Maya ran down the stairs two at a time, trusting luck to guide her feet and keep her from falling. Any moment now they could have an assassin on their trail, once he noticed that the puzzle door he guarded had disappeared, and Dust of Recall had that 30-second wait time. If they got in a fight with someone that much stronger, things could go badly too quickly for a clean escape.

But there had to be something valuable down here. No one hid a puzzle door in the middle of the innermost sections of an underground compound without it protecting something worthwhile.

Maben and Dert followed her, less quickly and less quietly. Maya may be insanely fortunate right now, but that didn’t mean everyone on her team could rush freely down a stairway in the dark without concern.

Then, abruptly, Maya came to the end. Another door, this one solid wood and very ordinary, faint light leaking from around its edges. She brought herself to a stop just short of colliding with the door. Instinctively she raised her terrarium full of magic over her head to protect it, then settled it onto one shoulder.

She unlatched the door with her free hand and pushed it open. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find beyond. Treasure, maybe, or a secret library, or. . .

Not this.

She stood at the bottom of a vast cavern, lit by glowing crystals far overhead. Filling the entire center of the room from floor to ceiling stood a giant pillar, easily twenty meters across and at least half again as high. It was perfectly cylindrical, smooth and cold to the touch, reflecting the crystals’ glow like polished obsidian.

Maya walked slowly around it, running her free hand along the flawless glassy surface, her fingers leaving a trail of magic behind. That didn’t matter; she had so much magic right now, it would be hard to touch anything without leaving some behind.

Light flickered occasionally across the massive column, but not in the same way as the leypillars. This material exuded a softer darkness, less harsh, with no metallic hints to it, and the light playing across it seemed more rainbow hued and less electrical in nature. She could even imagine it to be inside the material of the dark column, instead of running along its surface.

Halfway around, exactly opposite the stairs descending to this cavern, Maya found another door. It opened easily. Beyond lay another set of stairs, continuing further downward.

Maya left them for the moment and turned back to the central pillar. Something this big, this well hidden, what was its purpose? She half expected to see control panels or power cables hooked up to it, but found nothing as she completed her circuit.

She should probably keep moving, get a longer lead before the guard noticed anything was amiss. But this place was so clearly important in some way, she hesitated to leave without knowing more about it.

Slowly she continued to circle, captivated by the interplay of light. It almost reminded her of something, but she couldn’t place it. It was too intermittent, too unstructured to find a pattern, too infrequent to quite grasp.

“If you’re hoping to steal this, I don’t think we can lift it,” Maben whispered, awed.

“I could break off a piece—” Dert began without regulating his volume, but Maya and Maben both shushed him immediately and he subsided into silence.

Maya completed her second trip around the pillar and began a third.

“Maya Starborn, where are you?!”

The voice startled her so badly she jumped, heart suddenly racing. It took her a shocked moment to realize there wasn’t anyone new in the room; just the voice.

“Cydrin?” Maya hissed. She did not have time for this right now!

“Emma, good. Yes, it’s Cydrin. It has come to my attention that Julios is in severe dereliction of his limited duties as your escort. He will be adequately reprimanded. In the meantime, I have sent Xaneta to collect you until a new escort can be assigned.”

Maben and Dert had drawn their weapons, looking around, but Maya waved them to stand down.

“Oh. That’s, um, really not necessary. I’m safe for the moment. I can meet Julios back at Kalyx City in the morning to resume our questing. I was finishing my tier trial.”

“Why are you whispering? Are you in Kalyx right now?”

“Not exactly.”

“Where are you?”

“Um, I’m not really sure. Probably an hour or so away? It’s pretty dark out, I’ve mostly been wandering around.”

“Which direction?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Just look at your map. What direction is Kalyx from where you are?”

“Look, I’m in the middle of something. I can meet whoever it is at the leypillar in an hour or two, but I’m not going to drop everything and come running. Can’t I even have a few hours off? I mean, come on! We just unlocked a whole new zone, if that doesn’t warrant a break then what does?”

“Zone seven isn’t enough, and they only get harder and harder. We’re moving too slow. It’ll take years at this rate. But that’s not the point. Where. Are. You?”

“I’m in a dungeon, okay?” Maya snapped. She was improvising her story at random by now, trying to come up with any excuse to buy her time. “I can’t check my map because I’m inside, and I’m not going to wait and let someone else jump in and steal it out from under me.”

But in her indignation as the discussion grew more heated, she’d forgotten to keep her voice down.

“Is someone down there?”

A new voice, utterly unfamiliar to her, but both her companions reacted at once.

“Incoming!” Maben hissed. “Ambush positions, quick.”

Dert drew his sword and Lubon’s massive tower shield, standing ready and making no attempt at stealth. Maben disappeared into the shadows.

“I have to go,” Maya said hastily. “I aggro’d, er, the boss’s guards, no time to talk.”

“If you had stayed in your assigned team—”

Maya hung up on him. She knew it might be a problem later, but she didn’t have time to worry about it now.

From what she knew, the three of them wouldn’t stand much chance at winning, especially if other guards heard the commotion and came running. They had to get away, preferably without being seen, but at least without engaging in direct conflict.

Maya sprinted across the room and shut the door at the bottom of the stairs, then gestured toward the far end of the room. “Not here,” she whispered urgently. “We need to keep going further down. The open area here would give him the advantage if he’s stealthier.”

Dert looked disappointed, but nodded and hurried toward the second door. Maya assumed Maben would be right behind them - or perhaps ahead - and ran down the steps.

She had to find someplace to set an ambush or another way out of the compound entirely. One or the other had to be down here, she felt certain.

After nearly a minute, the stairs leveled out and the passage continued straight forward. Maya paused, and only then noticed the sound of combat from behind.

Cursing, she set down the terrarium and ran back up the stairs.

She’d only made it halfway before everything went completely silent. Maya froze, flattened against the wall, then toggled stealth for good measure.

“Who is hiding from me?” The voice echoed down the stairway, teasing, utterly confident, and definitely not Maben or Dert.

Maya silently gathered a handful of magic and slipped it into her mouth. It dissipated into mist, and she blew it out into her hands. Wind Whisper, but on an entirely different scale. She felt the power vibrating even for the split second she held it in her cupped hands before throwing it out upward into the darkness with an audible whoosh. She just wished it weren’t completely dark - she wanted to see how it worked.

She triggered the ability creation interface while she was at it, depositing the requisite handful of magic for the conversion. It might come in handy, though it would probably be prohibitively expensive in energy.

“Where are y—ooooh—”

Maya heard something clattering and thumping toward her, much like someone off-balance careening down stairs while trying to regain their footing.

She stuck her leg out. Something collided with her almost at once, but she had anchored herself at an angle against the wall and remained stable. The other person wasn’t so lucky. She heard him tumbling in a completely uncontrolled manner down and down and down, finally ending with a sharp CRACK.

Maya winced. If he’d landed on her magic terrarium, she doubted it would come out as the victor. One more sunk investment.

She was about to snap on a Spark to provide light, but stopped herself just before following through. Last time she’d done that while covered in this much magic, she’d turned herself into a wannabe phoenix.

She hurried back up the stairs, hoping to find Maben or Dert still alive, or at least the torch.

She encountered no one on the steps. Was that good, or bad?

The door at the top was closed and barred with something. Before she could figure out what it was or how to unlock it, something collided with the other side in a splintering crack.

Maya backed away several steps down to clear the area.

This time, Dert smashed shield-first right through the door in a hail of splinters and broken wood, Maben right behind him with the torch.

“You’re alive! Good. I was worried.”

“Where is he?” Dert growled.

“I tripped him down the stairs. I think he’s at the bottom now.”

Dert charged without another word, Maben close behind him.

Maya followed them down. “Be careful! I doubt he’s down for good. Didn’t you say he was very strong?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m taking him down.”

Dert had enough of a lead on her - and was on the opposite side of the torch from her - that Maya didn’t see exactly what happened when he collided hard with someone unseen coming up the stairs from below. But she did hear it. With a great deal of thudding, clanging, banging, and yet another crash they tumbled the rest of the way down the stairs.

Maya winced. She wasn’t holding out much hope for her poor terrarium at this point. Hopefully it was the guard who landed on any broken glass, and not Dert.

It was a complete shock to see that, though cracked, it remained completely intact despite the battle raging around it.

Well. Dert raged, and swung, and flailed. His opponent was nowhere to be seen.

“Over here!” Maya called, grabbing Maben too. “We can form a wall, that way he can’t slip past us and attack from behind.”

“Unless I’m already behind you.”

Maya grinned and spun, charging her new Wind Word spell. It cost 50 energy to cast and took more than twice as long to charge as a standard Wind Whisper, but would hit much, much harder.

Maben stumbled back under an attack from their unseen assailant, but Dert was right there to close the gap and keep their opponent in front of them.

Maya pushed out the attack, sending it in a wide slash across the entire stairway, leaving nowhere to evade.

A quiet hiss of pain the attack elicited was enough for Dert to lunge forward and grapple the enemy right out of stealth.

Maya jumped aside as the two of them went tumbling down the stairs yet again. She shook her head, but began overcharging a Wind Whisper. She could really get used to this, having two separate versions of the spell meant she didn’t have to wait for the cooldown to finish before being able to attack again.

Of course, right now she had only enough energy for one cast of Wind Word and a couple decently overcharged Wind Whispers. The warrior armor did nothing to help. 97 was not enough energy. She couldn’t wait to get back to town and switch back to a known mage persona.

It looked like the guard had finally given up on stealth, because he and Dert were exchanging blows with a vengeance. Maya and Maben could do nothing but watch, Maya holding her Wind Whisper ready to cast but not pushing it out for fear of hitting Dert.

He seemed to be holding his own. Right up until he took a particularly nasty slash to the chest and just collapsed, suddenly limp and dull.

The assassin grinned up at the two of them, looking decently battered from the encounter but still on his feet, then slipped into stealth.

But not before Maya had fired her Wind Whisper.

She heard a satisfying ‘oof’ of surprise, then another crash as the assassin stumbled backwards - and tripped over her terrarium, still sitting at the bottom of the stairs where she’d left it. He fell out of stealth, and then Maben pounced.

Perhaps it was losing Dert, or just general pent up energy, but the rogue took less than three seconds to finish off the prone, injured - though still capable of fighting back - assassin.

And then the hallway fell still and quiet.

Maya picked up the torch from where it lay burning forlornly in the corner, still valiantly providing light to the chaotic scene. She collected the terrarium full of magic - several cracks down the sides now, from being repeatedly fallen on and tripped over by the combatants, but still miraculously holding together - and hoisted it onto her shoulder.

“Guess it’s just you and me, now,” Maya said.

Maben nodded. “I guess so. Where to now?”

Maya glanced back up the stairway at the giant pillar, then down at the long corridor stretching into the distance.

“We should keep moving,” she said reluctantly. As much as she wanted to continue investigating the cavern’s unique fixture, she was down to one protector now and had no desire to end up killed or captured. They’d figure out what was hidden down here, really quick, then head back out.

In this case, however, ‘really quick’ translated more closely to ‘after an hour of walking’.

They passed several turnings, but all of those were dead ends that led nowhere after a while, and eventually Maya began ignoring them in favor of hurrying onward.

She slowed to a stop, hand coming to rest on a nearby doorknob. Why was she still down here? Shouldn’t she have left by now?

Her hand tightened on the doorknob, incongruity sparking confusion. Why had she stopped here? She paused and looked more closely at the door. It seemed perfectly ordinary, yet she felt torn between curiosity and increasing unease.

She should leave the door and continue. What she needed was further ahead, this was a side-room with no interest for her. Why was she even considering it? She should have kept moving, gone on past, there was no reason to stop here.

She should keep moving.

She didn’t move.

“Maya?”

“Hang on, I just need to check something. Wait here.”

She could take a peek even if it was a terrible idea, right?

Maya opened the door, revealing a small chamber lit by blue crystal formations hanging down from the low ceiling, not quite low enough to bump an unsuspecting visitor’s head, but close enough to reach up and touch. Something wet-gleaming clung to the crystals’ tips, throwing iridescent light across the room in irregular patches like sunlight reflecting off a CD.

A thin pedestal dominated the center of the room, glowing with the same faintly iridescent blue light, an opaque purple orb resting in its center. Three deep grooves were carved into the pedastel’s sides, and a jagged digram spread out from the pedestal’s base in something that vaguely resembled three unevenly overlapped triangles, crisscrossed with countless lines to divide the whole thing into diamond and rhombus shapes.

Light seemed to somehow avoid the diagram lines perfectly, splitting around them and leaving them exactly perfectly black.

She shouldn’t be here. Bad idea. Close the door, keep going, never look back.

Maya couldn’t say exactly why she ignored the impulse to flee. Stubbornness? Curiosity?

She stepped into the room.

“You’re back.”

Maya jumped and spun, searching for the speaker. He hadn’t said her name, so it couldn’t be a trickster call. The voice sounded vaguely, unpleasantly, familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.

“Hello?” She should leave, ought to be running still, why was she doing this? This wasn’t the optimal route to escape.

“I know what you are.”

Maya still couldn’t see anyone. She did notice the door had closed itself soundlessly behind her at some point. She backed up toward it.

“And I know nothing about you. Perhaps introductions are in order?” She almost laughed at how calm and casual she sounded, though she felt anything but.

“We’ve met before, but not formally. I am Uvlan Soultaker, and you are currently calling yourself Urg the Mage.” Uvlan’s voice was full of laughter. “Bound by lies, protected by truth. A paradox.”

Uvlan. . .

Right. Domitius’s NPC soulbinder.

“Wait. We’ve never met. How can you possibly recognize me?” Urg was a completely new identity, created specifically for this infiltration. And even if he was reading something deeper, this was her Path of Life save branch. Last time they’d met it had been in her Seer save.

If even the Trickster didn’t retain interactions from non-current saves, why would Uvlan?

Uvlan chuckled. “The body may change, but you forget I work directly with souls. Yours is quite distinct and bears clear traces of my work. But only traces. I know you have not come here with any intention to end this, but I can’t ignore such an opportunity when it presents itself.”

Maya considered that in this context ‘soul’ probably equated to ‘source code’ and spent a moment feeling decidedly uncomfortable about that reality, before dismissing it from her mind and returning to the moment at hand.

“What exactly do you want from me?”

Uvlan lowered his voice. “I know that you either have or have had in the past a way to communicate with the Lady of Truth. I need it.”

Maya recoiled instinctively. The Diviner’s Orb? That’s what this was about? No wonder she had such a bad feeling about coming in here, this was a very bad idea.

“I should probably be going—” she tried the door, but it didn’t move.

“Do not fear, Urg the Mage. I will not keep you here against your will, but I must speak to you while we are both unbound. My master will return and I can only do so much to oppose his will.”

“Domitius, right?”

“No, the one calling himself Judah the Warblade instructed me to serve Domitius. It is only with Judah himself away at present that I have enough of my own will to even consider working against his implied designs.”

Maya blinked. She didn’t recognize the name, it must be someone else in Domitius’s council. The sheer quantity of powerful followers he had boggled her mind. It really made her wonder how Shardlord managed to keep up.

“But, why would the Oracle’s communication device help you?” Maya asked cautiously.

“I know not the full extent of Judah’s plans, but Domitius is a major part of them. I know he seeks the supremacy of the Lord of Deceit, and it is that which I would oppose. With your help.”

Maya had a very, very bad feeling about this. So far, any time anyone had found out about the Diviner’s Orb it had been a distinctly negative experience. And now she was expected to just turn it over to a random NPC working for Domitius’s gang, just like that?

“No. I can’t help you.”

Uvlan nodded. “I expected as much. You used the Liar’s Key to enter this place, after all. But though the touch of truth is light upon your spirit it is not completely gone, so I suppose I dared to hope it might be otherwise.”

“If I find anyone aligned with the Oracle, I’ll. . .” Maya trailed off. She had been about to offer to send them Uvlan’s way, but that would mean sending them straight into the heart of Domitius’s prison compound, and upon consideration she didn’t think that was a good idea.

She really should leave. She should never have come in here to begin with. This was a dangerous place.

“I may be under the control of another, but this place is mine and my power is not insignificant,” Uvlan said, pacing around the black lines of the diagram on the floor.

Maya’s sense of danger spiked yet again; if she could have run away she would have been gone by now. But the door was locked, and the room was too small to hide in, so instead she stood frozen, pulse racing.

“Yet, somehow,” Uvlan continued, “I feel it would be to my detriment if I were to interfere with you today. I warn you, if we meet again I am unlikely to be as tolerant of defiance.”

“Fair enough.” Maya’s voice cracked, her breath coming far too fast. “Let me out.” She wished it didn’t sound so much like a plea.

“Hmm.” Uvlan turned his back on her, waving dismissively, and the sense of imminent threat faded to a tolerable level. “The door is not locked. Go. I have much to do and no time to waste in the education of ignorant fools.”

Maya wanted to retort, but prioritized getting well away from there over having the last word. She yanked the door open and fled, running flat-out until her stamina reached zero and she had to stop, panting for breath.

Maben had to run to catch up, but Maya offered no apology. She couldn’t say quite what was so terrifying about Uvlan Soultaker, but she knew one thing for sure. She didn’t ever want to meet him on a low-luck day.