Sam stared at the slips of paper in his hands. Five different people had given him five different notes, all of which were just a random jumble of letters and numbers. They’d been handed over without a word of explanation, and when he’d tried to ask what was going on, he’d been confronted with a fusillade of shaking heads and shushing motions.

Ma, Pop, Pearl, Rashun, and Cora. They had handed him the papers almost as soon as he stepped through the door to the work room. A puzzle of some kind, obviously. It took him exactly three seconds after the last shush to put it together.

“Araxes,” he breathed. “How?”

“We don’t know, and he said he couldn’t tell us,” Pearl said from where she sat on the edge of a bandsaw. I think it’s because—“

“He said you’d figure it out,” Rashun said after recovering from a headlong dive that wound up with his hand clamped over Pearl’s mouth and the little fae looking rather dazed. “And that you’d understand why.”

The System. It was always listening. For words, phrases, even thoughts sent through the message system that might brush up against the ‘forbidden’ material. Apollyon, the Five, the war, and reality itself… Sam didn’t know what would happen if the System keyed in on those words, and he wasn’t particularly interested in finding out.

“Right.” He nodded slowly, conscious of a dozen sets of eyes on him—where had all those gnomes come from? And when had Booger shown up? And Tilly was there, pushing Bugruk… As he stood there taking in the scene, two more bodies pushed past him and into the room. Thrash and Char. Sam leaned back out the door and glanced down the tunnel. More people were making their way here, confusion and expectation writ on their faces.

Oh. Araxes thought this was important.

His attention turned back to the papers. They were nothing but random numbers and letters, scrawled in haste. If there were patterns in any of them, he couldn’t see them. He flipped through them, scanned them quickly… Math puzzles, maybe? Alpha-numeric substitution? A Throckmorton Cipher maybe?

Would Araxes know about codes and codebreaking? He’d lived long enough to take an interest, but somehow Sam just couldn’t see Lich King Araxesendenak sitting down with a good calcium milkshake and a good book of cipher theorems on a cold winter evening. It just didn’t jive with the lich king’s personality.

Okay, so think simpler. What’s unique about these?

Well, there was the fact that they were unique. Given to five people Araxes would have known he could trust…

Huh. And they all started with a number. Not the same number, but given the jumble of letters and numbers and even mathematical signs on the papers, it was a little odd that they would all start with a number. Even odder, he realized a moment later, that the numbers could be placed in ascending order. 1, 2, 4, 7, 9.

Okay, so let’s think like Araxes. He needs to get a message to me. It’s important enough that he wants everyone around for it, but he’s not a trained codemaker, so it has to be simple enough for his distractable brain to figure it out and get it out to people. The numbers might indicate the the order in which the papers should be read. Easy enough, but it’s still gibberish. But there’s a message contained in here, which means he must have sent me a clue to get it out.

“Nobody else got a message? Anything to pass to me?” Sam asked, scanning the room. All he got in response was a series of shaking heads. Bugruk made a thumbs-down motion, and Pearl gave an expressive shrug. No affirmatives, though.

If Araxes wanted me to read these in order, why did he use such weird numbers? Why not 1-5?

“Raxy did say we should have fun on our treasure hunt,” Pearl piped up after a second. “Does that count for anything?”

Sam blinked. “Treasure hunt? That’s what he said?”

“Yup! I thought it was funny, since he looks like a pirate flag and all. Ooh, and like pirate skeletons, too! We should totally get him a hat and a sword, Sam! He’d be so cute as a pirate!”

Treasure hunt. Why in god’s name did he say ‘treasure hunt’? It had to be significant, but Sam was damned if he could—

“He didn’t tell me anything like that,” Ma said, frowning. “Just said I should write it down and give it to you. What the heck is going on here, Sammy?”

He’d only told Pearl?

“Pearl, what do you know about treasure hunts?” he asked, looking up at the little fae.

“Well, you need shovels, and you need pirates, ooh, and you need a map!” Pearl grinned wide and bounced up onto her feet. “Everyone knows you can’t go treasure hunting without a map!”

“And if it’s a real pirate map,” Sam said, a slow grin forming, “then it must have the instructions written in a very specific way, doesn’t it?”

“Yup! ‘Ten paces east of the giant skull, turn north, thirty paces forward until you reach the tree where the dead men hang high!’ And stuff like that. C’mon Sam, everyone knows that!”

Clever bony bastard, Sam almost laughed. He looked at the notes, and sure enough, there it was. The notes didn’t have different messages, they conveyed the same message, but it would be almost impossible to see without the other notes for confirmation. On the first note in order, that started with 1, the very next number was 7. On the next note, that started with 2, the second number forward was also 7. For 5, the 5th character was also a 7.

Sam traced the numbers down using the pattern. Seven characters after the first seven was a 3. Three characters after that, a 9. And so it went, until finally after almost 15 numbers the last ‘step’ led him to a period.

And what he was left with was a 15-digit code. And given the context of all this, they just about had to be dimensional coordinates.

“Son of a bitch,” he laughed out loud. “He did it! That beautiful bonebag did it! I don’t know how, but he figured out a way to send us—“ he stopped. The System might not be listening for something as simple as the words ‘coordinates’, but why take the chance? He just laughed again and moved over to the portal device. The controls were simple; copper dials several buttons, and a large lever. Sam spun the dials to the appropriate coordinates, locked them in with a button press, and reached up to grab the lever.

“Everyone ready?” he asked the assembled roomful of friends and family.

He got nods and words of affirmative in return.

Gods it was going to be good to finally explain what was going on to these people.

“Alright then.” He yanked down on the lever. The portal machine whined and the coruscating rift over it spun and flashed. Then there came the quiet tone of a connection made, just like Sam had hoped to hear. The rift steadied, expanded, flashed a rainbow of colors, then settled into its new form, a tall half-circle tall enough for even Pop to pass through without stooping and wide enough for three men to walk through abreast.

“About bloody time,” said Araxes, arms crossed and glaring at him from the other side. “Really Tolliver, I expected you to decipher that message in seconds. What the devil took you so long?”

Sam forced himself not to just dash through the portal, but to check the readouts on the work station, make sure that everything was stable, then nodded slowly. “Okay, everything looks good. Portal should be stable. We can go through and back without… Well, without much worry. Someone needs to stay on this side to monitor things though, just in case.“

“Sam,” Ma raised her hand, looking half-distracted. “I’ll be along in a bit. Nat needs some help, and the boy doesn’t want to wait.”

“Sure Ma, if nothing else I can catch you up later. Now who should stay and—“

“On it chief!” The little gnome who had almost blown up the mountain earlier today—her name was Glendina, Sam remembered—jumped forward eagerly and shouldered Sam aside with strength that belied her small form. “You guys go over and do whatever you need to do, I’ll make sure the gate doesn’t close on ya!”

Sam eyed her. “No explosions?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Yeah. Remember, I know how the rest of that oath goes.” Sam continued to eye her. “No. Explosions.”

“Er… Right Chief. Gotcha.”

“Good.” He nodded once then forced himself to turn in a controlled fashion and step calmly towards the portal. “Alright, everyone, I’ll go through first, make sure it’s safe. Then come on in after me. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Araxes said as Sam approached the portal and stepped through the shining opening. There was a soft tingling on his skin, and the air pressure was just different enough on this side that he felt his ears pop as he emerged.

“Araxes,” Sam said with a grin and reached out to offer his hand to the lich. “Good to see you. How’d you get out of the Blue Room? More than that, how’d you get coordinates to this place? What is it, some kind of interdimensional hidey-hole?”

“Yes,” said a voice from behind Sam that made his body freeze and his blood stop in his veins. “And yet at the same time, very much no. It’s interesting, isn’t it? A real conundrum.”

Sam turned his head. There, ten paces away, still in the same position, still in the same powerful circle, still covered in glowing runes, was him.

Oh no.

“Nice place,” he heard Tilly say from behind him, and turned to see her and Bugruk come through the portal, closely followed by Pop and Rashun.

Oh no no no.

“Uh, Sam?” Pop rumbled, hand dropping to his sword. “Who’s the guy in the warding circle?”

“Araxes,” Sam whispered, staring. “What the hell did you do?”

“Welcome to my home,” said the mad god, cackling. “Make yourselves comfortable. This is going to take a while!”