Morgan got up and helped me haul the rope back in as quickly as we could. At last the other end emerged from the hole. Kenji was not there, obviously, but something else was. A glove. Someone had tied a brown leather glove to the end of the rope.

Morgan untied the glove and held it out. “This is odd.”

Sigrid had noticed what we were doing and landed beside us, her wings retracting back into the armor. She looked at the glove. “What’s that?”

“It’s a message,” I said. “From Kenji.”

“Why would he send us his glove?”

“It’s not his,” I said. “This is brown. He wore nothing but black.”

“So whose is it?”

“Probably belonged to whoever Kenji found and killed when he made it out.”

“I see,” Sigrid said. “He’s letting us know he got out. Clever Kenji.”

I took the glove and All Shall Be Revealed’d it. Nothing, just a regular old glove. I reached inside and looked for any markings. Nothing.

“So what do we do now?” Morgan said. “Are we supposed to follow him?”

“If we were smart we would’ve figured that out before letting him scamper off into the hole,” Sigrid said. “We’re too rushy with things.”

“I think we should wait,” I said. “Stay here a while and wait for Kenji to either come back the way he left or make his way through the labyrinth again and let us out.”

“Either one seems possible,” Morgan said. “He’s a very capable youngster.”

“Quiet though,” Sigrid said.

“In every sense of the word,” Morgan said.

“Well, since we have time to kill...” Sigrid said, and began stuffing her face with food again, no doubt preparing for more flight practice. I couldn’t blame her. If I could fly I’d spend as much time in the air as I could too.

I couldn’t remember the armor’s other power so I used All Shall Be Revealed on it again and was surprised to see a change in its description.

“Hey Sigrid,” I said. “Check out your armor’s Status.”

“Why? I saw it when I put it on.”

“Just trust me.”

“What the what?” Sigrid shrieked. “Hero?”

“I found that part a bit presumptuous myself,” I said, “but I think time will prove it right.”

“What’re you talking about?” Morgan said. “Let me see.” Sigrid shared the armor’s status with Morgan. “That is so cool!”

Sigrid Sorrensen’s Pegasus Armor Crafted in adamantium by the celebrated artisans of the Elohim, this legendary armor was originally made as a gift for the great Hero from the Elven Kingdom of the Eastern Forest, Elda Wildflower. With superior strength and durability offering tremendous protection, it also bestows the wearer the ability to sprout feathered wings. It now belongs to the Hero from Toronto, Sigrid Sorrensen. Powers:

Justice From Above - Fly using the armor’s wings

Back Off - Flap the armor’s wings to produce a wind barrier

Morgan and I were kind of worried that Sigrid was going to gobble up all our provisions, so we had lunch with her.

“There’s plenty of water here, but should we be concerned about running out of food?” Sigrid said.

“We’re good,” I said. “I did say that the bag of rats has many uses.”

“I hope you’re implying we use them as bait to catch something else to eat,” Morgan said.

“Use them as bait, eh?” I said. “Thanks, you just added one more use to the rat-bag.”

“Try again,” Morgan said. “I am not eating rats.”

"Don't worry," I said. "I lost my rats in the pit trap. We're on our own now." My eyes wandered over the shed where we’d stacked the dead bodies to get them out of the way. “I wonder how Flesh Golems taste?”

Morgan shuddered. “Don’t even joke about that.”

I just smiled at her and chewed my war pig sandwich.

After that I ran them through a few crossbow lessons before we all agreed that all work and no play makes Jack a drag to be around and we should take advantage of what the expansive grotto had to offer. We relaxed for a while on the soft pink sand beside the pool, but Sigrid quickly grew bored and left to try out some aerial tricks and practice throwing spears in mid-flight. Morgan and I stayed on the beach and chatted some more.

The Gorgon had enjoyed her creature comforts so there was a luxurious lounge chair set up on the beach, but there was only one, of course, so I laid back on the warm sand gazing up at the twinkly crystals in the domed ceiling while Morgan lounged. This time it was my turn to share, so I told her pretty much everything I’d told Sigrid and Jane about myself. All the sordid details. It helped that I couldn’t see her as I talked.

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To her credit, Morgan listened attentively, asked insightful, provocative questions, and accepted everything I said with no apparent judgment. And best of all, she kept talking to me once I’d finished. Actually, I’m not sure if that’s to her credit or not; any rational woman would have fled screaming from such a broken man.

We were just getting antsy to the point of sending someone else into the hole in the wall when finally the door opened. Kenji had returned, and he brought reinforcements. Along the way he’d picked up a familiar scent and found more of our group: Arthur, Bruce, Kay, Byron, and Andy. This time, Kenji made sure to prop the door open.

Arthur’s group was eager to tell us about how they’d found and slain the Chimera. It was in a room that sounded a lot like the Gorgon’s, at least in size. That’s where the similarities ended. Where the Gorgon lived in a place that looked like an expensive Caribbean vacation destination, the way they described the Chimera’s lair it sounded like the same island after being ravaged by a hurricane.

“The ground was rocky and uneven,” Arthur said, “as though some drunk teenager had stolen a backhoe and used it to blindly dig random holes, but that worked to our advantage. It gave us places to hide and avoid the fire breath. Which was good, because we totally lost the element of surprise when we triggered a bell alarm at the door.”

Under Arthur’s leadership, they had worked together to overcome the dangerous boss-level creature and came away with its heart and a big red mana crystal like the one we found in the Gorgon. But they’d definitely had to work for it. Even before I heard the story I knew they’d been in one hell of a tussle, they were still covered in wounds. Nina, our only healer, wasn’t with them. I did my best to patch them up with Laying On Hands, but even after that none of them were at full health.

After the fight with the Chimera they’d just been wandering aimlessly through the labyrinth until Kenji found them and led them to us.

“But let’s hear about how you four ended up in this oasis,” Arthur said.

“Actually there were five of us,” Sigrid said.

Arthur peered around looking for the missing teammate. “Five? Who else?”

“Did Kenji tell you anything at all about what happened to us?” I said.

“No, he barely said a peep, only that he’d lead us to you.”

“Oh. Well, um, Lancelot was with us too.”

“Lance is with you?” Arthur looked around for him. “Where is he?”

“In my inventory,” Morgan said.

“What? Is there even air in there? Can he breathe?”

“Don’t worry about that, it’s fine. Well, not fine, really. He’s stone.”

“He’s stoned?” Kay said, looking interested. “Where did you find drugs?”

“No, he’s stone," Morgan said. "As in, turned to stone. But at least he doesn’t need to breathe.”

“What are you talking about?” Arthur said.

“We met the Gorgon,” Morgan said.

We let Morgan tell the story of our adventure. They were upset about Lancelot, of course, but impressed by how we’d taken down the Gorgon, and astounded when Sigrid demonstrated her new armor.

Morgan pulled the Knight Vice-Commander's Longsword out of her inventory and handed it to her brother.

“Here,” she said.

Arthur took the blade and swung it a few times. “Nice balance.” I could tell by the way his eyes seemed to focus on something that wasn’t there that he was checking its status. He whistled through his teeth. “Wow, thank you.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Morgan said. “That is for Lancelot, but you may as well use it in the meantime.”

Arthur pouted. “Fine. I guess that’s fair.”

“When you get killed by a monster you can get first dibs on its loot,” she said. “But don’t you dare get yourself killed or I’ll...”

“Or you’ll what? What will you do to me? I’ll already be dead.”

“I’ll wait until the moment you respawn then I’ll kill you again. More painfully.”

“This is so unfair,” Andy said. “We didn’t get any loot off the Chimera.”

“Maybe your treasure chest was hidden under the rubble,” Sigrid said.

“We are so going back later,” Andy said. “With shovels.”

While all this was going on I noticed Kenji was acting strange. He seemed jittery, and was making no effort to hide like he normally did.

“I’d like to know what happened to Kenji after he left us,” I said.

All eyes turned to the teenager. His eyes turned to me, growing wide. I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging nod.

“Well," he said, "just when I thought I might get stuck in the hole it opened up into this, like, underground lake in a big cave with an island in the middle of it but I saw something big moving in the water so I didn’t go check out the island and then I saw a few tunnels way up high in the cave so I climbed up, sniffed out the best one, and followed it — well, after I took out some giant bats that attacked me first when I got close to it and all I could think about was how Chika would go crazy because she's all scared of bats but they weren't so tough — so then I climbed into the tunnel and it was weird, like, not like the one I had to crawl through which was all rough and stuff, this one was almost completely round and kinda smooth, which I soon discovered was because it was made by a really big worm and I had to kill a couple of those which was a lot tougher because they were nasty and Chika would've hated them too because she also doesn't like bugs and worms and stuff either, then there was a nest of these big centipedes — why does everything have to be so big? — and I'm kind of glad Chika didn't have to see because if there's one thing she hates even worse than creepy crawly worms are bugs with lots of legs, and then finally I hit another much smaller cave with a pond in it and a narrow tunnel leading straight up. There was a rope hanging down in this tunnel with a bucket at the end so I figured it was being used as a well, you know? And I could smell something cooking up above so I climbed up and found these two monsters, I don’t know what they were, they were like those orcs but different, and they were the ones cooking something over a fire so I got rid of them and figured I ought to do something to let you guys know I was okay so I took one of their gloves and tied it to the rope. Then I saw they were cooking one of those big centipedes and it smelled good and I was pretty hungry so I ate some and it wasn't so bad, just a bit stringy but better than Chika’s cooking anyway so then I left that place and got back into the labyrinth. It took me a while to catch a scent and knew at once it was these guys so I tracked them down and then I smelled the flowers and here we are.”

Everyone stood there dazed. “Holy hell,” Sigrid said, which pretty much summed up how we were all feeling.

I had half-expected him to use his powers to dissolve into the ether or whatever he did when he used his stealth, but he was so excited and proud that even he managed to overcome his shyness to tell the story of his adventure himself. The torrent of words that spewed out of him shocked the hell out of me, not only because it was quiet little Kenji saying all this, but also because these were all the things that happened to him while some of us were having snacks and hanging out on the beach. Plus, I had no idea before this what a siscon he was.

“Oh, here,” Kenji said. “I took these.” He dug his hand into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a few handfuls of mana crystals he’d taken from all the monsters he killed. There were a lot of them, a few white, some yellow, and a couple of green crystals.

“The green ones were the worms. They were really nasty.”