The sun rose.

  True sunrise this time. My body—visible—shone with it.

  Attar’s body was also visible. It let me see the panic in his eyes. His mouth was moving, but no sounds escaped either in his original voice or my own which he had taken.

  “What happened?” I asked both out of concern and to test my own voice. I still spoke with the voice of the goddess. The issue was not my own voice being returned to me.

  Attar shrugged and pointed at his throat. I studied him carefully. There was something strange about him now I was paying attention. The sun’s rise was ending, but even as he faded from view I could clearly feel a concentration of the cloying darkness which settled in the Bleak Fort’s bowels. It was wrapped around his neck. Myrra’s soul gave me the insight.

  “It will pass. The full moon has robbed your voice. Once shadow mars its face once more you will be able to speak.”

  Two suns rose suddenly in the midst of an endless ocean of tar. The tar clung to the suns, dimming their light slowing their rise. But the light was stronger, and the tar burned. Ashes rose like rain falling from a cloud in a world gone mad.

  Something swelled within me. Not that feeling of completeness I’d embodied since I’d eaten the hapless dryad, but similar. A feeling of being full without being diminished in freedom or scope. Of expansion in dimensions unseen.

  Two spells.

  I knew it like a knew when I was hungry, like I knew the difference between thirst and pain. I could write two spells. But I doubted I had much time.

  “I apologize Attar, I must write, but I assure you, your condition is temporary. Give it a day.”

  I drew my crayon before I finished speaking.

  _?Mental Map?_

  I didn’t pause from my success reinforcing the spell. I immediately sprung into writing my second spell. I could tell something was special about this one.

  ?Push VIII?. The door in front of me swung open just in time to admit the skeleton who cast the same spell in synchrony with me—

  I could probably use that spell to create a door opening spell—

  I returned my focus to the push, which caused the flagstone we’d targeted to grind and wail. I needed a spell which could defeat those foes resistant to everything I had, rather than spells which sped my journey downward. The cockatrice had shown me that. This spell wouldn’t solve that problem, but toad-dragons and ogres and maybe even those uncrackable ruby beetles could finally be safely overcome.

  Push IX: Push an object with 30,800lbs of force for up to half an hour.

  The spell was twice as strong as it should be. One recording in the rune for each sun I’d seen.

  I was always one to question good fortune, but I’d do my best not to.

  Attar had already sensibly had his breakfast. I dug around in his pack to grab one of the packs of rations we’d grabbed from somewhere (probably more dried fruit and meat) and took a pull from my waterskin.

  I ate in silence, which felt less companionable than usual. Something about being able to talk lent a quality to silence that muteness did not. I’d have to teach Attar sign language so we could decide to keep our silence in peace. Some time after we stopped being invisible.

  “I think it is best we spend the day without descending to the sixth floor. If you can’t call out to-”

  The sun rose.

  I blinked.

  Was this going to be a regular thing? My hand and legs were already starting to cramp.

  The light rippling through my invisible form made it obvious I had another spell to write. I didn’t bother informing Attar, just got ready with my wax.

  Now, how did one kill a cockatrice?

  I didn’t have a weasel. My spells couldn’t target that which they couldn’t see, except for those strange swords which obeyed orders rather than my own mental commands. But those swords were weaker than I liked, and less intelligent.

  A large enough attack, like filling the room with water or fire might work, but I didn—

  I did have a way to reliably fill a room with fire.

  Every blessing was a curse, and every curse was a blessing.

  Lift. I called to Attar as I stepped onto the lift. I’d changed my mind. We needed to descend.

  Lift II: A 10’x10’ black platform capable of lifting 2000 lbs raises and lowers at the speed of 0.5ft/sec as the caster commands for 1 hour.

  The lift dissolved under our feet as it touched down on the sixth floor. I didn’t have any time to waste. I immediately led the way towards the room of swirling yellow stones.

  It was a 12 minute walk back to the strange smelling hallway preceding the strange smelling room. I counted every second of it. Attar waited back in the room of yellow swirls under my direction, but not before I’d cast Conscience. The man could handle himself, but I still wanted to be there for him if needed.

  A minute passed. And then another.

  I didn’t know the mechanism for the strange deluge of suns, but it seemed to be close to every hour previously.

  Had it ended already?

  The minutes ticked by. Ten, fifteen, half an hour.

  Why wait? The cockatrice could kill either one of you at any moment, and you have the ability to stop it. Why force yourself to obey artificial constructions? Already you defy the true path of the Magi. What Magi writes ten spells a day? Throw aside your pretensions. If you die here, so too will everyone who relies on you, and the warlocks triumph. Can honour spring from such selfishness?

  The sun rose, biting at the heels of the dark thought, but the thoughts got the parting word:

  Sap Blade

  I ignored the words and the drifted free from my mind. The pressure of dark magic was ever growing, and if I could ignore something so useless on its face to relieve pressure, I would. I didn’t have time to think through the possibilities.

  Sword Storm III. I sent the blades off to defend me while I focused on the real intent of the spell. The fireball summoned along side the swords. The hall and room in front of me exploded into flame, which sent my hair flying back behind me like a gale. My eyes began to water. My skin burned as if out in the sun too long. I’d misjudged my safe distance somewhat.

  Heal IIII.

  I stepped back a few feet while I let my fireball continue forward. Fifteen seconds later, the room exploded. Then again. And again.

  Inferno: Every 15 seconds for an hour a fireball 50 feet in diameter and four times as hot as flaming coals fills the room in front of the caster at the time of casting.

  It was a start. The fire was even hotter than I’d hoped, but less continuous than I needed to guarantee death. I could fix that given time.

  My Conscience spell had ended, so I returned to Attar. We needed a new route through the dungeon, one which didn’t take us through the fire and flames to the south.

  ?Mental Map?

  If I moved past that endless sea, and dug a hole through the wall we could enter a large chamber near the stairs. A second hole and a bit of manoeuvring would have us there nearly as quickly as my initial path, though with more crawling through the tunnels.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  ‘Middle rotten wall opposite entrance, left, right, straight, left, left through middle of hall wall, straight, right, through left hand side of wall to stairs,’ I amended.

  “Wait here,” I said, “I will start work on a new path. Flee to the right from this room if something you cannot deal with emerges. I shouldn’t be gone long.”

  The corridor past the endless sea led to a fork going left and right. I took the left, as per my instructions. Here, at the centre where I planned to dig my tunnel, was a shaft in the floor, about as long and as wide as a person, leading deep into the stone. I couldn’t make out the bottom.

  A spell lightened Attar might be able to explore the shaft, but he would be completely unable to defend himself. I was more resilient, but the slightest bend would trap me. For now, it was better to seek the stairs than find a shortcut. I could always cast my one of my tunnel spells if the staircase proved to be too difficult to access.

  The sun rose.

  Tunnel. Tunnel II. Tunnel III. Tunnel IIII. I was ready.

  Tunnel V: Excavates 135 ft3 over the course of an hour.

  The resulting tunnel would be three and a half feet in diameter if I was willing to wait the whole hour, which, for future comfort, I certainly was. It would also make it easier to defend ourselves passing through, and in assessing the room before we entered.

  It also appeared the barrage of suns had not ended yet. I’d been worried after the half hour wait for my Inferno, but it appeared the rate was merely slowing, not stopping.

  I returned to Attar with a spring in my step.

  “A new path is currently digging its way through the wall, at which point I’ll immediately be able to start work on the next leg of the journey. Let’s wait here for at least an hour and see if there is an opportunity for more spell recording. I want to create something to kill that cockatrice if I can.”

  Attar draped his cloak over his head and then nodded his head so I could see. With my ring I could already make out his actions, invisible or otherwise, but I appreciated the effort. It was probably strange to understand just how powerful my ring was.

  We didn’t need to wait the full hour, as the journey to the tunnel was at least five minutes one way. We arrived with two minutes to spare, and I had the privilege of watching the final pieces of rock be broken free from our path.

  My light shone forth, and what I could see of the room was empty. Unlike in previous expeditions, I led the way forward. Attar would be unable to signal to me of the danger while he was muted.

  The heptagonal room I crawled into was as empty as it first appeared. About seventy feet in diameter, although the strange shape made it hard to calculate properly. Two exits, both on my right, led from the room. According to my directions, it was the second which was our goal.

  To my left was a moderately large fountain, with a life sized statue of a skeletal harvest-man on top. The harvest-man was draped in the barest black shroud, revealing his emaciated torso and sticklike legs. Two white wing stretched out to either side of him, almost like a swan’s.

  I’d never seen such a depiction before, but the elements—like Mother Holle’s scythe and the black shroud—suggested some sort of masterfully crafted depiction of Death, or a psychopomp of some sort. Perhaps if Attar could speak he could explain further.

  The Corpse in the Sky had also called himself Death, but this statue seemed newer. Another region’s god or spirit.

  The thing made shivers run up and down my spine every time I looked at it. I wasn’t going to drink from the fountain at its feet in a hurry.

  The sun rose.

  The large scrawling “Run Away” writ next to it in blood didn’t help put me at ease.

  As for the sun rising, it had been two hours since the last time, but apparently the deluge wasn’t done yet.

  I quickly crawled back through the hole.

  “I have to return to the fireball room. Wait for me in the room of yellow swirls?”

  Again that cloaked nod. With little time to waste, I scurried (though not without caution) back to the room full of inflammable gas, dropping off my backpack a ways from the entrance to protect its contents.

  Sword, Scorch, Scintillation. This time I got the distance right. The fire was hot, like standing too close to the hearth, but not unbearably so. At the moment of the first flash I started counting the seconds. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven... Now! Inferno. Fire alternated with fire. Gas burned, air rushed in like a thunderclap between the waves of destruction. My ears started ringing and my face became tender to the touch. Heal V. I could wait the hour.

  Inferno II: Every 7.5 seconds for an hour a fireball 50 feet in diameter and four times as hot as flaming coals fills the room in front of the caster at the time of casting.

  The rune might be enough. I’d feel a lot safer if the fire came twice as often, but I doubted at this point that the gas could replenish quick enough to increase the spell in the same manner. There had almost not been enough air for the fire to breathe.

  ...which did suggest that the cockatrice wouldn’t survive the attack, provided it was not able to evacuate the area in time. If there was some way to use Push IX without line of senses I could easily pin it in place. Of course, if I could use Push IX without line of sight I could just crush the creature. More focus on my wind spell next perhaps.

  I stood as still as I could for the few minutes needed for my skin to stop feeling so crispy, then returned back to Attar. My bar of wax was ruined, and, upon digging around for a replacement, I discovered my candle clocks had also turned into an irrecoverable soup at some point. At least my cloak and fouta seemed no worse for flare.

  I alerted Attar that all was well, then the two of us returned down the path to the heptagonal room.

  I wandered close enough to give the statue a once over with my ring, and instead discovered a chest hidden in the water of the fountain. This was the second time I’d discovered a metal chest stored in this manner. Did the warlocks not know iron rusted?

  I let it lie. Until I could discover the nature of the Death statue I didn’t want to invite any curse or misfortune upon myself.

  The far exit stood open without a door to bar the path. A much smaller room (roughly the size of—

  The sun rising interrupted my thought.

  I could get myself another inferno ready for the morrow and the—

  Was that room glowing?

  The same strange blue light as the room where we’d dumped the cockatrice corpse was coming from the neighbouring room.

  Crush it in a slide.

  I’d have to go around the room, but my final instruction was just “Through left hand side of wall to stairs.”

  I could go left from our current position, the wall was thin enough by my ring, but then I’d have to guess at the path and hope there was another approach. Which, in the best case scenario, meant I’d need another tunnel spell, but that meant recording the tunnel spell instead of an inferno spell. And that meant risking an encounter with a cockatrice in the future without sufficient arms.

  Odds were I could defeat the cockatrice already. Then again, why chance a slight risk of death in the name of saving a day of effort? Then again again, food wouldn’t last forever, and every day risked more creatures crawling up from the depths.

  I’d record the tunnel spell, and deal with the cockatrice if I had to.

  Tunnel V.

  Tunnel VI: Excavates 135 ft3 over the course of an hour.

  I cast the spell as close to the glowing room as I dared.

  The tunnel—once it was finished—led out into the corner of a hallway. Straight ahead the path continued as well as to left, introducing a fork where once there was a bend. The left hand hall was barely traversable, however, as a pool of acid stretched for ten feet across the hall.

  No matter. I could follow the edge of the room I’d meant to travel through all the way down my improvised tunnel and into the hall. Another room, a mere 20 feet straight ahead from my tunnel, appeared to extend to my right in the same direction of the room, meaning, if I dared the room, I could probably triangulate the area of the stairs without needing to enter the glowing room.

  The room was mercifully empty of hostile life. Just a rotting stack of logs at the far end, and an annoying stack of crates against the right hand wall where I wanted to trace the glowing room. Thankfully there was room on top, so I crawled over the crates to continue following the wall.

  My uncomfortable path allowed me to see the source of the glowing through my ring, and thankfully, I didn’t seem to bear any ill effects when viewed in this manner (which made sense given I could also feel fire without being burned).

  The sun rose, further illuminating the source: Strange cylinders of a glowing solid, which was translucent like glass. Id seen something similar, though made of metal instead of glass. A sacred hot pool said to be worshipped by the woodwoses. At its base had been the source of its warmth, a glowing metal which gave the same feeling as this glass, though the glass shone far purer.

  The pool was supposedly safe, even beneficial, as long as you didn’t get to close to the metal. Those who had tried to study it, and especially those who had tried to steal the sacred metal had met horrible deaths and suffered terrible burns.

  Such pools were rare, and I was one of a handful privileged to learn its hidden location. I wouldn’t squander my knowledge. We’d be avoiding the glowing glass room.

  And we could, for at the end of the crates, at the corner of the wall and straight ahead from my crawling, just on the other side of the ten feet of stone, was a staircase descending downward.

  I didn’t have much time.

  Tunnel VI

  I hopped off the crates and moved as quickly as I dared back to the tunnel to the heptagonal room while the spell worked. I didn’t have time to record it.

  Attar was waiting for me at the entrance.

  “Away! Back to through the far end. I’m going to fill this room with fire.”

  I rushed after him as he retreated. I wanted to be on the same side of the room as him in case something went wrong.

  There was a chance the statue of Death was a deity who would be upset by my actions, but there was an even greater threat another sun would be swallowed by darkness, I needed to cast immediately.

  After what felt like the lifespan of a pine we were both back through the far tunnel and I turned to record and cast my spell, this time written in a makeup pen, as my wax was destroyed.

  Inferno II

  Inferno III: Every 7.5 seconds for an hour a fireball 50 feet in diameter and four times as hot as flaming coals fills the room in front of the caster at the time of casting.

  No deity emerged from the statue to smite me, so I figured I was in the clear for blasphemy. Though whoever had made the statue would not be happy. The extreme heat, perhaps combined with the cooler water surrounding it, had cracked the base and caused the whole thing to topple over and the scythe had broken off.

  I suppose it was safe to check out the treasure after all.