Parry had a peculiar time back at Baronston's Adventurer's Guild. The dungeon was so new that no one had yet returned, making his report the first. Then again, he'd only been down there for a day and had visited only one level and managed few significant results. What could he really say that would assist anyone else?

Damn well not going to mention the letter, Parry thought as he described all he could to Guildmaster Kint. She clearly didn't know what to make of his report.

She glanced down at her own notes, then back at the young delver. "To summarize: you took the color teleport, it settled on red--"

"--Cheerful red."

She adjusted her notes, brow wrinkling, but she didn't inquire further. "You visited precisely one level, encountered one monster--a gnoll--disarmed one simple trap and looted one chest, yielding a few coins. I have to ask, if you found it that easy, why not move on to other floors?"

Parry offered what he hoped would look like a naive smile. "I wanted to quit while I was ahead."

The guild master didn't write that down. "Not the sort of spirit one might expect from an adventurer."

"Anything else, Ma'am?"

She shook her head, giving up. From a strong box beside her makeshift desk she pulled two gold coins. "Your bonus for the debrief."

"Thanks."

"I'm also supposed to disburse information to you upon completion of the dungeon. At least, that's what I wrote myself." She still looked baffled at that. "You hardly 'completed' it, but since you don't plan another delve...?" The guild master trailed off.

"No, Ma'am."

"Alright." She read from her own notes, in her own hand, despite no memory of having jotted it down. "'T first, then north, boo gah loo.'"

The boy beamed. "Got it!"

The woman tried to keep her frown, but it wouldn't stick, not against the young adventurer's sunny disposition. "A word of advice: if anyone in the tavern offers you a drink, decline. They're trying to buy early information about the dungeon, and what you have isn't worth the cost of a beer. They'll think you're holding out, and I'm not in the mood to break up a brawl."

"Ah...that makes sense, thanks."

They shook hands.

***

Parry worked in his room through the sunset then burned extra candles, fighting back night-blindness while poring over the papers. He'd stockpiled bread, cheese and a few fruits to keep him going as he memorized.

Styak pushed the pages around with a forepaw. "I can't make heads or tails of most of this."

"Intentionally," Parry muttered. "It's half code and half misinformation. The moment I bring anything out into the world, it's visible by the Creator. For all I know, the bastard is peeking in on us right now."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Wait, what?" The cat raised its hackles.

"I'm ready, I have all the details of this map. Go ahead and eat the memory."

The demon looked around with suspicious eyes but eventually slipped into the boy's mind and found the cell fresh on the surface of that enormous memory landscape. "If only everything were this organized."

Parry shrugged mentally. "Yeah, well, I have no problems remembering my current life, it's the previous ones that get shuffled and deleted." He let out a sigh as the hand-drawn map in his hands suddenly looked unfamiliar to him. "Time to memorize it all over again."

"This will take days," Styak said wryly.

"It's worth the effort, trust me. The moment I have something memorized a second time, look it over. It's your job to compare it to what you ate. We have to see if there are any mistakes or changes."

"Changes, as in, the Creator making adjustments to the parchment in between memorizations?"

"It's the asshole's only opportunity. The one and only safe place I have is my mind. Until information is secure in there, it might be subject to tampering."

"That seems a bit far-fetched. And how would you know?"

Parry set his teeth, determined. "I can't know, not for sure. I leave clues for myself I hope confuse anyone or anything trying to understand the message or make changes. It's not real security, and like anything you trust, that very trust can be used against you."

"Like the message you had the guild master include?"

"That's a reversal. 'T first, then north,' means 'Head first to the Imperial capital city of Terryp, then go north to the Icy Lands.' But I stuck on the word 'boogaloo,' which is a sequel, and that's a signal to myself to reverse whatever I just told myself. So the proper message is to head north first, then the capital.'"

The demon blinked. "What is a 'sequel'?"

"Second movie in a franchise. I know, I know. Eventually it'll be obvious to anyone watching that we're heading north before hitting the capital, but if the Creator was spying, the misdirection might buy us some time."

"I don't understand."

"Exactly."

The cat watched through Parry's eyes. "How much of this letter is in code?"

"About half. I try for a 50/50 mix of truth and falsehood in any clues I leave myself. But then, I figure the Creator changes reality in random ways between every incarnation, so there's no guarantee everything Geomancer Parry experienced will be the same for us."

"But you don't know what's false and what's true! That makes this letter useless."

Parry mentally shook his head. "Look at it a different way: all that matters is control. Big things like earthquakes and monarchies and wars are almost always the same over every lifetime. Little things may or may not change, some because of me, some because of my enemy and some by pure chance. The more information I have, the more memories I unlock, the more likely I'll find useable information and the harder it is to interfere with me. It's a game of probabilities and patience. This letter is a bonanza. The Creator might figure it's half code, but which half? If I can extract more than half the usable information I get a heck of an advantage, despite red herrings and dead ends."

"This is madness."

"It's hard work, it's frustrating and the deck is stacked against me. The dealer is a lying, cheating bastard who shifts the rules without warning. I've got one hand to play, so I have to gamble smart."