“This cannot be right,” Fran said, punching the wall furiously. “I just destroyed this stone!”

“The Chaos Chamber repairs itself?” Yelsa asked Rep, terrified.

“I do not know. I was only told they are unpredictable and one should never enter one,” Rep replied.

“There must be something we are missing. There must be another door,” Gorb said, running his hand against the walls, feeling for an exit.

“Maybe if we break the Artifact!” Fran ran to the center of the room and blasted the ceiling with a fireball as Rep tried to protest. The Artifact continued to shine, unscathed.

“I cannot die like this,” Fran said to the Artifact, enraged. “Not sitting in a room until I starve! What can be done, Rep?”

“I have told you all that I know nothing!” Rep said, frustrated. “I am not hiding information!”

“I know that! I know that!” Fran said, running her hand over her face. “I just wish someone had a way out for us.”

“I have found no doors in these walls,” Gorb announced as he finished his circle around the room. “But I will press against all the stones. Perhaps one of them is a pressure plate for an exit.”

“Why would there be an exit in a room that is not intended to be escaped?” Fran asked sharply.

“Because…” Zalan blinked in surprise when the idea came to mind. He felt his mood swing strangely. He went from confident they could break the wall, to dread of being trapped, to almost manic in wanting to find an answer in short minutes. His emotions just kept swirling, no matter where he was. He ignored the unsettling nature of his erratic mind and focused on the room. There had to be a way out. “Because… some people would forget about this room and accidentally get trapped. They wouldn’t want the castle dwellers that were intended to go through here to get stuck.”

“If what I recall of Docrun is true, then there would not be anyone else intended to pass through this room. He prized his treasures. He was known for always walking with his jeweled crown on and his golden scepter, even in his private quarters. He never left them for anyone else to manage,” Gorb said, but he stopped pushing against stones. He was curious where Zalan was going with the train of thought.

“Okay, that might be better. Because then the king would only have this one way in. He wouldn’t make multiple ways to get to his treasure room, right? So, he would have to pass through here. How would he deactivate the room?” Zalan asked, looking around at his friends.

“Perhaps from the outside? Before he entered?” Yelsa asked.

The travelers turned to Rep instinctively.

“I do not know if that is possible,” Rep shrugged, frustrated that they still looked to him for answers.

“Okay, then what else? How else could he get out?” Zalan asked.

“Why are you ruling out the possibility to disable it from the outside? That may be the answer,” Yelsa said.

“Yeah, but if it is, then we’re dead. There’s really nothing we can do if we were supposed to turn it off outside. So, we have to assume it’s not the case. Then we can figure something out,” Zalan said.

“Right,” Fran was nodding with new conviction. “There were thieves that went to the treasure room after Docrun’s death. They must have figured out how to escape.”

“Or, the only ones who escaped were the ones that knew how to deactivate it from the outside,” Yelsa said, her eyes pointedly on one of the skeletons slumped against a corner. Zalan didn’t want to dwell on the idea, quickly moving on.

“Gorb, stick to tapping every stone. It’s the best idea we have so far,” he said.

“Right,” Gorb turned around and began pushing against the wall, putting as much weight as he thought was necessary to trigger a button.

“Rep, you and I can check this skeleton and Fran and Yelsa check the other two,” Zalan made his way.

“Why would the skeletons hold the answer?” Yelsa asked, clearly disturbed about having to rummage through a dead body.

“I don’t know! Maybe this is a puzzle or something! Either search the skeleton or think of a better idea,” Zalan suggested.

He and Rep kneeled over the dead body. His tunic looked like it may have been blue, but it was hard to tell when everything in this room was the same yellow color. Rep made a face, clearly not wanting to touch the body and Zalan began patting it up and down for items or evidence of a puzzle. Rep winced, but didn’t say anything in protest as Zalan began moving joints in directions they never would have turned when alive.

Zalan was able to uncover two daggers in torn, broken sheaths and a folded parchment.

“All the fabric he has is torn all weird,” Zalan said, looking over the dead man’s clothes as he handed the parchment to Rep to unfold.

“The man was eating his clothes and the leather in his sheaths out of starvation,” Rep said in a small voice.

“Oh… right,” Zalan agreed, seeing the way the marks on the dagger sheaths looked somewhat like teeth marks.

Rep pulled the parchment open and squinted hard at it. Then he widened his eyes, then squinted again.

“I believe it is a letter. It says…” Rep trailed for a second. “It says…” he said slowly. Zalan remembered that Rep’s reading speed wasn’t exactly the greatest and offered his hand for Rep to place the letter inside. Rep quickly dropped the parchment, grateful to get out of any embarrassment of literacy.

They shifted aside as Gorb pushed against the stones closest to them. Zalan needed to squint to read the handwritten letter, the yellow light not making it easy to make out the words.

“It says: ‘I came to the Castle Docrun to destroy Hatewing and retrieve the immeasurable treasure, but I am stuck and can go no further. Perhaps I may save another, so I shall note that which I attempted to do in order to escape. The walls repair themselves and the Artifact does not react to daggers thrown at it or Elemental Flame trying to burn it. I pushed against every stone in this forsaken room, trying to create an opening. There may be no way out. My last sights will be condemned to this yellow decay of light. To my son, Slauson: I love you. I am proud of you. Live well and do not try to cheat others like I have, else you may find yourself facing the same fate to pay off your debts.’ Does that name mean anything to you?”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Zalan looked up from the letter. Rep shrugged and shook his head. Gorb was looking at him with an eyebrow raised, clearly impressed.

“That is the fastest I have heard anyone read anything,” Gorb said.

“Indeed! Unparalleled!” Rep nodded, excited that someone else could witness this amazing feat.

“Oh, thanks, I guess,” Zalan said.

“It seems the dragon’s name is Hatewing,” Rep noted.

“And it seems this man already tried to find a way out through stone, if he speaks true,” Gorb said.

“These two are from Nightfall, judging by their clothing,” Fran called over from the corpses she was analyzing. “A husband and wife by the looks of the matching rings engraved with the name ‘Swift.’ A family name, I presume.”

“And there are no puzzles to be found in the dead!” Yelsa said, directed at Zalan.

“There’s only one thing left, in that case,” Zalan said, standing up and dropping the parchment. “We need to attack the Artifact with everything we’ve got. Destroy it. And before you start with a ‘What if’, I don’t want to hear it unless you have another option!”

Both Rep and Yelsa closed their mouths, their protests buried by Zalan’s last point.

“Very well, let us accelerate our death,” Fran said jovially, prancing to the center of the room and waiting for the others to gather around her. The others came close, everyone’s focus on the shining yellow gleam. Once they were in place, nobody made a move. Zalan licked his lips. His nerves were shot. It was one thing to suggest to try to destroy the Artifact, but it was another thing entirely to actually do it. What if they were trapped here? What if the Artifact was actually a means for them to get out? That didn’t matter. Zalan would get out of here. He was absolutely certain. He knew this feeling of confidence might just be another mood swing, but he didn’t dwell on the idea.

“Shall we?” Fran asked. Even her voice was decidedly uneven.

“Now!” Zalan said, wanting to start before the fleeting courage he felt fled.

Everyone blasted the low ceiling with all their might, Yelsa firing arrow after arrow in support of the group. After a few seconds of this, everyone lowered their arms, exhausted. The ceiling made a single click sound, then nothing. Zalan continued to stare at the ceiling as the others looked around the room, hoping for a change in scenery. The blank yellow walls stared back at them, unchanged.

“Again!” Zalan shouted, much more confident after they were not met with a terrible disaster the first time they attacked the Chaos Chamber Artifact.

This time a bit more disjointed, each of the Elementally-powered individuals sent their respective powers to the Artifact. The oppressive yellow glow was not clouded, even by Rep and Fran’s potent combined flames. Again, they were met with nothing but a small click from the ceiling when they stopped.

“Do you hear the clicking?” Rep asked.

“It is her arrows as they hit the floor,” Fran groaned, once more dismayed at being defeated by a room rather than a monster.

“No, I think it’s something else,” Zalan said.

“Let us try once more. This time, Yelsa should not fire arrows,” Rep said.

“I am running out of energy,” Gorb said. “We spent much on the wall before and now everything I have is going into a ceiling that is unaffected.”

“I do not wish to die by over exerting my energies,” Fran agreed.

“Please, I believe there is something more to this,” Rep said.

Reluctantly, they put their powers together once more with enough energy to disintegrate a Boznok. The ceiling remained unaffected.

Click.

“There it was again,” Rep said.

“You hear it, right?” Zalan asked the others.

“What is it?” Gorb asked, trying to control his breathing after outputting so much energy. Zalan could hear how the thinning air was affecting all their breathing. His lungs never felt full.

“Try our powers one at a time. You do not have to go full power,” Rep suggested.

Fran shrugged and threw a large fireball. The ceiling didn’t reply. Zalan threw a bolt of lightning to no avail. Gorb threw a gust of air.

Click

The travelers looked at one another in elated shock. Without prompting, Gorb threw another blast of air.

Click

“I think it’s a mechanism built into it. Someone needs to try and touch it or something,” Zalan said.

“It is one thing to try and destroy it at a distance, but we really should not be touching Artifacts we are not familiar with. I should be the one to do it,” Rep said firmly.

“No way. You don’t even have two hands. We’re running out of air here, I don’t want to waste a second. I’ll touch it!” Zalan volunteered.

“It is too dangerous! You do not know what that Artifact is capable of!” Rep said.

“I thought you liked Artifacts,” Zalan said.

“Not the mysterious ones,” Rep said, his voice grave.

“We really don’t have time to waste though. Let me get on your shoulders, Gorb,” Zalan said.

“Anything is better than nothing,” Gorb nodded, kneeling down for Zalan to climb up his tall back.

“I really believe we should think this through. I should be the one to touch the Artifact,” Rep said nervously.

“Quick, boost me up,” Zalan said, worried he would lose his will to touch the shining yellow thing the longer Rep would talk.

Gorb stood up and Zalan reached his hands up as high as they would go, just barely able to poke the bottom half of the Artifact. Nothing happened. He tried to pull it out, but it resisted. When he tried to mess with it, he felt he was able to push it in slightly. His companions watched intently, holding their breaths in silence. Yelsa popped her knuckles.

“A little higher,” Zalan said, his voice strained.

Gorb grunted and pushed Zalan as high as he could manage. Zalan was able to push the Artifact further inside, and continued fidgeting with it. When he released it, it made a click as it settled back into place. Zalan pushed hard against it, then twisted it to the side. He felt it clank past something, feeling as though he adjusted something in the ceiling.

“I think it’s a knob or a switch. I moved something. I don’t know if I—”

“Door! Door!” Fran screamed hysterically, pointing to the door that appeared.

The group bolted for the opening, not hesitating in fear that this new exit would leave them. Zalan didn’t have a chance to get off of Gorb’s shoulders, and he was thrown upside down, his head bouncing against Gorb’s back as his companion sprinted. Gorb was holding tightly onto Zalan’s legs as he ran. Fran dragged the doorway open and everyone collapsed outside, Zalan sliding off of Gorb’s back as they caught their breath. They looked back at the Chaos Chamber, once again populated by two doors. Fran slammed the door shut behind her.

They turned around and saw that they were standing on a bridge outside, warm with the sunlight above. The bridge led to a new chamber across the way. There was a ruckus above them, but they were so grateful to be in the soft, non-sickening yellow light of the sun, that they almost didn’t look up. Sunlight suddenly turned to darkness. They all glanced up to investigate in time to see the massive dragon, Hatewing, flying above and clambering into the giant hole atop the highest tower in the castle. It was like the size of a commercial airplane and Zalan was amazed that the tower didn’t collapse under its weight. They stared at it as its tail slithered in until it was totally concealed within the tower.

The travelers sat in silence, catching their breath and staring at their final adversary’s home not far ahead of them. Zalan analyzed the rooms that remained before them. About two or maybe three more rooms before they would climb the tower and face the dragon. Finally, after minutes of appreciating the open air, Fran decided to break the silence.

“Well…” Fran breathed, smiling radiantly toward the dragon’s lair. “At least we know we went out the correct door!”