The glow stone slipped through the grill and dropped 50 feet to the room below. It clattered across the floor, but nothing stirred or made a sound.

  The space below appeared unlike the rest of the temple’s architecture. Its organic pearl surfaces curved around, like the ward worm’s lair—but it bore no silver and gold dots. Still, it excited me to see this alien architecture again.

  Perhaps kobolds pried out the cylinders, but the gaps in the grate weren’t wide enough for even kobolds to slip through.

  Fabulosa looked through the bars. “See that, C-Belle? That’s what the worm room looked like—except it had metal dots and strips of lead on its surfaces.”

  Charitybelle turned to me. “An aquatic species built that?”

  “Yeah, when I communed with cylinders in the ward worm lair, it showed visions of lobster-fish. I don’t know if they built it, but they used it.”

  As we peered down, Charitybelle cautioned Bruno not to fall through the grill, even though it looked like it couldn’t squeeze through.

  The animal indignantly sniffed.

  From our height, we couldn’t see the room’s walls. The same curvy white resin shaped the room’s contours. A dining table-sized protrusion extended from the room’s floor, and the absence of dirt gave the place a pristine, angelic feel. I crawled across the grill to another vantage. An old gnoll lay dead next to the protrusion, but no signs of struggle appeared beside it. I couldn’t tell since it lay out of range of Mineral Communion.

  Charitybelle turned to me when my eyes refocused. “Do you see anything in the past that explains how the gnoll died?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. None of this makes sense. None of the gnolls who’d climbed down the rope had gray hair.”

  Fabulosa grabbed onto the grill and shook it. It didn’t rattle. “Gray? He looks downright white to me.”

  Charitybelle hoisted her siege hammer. “Structural damage gives us options. I could smash my way through the grate, but that’s a long way down.”

  Fabulosa twisted her lips. “I don’t know. Let’s not destroy anything yet. Patch and I did a number on the worm room. We plucked out all the gold cylinders, and it stopped glowing with magic. As nice as it is to have gold, I feel a bit bad about it.”

  I nodded in agreement. “We can force our way through as a last resort. There’s plenty of dungeon left to explore yet. There’s probably another way in.”

  There seemed no way to get down there. I could Slipstream through the bars, but 50 feet lay beyond Slipstream’s range if dangers appeared. Wandering around by myself wasn’t bright, especially with orange-rated monsters running around.

  “Lookee here, what’s this?” Fabulosa crawled away from the grate to pick up something small.

  “Whatchu you got there, Fab?” asked Charitybelle.

  Fabulosa held something in her fingers. “It’s a little green button. There’s a picture of a mouse on it…” her voice trailed off as if uncertain about her answer. She held up her other hand and spotted a trickle of blood.

  Charitybelle tossed a quick Rejuvenate. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I just cut myself. There are little pieces of glass on the floor here.” She squinted and picked up something too small for me to see. She laughed and handed Charitybelle the button—who examined it before giving it to me.

  “This isn’t a wooden button. That’s a cork vial stopper. The design could be a kobold. It looks like someone drank a potion here.”

  I activated Mineral Communion on the grillwork beneath us. I watched until three gnolls appeared. One drank a potion, shrunk to the height of a small doll, then dropped in through the grate. I couldn’t see what happened next because the gnoll fell beyond the stone’s line of sight.

  I slapped the floor when I saw the vision. “That’s a shrink potion. It’s funny—the whole gnoll became half a foot tall.”

  Fabulosa cocked an eyebrow. “That sounds like a crafty way to hide.”

  Charitybelle gave her a questioning glance.

  Fabulosa explained her comment. “I’ve been chewing over how to become Invisible and why we haven’t seen invisibility spells. You know, like how Patch keeps talking about how to find teleportation. If the nameplate shrinks down, it’s close to being Invisible.”

  Fabulosa rolled her eyes. “If we could shrink and hide, we could cast spells without enemies knowing where to strike back at us. We could take people completely off guard.”

  Fabulosa’s idea had merit. “That’s an interesting thought. But do doll-sized casters have shortened spell ranges?”

  No one answered my question, but Charitybelle suddenly laughed and took the stopper from my hands. “Oh, I get it. It’s a shrink potion! That’s why they carved a little mouse-head on the stopper. Aww, that’s so cute.”

  I returned to my stone visions to see if I could learn anything else. The grated floor provided the lizardfolk a view into the lobster room below, but the reptiles seemed content to worship it from afar.

  Our biggest disappointment hinged on the chimera’s lack of treasure. It made no sense why a monster stood here unless it guarded the chamber below, but the grates already did that. Did The Book of Dungeons just plop boss monsters down and forget about them?

  No visions of it appeared in Mineral Communion, leading me to believe it recently appeared. The area had no traps, hidden compartments, or secret doors.

  After returning to our feet, we retraced our steps past the metal tubes and into the star chamber.

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  Fabulosa pointed in the direction we came. “We entered from the south, and the north corridor dead-ends. You want to take a gander at the stairs or try the door to the east?”

  Dungeons typically got more exciting at the lower levels, but the western exit ended in a flight of stairs going up. Hoping to learn or find something useful, we moved toward the doors instead of the stairs.

  Like the other doors, the hinge along the top told us that the door swung upward. Mineral Communion confirmed its iron material, so a counterweight must have made it easier to move.

  The door had a small hole instead of a doorknob. My stone visions showed how the lizardfolk opened it by inserting a lever and pulling it open. Without it, we couldn’t open it.

  “I can bust it down with my hammer.”

  I grimaced. “What if it’s holding back something we can’t handle—like a room filled with vampires?”

  We assessed our spells and abilities but determined only one could help—Magnetize.

  I imagined purchasing Magnetize might help me against opponents in plate armor, so using it to open a door felt anticlimactic. Still, this spell might have more utility than unbalancing opponents.

  The completionist in me wanted to know what lay beyond the door, so I spent a power point on it.

  Magnitize’s interface produced little thin arrows showing everything’s latent magnetic pull. Long arrows showed a larger magnetic potential, while arrows that contoured around the stone were as small as snowflakes, showing very little pull. Creeper’s wooden handle made it a poor choice, and our swords offered a grip for only one person.

  I pointed to Charitybelle’s hammer. “That’s the best candidate for a magnet.”

  Charitybelle put her hammer against the door, and I cast the spell, which welded her weapon against the iron door.

  We pulled. Our combined strength dislodged the rusted joint, and the door swung up so quickly that we fell backward into a pile.

  When I canceled the magic, the siege hammer fell into my grasp. I handed it back to my girlfriend. “Thank you, my dear.”

  Beyond the portal guarded a modest storeroom. It housed the trays, the portable racks, and the pews I’d seen with Mineral Communion, but everything looked fragile and rusty.

  Bruno sniffed the racks. Having picked up no scent, he disappeared behind the junk on the floor, searching for something of interest.

  “I saw these gadgets in my visions.”

  Charitybelle lifted the metal rack as if to test its weight. “What do they do again?”

  I showed them how they worked. “The lizardfolk slipped gemstones into the trays. Little spotlights of moonlight or sunlight filtered through them. And these racks fit into little divots on the star chamber floor. Presumably, the racks line up with the spotlights.”

  “What do the rays of light do?” Fabulosa asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Energize them with magic somehow?”

  Fabulosa didn’t sound impressed. “It probably involved astrology. Or maybe they predicted tides. Don’t the orreries in Arlington do that—forecast when oceans are safe to travel?”

  I nodded.

  Fabulosa pointed to what looked to be a metal trashcan lid with several elliptical holes big enough to stick my hand through. Unlike everything else, rust hadn’t destroyed it. “And what is that?”

  I picked it up and inspected it with Mineral Communion. The trash can lid featured five odd holes whose smooth edges looked intentionally crafted. It couldn’t contain anything with such large holes, so its purpose puzzled me.

  Charitybelle pursed her lips. “It looks like a lid but doesn’t seem to fit onto anything.”

  I shook my head. “It’s an alloy. Alloys are hard to read with Mineral Communion. Alloys warp memories and fill them with static. I get the same thing with dirt. When there’s sand or mixed soil, I get static instead of visions.”

  When we handled the racks and trays, rust rubbed onto our hands. The artifacts weren’t brittle, but the corrosion made the symbols barely visible. Mineral Communion couldn’t help—rust corrupted visions. We inspected the gems remaining in the trays, but their common rarity and low quality convinced us they might hold value as a potential magic source. If we learned how to harness power from the stars later, this chamber might regain its purpose. The lack of treasure wasn’t what we wanted, but I’d intended on getting Magnetize anyway, so I wasn’t too disappointed.

  Having loosened the doorway, we closed it, leaving everything how we found it.

  We crossed the star chamber and passed through the open doorway leading to the stairs. Bruno scurried ahead of us, typically eager to explore.

  Charitybelle groaned, watching him go. “One drawback with Familiars is mental conversations with them aren’t always easy. Everywhere we go, Bruno wants to know what’s going to happen. He’s been bugging me about the stairs since we’ve been here. Chloe is nice and quiet, but he’s like having a little brother around, aren’t you, buddy?”

  The badger growled in disapproval, scurried through the doorway, and paused at the stairs leading up.

  Charitybelle explained her pet’s issue. “I’ll have to carry him. He doesn’t like going up or down steps.”

  The animal looked back at us, implying he didn’t appreciate waiting. He sniffed the air and seemed to have picked up a scent. Everything upstairs remained still.

  “Will he bite me if I pick him up?”

  “No, but he says he smells something rotting upstairs.”

  This place didn’t seem like an undead dungeon. Bruno probably smelled another dead monster like the scorpions or the gnoll. He had trouble getting up the stairs and stopped, presumably so I could pick him up. Knowing that I could toss the badger at monsters amused me.

  As I reached for the badger, I felt a hot stinging sensation on my arm and ear, and for a moment, I thought Charitybelle wrapped her arms around me and accidentally poked me with her weapons. The grip violently lifted me, and I instinctively kicked.

  I looked up to see dripping tentacles extending from cabbagelike flesh—at least until the liquid entered my eyes and Blinded me. I’d caught only a glimpse of what held me.

  I activated Slipstream’s interface by reflex when a plant lifted me off the ground. Freezing time gave me an out-of-body perspective on my predicament. Because something grabbed me, the spell’s targeting interface showed no valid locations to jump, but I saw what held me.

  Glistening, vinelike tentacles pulled me upward like a life-sized marionette toward a giant Venus flytrap attached to the ceiling three stories above the doorway.

  I hung defenseless. After closing the Slipstream interface, I zapped it with Scorch and Shocking Reach for a combined 60 damage, which erased only 14 percent of its health pool.

  By the time Fabulosa and Charitybelle targeted the man-eating plant, I imbued my Black River Cudgel with magical damage. My hands tingled, and my arms went numb. It felt like my fingers had disappeared, and I heard my mace and shield clattering on the floor. The silvery glowing magic imbuement faded as the items struck Charitybelle, interfering with her spellcast.

  Next to the icon for Grappled, a new debuff appeared in my interface.

  It wasn’t a good sign that a carnivorous plant considered me to be fertilizer.

  A salvo of spells from my companions dropped the plant’s health to half by the time it hauled me to the ceiling. Its lobes wrapped around me like jaws and sounded like tearing lettuce.

  A cascade of digestive debuffs appeared in my peripheral vision. The debuffs displayed the same icon, so the acidic effects stacked. I had enough control of my digits to cast Scorch and Shocking Reach only once, but when the string of debuffs hit me, I lost the ability to perform even cantrips.

  When everyone’s offensive spells cooled down, an influx of healing hit me. My health seesawed between life and death.