It was a short drop.

The wind escaped me on impact. I rolled onto my back, fighting for breath. Above me a trail of dust trickled down from the hole I’d fallen through, the swinging trap door creaking and groaning until it came to a stop. A ladder led back up to the pale light, each rung looking like a dust coated femur. I leaned in for a better look.

Oh, they are dust coated femurs.

When I turned to face the pit I’d stumbled into, I realized that was the least surprising thing.

Skulls adorned the walls—human, by the look of them (But what did I know?). Eight. Ten. Twelve. Twenty. More. Some of them were pristine, some chipped and ancient, others fractured or done in by some blunt object. The only light came from the ruddy glow of two small flames burning atop twisted branches out of the ground, one on each side of an altar along the far cavern wall.

Sitting on the altar was a treasure chest. It took a moment for me to register what it was, as the face of it was slapped shut by a heavy iron lock, the centrepiece of a number of chains that wrapped around the box. The chest itself was remarkably small, half the size of the two I’d seen.

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The cavern was small. The altar was only twenty feet away at most, and if I jumped I could swipe the vaulted ceiling.

I picked myself up, having finally caught my breath. I’d seen The Mummy and Indiana Jones enough times to know what I’d be getting into if I stepped forward and tried to claim the treasure.

My quick scan for obvious traps came up short. There were no invisible wires anywhere within five feet, and no narrow slits or holes in the walls where poison darts would eject from. But knowing this place, the trap would be the Kool-Aid man bursting through the wall with his signature phrase, and I’d be the newest addition to the skull crew before I could say “oh no.”

Slowly I crept forward, leaning towards Large Bird’s leg, which had landed about halfway down the cavern. I was close enough to wrap my fingers around it.

So far, so good.

The chest moved.

I slid back, brandishing the leg as a cudgel.

“Mmmnnnnnn! Hnnnnnmmnn!” Came a muffled sound from the chain-wrapped box. It jerked slightly.

Mimic.

It struggled fiercely against its constraints, barely able to move an inch, and then gave up. “Mnnhnnhnhnnn!” Its tone was pleading.

I narrowed my eyes at it and made my way forward, using the severed appendage as a trap detector. Thankfully none were found. Once I was near enough to touch the box I gave it a thorough once over. It was firmly locked in place, that much was clear. Whoever wanted it here was serious about keeping it shut away. The key was in the lock, but without anyone to turn it the chest would be here forever.

The altar was made of stone, a brighter colour than the walls around it. Aside from the chest and the chains that held it, I didn’t spot anything else. The wooden posts had a carved spiral design twisting up to a split in the wood, where it opened up like the curling fingers of a witch. And in the hand was the flame. No, above the hand.

The fire burned a few inches off the wood, floating in midair, and without any heat. I brushed the leg through the flame. It ducked beneath the feathers. Curious, I reached out to it. I started with a finger, then two, then my whole hand. The fire curled around my skin without roasting it.

“Whoa,” I whispered.

“Hmmmnnnggh?” Asked the chest. It rocked impatiently.

I wrapped my fingers around the key.

Maybe it was a bad idea to free it. I had my arrows, but that didn’t seem like it would be effective against a box. Or maybe it would be, I really didn’t know. I had my legs, and peering under the chest I learned it was probably not of the Terry Pratchett variety, which was a relief. If things went south, I could just run away.

On the other hand, if the mimic had any knowledge about the island, I needed to know. Maybe there was a deal to be had, an accord to be struck between man and man-eater. Food for knowledge.

Yeah. It’ll be fine.

I turned the key. There was a click, and the lower half of the iron bar opened with a creak.

“Ah! Finally!” I almost jumped at the forcefulness of the voice. “You, sapien, I thank you for your help. Now please remove this lock from my face.” He spoke with surprising articulation, each vowel having its moment to shine.

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I looked at him for a moment, thinking of the questions I wanted to ask. I had opened the lock, but it was still in place and, unless I pulled it off completely, the chains would hold.

“Sapien, have you ears?” He asked. “I request you undress me of these chains.”

“Take me to dinner first,” I said. I couldn’t resist.

There was an audible sigh, but from where I wasn’t sure. Did mimics have lungs? It seemed an odd question to ask considering I was talking to what amounted more or less to a large piece of wood.

“For years I have been locked away in this dusty cavern,” he explained. “Free me at once! I command it!”

“Are you going to eat me if I do?”

There wasn’t a face to make this assumption about, but I could tell he was thinking. If he had a beard, he would be stroking it thoughtfully. “How tall are you?” He wondered.

I cocked an eyebrow. “Six feet.” Five ten, actually. I don’t know why I lied.

The chest gave a full bodied laugh, surprising for something so compact. “Then you have nothing to worry about, sapien! If you were say, three nine, three ten, then you would be rather appealing. My appetite isn’t large enough for such a big creature. That thing in your hand, however…”

“Are we flirting?”

The box ignored that. “My name is Gnome Chompsky!” He said. “As you have freed me, I am required to be in your service. Now, about these chains…”

“Ben,” I said as an afterthought. “I have some questions for you before I decide if I’m going to set you free.”

“There is not time! We must evacuate this island of ourselves with great haste! Do you misunderstand my tone?”

I took a moment to marvel at the creature’s existence. He was small, more like a lunchbox, really—Something my sister would pick out at a vintage shop and then never use. He even came with a wooden handle at the top, the perfect size for human fingers. The rest of him was banded with silver along the edges and corners. Simple. Unassuming. But the curious thing about him was that he was alive at all.

For all the weirdness of the island’s creatures and stats, everything at least appeared to come with some sort of decipherable explanation. Level ups came in vials. Creatures operated like normal animals. This was the first thing I’d seen that was just… magic.

Gnome acknowledged my silence with another sigh. “Very well,” he said. “Ask your questions, if you must.”

There was so much on my mind it was hard to know where to begin. “Do you know who you are? What you are?” I asked.

“Ah, philosophy! My area of expertise. You know, I’ve been locked away with my thoughts so long I’ve had that particular dilemma rolling around my lid for quite some time. As another of my kind, Rene Descart, once told me before we were separated: I think, therefore—“

“Not what you are in that sense,” I said, then paused. “Wait, others like you?”

“Why yes. I’m not the only one of my kind. We animate objects may be few and far between, but there are others.”

Any semblance of a through-line to my questioning was rapidly fraying. Animate objects? I shook the diversion from my mind before I could follow that topic. “Okay, back up a little, Gnome. Why do you want to get off this island so bad? What do you know about it?”

The chest scoffed. “What do I know? Not enough to know the secret horrors that lie in wait for you should you play their game. But enough to know you, like all others before, will fail. That is without doubt. And when you fail, I will be brought back here and shackled! Shackled, I tell you! For years! By the creator, it’s been so long… will you embrace me?”

I ignored the chest’s obvious ploy to take a chomp out of my ribcage. “What do you mean fail like all others? I was told some make it longer than a month and advance to the next stage.”

“You still believe what they tell you?”

The talking box had a point. They’d already proven entertainment was their top priority. But the voice had said they wanted me to live. I have a lot riding on this, they said.

“I don’t have much else to go on,” I admitted.

“It may be what they said was true. I can only describe for you my own experiences with your kind. All who stumbled upon this grotto came with the same gusto I see in you now. The same fire. Each time I told myself: Gnome, this is it, this is the one who will take you out of this dreadful place… but no! All of them, all of them, perished. And I was brought back here to begin my sentence anew. And now… here you are.”

I took a step back. Without willing myself to, my eyes turned to the skulls that loomed along the walls of the catacomb. The thing about skulls is that, stripped of life and skin and veins, they all held the same expression. Even still, I became acutely aware of them watching me. Warning me. This is a graveyard of previous players. The hairs on my arms stood tall.

“That’s right, sapien,” said Gnome, as if reading my mind. “I’m not sure of the purpose of this display other than to taunt me. To remind me of your failures!”

I realized I had been holding my breath. “All of them?” The question escaped with my overdue exhale.

“All.”

The next question seemed unwise to ask, but we had breached that point already. “How far did they make it?”

I could almost hear the chest shrug. “Some further than others. One of them died outside this very cavern, slain by another player,” he said.

I spun to face Gnome again. “Shit, this is PVP?”

“There are no rules of which I am aware.”

The thought hadn’t crossed my mind before, even though it probably should have. It made sense to me why players would stick together by the simple rule of safety in numbers, but knowing the game masters, they likely had devious tricks up their sleeves for the opposite incentive.

“Do you see now?” Gnome was shifting under the weight of his constraints, trying to shrug the chains off his small frame. “We must find a way off this blasted spit of land!”

It was something I’d thought of once or twice before. The urge had come to me to build a raft and brave the open sea. I put a forefinger and thumb to my head and massaged my temples. “Like by boat? I knew I should have gotten into something useful, like carpentry. Or shipbuilding,” I said.

“By boat? Heavens, no. As this place is not on the plane of reality to which you are accustomed, you would not make it far.”

“Plane of reality? What’s that now?”

“Well, I misspoke,” said Gnome. “It is between realities. Oh, what is that saying among your kind? You have one foot in one world, and one foot in the other. And one foot in the middle.”

“What?”

“A needle, say, passed through with two threads. Unusual, in a word.”

If the chest was playing me, running me in circles, I had no way of knowing. Nothing had made any sense up to this point, so why not wholeheartedly chug the idea of living in multiple realities? “Oh, wonderful,” is all I managed to say. I slid down the wall to a sitting position.

“That is the boundary of my knowledge concerning such things, however. The rest befuddles me as much as you, sapien.”

It all felt so hopeless. I gently stroked a skull hanging near my face. “Do you have any tips, at least? Any places I should avoid?

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Once we are in the open air, I will need to see if the land has moved.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course it moves,” I breathed. “What the fuck else did I expect?”

“Oh everything does, lest I outwit the makers at their own game. But listen here. There are other avenues available to us. Riskier than faring ourselves against the gods of the sea. This land we find ourselves in is not what you might be used to. Don’t be fooled by the trees, by the pests. It is all a mirage. Once we go deeper, you’ll see. There are things out there. Things you would not believe. Things not even the makers of this game are… completely in control of.”

Gnome let that final declaration hang between us as it it were a fluffy ball and I was a cat just out of reach. I leapt for it.

“Such as?” I pawed.

“Magic,” said the chest. I imagined he was grinning. “Real magic.”