Dazed, the new arrivals scrambled to their feet and looked around. This was not the library at the university, but they were certainly no longer in Alexandria. For a moment, the blue-black cracks in the air were still visible, then they closed abruptly with the sound of tearing fabric. There was no sign of a portal for miles around.

After standing in the dust-dry Egyptian heat a moment ago, the air suddenly seemed incredibly stuffy and humid to Norman. The smell of damp earth, decaying vegetation and rot almost managed to mask the slight smell of sulphur. It was certainly over 23 degrees and the humidity had to be at least 80 percent. A light mist enveloped the floor almost knee-high. He could no longer see the brick walls and ceiling of the room from which they had escaped. Instead, he and his companions found themselves in a huge, tube-shaped cave made of gray-brown rock. The diameter of the rounding was a good three hundred meters and there was no visible end in either direction. As the cavern coiled three-dimensionally in all directions like a drunken snake, he would not be able to see anything further than a kilometer away. Thick moss in dark shades of green densely covered the floor, which he could only make out where his footsteps had stirred up the otherwise unbroken layer of fog. A strip a good hundred meters wide in the middle of the tunnel was completely hidden by this fog. On the sides, where the bend became too high, a few low but dense bushes full of thorns broke through the white swathes. Where the cave rose further up the sides, the moss gave way to lichen and low bushes with huge white-gray aerial roots. Fruits of various sizes and colors could be seen on some of the plants - from fist-sized, red, apple-like ones to a single hanging, almost human-sized oblong fruit resembling a melon. Every few meters, head-sized orchid blossoms adorned the sides of the tube.

However, the most remarkable feature of the surroundings was not the vegetation, but the translucent light blue tube that wound through the air at the exact center of the elongated cave without any support or carrier. This tube, which followed the twists and turns of the cave in both directions until it was out of sight, was also the source of the dim bluish light that illuminated the cave. The light reminded Norman of his last visit to a large aquarium, where most of the light fell through the tank into the spectator corridor. He would have loved to take a closer look and see what the pipe was made of. It had to be both very light and incredibly strong in order to bridge even the part that was visible to him. Unfortunately, he couldn't see any way of getting to it at the moment. He would have had to bridge 150 meters of open space first. As far as he could see, the pipe was the same distance from the walls, floor and ceiling everywhere. There were no trees to be seen for miles around and the bushes were no more than three or four meters high.

After getting his bearings, Norman looked after his traveling companions: "Are you all right? Is anyone hurt?"

Horst had landed much more awkwardly. He had ploughed a two-meter-long path into the moss-covered ground, through which the black, damp topsoil was visible. Undeterred, he picked himself up again. His tunic had slipped during the fall, exposing his previously covered shoulder. In the bluish light, he could now see a wristwatch pushed up to his armpit. Considering the muscular upper arms of the mountain farmer's son, the bracelet really had to be extremely stretchy in order not to tear. When he noticed the looks of his comrades, he casually slid the watch back down his arm to his wrist with his right hand: "I just don't feel well when I don't have a watch."

From another direction, soft choking noises could be heard. When he looked closely, Norman recognized Jane's stooped back, which barely protruded from the ground fog. When she straightened up again, her face was pale. You could also see her repeatedly rubbing her nose and contorting her face, as if to dispel the omnipresent smell of rotten eggs.

"Does anyone have any idea where we are?" A general shrug of the shoulders answered Norman's question.

Jane looked around for a moment, as if she was expecting observers. Then she shrugged her shoulders again, resigned to her fate, and pulled a shiny black object the size of a sugar cube from a hidden pocket in her toga: "Unfold yourself!"

Norman vaguely heard the unintelligible words of a strange, very melodic language, but the translation worked flawlessly. The small object unfolded with lightning speed but precision, and before he could even blink, Jane had a black snakeskin handbag in her hand, the strap of which she deftly threw over her shoulder. Then she opened the rather spacious handbag and rummaged around in it for a while. The way she disappeared into the small bag with her arm up to her shoulder made it clear that it contained much more than the outward appearance (or the laws of physics) would suggest.

She triumphantly picked up a small black cell phone, switched it on, typed in her PIN and then waited. Norman and Horst approached her curiously and looked left and right over her shoulder. Three pairs of eyes were glued to the small, flashing display: "Searching network... Please wait..." Then the text stopped: "No network available." Horst and Norman looked at each other, shrugging their shoulders: "I would have been surprised if they had reception in the cave." Norman was about to agree with his fellow student when he heard the disappointed and obviously completely surprised hiss with which Jane shook her cell phone. Obviously she had actually expected to get a connection. He cleared his throat carefully: "Um... in buildings or caves there are..." That was as far as he got. She wheeled around and flashed her golden eyes at the two of them: "This is no ordinary cell phone, you peasant fools. This thing is covered in technomagical spells and has a Gallifreynium coil as an antenna. I may not always be able to receive with it, but I can send a message to the university from anywhere. From anywhere! No matter whether I'm in a parallel world, deep underground or in a Swiss safe deposit box. If the thing displays 'No network', the connection is disrupted by the dimension wall. And that shouldn't actually be the case anywhere in the multiverse."

Norman and Horst looked at each other somewhat helplessly. "What if the area here is somehow deliberately protected against such trans-thingy signals?"

"That's not even possible." Golden curls flew back and forth as she shook her head vigorously. "Do you have any idea how much energy it would take to create such an interference field? It would also require vast amounts of Gallifreynium. It just doesn't make sense!"

Horst scratched his head in confusion: "And if it's broken?"

She just glared at him until he looked to the side and absently dug his foot into the soft earth beneath the layer of fog.

"Leo once told me that these dimensions are built up like layers. The higher one of these cosmic constants is, the harder it is to get there. Maybe the dimension here is just too far..." She interrupted him gruffly: "Getting there is always more difficult. Sending messages or people home is equally easy from anywhere. It's like having a mountain. No matter how high you climb, if you throw a stone down, it always reaches the bottom just as easily. If the universe were a house, the university would be on the first floor."

The trained bricklayer was used to the tone of voice on building sites and wasn't put off by Jane's condescending tone: "What about when we're in the cellar?"

She made a sharp retort, then stumbled. With suddenly widened eyes, she looked around again. "Cellar... maybe more like dungeon... Carcerus!"

She rattled off the next sentence like something she had memorized a long time ago, so she practically didn't have to think about it: "May the gods take their eyes off us and leave us alone!"

"Did you think of anything?"

"Yes! I know where we are now. I should have remembered straight away. But descriptions are a completely different matter to seeing reality with your own eyes. Come along." She trudged off cautiously. The ground was barely visible through the layer of fog, even right next to her feet. You could only hear from the soft smacking that it was quite damp, almost swampy. After a few steps, she accelerated and walked diagonally towards the edge of the elongated cave. Norman and Horst looked at each other in confusion for a moment and then hurriedly followed her. Under the bend of the huge tube, the mist fell back a little before it became too steep to walk sensibly. She was therefore able to pick up a sustained marching pace. Norman caught up and, with the burly backwoodsman close behind him, kept level with Jane: "Come on, tell me! What do you know? And shouldn't we wait where we've arrived, and where we're sure to be looked for first?"

"We are in a place where we don't want to stay. Especially not if anyone has noticed that we've arrived. That was no accident. Someone has lowered the energy level of this dimension so far that it has almost dipped into ours. Obviously they didn't quite make it, otherwise we'd still have half the population of the university standing around us. But it must have been enough to redirect our dimensional portal. But that can only be localized. If we move far enough away, I should be able to get in touch with the university again. And if they know where we are, they might be able to help us."

"And where exactly are we"

"Have you ever heard of the Primordial Gods?"

"No. Is that some old legend?"

"This is the source of all legends. The true source of everything. When the universe was created from nothing, everything was still possible. And out of the infinity of possibilities, some beings emerged who gained consciousness after an unthinkable amount of time. Time didn't really exist back then, only the gods gave events a fixed flow. But that came much later."

Norman looked at her rather doubtfully, but thought it was the wrong time for a discussion of religious principles. He secretly wondered where Jane had come from, that she had grown up with such strange stories. Jane spent the next hour telling her two spellbound fellow students a creation story that was completely new to them. The origin of the gods, the creation of Mandatus, the division of the multiverse into neatly separated parallel dimensions and the rebellion of Eris, the renegade god of chaos.

"And what does that have to do with this place?"

"Imagine a god who has lived for an unimaginably long time and is epically bored. And now he realizes that it's great fun to kidnap intelligent creatures and rush them through a labyrinth to their deaths."

"And we are in this labyrinth?"

"May I introduce: Carcerus. One of the most unpleasant places in the multiverse."

"I hate to say this, but..." Norman hesitated, only to be interrupted immediately:

"Then don't!"

"... but that sounds pretty much like a children's fairy tale. I mean, the guy's name alone. Carcerus is dungeon or something like that in Latin."

Horst intervened from the other side: "You speak Latin?"

"Just a little Asterix Latin."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"If I want to tell you a fairy tale, I put on a storyteller's beard and start with 'Once upon a time...'. Did I do that? No!" Professor Majere's daughter clearly showed where she had inherited her temperament. "My father comes from a dimension you've never heard of. One that has been used as a game board by several of the Primordials. You can't even begin to imagine what it was like to live there. To know that you are but an insignificant token for the amusement of unimaginably powerful beings. My father rebelled against the gods and almost managed to wrest his power from one of them. From him I got my knowledge of the true origin of the universe."

"Majere didn't seem so divine to me now..."

"Mandatus, guardian of the cosmic order, appeared in person and informed him that his plan could succeed. However, he would be violating one of the fundamental laws of his universe - and destroying at least his planet, but more likely an entire spiral arm of his galaxy. He himself could have used his newfound power to escape to a parallel world, but everyone he had known would have been killed in the cosmic inferno. So he abandoned his plan and used the power he had already absorbed to flee with me through the dimensions to escape possible retribution from the gods of the game. That's three Primordials, each using a whole group of gods as mouthpieces and pawns. I was just an infant at the time, just small enough for him to take me with him."

"And your mother? Your family?"

"He could only save me. And that cost him a lot. He never fully recovered from the effort."

"I'm sorry..."

"I don't need pity! Just listen to me when I tell you something! Any of the Primordial Gods can commission Mandatus to create a world for them according to their wishes. The god of this dimension wanted a universe where he could just have his peace and quiet. But then something went wrong."

"What's his name anyway?"

"The names of these beings are not comprehensible to normal mortals. They are more telepathic images, suitable only for the mind language that the Primordials use to communicate with each other. All the names you will ever hear were coined by humans. And many of them are known by more than one name. Or by a different name for each race and on each planet."

"And what is the name of the god in my home world, for example?"

"Among the knowledgeable few, he is known as Pantheon, the Splintered God."

"The Splintered God?"

"Like many others, he divided up his personality in order to be able to work on the world in different forms at the same time. Each of these forms pretended to be God to people and used part of his cosmic powers. But he made a fatal mistake. He concentrated too much of his attention on too many bodies. He enjoyed interacting with many people at the same time so much that his mind literally split and disintegrated into numerous independent individuals. My father isn't quite sure, but the individual parts probably don't even remember where they came from. And they all wander the earth and adapt to the passing of time. New peoples are given new gods to match, who can't imagine ever having been anything else. Until their worshippers die out again and the gods are forced to wander again until they find a new community that needs a god. Their power has now dwindled considerably and no one knows where they are anymore. Perhaps they have become so human that they can no longer be distinguished from humans."

"Multiple personality split in a god? That's crazy! So everyone we know from my world could be a god without knowing it?"

"Theoretically, yes."

"Me too, or Horst?" She looked at the two of them disparagingly in turn, obviously looking for a patronizing answer. When she couldn't think of anything suitable straight away, she made do with a particularly disparaging tone: "You two? Hardly."

Before Norman could think of a quick-witted retort, he was distracted by an elbow strike from Horst: "Da guckt moal! Schäfla!" The big guy pointed to a spot in the long strip of fog in the middle of the tube and was obviously as happy as a little child. All that was missing was for him to start clapping his hands enthusiastically and jumping up and down. Norman and Jane spontaneously grinned at each other and then tried to find the sheep that Horst was so happy about in the fog. Sure enough, three slight bulges appeared side by side out of the fog. Like slowly emerging submarines, they slowly peeled out of the layer of fog as they came closer and closer to the waiting group. From the deepest part, where they had probably been completely hidden, slowly and steadily striding forward, it really did look like the typical curly woolly coat of sheep. The tips of the twisted horns, which repeatedly broke through the blanket of mist further ahead, also matched. The white-grey color exactly matched that of the fog and the fluffy, irregular surface formed an almost perfect camouflage against the slightly undulating background.

Now the middle one of the creatures reared up on its hind legs, and the resemblance to a peaceful grass-eater was suddenly gone. Against the backdrop of the monotonous ground fog, the three students had completely misjudged the distance. The creature was much closer than they had thought when they had assumed it was the size of a sheep. Erect, however, it now towered almost three meters high out of the fog. Apart from the horns, its build was more like that of a grizzly bear. The only difference was that its mouth was disproportionately larger and filled with finger-length, pointed teeth. Large ram's horns protruded from the skull on both sides. While the back was covered in thick wool, the belly and legs were only covered in very thin fur, which shone wet with sweat and condensed water in the eerie light. Norman prepared to jump. The creature wasn't attacking yet. He had seen enough animal shows to know that by fleeing he might provoke an attack that he could perhaps avoid by standing still. Beads of ice-cold sweat rose on his forehead as his legs tensed in an effort not to run.

The creature, which Norman spontaneously named Bear Sheep, looked at him and his companions attentively for a moment. Norman's heartbeat rang in his ears. Then the monster opened its mouth wide and let out a deafening roar. Concentric waves formed from it in the dense ground fog. Then it threw itself onto its front paws and sprinted off, followed by its two companions, who looked up from the fog for a moment and then followed closely behind.

Norman didn't need the translation of the voice in his head to translate the roar: "Eat!"

Up ahead, Norman also saw Horst and Jane running. Jane jumped agilely over smaller bushes like a practiced hurdler, while Horst simply ploughed everything aside. Norman was clearly struggling to keep up: "Run up the side of the slope, the animals are too big to run well!" he shouted to his companions. Jane immediately changed direction slightly to the right. The tubular structure of the cave became increasingly dry and full of rubble further up. Norman didn't dare turn around. For their size, the bear sheep moved surprisingly quietly. The padded paws broke branches of some rotten bushes and crunched stones to the side. Beyond that, however, all that could be heard was a quiet, rhythmic tapping. When a short stretch without any recognizable obstacles appeared in front of him, he quickly dared to take a look behind him. His heart almost stopped and he stumbled briefly. The three beasts were less than ten steps behind him! And they were clearly catching up. He ran more up the slope and now had to concentrate more and more to avoid tripping or stepping on a loose rock. Ahead of him, he saw Jane slowing down and keeping to the side. She was fast, but her slender body had hardly any reserves. Horst grabbed her with his right arm as she ran past and heaved her onto his shoulder without slowing down. She squeaked in surprise but didn't put up any resistance. Norman could see the annoyed look on her face now that her head was pointing backwards as seen from Horst.

The light in the tube became brighter for half a second, as if a spotlight was racing through the tunnel. A hissing sound could be heard above Norman that seemed to originate further ahead. Then the sound suddenly became deeper and disappeared in the other direction. None of the students had time to think about it. Even as he ran, Norman felt a faint hint of moisture in the air. As if something very fast had rushed through the vein and forced some of the water out as a superfine mist.

At the next opportunity, he glanced behind again. The beasts seemed to have caught up a little further. From the sounds of it, they kept slipping on the rocky ground, but with their finger-length claws they still found enough grip to hold on and accelerate again. He almost thought he could feel the hot breath on the back of his neck. Again and again, frantically catching his breath, he called forward: "They're catching up! And they don't seem to be getting tired!"

He could clearly see from her face how Jane's thoughts were racing. Then she seemed to come to a decision. She kicked her legs to get Horst's attention: "Turn off at the next bush or rock behind it and stand me down. I'll use some battle spells."

Horst didn't really seem enthusiastic about the idea, but obviously he didn't have any breath left to discuss it. And he probably couldn't offer a better plan. "And Norman, throw yourself to the side when we stop. The area between me and the beasts is about to get very unhealthy."

Horst braked hard and slid almost at right angles to the left behind a large, particularly dense-looking bush. He spun the surprised Jane around and, slowing down at the last moment, set her on her feet in front of him. Norman turned a little to the side, stopped and stood ready to fight. Not that he thought he had any chance of stopping the monstrous beasts with their long claws and fangs with his bare fists.

The student didn't waste a moment. As soon as she stood, she held out her hand to the first bear sheep and shouted something in a language completely unknown to Norman. It was one of the few moments when he was consciously aware of the voice in his head translating. Almost as if she was undecided about the choice of words: "Lightning strike!"

Norman remembered that Jane had once made rather derogatory remarks about magicians who spoke their spells aloud and thus warned the target of the magic. So the call was undoubtedly meant for him and Horst.

A glistening, white-blue beam of electricity shot out of Jane's hand, twitching wildly back and forth towards the foremost of the monsters. Small branches frayed in all directions. Only the mage's practiced concentration kept the lightning from deviating from the desired path and simply fizzling out in the ground. It struck the bear sheep full in the chest from a few meters away. Arcs of light flashed out of its body, back in and out again in other places. Bright light washed over its body as it convulsed abruptly and rolled down the slope as a ball of muscle and surprise. After the white images had cleared from Norman's overloaded retinas, the creature lay lifeless on the ground. Smoke rose from several places, and the strange sheepskin stood out like a brush on all sides due to the static charge.

The two other monsters had slowed down in surprise, but were already approaching again, taking first cautious, then faster steps.

Jane raised her hand again: "Flaming inferno!" Again, the voice in Norman's head seemed dissatisfied with the translation. A white-red beam of pure elemental fire struck the second beast from a few meters away, vaporizing fur, skin and entrails and setting bones ablaze. The other one had just run behind it, so the ray was unerringly aimed at it too, after burning through the first one. Norman felt as if everything was happening in slow motion. The jet of flame had visibly lost brightness as it passed through its second target. On the way to the third and final monster, Norman could really see it getting weaker and weaker. It looked as if it was burning not through air, but through a viscous transparent mass, growing dimmer and smaller with every meter. Warned by the fate of its two companions, the beast threw itself to the side at the last moment and slid a short distance down the slope. The flaming lance missed it by barely a meter. Snarling, the bearsheep slowed down a little and gave the smoking pile a brief, uncomprehending look as it passed, but continued to approach. Jane's voice showed the first hint of fear: "That was the last battle spell I prepared. I thought I could get them both. Why did it have to slip now? What do we do now?"

The bear sheep slowed down barely eight meters in front of them and slowly reared up on its hind legs, its powerful muscles flexing. The disproportionately large mouth opened wide. A bundle of five or six long white spikes folded down from the top of the palate and pointed forward out of the mouth. Norman had never seen anything like it. Compared to the teeth and claws, they seemed almost ridiculous. And the placement was so far back in the mouth that it could tear its target apart with its teeth long before the sharp spikes glistening with saliva could reach it. And of course, as long as they were down, he couldn't swallow any larger bites. The beast's massive chest inflated.

Norman held his hands ready to cover his ears from the expected roar. His chest visibly twitched. Instead of a roar, Norman only heard a soft thump.

He looked at the beast uncomprehendingly. It had probably raised its spikes again, because he could no longer see them. The monster looked at him almost expectantly and slowly closed its mouth into a wolfish grin.

Norman was ashamed to realize that his legs were beginning to tremble with fear. But he wasn't actually that scared. The trembling spread to his arms. He looked down at himself.

Three bone-white spikes were sticking out of his chest, covered in a viscous, transparent liquid. Horst asked him if he had been hit. He tried to answer, but his vocal chords wouldn't work. When he tried to make a hand gesture to show that he could no longer speak, he realized that his hand wasn't moving. His mind wandered, he could no longer really concentrate. A female voice called out to him, but he couldn't understand her. He remembered that Jane had always spoken mostly German like Horst. After all, she had been at the university longer than he had. In her excitement, she had probably unconsciously switched to another language, presumably her mother tongue. The voice tried to translate, but he could no longer understand her. He was still thinking about how unfortunate it was that he couldn't talk to anyone now. Norman noticed that the floor suddenly moved towards his face. He wasn't supposed to do that. The last thing he heard was the loud, triumphant roar of the beast, which now sounded after a slight delay. Then it went dark around him.