Wist swore. A lot. We’ve been through a few Dungeons in our time. Comes with the territory when you specialize in hunting down Fragmented Ones. They’re never pleasant. The odors, the terrible puzzles, the fact that not one of them seems to have anything resembling a latrine. Oh yeah, and every third step the damn building tries to kill you and somehow every room is filled with various monsters that don’t seem to need food or water but they sure want to kill you too. Logic takes a break when a Fragmented One builds a Dungeon.

“Okay, so we all know how to move forward in that situation,” Azul said, once Wist’s tirade had slowed enough for him to cut in over her. “But this isn’t like previous ones, and I find that concerns me a lot.”

“You mean because of the River?” I asked. “Are you sure that isn’t just…some Dungeon trick playing with your magic?”

“Yes,” Azul answered, without clarification. “We’re not on Ternius anymore. We’re…I think we’re on a higher plateau. Remember in your vision?”

I followed his question to his reasoning. “Yeah, I think so. But it wasn’t like I could identify any particular plane. They all looked identical from where I was standing. Precisely, as far as I could tell.”

“Hmm. There’s a lot in mystical theory about the planes, and I think they’re supposed to be slightly varied each time. Like a painter doing sketches. Each one is a little bit closer to the end product and then they get out the paint. Each plane is almost an almost perfect reflection of the planes to either side and above and below it, but not quite. And we don’t know how far up the River our Fragment sent us.”

“So the rules here could be drastically different,” Suti concluded. I glanced around to see she was hovering now, both pairs of wings fluttering faster than the eye could track. At least that was a good sign.

“Aye. Even more so than usual for a Dungeon,” Azul agreed.

We all took a silent moment to absorb that thought. Dav visibly shook himself out. Then, we all turned to Azul again. “So…what do we do differently, then?”

“Not sure,” Azul admitted. “I just know it’s possible, I haven’t worked out how, yet.”

“Then,” Wist cut in, “I suggest we keep going as if the rules are the same until we run into something where they aren’t. Because we can’t just sit around doing nothing, either.”

Azul nodded his agreement, but his expression was uncertain, still.

“Okay,” I offered. “If that’s how we’re going to go about this, we have to treat this like a Dungeon room. There’s probably a puzzle that opens…something. It likely doesn’t have anything to do with doors, or gates, or anything else that resembles an entrance. Everyone think of anything you’ve seen that didn’t seem to have another purpose. These stones, for starters. But also, the shelves up there. They were mostly empty, but,” I pushed the engraving stylus, the jar, and the knife to the middle of the table, “These were in the tallest three. And the rest of them had some sort of mark carved into the inside of the box. I didn’t have a light at the time, but,”

“On it!” Suti called, snatching a jar of Dav’s flameless light from the table and buzzing up to peer into the first box. “Mph lmmks lnnk mm nmmm.” She announced, around the jar in her mouth.

“Suti…” Wist started wearily. Suti set the jar down on the shelf she was inspecting.

“It looks like a name!” She repeated. “Like a signature. I can’t quite…make out the letters. Maybe…William?”

“Could you copy it down?” Wist asked.

“Yeah,” Suti fluttered down to accept Wist’s chalk, then flew up to mark the wall beside the box.

“Okay,” I spoke to Dav while Suti and Wist worked on the shelves. It was easier than climbing back up on the table and balancing carefully to reach the shelves myself. “While they work on that, why don’t we work on these? Azul? Are they magical?”

Azul squinted for a second. I thought I saw a slight glow as he worked his magic, but that was just a common trick of the eyes around wizards. A moment later, he answered. “The jar isn’t, but whatever is inside is definitely enchanted. The knife and the engraving stylus are enchanted too, but as far as I can tell it’s a fairly mild one. Just enough to prevent rust and decay, keep them sharp, that sort of thing. No special properties other than that.”

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“I think the stylus is some sort of steel? But the knife’s metal doesn’t seem like anything I’m familiar with.” I offered.

“You’re correct,” Dav said, having clambered up his own backpack to sit in the middle of the table, so he could see what we were looking at. “The knife…” he lifted it to his snout and sniffed carefully. “Hmm. It’s not any of the base metals. It smells almost like copper, but…not quite right either. I’d guess maybe an alloy of copper and one of the false metals?”

I translated, for Azul’s benefit. Azul shrugged. “That doesn’t really narrow it down, though I guess the false metals are usually pretty sturdy stuff, so at least we should be able to use it like a knife, despite how thin it is.”

“My weapons are intact. Wist’s too. And Suti doesn’t need a knife to fight. We’d better keep it safe in case it’s important.”

Azul grunted. Dav shrugged. Taking that for agreement, I wrapped the knife in a roll of cloth from my bag I normally used for bandages.

“Open the jar?” Azul asked. This time it was my turn to shrug, but Dav nodded vigorously. He seemed eager to see what was inside. Jars and their contents were normally his domain. “Honor’s all yours,” Azul said, pushing the jar towards Dav.

Dav reached into his pack and came up with a penknife, just long enough to cut through the wax ring keeping the jar’s contents airtight. It came away in two complete pieces, and it was much thicker than it had seemed based on the width of the jar. I noticed that while he peeled away the wax, Dav was holding the lid down tightly. I suppose when you worked with as many volatile elements as he did, you got used to making sure they didn’t go springing loose every time you opened them.

Next, Dav kept the jar at arm’s length and carefully released his pressure on the lid. It held tight, even once he had completely removed it. The jar looked funny, narrow right beneath the lid, then widening again. Dav found the seam for the lid and carefully slid his penknife up to it, then turned the jar so the opening wouldn’t be pointing at any of us, and with a flick of his hand, pried the lid up.

The contents smelled like mustard seed. After nobody fainted and no clouds of evil vapors escaped visibly from the jar, Dav opened the lid the rest of the way, prying it loose while being careful not to touch the contents.

Inside was a pale paste. It seemed almost like freshly mixed mortar. There was a definite grain to the surface, which was gray and seemed to have formed into a naturally wavy surface. Dav turned the jar, and the paste neither stirred nor wobbled.

“Okay. So…it smells like mustard. It looks like something you’d use to patch a foundation. But what does it do?” I finally asked, when the paste failed to take any actions on its own accord.

“Hmm,” Azul said. “Enchantment suggests it’s used for…making things decay? No. It makes them…softer.” The light-that-wasn’t there spun in place over the jar, seeming to undulate from one shade of blue to another in sequence. My imagination was very active when it came to magic. Or…maybe magic was more visible here? If I had been a wizard, I might have been able to actually see what Azul was doing. “Yes. It softens…well…anything solid, as far as I can tell.”

We all digested that. Wist and Suti had finished copying the scrawled bits from the shelves and were watching the process surrounding the jar with great interest. Most of them seemed to be peoples’ names, in the letters of either the trade tongue or the elves’ history language. A couple were in a third script I did not recognize, but had similar hallmarks.

The far right shelf was in a fourth script, which I also did not recognize. But as Azul looked around, trying to figure out the purpose of the jars, he commented, “That’s Old Titanic.”

“Yeah? What about these others?”

“Hmm. I don’t know the language myself, but I’d say those are scaletongue? Maybe trollish?”

“But you can read the Old Titanic?”

“I can. But it’s been a while. Hmmm,” He traced one of the symbols with a finger, then traced it again, moving away from the lines slightly. “I think it says ‘Hul fliin beck buur’. ‘Keep your namestone with you.’”

“What’s a namestone?”

“Ehh…the Titans didn’t really write on papers. But you know how some cities keep a roll of all their citizens, and the citizens get badges or cards proving their citizenship?”

We all nodded. It was one of the odder practices, but we’d seen it a few times in our travels together. I even had identifying papers of my own for a couple of cities now.

“A namestone is like that. A badge of identification.”

“So, what. The…shelf…wants us to show our papers?”

“Seems that way,” Azul huffed. Then, under his breath, “Skyblighted Dungeon logic. No entry without an invitation. No invitation without citizenship.”

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