We stepped off the last stone, safely onto the shore of the lake, and Max looked at me with something like awe in his expression. “How?” he asked. “How did you know the pattern? Where did you see it?”

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” I said with a wink. This probably wasn’t the best time to admit that I’d chosen stones completely at random. This was a labyrinth of dreams. What mattered more; having the right answer, or Max believing that we had the right answer?

I’d tell him the truth when we got out.

By unspoken agreement, we kept hold of each others’ hands. The last thing we wanted was to be separated again. We found ourselves in the caves again, and a short way away, I heard sobbing.

The kid in the box! I’d been trying to save him!

“Max,” I said, “do you have anything big and heavy in your bag? Anything that might break a padlock?” I headed for the noise. “We have to – ”

But Max didn’t follow. He tightened his grip on my hand and headed in another direction. “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s not real.”

“You don’t know that! This place is really weird. I’ve found stuff that I think might be real that has absolutely no reason to be down here, and I encountered that sobbing before and I guarantee there’s nothing in my mind that could build – ”

“It isn’t your dream. It’s mine. It’s just an illusion. We need to focus on finding Kylie.”

Max’s dream? “Max, who is – ?”

“Do we really have to have this discussion right now?”

“I… guess not.”

The child screamed. Max’s hand tightened further around mine, stopping me from accidentally pulling free when I automatically turned and tried to chase the sound. His expression was placid. Composed.

“Stay on target,” he said calmly. “It’s fake, and even if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t be in any danger. He’s not going to die in there. He’s just having a tantrum.”

“That’s some real sociopath shit, Max,” I said. But I followed him. If it was an illusion, then he was right; I shouldn’t waste my time with it. We had to find Kylie.

Five minutes later, I asked, “You’re the spell expert. Are they going to stop tormenting us with the sobbing child any time soon?”

“I’m trying.”

“Um, what?”

“They’ll let him out when he masters composure,” Max explained in a perfectly composed tone. “There’s not much we can do but ignore it.”

“Who are ‘they’?” I asked.

“Hmm?”

“You said ‘they’ will let him out.”

“Doesn’t matter. It isn’t real.”

It did matter, because I needed to know who I’d have to track down and slowly beat to death for their crimes against Max when we got out. But Max’s fingers were tight around my knuckles and his hand was trembling despite his placid tone, and this seemed a really bad time to press for details. Max had never mentioned any of this. He’d played off being chosen to be the Nonus over older candidates as a combination of luck and skill, something he was a little embarrassed of. I’d assumed there had been training and education, that maybe he’d pushed himself really hard at those American runecrafting summer camps or whatever. I hadn’t pictured anything like this.

And he wasn’t choosing to show it to me now. I couldn’t feel my fingers any more in the hand he was gripping, and I had the sense that he wasn’t so much bothered by the sobbing as by the fact that he couldn’t prevent me from hearing it. I would’ve apologised, if that wouldn’t make it worse. So instead, I kept silent.

The sobbing did, eventually, fade. As we moved deeper, we found ourselves crossing shallow streams of water running through the caves, and neither of us could figure out if they were real. Sometimes, strange sound came from dark side tunnels, scurrying and snapping sounds that reached deep into my brain and told me to run in the opposite direction, but we didn’t; they might be where Kylie was. By the time we got to the source of the sound, there was never anything there.

We broached another shallow stream, only to find it suddenly, shockingly, deep; we took a step forward and found ourselves dropped straight into the water, having to tread to stay afloat. I glanced up at an open, cloudy sky, then around at the endless ocean.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Is this your dream?” I managed to gasp before an impossibly huge wave swept over both of us.

We found the surface again, and Max choked out, “I don’t think so,” before the next wave came.

If it wasn’t from his mind, and it wasn’t from mine, then that meant –

There she was. Kylie, safe and sound in a little lifeboat, crying. She had a paddle, but it sat unused in her hands. And in the ocean around her, people like us, struggling to stay afloat and calling for her help. As I watched, she locked eyes with a young man begging in a language I didn’t know (her mother tongue, judging by the accent), and, after a moment’s indecision, paddled the lifeboat towards him; as soon as she reached for his hand, the water swept him away, dragging him under. He didn’t surface again.

Kylie slumped back and started crying again, while people cursed and begged and shouted and pleaded with her from the surrounding waves.

This was a problem, because Max and I very definitely needed help. I could swim, but there was a difference between paddling about on the shore and the gargantuan swells of the deep ocean. We weren’t going to last out here.

“Kylie!” I shouted between waves. “Kylie, help!”

She looked up at me in miserable resignation. As the ocean took me again, I wondered how many times she’d watched me drown.

As I had the thought, another swell took me. I made for the surface again, the surface didn’t seem to exist. The water swirled about me, disorienting me as I flailed about groping for air. How long could I hold my breath?

Then, hands wrapped around my waist. Max pulled me to the surface and held me as steady as he could while I coughed and gasped.

Kylie stared at us with wide eyes, then started to paddle the lifeboat over. Behind her, a wave swelled, bigger than any we’d endured so far and I knew, distantly, that if it his us, I probably wouldn’t find the surface again. We tried to head toward her while she raced the wave and, the moment she was close enough, dropped the paddle and flung herself forward to grab at us, pulling us up against the lifeboat while the wave swelled beneath us. She pulled us into the boat, trembling and sobbing.

“It’s you,” she whispered, an arm around each of us so tight I could hardly breathe. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

“We’re okay,” Max agreed. “It’s alright. Everything’s alright.”

Soaking wet and in a tiny lifeboat in the middle of a vast ocean full of drowning people, I thought ‘everything’s alright’ was a bit of an overstatement, but didn’t contest it. “How did you know we were real?” I asked.

“When you didn’t come up, Max went down to get you. They,” she gestured at the people in the water around us, “don’t help each other. They put it all on me.”

“Do we have a way off this ocean?” Max asked.

“Y-yeah.” Kylie nodded. “I couldn’t maintain focus, not knowing where you were; it kept using your faces against me if I tried. But now… don’t let go of me, okay? I won’t be able to concentrate unless I know you’re both safe.” Hesitantly, she removed her arms from around our waists to rummage in her bag, and withdrew her little silver mirror. It was dented in places, and the glass was cracked, but it showed our reflections just fine; three wet, blood-streaked, trembling teenagers. It was amazing that we were all still conscious.

“Pity you couldn’t have put this little adventure off until after I had a fetish, huh?” She smiled weakly. “That’d make this a lot easier.”

“I’ll keep such things in mind next time I secretly investigate the deep mysteries of the school,” Max said drily.

Kylie laughed, eyes still on the mirror, then abruptly relaxed. Her eyes didn’t leave the mirror, but they didn’t seem to be seeing anything.

And then we were on the floor of the cave. Dry, but for streaks of blood and sweat, and sitting on firm stone.

“Kylie?” I ventured.

“I’m still here,” she said. “I can channel the power without it overtaking me, but it… it takes a lot of concentration. I can’t keep the spells away from us, but they won’t dare try to deceive the Evil Eye.”

That didn’t seem likely, but she said it with such certainty that I couldn’t help but believe her. Max looked a little more dubious. “Are you… sure?”

“Yes. The Eye is… limited by my body, but there’s so much more power down here, it can communicate a… a little bit better. If I keep it… awake… in my body, it can keep us safe.” She dropped the mirror back into her bag and grabbed at us, fingers digging into my arm with surprising strength. “I can keep you safe.”

Max eyed Kylie with open curiosity, like she was an interesting phenomenon he was studying in the lab. He noticed me watching him, blushed, and looked away.

“Do we have a way out?” I asked.

“Yes.” Max bit his lip. “I mean, I did. We’re in a, a giant network of runes, in several concentric circles around – ”

“Yeah, we figured that much out,” I said.

“Right. Of course. Well, fairly close to the centre should be an exit. I think.”

“You think?”

“He’s right,” Kylie said, he voice sounding distant. “He has to be. The Eye didn’t prophesy until he’d been down here awhile, remember?”

“Okay, then. Let’s go find our way out.”

“It’s not that simple,” Max said. “I may have gotten a bit… it’s a lot harder to keep track of where we are down here than I thought. We’re lost.”

“Do you have a map to the place we need?” I asked.

“I have… several hypothetical maps. Runic patterns that might be further in. I don’t know which one is accurate.”

“Good enough. I’ve gotten turned around, too, but if we walk around awhile I can draw us a map as we go and you can see which one of yours it matches. I’ll track our progress, you know the runes, Kylie keeps the dreams away. Easy-peasy.” I grinned. “It’s like we’re not even trapped in a vast underground tunnel network full of dangers at all.”

“Glad to see some optimism,” Max mumbled as we pulled ourselves to our feet.

“I’m saving up all of my fear and rage until we’re safe,” I told him. “I’m going to need all of it to lecture you about going off on stupid one-man secret missions. You’re supposed to be the smart one.”

“I never agreed to that role,” Max protested weakly. But it didn’t matter. He was in for the Disappointed Friend Lecture of a lifetime.

If we made it out of this alive.