We threw the body into the room with the strange light, so it wouldn’t block any paths. “We” being me and my swords under my direction. The blood was almost certainly still poisonous. I’d heard more than one story of some brave hero finally slaying a cockatrice only to die from the blood running down their sword.

  The green patina which overlaid my vision wherever I looked—the spores and dust of life which lay everywhere, even on cold stone—withered and died from the drops of blood which rained down from the creature’s floating corpse.

  “I wish I’d killed a weasel now,” Attar said when it was done, “If only for the piece of mind. I’m going to dread every step near each and every drop of blood.”

  “The strange this is, I have,” I said, “Weasel was killing the chickens. Had to put down some of the wounded ones as well. Either could have protected me if I hadn’t already taken the ogre tattoo.”

  The amulets would serve. Cockatrice were an exceptionally rare animal by virtue of their birth, and even less likely to survive. Few tolerated them, and, with the right preparation, they were not difficult to kill. Only dangerous.

  “What’s in the room behind the wall?

  “I don’t hear or see anything near it. Nothing, hopefully.”

  “They’d have been alerted to the sound by now. Either driven off or ready to attack.”

  “You’re right. Let us wait near the hole so we are ready if needed.”

  The minutes slowly chipped past, until finally, the job was done.

  I flared my light and peered down the hole from ten feet away, then 5, then right next to it. As far as my vision through the narrow tunnel could see, there was nothing.

  Attar led the way as we’d grown accustomed to, and I soon followed.

  “That’s strange,” I commented upon straightening out and receiving back my fouta and pack.

  “I thought so too. Are they dangerous?”

  The floor was covered in several spiralling patterns laid out in yellow stones. I crouched next to one, then picked it up and turned it over in my hands, “No. Some warlock’s art project maybe. Both the stones and the patterns are completely ordinary. Which doesn’t mean they don’t contain some sort of significance, but we can walk freely through here.”

  “Shame about the ceiling,” Attar pointed up at a shaft leading up into the darkness, “the room would almost be secure without that.”

  “We’ll find a space to hole up for the night. There should be one across the hall if I remember the map correctly.”

  We huddled into the far corner of the room, which only gave us thirty or so feet of clearance from the door when my sword attacked.

  Sword Storm III

  The wood didn’t even last a single strike. The destruction was so quick the snap didn’t even alert the inhabitants of the Bleak Fort.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  I led the way out through the door and a short way down the hall to our right. There on our left was the single open entry to what I hoped to make our base of operations. My eyes grew wide as I approached the entrance.

  Beyond the open portal was an endless sea. My light carried across the waters effortlessly, yet even at the glittering limits of my vision, I couldn’t detect a wall on any side.

  A woman knelt at the centre of infinity and cried. Her clothes were tatters. Strange tatters, white and thin, like a corpse’s shroud.

  She looked up as I drew near to the edge of the sea, though my steps had been silent, “Draw no nearer, and I’ll not harm you, Mother of Light.”

  The woman was not one of the knights. I doubted they’d found a way down here before us. Did I look like an avatar of the goddess? How did one look like an avatar? How did anyone know what a goddess’s avatar would look like? I’d seen a goddess once—not her avatar—and she’d not looked human in the slightest. She hadn’t even been part of the earth. The gods were endless, infinite. The strange sea contained in the room my map had assured me was encased in walls fifty feet long looked more like a goddess than I did.

  “You are crying. Do you need my help?”

  “I will kill you if you enter this place. I will not negotiate. I will not show mercy. I bear you no ill will. Thus is my promise.”

  Unless the woman was much further away than she appeared, the water was only about a foot deep, but I could drown in a foot of water. It would be a poor place to sleep.

  I turned back the way we’d came, then continued past the splintered doorway and took the right turn down the hall. We could scout the approach to the stairs while we sought another room.

  Straight, Straight, Right...

  We walked down the hall, ignoring a fork back to the room with the eerie light and cockatrice corpse.

  The hall turned left, then ended with a doorway on the right. Was this the right turn I’d recorded, or was it to come?

  I should have written better notes.

  Though it was probably safe to assume I’d only written directions when necessary, as that would be how I would do it now. It was a trick I’d found to almost never fail. The past version of myself and the present often made the same decision when presented with the same option. Therefore, the door was not the right turn, but still needed to be opened.

  I sent my sword ahead while Attar and I ducked around the corner.

  The door didn’t go down without a fight. First the blade plunged through the wood without moving the rest of the door, then something within the splintered hole shuffled to fill in the hole and ooze down the sides. It glowed under my life vision. Some sort of slime.

  My sword returned and carved off another splinter, and then peeled a twisted line from the section near the hinges, twisting the door round and jamming it more thoroughly than it had been before I’d started. Five more minutes left us with a pile of splinters and a disgusting smear of mold everywhere.

  I reached out my control to the slime and forced it to gather together and flow ahead of us into the room. Whatever wood it passed over it digested, and, if it hadn’t been for my intercession it would have left a trail of spores.

  The room exploded.

  Fire rushed down the corridor in a wave, the slime withered and died in an instant.

  True Teleport II

  I sent Attar to the end of the room with the swirling patterns of stones first, then-

  ?Clothes’ Hanger?

  Safe TeleportII

  I was standing next to him. Every time I blinked my vision was filled with a red glow, but the fire didn’t continue down the tunnel.

  “I was going to call you gross for playing around with that mold, but I take back even the thought of it.”

  I rubbed my eyes, “I think the traps are getting more deadly, not just the animals. The warlocks must have needed them to control previous migrations.”

  “Why haven’t they sealed off the caverns?”

  My thoughts turned grim as I thought of the cockatrice, “Perhaps they couldn’t.”