There was a note from Katrin. It said they'd waited fourteen hours before needing to leave due to some vague risk involved with sleeping in the same room twice, but that timeline didn't seem possible - even accounting for some lost time with the tentacle monster I couldn't come up with any way it could have been even half that long. We'd taken some breaks, and I had drifted off at one point, but it's not like we would have both slept for five hours or more without realizing it.

Errod read it again, and sighed. "Is the note fake? Like, created by this place?"

"I don't think so?" I said, hesitantly. "I don't know enough about how Nusos works but I didn't really get the feeling that was a thing it could do."

"Maybe we really were gone that long. I'm hungry enough, that's for sure."

I couldn't argue with that. We dug into the backpack and ate about two meals' worth of food, then sat for a bit to think - though there wasn't much to think about. The note said they were continuing on to the vault in case we were headed that way, and to head back to Good Charl and check in with Mama Carnage if we ended up exiting Nusos elsewhere. It also confirmed my suspicions, that Nusos was about to be aligned with the material plane.

"Fuck. What if the alignment is already over? We lost time, somehow, and we don't know how how much - we know that the others waited fourteen hours, but they could have left that note a year ago."

Errod couldn't think of anything more reassuring to say than "I think it probably wasn't long" but it didn't matter. There was no way to be sure, so all we could do was head to the vault and hope for the best. I'd spent a lot of time staring at the key so I felt pretty good about my ability to remember it, and Errod said he was at least fairly sure he could picture it. It would need to be good enough.

We headed out, keeping close together, and I found that much to my surprise I was in good spirits. We had some food and water, we'd succeeded in finding the room we were looking for once, and the others were okay. "This is going to be alright. We can do this."

Errod put on a smile that was maybe a little shaky, but nodded. "Of course we can. I was hoping to wait until after the Duminere to start adventuring, but... well, as silly as it was, I felt bad that I didn't get to go into the Necropolis with you. I'm not stupid, I know it was awful and dangerous and I was lucky to be able to stay safe up on the surface. I'm not trying to suggest that I could have..." he closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, "that I could have saved Aestrid. But I wanted to prove myself. Everyone laughs at me, they see how clumsy I am and they tell me to put down the sword before I hurt myself. And yes, fine, I know. I cut off my own toe, and I've cut my hand a few times, and I... cut my belt off twice."

"Twice? I only saw the once!"

"Well I didn't exactly brag to everyone about it. But yes, twice. The thing is... it's like I said, I'm not stupid. I know I'm bad at this. I just... I feel so certain, Callie. The vision I had... I was fighting five men at once, while wearing armor with the crest of the knights of Brinkmar. It was so real, so... right. And when I woke up I found out that everything had gone wrong. My father had been arrested, and we'd been robbed, and... the only thing that made me feel like it was all going to be okay was knowing that the gods had shown me there was something important in my future. That I have a destiny. Hopefully when we reach the Duminere I can learn to fight, but even if I get a dud I'm not changing my mind."

I stopped Errod. "Hey. You saved my life in that alley when we met, just by showing up. And you took out that wild mage by pulling her off a roof which was just... I mean seriously, that was so badass. And you tackled some guys in that fight, and - shit, Errod! Just however many hours ago you stopped me from drinking tentacle juice! That was all you!"

"You killed the thing."

"Sure, fine. But killing it wasn't the hard part. I was totally without any hesitation going to drink the tentacle juice. You're a hero, like ten times over."

"I don't think it was that many," he said, waving me off.

"I was rounding. Where I'm from we round to ten, remember?"

"Such a stupid way to count. Utterly ridiculous."

I tried to glare at him, but it was clear he was deliberately trying to provoke me. "Okay, okay. Let's... re-center ourselves and get going. You have it in your head?"

He stood at attention, closed his eyes, and nodded crisply. "With absolute confidence. Two rooms away, at the most."

We started walking, and almost immediately ran into another monster.

We'd ducked through a few rooms quickly, and were just about to open another door when I heard someone calling for help. We were in what felt like a church, rows of pews and a high ceiling with all sorts of decorative stonework, and the voice was coming from a nook that I couldn't quite see. I hesitated, hand hovering near the doorknob, but Errod of course was already charging towards the voice so I had no choice but to follow.

There was a girl in the nook, maybe eight years old, being pulled into a hole in the wall by some sort of vine or root around her waist - her legs had already vanished into the opening and her arms stretched out, wildly grasping for us as tears filled her eyes.

"Jesus!" I yelled, trying to to decided if it was safe to approach.

"Help me!" the girl called, flailing around as she struggled.

Errod started to move forward again, having been taken aback at first by the sight, but I grabbed his shoulder. "Okay. Shit. What does the rest of that thing look like? Did it reach out of the wall?"

Presumably not too thrilled with our lack of immediate action, she called out again. "Help me!"

"I'm trying, I need to know so I don't just get us both stuck."

Errod looked nervous. "Callie, we need to do something."

"Help me!" She yelled for a third time.

"I... oh. Say literally anything other than help me."

"Help me!"

I sighed, and pulled Errod further back. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Okay."

"Help me!" the girl screamed, in exactly - precisely - the same way as the other times. I squinted at the thing in front of me. It was pretty convincing, other than the limited vocabulary, but now that I was looking close there were some tells. The eyes weren't quite right, and the tears weren't tears; the drops just dangled there impossibly from her face without ever falling.

"Well I guess we can just keep going?"

Errod shook his head. "No, Callie, we can't just leave this thing to kill the next person that comes along." He took a deep breath and lunged forward, swinging his sword right at the girl's head - while Errod's form always left something to be desired, this thing didn't even try to dodge and the blade sliced across cleanly. Suddenly there was a screech and the girl opened up right where the vines were - they peeled away as she split at the waist, revealing a huge mouth.

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"Yeah cool, I wasn't quite traumatized enough yet so that's perfect," I said, "Thank you for that."

The vines reached out but we both stepped back, and the whole thing started to awkwardly climb down from the wall. There was more of it, inside the wall, and as it slithered out I could see it looked like some giant grub or the back end of a queen termite. I took a chance at throwing a knife and it hit just off center, missing the big black vein but causing pus-like goo to flow out of the cut.

The thing shrieked again and recoiled, leaving an opening for Errod to swing - this one hit the vein, and thinner black liquid mixed with the white. It stopped, reversed, and tried to climb back up to its hole.

"Oh, changed your mind? Don't want to play anymore?"

This position just left it more exposed, however, and now I could see that at the base of the false girl's back (which didn't look at all right from behind, clearly this wasn't an angle I was supposed to view it at) there was a pulsing clump of some sort. If this had been a video game, it would be flashing red. I took my time, because it was having trouble getting the girl bits into the hole, and threw another knife. It hit a little sloppily but it didn't matter; as soon as the lump was cut a spaghetti-like tangle spilled out and the beast immediately collapsed. "Help... me..." it said, and then the ichor from the previous wounds stopped flowing, and the whole thing just kind of deflated.

"Well that was fucked up."

Errod looked like he was going to reply, but then just shrugged. He wiped his sword clean on some tapestries, I retrieved my knives, and we were back on our way. We came across what I suspected was another monster a bit later, but in that case we avoided it - there was a shining golden tiara laying in the middle of a room and it looked way, way too much like bait in a trap. We shared a look and just closed the door and took a different route.

It seemed like it should be possible to navigate to anywhere in just a few rooms theoretically, and I suspected that someone who specialized in this plane could cross the whole continent in fifteen minutes as long as nobody else was with them slowing them down with conflicting mental images. I considered trying to use whatever strange natural magic I had to help us get there, since it seemed to be related to probability, but even thinking about it made me feel funny. That strange ache, with the feeling like something in me was cracked, had been growing over time. I couldn't be certain, but I suspected it was me regaining mana after damaging my lutore by over-spending.

Your lutore was supposed to grow in two ways - its potential would increase very slightly over time, meaning old people had a bit more mana available than kids, but also if you weren't using it it wouldn't be at its full potential anyway. It was like building a muscle, right now regardless of how strong I might be capable of being I was the magical equivalent of a couch potato - and I had just tried to lift a car. In return I'd strained my lutore and burned though the reserve of life mana it used at the innermost level where it connected to my body. Until it recovered I would not only have that strange ache but I'd even heal a little bit slower from injuries - probably not enough to notice. Getting a Dumine would solve both problems, as it shored up all your connections and strengthened your lutore. I'd develop it faster too, meaning I would be less likely to strain it in the future as long as I didn't do anything too stupid.

At any rate, I wouldn't be experimenting with magic in my current condition. We continued on, eventually taking another break once we were somewhere that looked about right - aside from the colorful walls. "Well this is promising," Errod said, "this definitely has the feel of a royal vault. Or the entry to one anyway, which is what we're going for."

"Yeah, I think we're almost there. I wish I could remember the exact patterns at our destination, but I have a pretty good overall vibe."

"It was strange enough that we shouldn't have trouble. I can't imagine there could be too many rooms with those odd patterns on the walls. If Cyne is right that's the point, in fact - make the room unique enough and you can't find it through Nusos without picturing it exactly."

"Yeah, or maybe stumbling across by accident - but if you did that you wouldn't know it was part of the royal vaults anyway and probably wouldn't try to break in. I assume all the other rooms in the vault are warded to keep people from getting in at all."

We drank the last of our water, took turns facing the other way while the other one relieved themselves in a convenient corner, and then optimistically stepped through the next door. And there it was. "Oh, shit. It really was the next room. Man, now I wish we'd just kept going instead of taking a break."

Errod got a thoughtful look. "If we had, it might not have been here. It could be that we needed to take that break, I wasn't feeling confident when my feet were hurting."

"Yeah, could be. Okay. Well, nobody is here waiting for us. Could be we beat them here, or it could be they're on the other side. Though... I just figured someone, Sige maybe, would hang around on the Nusos side and keep an eye out."

Errod shrugged. "So do we wait?"

"No... I mean, I'm not even certain of how to get out, so I figure we should try. If it works then we did it, if it doesn't then... well, then we're keeping ourselves occupied while we wait."

Going off of the general feeling of Nusos, I decided it would be best to just kind of walk around while being as certain as possible that we were actually in the real world. We held hands, to make sure that if it worked it worked for both of us, and after a while also closed our eyes in case that helped somehow.

"Anything?" I asked, opening my eyes and looking around.

"I don't think so. I don't see the others, anyway. Should we check the doors?"

I opened the door we had come from and it led to a five-foot nook, basically a closet. I wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad sign. I went to the only other door, and it was the same way. "Uh. We're trapped. That... wait, that doesn't make sense for either place. If we're still in Nusos we should see hallways or rooms, and if we're in the real world we should see the vault. Right?"

"Callie, do you hear that?" There was a faint hissing sound from somewhere.

I stepped into the nook in front of me and looked up, and could just barely see a distortion in the air. I jumped back, slammed the door shut, then ran back to the other door and shut that too. "Fuck! Fuck! There's poison gas!"

I didn't know it was poison gas of course, not for sure, but it seemed likely to be something bad. If not poisonous then... explosive, or something. I pulled off my dress and rolled it up, trying to stop up the gap under the door, but there was no way I'd be able to do more than slightly slow it. I saw Errod take my cue and pull his tunic off, wedging it along the base of the other door.

"Okay so. Um. New theory, the specific exact patterns on the walls actually are important because there are decoy rooms to trap thieves."

Errod's face went pale. "That... sounds like a very clever idea. Can we get back into Nusos? The planes are supposed to be aligned, right?"

"I think it's easier to get out than in. Even if we could, we'd... we'd need to go through doors to do that. So that would mean standing right under the flow of the gas and closing ourselves in there with it, then repeatedly trying to come back into this room until we got into Nusos."

Errod held his breath and opened the nearest door, then shut it without going through and stopped up the bottom again. To be safe he took a few steps away before letting out his breath. "They thought of that. It doesn't look like you can open those doors from the other side."

"Oh. Fuck, right. Thank you for checking that before we locked ourselves in the poison closet. Honestly it probably wouldn't have worked anyway, I'm sure there's a reason Cyne brought us in by walking in circles for a while. Okay. The gas was falling down, and this is a decent sized room. So we should have a few minutes, right? Just don't lay down."

It presumably wouldn't have to actually fill the room, though, since that would be a terrible design for a trap. Errod began banging on walls with the hilt of his sword, and I started feeling along for secret passages - it was a longshot, but I had nothing better to do. I was searching for seams, or odd cracks, or something in the patterns. Nothing. I looked up, wondering if there was somewhere we could climb to get away from the gas, and...

"Errod! I think I found something, give me a boost!" He held his hands out, intertwined, and I stepped onto them and then onto his shoulder. There. I jammed my non-throwing knife into a crack, seriously damaging the blade, and then hammered on it for a moment until a small section of stone popped away. "Hah! It's too small to get through, but... yeah, there's a ton of them. I think they're arrow slits so guards can shoot down into the room."

"No door though."

"No. But just keep holding me up and I can call for help. Maybe the others are here somewhere."

When I was young, I found that I could do a full on horror movie scream. My mother was not amused, but then again, she never liked me anyway. So I didn't bother starting with anything quieter, and just let out my most shrill, ear-shattering shriek. I waited a second, and did it again. Then again. After that it was starting to give me a sore throat, and I switched to just calling out.

"Callie, I can't hold you up much longer."

"Oh don't be a baby, I'm not that heavy."

"I know. I think... it's the gas. I'm having trouble with... I'm. I don't like this."

Sore throat or not, I started screaming again. I could feel Errod wavering, like his feet were about to go out from under him. Suddenly fingers nearly hit me in the eye as they popped through the arrow slit and pulled it open, distorting it until it was just barely big enough to pull me through. Another set of arms, orange and hairy, roughly grabbed me and hauled me into a narrow hallway where I could see Mila working on widening the opening a bit more.

"Hey, you're fucking late." Sige said.