KeeperAbra burning heart logo submark [https://i.imgur.com/pLODXZx.png]
A trickster god nabbed the wrong mortal and threw it into its labyrinth of little games. It laughed at the mortal’s imminent demise as he moved between empty and wet stone rooms, with little more than bio-luminescent moss to provide for light. “Is this a bad joke?” the mortal said. The god laughed—because it was! The god laughed as the mortal encountered a door with a rusted lock. He broke the first lock with a stone, only to open the door and find a second, and to open the second, only to find a third.
The third lock was mightier than the last. A feeble bashing could only flake off but a thin coat of rust.
The god laughed when the mortal picked up a thin but mighty twig, and with it—and the perseverance of aeons—opened the third lock to find a fourth, and removed the fourth to find a fifth.
The mortal mentally noted the maker’s mark on each lock, for each lock took mere seconds to open. Clearly, these locks were of poor quality, and would not protect a domicile from raiders.
Soon, the mortal was already through the twenty-fifth lock at a frightening pace. The smile disappeared from the god’s face.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen!” The god sought to correct his mistakes. He could not descend, as he was anchored to his home in higher planes, and so he sent forth a servant from the depths.
A goat-headed warrior, clad in ancient iron armor and wielding a great axe, appeared over the mortal’s shoulder, at the mouth of the Hall of Infinite Locked Doors. That was the name, but there were actually a finite number of doors: 50 in all.
In the trickster god’s defense, there was no mortal in the whole of the world of Sera who could go through even just 10 of them, at least not before the goat-headed warrior would have reached them.
The trickster god had never felt more terrified in his immortal life. The mortal had already gone through 49 doors by the time his servant reached the entrance of the Hall—but! His servant was fast, and the final door confronting the mortal was no small thing: a great, hulking stone door carved with foxman heralds, much taller than any mortal man. Even if he had picked its lock, he would have had trouble forcing it open.
—The warrior charged, and in a flash, was already halfway into the Hall!
The mortal, however, was faced with a far more pressing issue. He looked down to his mighty twig, and though it had served him well for 49 doors, it was worn down, and frankly, he needed a proper tension wrench. The door’s lock, though sizable enough to fit a twig into, was one made of some kind of ultra-hard stone. There was simply too much friction, and turning its barrel required good leverage.
He looked back to the goat-headed warrior, which was growling as it charged—so very close to him now. That guy’s axe has a decent handle on it, he thought.
He dodged at the last moment, letting the warrior ram itself straight into the stone door. He kicked the back of the warrior’s knees, causing its stance to crumble, and it found itself kneeling—then it found a pair of sturdy arms around its neck, binding it.
The lock was incredible. The warrior had been a servant of the trickster god for hundreds of years, and yet, it was being done in by a mere mortal. It flailed around, looking for the man’s head, maybe to grab it and gouge his eyes out, but even its arms were somehow locked!
The mortal found his footing, and soon, he was tossing hundreds of pounds of killing machine overhead—backwards.
In a straight vertical suplex, the warrior’s own weight snapped its spine at the base of its neck.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The trickster god was at a loss. One of his most reliable servants, who had been guarding this labyrinth for hundreds of years, had been killed by a mere mortal. What had he summoned? Who had he summoned?
This was the Lockpicking Lawyer. Many of those from his world admired him mainly for his lock-picking genius, but lest they forget, he was a lawyer first and foremost—and lawyers made enemies.
It was merely by happenstance that, over a very long career, he had acquired a particular set of skills, skills that made him a nightmare for the well-connected to deal with, in the courtroom…and outside it.
Among those skills just happened to be lock-picking. As it turned out, people enjoyed watching it, and so he had chanced upon incredible repute and a viable income stream.
Using the axe as a tension wrench, he finally opened the final door. It’s over, the trickster god thought. He hid himself, locking away his dimension behind thousands of layers of obfuscation and defenses. Despite his cunning, there was simply no way out of the onslaught about to come. Regardless, he would do use every trick in the book to keep that terrifying mortal away from him!
Behind the door was a goddess, chained onto an altar’s table. She glowed dimly, but the glow, flickering. For a moment, she glowed a little brighter. “Who goes there?” she said. Her voice was soft—weak.
“I’m”—the Lockpicking Lawyer thought of his next words carefully. There was a reason why he never revealed his true name. “I’m the Lockpicking Lawyer.”
“My…Lockpick Hero?”
“No”—
“Please…help me.”
He couldn’t refuse. There was no other way out.
The chains binding her down were unnaturally hot to the touch, but not scalding. The locks, on the other hand, were of marginally better quality than the previous doors. Really, it peeved the mortal more than it should. At least it only took a moment to remove each one.
As soon as the last shackle fell, a blast of air emanated from the goddess.
“The labyrinth is mine,” she said. From lying down, she was already standing, hovering in front of him with a soft halo crowning her. “Unto you, o breaker of seals, I gift this holy weapon fit only for you.”
A weapon? A lawyer couldn’t possibly come into possession of such a thing without studying the local legislation first!
Nevertheless, a small orb of light slowly fell in front of him. It didn’t look anything like a weapon, so he caught it with a hand.
“This weapon is fit only unto you. It will never leave your side,” the goddess said. The orb of light landed on his palm, and it morphed in a…lock-picking set?
He breathed a sigh of relief. There was a good chance that locksmithing was a legitimate profession around here, so he didn’t need to worry about being arrested for possession of deadly weapon.
The lock-picking set disappeared with a thought, and reappeared with another.
It was part of him.
“O breaker of seals,” the goddess continued, “that weapon will aid you, for if you know a structure, you may summon any conceivable tool to unlock it.”
“So I can unlock anything with this?” He thought of a car door’s lock, and in his hand materialized a tricky-looking multi-levered contraption. He chuckled to himself. “How about the secrets of the world?”
“Yes…that can be done,” the goddess said.
Unbelievable. What was even more unbelievable was that she continued to explain: “Magic permeates this world. Here, to aid you in your journey, I curse upon you knowledge of the world’s nature.”
“Wait”—
She poked his forehead, and pain assailed him. It ripped him apart. It threw him to the ground and made him vomit. The world—everything—he saw was just something barely held together by invisible, infantile forces that mortals had no business toying with. Nudging even a single piece of it could collapse the house of cards, and the destruction of all creation would cascade at the speed of causality. No one would even notice the apocalypse.
He got up on shaky legs, panting. “Why—why would you do that?”
“I sense in you a great force of order,” the goddess said, her words dancing in his mind. “The rules of reality have been stated. Go forth, punish the trickster god for his childishness, and only then can you peacefully go home.”
Among the knowledge he had acquired was that of the One Seal: a barrier between mortality and true immortality—and he needed true immortality before he could confront the trickster god.
The rules were simple, and he made up his mind. He couldn’t go home without doing this.
In the left hand manifested a hooked wand, and in the other, a straight wand. With these, he played with the magic in the air, dancing to a rhythm, drawing circles in the ground with his feet, and in the air with the wands.
—Gamma, binding. Click out of Chi. Alpha, binding. Sera, turning. He stopped. The Seal was open.
It all clicked for him. The very nature of his existence had changed. Nothing drastic had occurred around him, certainly, but he felt as if—and it really was the case—that nothing could truly kill him. Not here. Not anywhere. Not anymore.