Of course, we were all going in together. We were a team, that was how we handled delving a dungeon. This time though, Felicia was going first.

  The preparation that she needed took several hours, which were spent in a small room provided by the Guild, while the rest of us waited impatiently or went out to get the ingredients she needed. There were, perhaps, other things that I could be doing, but I couldn’t get Janie's fate out of my mind.

  What stopped me from screaming at Felica to hurry up was the realisation, gained after only a few minutes of agitated pacing, that we would have to go in at night. That made shadow walking easier, it made any watchers easier to identify… the logic was inescapable.

  And I could spend a few hours working out how to strangle logic instead of bugging Felicia.

  When the time finally came, it was a few hours after sunset. Cloridan had scouted the area again but still hadn’t found any watchers. He assumed that meant they were being subtle, but it also meant that if we avoided any overt actions, we should be able to evade them.

  We shadow-walked to the upper floor. That had been at Felicia’s insistence.

  “Our goal is on the ground floor,” she explained. “So that’s where the nastiest trap will be. The chance that we will even use the second floor is lower, so expensive alchemy would just be wasted.”

  That didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be traps on the second floor, so we went in prepared. We had masks, treated with an alchemical concoction similar to what we wore in the myconoid dungeon. And it meant Felicia going first, along with her Alchemist’s Lantern.

  This was actually a candle, on a hinged holder on the end of a metal rod, about two feet long. It was made to stay upright, no matter what angle the hinge was. It let Felicia hold the candle flame up to the roof or down at her feet without effort.

  It turned out that we couldn’t take the lit candle through the shadows, which shouldn’t have surprised me. But once were were through, Felicia managed to light it without difficulty. It burned with a very clear flame, providing only a little light. Felicia examined it closely, moving it up and down, before proclaiming the air good.

  Before we could proceed, Felicia needed to examine the surfaces more closely. Wary of anyone that might be watching from outside, we weren’t using the normal glowstones or [Light] spells. Instead, I handed Felicia a makeshift penlight, made with [Phantasmal Object]. It was just a pen-shaped cylinder, open at one end. With a [Light] spell cast all the way down inside, it produced a thin beam of light that Felicia could block with her finger.

  Felicia started by examining the floor at her feet and then moved on to the rest of the room. Having been given the all-clear, I started bringing the others in. This was a time-consuming process and by the time I was done, Felicia had finished with her examination.

  “The boards are coated with Widow’s Caress,” she said. “It’s a sticky resin that causes paralysis. If Cloridan had tried climbing inside, he’d be twitching on the ground outside by now.”

  “I wear gloves,” Cloridan pointed out.

  “Then it would stick to your gloves, and get on you the next time you touched your face or tried to take the gloves off. But that would make it take longer to paralyse you.”

  “So it’s on all the boards?” I asked.

  “All of the ones here, yeah. That’s… expensive. Widow’s Caress is pretty niche, as a poison. It sticks to weapons well, but it works through the skin, not the bloodstream, so it’s not popular. Who uses poison on a club?”

  She led us forward, as far as the door that blocked the exit. She examined the handle and the frame closely.

  “More of it on the handle,” she said. “Stand back.”

  She carefully poured a small amount of oil on the doorknob and then wiped it clean with a cloth. Carefully wadding up the cloth, she threw it into a corner. Then she turned the handle, only to stop.

  “Are we expecting physical traps, here? They wouldn’t have had time to rebuild doors, but they might have strings attached to the other side, right?”

  “Just pull it open a crack, and I’ll check,” Cloridan said, bustling forward. He pulled out a small mirror and borrowed the penlight. A few moments later, he pronounced it clear. Working together, the pair carefully eased the door open.

  Felicia took the lead again, holding the Alchemist’s Lantern in front of her.

  “Is there a reason we don’t use that in dungeons?” I asked.

  “Alchemy is rare in dungeons,” Kyle answered softly. “You can get potions in the rewards, of course, but for traps, they prefer direct magic.”

  I made a note to ask Rhis why when I got a chance. We pressed on.

  The second floor was a short corridor leading off from the stairs, surrounded by a U-shape of rooms. Since we weren’t interested in any of the rooms, we followed the corridor to the stairs. Felicia pointed out the glistening traces of Widow’s Caress on the doors that we passed.

  “You’ll need to have this place thoroughly cleaned when this is all over,” Felicia told me as we started heading down the stairs. “Sticky resins always end up stuck somewhere they shouldn’t be. You drop a paintbrush, get bumped into a wall—”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  She broke off as the Lantern flared up, the flame turning a brilliant blue. She looked at the flame. I was looking at what the extra light showed on the walls.

  “Back up,” Felicia said. I could hear the nervousness in her voice. We took a few steps back, and the flame turned back to normal. Felicia then bent down and lowered the candle. About halfway down the final flight, about five feet above ground level, there was a line where the candle burned blue. Felicia bobbed it back and forth over the line to be sure.

  “Kandis,” she said. “Did you arrange for your first floor to be airtight?”

  “No,” I replied. “And that’s not the only decor change.”

  I took her arm and gently redirected the light from the pen to shine on the walls downstairs. The elegant and fashionable wooden wall panelling had been scorched black by flames.

  “It looks like Janie was here.”

  It took Felicia a little while to work out what the gas was. “Serpentwine gas, she eventually pronounced. “It’s another paralytic.”

  “What’s the antidote?” I asked.

  “I don’t… have one? There isn’t one, really. The masks we have will slow it down if we breathe it, but it also works through the skin… but slower.”

  “How much slower?” I asked.

  “It takes about five minutes through the skin… maybe some kind of oil barrier on the skin… oh wait! It dissolves in water.”

  “So?”

  “You can do that water spray thing! Spray enough water and it will absorb the gas!”

  “What’s that going to do to my wood panelling?” I grumbled. Felicia looked abashed.

  “Well, it was burned anyway?” she suggested.

  “More importantly, where is the water going to go?” I asked.

  “Um, If the place has been made airtight, somehow, none of the water can get out either? Which is good, since it will still paralyze people if it touches them.”

  “I guess wading through poison is better than breathing it,” I said sourly. “No, wait, I’m an idiot, I’ve got the [Water Ball] spell.”

  Well, I needed to practice with [Water Magic] anyway. It was a fairly tedious business, spraying out water in as fine a mist as I could manage, and then collecting it with [Water Ball] and dumping it in a Phantasmal barrel. Felica kept checking the level of the gas between sprays.

  “It’s going down,” she said after about fifteen minutes, “But I think there must be some kind of source for it because it keeps flowing in.”

  It took an hour before we could proceed. And I had to keep spraying water in front of us because the gas kept flowing from further back.

  “This has to have been Janie,” I said, looking at the scorch marks that covered everything. I’d made my own torch by then and was shining it around. “I don’t know anyone else that could make that much fire and keep it from burning the place down.”

  “That isn’t good news, though,” Cloridan pointed out. “Looks like she was in the fight of her life.”

  “It means Koenig was told a lie,” I said. “It raises the chances that the rest of it was false.”

  Felicia gasped. “Is that what…” she started to say. I looked at what her light was pointing at. Nothing too exciting just an open barrel. It was labelled, but [Identification] was faster, as if it were jealous that I might seek information from some other source.

  “Can you… block it off without going near it?” Felicia asked weakly. I shrugged and used [Phantasmal Object] to put a lid on the thing.

  “Haah…” Felicia breathed out a long sigh. “I can’t believe that someone made that much liquid Serpentwine! It must have cost tens of thousands of gold!”

  “Isn’t it just what we’ve been making? I asked, gesturing to the barrel behind us, and dropping another water ball in it.

  “No, this is pure, not dissolved in water,” Felicia said. “It’s been slowly evaporating for all this time, keeping the house filled with gas.”

  She approached the barrel gingerly and tapped it with her staff. “Half full,” she reported.

  “Well, the portal is just back here,” I said, taking the lead. To my relief, it was still in operation. Looking at it with [Sense Mana] I didn’t see anything wrong with it.

  “Will gas go through the portal?” Felicia asked.

  “Probably, I said and gestured for her to try her Lantern. It did gutter green when she placed it near the bottom of the portal. The bottom wasn’t flush with the ground, so there must be a shallow pool of gas held back by the lintel. I took the Lantern of Felica. I wasn’t an expert but I’d gleaned the basics.

  “It takes a few minutes to work, right?” I said. At Felicia’s nod, I stepped through.

  “Mistress! You’ve returned!” Rhis exclaimed joyfully.

  “I sure have,” I said. “Before anything else, can you get rid of this poison?”

  “As you wish!” Rhis said. “I did wonder why the level was dropping.”

  I moved the Lantern to the ground and was pleased to see that there was no green flame.

  “Well done. Next question, is Janie alive?”

  Rhis cocked his head, puzzled. “Yes?” he said. “Should she not be? I can drop a monster on her, as quick as you like!”

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “Where is she?”

  “Asleep on one of the upper levels,” Rhis said disapprovingly. “Apparently, regular sleep is required for mortals to function at full capacity.”

  “You know that it is, Rhis,” I said calmly. “You’ve seen me sleep.”

  “Well, it’s different for you, Mistress!” Rhis said. “Of course, you should have all the sleep you wish to have! I was talking about servants like the Fire Mage. I would have worked her all the hours of the day but… she refused. And she makes me feed her as well!”

  “That sounds like everything is as it should be,” I said firmly. “Are there any other… mortals in here?”

  “Three others, all quite useless. They haven’t killed anyone,” Rhis complained. “One is her small apprentice, and the others are two of the girls who fetch the money. Your money.”

  “That is good news,” I said. Koenig hadn’t kept track of my employees. “I’m just going to step out to get the others. Wake up Janie and bring her down here.”

  “You’re not leaving so soon? You haven’t reviewed any of my innovations!”

  “I’m just stepping out to let the others know it’s safe,” I said. “Don’t worry so much.”

  “Yes, Mistress. I should warn you that Janie gets very grumpy when she’s woken up at night.”

  “I think she’ll recover,” I said and stepped out.

  “It’s all good,” I said to my friends. “Janie’s alive, Rhis is waking her up. Let’s get inside.”

  I looked at the barrel of poison. “Can you bring that in with you?” I asked the boys.

  “Carefully!” Felicia exhorted them.

  “Oh, poison, you shouldn’t have,” Rhis said. He managed to look both grateful and scornful at the same time.

  “You can tell me why you don’t like alchemy some other time,” I said. “For now, just put it in inventory. It’s valuable and dangerous and I don’t want anyone else to have it.”

  “I can’t do that until your guests step out,” Rhis reminded me.

  “Oh right.” I looked pleadingly at my ‘guests’. Felicia rolled her eyes but led the others out. The barrel disappeared as soon as they were gone.

  “Right,” Felicia said when she returned. “Where’s—”

  “I know this stuff makes you tingle before it paralyses you! So help me, if you’ve decided to kill me, I will burn you down to the—”

  The voice stopped as Janie came into view. “Kandis! You made it back!”

  Janie ran across the room and threw herself into a hug.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I made it home.”

  Janie: You remember her, right? She burns stuff.

  Rhis: Hahahaha I was totally lying about the stabbing. Rhis would never stab Janie, he's been repeatedly instructed to keep her alive! You'd let him know if that changed though, right? Right?