Being locked up in a cell but having weapons was a strange feeling. Laryn grew antsy after a short time with nothing to do, and returned to the loose stone in the floor. He picked at the mortar, grinding and shifting the stone as it grew looser and looser. Then he blew into the small gap, forcing a small cloud of dust into the air.

  “What are you doing?” Kenna asked.

  “I don’t know how much we can trust… what we’ve been told,” he said, glancing at the door of the cell. Who knew who might be listening in outside? “So I’m spending my time on the back-up plan.”

  “How are things in Vallor?”

  “Adi says they’re fine, but the Ebil is still high. Gall, Widan and Gaten were giving Harrat’s men a hard time as they try to regroup.”

  “Do you really think that you’ll be able to stop Harrat?”

  Laryn stopped and looked up from the loose stone.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m building a kingdom. Or I’ll die trying.”

  “That’s the part I’m worried about,” Kenna said. “I want to do the right thing. I want to defend the people at home, who I love, and stop Harrat from taking advantage of them. I could have destroyed the spell module that I stole from him. It would have killed me, but it would have gotten it forever out of Harrat’s hands. But I didn’t do it. I still wonder if that was the right move.”

  “I don’t have anyone to defend,” Laryn said. “There is no success in death. Death is failure.”

  “If I destroyed that module, Bram might still be alive,” Kenna said. “Is it right for me to preserve my own life at the cost of his?”

  Laryn returned to his work. He didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make things worse.

  A goblin guard brought them a bowl of gruel to share for their dinner. He lingered at the door, leering at them, until Laryn threw sand in his eyes and drove him off.

  “I wish I’d gotten a timeline,” Laryn grumbled as Kenna ate her portion. “Waiting indefinitely is a special kind of torture.”

  “What’s this?” Kenna said, holding up the wooden utensil she’d been using to eat. On the back of the spoon was an engraving, which twisted around the handle.

  “Some kind of strange decoration?” Laryn suggested.

  “It says ‘map’ right there,” Kenna said.

  Laryn moved over to look at it. It was as she described. Some kind of route was outlined on the spoon, with a starburst at one end. Did that indicate an end or a beginning?

  “I hate ‘you’ll know it when you see it’ as a plan,” Laryn said.

  “You’re not much for subterfuge. No more information than is strictly necessary at the moment.”

  “No. I’m more straightforward,” Laryn agreed.

  “I guess we just wait until this makes sense,” Kenna said.

  “It could be a pattern of joints in stonework,” Laryn said, examining the spoon. “Let’s see if anything matches in here.”

  They spent several hours holding the spoon in various orientations, inspecting the floors, walls, and ceilings for a match.

  “It’s hard to say, because the pattern wraps around the spoon,” Laryn said. “It might line up here, though.” If he was right, a stone about midway up one of the walls overlapped with the starburst on the map.

  He pressed on the stone. It didn’t move. He examined it closely, looking for any indication that this was the intended solution of the puzzle. He found nothing.

  “I hate puzzles,” he said.

  Kenna took the spoon from him as he sat in the corner.

  They continued waiting.

  Laryn was awoken by a rumbling in the ground. He jumped to his feet, feeling the vibrations rattling the stones of the cell. Kenna slept on a pile of loose straw, curled up in the corner.

  “Kenna,” he called. “What’s going on?”

  She roused.

  The ground fell out beneath them.

  The drop was only a couple of meters, but the suddenness of it sent Laryn sprawling. A cloud of dust billowed into the air.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Laryn and Kenna picked their way over the crumbled floor and to the gaping hole that had been revealed to one side. Something had just dropped them down into the catacombs.

  A gap of about a meter opened up before them. Laryn crouched and stepped through, finding solid ground a few feet below the debris. He stood up straight, and felt the ceiling brush the top of his head. The cave was totally dark.

  Kenna ducked through after him, and they stood in the darkness, eyes adjusting.

  “I guess this is the time to escape,” she said.

  “Know what the spoon means now?” Laryn asked.

  She shook her head, but patted a pocket where she’d stowed the spoon.

  “It’s too dark down here,” she said, feeling her way around the opening. “You could walk right into a wall.”

  “I think I see light in the distance,” Laryn said.

  They shuffled slowly forward, arms outstretched as they worked their way toward the light. As they moved, Laryn expected to hear guards charging down after them.

  When they finally reached the light, it was a small burning candle sitting on the floor of the catacombs. It faintly illuminated a sphere which just brushed against the walls. A stick with an oil soaked rag tied atop it leaned on one of the walls.

  Laryn lit the torch on fire, and they were able to see a little more. This was a crossroads; tunnels lead off in four directions from here. He could just make out the dim spot of light back where they’d started.

  “Now what?”

  “I think it’s time for the map,” Kenna said, examining the spoon. “This is probably this starting point, here, see how these grooves indicate directions?”

  “You’re saying we need to go that way, then?”

  Kenna checked the spoon again, then looked down the hall where Laryn pointed.

  “Yes.”

  They moved on in the darkness, as quickly as possible. Laryn didn’t know how long the torch would last, and he didn’t want trust that Zaremba had planned that out too, and left him a new one at just the right place in the catacombs.

  They followed the map through the twisting maze, and at each turn Laryn became more confident that they’d correctly understood what they were supposed to be doing. The air grew more humid, and water began trickling down the walls, dripping from small stalactites overhead.

  “Aren’t we supposed to be leading guards here, to find the spore?” Laryn asked.

  “Don’t you think they’ll follow us? If we find it, then they’ll find it.”

  “There is a lot of ground down here to cover, though. If they don’t find it, then Zaremba’s plan fails.”

  “I think they will.”

  “But if that’s the plan, then why include us at all? Just knock a hole in the wall near the spore and let someone find it.”

  “Let’s keep going. If it doesn’t make sense once we find the spore, we can discuss it.”

  They rounded the last two corners on the map, and reached a solid wooden door.

  “This is it,” Kenna said. “This is the starburst. The spore must be in there.”

  “Or is it an entrance to the catacombs?” Thick dust coated the floor, but in the area around the door it had been cleared away.

  Kenna pulled the door open.

  They had found the spore.

  A crate, which had clearly once contained the spore, rested in the middle of the room. From it sprouted midnight tentacles, which stretched up into the air and over to the walls in every direction. It looked like a potato Laryn had once seen, sending out runners in every direction to find the soil.

  A small stalk had sprouted, bearing a few small buds on it.

  “By Ishtoran,” he muttered.

  “That’s bad,” Kenna agreed. “How long has that thing been down here?”

  “They can grow fast,” Laryn said. “So what are we supposed to do now? Drag it back to the cell?”

  “I don’t think so,” Kenna said, examining the room. The spore spindles pulsed and stretched, elongating and sinking deeper into the walls. “I don’t think we can. But there’s a door there.”

  She pointed across the room.

  Moving carefully around the edge of the room, they tried not to touch the spore appendages. This required a significant amount of ducking, weaving, and careful stepping, but they reached the door. It had not been penetrated by the spore, which seemed to be seeking places that water leaked through the stone.

  The void seemed attracted to their movements as they passed. Thin, whispy strands stretched out in their direction as they moved, or when they talked.

  The other side of this door was a narrow staircase, which lead up to a small room. Most of the floor of the room was a pool of water. A narrow door blocked their progress at the other end of the room.

  “A smuggling hold,” Laryn said. “I’ll bet that this water is connected to the lake around the palace. That door probably opens up behind a tapestry in the kitchen or something.”

  “So do we just swim out?”

  “We need to alert the guards, that there’s something going on down here,” Laryn said. “Even if the plan is to just leave it be… That seems dangerous. What happens when a voidbloom takes hold here? Maybe we should go back down there and hack it up before it can get any larger?”

  “I think it’s growing already,” Kenna said. “If we kill it, wouldn’t that prevent the alarm that Zaremba is trying to trigger in the palace?”

  “I don’t think she meant to plant it in the basement,” Laryn said. “Besides, if we kill it, then that casts even less doubt on her, right?”

  “Okay…” Kenna seemed nervous about the idea, but they crept back down to the voidbloom sprout.

  “It’s growing much slower than a normal voidbloom,” Laryn said, “Probably because it’s not strong enough to break down the stone. It’s just got air and limited water, for now.”

  The buds did appear somewhat larger than they’d been just a few moments earlier.

  Laryn drew his sword, when he caught sight of a light flickering in the catacombs, in the direction they’d come.

  “Friend or foe?”

  “Could they have found us that—”

  Kenna’s comment was cut off as two of Grimby’s pale children slipped into the room. The goblins moved like quicksilver, their faces surprise as they stopped and took in the void bloom. One of them snuffled the air and pointed a crooked finger at Laryn and Kenna.

  Just behind them a squad of goblin soldiers entered the room. The first few stopped abruptly and stared at the horrible, twisting void sight before them. Goblins behind them crashed into the leaders, and a whole dozen stumbled and crashed into the room at once.

  The tentacled vines of the voidspore whipped out and began ensnaring feckless goblins, dragging them into the still partially crated central spore.

  With crunching and cracking of bones, it bound them and feasted on their essence. The blooms swelled in the center, and the tendrils pulsed with energy.

  Goblins screamed.

  “Get out of here,” Laryn said, pulling Kenna up the stairs.

  “Can’t you stop it?” she asked. “Reset time?”

  “No,” Laryn said. “It’s been developing like this for days, maybe weeks! There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Behind them bones popped and flesh squelched as the spore feasted on its prey.