Dalthan was in such a rush to escape the [Witch-Queen]’s hovel that he barely registered the inky darkness beyond the doorway. In truth, it could have been a snow-covered wasteland, or a pit of rolling fire and he still would have taken his chances there over another minute in the company of the brain-melting witch. Even Belial was beginning to test his patience, a sure sign that he was operating with a debilitating degree of sleep deprivation.

He belatedly realized, as the door swung shut behind him, that diving into the pitch-black nether wasn't the decision he would have come to if he’d had a well-rested and rational mind. The hours on his feet had chipped away at his mental acuity like a lumberjack taking chunks out of an oak tree. The interrogation about his asshole father had been the breaking point.

It was too late to regret his decision now. Whatever passage he’d taken to enter this dark, formless place had vanished when the door shut behind him. Now he was well and truly isolated in a strange, lightless realm.

Or, he would have been, if he hadn’t had a stowaway in his shadow.

“Human Daathaan,” Vex croaked, the return of his strange, gurgling accent was a sure sign of the abomination’s anxiety. “Where have you taken us? This feels like home but it is not Limbo. This blue slaad would like to return to the Hub now.”

Dalthan couldn’t quite tell where the slaad’s voice was coming from. It held a strange echoing quality that made it impossible to home in on.

“Can you see me?” Dalthan’s voice, likewise, had an ethereal echo, as if he were standing at the center of a large, empty auditorium.

“I cannot. I know I’m still in your personal darkness, but it feels far too large. It is like the difference between a pond and an ocean.” The murder toad paused and Dalthan could virtually hear him gathering his thoughts. “It isn’t uncomfortable, but it feels unnatural.”

Considering the source, wasn’t that an alarming observation.

On a whim, Dal tried to move forward. He could lift his foot and even feel a flat, firm surface when his boot met the unseen ground. However, the sensory input stopped there. He couldn’t hear the tap of his bootheel, nor could he feel the air against his face as he walked forward. The rogue even broke into a run to see if it made any difference.

It did not. His body told him that it was moving, but the dark world around him claimed he was still as a tombstone.

Panic began to creep into his mind.

“You don’t have any idea where we are? All I did was walk through a fucking door!” Dal wasn’t proud of the strained notes that made his normally smooth voice sound jagged, like the jaws of a bear trap.

Vex was even less circumspect with his feeling of anxiety. “I do not like this place, Human Daalthaan! I cannot leave your darkness because it is everywhere! The slaadi collective must destroy this place!”

The [Beastmaster]’s outburst left Dal seriously concerned about Vex’s ability to operate under pressure. Not that he wasn’t dealing with a minor existential crisis himself. Desperate for some kind of guidance, Dalthan looked to the one source of information that had never steered him wrong.

The Thief’s Handbook.

The [Rogue] wracked his brain for a rule that fit this bizarre situation, finally, he settled on rule twenty-six.

‘Magic is bullshit.’

It was one of Dalthan’s favorite rules because it was so unequivocally true. Magic was bullshit and the current crisis was a fine example of just how bullshitty it could be. All he’d done is walk through a god’s damn door and instead of ending up on the street like a normal person he’d wound up in this strange nothing-space. Why? Because magic wanted him to be locked in a dark cave with a nightmare frog already losing its highly erratic mind.

Unfortunately, the only way to solve a magical dilemma was to lean into the nonsense.

“I’m going to try to open the door again,” Dalthan said more confidently than he felt.

“What door?!” Vex gurgled, lapsing into a series of wet croaks that Dal assumed were examples of slaadi profanity.

That, or his blue-skinned friend had just suffered a stroke.

“When we ended up here, I wasn’t thinking about where I wanted to go. I was just trying to get away. Maybe if I focus on somewhere specific, we’ll end up there instead of wherever this is.”

The [Rogue] winced as Vex replied with a wet sound that reminded him of fish guts plopping into a chum bucket.

“I just want to go somewhere with a bed. That’s all I need. Anywhere that I can get some sleep would be fine.” Dalthan mumbled the words to himself as he reached forward. He couldn’t see his arm extend, or even feel air sliding between his fingertips when he closed his hand. The surreal lack of sensation made the thief wonder if he was actually moving at all, or if this entire place was a figment of his imagination.

That concern was soon dispelled when he felt the knob of a door beneath his palm.

Dal took only a moment to recognize the shape for what it was before he shoved the door open and rushed forward. Light assaulted his eyes, sending the thief reeling back into the threshold he’d stepped through. While he shielded his eyes with an upraised hand, the silence he’d been entombed within shattered beneath the steady assault of nearby sound.

As Dal blinked the spots out of his eyes, his ears began to sort out the sudden burst of noise. The rhythmic creaking of straining wood formed a perfect counter-tempo to the rapid huff of labored breathing. Sifting through the louder sounds, the [Rogue] quickly made out the notes of decidedly feminine moans that bounced against the walls in a series of breathless notes rising toward a climactic crescendo.

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The rogue’s jaw dropped just as his hand did, letting his green eyes take in the aggressively deviant copulation taking place on the bed across the room. His shock was quickly replaced by a grudging sense of admiration as he watched the man, and two women, work with a professional level of skill. Mesmerized, the [Rogue] tilted his head to spectate from a slightly different angle as he tried to figure out how the trio maintained their balance.

“We have escaped Human Daalthaan!” Vex croaked triumphantly, not the least bit taken aback by the compromising situation they’d just walked in on.

“Shh,” Dalthan hissed, tearing his eyes away from the impressive display of carnal talent to look for an escape route. His quick survey discovered a small window and a door set into the near wall. Rather than take his chances with the window, Dal began to quietly work his way toward the door. “It’d be rude to interrupt them.”

Now that his eyes had fully readjusted to a world with light, Dal let his gaze drift across the room. Mage globes that were set into elegant fixtures placed along the polished stone walls, lit the room in a soft, intimate light. A large rug occupied the center of the room, most of its intricately woven pattern hidden beneath a pile of differently shaped pillows, some of which were close enough to the roaring fireplace to present a potential safety hazard. A standing mirror, from floor to ceiling, occupied the wall opposite the fireplace. It was purposefully positioned to reflect the four-poster bed that currently served as the stage for the show Dalthan had stumbled upon. The mirror’s twin was placed on the ceiling above the bed, offering its occupants a positively scandalous view of their writhing bodies.

The room’s decoration made divining its purpose rudimentary. If there were any lingering doubts, they were put to rest by the musky scent of sex that hung in the air like a thick, soupy fog.

Dal, focused on his escape, was startled by Vex’s voice when the slaad spoke from his shadow. “Is that what you plan to do with Lady Belial?” There was a note of reproach in the frog’s voice, drawing the [Rogue]’s attention to where his shadow lay cast across the nearby wall. The coal-black eyes that stared back at him were as judgmental as any member of the clergy he’d ever met.

“Not that exactly,” Dalthan said, resuming his trip across the room while the trio on the bed were hopelessly distracted with one another. “Not unless she was really into it.” After a moment’s hesitation, the thief amended, “And we’d need towels to clean up. Not just one or two. A lot of towels.”

The thief turned back toward the bed with a lazy wave of his arm. “Just look at how much chocolate and peanut butter-”

Dal blinked owlishly as he found himself staring eye-to-eye with one of the women that had dark smudges around her lips and across her chest. The human had fiery red hair and green eyes the color of seafoam. For three heartbeats she stared at him, her chest heaving as she struggled to find the breath to speak.

He assumed that those smudges were chocolate.

The [Rogue] offered the woman a smile that would have thawed a [Witch-Queen]’s black heart. “I just want you to know that you have the most exceptional fucking balance I’ve ever seen. How did you even stay upright while the two of them-”

The entitled little strumpet repaid his sincere compliment by screaming bloody murder.

Ever the gentleman, Dal gave her the finger as he lunged toward the door.

The thief managed two steps before he felt a searing heat flash against his thigh like the kiss of a branding iron. Reflex sent him twisting to the side, shifting his leg just enough to avoid the knife that spun through the air. The weapon struck the wall with a brutal thunk, proving once again that the [Rogue] had made an excellent decision in his choice of feats.

Dalthan’s sense of triumph was short-lived. He spared a glance over his shoulder and saw the other woman, a buxom lass with violet hair and red skin, pulling another knife from the table by the bed. She wasn’t the only one taking action. Both the redhead and the lanky man had abandoned the bed and were rushing in his direction.

Neither had bothered getting dressed.

“Don’t be so defensive!” Dalthan called out as he grabbed hold of the doorknob. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of!” As he spoke, the thief twisted the knob and made to jerk the door open.

Only to find it locked.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Dalthan groaned and then threw himself back to avoid the naked man’s flying tackle.

“It was an accident! I didn’t mean to ruin your fun.” Dalthan backpedaled further into the room to give himself more space. Another knife whizzed through the air, barely missing the [Rogue]’s ear as he flinched away.

“Vex!,” the thief called out.

A slaad erupted from the shadow cast by the fire dancing behind Dalthan. Suddenly, between the rogue and the three naked combatants, stood a towering figure sculpted from slimy blue skin and hard corded muscle. Its appearance made the trio falter, suddenly less enthusiastic about the possibility of combat when it included a hulking figure armed with jagged teeth and wickedly curved claws.

“Look,” the rogue said, glancing from one naked person to the next as he adopted a soothing tone that could have calmed a rampaging bear. “My friend and I are on our way out. If you just stand aside, we’ll be gone in five seconds and you can get back to playing in the chocolate and peanut butter.”

Vex’s nostrils flared. The abomination turned slightly, casting its black, depthless gaze toward the thief as it croaked. “That isn’t chocolate, Human Dalthan.”

“Or peanut butter,” it continued.

“...It’s not?” Dal’s handsome features began to twist into a mask of abject horror as realization began to set in.

Before he could ask any of the many, many questions that rushed through his appalled mind, the room’s door swung open. In walked a tall woman with a pair of swept-back horns rising from her brow. She had shoulder-length hair the color of glowing embers and a heavy tan that gave her complexion the faintest hint of red. She wore a loose-fitting silk robe, bound at the waist, that did nothing to hide the thick tail that emerged from the outfit's hem. The appendage swished back and forth across the floor in a display of agitation like a cat watching fish swimming safely in an unassailable bowl.

Oddly, Vex ducked his flat head at the new arrival and stepped to the side. The other three scrambled away, rushing toward the modesty offered by the filthy bedsheets as if they’d just remembered that they were naked and covered in…stuff.

“Who the hell are you?” The woman’s voice was remarkably deep, like the angry rumble of a volcano moments before an eruption.

Dalthan found something unnerving about the horned woman’s gaze. Like an iguana, her pupils were slit and they held an intensity that would have been a match for the [Witch-Queen].

Refusing to be cowed like the rest of the room’s occupants, the thief straightened his back and doffed his hat. “I’m Dalthan Sol’Magor, [Rogue] extraordinaire. Who the hell are you?”

The woman huffed and Dal might have imagined faint wisps of smoke trailing up from her nose. “Here? I go by Polly.” The tall woman took a step further into the room, seeming to fill the entire chamber with the weight of her presence.

“Now, Dalthan, tell me why you’re fucking with my clientele.”