Mary froze. She couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe.

She felt nothing in her chest as if her heart had stopped. Fearfully, she raised a hand to her eyes - the skin was so white it almost hurt her eyes, and the dark veins she grew to hate so much were gone. Or... maybe not, not really. Shadows were dancing above her skin, clearly disconnected, yet just as clearly a part of her.

“Mary?” Paolo asked.

Mary felt a twinge of fear. She'd probably be hyperventilating right now, but not breathing made it quite a challenge.

“Don't worry, don't worry, she's fine,” Frank said. “She probably just died.”

What?

“Dead doesn't exactly scream 'fine' at me!” Paolo said calmly.

“It happens all the time,” Frank dismissed it with a hand wave as if it solved anything. “Half the battle transformations require too much change to sustain anything human-like underneath the surface. She'll just have to learn how to operate whatever she ended up with. Or maybe she'll be able to reverse the transformation - I know some heroes that could change to and from their battle attire like no one's business.”

“Mary?” Paolo asked, turning back to the girl again. “Can you... I don't know, nod or something if you're okay?”

Mary looked at the idiot and shook her head violently.

“Well, I'll take it as a yes,” Frank laughed.

Mary's fist clenched, and the shadows in the rooms started to slowly lengthen.

“Okay, okay. Most battle forms can still speak somehow. Try thinking something really hard, and push it outside, towards us. You'll need to learn how to talk from the start, but it should be quicker this time. I expect you'll get fluent before a month or so.”

This. Is. Some. Bullcrap!

The words rang out in the room with such force that most of the assistants yelped and covered their ears. Even Paolo winced, but Frank only laughed even more. Mary was mildly surprised - the voice came from behind her as she felt a part of her shadow manifest there. It was so close she should have lost her hearing or something - but the way it was, the noise wasn't even unpleasant.

Mossie buzzed as if it wanted to fine her something big but thought better of it.

“See?” Frank said to his assistants. “All you have to do is get people angry to get the results. Now, whether these will be the results you'd been wanting may vary.”

“Very. Funny.” Mary spoke-thought, slightly more cautiously this time. Some people still flinched, but it wasn't the resounding boom she started with.

“Nah, it's not a joke. That really is one of our most effective training tools. Anyway, you may want to see Arthur again after we finish down here - he's at least top three of the best necromancers I've ever met, and he may help you with little tweaks and tricks.”

“Excuse me,” Paolo said calmly. “But who the heck is Arthur, what the heck is going on, where is Mortimer, and for Author's keyboard, where can I get some normal clothes?”

Oh, right. That. At least Mary couldn't cry anymore.

From there, it was rather easy. Mary had to dismiss three more shadow-monsters to the abyss, but it came with no extra effort, now that she knew how to do it. There were other prisoners remaining, apparently including members of her team, which she really should've thought about earlier, but Frank assured her that he'd deal with them without her help. And besides, they needed to build a large dog park for all the puppies - you could only hold them in a bag of holding for so long before something went wrong - and Mary had no building skills to speak of, so she'd be of little help.

So, Mary went off to see Arthur, and Paolo (in a relatively standard black leather armour) followed her along. There was only one problem, which she discovered after they reached the first intersection. Neither the sandstone walls nor the standard torches sported any direction signs.

“So, which way to this Arthur guy?” Paolo asked.

Mary had a feeling he wouldn't like the answer.

“What do you mean, you don't know?”

“It was. Long day.”

Paolo shook his head. “Then we'll have to go back and ask, I guess.”

So they went back the way they came in. Unfortunately, there was a tiny-tiny little problem with that idea too.

Mary stopped to examine a fork in the corridor. It looked just as generic as the previous intersection, with standard sandstone and standard torches. It seemed perfectly solid, and perfectly old.

“Am I missing something...?” Paolo asked.

Again, Mary had no satisfying answer to give him.

“Should we. Separate and. Check both?” Mary said while adding a tiny drop of pride to her poor mood - she managed six words at a time, with no shouting or anything going wrong. Mossie buzzed around as if it wanted to say something again, swerving so wildly that it almost scraped a wall.

“No, no, no. No. Rule one - never split the party. Rule two - check rule one,” Paolo said.

“So which way?”

They walked the maze for hours. Sandstone and torches. It was always sandstone and torches. Mary lost track of time, and what bothered her the most was that it didn't bother her at all. She didn't feel tired, hungry... nothing. Paolo slowed down a bit after a while, and she berated herself for not thinking about her just-resurrected friend. Unfortunately, slowing down wouldn't magically solve their problems.

“This doesn't work,” Mary said as she stopped.

“Yeah.” Paolo leaned against the wall to catch a breath, then immediately leapt away.

“What happened?”

Paolo ignored her, inspecting the wall suspiciously with his face so close he could be licking it for all Mary knew. Then he slowly touched it with a single finger, then all five. A grin twisted his face.

“Try it yourself.”

Mary eyed him, then placed a hand on the rough sandstone, wincing only slightly at the sight of familiar-but-not-yet-familiar mixture of paleness and darkness.

Immediately, a robotic voice rang in her head. “Please - select - destination.”

“Arthur,” Mary thought.

As the robotic voice spoke again, a vivid image of a corridor with bright green arrows drawn on the floor formed in her head. “In three - hundred - feet - turn - right.”

She lifted her hand, and all the images disappeared. She groaned, then pressed it against the wall again. “Please - select - destination.”