Blake and Ilya walked through the growing chaos of the orc warrens with hoods over their heads. It still hurt a little to walk, but Blake decided getting flayed alive would probably hurt more, so he did his best.

“I can’t see anything,” Blake complained. “Is anyone looking at us?”

“Just keep your head down and walk,” Ilya said, pulling him along arm in arm.

Blake soon stole a quick glance, activated Mental Influence on a random passer by, and watched the scene through the orc’s eyes.

Things…didn’t look great. Orc warriors were corralling every orc citizen into what looked like a central circle. They had formed a wall of bodies in a ring, shoulder to shoulder as they squeezed it closed.

The dungeon Blake and Ilya needed was on the other side of said circle.

“There’s warriors in our way,” he whispered. “We’re going to have to pick a spot and go through.”

Despite the mind control, Blake could palpably feel Ilya’s terror. But she grit her teeth.

“We have no choice,” she said. “It’s the only thing that will save us.”

Blake winced at his exact words quoted back to him, hoping the girl would forgive him when she came around. Hopefully she’d see they had no choice…

“Quite right,” he pat her hand. “Stick with me, and we’ll manage.”

“You there! In the hoods. Stop and show your faces.”

Apparently they’d run out of time. Blake and Ilya just kept walking, ignoring the repeated and increasingly angry command as they picked up their pace. Then there was warriors yelling to stop them, and men pointing and trying to figure out who the hell they were talking about.

They reached the outer circle, and Blake had to decide: Mind Control, or Telekinesis? Something told him Mind Control wasn't wise. The orc chiefs had talked about the king's power to control the minds of the warrior orcs, and Blake seriously doubted he could easily overcome that with ease. No, he decided. Better to use something more reliable.

But how to deal with so many orcs...

With something like giddy madness, it occurred to Blake he didn't need to move a dozen orcs. He just needed to move one female, and a relatively skinny human...

"Go back," said the orcs in the circle as Blake and Ilya arrived. Then they looked over their shoulders to see other warriors in pursuit, shouting to stop them. "Wait," one growled. "Drop your hoods and put your hands in the air."

"Finally an order I can agree with," Blake said with a sigh, pulling back the cloth. Ilya stood frozen beside him, eyes going wider and wider with panic as she looked to find no obvious escape.

But the orc city was dug with a good high roof, maybe fifteen or twenty feet above all their heads to make room for various buildings. Blake gripped Ilya's arm, and took a deep breath. He'd never tried this before, and suspected it would take some finesse.

"If I crush us both against a wall," he whispered. "I'm deeply grateful for all your help. I truly am."

"What?" Ilya instinctively tried to pull away from his grip a little, then he flung them both into the air with Telekinesis.

He readied it again the moment they flew, propelling them towards the ancient mine, trying not to hit a building or a hanging rope with clothes. The orcs were shouting in some combination of order and alarm, all kinds of orcs just staring in utter confusion as two figures flew above their heads.

Ilya was screaming in terror, but Blake kept his focus. He launched them four, five, six times before deciding they'd gained enough distance to land and run for it.

Right, he realized. Landing.

He hadn't really considered that. He waited until they'd nearly struck the ground, then used his power to 'catch' them as he'd done in the tree dungeon. At some point he'd lost his physical grip on Ilya, and now she sort of slowly spun forward in the air about a foot from the ground. Blake dropped himself first, then did his best to help steady her.

"What...I..." she was slightly pale and looked ready to vomit.

"No time for that, my dear, run!" Blake grabbed the unsteady orc girl and pulled her forward, scrambling past staring orc civilians but a distinct lack of guards. All of them were obviously back in the circle, many chasing but too far away to stop them.

They reached the dungeon in less than a minute of scrambling around buildings and trying not to trip, finding the same boarded up descent into darkness. It only really occurred to Blake, then, that Ilya was not a player, and may not even be able to go inside.

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She'd said orcs had tried, and he'd believed her, but he realized then that maybe that was all just nonsense implanted in her brain by roboGod—as false as her people's history.

He met her eyes and took her hand, thinking back to Mona, the girl he'd met in the tutorial. Was another good person going to die for him? Was Ilya even a person at all? Or just some complex NPC?

In that moment he didn't care. The idea of her suffering for helping him was almost unbearable. He could Mind Control her again, he thought, craft her a story that would make the orcs understand she had no choice but to help him all along.

But the guards were coming. It was too damn late. He grabbed her hand and put his other palm to the door. "Come on," he whispered to the system. "My brother has his bloody wolf. Let me take an ally."

[Would you like to enter secret Grey Tower dungeon—Ancient Mine?]

"Did you get the prompt?" he told her. "Can you go inside?"

She stared at him, obviously confused.

"Of course I can go inside. What do you mean?" She grabbed at the wooden boards and started pulling. "But we have to get these down. Hurry!"

Blake blinked, heart pounding as he realized it must have failed. He used Telekinesis and ripped the barricade apart. "Go!" he shouted, then ran through the opening. As he did, he felt a tingling on his skin, the darkness pulling him through the now familiar portal of a dungeon.

"No!" he yelled, “I didn’t accept!” He reached for his companion. "Ilya! Take my hand!"

She turned back to look at him, amber eyes glowing dimly in the gloom. Then he was gone.

* * *

Blake opened his eyes to see a corridor that belonged in some 80s role-playing game like Wizardry. Perfectly cut stone squares made up everything, overly symmetrical moss growing between every crack. He spun to find nothing but a wall behind him, and no sign of Ilya.

His knees felt suddenly weak, and he dropped as he put his face in his hands. He'd abandoned her back there, then, to be found, interrogated, tortured. A crushing weight hit him, so unfamiliar, so unwelcome, like it sapped his strength and will to do anything.

It was guilt, he decided. Guilt for what he'd done to her, knowing all the while what it probably meant. He slapped himself hard, opened his Mental Partition, and did his best to shove it all inside.

Amazingly, it worked. He took a deep breath, feeling much better, much clearer. And when the hell had he started feeling guilt?

[Objective gained: Find and rescue Ilya Vori from somewhere in the dungeon. Reward: ?]

[Objective gained: Unlock and unravel the first mystery of the Makers. Reward: ?]

Interesting, Blake thought. Very interesting.

Mason had mentioned something about 'Makers' in the worm dungeon he'd done with Carl. Apparently it was Blake's turn. Of course, Mason had described killing a building-sized worm, so Blake had possibly just gone from the frying pan into the fire. But there nothing else for it now. He stood up and started walking.

All he had was a knife or two in his pockets, and his Mana Gem. Not exactly an inspiring toolkit to try a phase two dungeon alone. Would the place be filled with giant monsters ready to rip him apart? Something humanoid he could potentially control? He could only hope.

The corridor ended quickly, expanding into a square room lit by glowing orbs in each corner. On the far side he could see text in English on the walls, each with symbols and images beneath. On the floor, a series of tiles with matching symbols and images. Other than that, there was just one door.

Blake smiled, the earlier crushing feeling replaced by a giddy excitement. It was a puzzle. And maybe a dungeon of puzzles, rather than a host of terrifying creatures. And Blake always loved puzzles.

He cracked his neck and fingers and suddenly missed Psionic Physiology. Maybe he could level and take it again. But until then, it looked like Blake would have to do it the old fashioned way. He started reading the text, inspecting the symbols and images and memorizing them with familiar glee.

"Damn," he muttered, "all I’m missing is some Red Bull."

* * *

The symbols were completely unfamiliar. Blake was rather fond of languages and knew quite a lot about their history. But these didn’t look like sanskrit or cyrillic or any kind of Asian character. And there were only nine of them, which made it unlikely they represented an alphabet. The grid on the floor was also 9x9, which seemed important. The text on the wall made no sense.

The old green pond sits. A frog leaps in, splashing it. The sound of the water.

Uh, what? There was another, just as strange.

Spring ocean stretching. Swaying gently, blue and wide. All day and night long.

They almost seemed like...poems. As the thought struck him he counted syllables and sure enough—17, five seven five. Haikus.

He went over the imagery and the symbols, trying to recognize a shape or image, then putting letters to symbols and counting the letters every way he could think of. He couldn’t read any Japanese but he was pretty sure they had a couple writing systems. Or was it three? Hira..gami? No. Kanja? Shit.

Nine symbols. Two haikus. A 9x9 grid. He paced back and forth, wondering if he could use Telekinesis to just rip open the door and float right through, but discarded the idea. You didn't fuck with dungeon puzzles. That probably pissed off robot Gods as much as it pissed off the DMs who’d gone to all the trouble to set them up.

Blake stared until his eyes went blurry, then almost laughed as it came to him. He'd done plenty of Sudoku in his life—a sort of number based puzzle in a grid. He even knew what it meant, roughly: all symbols in a line.

The symbols were just numbers. Well, numbers were really just symbols. The words probably didn't mean anything—they were just giving him a hint this was a Japanese puzzle. He had to fill out the symbols like a Sudoku, where everything lined up with no repetition.

Of course the alien symbols made it difficult visually. Blake had to remember which ones were which, and a couple looked damn near the same. He studied them long and hard before moving to the tiles and finding they could spin, sort of like dice. Most he moved by hand, but once it got to the middle he moved them with Telekinesis just so he didn't accidentally spin anything he stepped over.

The puzzle was hard, but Blake had nothing but time. In maybe thirty minutes he was finished, or hoped he was finished, but took a good long inspection before he was satisfied.

Nothing had happened, of course, which maybe meant he was wrong. Or maybe meant he had to try the door.

With another minute of inspection, and another after that of pep talk, he floated over the puzzle, squinted his eyes, and reached for the door.