The door the vizier indicated opened of its own accord. Today comes the melt and shoot. I’d been worried about causing another diplomatic incident by knocking down the king’s only remaining door.

No points to the architect for a well balanced hinge, however. The door had flowed open in fits and starts, much like the dead men about the throne. I doubted they need concern themselves with rust or warped wood.

The “hall” was another of the antechambers I was growing used to. A ten by ten room with doors on either end. As if the architect had left his rule with his senses and had to make up for all the unaccounted for spaces with a smattering of tiny tunnels.

Unfortunately, this room was a room, not a tunnel. There was not second exit to be found. “Pass through the wall at hall’s end” was all well and good when there was a hall, but the dimensions of the room were identical.

The obvious assumption (besides the king’s vizier being terrible at instructions) was that I should continue straight ahead. Surely exit and entrance of a corridor would be directly across from one another.

My throbbing palm said otherwise.

I hadn’t meant to slap the wall so hard, but I guess I’d been subconsciously counting on my hand simply passing through the stone like it wasn’t there.

I returned back to the door (ignoring the watchful gaze of the orcs—why were they so silent anyway? Surely they knew the correct way) and began to feel along the wall, making a slow circle of the room, much like I had when I’d first been free from the warlock’s prison and without any light.

I found the way through three-quarters of the way around the room. In other words, the vizier could have said “take a left”. Perhaps it had been a while since he’d been this way. I doubted the dead got out much.

The wall was identical to the others both in appearance and feel. If I’d continued with my slap method, I might never have found it. It was only when I ran my hand along its surface that it slowly began to sink into the wall.

The closest analogy I could think of was—the only analogy I could think of was quicksand. Yep, quicksand. Nothing else. But much slower than quicksand, and harder. Slowrock, if you will.

I withdrew my hand, which by now had sunken up to the wrist, and studied it. The wall didn’t so much as ripple on the wall in or out. It was completely clean and dry. I’d heard of some metals which melted on contact and froze immediately after. Perhaps the wall operated on a similar principle. Hopefully it wasn’t too thick. Hopefully if it was I could breathe.

I sent my spells ahead first. They seemed to pass without difficulty. Even my will-o’-wisps sunk into the stone without resistance. Then they were gone. I could still sense the spells, but I had no idea if they’d made it all the way through. I pulled one of my will-o-wisps back, and it came as easily as it had left. It wasn’t a one way trip.

Thus reassured, I shuffled forward until I was flat against the stone. Then, just in case, I took as deep a breath as I could manage. Then I closed my eyes I pressed myself into the wall.

It was very dark.

I don’t know what I expected. My eyes were closed, after all, but it was more than that. Ever since the evil altar my eyes had become sensitive to the slightest amount of light, whether or not they were open. Just as I had once been able to feel the light of the sun against my eyelids, even indoors with the blind pulled, I’d been able to sense in some sixth sense manner the light of my jack-o’-lanterns even around a corner.

There was dark, so dark you couldn’t see, and then there was this. The total absence of even the concept of light. It was like being in the Shadowmaster’s sphere of darkness all over again.

The wall didn’t end after I pressed my face through, nor my chest, nor even when I took my second step and pulled my whole body through.

Something else changed.

The resistance ended the moment my final toe cleared the threshold. I still felt smothered, but it was on a spiritual level rather than a physical one. I moved as freely as I had in the antechamber before.

I still didn’t try to breath.

Nor did I open my eyes. There was no telling what pressing through stone face first would do to them. At the very least I imagined coming out the other side through whatever layers of dust had accumulated on the wall would sting like crazy.

Two more steps forward, then three.

Was I heading the right direction? Had I been turned around in the darkness? I couldn’t even use the sense of my swords to guide myself. It was a kinesthetic sense, like controlling my hands while my eyes focused elsewhere. If I got turned around, so did the swords. I’d even lost track of a magic broom before, back when I was still an apprentice.

Two more steps, then three and—I was out. It was still dark, of course, but the nature of the dark changed. My eyes snapped open. There were my will-o’-wisps; light. There were my swords; safety. And there was the door the vizier had spoken of, directly across from me on the far side of the room; I’d made it.

The room contained only a forge and a series of pillars following the right hand walls. The forge and its anvil were directly in my path, but they were hardly a danger. The forge was even lit, but that meant only it gave off enough light to avoid it by. I’d been worried the viziers direction might lead me directly into another nest of ogres. I didn’t think the dead king wanted me dead quiet so soon after giving me his gift, but that didn’t mean he’d seen along the path since the incursion from the caverns below had began. I doubted he’d seen anything in a long while, given the state of him.

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I didn’t trust the wooden door on the far side of the forge for a similar reason. Luckily for me, the anvil was a large sort, large than me when crouched next to it, which I promptly did. Then my swords went to tear the door down.

The door was less sturdy than it had looked. After fifteen seconds work, only splinters remained. Good. I was in somewhat of a hurry. The strange druid-sun might rise again any time now.

The path was as the vizier had said. A door leading to a small ante chamber with an open archway directly to the left. The confusing part was that there was little to distinguish this antechamber from the so-called ‘hallway’ with the slowstone wall. Either the vizier’s memory was going, or the warlocks had done some serious renovation since the last time he’d corpse-jittered his way around the dungeon.

The room beyond the antechamber was uninhabited which was as pleasant a surprise as a cool breeze. That didn’t mean someone hadn’t been decorating.

All along the wall to my right and directly in front of me were little niches carved into the stone walls. Set in each of the niches were skulls. The skull ranged in size from from little pebble like things which would fit in the circle of my thumb and index finger, to a great bulbous boulder of a skull set with holes at random along its surface.

It was a smaller skull which appeared to the centre piece. It was somewhere in size between a large dog and a horse, and elongated similarly; perhaps a lion’s or crocodile’s, though I couldn’t say for sure, having never seen either animal without their skin, and the crocodile only in drawings.

There was a label above the skull. I moved closer, bringing my will-o’-wisp with me:

“The dragon is not a dragon.”

Well that cleared things right up. Very illuminating. Meticulous scholarship as always from the warlocks.

I left the not-dragon to its shelf. I had more important things to do.

I fetched the king’s compass from my pouch. Supposedly, if I had the right room, it would work, and I had no reason to believe I was in the wrong room.

So why was the compass pointing directly at my hand regardless of the direction I was fa—

Right. The shocking door. I already knew lodestones could mess with compasses, and I was one big lodestone. That would make this somewhat trickier.

It was already going to be difficult to record the magnet. Magic substituted actions which had been under the mage’s control. Typically actions provided by tools. A flint was a tool which created fire, therefore a mage could replace the flint with a spell which created fire.

A compass was not a tool for spinning things (unless they were very small), but a tool which pointed north. It would most easily be replaced with a spell which pointed north, except that spells didn’t point. They didn’t do anything until defined. In theory the spell would still cast, and maybe even be pointing north with its non-existent form, but I’d be none the wiser.

That was where my training came in. Creativity would suffice, but one was often a substitute for the other. Spells could be cast on each other.

Rapture

The compass began to glow. I released it and step back. The compass remained hovering in place. I lowered it slightly with my spell so I could still see its face, then took several steps back. Two of them was enough. The needle swung away from me and pointed directly at the wall opposite the door I’d come through.

Will-o’-Wisp

The spell didn’t summon two wisps as it was supposed to. Instead, it summoned one, more than twice as bright as my other will-o’-wisps already dancing about the room.

Again?

My magic was becoming more volatile. Less under my control.

I still had no idea why. Could it be related to the depths of the dungeon? Perhaps my proximity to the caverns far below? Few had entered there, and even fewer had returned. Who knew what was possible?

At least in this case the altered spell was actually more convenient for what I was planning to do. Perhaps if I accepted enough small blessings they’d add up into a bigger one. Who knew?

Will-o’-WispII

This time my spell produced the two dimmer wisps I was expecting. I sent one of them off to guard the far exit, and the other to hover above my compass. In the time it took to arrive, I had my crayon retrieved and ready.

I began to sway the compass back and forth, up and down, toward and away. I was careful to never let the face leave my sight, rotating on the spot where necessary. There was no pattern to my actions. I merely moved it through as many planes as possible, given my limitations. As the compass moved, I command my will-o’-wisp to move as well. The brighter light stayed a fixed distance from the compass—as fixed as I could approximate—always moving with the needle, always pointing north relative to the compass. My dimmer will-o’-wisp remained at the pivot point of the compass, again, always at a fixed distance. If not for my years of training as a Magus I might have struggled to control all three components of the spell for the full hour, but as it was I didn’t even slip up once.

Compass: The caster heals an hour’s worth of injuries over the course of one hour.

What?

I frowned and ran my hand over the wax again: The caster heals an hour’s worth of injuries over the course of one hour.

I didn’t often double check my spells. If the writing was complete, the spell worked. If the spell worked, it was the spell I’d written. But the last day had made me doubtful of my own casting and my own mind. It was apparent I was right to doubt.

I flipped back through the spellbook. The runes came into me an instant, as always, never a cause for doubt, but... the names were no longer everything. The healing spell I’d just written was called Compass. Flames of Revenge had a form I’d not recognized until carefully parsing it, and even then the intricacies still escaped me. True magic couldn’t pursue such things as “enemies” or “communities”. It would be the masterwork of a genius over the course of years to create a spell which could define one of them.

It took a further hour simply to go over the spells. The ones tattooed to my flesh and carved into my mind especially concerned me, but they were as I had remembered. It did little to put me at ease. Fireball II slipped and squirmed under my grasp as I looked at it, in a many wholly unlike a natural spell, yet looked as normal as any other.

In the end it was indeed only Compass which had been altered, but that alone was cause for concern. I’d be double checking every inscribing from now on.

There was little I could do in the meantime. I still had the lease of the dead king’s compass for another day, more than enough time to attempt my compass spell for a second time. But I dared not stray far from the relative safety of the string of rooms I’d found. Nor did I wish to risk whatever wandering inhabitants might pass through said “safe” rooms, nor face the privations of thirst and hunger while waiting.

The ogres’ room was well defended, with only a single, difficult entry. It contained my packs and water. If I was lucky, I might even find something edible hidden in their hoard. It was time to go through the ogre’s treasure.