“What do you think you’re doing?” Flip protested loudly as Selian crept carefully over the plant roots and very close to the rippling air that seemed to signal certain destruction.

“I have a theory.” Selian bit her lip as she spoke, not entirely confident about her theory.

Rather than touch the wall herself, the elf retrieved an arrow from her quiver and tossed it underhand towards the point where her first arrow had struck the far wall. And as it passed through, nothing happened.

Flip frowned and retrieved another scrap of paper to hand to Selian. “That doesn’t prove anything. There could be very specific conditions… materials… speed… angle perhaps. Magic designed to be durable enough to stay in place for hundreds of years must be very specific and powerful.”

“Should I go and grab the hox to throw through that hot air then?” Dovhran chuckled at his own suggestion but was met with quiet contempt.

Selian ignored the paper that was being thrust in her direction, along with Dovhran’s comment, and took a deep and regretful breath before thrusting her hand through the space that had before disintegrated her arrow. And again, nothing happened. Selian had closed her eyes, but when all she felt was warm air and the thin hairs on her arm sticking up she opened to to check it her limb was still there. And it was. All was as she had felt it.

“We are diametrically opposed beings, you and I.” Flip grumbled. “You have all caution when there is no need, and none when the situation calls for it.”

Flip pushed past the elf and to the left down a narrow corridor from which the energy in the air seemed to be coming from.

“Perhaps we have very different understanding of what is dangerous.” Selian sighed and rolled her head in a frustrated manner. “Almost as if we are very different people that know different things.”

“That’s what I just said.” Flip sighed back.

“Do you think these plants are still dangerous?” Dovhran close behind the other two had stopped to look at the plant roots still limp on the stone floor where they had grown out in search of him.

“Don’t step on them.”

Dovhran, not content with the wizard’s complacent response, exercised extra caution as he followed his two companions.

Roughly fifteen feet to the left of the left passage from the plant room, was a door with no apparent lock. The faintly glowing dark crystal structure of ominous design just fifteen feet further down the passage to the left seemed to indicate that no lock was needed. It made perfect sense that locks, after the first one, were merely to slow down intruders rather than impede them. Anyone who had made it all the way through the pale wastes and survived with Theihdow’s blessing to enter the tomb likely wouldn’t be stopped by a locked door for more than a few moments anyway. This was evident in the layout of the first real chamber of the tomb. And having survived that, the three trespassers were all worried—to varying degree—of what else the tomb’s architect would substitute for a lock next. If it was anything like the deadly plants and destructive arcane force they had just survived, Flip at least was unsure of how much further they could make it.

When the three entered the simple wooden door, however, they were underwhelmed. Before them was a short passage lit with a series of arcane torches that seemed to burn without fuel in small braziers fixed to the stone walls. And at the end of the passage lay another wimple wooden door. For a moment, Dovhran feared that they had walked into a trap and would enter an endless loop of small rooms from which they would ever be able to escape. But the next door was opened and a relatively large room sprawled out in front of them.

Dovhran, who had made very careful mental notes on the structure they had outlined above ground, recognized the shape. More or less at least. It was the last section of tomb they had been able to detect from the surface. And, immediately, something about it didn’t feel.

“Do you smell that?” Selian was the first to make a comment as she walked into the open space. “It smells… damp?”

The room, which was nearly one hundred feet wide and just short of that long, was also well lit with the same sort of magically fueled light. At the center of the room, at something of an aesthetically odd position, was a stone column about fifteen feet in diameter that ran from floor to ceiling and made it difficult to see more than half the room at a time. Apart from that, the room seemed empty. And it was, perhaps so much a smell but an air, that felt the most wrong to the three trespassers.

“Not damp… clean.” Flip raised his eyebrows high to better inspect the room that he was emerging into. “It seems… cleaner… the air. Less underground.”

“Damp the way the coast smells damp.” Dovhran filled in. “You’ve never been to the coast, have you, Faengil. You can smell the moisture in the air from the see for miles inland, it smells like an endless horizon.”

“That sounds ludicrous.” The wizard frowned. “You can’t smell a horizon. Hear it, perhaps… but not see it.”

“Regardless, aren’t you both being rather careless? Just walking in like that…” Dovhran, who had lingered in the doorway, was leaning out into the open room and watching from a distance as his companions breached the room for him.

“Isn’t detecting danger your speciality?” Flip retorted.

The wizard thought, for a moment, that it might be a good idea to started the changeling with a spell that could push him into the room all the way, but he didn’t have such a spell ready to cast and was not eager to expend more effort on spells than he needed. His star shower spell had taken a lot out of him, and while the lights he conjured were extremely basic magic they were still somewhat taxing after using some much of his power. The wizard was not looking forward to what lay ahead of them.

Dovhran, with a sigh, slunk to the ground and assessed the room on all fours for a moment before creeping into the space. The wizard and navigator stopped as their companion made a careful circle around the room, starting on the left side of the column and moving around in a clockwise rotation until he came back to the door they had entered from. Nothing had alerted him.

“I really don’t like this.” Dovhran muttered. “There’s nothing here.”

“That is troubling.” Flip nodded in agreement.

Selian, not quite grasping the concern shared by the two men, was greatly tempted to ask what they meant but was not eager to indulge their cryptic behavior.

Seeing the conflicted expression on the elf’s face, Dovhran explained. “I mean that something is going on and I can’t detect it. So I’m worried. If I can’t figure out what this room does, or what might be hidden here to trap or harm us, then we may have already fallen victim to something we can’t escape from or deal with.”

“That would be the ideal way to prevent progress.” Flip nodded. “Whatever mage constructed this place, they seem adept at laying traps. And durable ones. I envy their skill.”

“I didn’t notice anything either though…” Selian began. “And we were able to see the plant roots before easily enough.”

“The mage did seem to indicate that this was not an impossible task.” Flip sat down in the middle of the room between the two doors and faced off against the column. “A very hard task. But not impossible. He himself likely had to traverse the obstacles he placed on at least one occasion.”

“This definitely isn’t the end either.” Dovhran began circling the room in the same clockwise motion he had before. “We know that. There is definitely more. And I’d wager it only goes down from here, since we couldn’t mark off any other rooms from above ground.”

Flip looked around the room himself, careful now to consider all facets of the room. What startled him was that he did not notice another door. The passage out had not even concerned him before, he had been so engrossed in the idea that there was some other trap or security measure to stop them that he had failed to notice there was no way forward. The only doors in the room were the ones leading backwards into the passage with the arcane barrier. Or so it seemed.

Without explanation, Flip rose to his feet again and walked to the door they had not entered in from. Without word to stop him he walked through and found himself in a short passage like the one that had connected the plant room with the column room on the other side, and beyond that the same room containing the arcane barrier and plant roots. Flip crept carefully to the barrier and checked to see if the roots were still in the same location as well, which they were. It was the same room that they had already come from. Without reason to investigate the space further the wizard returned to his companions and said nothing.

“These are interesting…” Muttered Selian as she followed behind Dovhran in his clockwise circle of the column. “The stone work on the floor around the column is different. The flagstones that touch the base of it are like a sunburst of long stones pointing outward.”

“Decorative, no doubt.” Flip grumbled as he sat down again in his same spot. “It is the folly of wizards that attract fame to indulge in decoration.”

“What about those robes of yours?” Dovhran stopped his investigation to poke fun at Flip.

The robes were the very same ornate purple ones he had adorned while waiting for his preferred ones to dry after trudging through the rain. He had not remembered to change them since putting them on and had almost forgotten that he was wearing them. They were comfortable, there was no denying it, even the longer sleeves, but they were far too showy for Flip’s liking.

“My uncle’s old robes.” Flip retorted. “Not that he wore them very long.”

The topic was quickly abandoned as the concern of their surroundings continued to vex them.

“What about this?”

Selian had passed behind the column while Dovhran had stayed to poke fun at Flip, and at her words Dovhran turned back around to catch up with the elf. Only he went around the room in a counterclockwise fashion to save time.

“What about what?” Flip heard Dovhran call from behind the column.

“This over here, there’s a little insignia pressed into this flagstone.”

“What flagstone?”

“The one over here.”

Selian came around the right side of the column as Flip watched. She looked confused, which confused Flip. Rather than inquire about the miscommunication that was unfolding before him, Flip watched as Selian made another clockwise pass around the column before stopping again.

“Where are you? Are we just circling around the room?” Selian was frustrated and her groaning voice reflected that.

“Maybe.” Dovhran sighed loudly from the other side of the column.

And then he came around from the same side of the column that Selian had.

“Odd.” Flip muttered. “Did you circle around?”

“I did.” Selian answered confused.

“I just went around the back and around...” Dovhran, now also confused tilted his head towards the wizard. “But then I walked back the way I came… you didn’t move, did you Faengil?”

“I haven’t stood up since I came back in the room and sat down.” The wizard replied.

“Alright… Don’t move.” Dovhran said slowly as he back up around the column from where he’d just come.

A short time passed, and the wizard could hear the changelings footsteps grow fainter as if he was walking away down a long hallway.

“You still haven’t moved?” Dovrhan called out to his companions.

“Not a smidgen!” Flip called back.

Selian, who was lost in the interaction, said nothing but made her confusion obvious on her face.

“Leave something on the ground and come around the way I did.”

With a smile of understanding, Flip stood and placed the hatch on the ground where he had been sitting. He didn’t activate it, but he watched it carefully as he walked backwards past Selian and around the column. And as Flip rounded the left side, left as he had viewed it before at least, he saw Dovhran standing almost exactly where Flip himself had just been sitting. But the hatch was no where to be seen, nor was Selian.

“Lady Farwysher. Have you stood your ground?” Flip called back around the column in the direction he’d come from.

“Not at all.” Came her frustrated reply.

Flip circled back the way he came and collected the hatch before turning to address the elf. She was still positioned exactly the same as she had been before, leaning up against the column with a mixture of fury and confusion on her face.

“Walk around this way…” Flip gestured to the left side of the pillar as he faced the elf. “I’d like to see the marking you found.”

Selian threw her hands up in frustration as she led the way. “Okay. Over here.”

The elf led Flip around to just past the edge of the column and indicated to one of the long rectangular stones that was pointing away from the center of the room. On one of the corners that touched the corner where the floor and column met, there was a small circular impression in the stone with a symbol carved into it. Flip ran his finger over the marking and wiped out a small dusting of dirt and revealed the symbol in its entirety. The wizard recognized it after a small mental struggle, it was the numeral one in the Nilandean runic script. Flip did not speak or read Nilandean, but recognized the numeral from the pagination of arcane texts.

“I see.” Flip muttered to himself. “I must check one more thing… but I suspect this room is much bigger than it appears.”

Flip walked, rather quickly and with newfound excitement, counterclockwise around the pillar a full rotation so that he was just out of sight of Dovhran. Selian, at a loss of what else to do, followed closely behind the wizard so as not to be left behind. As Flip reached what would have been the space he had just come from he knelt down to inspect the stone that would have had the marking he had just observed. And the same circular impression was there in the same spot, almost imperceptible if you were not looking for it. But the numeral was different. Bounded inside the circular impression was the Nilandean numeral for two.

“Dovhran, have you moved?” Flip peered around the column to search for the changeling and found him standing in much the same place he had been before. “Go through that door that we entered this room from and check the plant room.”

Dovhran cocked his head to the side as he began to understand the wizard’s train of thought. The door he approached was not the same door they had come in from. Dovhran had not recalled closing the door behind him, but this door which appeared to be in the same place was closed. But as he opened it and walked through, he found exactly the same short passage and plant room beyond it that the real door had obscured. Yet, when he walked back, he could not see the wizard or elf that had been in view before.

“You vanished.” Flip called around the column. “Where have you found yourself?”

“Back at the start.” Dovhran sighed as he rounded the column in the proper direction to find the wizard and elf looking in the direction he had just been. “What do you think that means?”

“If there is a first and a second layer… I think there may well be a third.” Flip hummed to himself as he curled his finger through his beard. “Maybe even a fourth, and dare I say a fifth… I would not put it past the mage to have added a sixth layer either.”

“Please stop.” Selian groaned. “I only vaguely understand what you mean.”

“Well, let us see.”

Flip stood and retrieved a small piece of chalk from a pouch at his belt and pressed it to the column’s side. As he walked, he kept the calk in place and drew a continuous line across the stone. A full rotation passed and flip spotted a mark on the stone that was likely the numeral three, but did not see any trace of his chalk marking. Flip made a strike through the line as he passed the numeral and continued on, trailing the chalk line behind him.

Ten full rotations later, Flip was beginning to feel dizzy. One can only walk in a circle for so long. And though the space itself was not exactly a circle, but a twisted space that seemed to occupy itself, it still felt very much like he was walking in a circle. But then, at the middle of the twelfth iteration of the space and opposite the side that would house the numeral twelve something new in the room finally appeared. On the column itself was a slender double door made of fine dark wood and with polished metal fittings for the hinges and handle. Flip was confident that it was either a trap or the door forward, but unsure of which.

“Dovhran, would you care to take this calk and circle around just a bit more?” Flip held out his now much diminished chalk to the changeling.

The changeling was not quite so motion sick and disoriented as his companions. Selian, to her credit was holding up rather well, but overlapping space was not the same kind of sensory disorientation that a sailor was accustomed to and still jarred her senses nearly to nausea. Dovhran accepted the chalk and made another rotation out of sight. And, as he passed the numeral twelve, he came around again to find himself in a slightly different space. They had not touched the doors past the second layer of the room, but the space he now found himself in was a version of the room with an open door. And as the changeling looked back on his chalk line, he noticed that it was short. It started not far behind him and went up to where he now stood. And, to his displeasure, the changeling found that another wrap around the room in the counter clockwise direction led him back to the start of the line above the numeral two.

Dovhran swore loud enough for Flip and Selian to hear him eleven layers down. Fortunately, Dovhran could not hear the chuckled that escaped Flip in response.

“It seems my theory was correct. He’s found himself back at the start.” Flip took a seat at the door and Selian joined him gratefully. “We should wait for him to get back. I’m quite confident now that this door is our exit from this room… and it’s quite clever really. If any of us had come here alone, we might not have noticed that we were moving down an invisible spiral staircase without taking a step down.”