Saturday, Felicity and I headed back out into the middle of nowhere. "I've been doing some research," Felicity mentioned while I drove. "The assassination of the military governor of New Respite as a touchpoint at the start of the Chaos War is a real event in our history, but the details don't line up with Gareth's version at all."

"What happened?"

"For starters, he wasn't passed out in the streets, and it wasn't an adventurer who did it. Or a man for that matter. Happened in broad daylight as he was holding court. A peasant woman came seeking relief from the bandits who were pillaging her homestead. She begged permission to approach the governor, which was granted. Knelt before him, kissed his feet as per the custom he had instituted — real charming guy, huh? — and then suddenly pulled a knife out of her cloak and slashed his femoral artery. Cried out 'now the bandits' chief falls' as he was bleeding out. His soldiers killed her but it was too late to save the governor, and healers couldn't get to him because the whole scene touched off a riot. Apparently he'd spent years making himself distinctly unpopular in the city."

"Wow, that's a pretty wild story. I did notice he said the war raged for thirty years; wasn't our version closer to fifty?"

"Fifty-three," she said. "And there was no corrupt empire beforehand; the thirty kingdoms had various sets of alliances between them but they weren't united into a whole by any means."

"Yeah, I knew that much. So we're back to where we started: the more we learn about Gareth, the less any of it makes sense."

"Except the bits that make all too much sense, like him turning off his phone's GSP once we told him how it works."

"Yeah. You sure you can find the way back to the dungeon if he's not around?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Don't worry so much, Brad!"

"Sorry." We drove in silence for a few more miles before I asked, "you know what the worst part is, though?"

"Hmm?"

"Those stone cats. Even after they reacted badly to my attempt to cheese the place, my mind just won't quit thinking about other clever strategies that would probably just make everything worse."

She just laughed softly and shook her head. "Come on, get your head in the game. We're almost there."

A bit further down the road and I pulled off and parked the car again, about the same place as last time. A few minutes' wait as Felicity put her armor on, and we headed into the woods. She had to scare off a few monsters again, but nothing too threatening, and we were probably two-thirds of the way to the big tree when Gareth stepped into view. "You return," he said. "Bearing good news?"

"Possibly," I said. "I think the books on one shelf might be the key to the books on the other. There's a different method where the key isn't small, it's the same size as the message. And we wanted to try it out."

Meranas gave a slow nod. "Very well, I shall see you back to the library."

"Also," I asked as we walked, "does the name Terenaþ mean anything to you?"

He stumbled in his stride, hand going out to catch himself against a tree, and his voice changed. "My servant Terenaþ is sent unto your realm with a quest of the greatest urgency. Give him aid and you shall be blessed."

Then he was himself again. "Terenaþ? The name is not familiar. Is that a saint from your time?" He noticed the looks we were both giving him. "What is it?"

"You just delivered a Guidance," Felicity said. She repeated the words back to him.

Gareth scowled at her. "And who is this Terenaþ?"

"A Celestial," I said. "He claims to be of the Court of Meþas. He was in the dungeon the day I found you; by his actions I can only assume he looking for your prison. But he fell in battle against the dungeon's boss. He recently returned to the Prime Material, and he spoke to me. He says he wants to find you, but he wouldn't tell me what for."

"That does not sound very trustworthy," he mused. "I certainly hope you did not tell him where to find me."

"I didn't."

"Thank you. Perhaps we should meet, when I have a better understanding of the state of affairs. But not now."

Felicity looked over at him. "Are you asking Brad to directly disobey a Guidance from his god? One that you yourself delivered?"

"I am not saying not to do it; I am saying 'not yet.' I know not your god; why should I have dealings with him or his court when I still do not even know what has become of my gods?"

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"I'm sorry I even brought it up," I said. "Can we please just keep going?" Last thing I wanted was some þeological dispute breaking out between those two.

"I agree," Gareth said, resuming the walk towards the dungeon. I followed, and Felicity brought up the rear in an uncharacteristically sullen silence.

We made it down into the dungeon without incident, and soon arrived at the stone cats' room. Gareth looked at me. "Since you were here, I have been looking at this room differently. I've tried any number of ways to avoid or deal with the panthers, from bringing small rodents down to distract them with softer prey, to creating an illusion of myself that would always watch the room closely, to binding the statues with rope. None of it ever worked."

He held up his spear. "But this did." The weapon began to glow a dull, rusty orange color for a few seconds, before he called out a war cry and stomped his foot on the ground. An explosive wave of energy shot out, washing over the room and shattering the pillars and the cat statues atop them.

I just stood there frozen for a moment, gawking at the casual display of a terrifying amount of power. Felicity let out a quiet "wow!" and then, a few moments later, "what's that technique even called?"

"Soulwave," he said. "Difficult to learn and to use effectively, and in all truth probably wasted on such meager foes, but it's not as if I will have any demands on my higher slots today."

We walked with him into the library, and I took my rune tablet out of my spatial bag and set it up, connecting a cheap oculus I'd purchased. "All right. Let's see if we came all the way out here for nothing." I grabbed a random book off the nearby shelf, then walked over to the other one and started looking for its counterpart. It took a bit of searching, but soon enough I found one that looked like an exact match. Opening them up just to confirm one minor doubt, I saw that both books were filled with incomprehensible random junk, but different incomprehensible random junk; they were not two copies of the same volume.

I held the first page up to the oculus and let it acquire the image and translate it to text, then did the same for its counterpart on the second book. Then I just waited while it ran through a few dozen permutations of possible ways to decrypt the information, projecting several pages of gibberish, and one that looked consistent.

At least, it was all one script and seemed to have some sort of meaningful flow to it. Not that I could read a word of it. "Can either of you tell what this says?"

Felicity looked at it. "That's Goblic," she said. I can't really read it, but it's related to Kobol. Let's see, this starts with a number, a big one. Then it says 'book of.' Of... something. Then this looks like a proper name, and then... sorry, I'm really not good with Goblic. But... this works! You did it, Brad!"

We checked the next few pages, but they were all Goblic. "All right, let's find another book," I said. "Hope they don't all come out Goblic." The next one wasn't, but it looked to be Deep Dwarvish, which none of us could read. The third one... no idea. Fourth looked like Jade Elvish, but the fifth was in Common!

"What the Abyss is this?" I muttered as I looked at the words.

The three hundred forty-nine millionth, one hundred fifty-five thousandth, nine hundred forty-eighth Volume of the Book of the Forsaken. Heldd Ilskar, son of Dhas Ilskar.

It was a... biography. It told of Heldd's birth to a nomadic tribe of the Arifold Steppes. The next few pages spoke of his childhood. Skipping forward, he didn't appear to have been anyone particularly notable. Curious, I turned to the last page, which spoke of his death from old age, attended by his family. It ended on an ominous note:

Once Heldd existed. His descendants, living and dead, numbered five hundred eighteen. All of them exist no longer, blotted out from reality, present and past. They are remembered only in these shattered pages.

"O...kay. Nothing fundamentally disturbing about that, is there?" I asked.

"There have not been nomads living on the Arifold Steppes in centuries, even from my perspective," Gareth said. "If this man ever did live, it was long ago."

With renewed curiosity mixed with a bit of dread, we began looking through the rest of the books. I started to categorize one of the bookshelves, sorting the books by color and then by size within the same color. Gareth would find a book from the other shelf and locate its match, and Felicity worked to decode it. We didn't find many that were comprehensible to us, but of the ones that we could read, they all looked to follow the same pattern. A numbered volume of "the Book of the Forsaken," a rather dry biographical account of their life, and a concluding note that they and all their descendants had been somehow annihilated, "blotted out from reality, present and past," whatever that meant, only remembered in this increasingly creepy library.

"OK, seriously. What the Abyss is this place?" I asked after we'd gotten half a dozen books that were comprehensible to us. "Who is being remembered here? Are they real people? Is this dungeon's core just playing an elaborate, sick prank on us?"

Felicity frowned. "It says that this one was a follower of Beriþarin. I've never heard of a deity by that name."

Gareth looked over at her. "I have. Beriþarin was the God of Orcs, from my time."

She checked the next page. "Are you sure? She seemed to be someone who fought against orcs, an elven Paragon."

He looked frustrated at those words. "Then even restored to legibility, this is a library of nonsense. It does not seem that these books hold anything of value."

"I'm not sure," Felicity says. "There's a feeling of... purpose, I suppose. Of real intent to all this."

"I think you might be right," I said, "but it feels like we're missing some vital context. Without that, I'm not sure any of it will truly make sense."

"Do you think we could find the context on another floor?" Felicity asked Gareth.

"I have explored seven floors of this dungeon. There are oddities here and there, but nothing I have yet seen that would bring order to this chaos."

She nodded. "Well, let's proceed to the next floor then. Maybe Brad or I will notice something."

We made our way down the Corridor of Ruins and made short work of the floor boss, then climbed down the staircase to the second floor.

Most dungeons have some sort of theme to them. This one, though, the second floor looked completely unlike the first. Unlike a dungeon at all, for that matter. The stairs led down to a pier of sorts, with a sailboat tied up at the end. But there was no water. Or stone. We seemed to be suspended in some vast, open sky, with clouds drifting by in the distance. Looking down, there was no land; looking up I could see no sun.

"Welcome to the Endless Expanse," Gareth said.