I honestly could not tell you how long it took me to put myself back together, recover the crystal I had lost, and summon enough mental energy to recast my flying spell.  However, by the time I managed to crawl my way back over the wall and flop, gasping like a fish, into the entry hall, I was well and truly exhausted.

Also quite starving.

So when I caught sight of Jax hovering over me, arms crossed and with an expectant little grin on her face, I did not know whether I wanted to tell her to shove it or just do it myself.  Either way, the paddling I had promised was about the last thing on my mind.

However, when I saw the grin fading away to be replaced, not by her customary scowl or even the expected I-told-you-so’s, but by hurt acceptance, my resolve melted.

“Can I at least get a hug first?” I asked, shaking the trio of crystals loose from my sleeves.

A shadow of her smile returned, and she knelt solemnly in front of me.  “Anything that be mine to give, I give it freely.  Ye’ve but to ask.  Master,” she whispered.

Then, she folded herself into my lap and for a long while, we simply rested.

 

*****

 

Eventually, the much-needed cuddling session ran its course.  Jax and the girls wanted to know all about my private adventure, and I regaled them with the story in a little nook beneath the stair, though I did smooth over most of the rough edges.  Neither of my bondmates were fooled, but they were kind enough not to spoil things for Lynnria.

Then, talking turned to petting, petting to fondling, fondling to kissing, and things escalated from there.  Strangely enough, not once did I have to tell them to back off, slow down, or really much of anything.  I could not tell you how or why but, now that I knew exactly what it was I needed, they seemed to have sensed it and adjusted accordingly.

It was so natural and so easy.  As if there had never been a problem in the first place.  Not with them.

It had been me all along.  I had not known what I wanted.  

And yes.  I did finally give Jax the ass-whooping she had so desperately craved.  I felt ridiculous and more than a little guilty to be striking someone I cared so deeply for, but she was so into it.  No matter how much force I put into the blow, she only ever reacted with greater and greater enthusiasm.

But she never once begged.  However great her pleasure, however many times she clutched at my leg, quaking.  However much my name was called in ecstasy.  Not once.  She only stared at me, hungry for more.  Wanting.  But never asking.

Ultimately, it was my stinging hand that admitted defeat.  Her backside had achieved glory.  I even enjoyed the experience, if only because I got to watch her bliss.

It was not like there was none left over for me.

Still, we could only delay the inevitable for so long.  What Life we had, we had shared.  Our quests were done.  Our tasks complete.  

Above us was the landing, and from there, the balcony which converged into a second, central staircase leading up to the next floor.  

We hesitated only briefly.  This was the only place left untrod within the mansion.  Every other door was locked, barred, or otherwise unopenable.  But we had left hesitation behind, and so too did we leave our familiar surroundings in favor of the new.

And new we found.  Once gathered atop of the stairs, true we did discover yet another superfluous sitting room with plush and well-appointed furnishings.  But we could not appreciate those.  Our eyes only beheld the brilliant glow of light pouring through the door beyond.

The solarium.  A place for the sun.

The door was quite large.  A small elephant could have passed through that set of double doors and with room to spare.  But much more spectacularly, it was entirely composed of wrought iron, bound and interleaved by the clear glass through which the light streamed and scattered.

Or perhaps it was crystal?  That would have been appropriate.

Either way, the metal was woven into an intricate pattern.  Spirals and whorls wound their way up and around the great arch seemingly without rhyme or reason.  Yet in the center, split by the seam of the doors, there was the unmistakable outline of a faceless woman.  And having seen it, the randomness of the patterns behind her revealed their secrets.

A pair of horns crowning her head.  And a majestic pair of wings, unfurled and raised as though to take to the sky.

“Even numbers…” I observed dully.

Arx nodded.  “I see them.”

“But only one o’ Her,” Jax countered.

What we were supposed to take from that was unclear.  The Dungeon often featured such installations—random bits of art, statues, and the like—whereby you could get a hint at your fate were you to mess with them.  Odd numbers were generally safe.  Even numbers were not.

This was a mixed message.  As if to say, beyond here laid doom.  Or salvation.

If only I could split the difference somehow.

Lynnria stepped forward, close but not quite touching the light spilling to the floor.  “Grandfather always said that was just superstition.”

“It’s true more often than not,” Arx said defensively.

Lynnria turned to look at her.  “So not always.”

Arx scowled, but she could not deny her own words.  “‘Snails.  It’s not like this changes anything.  We have to go through.”

She was right, much as I hated to admit it.  If it were not for the gigantic, black spot nestled right between by shoulder blades, I would have turned, then and there, and never looked back.

“Anyone see a doorknob?” I asked.  “Or a place to put these crystals?”

Eyes began scanning every which way.  From the door itself—bare of any sort of handles, catches, or knobs—to the floors, the walls, and even the ceiling.  Nothing obvious called for our attention.  There were no slots, no control panels, no hidden compartments.  We could not find a thing that might open the door.

Eventually, Jax tried the portal itself, but it was every bit as locked as we had anticipated.  As for smashing it open, her ax merely bounced off.  It might have looked delicate, but that door was solid as granite.

“Demon Queen, my arse,” Jax grumbled, peering through the glass in frustration.  “Queen o’ Boots, more like.  Locked Her ownself in there tight enough, we’d need a battering ram to get through.”

I scratched at my beard in thought.  Every step of the way, we had been met by puzzles, traps, and tricks, so it came as no surprise there would be one final hurdle.  One would think that if this goddess actually wanted to speak with us, She would have made things a little easier.  How were we supposed to solve a puzzle we could not even find?

It was like She was deliberately trying to keep us out.  Yet another mixed message.

But then something caught my eye.  Down on the floor, there was a peculiarity right on the edge of Jax’s shadow.  Like a slightly too-bright spot peeking around the corner of a building.

“Jax…” I murmured.  “Move a little to your right, would you?”

“Like this?”

Soft gasps came as her silhouette moved, revealing what I had seen.  Truthfully, I was not even sure what I was looking at… or well, no.  I knew what it was.  There was a hexagonal patch of light sitting right in the middle of Jax’s shadow.

It was the how of it that was eluding me.  There was nowhere for the light to have originated from.  Even when we began waving our hands over it, nothing we did obscured it in the slightest.  It was only when the light from the door overshadowed it that it was hidden… if ‘overshadowed’ was even the right word.

“Huh.  Do you think it could be coming from beneath the floor?”

I reached to tap at what looked for all the world to be solid wood paneling, however Arx instantly snatched my hand away.  She did not scold me, but the exasperated look on her face said plenty.  Instead, she began to hum.

For several long seconds, her eyes scanned the room, taking in every detail while the haunting melody drifted through the air, until finally landing on the illuminated geometry before us.  There she stopped, the tune left unfinished.

“Well?” Jax asked.  “Sense anything?”

“Danger,” she replied shortly.

I pulled away from the spot cautiously.  There were no obvious signs of traps that I could see, but I was just the wizard.  I knew better than to trust my own eyes.  

“From where?”

She glanced at the door and swallowed before focusing on me again.  “Everywhere.”

I sighed.  This is sounding worse by the minute.

“That ain’t real helpful, love,” Jax observed from the door, crossing her arms.

Arx could only grimace.  As a Scout-typed Class, her role was to be our guide, but she was just beginning to fill those shoes.  It had to gall, being unable to help more.

“I only know there is a single correct answer.  And a lot of wrong ones.”

“And I presume we don’t want to guess wrong,” I filled in.

She did not reply.  But then, she did not have to.

Jax spat to one side.  “Bloody typical.”

“Did you find any hints before you found us?  Anything at all that might help here?” she asked.

“Some riddles,” Lynnria provided.  “I even kept the one.  You know, just in case.”

Untying her fanny pack, she sighed with relief as she let the contents spill to the floor.  Besides the nine crystals we had painstakingly collected, there was a simple card, crumpled and misshapen from having been stored amongst what amounted to a pile of rocks.

“I’m glad to be free of that thing, finally,” she muttered.  “I don’t know if my back will ever recover.”

“I would have thought you’d appreciate a bit of Strength training,” I quipped with a smile, trying to lighten the mood.  “You wanted to be a Warrior, remember?”

She flashed me a sour look.  “Yes.  A Warrior.  Not a pack-mule.”

“Well, y’ain’t neither, no how.  So stop yer grousing,” Jax groused.  “Now, ye gonna read that card or not?”

“Don’t know how much good it’ll do,” I said, reaching to grab the now-decrepit card stock anyway.  “It’s an old clue from that puzzle-chain I broke.”

Arx nodded sympathetically.  “And this is the end of that chain.  It might still be relevant.”

I shrugged then, after straightening the paper over a knee, began to rehash a poem I had hoped never to look at again.  It had only ever caused me misery.

 

“Three by three by three.

In yellow.  In blue.  In green.

Six for one.  Seven for two.  Eight for me.

In light.  In dark.  In between.

Three by three by three.”

 

A thoughtful frown pulled at the corners of my mouth as the penultimate line emerged, and I glanced at the little, glowing hexagon.

Between light and dark…

Initially, I had taken that as meaning one light maze, one dark maze, and between the two, this final door.  However, there was a certain ambiguity.  And it would be fantastically appropriate for an emergent puzzle to have a clue that could apply to multiple situations. 

But how to interpret it…?

“They’s only the one spot,” Jax pointed out.

“There’s only one so far,” Arx countered.

Lynnria glanced at her.  “You think we haven’t found them all?”

“Maybe.”  Arx’s eyes danced about the room again.  “We found a light spot hidden in light.  Maybe there’s a dark spot hidden in dark.”

“And how would we find that?” Lynnria asked.  “We don’t have a torch and, even if we did, I haven’t the faintest idea how we could start one.”

Jax smiled.  “I do.”

Arx and I straightened simultaneously.  “No fires indoors!”

Then we glanced at one another.

Jax ran a speculative tongue over her fang.  “Leavin’ that by the by, what else can we do?  There ain’t no light save what’s coming from this here door.”

“No… there’s two lights,” I pointed out.

On a hunch, I quickly reached for the yellow crystals.

“See, the clue about six, seven, and eight doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  Except for one thing.  I found another clue—uh… back on the clock, or I’d read it to you.  But the gist of it was that these crystals are weighted.”

Lynnria cracked her back.  “I think that’s been established.”

I favored her with an apologetic half-smile.  “More importantly, they’re differently weighted.

For a moment, I juggled the three prisms in my palms before singling one out.

“Arx, how heavy would you say this is?”

She rolled it over her fingers briefly, considering.  “I’m not as strong as I used to be, so my judgment might be off.  But… maybe five?  Six mina?”

I decided against asking what a mina was or how they might relate to stones—the only other local unit I was aware of for weights.  Knowing the way things tended to work around here, it was probably something stupid.  But then, I was used to the Imperial system, and that was ludicrous.

“Well, that’s the lightest of the three,” I revealed.  “So I’m guessing six.”

She nodded slowly.  “Six… for the one… in light.”

“And yellow is listed in parallel within the clue.  Unless there’s something we missed, that has to be our starting point.  I say we put this crystal on that light spot and see what happens.  I doubt it’ll open the door, but if I’m right, we should at least reveal the next part of the puzzle.”

I had thought of a second interpretation, as well.  There was the distinct possibility that I was reading too much into the clue, and all we needed to do was slot the heaviest green crystal in order to directly open the door.  This was the ‘between’ place, after all.  And ‘green’ was in parallel with ‘me’ and ‘eight.’

However, that would have meant we had schlepped those crystals all across the Dungeon for absolutely no reason, and I was not quite ready to admit that possibility.

“Sounds good to me.”  Arx exhaled sharply.  “You guys stand back.  If this goes wrong—”

“Let me,” Jax argued.  “I got the most Toughness.”

Arx shook her head.  “Not by much.  Besides, I’m a Scout-type.  This should be my job.”

“Sure it should, but what skills have ye got fer such?”

“After finding the trap?  None.  But I do have a couple of skill-points saved up.”  She glanced at me hopefully.

“What?  You don’t need my permission.”

“No, I know, but…”  She began wringing her hands.  “Please, choose for me?”

And suddenly the self-confidence vanishes.  “Arx, you’re not a drunk anymore.  You’re perfectly capable—”

“No, no…  ‘Stits, it’s not about that.”  She hesitated just long enough for her breath to catch then leaned forward with a fervent light in her eyes.  “I want you to mold me!  To be a vessel for your intent.  I want to feel your fingers through every scrap of me.  Please?  Master, please?!”

I had to lean back somewhat.  For a submissive, she was awfully aggressive about it.  If submissive was even the right word.

“Yeah, o-okay, Arx.  I will.  But you’re at a ten right now, and I’m gonna need you to bring it to around a five.”

Her eyebrows bunched together, momentarily confused, but she backed off.  “Sorry.  It’s just… the points have been sitting there, and…”

“And you’ve felt neglected?” I finished for her.

Ordinarily, I would have sighed and reflected on how put upon this kind of thing made me feel.  However, she had just flat out told me this was not coming from some lack of confidence.  I was a master making decisions for a person whose delight was in the time I had taken to do so.  It was a form on intimacy.  One which she craved above all others.

I might not have understood why she desired this.  But then, I did not need to.  It was her kink, not mine.  To love her was to accept her for who she was.  And while I might not have been into this type of thing, I had been just as willing to enter into this relationship as she had.  I owed it to her to keep up my end.

My hand cupped her cheek softly.  “I’m sorry, Arx.  I’ve been too absorbed with… what’s coming… to think about these things.  We’ve been on the back foot for so long, I guess I just got in the habit of picking skills as we needed them.  But you’re right.  Hoarding too much potential does more harm than good.”

“It’s alright, Dearest… now that you understand.”  She smiled into my palm.  “My points are yours to spend when and where you choose.  I was only reminding you.”

Sure, Arx.  Sure.

“Well, let’s see, then,” I mused.  “You can already sense danger when traps are near, so… I guess next would either be disarming them or avoiding the ones you accidentally set off.”

Lynnria cleared her throat, having kept silent during the earlier exchange—likely from embarrassment.  Arx had just admitted to some fairly kinky shit.  Not that Lynnria had a lot of room to talk.  I might have lacked confidence as to my labeling of Arx’s particular brand of degeneracy, but I did at least have a label.  What would you even call a person who was into mind-melding?

A vulcanist?  No… I’m pretty sure that one’s already taken.

She gestured toward the geometric patch of light.  “I… doubt disarming this is possible without magical aid.”

“I dunno.  I’ve seen people with some pretty crazy skills,” Arx argued.  “But they were old hands with this sort of thing.”

I nodded.  “It’s probably best to start with avoidance anyway.  Mia?”

“My lord,” she responded immediately.

Eavesdropping, were we?  Well, I would take it over getting herself lost in my head again.

“We’re going to need something like Spidey-senses, I’m thinking.”

“Pardon?”

Right… you knew better than that.  “Uh… it’s like an intuitive danger sense that lets you know when you need to duck for cover or just get the hell out of the way.”

There was a moment of dead air.  “But… she already has a skill for that.  You just watched her use it.”

“Yes, I know that, Mia.”  Frustrated, I stood and began to pace.  How to explain this?  “Help me out here, guys.  I’m sure there’s plenty of good trap-avoidance skills.”

Jax shrugged.  “Don’t ask me, mate.”

“I never studied up on anything but Warrior builds,” Lynnria provided unhelpfully.  “And fire magic, but…  Well, never mind that.  I do know of several combat skills which might help a person with dodging or parrying, but I doubt they would be much use against traps.”

“Right, no.”  I sighed.  “What I’m talking about—well, it’s more of a sudden feeling you get when danger is imminent.  Then, it’s like you get this massive Agility boost for a split-second, and you can just… jump clear.”

“Stat-boosting magic is—”

“—not available in the Foundation Layers,” I finished.  “Yes, I know.”

“But…”  Arx held up a finger.  “Sometimes you can get away with things if you put enough restrictions on it.  For instance, Mia already said I have the danger sensing part taken care of.  What if this skill only works while I’m humming?”

“Linking the one to the other?  Well… so long as the bonus was—getting your tits fucked!—uh… quite brief, that is.  And significantly less than ‘massive.’  The luck component would also be quite useful as a limiting factor.  The clarity of the original skill’s prescience can vary wildly from one moment to the next, so it would not be reliable enough for combat without a decent amount of skill.”

“I already have plenty of skill in combat,” Arx said confidently.

I nodded, having seen that firsthand.  “Combat utility would be nice, but this is mostly just for evading traps right now.  So the boost would not have to last all that long.  And besides, the skill should be more about how to dodge than any Agility boost it provides.”

“Very good, then.  I believe I can make that work.  Anything else?  You still have the one point to spend.”

“Hmm…”  I glanced at the study in wrought iron and glass before us.  It might have been bright and welcoming, but if a lifetime of gaming had taught me anything, you always look at particularly large sets of double doors with a degree of suspicion.  “This is supposed to be a dinner party, but… you think She might be tempted to throw something at us?”

My question was met with a resounding silence.

“Yeah… I was afraid of that.”

The Demon Queen’s letters had seemed reasonable enough, so there was still some hope this would end amicably.  However, it never hurt to be prepared.

I tapped my lip with a thumb.  “You know what?  Go ahead and get that first skill ready while I think about this.”

“My lord.”  I could almost hear the slight bow as she excused herself.

While we waited, I resumed my restless pacing.  What does Arx really need to fill out her current build?

She could sense danger.  She could handle Status Effects through our skill synergies.  She had a nice, if unorthodox, little translation ability.  She could do a bit of limited crowd control with her Beguilement—always helpful and worth expanding upon.  We had just purchased a quasi-defensive skill, and she had the one offensive ability… though her arrow was still extremely unreliable.

Actually… that’s got to be the biggest hole in her arsenal.  The whole point of that skill in the first place was to have complete control over a projectile, but the thing was so difficult to use, we had wound up with the exact opposite.

“Okay, we’ve established that skills can be used to modify or enhance others, and right now, I honestly think that the best thing we can do is to try to fix the control issues Arx is having with her arrow,” I began.  “From what I’ve seen, the problem seems to be arising from the need for a projectile to be a projectile.  To do any damage, it has to be moving with enough velocity to penetrate whatever you’re aiming at, and that is prohibitive to any sense of in-flight control.  Correct me if I’m off-base here, Arx.”

She shook her head, “No, that sounds about right.”

“I be glad yer thinkin’ so,” Jax quipped.  “I ain’t understood half o’ what ye just said, Master.”

Lynnria nodded along.  “You really need to use smaller words if you want to pretend to be a commoner.”

I just glared at them both.  

However, before I could continue, Mia returned.  “That should do it.  I hope you were not enamored with my predecessor’s taste in nomenclature, however I simply could not bring myself to scribe that particular genital dysphemism.”

I pointed at my own head.  “See?  See?!  That’s how nobles talk.”

Their nods of agreement did not even border on sarcastic.

“You know what?  Screw the lot of you!”

“Anyway, the base skill was crude enough without my adding to it, so I’ve entitled your latest ability, Idle Avoidance.”  She paused.  “Because of the humming?”

Jax scratched at the back of her ear.  “Were that supposed to be a jape?”

Barely.  But explaining the joke was certainly not going to help it.  Still, the hint of vanilla was a welcome alternative to the constant bouquet of ass-sweat and gimp leather.

“Uh… more a play on words.  Clever, Mia.”

It was a sparse complement, but still enough to elicit a pleased little sound from my Faen.

However, Jax was shaking her head.  “That ain’t what I were talking about, Master.  We be Dolilim.  What power we got only works when we’s in tune that.”

“I agree,” Arx said, nodding.  “You don’t have to be crude, Mia, but the names of our skills should at least reflect our nature.”

I got a sense of eyes rolling somewhere within my mental dimension.  “Fine… I suppose the parent skill does require a certain frame of mind, so your objection is not without merit.  Perhaps you would favor something more like… Ditch the Itch?”

I had to take a step back.  “Wow.  That is… just, wow.”

“Oh, come off it!  Ye gotta be taking the pish,” Jax said with a chuckle.  “Ye’ve had that one ready to go from the start.  Admit it!”

Mia hummed with amusement.  “I do enjoy the occasional bit of witty repartee.  The parent skill was so bluntly worded, I must have come up with about a thousand alternatives in passing.”

“What is it called?” Lynnria asked.  “If you don’t mind saying.”

Arx barely hesitated.  “Cock Helps Me Think.”

Lynnria had to squeeze her eyes shut a moment.  “Oh.  Um… well, does it?”

Arx only smiled.

“That… explains a lot, actually.”  Lynnria stared dazedly at the ground then shook her head to clear it.  “I’m still not getting the joke, though.  I mean, I understand ditching something as meaning to dodge it, but ‘Ditch the Itch?’”

“Reverse the word order,” I explained, addressing the ceiling tiles.

“You mean… Itch the—”  Lynnria’s mouth slowly formed into an ‘O.’

Watcher’s eye…  The name might have been less blunt, but it was far from crass.  Almost ingeniously so.

“That’s…”  It was a struggle to force the rest of the words out.  “…perfect, Mia.  Thank you.”

“Thank you, Dearest,” Arx said, crossing her arms over her chest.  “I will treasure it.”

I nodded, more from wanting to move past the situation than anything.  “You can treasure it if it actually works.  Let’s the rest of us move back.  No telling what’ll happen if this is the wrong crystal.”

As we began shuffling back down to the balcony, Lynnria quickly tapped Arx on the forehead with her pinky.  “For luck.  Hopefully, you won’t need to diddle your way out of this one?”

Arx laughed heartily at that and delivered a playful swat to the younger woman’s backside—to which the other growled but ultimately let it slide.  Playtime was over.

The gray-skinned beauty stood tall atop the stairs, rolling her head about her shoulders and loosening her limbs.  All of which sent wondrous reverberations through her anatomy, but I was too nervous to appreciate it.  She could not die for real of course, but that did not mean I enjoyed watching her suffer.

More than that, though, with us having to keep Lynnria fed, we were only just maintaining an equilibrium.  A setback here would put the entire burden of Life Energy generation on Jax for a full twenty-four hours, putting us at a significant deficit that would require even more time to recover.

Not an altogether unpleasant proposition, I grant you.  However… well, I might have expressed some reticence for going into such an important meeting smelling like a brothel, but quite frankly, that ship had sailed, caught fire, and exploded.

Arx began to circle the spot, humming for all the world like a pampered dandy, yet her expression was deadly serious.  

Here, for the first time, I wished I had more control over our newly-discovered linking ability.  I badly wanted to know what she was feeling.  What she was sensing.  What dangers she had gleaned.  All I could do was stand in the background, watching and waiting.

Still, it soon became clear there were several places along the walls she kept returning to.  The way she stared at them, you would have thought there were dragons sleeping just behind the paneling.  Unseen and unheard but for the faint whispers of their breath.

Eventually, she must have deemed it safe enough, and cautiously bent at the knees.  The golden crystal dangled from her fingertips, gleaming in the light like a frozen drop of amber, descending down.  And down.  But before she could touch it to the floor, she hesitated.  

“Huh…”

“You sensed something?” Lynnria asked half a second before I added, “You think it’s the wrong one?”

“Yes… and no,” she replied absently.  “Stand well clear.  I’m going to have to do this fast.”

“Do what fast?” I called, nervously scuttling backward.

Instead of answering, she took a deep breath and began humming once more, this time with a nervous edge.  But she did not hesitate.  With the decisiveness of a chess master giving check to king, she slapped the crystal down.

From my vantage below, I could not see what was happening save that for the space of perhaps three seconds, she stared intently at the floor before her, as if to hastily memorize its every feature.  Then, without warning, she snatched up the crystal and back-flipped away.

With all the build-up, I had been expecting… well, I don’t know.  Perhaps a hail of arrows?  A jet of fire?  Maybe even a summoned monster or twelve?  But this…?  I honestly could not tell you what happened.

Somewhere about the time her toes crossed the plane from room to stair, the room just sort of… blinked.  For a split-second, it transformed from a place of four walls, wooden paneling, and furniture to one of white heat and horrific, ear-splitting sound. 

Then nothing.  

It was as if someone had neatly cut away a cube right in the center of an ongoing nuclear explosion, momentarily fitted it within the sitting room above us, then transferred it back with none the wiser.

“Fuck me sideways,” Jax grumbled into the deafening silence left behind.  “When ye asked if’n She’d throw summat at us, I did nay expect the whole flamin’ sun!”

“You ain’t just dick whistling,” Lynnria agreed.

I agreed, as well.  Which was mostly why I was letting that one go.  I was still struggling to wrestle my heart out of my throat.

Curious to see what might remain of the room above, I took a single step upward, but Arx slapped a hand to my chest.

“Can’t you hear the ticking?”

I looked at her.  “Ticking?”

Then the room exploded again.