Cyrus finished cooking breakfast, then brought a plate of bacon, eggs, and apple slices with fruit dip over to Lyda, setting it in front of her. They ate in silence as she continued to appraise the wall, then Cyrus took the dishes away, cleaned them, and sent them away as he returned to his spot to watch her.

Only a few minutes passed after Cyrus returned to his watching spot before Lyda returned to her attempts, spending all of the morning and the first two hours of the afternoon working on the puzzle, before the wall rearranged itself, the bricks shifting into an archway pattern, only darkness visible through it.

"Um," Lyda looked at Cyrus.

"There are three different effects which could be in the gate," he told her. "Depending on which pattern you did. You activated the darkness visibility, but there is also the purple cloud and the green mist. They don't actually give you a clue as what's to beyond, it's just to make it clear you're going to a different area. This is where the branching happens."

"The branching?" She asked.

"Yes," Cyrus packed up their stuff and put it away, before walking over to her. "This is the first time you're really able to branch into different sections of the ruins. It's even possible to end up in different stages altogether. The green mist indicates that you're jumping ahead four stages. The purple cloud and darkness beyond both go to the next stage, but they are different areas with different challenges to make it through the stage."

"Is the darkness the worse of the two?" She asked.

"They're both equally annoying," he told her. "That's why I just cheat to get to the nap areas. It avoids going through the hassle of the puzzles and all that."

"Okay," she said. "Let's go, then."

Lyda stepped through the archway, then Cyrus followed her. They found themselves in more ruins, this one surrounded on all sides by forest. The archway reassembled itself back into the wall, though in the new stage, the wall was whole, twenty feet in height and thirty-two in length.

It was also the only wall, though at the other two corners of the ruins rose pillars four feet in width and twenty in height, vines wrapping onto them.

Cyrus walked out of the ruins as Lyda looked at the ground, examining the strange pattern of the tiles, each of which was two feet on each side. In the four corners of the sixteen-by-sixteen grid were empty spots, squares without tiles.

The tiles themselves were strange, Lyda noticed. They had varying colors to them, with some having an off-yellow, while most had one of two shades of green on them, a bright, leaf green or the darker green of healthy grass. The darker green was used exclusively on lines, while the lighter green was for sections of color.

"I'll help you if you need it," Cyrus told her. "But not in figuring out what this is or how to solve it."

"Just give me time," Lyda told him. "I'll figure it out. I think."

Cyrus nodded, then sat down and waited, watching Lyda. She spent the entire day examining the tiles of the ruins, then joined him for dinner and bed. When morning came, she ate breakfast, then looked out across the tiles.

"So I've figured out what I need to do," she told Cyrus. "I just can't figure out what the image is supposed to be."

"The image?" He asked, wanting to make sure she actually did figure it out and wasn't attempting to trick him into answering.

With the emotions in her mind at the moment, he knew it could be either one.

"Yeah," she gestured at the tiles. "It's one of those sliding tile puzzles. The tiles need to be rearranged in order to create an image. I'm guessing the four corners are the empty spots, since they're all empty now. It would make the most sense. But with the lines… I really can't figure out what it's supposed to form."

Lyda turned her gaze to Cyrus.

"I'm actually rather good at doing these once I know what they're supposed to be," she told him. "So if you told me what it's supposed to form, or gave me a hint that could tell me. I'll be able to do it. It'll even be a little easier, since there are four empty spaces rather than the normal one."

"The corners are the empty ones," he confirmed. "As for the pattern, it's a tree."

"A tree?" She asked.

"Specifically," he said. "The Forest Token. And no, this isn't where you get it. It's just a puzzle picture of the token, on a grid of sixteen tiles by sixteen tiles. The token is a tree."

"I see," she said, then looked out across the puzzle. "Give me an hour, maybe two, and I'll have this solved."

Lyda set off to begin sliding the tiles around, and Cyrus watched her. He offered to help her move the tiles several times, but she told him to just let her be. An hour and a half after she began moving the tiles, the image began to form, a tree contained within a circle. Another twenty minutes passed, and the image was completed, with just the corners empty.

The moment Lyda slid the last tile into place, the wall rearranged itself, creating an archway once more, only darkness visible beyond it.

"Is that going to lead us back?" Lyda asked Cyrus.

"No," he told her. "It takes us to the next stage. Nice job with the puzzle."

"Thanks," she smiled at him. "I'm rather sore now, though. How long do we have before it resets?"

"Until either someone else comes into this stage or we pass through the gate," he told her. "We can rest after, and I told you I'd help move the tiles."

"I should have accepted that offer," she admitted. "I'm no used to work like that, and my back hurts and arms are sore."

"Let's go," he told her.

Cyrus joined her, then they walked through the gate, finding themselves in the ruins of another chapel. The archway that marked its entrance was filled with darkness, though once Cyrus passed through after Lyda, it returned to normal, revealing a path beyond.

"Oh, good," Cyrus muttered. "You did it fast enough."

"Fast enough?" Lyda asked.

"Yeah," Cyrus cleared his throat, then indicated for her to follow the trail, so she did, Cyrus walking beside her. "You could end up in one of three places depending on how long it took for the puzzle to be completed. I always just used magic to shift them around, and completed it in maybe ten minutes, so I always got the best path. If I bothered to actually do the stage. The longer you take, the worse the path is. The actual spell that determines it is out of sight, and I never bothered looking deep down for it. I was thinking that since we'd spent the night, we'd have the second path, which isn't as good as this one, but not as bad as the third, which is where you go if it takes more than five days to complete the puzzle."

"What's the difference?" She asked. "Between the three paths, I mean."

"How difficult they are," he told her. "And how many extra stages there are between them and the end. We're on the 'true' path. The purple fog's optimal completion leads to this as well. If you end up doing the second path, you have three more stages before reaching this one, and if you end up doing the third path, you have six more stages."

"So they both lead back to the same path?" She asked.

"Everything does, eventually," he told her. "Sometimes, it just takes a single stage, other times, many stages. But the very end of the ruins is the exact same for all, all paths lead to it."

"And that's where the Forest Token will be found?" She asked.

"That's where the Forest Token will be found," he confirmed.

"How many stages are between here and there?" She asked.

"That depends on your luck, your abilities, and how easily you solve some of the puzzles," he told her. "You're going at it slowly, but you're also mostly doing it by yourself, with just some hints from me. It could be five more stages, it could be sixty. That also depends on how often you end up repeating stages, too."

"Okay," she said.

They walked in silence until they came to a fork, the path continuing forward and splitting to the left. Lyda chose the left path, and they continued walking until they came to a fork, moving forward to the right.

The rest of the day, they traveled on the paths, Lyda choosing a branch based on some pattern Cyrus didn't bother to learn. As the artificial sky turned to sunset, Lyda turned to face Cyrus.

"I give up," she said. "I can't figure out which way to go. I feel as if we've been walking in circles."

"We kind of have," he told her, the pointed to his right. "The chapel ruins we appeared in are maybe one hundred yards through the trees that way. The main reason you can't see them is how dense the trees and underbrush are."

Lyda groaned.

"What's the trick to figuring this out?" She asked.

"At every fork," he told her. "Look for the split tree. It might be between the paths, it might be off to the side. You can see it from the split, from the direction you were facing when you reached it, even if you need to turn your head a little.

"The trees split at varying heights," he told her. "But three things always hold true. If a split goes up, it represents the forward path. If it goes to the right, it represents the right path. If it goes to the left, it represents the left path. That will always hold true. So too will only one split match a path. That's the way to go. The third thing that holds true is only when we're at a triple split, like here. If you don't see a split tree, then go forward. If you see a split tree, the split that is the lowest is the way to go."

Lyda looked around, finding no split trees.

"So here," she said. "We go forward."

"Correct," he told her.

"Let's set up camp," she told him. "We can continue on in the morning."

They set up camp and ate dinner, then went to sleep. After waking in the morning, Cyrus made breakfast, they ate, then packed up and continued on their trip through the forest. Knowing the trick to the stage, Lyda managed to navigate them through it, eventually coming to a waterfall cascading down beside the path, falling into a river which snaked away from the path and out of sight.

"This is beautiful," Lyda breathed in awe, looking at the waterfall. "I can see why you like it."

"This isn't the one I was talking about," he told her. "The one I like is smaller, quieter. But more entrancing."

"Oh," she said, then looked at the opening in the cliff beside the waterfall. "I take it this is another labyrinth?"

"It is," he confirmed.

"Let's stay here for the rest of the afternoon," she told him. "Since it's only a couple of hours until night. Then we'll head in when morning comes."

"Okay," Cyrus said, then set up camp for the night.

They spent the night cuddled together under a blanket, and after breakfast in the morning, Lyda led the way into the labyrinth. Lyda led the way through it, leading them to dead-ends several times, or activating traps which soaked them in water, froze them in place, blinded them, deafened them, or a variety of other effects.

Cyrus let the trap effects slide off of him, and when he offered to do the same for Lyda, she told him to let her suffer the traps like a normal person would, as they were harmless and only caused discomfort or delays.

After nearly a full day of travel, they arrived at an altar illuminated by candles. The pair knelt in front and clasped their hands together, then found themselves warped to the altar of a ruined chapel. Lyda looked up at the stained-glass window behind it, then at Cyrus.

"Yes," he said. "That is Rynovar's younger brother having sex with his wife from behind."

"It's a stained-glass window," she said.

"It is," Cyrus said. "Shall we set up camp outside the chapel?"

"Her chest is remarkably small in that," Lyda said. "Rynovar's decision?"

"No, that's how she was," Cyrus told her. "His brother was into flat-chested women. I keep meaning to smash that, it's in bad taste."

"Leave it," Lyda told him. "I think Rynovar might not be happy with you doing that, from what I know about him."

"Maybe," Cyrus shrugged. "He's a lot more into sex stuff than I am, so I'm sure he likes having it. It's creepy. I'm just glad Kylnar convinced him to remove the statues at the waterfall I like. I didn't even have to tell Kylnar a thing, he just knew that I though the waterfall would be a lot nicer without them. Next time I visited the waterfall, they were gone."

It took him another two years to pull the answer out of Kylnar about why they were removed, too, and had thanked the god heavily for it. The other napping spots were nice, but the waterfall was the best, in his opinion, and he didn't want to nap with a pair of statues having sex there.

"I'm setting up camp outside of here," Cyrus told her, then did exactly that.

After they ate, Lyda looked around, then gave Cyrus a baffled look. He ignored it, pulling out a book to read as he made s'mores to snack on. They went to bed without Lyda asked him about what had confused her, and when morning came, Cyrus made breakfast as usual. Lyda stepped away to pee as he cleaned things up, and when she returned, she gave Cyrus another baffled look.

"Yes, Lyda?" He asked her.

"Cyrus," she said, then looked around, taking in their surroundings once more. "Cyrus, there's no path here. How are we supposed to solve this stage if there's no path leading us away?"

Cyrus looked at the forest around them, before finally looking at Lyda again.

"I never said a path was necessary," he told her. "You're a smart woman, Lyda. What do you think it means, that there's no path to walk on?"