Fabulosa scaled the wall to a second-story balcony, her fingertips finding purchase between the building’s oversized blocks and cracks in the masonry.

  Despite having a lower strength, I followed her lead to the first balcony without embarrassing myself.

  We could have easily entered the building through the balcony, but a top-down sweep made for a more thorough approach and gave us better retreat options if things went haywire. Gamers typically explored dungeons methodically, investigating every room in the area before moving on. Starting on the roof allowed us to explore the entire structure from top to bottom without risking a flanking attack. Perhaps we were overcautious, but ransacking a wizard’s tower had a way of making both of us paranoid.

  While my partner monkeyed around her new grappling hook, I peered inside the tower. I saw a well-furnished hallway connected to several closed doors.

  Fabulosa aimed upward again and secured the hook on a balustrade rimming the roof of the four-story building. It landed without making a noise.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I wrapped some wool leggings around the hooks to deaden the sound.”

  “Brilliant. You should have been a thief.”

  Fabulosa pulled the line taut and hoisted herself. “What makes you think I’m not?”

  Even though I’d become an excellent rope climber and Slipstream allowed me to survive a four-story fall, my heart pounded with nervous energy. The surrounding buildings put a scale to the danger of climbing so high.

  Unfortunately, the line Fabulosa tied to the grappling hook wasn’t as thick as the one we climbed into the Dark Room. Climbing a thinner rope proved much more difficult, requiring crazy upper-body strength. She hadn’t tied knots a foot apart, making the ascent difficult. I lost my breath by the time I reached the top.

  And yet, we climbed without incident. A powdery layer of grime on the ledges made the exercise unpleasant. The overall building looked clean, but there seemed to be no escaping soot in a city—the dandruff of civilization.

  Our climb reminded me that the Dark Room offered a retreat option. We acted as spies, in a way, and if we stumbled into trouble, we could climb inside the transdimensional panic room and eavesdrop on whoever occupied the building.

  We descended through a rooftop trap door into an empty room. The wooden floor and plaster walls convinced me to hold off casting Mineral Communion until I spotted solid stone. The creaking floorboards made me cringe at every step. I felt like the world’s noisiest burglar.

  Detect Magic revealed a glow on the bedroom door. It bore no item description, so I couldn’t explain the glow. After informing Fabulosa, we scrutinized it, but neither of us could discover a way to trigger its power.

  The door led to a short hallway leading to another magic door. Then I saw each portal had a decorative metal fixture in the shape of an animal—one showed a boar, the other a fox. Across the hall, the fox door led to an empty bedroom. The rooms looked recently cleaned, but neither conveyed a strong sense of occupancy. We spotted no hair in the desk combs, smudges on the mirrors, or impressions on the pillows. We tried shutting the doors on both sides of the rooms, but nothing activated their magic.

  We creaked down the stairs to another floor constructed with wood and plaster. While plaster counted as a mineral, my ability to read its memories became fuzzy and garbled. Mineral Communion worked best on solid stones. We found more bedrooms and a lounge filled with furniture and musical instruments. It looked like a posh residence, but only doors numbered among the magical objects. What kind of wizard tower had we broken into? The third floor’s doors featured more animal plates.

  The constant creaking of our footfalls stopped when we reached the second floor, where we stood on stone tiles. I cast Mineral Communion and watched random scenes of people walking around. Fabulosa grew a little bored waiting for me to see something special and sat on a nearby chair. I wanted to prove the worth of my spell, but the longer I looked, the more ordinary the stone memories seemed.

  An aging gentleman counted among the building’s occupants. He didn’t seem evil or powerful—no one cringed or cowered when he passed. He could have been Lord Rammons, his grandfather, or another noble. My fashion ignorance caught up with me, and not knowing their styles prevented me from distinguishing recent scenes from old. Of course, I would never admit this to Fabulosa.

  Aside from the servants, I recognized the regulars in the visions. Well-dressed strangers appeared, showing that the family frequently entertained. None of the visuals showed violent, fantastic, or remarkable behavior. Still, seeing the same people at different stages in their lives gave me a sense that the estate had been in the Rammons family for quite some time.

  I heard a huff and a rustle while watching the afterimages. When I refocused myself on the present, Fabulosa had left her chair. “I’m going to check out this place while you do your thing.”

  I sympathized with her impatience, for I’d been scanning for fifteen minutes.

  Fabulosa returned ten minutes later. “There are more doors with animals—we have a raccoon, a dinosaur, a frog-person, a deer, and a bear. I also found some books, but I’m unsure if one is the Archon.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  I gave up searching the visions and followed her through the house.

  The second floor featured a small office, but its desk had only scraps of unimportant parchments and scrolls. I found a small shelf of books, but their arrangement wasn’t what I expected. They weren’t aligned, spine-out, like any average bookshelf. Each tome rested on a book holder, and its front cover faced outward—each book stood on display. These illuminated manuscripts decorated the space.

  Fabulosa gestured to the bookshelf. “I assume one of these is our so-called Book of Dungeons. I’ll go check out the ground floor for valuables.” Without waiting for my opinion, she withdrew to explore the rest of the house. I didn’t particularly like splitting up, but I didn’t want her watching me. I hoped she wouldn’t go to the basement without me because everyone knows basements are always the danger zone.

  Once again, Detect Magic revealed nothing but magic doors. Since we weren’t looking for a magical book, I used conventional methods to examine them. Picture books spilled their contents quickly, and sorting through them took little time for someone with my research skill.

  Although the house didn’t offer many tomes to examine, I wanted to be sure that someone hadn’t hidden the Archon inside another book cover to conceal its contents.

  We found no valuables, although Fabulosa emptied the place of its cushions, candle holders, washbasins, blankets, and everyday items that would make our rooms in Hawkhurst more comfortable. She even took decorative wall hangings like pictures, mirrors, and tapestries. The more finery we could surround ourselves with, the more legitimate the settlement appeared.

  My scholarly pride prevented me from taking these ostentatious books. Leaving them behind made a fitting statement.

  Searching through this library rankled the book snob in me. I’d seen enough illuminated manuscripts to recognize poor work. The images lacked artistry, but in a sense, they served a function. Catholics hadn’t covered their churches with Bible scenes because they celebrated artwork. Sculptures, stained-glass windows, and paintings offered mnemonic reminders for an illiterate congregation. In a sense, cathedrals advertised their religion. It wasn’t a coincidence that Muslims avoided imagery, for Medieval Muslims could read. A literate congregation didn’t need icons to understand their faith. And if visual representations dumbed down their holy message, I could appreciate how banning them distanced them from illiterate Christians.

  The books on these shelves betrayed the same illiteracy. Instead of revering literature, the aristocracy in Miros showed a disinterest in reading.

  I closed the last book with a loud clap and placed it on its display holder. The Archon wasn’t among the titles, and wasting time looking through them only made them more annoying.

  When I came upon a gallery that opened to a stairway to the first floor, I spotted Fabulosa downstairs. She seemed engrossed in a painting of a candle.

  “Did you check out the basement?”

  Fabulosa shook her head. “There isn’t one.”

  “Oh, bummer. That’s rather disappointing.”

  “You better check for secret doors.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Fabulosa turned her gaze back to the painting. Detect Magic revealed it to be glowing.

  “What are you looking at?” Since Fabulosa didn’t know arcane magic, she didn’t have Detect Magic. I wanted to know what she’d seen in it that caught her attention.

  “I don’t know. It’s a strange picture.”

  As I strode down the stairs, I got a better view of the painting. It stood three feet wide, six feet tall, and hung only a foot off the floor. Stranger still, the painting’s subject focused on the other side of the foyer, a candle fixed into the wood-paneled wall.

  “There are no people in it. Who paints a picture of a room and then hangs it in the same room?”

  “It’s magic.” The painting had nothing special behind it, and Mineral Communion showed no one interacting with it. I tentatively touched it, half expecting to see a mirror image of my finger or to see my hand slip beyond the painted canvas. But no such wonders occurred.

  “It’s weird. Everything in the painting is the same except the artist didn’t paint a candle mounted on the foyer wall.” Fabulosa turned behind her toward a wall sconce.

  “Maybe they painted it before installing the candle.”

  A candle behind her also glowed, and I told her about it. Casting Scorch on the wick did nothing special, nor was its flame or illumination remarkable. Everyday objects filled the room, like a coat rack, rugs, and a metal frame, which visitors used to scrape mud off their shoes.

  I blew out the candle and found it ordinary in every way except that it featured an item description. “Okay, so there’s a link between the picture and the candle. We can come back to this. Mineral Communion is burning, and I want to check everything out before it expires. What else have you found?”

  “A lot. I cleaned out the kitchen, parlor, and dining room, by the way. I took everything not nailed down. Then I found this weird door under the stairs.”

  I put the magic candle in my inventory and followed Fabulosa around the bottom of the staircase to a glass door. It glowed magic but had no animals adorning its surface.

  Its metal frame held a wide crystal window, which looked much thicker than glass. Tiny imperfections marred its surface. Beyond the translucent door stood a closet-sized room.

  The windowed door didn’t have a handle on the other side, implying a one-way portal.

  Mineral Communion showed scenes of two gentlemen pushing through the door. In some visions, one looked younger, so they’d been using it for quite some time. Unlike the other rooms in the house, only they used these doors. This older one must have been the wizard, the younger one his grandson, Lord Rammons, the politician who stole the Archon.

  I used the Magnetize interface to examine its lock mechanisms. The door’s hinges had wound metal springs connected to catching devices that prevented opening them from the other side. The sinister ramification suggested that anyone going through couldn’t get out. It all but broadcasted the makings of a trap.

  I opened and examined the small closet space beyond. It appeared to be a nondescript dead end. I inspected the area with Mineral Communion but saw no secret doors or visions of anyone using the room. The area glowed magic, but these scenes contradicted afterimages of the gentleman using its door.

  It made no sense.

  Throughout the rest of the building, people used the other rooms. Yet only Lord Rammons used this door—but I couldn’t fathom why. The closet beyond stood deep, lined with heavy masonry, but nothing magical about it caught my attention. I spotted no hidden doors, nor did my stone sense reveal scenes of interred prisoners trapped inside. The history of the closet seemed utterly benign.

  “I better give the ground floor a once-over while Mineral Communion is still active. This search has already taken longer than I thought.

  When we rounded the stairway, I started searching the ground floor for secret doors when I noticed something different about the painting. Phantasmal icons of animals appeared on the picture’s surface.