Daniel looked at the four identical entrances and fought against his own impatience.

bizz. buzz. buzz.

The lighting rods continued to flicker, and the creatures in pursuit drew nearer.

He needed more time. He took out another fire flower, sad as he had but two after this. The gentle little flower looked so small, and it barely felt warmer than an ordinary flower.

But he knew better. If the petals were torn, flaming ichor would flow forth. With the correct touch of magic, those flames could be compressed and explode. But there were many ways to skin a cat and many ways to use a fire flower.

As the surging oozing fluid, and the chaos creatures in the shadows and the corner of his eyes drew near, as the long-limb metal creatures chirped and sped to bridge the gap, Daniel tore the silken petal of the fire flower.

Golden light bloomed inside, gentle and flowing.

Instead of a rapid explosion, fire flowers could also be drawn out for sustained burn. More magic, for more care and focus was required. The Servant Branch had only a few handfuls of magic, and he had already used at least half of it. But skill would save him where volume had failed.

It took more magic for him to send the fire out around him, blocking the doorway. His head gave a light little flutter, and his vision swam, but then the magic took and was steady.

The creatures hunting him froze and paused, held back by the sparkling flames outside this antenchamber.

Buzz. Buzz. Pop. went the overhead lighting rods. The golden fire had cast some real warmth into this space at last, and the terrible noise seemed repressed by the flames.

Time to find the correct room. He truly was set to his path.

Which room was the Eastern Red room?

Four hallways led into this octagonal room along alternating walls, and the four rooms spilled out. Each room was large at the beginning, massive, then the chamber became narrow and narrower until it tapered off to the hallway that led away to a straight passage.

In the past, he had wondered in the past why the Eastern Red room seemed very much a great triangle laid on its side.

Bizz. Buzz. Bizz.

The light overhead sparked and flashed as he drew closer to one of the rooms.

He did not draw into large room before him, but just searched for a clue. It was giant, spacious, and yet without its native color completely wrong. Daniel spied the doorway in the back that, if this was the Eastern Red room, would lead to the Owl's Scope room. But if it was, for example, the Southern Green room, then it would lead an old unused gibabears chambers.

Sound behind him made Daniel stand ready. An adventurous long limbed metal creature approached from the embargoed doorway. Daniel reinforced the fire, feeling his own head grow faint and his body sway. But the flames held, and the metal-limbed creature recoiled as the heat intensified. All the metal-limbed creatures drew back, but the weight of the featureless gazes rested heavily upon him through the flames.

"Hurry up, Elswith," he muttered to himself.

How to tell which room mirrored the real Eastern Red room?

Fast steps took him across the antechamber and into the opposite entranceway. The echoing chamber beyond seemed as though he had not traveled anywhere, with identical pillars and columns of yellow-papered walls. The walls subtly tapered until they pinched at the far end leading to a doorway. The two rooms seemed truly identical. Perhaps there was only one room and someone had copied it three times!

It was strange, being in the Dungeon copy of the Stable.

The rooms had not moved a single time while Daniel was here. The hallway did not scatter and shift. There was no sense of motion underfoot.

That was another difference between the Stable and this place.

The moist damp carpet felt slick underfoot. Whatever that was, Daniel needed to hurry and get moving. Why had this happened in the Stable? Why not an ordinary building that did not move? He could have found his way through the vast estate of the O'Tells. This Dungeon, despite this section being cast in the same model as the Stable, that it did not move the same way prevented him from being able to move about with confidence.

Some of the dread creatures tried to brave the flames. Unlike the metal creatures, it seemed much more indifferent to the flames. Had Daniel had more time to react, he would have been afraid. But the creature tried to brave the heat too quickly, and Daniel was rewarded with the sight of it catching alit and burning. The shifting mess spluttered and went out, seemingly dead. But much of the heat of the Fire Flower was used up.

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

Flick. Flick. Buzz. Went the lights overhead.

He had to choose the eastern Red room the first time.

Had the Stable ever been set? More akin to a true building than a swirling changing jumble of rooms for creatures...

It was logical, he supposed. There was more order in the early days of the Seelie Court, he knew from history. The First King had united and guided the Fae from tribes of wandering wyldfae into the ordered and mighty Kingdom of the Seelie. The First King had commissioned the forging of the Great Swords. The First King had been a builder. He had built the now-lost Armory, the Grant Stable, and the Keep. These were the first buildings that established his Kingdom.

Daniel looked at the shape of the rooms before him.

He had never truly imagined the Stable as a place that had order. There was never a sense of 'this room is twenty feet from that room'. There was no grid, everything was just wandering ever-changing paths. It was more akin to traveling via the swelling and blustering ocean amid a fleet, where the ships would switch positions and migrate according to each captain's design, all following the same compass but the ocean taking them on varying routes.

Compass...That grabbed his attention...but Daniel lost the flittering thought. A compass would not help him identify his way through the Stable. He needed to find a specific room, not identify North.

But the thread of the idea did not let him go.

Daniel raced across the antechamber, boots kicking up the spray of the damp carpet underfoot, as he compared the rooms.

Each room was the same shape.

He compared the room he was standing in now...the center.

The First King was a builder of great purpose. The Armory had been more than a storehouse of weapons. It had contained the Forge of Altcraft. The Forge had been a masterpiece of engineering and magic joined that has never been replicated. The weapons created in that Forge established the power balance that lasted to this day, untold generations later. The First King built useful, pragmatic places and spaces where great and important works could be accomplished.

But he had also built beautiful places. Ethereal structures with winding serene paths between the trees glowing softly of silver, soaring spires of gold and glass that inspired even the most senior of the Fae, bridges arching like frozen moonlight over chasms dark and deep. The Servants' Keep had gentle elegance and grace, even after centuries of its fine material being stolen and repurposed. His former steward Matheus had once informed young lordling Elswith that there was more attention to detail in a single room of the old King's Keep than all the splendor, over-embellished, rococo, and bedizenedrza of a modern Fae's entire Estate. Each room the First King built had significance and meaning; whether to poetry, fable, literature, music, song, or adventure, did not matter.

Eastern Red room.

Eastern.

East.

Daniel wanted to hit himself. In all his time he never considered whether a room in the Stable was east of another room, because the next day it very well may be north, or south, or west.

Northern Blue room. Western Purple room, Southern Green room, and Eastern Red room.

The First King had not built the Stable to be swollen and shifting, too many rooms jammed inside to ever use it well. He would not have created a building that risked life and limb to traverse it. All that had been added later.

No, when the First King built the Stable, he had built it for a much smaller Seelie kingdom. Four rooms led to four distinct stalls. All the stalls led to creatures that in elden times, would have been the swiftest and most far-reaching. No one rode Owls these days, and Gigabears were a holdover and used only in ceremony. But all those generations ago, they were a symbol of speed and mobility. While Daniel did not know what the other rooms had held, as that knowledge was lost long ago, he was betting it was other creatures that could carry a Fae to any point on the map in short order.

The First King was a builder of beautiful purpose. Whatever the true design of these rooms, the ancient Fae monarch had shaped this section of rooms like the points of a compass rose. The center antechamber was the middle, and each triangle was a point.

Daniel was standing in the center of a compass rose. Just find east and there was his heading! To find east all he had to do was find north.

The next problem...which way was north?

A compass points north. They were not rare, but not exactly common. The fae did not touch iron. Iron made the Law of Fae a liar, as the saying goes. Iron, the ignorer of rules. Iron stole the color of the world and the brightness of the stars. A world of iron was a world of little magic. Even touching iron would be enough to burn the flesh of the Fae.

But other metals worked for compasses. Nickel was the metal of choice for compasses in these parts.

What metal were the long-limbed creatures?

If it was iron, he would be in pain the moment he touched it. If it was a metal that did not react to the pull of the north, then it would have been a waste of time. What were the odds that the long-limbed metal creatures would be the exact material he needed?

Did he need a compass?

Lightning was his one element, the only one he had control over. But when he used lightning he had felt...a pull. Like all around the world there was lightning in the sky, but not lightning. A compass moved north to align with that pull.

Could he find the pull himself? With no metal. Just a sense of north?

Did he have the magic for that?

He had barely any magic left. The flames guarding the doorway were not his fire. He was not making fire. That was the fire flowers. He was using just a little bit of magic to sustain it. If the creatures chasing him had any elemental affinity, they could overcome it.

But what source of lightning did he have? He should have taken an electric eel...

Hindsight is clearer.

He had lightning in a bottle. Esra's crystal goblet was now refilled and ready to go. He pulled it out of his repurposed garment bag. The crystal goblet glowed an electric blue, the crystal itself holding the light.

Daniel had not forgotten about it. In fact, he had considered it first of all. But he had set aside just as swiftly as he had considered it, as it was too gentle, unusable for battle. There was no magical energy in it now. It was being held in suspension, in stasis. The most this power would do was cause an enemy's hair to rise. And considering the enemies attacking him now had no hair, that wouldn't accomplish anything.

The next problem. He could not sustain the fire flowers burning and this at the same time.

He would have to release the fire before he tried to attune to the lightning energy in the crystal goblet. And he had to hope that there was North in this place. That it existed somehow in the physical world.

No time like the present.