Vera trailed into Saanvoleg after Ryno, feeling cautious about the structural state of the temple. Sand and dust fell from the ceiling occasionally due to the grinding of the sandstone as it subtly shifted against itself. The new hole in the back wall let in plenty of light on the ground floor, but the temple was struggling to find its new footing, and at any time it could fail.

  In front of the back wall was a wide staircase that headed further underground. Darkness seeped from below. There was no light in the lower levels.

  "Are the flowers down there?" Ryno asked, looking down the only way further into the temple.

  Vera confirmed. "And I don't want to stay up here any longer. The temple could fall on us at any moment, thanks to you," she added.

  Vera finally made use of the temple's map in her possession, and she studied it before descending deeper into the temple. She used her element to create a glowing white crystal, that hovered in the air and floated near her at all times. It was bright enough to illuminate the walls for several feet, but not so bright that it couldn't be stared at uncomfortably.

  Half way down the stairs, Vera noticed Ryno was not following. She turned around and looked up at him.

  "Are you coming?" She asked.

  Ryno had been staring up at the ceiling. At the question, he finally met her gaze. "Yeah okay. I think you're right, the damn thing might actually collapse," he stated about the temple.

  "You better hope for your sake it doesn't. John will be so upset at you," she stated.

  Ryno actually ran his fingers through his hair under the hood upon his head, in a troubled state. He actually looked like he was contemplating the consequences of his actions for the first time in ages. Killing a patron in the tavern didn't bother him. He didn't bat an eye putting a hole in the establishment's roof, either.

  But damaging something Reech had directly told him to keep perfectly preserved was now bothering him greatly.

  "...It was the door's fault!" Ryno bellowed out in sudden frustration. "I told it to give me access!"

  "Doors can't talk, Ryno. Just like birds can't," Vera reminded him.

  "I…" Ryno spoke as if he had a sudden realization. "I know that. I'm not sure why I thought that." It seemed as if Ryno was struggling to understand why he blew off the temple doors just minutes ago.

  "Well, take it up with John later," she replied, knowing that it was all getting written down in her report that Reech would read when they returned from the mission.

  The two reached the bottom of the stairs. The underground halls would have been black as the void if Vera didn't have her handy floating crystal that lit their sights up. The hall immediately split both left and right. Each direction looked perfectly similar to the other.

  "Which way?" Ryno asked.

  Vera double checked her map. She had memorized the exact route they needed to take, but she still read it just to make sure they would go the right way. Vera feared that if they missed a turn, and were down there for too long, Ryno would start to get antsy. And that would not be a good thing in any sense.

  "We're going left," she spoke.

  These lower levels of Saanvoleg were spooky. There was a chance that dangerous criminals could be hiding down here. She wasn't sure which unfortunate event could happen first. Running into raiders, or a booby trap.

  She was careful with her footing as she tread ahead of Ryno. With boredom, he followed behind.

  Vera focused intently on the map as they made more turns and descents. The further down they traveled, the mustier the smell. It wasn't long before Ryno was accidentally kicking debris on the stone floor that had most likely been there for centuries.

  Each time he did so, the echo of the noise traveled ahead in the chamber they were in, easily alerting anyone far in the distance that others were down here.

  "Would you please watch your footing?!" Vera pleaded.

  "Sorry."

  They continued onward, and eventually, they had made it so far in that it would be impossible to have memorized the way back out. These halls were truly a maze, and that was most likely intentional. Almost anyone would get lost, minus those who could understand where they were based on the paintings around them.

  The sandstone walls in the basement levels had faded art work on them that archaeologists would love to study. If either of them had a mind to appreciate them, it would be quite tempting to spend time admiring the historical depictions. Luckily Ryno couldn't care less, and Vera did not want to be down here a second longer than she had to be.

  After a while, the worst thing Vera had worried about happening finally occurred. They hit a fork in the road, one that was not expected, and one not recorded on the map.

  Vera paused for a second. She studied that map, wondering where she could have gone wrong.

  The second turned into many.

  "Which way?" Ryno asked impatiently.

  "Uh… um…" Vera flipped through pages, trying to backtrack, seeing if she missed a turn. She couldn't believe this happened.

  "You don't know?" Ryno said.

  Vera wasn't sure if she had made a mistake, or the person who made this map had. As she looked back on the map, she verified every turn the two had made.

  No, Vera had not made a blunder. This was a split in a long hall that was seemingly undocumented.

  "I don't know because it's not written down," she stated with worry.

  "The map's wrong?!" Ryno shouted.

  "The map's wrong," Vera repeated, confirming his thought.

  Damn map. Piece of garbage. What is wrong with you? I'LL KILL YOU! Ryno's thoughts were flooded with statements such as these, but he quickly shook them off. It was not the map's fault. The map is not alive.

  Vera finally made a guess. She had to. Based on the continued direction of where she was instructed to go, they made a left.

  Ryno was starting to get antsy, but Vera assured him they'd reach the chamber of Hallicent Blossoms soon, even though she didn't entirely trust her own words.

  Taking the left was detrimental. Suddenly, none of the directions on her map lined up with where they were traveling. She kept that to herself, though. If Ryno sniffed out that they were lost, he might get an idea in his head to do something about it, and that was not something she wanted to deal with.

  At this point, Vera just hoped they would stumble upon the chamber. They had already completed more than half of the instructions. They had to be getting close to the vicinity of the room. Perhaps they'd get lucky and stumble upon it.

  The only issue would be figuring out how to get back out. That was less of an issue though. After crossing a few dangerous gaps, and making several more turns down endless hallways, a new terrible event occurred.

  They were back at the fork in the hall. The one undocumented in her map. Only this time, they had arrived on the right side, instead of the left they had originally turned down.

  This was not good in any sense. Vera halted, and quickly brainstormed what to do. Hopefully, Ryno wouldn't realize how lost they were. Due to coming back to the fork at a different angle, he was unlikely to notice it. In that case, turning around was out of the question. She could try going left again, but she had not a good reason to do so.

  There were other turns they hadn't tried before they made it to this cursed fork. Perhaps she would go down those.

  "HEY WAIT A MINUTE!" Ryno bellowed out, bringing Vera's brainstorming to a halt. She cringed, dreading what words he would follow up with.

  "We were here before!" He confirmed.

  Vera sighed, and turned around to look at him. "Yes. But I have an idea where we should go."

  Ryno looked like he was getting antsy.

  "There was a different hall on the right side of the center pillar in that last room. I wonder if that's the turn we were supposed to make," she tried.

  "...Alright. But we better almost be there. I don't like it down here," he shared.

  "I don't either. But we have to keep ourselves composed. No destroying anything, remember?" Vera spoke.

  Ryno reluctantly nodded.

  That was good enough. Vera had bought herself more time. She prayed that they would find the hidden glowing chamber soon. Ryno had not the mental temperament to endure an extended amount of time under the temple.

  They began to backtrack, trying to find the hall Vera spoke of. She frequently studied the map she had been relying so desperately on. Perhaps one direction was wrong, and if they made this turn, everything else would begin to line up again.

  As a side note, Vera had begun to let her guard down about the fears of these halls. They had been desolate of people, and not one trap had gone off the entire time they had been down there.

  They entered the previous chamber, and made a turn down the hall they had passed earlier. When they walked down it, Vera hoped everything would make sense again.

  It did not. New chambers and turns were appearing that were not recorded in her notebook. Ryno asked if everything was now lining up.

  Vera lied and said it was. It was an understandable attempt at keeping him under control.

  Each time the white light from the crystal rounded a new corner, its brightness illuminated a similar scene to one that they had just recently viewed. So much down here was built using the same blueprints from a pool of just a dozen. These halls and chambers were seemingly repeating themselves.

  They surely were – after traveling for a while longer, Vera had led the two of them back into a chamber they had just been in twenty minutes ago.

  "Okay! That's it!" Ryno declared. He had enough. It finally occurred to him that they were entirely lost, and Vera's attempts to get them back on track had failed multiple times. It was no use now, in his mind.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  "Wait! Ryno!" Vera was panicking.

  "Nope! Don't want to hear it. We're lost, you don’t know where we're going. I obviously don't know where we're going, so I'm going!"

  "Going where?!" Vera shouted as Ryno stormed off in some seemingly random direction.

  "I… Somewhere!" Ryno was visibly frustrated, fighting off desires of destroying things. "I'm going this way!"

  "That's not the right way!"

  "How would you know?! Goodbye, Vera. I'm gonna find the room myself!" Ryno struggled to process his frustration. Usually when he got this upset, people died, and buildings were reduced to rubble. In this case, he could do neither. He was restricted in doing anything to help his anger.

  Vera wanted to order him to stop. They needed to stay together, it would not be good if they got lost and could not reunite. It would have even been a better move for her to follow him, even if it was not the correct direction.

  She didn't do that, though. Vera let Ryno storm off. He was in a dangerous state at the moment, and he needed to gather himself alone. She didn't want to risk being near him and causing him to make a regretful decision.

  Ryno's eyes began glowing as he enabled some form of darkvision. He left Vera, and wandered new halls alone. He babbled to himself in rants as he walked, the only way he could try to make himself feel better about the situation. He entered new rooms, and it became apparent how purposely similar everything was.

  This place was a death trap. People who wandered into this temple were meant to get lost and die. That was proven even more true in Ryno's mind when he entered a small chamber and saw some skeletons on the ground. Spooky, scary ones, to be precise.

  Most people would likely find that to be accurate descriptions, but Ryno lit up with joy when he saw one.

  "A skull! A real, actual skull!" He said to himself in awe, almost completely forgetting his woes already. He walked up to the skeleton, fully distracted, and sat beside it on the ground. He picked the skull up, something that easily detached from the spine from being completely decayed.

  He felt it in his hands for a while, admiring it. For a brief moment, he wondered who this person could have been once upon a time.

  The jaw was still attached. Most of the teeth were still intact, minus a few. There was even a gold tooth, that barely glimmered in the dark environment. It was fun to study for a while, but slowly, Ryno's current problems came creeping back into his mind. It was a nice distraction, but there were issues to be dealt with. Ryno's cheer melted away.

  "Hello, Mr. Bone Bro. How are you today?" Ryno asked solemnly to the skull.

  Ryno began shaking the skull, the jaw clapping up and down in a cheap imitation of it somehow talking.

  "Oh hi Ryno! I didn't expect to see you down here!" Ryno said in a higher pitched voice as he shook the skull.

  "Yeah, I know. It wasn't my idea. Stupid Johnny made me come down here. Gotta find those dumb plants."

  "Well how's the search going? Are you finding any success?" Ryno replied to himself in a cartoonish voice.

  "No. And I think I'm messing up a lot lately, Mr. Bone. I damaged the temple when John told me not to. And I'm pretty sure I hurt Vera's feelings as well. It hasn't been good," Ryno unloaded to the skull in his grasp.

  Ryno kept shaking the skull each time he wanted it to talk to him. "Well just remember. If you don't like who you are, then change that person! What I'm saying is you always gotta try your best. That's all we can do!"

  Ryno nodded to himself. "That's good advice, thank you Mr. Bone. You are a real bro."

  Ryno shook the skull more as the jaw moved up and down. "That's what I'm here for! You know, I'm always trying my best, too! I'm trying my best to find the cheapest whore in town!"

  "...What?"

  "I'm skint on coin, you know! A guy's gotta get what he needs! Maybe I'll try your mother. I've heard the woman can polish a knob better than the maids of Fairgoth, and what's more, she'll do it for free!"

  Ryno became infuriated. "DON'T SAY THAT ABOUT MY MOTHER!!!!"

  He threw the skull with all his might into a nearby wall, shattering the head into many fine pieces. He stood up, and pointed to the shards on the ground.

  "You dared to speak to me in such a way, and now what's happened to you?! You're a pile of marrow shards now! A faint speck of your former self, a haunting echo of your intact structure, a cruel reminder of your… Well, SOMETHING!"

  Ryno stormed out of the room after somehow making himself upset.

  "Stupid Mr. Bone, insulting my mother like that. YOU ARE NOT A BRO!" He shouted behind him as he traveled down a hall.

  Ryno began taking on the mission of finding Arno Hallicent's chamber on his own. He had tried to take a rest and contemplate his recent actions, but that had not gone very well. Perhaps he would find solace in completing the mission on his own.

  Despite what the skull had 'insinuated' about his mother, what Ryno had made the skull say initially was taken to heart.

  He needed to do better. He decided if he ran into Vera again, he would apologize about his recent behavior. That was if he would see her again. As he explored looping halls and new rooms, it was settling in that there was a solid chance he would not run into her for a while.

  Ryno was resolute about not destroying walls and pillars, but that made his job of finding the blossoms entirely difficult. If only he had a map. A guide, even if it was not entirely correct, some paperwork on the temple would be better than nothing.

  Oh, wait. He had all that. Vera was the key. And he had left her. Left her because he threw a tantrum over getting temporarily lost. He had been stupid.

  Nearly an hour passed as he explored rooms, and he was near positive he had done several laps around the same hallways at this point. This was folly. Ryno held immense power, and none of it could help him in this situation.

  What was the best way to defeat Ryno? Trap him in an endless maze and tell him he can't break through the walls. That would render him useless for an indefinite amount of time.

  He talked to himself as he wandered, the only person who could keep him company in these trying times. Despite having darkvision, Ryno could still feel that it was dark, and that was depressing him. If only he could finally find his way out of this endless void of still nothingness!

  Then, there it was. Suddenly, in the total black, a white light broke a nearby corner. At first Ryno thought he had finally witnessed the light at the end of the tunnel.

  This was not death though. As the light grew brighter, a white floating crystal appeared, and within another second, Vera as well.

  Ryno became ecstatic. He shouted out, and at first, it caused Vera to jump. But then, she shouted out his name in reply.

  "Yes, it's me! I'm okay!" Ryno ran over to her, embracing the luminescence of her crystal.

  "Oh thank God I found you! I should've never let you wander on your own!" She spoke in a shaky voice, still trying to believe she actually found him.

  "I agree! And I'm sorry I left you, and I'm sorry for earlier," he said back.

  This took Vera off guard. She wondered what the heck had happened to him that he would apologize like this. Ryno was known to never apologize.

  "Uhh… I forgive you. Are you okay?" She asked.

  Ryno smacked his chest twice in a hardy fashion. "I'm more than okay! I have found my guide, and now we can continue our search! Hope has been restored to me once again! I don't care if it takes us days, as long as we're together, we're bound to eventually find the chamber!"

  "Oh," Vera started. "I found the chamber, thankfully. I updated the notes to get back to it easily. I picked the ten best samples of blossoms like John wanted. I just needed to find you to destroy the room."

  Ryno's jaw dropped. "You… you found it… without me?"

  "It's okay! You're still needed! I can't destroy the amber crystal on my own, it has some sort of ward around it. I tried. I figured if I could save you the work we'd be out of here sooner. But it really needs a special Ryno touch that only you can do."

  Ryno then puffed out his chest, his purpose and meaning in life being restored. "Then I will do it! No ward is a match for me! Take me to the room!" He ordered.

  With Vera and Ryno reunited, she backtracked, and guided him back to the chamber. It did not take long, but one interesting feature that was unique to the rest of the temple's maze was a spiral staircase that did not occur anywhere else in the endless rooms.

  It was a sign that the maze was over, and the final room had been successfully discovered. Ryno made a comment about the new structure that hadn't been seen anywhere else in the accursed maze. It was refreshing to see something new.

  At the bottom of the staircase, one final hall greeted them. At the end of it, Ryno began to notice a faint orange glow in the distance. It became brighter as they approached it, and before long they stood at the entrance of the room.

  Arno's chamber of specially curated flowers was not big in any sense. The room was just some twenty feet in size. The entire floor of the room was a dark rich soil, covered in vines with occasional purple and white flowers sprouting out of them.

  It was pretty to see, but the real feature to gaze upon was the self-sustaining, floating amber crystal in the center of the room. It gave off a fierce amber colored glow, the plants below it basking in the specially tailored light for them.

  "Wow," Ryno dragged the word out as he studied the entire sight. "This has been down here the whole time? What reason would someone have to build all this so far away from anyone's grasp?"

  "It's not for us to know," Vera spoke.

  Ryno's pupils darted at the different blossoming flowers scattering the dirt floor.

  "...You picked the best ones?" He confirmed.

  "Yes. And now you can clear this room out. It's sad, actually. It doesn't feel right to disturb this place. But we have orders," Vera spoke with sorrow.

  "And orders are orders," Ryno confirmed. "Stand back, this could get messy. I don't want you getting hurt."

  Vera confirmed. She began pacing backwards down the hall. Soon Ryno's caped shadow was the only thing in her sight of amber light.

  Ryno then turned to the crystal. He admired it for a few more seconds. Their home, the crystal cavern, had many gemstones such as this all throughout the place, but none of such a rich amber color. This floating crystal was truly a work of art, a product of intense effort to make a reality.

  He was now going to destroy it.

  Ryno chuckled to himself. He held his arm out, his hand open towards the crystal. He felt the electricity escape him as it attacked the crystal.

  The continuous stream of white lightning made contact with the amber gem, but sure enough, it refused the attack. A ward protected it.

  Ryno leaned into the attack. The jagged lightning becoming thicker as its voltage increased. The ward was visibly straining. Despite the larger outpouring of electricity, it was still surviving. The amount of power Ryno was currently outputting could vaporize just about any normal material at this point.

  Well, that's interesting, he thought as the powerful stream of lightning was still not enough. I haven't opened the floodgates in a while. Time to give it more juice.

  Ryno switched into a new gear of power, but this new skill he activated was several magnitudes stronger, and instead of leaning more into the attack, he had to throttle it to prevent wanton destruction.

  The stream of electricity grew twice as thick as it already had gotten to, the jagged nature of the dancing voltage fluctuating far more than normal. The stream from the attack became far brighter, and the hum of it now became a disturbing crackling noise at an uncomfortable volume.

  The ward was no match for the sheer amount of power from Ryno. His electric endeavors overcame the defense of the crystal, and the amber color from it became white as it filled with energy from the attack. It began cracking, and after another second, exploded, sending shards in every direction in the room.

  Ryno shielded himself with his arms. The blasting shards from the crystal smashed into every inch of the chamber, destroying the flowers, the walls, and every other bit of the room that made it recognizable.

  Ryno was wise to send Vera far down the hall. The explosion from the crystal would have badly damaged her if she was near. When the dangerous event had concluded, Ryno brought his arms down to have a gander.

  The room was now nothing more than a sphere of blasted debris. Nothing inside the space had survived. Before he could look at anything else, the room started vibrating. A deep rumbling in the earth had begun. It was likely that the room was going to cave in on itself.

  "Ryno! We have to go! Quick!" Vera shouted behind him.

  Ryno understood the impending danger. He retreated out of the room, and with Vera, they both took off down the hall, putting distance between themselves and the location of the destruction.

  All Vera had to do now was backtrack out of the temple with her newly revised notes. She had the flowers secured in her bag, and if they followed the instructions to the tee, they'd finally be out of the temple within an hour.

  They had completed the job.

  Meanwhile, in another section of the temple, down in the dark mazes of Saanvoleg, another man traveled the halls. Unlike Vera and Ryno, he had the entire structure memorized. There was no getting lost for him. As he walked, he would take moments to admire the paintings on the walls. The rough artwork brought back good memories to him as he studied them under a torch light.

  In the middle of his reminiscence, a sudden rumbling of the ground disturbed him. He wasn't sure what caused the event, but it was close, and somewhere within the temple.

  He raced forward, his bamboo walking staff hitting the ground with each step.

  In his straw hat and dirty burlap robe, the man decided it was time to stop the sideshows, and get back to the main task: acquiring some Hallicent Blossoms for Marin, the King of Nocturne Castle.

  Monzane navigated the maze perfectly, but even then, it took him some time to finally get to the spiral staircase. When he reached it, he descended. He expected to be greeted by the dim amber light at the start of the hall, but that was not the case.

  As he moved forward, there was not a thing that could prepare him for the devastating sight he was about to witness, or lack thereof.

  At the end of the hall, Monzane was mortified to see that the amber crystal had been destroyed. All the vines and flowers had been vaporized to ash. There was nothing to take from the room. Nothing to recover.

  Monzane blinked several times to confirm it was all real. Eventually he noticed the smoke still coming off of the sides of the burning walls. The destruction that occurred was very recent. The quaking he felt earlier in the temple – he knew this was the source.

  Someone had destroyed all the blossoms just before he could get to them. How, and why, he could not fathom.

  It looks like someone knew my plans. I wonder what the reason is for stopping me.