It was another illusion of Nilsiir, High Priest of Rhyth in the days when Tarin-Tiran flourished. This time something was different, however, and it was not hard for Robin to put his finger on precisely what that was.

Nilsiir was staring right at them, eyes flicking from one member of the party to another. The High Priest opened his mouth and began to gesture wildly, but no sound issued forth.

A look of consternation drifted across the illusion’s face.

Illusion? Ghost? Some combination of the two? A trick of the dungeon?

‘What is happening?’ Robin whispered to the rest of the party.

‘I was hoping you had some ideas about that,’ Vance whispered back.

Jhess had her daggers out. Savra was flipping her coin and frowning at it as it came down on edge time and time again. Sparks of purple-white light danced across Drev’s fingers as he readied himself for a magical defence in case things got serious, fast.

The illusion of Nilsiir began pacing around the room, squinting at various details, walking through inconvenient obstacles, and generally muttering in discontent.

Robin wished he was better at lip-reading. Would [Tongue of the Fallen Tower] work with lip reading? Probably not.

‘What is it doing?’ Jhess asked, keeping the point of one of her daggers continually trained on the illusory priest.

‘It looks like they’re…looking at things?’ Robin answered. ‘Maybe looking for something?’

Nilsiir looked at them and glared.

‘Wait,’ Jhess said, ‘can it hear us.’

The illusion nodded and rolled its eyes.

The rogue threw a dagger through it.

Nilsiir just sighed and tossed back a look that just said Really?

‘Can you understand what I’m saying?’ Robin asked.

Nilsiir nodded. Then the illusion moved its hands through a few gestures. Nothing happened and the illusion grimaced.

Robin had frozen at those gestures though. he recognised them. How could he not? He used them every time he went to cast [Lesser Phantasm].

He stepped forward cautiously and mirrored the gestures, conjuring a small image of the figure he had first seen in the shrine he awoke in when he first arrived in this world: a shadowy figure that from many angles just seemed an outcropping of stone.

Nilsiir smiled broadly upon seeing it and looked at Robin with renewed interest.

‘What was that?’ Vance asked.

‘Something I saw in a—book about a shrine to Rhyth once,’ Robin answered. ‘I figured if we’re seeing a sentient illusion, in a city dedicated to the god, what else would be better to show we’re friendly?’

‘Are we?’ Jhess asked bluntly.

‘Hey, the more allies we have down here, the better,’ Robin shot back. ‘There’s a living dungeon all around us that wants us dead, for one, not to mention the other monsters roaming this ruin. If Nilsiir here has access to their old memories, it could be invaluable. Why not try to make friends?’

‘It’s your funeral,’ the rogue said. ‘Just make sure it isn’t ours as well.’

Robin smiled grimly at that.

Nilsiir had discovered Robin’s floating illusion replicating the runic structures within the room and was examining it with great interest. The reaction when they discovered the bit highlighting the change Robin had just made caused an extreme reaction. The High Priest began gesticulating wildly, trying to draw Robin over.

He went. He was trying to make friends after all. And who knew what he might learn?

Drev and Vance followed, curious. Savra and Jhess were more cautious. Rerebos was staying safely out of sight, just to be on the safe side, but Robin could feel the fascination rolling off the little dragon in waves.

Nilsiir was gesturing at the rune Robin had altered to try and reactivate the original functionality of the place. They were drawing a shape in mid air with their hands. It looked mostly similar to the rune Robin had shaped, from what he could see, but maybe there was a slight difference. It was hard to tell from guessing at the lines left by an illusion’s gestures.

Though that gave Robin an idea. Using [Lesser Phantasm] he carefully traced the movements of Nilsiir’s hands. The illusion, catching on to what Robin was doing, slowed their movements so the bard could more easily follow. When the image was complete, Robin willed it over next to the rune he had altered for comparison.

They were slightly different!

Robin raised his hand to make an alteration to the runic structure but Drev’s voice pulled him up short.

‘Wait. Are you sure you want to do that? We don’t actually know what that will do.’ The mage’s voice held a note of caution.

‘No,’ Robin answered, ‘but as its my magic fuelling the change, there’s a very good chance I could cut the energies before anything truly catastrophic went wrong. The runes aren’t that different. The effects should be very similar to what’s already happening. We’ve seen that in other places we’ve tried this experiment, after all.’

‘True,’ Drev said. ‘I merely thought it wise that we consider carefully before attempting anything. This is…unprecedented.’

‘That we know of,’ Robin said.

‘Savra?’ Jhess asked.

The seeress flipped her coin. It came down on its edge once more.

‘I cannot see. Whatever effect that confuses divination has been almost insurmountable since we arrived in this room. Something is interfering.’ She shot a suspicious glance at Nilsiir.

The illusion ignored her entirely, focused on the runic structures floating in front of it.

Then the High Priest took the decision entirely out of the party’s hands. They reached out and grasped the glowing rune formed by Robin’s [Lesser Phantasm] and slid it into place in the illusory runic structure, displacing the one Robin had originally conjured in the relevant place.

‘Ah, there we go,’ Nilsiir said. ‘Much better.’ He turned to the party. ‘Thank you. Light and shadow but it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to speak freely!’

‘Erm, happy to help?’ Robin managed to find his voice before the rest of the party.

This was not like the visions they had seen before. There, the illusions were static things, memories of a past endlessly repeating themselves on a loop. This was areal time interactive illusion, the likes of which none of them had ever seen.

This was verging on fully awakened, holographic artificial intelligence, to borrow some ideas from Robin’s original world.

‘There is not much time,’ Nilsiir said. ‘I have no idea how long your little patchwork job here will last with the titanic energies involved in this room. Particularly now that Silirin has made so many strange changes.’ Nilsiir shook their head. ‘I have no idea what has warped him so, but it is…unsettling, to say the least. Oh, what year is it?’

A stammering Drev told him.

Nilsiir raised one elegant eyebrow.

‘Really? So long? I’d have thought…never mind! You are here now! You can—‘

Nilsiir suddenly flickered in and out of focus, flashing between their current form and the ghost-like apparition from before.

‘What’s wrong?’ Vance asked, looking form the illusion of the High Priest to the illusion of the runic structure Robin had conjured.

Robin didn’t have an answer. There was a tingling in his extremities that felt ominous. He quickly banished the illusion and reconjured it, hoping that would both stop the sensation and restore some semblance of normalcy to Nilsiir.

It did.

‘Well that was unpleasant.’ The illusion shuddered.

What did a sentient illusion feel? At first Robin’s mind rejected the idea, but then something clicked and he saw easily how such a thing could be. On one level, illusion was all about fooling the senses, so why could it not fool senses that were themselves illusions?

Hey, he had turned the pages of an illusory book with illusory hands. This shiz was weird.

‘And while I appreciate it, your efforts will not last. You need to make some restorative changes to the runic structures in this room for me to last long enough to tell you anything useful at all.’ Nilsiir somehow managed to look pale, without having any blood. Or body, for that matter.

‘And why should we trust you?’ Jhess demanded

‘You shouldn’t,’ Nilsiir replied, a look of surprise on their face. ‘Sweet shadow and shade, you don’t just go around trusting anyone you meet do you? That would be the height of idiocy!’

Jhess blinked.

‘Ironically, that makes me want to trust him,’ she complained.

‘Still foolish. I’m an illusory apparition in a living dungeon.’ Nilsiir shook their head. ‘Bind me with an oath, if you can, or find an agreement that can bind both parties with things each want. Honestly, what do they teach adventurers these days?’

‘Why don’t you start,’ Robin challenged. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’d like to remain in control of my faculties, to begin with,’ Nilsiir responded crisply. ‘I’ve spent quite enough time as a drifting ghost in this city as it is. The place is in ruins! There is much that can be done to restore this place, to..find the missing voices that should be sounding, even now, through the stones.’

The illusion looked troubled.

Robin knew the High Priest meant Rhyth. And if this was truly the ghost of Nilsiir, somehow, the secret knowledge that Robin might be able to access! This was a priceless opportunity, worth any risk.

‘And what do we have to do to make sure you get it?’ Robin asked.

‘Ah ah, not yet,’ Nilsiir shook a finger at the bard. ‘That knowledge can be turned against me too easily. I’m no novice at this. Tell me what you want, and then we’ll see if we can proceed.’

‘Knowledge,’ Robin said immediately, a word echoed by almost the entire rest of the party.

Jhess’s response was more along the lines of asking for the knowledge of where the best treasure is.

‘Interesting.’ Nilsiir’s eyes flicked across the party, lingering a moment longer on Robin, holding the bard’s gaze. ‘Not your usual adventuring party.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Robin said. ‘Is that enough for us to continue, or are you after more specifics?’

‘It will suffice for now. I think I have enough of your measure.’ Nilsiir winked at Robin.

Oh this was a dangerous game. This person was dangerous, even dead. But there was something about them. A spark of divinity, perhaps? They were compelling, charismatic, and Robin felt something within him respond favourably to the priest’s antics.

He recognised them. There was a trickster there, and a flicker of fear hiding behind the mask of joviality. He’d worn that mask before when he felt that fear.

‘If you would make the following alterations to the runic structures, please, we can get started.’ Nilsiir gestured, forcing Robin to outline the illusion’s quick gestures in light once more, in far more intricate detail.

It was a slow process. Several times Nilsiir insisted on going over the details exactingly, until the image was perfect. Vance joined in the project enthusiastically, Drev with a bit more wariness, but the lure of new and advanced knowledge of magic proved too strong a lure for them to resist. Even Savra drew close, eyes and ears sharp for useful magical lore.

And none of them were disappointed. Nilsiir proved very happy to share what they were doing. Robin watched several notifications flick past before his eyes as various of his skills received experience discounts just from listening to Nilsiir and carefully executing the illusion’s instructions.

After a few hours work, enough of the work had been completed that a tipping point was reached. Nilsiir suddenly cried out in exultation and the room rippled around them.

Robin felt it, illusion magic of a tier he had not yet encounter. It rippled through the room and everything changed. The runic structures rewrote themselves on the walls and then Nilsiir did something, Robin didn’t know how he knew, but he did. Was it [The Mirror’s Revenge]?

It had to be! How else could illusion be made temporarily real. And this illusion was so titanic, so far reaching, that for it to be made real, even for several seconds, was staggering.

Nilsiir cracked their neck with an audible sound. Then they reached out and ran their fingers across the stone, prying a small stone from the new mosaic and tossing it from hand to hand.

‘Much better.’ The High Priest smiled. ‘Now, let’s get down to business! Silirin—what you call the living dungeon—is not going to be happy about losing a chunk of his territory like this. We’ll need to move soon.’