Solid stone under my back felt like a luxury, even if it was cracked, dusty, and probably stained with things I didn’t want to identify. I lay there, chest heaving, the phantom impacts of the climb still echoing in my muscles. Below, maybe fifty feet down in the faint blue glow of the relic chamber, Thumbs looked up, a tiny, anxious figure. Getting him up here was the next impossible problem.

  My eyes scanned the wrecked throne room. No rope in my inventory – used the last decent length back on the third floor. The shredded remains of tapestries hanging from the walls were rotten, useless. Broken furniture offered nothing long enough or strong enough. Damn it. Leaving him wasn't an option. Climbing down without the greaves' boost and then trying to haul him up manually? Suicide. There just wasn’t enough mana.

  Think. There had to be something. This was a Lord's audience chamber, right? Maybe there was a room I hadn’t explored the first time through. Pompous idiots like that always had auxiliary rooms nearby. Storage. Pantries. Closets full of moth-eaten ceremonial junk. My eyes landed on a doorway across the chamber, half-blocked by a fallen chunk of ceiling masonry but not entirely impassable. I remembered seeing it before Kingsley went berserk. Maybe…

  Dragging myself upright, every muscle protesting, I limped over, the Aether-step Greaves feeling strangely light on my feet. The blockage was heavy, but lodged precariously. Using a length of broken spear shaft I spotted nearby as a lever, I managed to shift the worst of the debris aside, grunting with the effort, dust showering down. Behind it, a heavy, iron-banded door. Locked, probably. Except the lock mechanism was smashed, likely from the earlier impacts. It creaked open reluctantly.

  Dust, thick and cloying, filled my nostrils. It was storage, all right. It was the carpet room and I was hundreds of feet in the air. For whatever reason, I had discovered a secret doorway to the carpet room place. Whatever it was called, don’t ask me to remember things.

  just like before there were Rolled-up monstrosities, some easily ten feet long, stacked haphazardly against the walls, piled three deep in places. Gaudy scenes of hunts I doubted the fat Lord ever participated in, self-aggrandizing portraits woven with gold thread, abstract patterns that probably cost more than my entire life's earnings. Utterly useless… except. They were long. They were made of thick, woven material.

  An idea sparked, ugly but practical.

  I pulled out the biggest, least rotten-looking carpet – a hideous thing depicting griffins dive-bombing terrified peasants – and dragged it into the main chamber. My knife, thankfully still sharp, made quick work of slicing it lengthwise into three wide, sturdy strips. Knots. I needed good knots. I tied the strips together, end-to-end, using techniques learned in alleys and bolt-holes, reinforcing each join, yanking hard to test the strength. It wasn't elegant. It looked like a lumpy, monstrously oversized bandage. But it felt strong. I repeated the process with a second, slightly less offensive floral-patterned carpet, adding its length to the first.

  It was heavy. Awkward as hell. But long. Definitely long enough.

  Dragging the makeshift 'carpet rope' across the dusty floor felt like hauling a dead body. I found a solid anchor point – the base of the shattered throne, wedged firmly by fallen debris – and looped one end securely around it, double-checking the knot until my raw fingers burned. Then, carefully, I began feeding the other end over the edge of the hole, down into the blue-lit darkness where Thumbs waited. The thick, woven material scraped noisily against the broken stone, sending dust and small fragments tumbling down into the abyss. Down, down, down it went, until I felt the weight lessen slightly as the end pooled on the floor far below.

  "Thumbs!" My voice echoed weirdly in the vertical space. "Grab the rope! Tie it tight around your waist! I'll pull you up!"

  A faint, high-pitched squeak drifted up from below. "Big… big messy rope!" Then, after a pause, a more determined, "Thumbs tie! Ready, ready!"

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Bracing my feet against the broken floor, leaning back, I took the strain. Gods, the carpet rope was heavy even before adding a goblin. I started hauling, hand over ragged, improvised hand. The thick, uneven material bit into my palms. My shoulders screamed from the climb, my back protested, every muscle felt scraped raw and overstretched. Progress was agonizingly slow. The rope snagged on projecting bits of rock, forcing me to jiggle it loose.

  Below, Thumbs ascended in fits and starts, occasionally bumping against the sheer rock face with a small yelp, dangling precariously. He wasn't heavy, but the sheer awkwardness of the lift, combined with my own bone-deep exhaustion, made it feel like hauling a boulder. Sweat dripped into my eyes, stinging, blurring my vision. My arms burned, threatening to give out. Just a bit further.

  Finally, his small, wide-eyed face appeared over the edge, followed by the rest of him, tangled in carpet strips. I gave one last heave, pulling him clear onto the floor. He collapsed in a heap, trembling violently, immediately scrabbling to untie the knots around his waist.

  "Up," he gasped, disentangling himself and immediately latching onto my leg like a furry limpet. "Big messy messy rope… work hard work hard. But scary scary scary."

  I sank back against the throne base, breathing hard, letting the carpet rope pool around me. We were both on the main level. Safe, for now. I took stock again. Mana still low, barely creeping back. Arrows effectively gone. Bites throbbing angrily under the makeshift bandages. And no obvious way out of this wrecked chamber. The main doors across the room looked buckled and warped, possibly fused shut by heat or force. No other exits visible. Trapped. Again.

  My eyes instinctively went to the aerlyntium floating above the throne. The Aerlyntium orb pulsed with a faint, internal warmth as I put my hand around it. I hesitated. It hummed almost silently in my palm, a tiny orb prison of raw potential. A tool of resurrection. But if I revived Klericho who knew what could happen we didn’t part on good terms exactly.

  Using the orb now felt… wrong without a plan. A waste of resources I’d harvested to fufill a deal. Unless…

  Part of me urged caution. But look where caution had gotten Klericho. Look where it had gotten me. Trapped in a dead-end throne room after surviving two boss fights back-to-back, with no way to go forward and no way to reset the floor, low on everything, facing starvation or another inevitable threat, stumbling upon us. Sometimes, the biggest risk was doing nothing. I needed an edge. I needed power. I needed help. Now.

  Screw caution. I made the choice.

  Finding a relatively clear patch of floor amidst the rubble, I sat, and brought up the aerlyntium menu. I chose klericho from the list, and placed him in the room.

  The reaction was instantaneous and fierce. A shimmering haze formed in the air, rapidly taking on substance, solidifying into a human shape.

  My eyes snapped open. Standing there, stumbling slightly as if finding his feet after a long illness, was Klericho.

  He looked exactly as I remembered him from before the fight – robes slightly askew, Rellum symbol prominent, thinning hair mussed. But his eyes were wide with a profound, soul-deep shock, gasping raggedly as if tasting air for the first time in an age. He looked down at his own hands, then at the empty space where the shard’s light had been concentrated, then at me, still kneeling, reeling from the energy backlash.

  His eyes locked onto mine. Understanding dawned, swift and terrible, instantly curdling into horrified rage. He didn't need to feel residual energy; he knew, somehow, knew with absolute certainty what had just happened.

  "You!" The word was a choked, strangled sound, ripped from his throat. He scrambled back a step, his hand flying protectively to his Rellum symbol. "You bound me! My soul… trapped! In that… that thing!" His voice cracked, escalating into a near scream. "Abomination! Defiler!"

  I opened my mouth to speak, to explain, to try and make sense of what just happened – I didn't know! – but no words came out. My head was still swimming from the power surge, my body weak, my thoughts fragmented.

  There was no time. Klericho didn’t hesitate. Consumed by the primal terror of soul-imprisonment, by the perceived ultimate blasphemy against his god, he lunged. Not with a cleric’s measured spell, but with the desperate fury of a cornered animal. His ever-present mace came up, not for support, but as a bludgeon.

  I saw the movement, tried to react, tried to bring my arms up, tried to trigger the Aether-step Greaves defensively, but my limbs felt like lead, my thoughts sluggish, caught completely off guard by the speed and violence of the attack.

  The thick, fire-hardened wood and metal of his mace connected brutally with the side of my head.

  A blinding flash of white-hot pain exploded behind my eyes. The world tilted, spun violently. The last thing I saw was Klericho’s face looming over me, contorted not just with rage, but with a profound, almost ecstatic horror. Then the cold, unforgiving stone floor rushed up to meet me. Thumbs’ distant shriek was swallowed by roaring silence.

  {You Have Died.}

  Darkness. The familiar sensation of dissolution, of being unmade. Then, the equally familiar, jarring snap of reformation.

  End of Run