"Alright, well, I'm ready," I said. "Everyone else?"

  A chorus of affirmatives met my ears.

  "I've slept with everyo you and Emily," Summer- she'd said it was a refereo a different story she was fond of, whione of us had ever heard of- said. "Well, kinda-sorta."

  After some careful iion aing, I'd ended up giving Summer the sword I'd taken from the Hellknight; I already had a trophy from that adventure, and the sword was safe to wield, for all that it had been fed and ented with demonic magics of death and decay. It had needed a sheath, but that wasn't a problem for me, and she now had a sturdy, sheet steel sheath with some leather padding hanging at her hip. At her other hip, oher side of her belt, she had a rio of sturdy leather pouches, eated as bags of holding, and loaded with all sorts of useful adventuring supplies she might want.

  "If I'm gon pregnant, it's gonna be from him," Talia said, pointing at me.

  "What, are you ovuting right now?" I asked sarcastically, quirking an eyebrow.

  "Uh, yeah?" Talia asked, folding her arms. "Why do you think I suddenly got so much horhis st winter?"

  I blinked a few times. That was- what the- oh, goddammit. Of course. Lysander had mentioned 'heat,' hadn't he? It was one of those details of elven anatomy that I had maet- elven women might only ovute once a decade, but they stay like that for a whole year. And Talia was... I mean, the age of an elven woman's first ovution varied from person to person, but eighteen was supposed to be a perfectly reasonable age for that.

  Fuck, someone had told me this before, haven't they?

  "I told you when I first realized, remember?" Talia tinued. "I said that, for the year or so, I was gonna be really horny, and that I might say or do some stuff we bret, and that, if you were gonna give up on the Mage-Knight thing with me, I needed you to use prote so I don't get pregnant."

  I stared bnkly ahead, as I remembered a versation that I hadn't been paying much attention to at the time, because I was a shitty boyfriend.

  "So anyways," Faith said, f valiantly ahead. "Summer's picked up some abilities from all of us, including some basic Druidcraft and some martial arts- a lot more martial arts than we were able to teach her in just two weeks naturally, which is nice. Volex also gave her some more Occult stuff, although... Summer, what all did you get again?"

  "Shapeshifting and Bardiowledge," Summer said. "Apparently Bards use Occult magic to feed them information that they could pusibly know, and since everyone knows Bards tend to know all sorts of random trivia... Well. I bet that'll get a lot of use."

  "It really is a erstone of any Bard's skillset," Volex said.

  "Alright, well, let's just go tell Helen we're ready, alright?" I said.

  "No need," Volex said. "This was while you were out, but Professor Takeda is going to be managing The Abyss, and she'll know when we're ready, so we just have to show up."

  I grunted. "Well, let's go then, if we're all ready."

  "Wele, children," Professor Takeda said, as we ehe weirdly rustic-looking sub-basement where the entrao The Abyss was kept. The floor was all cobblestone, and the walls were mostly cobblestone, interrupted by regurly-spaced pilrs of dark, aged, and thick timbers that ected to the rafters- the ceiling wasn't stone, but it was still rather old-fashioimberwork that felt out-of-p a building people still used regurly. "I have your assig here, and I'd like to take a few moments to go over it with you, and answer any questions you might have. Yoal in The Abyss is simple: desd through ten levels of challenges, arieve an a artifact that Archmage Helen Rosewood herself cast down into The Abyss. Any questions?"

  Well, that was short. I guess she wanted us to ask a lot of questions, but... I mean, , there's some information you could've reasonably assumed we wao know.

  "Why did Helen throw it down there in the first pce?" Talia asked. "And what is the artifact?"

  "It is a type of magical item called an Oracle," Takeda expined. "The defining characteristic of Oracles is that they are capable of indepely perf divination magic- usually in respoo questions asked of them by people, but some historically-notable examples have a will of their own, which gave them their name- usually used to refer to humanoid diviners."

  " you be more specific about what the artifact looks like?" I asked.

  Professor Takeda snapped her fingers, juring an illusion of the artifa question in midair, which slowly rotated so we could see it from multiple angles.

  "It is a gss vessel," Professor Takeda described, "with a roiling green storm inside of it. It possesses a looped handle, a ft base upon which to rest, and a tapered protrusion, from which emerges the ao any question it is asked."

  "Kinda looks like a teapot," Summer said.

  "Yeah, holy, that looks almost exactly like a gss teapot," I said. "I mean, that little bulge at the top looks like a lid that's just... Fused in pce, so you 't open it."

  "You are free to your interpretation," Professor Takeda said sagely.

  "How long is this going to take?" Faith asked.

  "From the perspective of the outside world, it will be only an hour at the most," Professor Takeda said. "From your perspective, however, it will be between five and nine days. Do you o pack more rations?"

  "I've got a month's worth of those travel rations from the issary," I said, patting one pocket. "I've also got a few bottles of spices, because they don't taste great."

  "Good, that should keep morale high," Professor Takeda said, nodding seriously. "There are Occult teiques for improving the taste of food, which I highly reend you learn if you do not already know them, but I will cede that they are rather low-priority. Any other questions?"

  "What kind of challenges will we be fag?" Emily asked.

  "Seeing as I am the one pr The Abyss right now, it will mostly be puzzles and sger hunts," Professor Takeda said. "There will, however, be a few martial challenges, which Summer is expected to be capable of fag on her own. By all means, intervene and save her if she seems to be in genuine danger, but... Do give her a ce to solve it on her own, yes?"

  "Listen, guys, I uand the importance of a learning experience, but I do not give a fuck," Summer said, nervously. "Shit goes down, I want you to help, okay?"

  "Aw, Summer, don't worry," I said, reag over and pyfully tousling her hair. "You'll live."

  A bead of sweat formed on Summer's forehead.

  "If that's all the questions you have?" Professor Takeda asked, half-turning to tap a few buttons on a little sole I hadn't noticed before. On the back wall, in a gap itern of timbers, the fabric of reality tore, f a near-circur portal with messy, ragged edges, and some slight ers at the top and bottom.

  "How does this whole thing work, anyhow?" Talia asked.

  "Volex expin," Professor Takeda said. "In you go, children."

  And with a snap of her fingers, irresistible magic picked us up and threw us through the portal, and into The Abyss.

  "Alright, first room seems safe," I said carefully, after going over it with some trap-finding divinations. "Everyone's alright? That wasn't a soft nding, and the floor's pretty hard."

  The first room of the first floor of The Abyss was big and open, with a locked door just behind us and a locked door on the far side of the room. The floor and walls were cobblestone, just like that sub-basement, and the ceiling was... well, very shadow-y and hard to see, but a simple handheld spotlight revealed it to be basiassuming wood pnking with reinf rafters.

  In the ter of the floor was a simple puzzle that I knew and loathed: three wide, circur ptforms set in a line, one of which had a golden emblem on its side. At the other end, aform had a stack of ten disks of stone, eae smaller than the one below it.

  "I'm alright," Summer said. "What is... The hell is that?"

  "A cssic pseudo-puzzle called the Towers of Mordecai," I said. "The rules are simple: you only move one disk at a time, the only valid move is taking the topmost disk from a stad setting it on aack or ay ptform, and you 't put rger disks on top of smaller disks. And the goal is to move that stack from the lefthand ptform to the righthand ptform, which has a golden emblem on it."

  "Huh," Summer said. "Wait, pseudo-puzzle?"

  "Even I know this one, and I don't do logic puzzles for fun," Talia said. "It's a simple pattern that you repeat over and ain, no matter how many disks there are. The only thing that matters is whether the number of disks is odd or even, and whether you care which ptform the disks end up on."

  "Yeah, there's no actual solving, here," I said, shaking my head. "The worst part is, for every disk you add to the stack, the number of moves you have to make doubles. For a stack of ten disks? It's gonna take us a thousand moves to finish this thing."

  "Well, it's not gon any more solved by standing around pining," Summer said, swaggering over to the stack. "So which ptform do I put the first one on?"

  "The middle ptform," I said.

  "Cool." She cmbered up the stack, until she stood ohird rgest disk, and id hands on the smallest disk. She grunted with effort, her arms straining... and then, with a loud grunt, followed by a loud curse, she mao budge the stone about an inch. "...A little help here? This thing is heavy!"

  "This is gonna be our whole day, isn't it?" Faith asked, listlessly.

  "Eyup," I said, nodding. "And here I was thinking I aranoid for pag a colpsible gantry e. Alright, Summer, c'mere, we're gonna do this properly, and I need every pair of hands I get for this."

  Summer huffed, as she made her way over to us. "Man, this is bullshit. Why they build a dungeon like this?"

  "Well, it is hard, isn't it?" I asked, as I started pulling steel beams out of my pocket. "Alright, bolt this oo that one, okay? We'll be doh this soon enough."

  AnnouAs always, if you like Iro and wao keep making it, the best way to do that is to leave a ent, here or on my discord server.

  Also, I'm taking suggestions for publius chapters iween books. The ideas I've currently ge from "The remaining Kings of Hell react to the political upheaval caused by Paimon's death" to "Joseph Iro visits a neighbor and pys dominoes." Anything goes.