, seeing and speaking to a jackalope was right up there with first time screwing around with the lives of a new monarchy or that one time, in the woods, where I changed an idiots head into that of a donkey and made this really hot chick fall in love with him.

Now, though, I was alone and wondering what to do next. Even though I was in Ethan’s space, there was nowhere I could see where someone would comfortably go to sleep and rest. I’m not sure that sounds as surprising as it was to me, but it was surprising and I quickly realized I needed to dig around a bit to figure out what I was missing.

I adjusted my satchel and did a three-sixty and then …

“What’re you doing?” Faelix asked, suddenly appearing in front of me.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Checking on you. Figured, since I didn’t hear any of the queen’s royal guard or Moment’s elite faerie fighting force, it was safe to come out and see what was going on.

“You were in my bag?”

“The whole time. Well, technically, not the whole time. I ducked into your little pocket space and hid inside there while the faerie guard was inspecting your bag. We really need to talk about what you keep in there. Anyway, I waited inside there until everyone left and then kept waiting until it was quiet and clear.”

“How in the ever loving faerie realm did you get into my personal space?” I asked, my tone very flat and dangerous.

“What?” Faelix asked, a puckish smile on his face. “Dimensional spaces are easy to get into.”

“No, they’re not,” I said. “That’s the exact opposite of what personal dimensional spaces are supposed to work.”

Faelix just shrugged his shoulders and took off flying around the room, the equipment, everything. “Technology was not this advanced before we got trapped,” he said landing in front of one of the windows.

“Your know what these things are?” I asked. A thrill of excitement shooting through me.

“I’m guessing they’re some kind of computational device. That one is connected to security cameras. That one over there is processing data. That one,” Faelix flew from one window machine to a different one, “looks like real-time communications between this place and somewhere else.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“That sounds like something we should check out,” I said.

“Not yet,” he said and flew toward me, his arms gesturing for me to get back. “There’s a time lock and I’m guessing a set of proximity sensors just in case. Whoever’s on the other end isn’t expecting anyone until later and even then, it looks like more of a data connection on top of text only communication. See those numbers there! That’s the time your robot-monster friend is supposed to check in.”

“How do you know all of this?” I asked.

“I don’t have a choice but to know all these things,” he said. “It’s a curse.”

I wanted to explore the idea of a male faerie being cursed or under the influence of a curse, but that wasn’t going to happen. Right now. Instead, Faelix took off from where he was, I was realizing he was almost always in motion, and pointed out a door I hadn’t noticed on first examination of the room. In my defense, the door was built into the wall and was flush with the surface and outside of a small, square panel next to it, there was no other indication that it might be a door.

Faelix hovered in front of the panel and after a moment quickly touched seven of the buttons, all with different symbols on them, before the door made a hissing sound and popped open. He motioned me over and I pulled the door the rest of the way open revealing a staircase that led down.

“What’s down there?” I asked, feeling a subtle breeze of cold air play over my skin.

At any other time, I might have allowed the interplay to get me all hot and bothered, but this wasn’t that kind of situation and while I did have questions to pelt Faelix with, this wasn’t the time for that either.

“No idea,” Faelix said. “My guess is it’s the next step in figuring out the barrier around the forest and fixing stuff.”

“Not exactly helpful,” I said.

“Who said anything about being helpful. My goal is to get free and in order to do that I have to get rid of the barrier and probably fight an army of faeries and convince my mom this is for the best and I think four or five other things. All of which come after the barrier.”

“Barrier first,” I said.

“Succinct,” he said and led the way down the stairs.

Without warning, lights started turning on giving us a view of where we were going. The stairs circled down far longer than I thought was appropriate. When we got to the bottom there was yet another door. This one had a handle and wasn’t as secured as the first door and when I pushed it open Faelix and I entered a room that never really lit up, but the lights seemed to grow slightly brighter showing us a room filled with tall tubes filled with liquid and other things.

The door fell shut with a subtle vacuum sound and we were inside no closer to understanding what we were experiencing than before we’d come down the stairs.

“This place is a lot bigger than I thought it would be,” I said.

“That’s often the case when exploring places like this,” Faelix said. “The impetus on the outside is to minimize the size and extent of what is hidden on the inside. Depending on how that’s done, there could be some science magic involved, otherwise it’s best to just go with it. Flow with the flow, if you know what I mean.”

“Maybe in time,” I said. “Knowing what you mean. Right now what I need to know is what all of this is.”

“That, too, takes time,” Faelix said.

“Time for what?”

“The primordial ooze of understanding and intelligence that is ever present in the world all around us,” he said.

Again, I had no idea what Faelix was talking about, but he seemed to know what he was saying and at this point I was willing to follow Faelix over trying to figure out everything on my own.

Faelix, for his part, flew around the room and the tanks, taking them in as he trailed light in circles and leminscapes in overlapping and dizzying patterns. He’d pause on occasion and look closely at different things, mostly the tanks, and then head off to a different part of the room. I considered doing my own investigation, there were plenty of places where I could allow my natural curiosity and inclination to take over, but didn’t because I’m also lazy when I can be.

Instead, I found a chair and sat down and allowed myself to dream of better things.