The room was rectangular. Thirty by fifty feet in all. The floor was checker-board, like the bath rooms I’d seen before. Unlike the bathrooms, this floor rippled. Concentric rings were slowly spreading outward from my feet like a stone dropped in a pond. Deeper rings intersected with them, forming peaks and troughs which grew in strength as I watched. The whole room was starting to sway and bob.

This distracting sight was lit both by my pair of will-o’-wisps, and by a sight far more distracting in its own right.

A giant fire breathing goat with the claws of a lion and serpent for a tail stood in the centre of the room. A lion’s head grew from the centre of its chest, or perhaps the goat’s head grew from the lion’s back. Either way the lion was the only one concerned about the situation. Its face was confused, perhaps a bit frightened as it wobbled back and forth on the strange floor.

By contrast, the serpent had twisted about and was hissing at me.

The goat was roaring.

The sun rose, and with it came more flame from the goat’s mouth. Thankfully it was pointed toward the ceiling rather than at me. My hair had shown to be fireproof, but my chest had revealed itself to be quite the opposite.

Clothes’ Hanger

I’d been putting the poor spell through its paces today. I was glad to not have lost it. I’d have been stark naked halfway before lunch without it. Now if the chimera charged I was ready.

If it could charge. It was more concerned with floor—I rocked back onto my heels and fell back onto my rear. Just before it impacted I managed to turn the fall into a crouch. The floor rolled under me. Maybe I should be more concerned about the floor as well. The creature’s (creatures’?) pacing was only causing the situation to get escalate.

The chimera had drawn every object in the room to it. Its own weight has its undoing, a whirlpool for bouncing and jangling objects. Chains and manacles, bottles and fabric, antlers, a sword, even a skull. Adding to the chaos was a little brass bell which wouldn’t stop dinging every time it bounced off the floor.

It was enough to drive anyone mad.

I let my gaze switch to my ring sight of the other side of the door. The ghouls hadn’t given chase which was surprising. Anything with a head like that could smell out their prey. Perhaps they hadn’t had time to get my scent.

The serpent tail hissed at me and I was forced to bring my full attention back to the chimera. It seemed to have decided I was to blame for its predicament. The goat’s creepy goat eyes were now fixed on my face, and even the lion spared a glance or two from the floor to glare at me.

The goat could breath fire. Fire hot enough to scorch and melt the stone ceiling above it. If I didn’t de-escalate the situation soon there would be trouble.

So I shot it.

Look, goats were scary. Plus, if the goat was dead, there would be no more escalation.

Firing a gun was more complicated than I’d expected. I knocked the cap of with the pommel of my cutlass and pointed the tube at the centre of the chimera. The weapon had a bit of amadou or similar tinder sticking out of it so I thought a quick

Fireball

summoned roughly above it and then (ow ow ow) moved quickly away would be enough.

And it was, more or less, but the shot took far longer to actually go off than I expected. Had the chimera been actively attacking me rather than posturing, it would have been going back for seconds before the fuse took its merry time to reach the powder.

When the gun finally went off it felt like a mule had kicked my hand and wrenched my shoulder. Wasn’t the gun supposed to hurt the thing it was pointed at? If I hadn’t been far stronger than a normal man, it would have torn out of my grasp entirely.

Naturally, the shot missed completely, but the smoke and loud BANG! managed to deafen and blind both my natural senses and overwhelm those of my ring as I was assaulted by flashing fire, smoke and noise from every direction at once.

The goat roared as well, or it might have been the lion. My ears were ringing too much to tell. Somewhere in the distance a door slammed. Hopefully not the one behind me. I needed a way out—no wait it was closed. Had the ghouls broken in? And closed the door behind themselves? How polite of them.

When the smoke finally cleared enough to see and my brain stopped reeling from the overload of sensations, the chimera was gone.

It had fled straight through the archway behind it.

That still didn’t explain the slamming door. My ring confirmed the door behind me was still firmly shut. The ghouls hadn’t even come to investigate the noise.

More the fool them.

It only took a few more seconds to realize I was lying on my back. I was on top form today. Either the gun or the ripples caused by the fleeing chimera had bowled me over.

The floor was kind of nice. It was like lying in salt pool which reached up to massage you from underneath. Shame it was cold.

The chimera had inadvertently been guarding quite a haul. Once the rocking settled I made my way over to it. It was somewhat like being aboard a small skiff, though the risk was taking a cutlass to the eye rather than falling overboard.

If this were indeed another warlock spa (assuming the others had had anything to do with such things) it was a more demented one than usual. I’d gotten a glimpse of the objects earlier, but now I could see them in their full glory: A giant spiked cutlass, a nightgown so replete with wires it stood on its own, chains, manacles, the brass bell, a bone flute, a cube of demonic faces, and (of course) the skull.

These were a necromancer’s tools.

Worse, the metal cube bore my face.

It was twisted and warped. There was a cruel glint in my eyes and hooked fangs in my mouth. The faces swirled and melted and overlapped one another, but I could still recognize them: my face as it had been before I’d entered the dungeon. And above the myriad of caricatures flew the albatross.

Not for the first time I wondered if I was somehow dreaming. It wasn’t a desperate hope or idle fancy; I’d been captured by warlocks. Even now I could still be chained in that first chamber with the Shadowmaster working his magics on my mind. His death, the evil altar, the unimaginable size and structure of the dungeon—they could all be fabrications. Every wrong turn or innocent death—the dark elves—every curse and use of dark magic, they could be another bond broken by the warlocks.

Even Brace and Conan and Erin and Gunhild, they all could be part of the dream. This did not make them lesser. Even warlocks didn’t have full control over the realm of dreams. That was the domain of the gods. Even if I dreamed, the dream was real.

But Elysium...

I had been there. This was something I knew, knew more than anything. I’d never been one with sure beliefs, anything was possible, after all. Anything but Elysium. It filled me with a certainty. If this were a warlock’s dream I’d still broken the mural, still travelled to Elysium.

And eating the dryad had been real. I’d felt the warmth suffuse me. That feeling of fulfillment had never left.

And the druid stone. Which had grounded me. Energized me. Given me the strength to continue. That had been real too. More real than real.

So.

So if this dungeon was a dream which was more real than real, why would the warlocks dare send me here? I’d already inadvertently undone their greatest work. The nature of that mural would have changed society for generations. Its destruction might bring about a new age. A golden age. One without fear. One without that empty gnawing doubt. That shying from the void of finality which we all secretly dreaded awaits us.

What could people without that fear achieve? What bonds could they forge?

So then, the dungeon was real. But if the dungeon was real, why was my face carved on the walls. Why was it carved on the cube? Who was I to the warlocks? Did they even know? Or had the existence of the carvings been the sole reason for my capture?

I grabbed the cube.

It was heavy, metal, and nothing more. No magic animated it. No answers revealed themselves.

It was somewhat lighter than it should have been however. Hollow. In fact...

The cube was meant to give, or it had a puzzle joint my strength could ignore. I twisted along one of its faces and the cube split in half.

A pearlescent red dress spilled out. A dress so impossibly fine it had fit the confines of the cube and now spilled over my hands like water. My ring-touch agreed with my eyes. It felt finer than the finest sea silk, and smoother than the pearls it resembled.

I pinched it in my fingers and pulled. Strong, as strong as silk despite its impossible ethereal nature. I held it up and it cascaded down into its full form. Full length, low cut, narrow for a dress. My fireball lit up the far side, but the dress was not transparent. Somehow the thing material caught the light rather than letting it pass.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

I wasn’t a fool.

The dark elves had spoken of a feminine spirit around or within me. The mirror had showed one. There might have been others. This was a warlock’s dungeon.

The dungeon was speaking to my desires. That was what the feminine form of a man was, according to certain shamanic sects. Both corruption and purpose. Magi had a different belief, namely that male and female must both be incorporated in the whole, which was similar, but separate in the distinction that neither ‘existed’.

The shamans believed they were real. Spirits, mostly, but some went as far to say corporeally as well. Within every man the spirit of their ideal woman, and within every woman the spirit of their ideal man. This spirit both reflected in how they interacted with the opposite sex and marked the character of the man or woman in question.

The shaman believed our ideals said as much about us as our own actions. Shamanistically, the warlocks would be speaking to that spirit in order to bring about their broken bonds. Warp the inner woman to be one who only gave, never asked, a woman unbound by the mundane. A succubus. Perfection incarnate.

A child’s notion, or that of a young man.

Or that of an older man who had failed.

I had the pieces of the puzzle, but I couldn’t see how they fit together. Why the dress? What had the dark elves truly seen? Were the shaman more correct than the Magi had believed? Or could the elves see a sort of spiritual attack on my soul? One the dungeon or the warlocks had initiated?

I wasn’t a fool, but I still didn’t understand. Was I the succubus, or the dungeon? Was the dress metaphorical or literal? I was holding it, yes, but it was clearly too small. So why had whoever had made it made it? And why had they hidden it inside a metal cube five floors deep in a dungeon one might never go to?

I’d already decided this wasn’t a dream, but it would simpler if it was.

I pulled the dress over my head and armour. It pinned my arms to the side and bunched up around my shoulders, but it was enough. I could sense the dress’s magic. It wasn’t quite clear, and wasn’t what I expected.

Something to do with text?

I fished around in my pocket until I withdrew Eric’s invitation.

I needed to touch it with intention.

The thought came to me as easily as where to place my fingers on my pipes. The beginning of the thought was the end, there was no in between.

I touched the page with a gloved hand and the world transformed.

I could have said the words transformed, but that wasn’t enough. Only the page moved, but a sense of understanding arose, as inevitable as the draw of the chimera’s weight in the centre of this very room. The text transformed into a picture of a noble been heralded by a page, who gestured to a castle at the top of a hill. There were a dozen interpretations of the image which were possible. Infinite. And yet the meaning was as clear—as exact—as the text it had replaced. Even the position of the sun in the image spoke to the time the ‘meeting’ was to take place.

I withdrew my finger. The image stayed.

My eyes widened. This was the kind of enchantment wars would be fought over. And the warlocks had left it here, far below their keep. Had they even known something was in the cube? Had they known the cube existed at all? Perhaps I was the only one who could open it.

I pulled the potion vial from my belt, the one with the rune I didn’t recognized, and placed my thumb on top of it. My ring watched the rune change beneath my thumb. The image was still carved in wax, but it now depicted a man and a woman facing each other with their hands touching. The space was too small for the carving to have much detail, but it was enough to note the similarities in their appearance and the similarities in their pose. It reminded me uncomfortably of the demon mirror once again. A mirror image.

And here I’d thought it had been something to do with enhanced hearing.

I was tempted to throw away the potion. Why carry the weight of something I’d never use?

But it was light and I was strong. I’d have never thought Withering Insect could be so deadly effective either. The vial went back on my belt.

What else was there? The warlock rune. The one I’d found next to the druid rune. It had clearly been magical, but their runes were unknown to me.

I pulled it from my pouch and rubbed my thumb along it. The stone carved rune became a stone carved image, one which kept the little scratches and slips of the hand, as though made by the same artist with the same tools. The image was now of a blossoming flower with a fire contained within its petals.

An explosive rune. I’d been carrying around a bomb this whole time! I was lucky a blow from the ogre or one of the Trogodytes spears hadn’t set it off. Or the dozens upon dozens of times I’d fallen. I winced. How many time had I fallen on the pouch containing the rune?

On the other hand, how many times had I fallen on the pouch containing the rune? I had yet to be blown to smithereens, so perhaps the rune was harder to set off than that.

I could still feel the power in it, even though it had been transformed. The dress didn’t overwrite any aspect of the thing it translated. It instead substituted another reality; a what could have been with what was.

I gingerly packed the rune back into my pouch. It hadn’t gone off yet. And if it did go off...

I was going to say I could Regenerate my wounds, but if it went off it might take my spell book with it. I removed the rune to the inside of one of the cloth gloves tied to my belt on the opposite side of my body. Just in case.

My hands were still shaking as I extracted the first scarf from the pile.

Much like the dress it was strong, warm, and finely made. Warmer, really. Unlike the dress it was practical, unisex, and non-magical. Part of a noble family’s collection of winter gear or something similar.

I dropped it next to the ruins of the cube and grabbed the second scarf.

This one was finer, though less finely made. A rich woman’s scarf or a fashionable man’s. It also joined the pile. It was followed by a too-small woman’s cloak, an ancient coat full of holes, strange looping white robes which were also too small and which I couldn’t figure out how to wear besides, another dress, a bone club, a bowl, a cup, a wimple, and the little brass bell.

If this was a necromancer’s gear he’d brought his wife with him on their day out. Or the necromancer was the wife. Why they’d abandoned all their winter gear in a room underground? No idea. Perhaps they hadn’t had a choice, or one of their warlock friends had been storing it for them.

Some of the gear didn’t look like the sort of thing you’d let leave your mansion. Their was a tapestry as old as the coat which cracked and fell apart when I unrolled it; what little of it remained depicted a shadowy woman whispering into a man’s ear. There was a beautiful set of tiny iridescent antlers carved from opals, and of course the human skull.

I didn’t know how to use a skull, but I knew a good one when I saw it. The bone was pure white, unblemished by scratches or time. The jaw was somehow attached without wire or sinew and not a single tooth was missing. The proportions were perfect. As though it were the skull all other skulls were based upon and but mere imitations of.

There were no wonders I could perform with such a thing and so I set it aside, but true perfection was a magic of its own. Where the magi sought living gold, this necromancer had sought a living skull and found it.

It made my skin crawl.

The flute was also made of bone. I liked playing music as much as the next guy, though not nearly as much as the delta folk, but there was no level of enchantment which would give me cause to play it. It had probably been used to summon the dead as the bell and gown had been used to ensnare them. And there was a magic nearly as dark as the warlocks’.

At least, that’s what I assumed what the nightgown was for. A form for an ethereal passenger. I knew some vain sorts found it easier to wear clothing which shaped them rather than shaping their clothing with a body worth showing, but the gown was a step above even that. It didn’t have any clasps or openings, it would have to be pulled on and over every inch of skin.

The dress had worked and was still working as a sort of shawl. Perhaps the gown would work as a helmet. I placed the wire structure on my head so I could feel silly for a few seconds before I placed it with the rest of the rejects.

Not all tools could be used by all craftsmen.

There had been an apple under the nightgown. It was delicious and surprisingly hale for a fruit that had to be at least a month old. The colder air of the underground must have helped.

Next were three potions with three unknown runes. Seeing as I was still “wearing” the dress, I merely ran my hand over each in turn to decipher them.

The first depicted a man staring up at the north star; a potion which could sense directions.

The second showed a crowd of people and animals all staring at a speaker in their centre; a potion of translation. I couldn’t tell from the picture whether it would work for text as well.

The third showed a swarm of butterflies arrayed like the ripples in a pond. I had no idea what it was supposed to do. Perhaps the rune itself had been incomprehensible. I kept it anyway. Without the dream seed my pouch had plenty of room.

Next were the weapons: a longbow, a cutlass, and a lance. The cutlass and a lance felt like a deliberate mirror of my own weapons, though both were far larger.

The cutlass was covered in spikes, some of which curved back round to dig into whatever hand might rest of the pommel, and the blade was far heavier than the rest of it. Even with my strength it was uncomfortable to wield and the balance was so bad I feared putting my elbow out swinging it.

The lance was far more practical, but was still a lance. Unless I found a way to mount one of those beetles or the chimera decided it believed in second chances, it was of little use to me.

The longbow was a longbow without arrows. Useless without my magic, but potentially a great boon to me in time. Carrying it would be a bit of a problem.

Given what a failure the handcannon had been, I threaded its handle back through my belt and decided to carry the longbow in my off hand instead. I could drop it before combat if need be.

The drinking horn was nice, but it was far too large, and far less practical than my waterskins.

That left a grimoire, the chain, the manacles and a metal file.

I reached for the metal file first, and a strange thing happened. My fingers refused to close around it. It wasn’t like there was an invisible barrier, or a force pushing back against my hand—there was no strain involved—my hand simply stopped obeying me once it got near.

I nudged the file with my boot and it moved as would be expected. I tried to pick it up again and my hand stopped. I was wearing both gloves and boots. It wasn’t like it was avoiding skin contact.

I sat in front of the file and brought both my feet around to try to pinch it and lift it upward. They both stopped before making contact.

Aha!

I returned to my crouch and leaned over to flick the file with my hand.

It spun on the spot.

For some reason the necromancer had made it impossible to pick up. Fine. I’d leave it for now. My swords were faster than a file anyway.

I ran the chain through my fingers instead. It was one chain, not multiple like I’d thought earlier. Just long and twisted enough to create the illusion. Chains had their uses, but none right now, and I didn’t have room to carry it.

I picked up the book next. Not a grimoire at all it turned out. The unknown text on the cover transformed into a full-page illustration of a merchant woman curtsying to a noble as the noble sipped tea on her porch.

It was a book of etiquette.

Why had the necromancer had that? I eyed the nightgown and the manacles again. I’d thought they were a weird choice for binding the undead. Had he been hoping for a wife? A maid? Is that why there was all the women’s clothes lying around? Did ghosts need warm winter gear?

I flipped the book open. I couldn’t understand any of the text, but one of the pages already had a picture. It was of a stern looking woman standing before a tea table with her student sitting across from her. The instructor had a wooden spoon in her hand and had an expression half way between fear and astonishment on her face. Creepy.

What was causing her to look like that?

I followed her gaze down to the student who was—