We walked the halls of an overgrown cathedral.

Daylight gathered in the curves of ogives, filtered through a cloudy stained glass window - a heretical scene limned with festive hues. The air filled with enormous motes that flitted around, kicked up by our arrival. Cluttered rows of rotting pews fitted with misericords stopped up the entrance into what I imagine must have been the priest’s quarters, and all we could see beyond them was that same dusty dark. Poetic surroundings to be sure, but our attention is entirely occupied by the terrible sight up on the walls..

Ancient devotional reliefs, depicting mad, multi-headed gods riding on chariots, deferential figures caught underneath the wheels. In the hand of one is a beribboned armament couched as their chariot races towards a gold leaf disc in the top left corner, which must be the sun. All around the scene of carnage are devotees in sumptuous, yet revealing robes, clutching goblets overfilled with a maroon liquid, which I suppose could be wine, blood, or some admixture of the two. The liquid runs down the cups, and, this is really a masterstroke artistically speaking, their trails end up crisscrossing around the bottom of the sculpture, assembling into a kind of lattice, before arching up towards the sides, then to the top, producing something like a picture frame to the whole scene.

Despite its indisputable aesthetic significance, I don’t care for this side of the Ancients. With historical pieces I enjoy that essential contradiction, that the more things change the more they stay the same. The essence of what it is to be human, cast in foreign, exotic molds, that’s what I like. Rows and rows of curious porcelain, totally inimical arrangements, broad-bellied vases with elegant handles and tapered lips, but if you look closely, you can tell from the grain what mineral they’re invariably made from.

But not with artifacts like these. Here, the historic character is completely foreign - there’s nothing human at all to bounce off of, so the crude, the bloody, the barbaric is never tempered by anything that could make it tragic. Instead it’s just cruel and strange. Dicephalous, bloodthirsty gods, could there really have been a time when we believed in things like that? I’m disposed to find reason in even the most unreasonable of human beliefs, to think it’s base to dismiss entire periods of human history as unthinking, seeing as we were certainly thinking the whole way through, and that beliefs don’t come from nowhere, but there’s no part of me that could meet the relief on the wall halfway.

Time to get to work. With a hushed incantation, I focused my energies on the pews filling up the hallway. A dust devil started up in the epicenter of the magic spell, and a sudden wind rushed through the room, chilling us to the bone.

I pointed a finger at a pew, and it shifted, then rose up, wobbling very slightly. I turned my hand to an empty part of the chamber, and it drifts over, pitching and wavering, until I set it down, under one of the reliefs. I gestured to the next one, lifted it, and, while trying to deposit it neatly on top of the other, ended up sending it through one of the windows. My party ducks at the sound of the impact. Oops.

“Sorry, I haven’t done this in a while”.

I waste no time in removing the rest of the pews one by one, disposing of them wherever is easiest until the hallway is clear.

“Now, you’re all briefed on the plan already, so I’ll make this short. You look for the wall done up in a rococo style, with a violet tapestry hanging on it. Behind the tapestry you'll find the balcony, and up that is, hopefully, the Archaeopteryx. If you find the secret passage before me, you’re to find me, so I can sneak up to the mob before it can fly away, or gods forbid, attacks. The tapestry varies day by day, but is known to appear on the second and fifth floors of the cathedral, so we’ll split up into teams of two to try and find it as soon as possible”.

Vigdis looked at Béla when I said this, and I figured there was no separating the two, so I bit the bullet and volunteered to go with Jeroen, though I wasn't happy about it. We mounted a spiral staircase at the end of the hall and made our way into the gloom. I cast a minor torch spell - the place was windowless, aside from in the main hall, making the upper floors lit only by discreet cracks in the walls.

The cathedral is an anachronistic mishmash, a gallimaufry of every time period known to modern historians, and some no one can exactly place. The one room we’d entered was in a gothic style, with great, dismal arches, supported from the outside by rows upon rows of buttresses, like the raised spears of a regiment, tapering off with little ceramic inversions of Lux’s warding glyph. Segmented ceilings, white and symmetrical, like the ribcage of some prehistoric shark hanging suspended in the hall of a museum. A type of architecture all at once brutish and mathematical, reflecting the great sympathies of a bygone era: the self-incriminating logic of priests flaying themselves in bricked-up chambers, of malformed serfs breaking their backs in the fields, tyrants lamenting their teeth, lost to the marzipan cakes ceaselessly hauled in on porcelain chargers so fine as to be translucent. This spirit of the times presides now over a state of complete disorder: upended furniture, bureaus, escritoires, armoire, chaise longues, handsome fireplaces chock full of debris, a banqueting table split down the middle, each half leaning towards the other. The stone roots are merciless. They claw through every available surface, seeking purchase in the unlikeliest of places. I saw one that had worked its way behind the glass belly of a grandfather clock, winding up the pendulum, then just barely visible behind the dirty white clock face.

In the middle of all this are me and Jeroen making our way through the wreck of a room. At one end is a rococo wall. I rush over, stumble on the edge of a moldy cushioned chair, catch myself, and fling away the violet tapestry. Nothing.

“Well, that solves that. I guess we’d better make our way over to the others.” I turned around and saw Jeroen bringing a metal implement down on my head. In an instant I dodge to the right, and kick his knee in backwards. He crumples up on the floor.

“Now, what did you mean by doing that?”, I asked, the suddenness of his reprisal hadn’t given me enough time to process the fact that he just tried to club me, and so my words were more neutral than you otherwise might expect.

Jeroen gave a protracted groan. “H-how are you so fast..” I supplied this inquiry with a similar attitude,

“I’m level XX, that must be why.” I nudged him with my foot, the gravity of the situation beginning to dawn on me, though that gravity was qualified by the fact that this wasn’t nearly the first time someone, party member or not, had tried to sap me. “Phew, I got you pretty good this time. Look, I’m not stupid. Just cause we seemed to make up in the maze, talking about life, doesn’t mean I’d forgotten our little spat. I just knew that whatever you tried, even if was going to be something as stupid as this, I’d be able to handle it. Still, though, you were going to try and kill me for that?”

“Aghhh… Noo, j-just rough you up a bit. Do to you what you did to me..”

“I guess I should’ve expected it. You know, my ‘Detect Evil’ spell is that old fire-and-brimstone type. That means it picked up on you immediately. I was wondering just what it was that made you traditionally evil. I thought, so he’s a little difficult, but that doesn’t make him evil. Then you pull this little stunt, and I think I’m starting to catch on.”

“S-shut up, you don’t know me”, he began with another groan, this time punctuating it with a sharp intake of breath. “M-my leg.. It’s bad isn’t it?”

“You’ll be fine. Just have to put it back in place.”

“Ah, good, you have your hearthstone set to the Doctor-Barber’s, right?”.

“No, actually. But we don’t need to hearth anywhere. I can set your leg right here, so we can finish the dungeon. That alright with you?”

Ignoring his protests, I went about fixing his leg. His screams resounded throughout the cathedral’s ruined halls.

-

Béla and Vigdis came rushing into the room. I had seated myself by this point, after making a splint for Jeroen’s leg. I was helping myself to little nips from my hip flask. They caught me right as I was raising it to my mouth, which was slightly embarrassing.

“What happened?” they blurted out. Then they saw Jeroen passed out, and Béla asked, “Is he alright?”

“A bad bit of floor”, I answered coolly. “He fell right through it, busted his leg”.

“That’s terrible! We have to get him out of the dungeon right away”, said Vigdis.

“That won’t be necessary. I set the bone already. We can continue on, as long as we keep Jeroen out of harm’s way.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, you can always trust a veteran adventurer”.

-

The fifth-floor tapestry was guarded by a pair of surly ogres, each wielding a bannered polearm. One was shirtless, while the other was clad head-to-toe in a suit of outsized plate armor. He might’ve proved troublesome if it were any other sort of party he was dealing with.

I stealthed behind a dusty marble statue - the whole room was laden with heathen decoration - and pointed my finger towards the unarmored ogre. I suddenly retracted my entire hand in a tugging motion, and the left leg of the ogre went flying out from under him. Ogres are famously clumsy. He stumbled, dropped his polearm, and still was unable to keep his balance, falling flat on his face. The armored ogre bent down to check on his friend, convinced that it had been a complete accident, and not the malicious magical act it really was. As he helped up the fallen ogre I stole through the hall and up to them, sword drawn.

I shot needles of ice through the helmet’s visor, and the ogre reared up, clutching his useless, bleeding eyes. I used that opportunity to bring my sword down and behead the fallen one, but it didn't quite cut through. As I struggled to free it, Béla came rushing in with his cutlass, and finished the job for me.

“You really need to get a new sword”, he quipped. A bolt of light went careening into the blinded ogre, knocking him comically into a long vase standing free on a pedestal. The whole thing went down with him, so he was rolling around in a pile of marble shards, bellowing with pain. I delivered the coup de grace.

Dusting ourselves off, we approached the final tapestry. I pulled it down and found the balcony before me.

“Alright, you guys wait out here. It has to be me alone on that balcony.” At this they nodded, and I stealthed through the secret passage.

-

The “balcony” stretches across the side of the cathedral, terminating at a kind of pulpit that overlooks the labyrinth. Only about half of the staircase leading up to it has a railing, meaning it was just a set of long, stone slabs sticking out of the side of the wall for the first part of the journey upwards. I crept up with measured steps. The slightest sound will tip off the Archaeopteryx, and when it learns of your presence it does one of two things: either it will turn tail and fly away, meaning all our efforts were wasted, or, it tries to fight. You do not want to fight the Archaeopteryx.

Just focus on putting one foot in front of the other, I demanded of myself. Don’t look down, but don’t get distracted. You have to keep calm when you stealth, without letting your mind drift. You must be fully conscious, but unperturbed, which is a tall order when you’re looking at a XX-foot drop beneath you, and a vicious dinosaur above. Stealth is really a form of meditation. Just as you let the light pass through you and obscure your body, you must let all your worries, cares, deepest fears run riot in your mind. But you can’t let them get to you - otherwise, you slip up, lose that integral rhythm, and that’s that, you’re dead. Your fears will come true if you let them.

One step cleared after another. I was careful not to put down my weight immediately. Instead, I ever so gently rest the front of my foot on the step in front of me, at which point, if it proves secure, step onto while maintaining an even pace. I’d been lucky so far, not a single one was suspicious, and I’d managed to get to the portion of the staircase with a railing.

The next one, though, wobbles when I put my foot down. The steps are so far apart, I can’t skip any. I clutched the railing like it was a ship’s mast in a storm. I take a chance.

The step gave out instantly. I find myself holding onto dear life, hanging from the railing. My stealth, needless to say, was broken. I hauled myself up, almost losing my grip, but reinforced it instead, and raised my leg, to try and seek refuge on the next step.

It gave out too! Now the railing is disconnected, hanging loosely above the labyrinth. I pulled myself up the side of it, and the strain is making every single suture in me pop out of place. I indulge myself with a look down: the drop is terrifying. For the first time I feel the vertigo swimming through me, and it's all I can do not to give up and let go, to put myself out of my misery once and for all. To give up the struggle.

-

I didn’t give up. Something in me wanted to live. As much as the railing shook on the way up, as much as my body yearned for rest, I found myself clambering up it in a desperate bid to save my skin. I wanted to live. Live! I climbed up with renewed vigor, putting one aching arm in front of the other, pushing myself up and forward with my legs on the posts, some giving way as I kicked them, spiraling down towards the labyrinth below. With one last manic push, I flung myself onto the pulpit, where, of course, the Archaeopteryx was waiting for me.

It didn’t turn tail at that point like I had hoped. That would’ve been perfect, to not have to fight the thing, and have a good excuse for it. No, I found that sonofabitch bearing down on me just as soon as I picked myself up.

It tackled me, sending me into the side of the pulpit. I knocked against the railing, conscious of the blood that was pouring down my chest. It flew around, and back in to take another bite out of me, and I leapt to meet it. A seamless strike with the edge of my sword - I managed to slice off a few feathers, that’s all. The beast was untouched. I whirled back around just as it brought its talons to the fore, and they lock themselves around my blade. I attempt to wrench the blade free. As I’m doing that the beast suddenly let go, and I flung myself towards the very edge of the balcony. I’m teetering, the sword in a disadvantageous position, and it just doesn’t let up. It’s swiping at me, tearing up my gambeson, making sure that first wound has company.

I grab its neck with my free hand. It lashed out something fierce at that, hind claws swiping futilely through the air, but I kept holding it.

I channel all my mana into one terrible spell, a maxed-out, high-level, focused Shock. A level one spell, and yet the best one ever made, perhaps. Blue lightning courses through my body, seeping out from my body, mind, and soul, localized entirely in the palm of my scratched-up hand.

My head was swimming. I fell from the balcony.