The stone caverns where they'd fought the Corpse Golem gave way to an underground castle of positively Escherish design. Straight hallways that exited perpendicular to where one started, descending stairways that deposited you higher up than you'd started, the sort of mind maddening geometry that only the Developer could provide.

They'd roamed the castle for the better part of an hour and a half, and faced a mixture of curious, yet relatively simple trials and threats. A moving block puzzle reminiscent of an old super Nintendo game, a worrisome search for seven red dragon keys that turned out to all be on the same keyring just outside the castle dungeon. There were monsters in abundance filling the chambers and hallways but even the would-be goblin Sentai team proved little challenge to a ferocious frontal assault. Perhaps if they'd let them transform, but Cayden wasn't that stupid.

Each wing of the byzantine structure brought them closer to entering the central chamber, warded as it was by a magical lock that required a series of colored gems to bypass. A 'royal ruby' retrieved from a statue's eye in the master's chambers. An 'ethereal emerald' from the secret '6th' goblin warrior who arrived too late to save his friends but proved a more substantial challenge than the other five put together. Each gem was placed in turn, until at last, the doors slid open with a terrible rumble.

The chamber, as it turned out was empty save for a small elevator platform, some ten feet across, that began to ascend the moment all five of them had stepped atop it. It was a short ride, just long enough for the five to catch their breath both physically and mentally for what they hoped would be the final challenge. Given how little time remained, it might be their final challenge either way.

They were bathed in the light of an ornate chandelier as the platform slowed, then settled into place with a loud 'click' that reverberated off the enormous open space that just screamed 'boss arena'.

They were in a library of sorts, or perhaps a study. It was an open circular room, ringed with stone pillars and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A small fireplace and a tacky bear rug dominated one side of the room, while a large wooden desk sat before it, absolutely brimming with papers.

"So are we thinking the desk is a trap?" Cayden asked dryly.

"Probably. Let me look."

Shifty had barely managed two steps before a shimmering figure materialized behind the desk, its sudden voice reverberated from the stone walls.

"Please! No more! My son, he's gone ma-" The ghostly figure stopped abruptly. Its half-coalesced face adopted a confused expression as it looked down to the knife now protruding from its chest and stammered, "I..."

"Oh," Shifty winced, feeling the glares of his comrades burning into the back of him. "You uh, alright?"

“You… will never leave this… place.” The shade gasped. Fingers curled and uncurled around the knife embedded in its chest, then crooked against one another, forming an arcane gesture with its steepled fingers. With shuddering effort, the ghostly apparition of a grey-haired man uttered an incantation with what little strength remained. “Uoy lliw ton evom nehw emalf htaerw si tsac ro eht dair swolb up."

Flame shot from the space between arched fingers. It struck the floor and began to spread in seemingly random directions, snaking out into five distinct branches that in turn sought out each member of Cayden’s party. They swirled around them faster than any one of them could hope to move out of the way, spinning and spinning until at last, they formed a solid and consistent barrier of flame some six feet in diameter and three feet tall around each of them.

Yet despite being surrounded on all sides by a wall of flame, there was no threat, no discomfort, not even any warmth. Though it energetically sparked and leaped around them, the fire itself seemed inert, almost insubstantial. It didn’t burn the rug where it overlapped near Celia, or ignite the papers on the desk near Cayden.

"Okay, in my defense-"

"Shut it," Cayden barked. "We'll deal with you throwing first and asking questions later."

"-it was a ghost and everything else we've run into has tried to kill us."

“Is it an illusion?” Michael asked, ignoring shifty and focusing on the same realization as Cayden. He knelt, fingers touching the stone floor near the edge of his ring of fire. “No heat at all, it's gotta be, right?”

“You want to try it?” Shifty asked with a smile.

“No one is trying anything,” Cayden said sharply before either of the men could browbeat the other into testing the danger. “You’ll kill us all if you step across that fire.”

“How do you know?” Michael asked skeptically.

“He is right,” Celia said. “I knew this room seemed familiar.”

“Ah,” Michael replied with a frown. “More gamer crap.”

“It is all gamer crap,” Dinah told him with a glare. “You haven’t picked up on that by now? It's what the Gremlin meant when he said esoteric challenges, and it's why we can’t have internet access. This whole trial is just about testing your nerd cred.”

“Which makes this, what, exactly?” Michael asked.

“Well, that…” Celia pointed to the now-deceased mage. “Was the Shade of Aran. Which would make this.” She gestured to the fire surrounding them. “A flame wreath.”

“Pretend any of that made sense to me.”

She scowled. “Cayden already covered that. If you pass the boundaries of your flame wreath it’ll explode and we’ll all die.”

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“Which means we do what?” Michael asked.

“We wait. It is a timed debuff.” Cayden explained. "It should go away within a minute or so."

“Pretty stupid nerd cred puzzle if you can beat it just by standing still,” Michael replied, clenching and unclenching one fist. He paced a shallow circle near the center of his flame wreath as the seconds ticked by. At the end of the first minute he opened his mouth to complain before he thought better of it, but by the end of the second, his patience had worn thin. “Are you actually sure about this? Just because it has the trappings of something else doesn’t mean it is going to work the same way.”

“He has a point,” Shifty said. “There isn’t a listed status condition. It could be more complicated.”

"Could be that you screwed us all by stabbing someone you weren't supposed to." Michael suggested.

“Not helpful right now.” Cayden said. He’d spent the intervening minutes examining the chamber, looking for something out of place, some sign of a puzzle, or some other way to disable the magic surrounding them.

“Do we think it’ll blow if I throw a few more knives at him? We didn't get any XP and it didn't turn to ash. Could be he just needs a coup de grace.”

Celia and Cayden exchanged looks, then shrugged in unison. “You could shoot out of it in wow. Probably safe to do so here.”

Shifty nodded and drew a trio of knives from his bandolier. The first, unexpectedly, struck a glimmering shield a few inches in front of the kneeling mage, then bounced away harmlessly. He responded by ricocheting the next two knives to come in at unusual angles, one from the upper left, the other from the bottom right. Each impacted the same shield and clattered away harmlessly. “Okay, that is probably a no-go. Does anyone else have something better?”

“Skill Use: Throw Anything,” Dinah said, heaving her arms back for a double-handed ax throw that sent her weapon careening into the same magical shield with predictable effects. She smiled sheepishly in Shifty’s direction. “Not that I don’t trust your knives, but sometimes it is better to check with brute force.”

“Celia, could you speed up time? Run down the clock on the flame wreaths?” Michael asked.

“No, I don’t think so. I can’t target it directly, so the best I could do is locally speed up time for everything in the dungeon, but that isn’t any better than waiting. Worse, actually, since we’re already in a time crunch.”

Cayden nodded. “Better to save your mana for any further challenges anyways, or to slow things down if it comes down to the wire. We’ve still got twenty minutes.”

Then they had nineteen. Then eighteen, then fifteen. When ten rolled around Celia cast her spell, buying them another five in delayed time. Time that was also spent in futile attempts at finding clues or dousing the fire. Any conventional attempts such as drowning it or smothering it failed outright, as did Cayden’s attempts at ice magic and countermagic. Even their remaining hint had proven less than useful.

“Don’t cross the flame wreath if you value your life.” As if they didn’t already know that.

“You realize that if we fail this, we’re probably all going to get killed by the Wardens by the end of the week anyway. It isn’t like we have a lot to lose.” Michael said grimly from his spot on the floor. They’d run out of ideas five minutes ago, and with five minutes left a certain fatalism had set into his attitude. “We have to try something. Go over it, under it. Something. Hell, maybe it is a riddle and if you’re willing to die then you can walk right through it.”

“I’m not willing to risk all of our lives on a gamble,” Cayden said, still scanning the room for something, anything that could be of help to them. “Not that it is up to me.”

Shifty smiled a bit too sweetly in Michael’s direction. When the man had told them he intended to walk through the barrier, Shifty had produced their ‘get out of jail free’ card and told him in no uncertain terms that he could rip up a piece of paper faster than Michael could walk out of the flame wreath.

“I hope you know I plan to stab you when this is all over,” Michael said, shooting Shifty an extremely sour look. “So, we’re just going to wait it out and hope that the wreath goes away at the last second?”

“Unless anyone has a better idea?”

They all shook their heads and the conversation ended, a pervasive silence filling the empty air between them as they watched the seconds tick down towards their failure. Then in defiance to that angry quiet, Celia closed her eyes began to sing, just under her breath.

“I will not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up.”

When she opened them again, all eyes were on her, wide and astonished. “What..?” She asked.

“The flame it…” Cayden started, then shook his head and decided to show rather than tell, repeating her song in a low monklike chant. “I will not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up.”

The fire moved in time with his words, its edges spiking and falling like a visualization of the audio waves, only to return to its original random pattern when he finished singing.

“There is no way.” Celia and Cayden said in unison, laughing alongside one another before Cayden added. "Learning to sing, indeed."

Michael stood, scowling at the pair “Could one of you explain-“

“No. Shut up.” Celia laughed. “Cayden. You lead.”

He nodded and began to sing in that same holy Gregorian chant that was so entirely at odds with the words of the melody, his voice lingering on the final words three words. “I will not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up.”

He pointed to Celia and the two of them picked up the chant, harmonizing with one another as they repeated. “I will not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up.”

The top edges of the fire around all of them were far more stable with two voices in unison. The distinct change was more visible, an unnaturally curved edge in the fire that slid up and down with the rise and fall of their intonation.

This time Shifty joined them, the simple chant becoming a melodic mix of three distinct voices as they worked their way through it. “I will not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up.”

The wreath changed through the course of the third verse, shifting from the wall of fire to a tightly compressed ring around each of them. It vibrated with magic and with music, a soft hum emitted from the flame to accompany and compliment their voices.

Dinah was shaking her head vigorously as her turn drew near, but when it actually came she drew a deep breath, grit her teeth, and joined in with all she had. Her voice was beautiful, a majestic soprano among the less trained singers, while the chant itself held a sort of magic all its own, a beauty that belied the absurdity of its words and origin. “I will not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up.”

Around them, the fire compressed ever further, nothing more than a few thin strands of light that tracked each distinct voice as they struck their highs and lows. Had they wanted to, perhaps any of them could have slipped beneath those dancing strings, but they were committed as all eyes turned to Michael.

They laughed despite his grim attitude, waited for his moment, and joined them.

“I will not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up.”

The flame wreaths snapped, their combined magical energy reverting to fire and flowing back towards the man who had summoned them. They wreathed him in flame, a light so bright that none of them could look upon it, one final verse ringing out from every direction at once as a thousand voices joined into a symphony for one final verse.

“I will not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid, blows up.”

The light dimmed and the shade was gone. In his place was a single glowing entrance, a black void ringed in celestial light.

With less than half a minute left on the clock, Cayden nodded to his fellows, rushed forward, and stepped through the portal.