Ishani had assumed that there would be a rush to get everything ready to leave, but Chris went back to bed and told everyone to follow his example. He was so sure that they wouldn't be attacked or otherwise molested by the local fauna that he declared no watch. Doubtful, Wolfgang tried to protest, but Chris asked him to walk the water and come back. Seeing the barrier, the impassable barrier, Wolfgang realised that even if someone did try to attack, the fact they were falling back in a few hours meant that no siege or camp would work against them. They'd be gone for subjective years from the point of view of those inside the dungeon.

With that settled in his mind, he went as readily to bed as any of them. Ishani thought she would be lying there until the new day, but she was asleep bare seconds after her head hit the pillow. Say one thing for camping in the mountains you slept well.

The day of their departure dawned, less than five minutes after they'd left from the point of view of those outside. Lin was surprisingly cheerful, she kept crowing that she could have Chris put down another circle outside and have a second meal from the local hawker centres while they waited for word from on high. Chris came out of his tent looking somewhat more mussed than normal, his mane askew and his face a little more mussed than usual.

"Okay," he said around a yawn that threatened to unlatch the top of his head. "Coffee first. Strong coffee. Then a hot breakfast. We'll not break camp. If I'm right, we're going to be back here for this evening. If I'm wrong then we'll have time to retrieve everything before we send in some kind of plane for a nuclear strike. A kilo of anti-matter will effectively end this dungeon if all else fails. Expensive but oh so delightfully final."

Putting action to word, he immediately stepped to and started grinding some fresh coffee beans.

Lin leaned over to Ishani and in a stage whisper only an animate rock could make said, "Oh it's serious, the big kitty only gets the fresh beans out when there's something serious going down. Or he has a hangover." She looked over at Chris expecting to see him argue the point or try to protect his honour. He did neither and instead continued to look somewhat depressed while he ground coffee beans.

"Oh," Lin said, crestfallen, "It's the serious one then. Do you really think they'll drop an un-maker in here?"

"If I'm right, no. There could be literally no way for us to deploy an un-maker in here, the multiverse has protections against this kind of thing. You'll hear more when we get out. I'm going to have to invoke Ngaboux in the flesh for this. We need a divinity to see what this place is. They've got senses we can't imagine."

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

It was Wolfgang's turn to make breakfast, and he was doing his usual fry up, sausages, bacon, eggs, beans and toast. Lin had some of her special ration bars which she insisted were better than Wolfgang's cooking because they were at least meant to be mostly indigestible by organic lifeforms while his cooking managed it by sheer accident. Honestly, Ishani felt this was an exaggeration, Wolfgang wasn't the best cook in the party, but he wasn't bad by any stretch. Chris had proven himself to be the better cook, though Lin insisted that she was the best when she was organic at any rate. Chris actually agreed with her, Lin apparently came from a family of chefs who'd been in the business for longer than Chris had been alive.

Still breakfast was good and after finishing it, Chris seemed to be back to his normal self, or at least back to how he had seemed for the past two days. He called to them to gather everything they needed outside and to stand by the Gate. Then he rummaged in his bag pulled out his computer and set it to take a photo every day and store it. "This should give us a decent idea of how fast time is going in here. Magically powered, it'll last a million years, and it's waterproof!"

He then went to the camp store and pulled a spare set of stakes and walked through the barrier toward the mountain behind the gate, away from the lake. He then set up a second circle of stakes and placed the computer within it. activating the stakes he said "And that'll keep it safe until we get back."

He came back into the primary circle and began a new ritual, redrawing the runes inside the active circle with one claw while he hummed a tune that Wolfgang informed Ishani was from the late twentieth century. "Metallica, classical music. very highbrow."

Ishani had been taught that altering an active circle's runes would cause it to become inactive, if you were lucky. It could easily explode if you weren't. Chris was changing the runes with a casual ease that finally spoke to the depth of his knowledge and power to Ishani. Before he had been something of an adjunct to his god in her eyes. Yes he had power, but it was borrowed power, he was just using something lent to him. Now he was still using the power as casually, but she knew that the influence of Ngaboux was weak here, especially with the time differential. Yet without the crutch of a divinity, this man who seemed to take things very lightly, was performing magic in the field that the instructors in the academy would be hard-pressed to repeat in laboratory conditions.

He didn't take long about it either, barely five minutes after he started he stepped back, walked to each of the stakes in turn clockwise, then anti-clockwise, touching each and making minute adjustments to the runes. The moment he touched the last rune, there was a sudden sense of pressure, like ascending in an aeroplane. Instead of ears popping, the world popped. The sun started to speed through the sky, it had been dawn only an hour earlier, but in the ten seconds it took Chris to grab his bag and walk to the Gate, the sun had set.

Without a second look, Chris stepped through the Gate and the rest of the party followed him.