One moment, Rory was moments from death, the next he was flopped on the sandy ground of a desert he had last seen something like two years ago.

"Wow. You look like shit."

Rory glanced up, taking in the sight of Zoey standing over him. She was… pristine, like she had come from a trip to the spa.

Oh, and she had a turtle, which Rory chose to ignore for the moment.

"What the fuck were you up to?" Rory raised his eyebrows at his companion.

"Oh, you know, hunting treasure."

"Hunting treasure?"

"Yeah, you heard me. Also, I found a turtle. He's immortal."

"Right, ignoring that last part for now."

Before Rory could launch into a tirade, a notification appeared, grabbing his attention.

Objective Cleared: Survive the Gomorrahian Labyrinth for as long as possible.

"Hey, question," Rory paused after he finished reading the notification. "Did you have an objective to survive a Gomorrahian labyrinth?"

"What? No. Why? Wait, are you referring to the end notification? I mean, I did get one, but mine was 'Objective Cleared: Find the exit of the Turn-Back Labyrinth.' Which I received after, obviously, finding the exit."

"Huh."

"What?"

"Oh, you know, just thinking about how the universe has picked favorites, and clearly I'm not one of them."

"Oh, quit being dramatic," Zoey gave him a thump on the shoulder before offering her hand, hauling him to his feet. "Also, whatever you were up to, it was good for your growth. We're matching levels now."

"Slugs almost ate me and used me to lay their eggs."

"But did they eat you?"

"N-no?" Rory said, perplexed at the question.

"Then there you go, sounds like a you problem," Zoey said with a shrug. "So, any guesses on the nature of this place?"

"Did you have to touch a black box to enter your labyrinth?"

"Yeah."

"Alright, then, I think depending on the box you touch, you get sent to your own section of the labyrinth with a specific objective. You were sent to one where the goal was merely to reach the end."

"Right, that adds up."

"I was sent to one that required me to survive for as long as possible, and I'm assuming that 'as long as possible' means 'until your partner clears their labyrinth.' Or something along those lines."

"Right, that explains why you look like the shit side of Sunday."

"W-what does that even mean?" Rory asked, again perplexed.

Ignoring him, Zoey held up her small turtle that Rory had been putting off thinking about.

"This is Mr. Turtle."

"Hi, Mr. Turtle," Rory said, deadpan.

"He's immortal."

"You mentioned that."

"No, I mean, like, really immortal, not just fancy flavor text. Give him an examine."

Doing so, Rory raised his eyebrows.

"Why is a normal turtle immortal?"

"Dunno. He's also really good with directions."

"That's… good to know?" Rory was honestly just happy to be out of the accursed labyrinth, even if the immediate aftermath was being presented wth the oddities of an immortal turtle.

"Oh, also, I wasn't able to bring much back with me, you know, because I don't have an inventory," Zoey said, eyes looking at him accusatorily.

"Hey, I can't do anything about that until I have something suitable to work with." Rory raised his hands defensively, not wanting to be grilled over that.

"Oh, well, now that you mention it…" Zoey put on an act of being lost in thought, even if Rory saw straight through it.

"What did you find?" Rory huffed, humoring her.

"Oh, how could you tell I found something? Well, if you are so curious, I found these."

Casually, three objects were suddenly tossed toward him, each one caught mid-air by threads of pneuma as Rory investigated them. The first item was a ruby that could apparently clog arteries, which seemed weird, and Rory couldn't see an immediate use for it. Still, since it was related to blood, there was probably something interesting he could do with it.

The following item was downright ridiculous: a spigot for extracting sap or similar substances from plants, while also making them sweeter for whatever bizarre reason.

The third item made Rory's eyebrows twitch with surprise at the find.

"This is pretty damn nifty," Rory whistled as he decided to examine it from up close. "And you just… found it? Lying around?"

"Well, it was safeguarded by an extensive field of traps, but Mr. Turtle led me to a backdoor route that let me snag it pretty much for free, yeah."

"Damn," Rory whistled. "Yeah, I can work with this. The inventory won't be as large as my inventory, but it's definitely workable."

"Sweet," Zoey grinned. "When will it be ready?"

"Assuming I'm not trying to make it operational as protection for stepping through space? Not too long, honestly. The hardest part of making an inventory is the need for a void-related item to use as the basis of the entire thing."

"In human language?"

"Oh come on, that was already simple," Rory sighed, shaking his head. "I can have it made soon."

"Dope," Zoey grinned widely. "So, next question, if we counted as clearing this planet, shouldn't we be seeing- ohhh, spoke too soon, there it is."

From the sky above, what looked like a stream of glowing orange gas-

Plasma, I think it's closer to plasma.

-orange plasma meandered its way to the planet's surface, until the strange river ended right in front of them.

It was the same method of traversing between the volcanic islands and mountains that they were, as a reminder, still inside.

"Back to fake-space," Zoey said with a sigh, flopping backward into the orange plasma river as it whisked her away, still holding the turtle.

"Well, I would say it's been fun," Rory muttered as he stared down at the sand beneath his feet. "But I'd be a liar."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Dad, I'm your favorite, right?"

"No, I'm dad's favorite!"

Apostolos sighed. The very first thing he heard upon entering his home was his two children bickering. It would have been cute when they were young kids.

Except they were eighteen and twenty-two.

"Enough," Violet said, walking in behind him and giving him a push in the back. "Your father had a long day."

"Oh, yes, great Chief Protector," His son, Isaac, snapped a salute. "How would we survive without you?"

"See, this is why I'm dad's favorite."

"My favorite is Jimmy," Apostolos finally said as he rolled his eyes at his children's antics.

"You can't like my boyfriend more than you like your actual kids," His daughter, Chloe, argued.

"Jimmy doesn't eat my last slice of pie that I was intending for myself," Apostolos said with a snort.

It was a moment of brevity that Apostolos felt himself drinking him, a place of refuge from the chaos of being the figurehead of Ehkorrus, the one upon whom the weight of responsibility fell. It was a duty that Apostolos embraced with pride, but that didn't change the stress involved.

Such as the fate that loomed ever closer.

Looking at his children, a familiar shudder passed through his body.

Not much time left.

Twenty years. Twenty years until the tier seven waves.

Will I have grandkids by that point?

Another shudder.

Relax. Don't let them see your worries.

His wife had clearly noticed, her eyes were literally sharper than his children, who were only tier threes.

Relax. Her gaze seemed to say. They had known and loved each other long enough that spoken words were unnecessary between the two of them.

Letting the tension ease from his shoulders, Apostolos closed the door behind him, making it a point to relax and take some time to exist away from everything else. His home was meant to be the one place he didn't worry all day long.

Still, even as he closed the door, he found his thoughts drifting to the one family who could make a difference, the one member of his family that didn't live under the 'safety' of his roof.

I wonder where Rory is and what he is up to?

"I told you this was a bad idea," Rory groaned, flicking his hands and arms, trying to dislodge the gunk.

"How was I supposed to know that this wasn't mud!?"

The two prestigious founders were currently neck deep in shit.

Literally.

After leaving the labyrinth world, they have traveled through fake-space for several weeks before finding their next planetoid. It was an endless trash heap, dung beetle monsters everywhere, and tetanus risks as far as the eye could see.

Just minutes prior, they had been fleeing from a pack of a thousand level seventy-six dung beetles; they'd raced over the edge of a cliff, aiming for a massive lake of mud far below to escape the horde.

Except, there was one little problem.

It wasn't mud.

Had Mr. Turtle been with them, things would have been fine, but no, Mr. Turtle refused to leave their small base camp on account of being disgusted by the garbage world.

So, the two of them were bumbling around, searching for a needle in a haystack. Their objective? Find the 'Mark of Royalty.'

If only it were as sanitary as a needle in a haystack.

Replace the haystack with a trash heap, and the needle with a tiara or perhaps a crown, or something along those lines.

"This place sucks," Zoey complained, failing miserably at removing the shit from her hair.

"Honestly? Better than the labyrinth world," Rory responded, the shit lake was far less disgusting if he pretended it was mud.

You know, by being delusional.

"Speak for yourself, that world was great for me."

"You weren't almost slug food."

"You always bring that up."

"Slugs almost ate me!"

"A you problem," Zoey responded, enjoying antagonizing her friend. "Can't you just make something to help us find this thing? Maybe magic it up?"

"Neither of those is as easy as you present." Rory shook his head, partially in disagreement, partly in an attempt to dislodge the muck clinging to him as the two shuffled their way to the shore of the waste lake.

"Why not?"

"Well, it would take quite a while for a resonance to be achieved, without anything directly binding the object of our pursuit to whatever ritual I could whip up would probably take months at the fastest."

"And that's a problem… why?"

Rory raised his finger, ready to disabuse her, when he suddenly stopped.

"You know… fair point."

"So we've been sifting through muck for… no reason."

"No reason," Rory confirmed.

"I hate you so much."

"The ritual will be ready soon," Viviann told the council, earning a look between Apostolos and Irene.

"How soon?"

"A month, maybe two."

"Quite soon," Jed said. He had been re-elected to the position for over ten years now; the only other craftsman who'd been considered had been Gil, and he had made it clear he already had his hands full with the forge.

"And you're ready?"

"As ready as I can be," Viviann said, a look of grim determination on her face.

She's in her nineties. Of course, she is feeling pressured.

The problem with crafters was that they found ascensions considerably slower than combat types; the only one who raced through the tiers as a craftsman had been none other than Rory himself, but even he wasn't a pure craftsman.

She wasn't on the verge of dying, not even close, but her skills had long since stalled out; just going through the motions of her profession wasn't enough to earn the ascension energy she would need to reach her next tier up.

In a way, Apostolos felt like Ehkorrus was a reflection of her plight. They weren't in any immediate danger, but the threat lurked all the same, growing closer day by day. If you didn't stop to think about it, it was easy enough to forget about. But loom it did.

"Aside from your helpers that you requested, have we had any breaches in operational security?" Irene asked.

"No," Viviann said, shaking her head. "I've kept it close to my chest."

"Good," Jed said. "Once you succeed, it's our intention that we still keep this on the down low if possible."

"I appreciate the voice of confidence," Viviann said with a half-hearted laugh.

"I have that much faith in my former master, after all," Jed said with a shrug. "I believe I speak for the entire council when I say that we will succeed, and it shall start with you. The challenges and trials we may face are great, but with ambition and hope, we will prevail."

It was a rousing sentiment, one that Apostolos wanted to feel more strongly.

But something just felt off.

"A month," Apostolos finally spoke. "It's easy to get anxious, looking ahead too much, ready to act as you near that finish line. It was something Rory himself told me on several occasions. So, just make sure every preparation has been quintuple checked if need be, and then another time for good measure."

"I second the Chief Protector's sentiment," Irene added.

"Of course," Viviann gave a low bow, her face set. "For the good of Ehkorrus."

One month. One month to see what will become of what may be our next best answer to these waves.

"How about now?"

"No, jeez," Rory sighed. "It's only been three months, and the calibration isn't even close to finished."

"Uh-huh, whatever you say," Zoey mumbled.

"Would you like to take over?" Rory questioned, arching his eyebrows at Zoey. "This isn't exactly easy."

Rory was currently standing in the middle of fifteen bound circles, each tailored to isolating a concept aligned to the thought of royalty, with the very centermost ring having runes that acted as a guiding compass once the other rings had aligned their conceptual lock onto the item in question.

Unfortunately, without more equipment or items to work with on hand, Rory wasn't able to set it up to work automatically; he had to act as the control tower, filtering out all the false positives that the concepts locked onto. Every second, he was being bombarded with vague mental images, whiffs of potential matches that Rory had to cross-reference against every other image conjured, and on a trash heap planet, that was a lot of stuff to filter through.

Also, it would be a little more immersive if all this garbage weren't twisted approximations of items you'd expect to find in an Earth trash heap, like the background art in a game that's only been half rendered.

Even 'half-rendered' Rory was still forced to mentally examine every twisted image as it-

Excuse me?

Rory froze, feeling something weird. Evidently, it showed on his face as even Zoey raised her eyebrows at Rory.

"Something up? Find it?"

"No," Rory muttered, trying to make sense of the weird feeling in his gut.

"It feels more like something found me."

"And how does that make sense?"

"It doesn't," Rory answered.

Perhaps it was a strange snag in the ritual setup that Rory had somehow failed to account for. It almost felt like a fishing line being taken by a large fish rapidly swimming away.

Except that 'fishing line' was a metaphysical space from within himself.

Damnit, this is what I get for being rushed into things.

Locking down on the sensation, Rory let the 'thread' spool out for several more seconds, ensuring he had a general idea of the 'direction' he was being pulled from. Once Rory felt reasonably confident, he snapped the 'line' tight, instantly halting whatever was pulling against him.

Huh, not as much resistance as I expected.

Now that the internalized aspect within himself was no longer being yanked from him, Rory began pulling back. Giving it one, two, three soft tugs, Rory let go as he waited to see what would happen. After nearly ten minutes, the 'line' began to be pulled upon once more.

Greedy.

If Rory had to make a guess, his 'little' ritual had put so much of himself out there that some sort of monster had caught on, trying to take a spiritual chomp out of him without him ever noticing.

Sneaky, but I'm on to you.

Letting whatever was trying to take from him think it was in the clear, Rory metaphysically observed for another minute before finally nodding to himself as he grew tired of the charade.

Okay, play time is over.

Seizing the thread once more, Rory heaved back, not giving it a single second to gather itself. Rory had quite a bit of experience with his inner world. Comparatively, whatever had managed to latch onto his loose thread seemed far from well-equipped, posing no resistance as Rory yanked everything it had drawn from him back in seconds, and not just that, he even managed to take a snag out of it, barely a morsel of a bite.

Huh. Odd.

"You good? You look constipated," Zoey spoke up, drawing Rory's attention.

"Yeah, I'm fine. With how sensitive this ritual is, I must have left myself exposed to attack or something."

"That's a thing?"

"Ehh, I didn't think so, but clearly I was wrong," Rory said with a shrug. "Either way, I'm going to take a short break and set up another bound circle to insulate me from any other opportunist scavengers."

"Well, at least it wasn't something stronger."

"Yeah, you're not wrong," Rory said in agreement with his fellow founder, who was already returning her attention to the small turtle she was playing with, the entire fiasco barely a blip of interest to her.

Requiring only a few minutes of his time, Rory soon had yet another ring of bound circle set up, meant to safeguard his mind and essence from attack while exposed.

Well, with that mild inconvenience put to rest, back to work.

Because in the end, that was all it had amounted to.

A mild inconvenience.

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