Lexie was getting impatient. The hooded figure still hadn't spoken, and he hadn't revealed himself either.

"Did you hear what I said?" Lexie asked, wondering if she should use <Can I Have Your Attention> to project her voice further. "Are you deaf? Or you don't speak Eldritch?"

Yeah, that had to be it. Maybe he only spoke in their strange zombie chittering language.

Lexie looked to Cecilia to see if she could translate what she was saying.

Cecilia nodded and began to say something, but the booming voice interrupted her and said, "I heard what you said, Eldritch."

He finally lifted the hood, showing himself to also be a zombie, but bigger and more imposing than the rest. He was pale, with fangs, and his bloodshot eyes held more awareness. The top of his skull had been completely sawed off, showing the lobes of his brain pulsing, sparks of energy flitting through it.

"Gross," Cecilia mumbled, but Lexie was fascinated. She had a sudden and nearly overpowering urge to take the brain apart and figure out its components.

"You." His head twisted, and he was staring at Max. "You have finally come for your revenge."

"What did he say?" Max asked Cecilia.

She repeated the words, and Lexie glanced at Uncle Max. That was when she noticed how tense he was, even after they'd won the fight.

She also noticed how much his face had tightened, and how absolutely murderous he looked in that moment.

She glanced back at the zombie, then at Uncle Max again.

"He's the one you want to kill?" she asked Max in human tongue.

"No," Max responded.

"He wants to kill my master," The zombie said, speaking broken human language. Which meant that he could have spoken human this entire time and simply didn't, to be an asshole.

"Where is your master?" Lexie asked him.

"Not here." The zombie responded.

"Okay then. I'll just make myself at home." She started across the vast courtyard, walking over groaning bodies of the recovering zombies, waiting to see what the big one would do.

He must have been smarter than the rest because he didn't attack. He simply observed.

When Lexie went to the back, she saw that there was a sleek outhouse whose door had been secured with several locks and wheels, like a safe.

Two gargoyle statues stood beside it, and their eyes told her that they could potentially be alarms.

Lexie stopped. She activated Pvilycht's creature card, but only the ability portion, and used it on the door to examine its components.

She could see it, coming apart in her mind's eye, the bolts, the levers, the magic. But beyond that, it wasn't as easy to know how to unlock it.

She couldn't make much sense of it until she interacted with the object. Since she couldn't talk to it, she had to touch it somehow.

She reached forward, and Max said, "Wait."

She glanced at him, and he held up a little blinking orb in his hand. He tossed it at the door, and it was immediately caught up in the crossfire of lightning-infused laser beams that attempted to slice it up. But the touch of the laser caused the bomb to detonate, blowing the gargoyles to pieces.

"That's an easier way to do it," Max told Lexie.

Lexie nodded and went to the door, laying her hand on the surface. Immediately, she could see the individual components inside, the locking mechanism, the wiring, the delicate set of spells that were designed to keep out anyone who wasn't the Supreme.

She disengaged each lock one by one, and when she was done, the door popped open, and they finally saw…

Nothing.

Or at least, it looked like nothing at first.

But right there, in the middle of the nothing, a rectangular plane, darker than dark, hung in the air. It looked like the same one that had allowed her access into the heart of Yasycht's dungeon.

It was the access point.

"How did this get here?" Lexie wondered aloud, but there was no one to answer her question. Uncle Max was scanning around the room for more traps, and Cecilia looked scared but also curious.

There was a trap in the ground near the door, but Lexie easily disengaged it.

Going through the door would probably lead her ot one of Yasycht's levels, the reward for which would be more animals in this dungeon.

But she didn't need to do that right now.

Ryn and Little Fae were fine.

Her priority was Uncle Max.

She glanced at him.

He didn't know what she planned to do yet. If he knew, he would never let her do it, so she would surprise him. He'd probably be resentful after the fact, but it was necessary.

He could not stay here with her. She couldn't become what she needed to become with him around.

So he had to go back to Earth, where he belonged.

To make it up to him, she would kill the zombie boss on his behalf. She didn't care much what he'd done, only that Max wanted him dead.

"Are you ready, Cecilia?" Lexie asked.

"Yeah, but I'll need to do some more calculations and run experiments with the door, though. Also need to know how to maintain a portal outside of myself."

"Take your time," Lexie said as she went out to check on the zombie guard who was still standing on top of the castle. Lexie used <Charades Champion> to read his body language, learning that he indeed wanted to stop her, but he didn't want to die like the rest. He'd rightly gauged that he wasn't too strong enough to face her now.

Perhaps he was waiting for reinforcements or for his master to return.

Lexie gave him a mocking smile as she leaned on the door and told Cecilia, "We have all the time in the world."

***

The Zombies did not attack again that night. Some of them healed as the sun rose, but they glared at Lexie and simply trudged back into the castle or wherever they'd come from.

When Lexie asked why the Zombies didn't hurt the other townspeople during the day, Uncle Max told her that the zombies had come to some sort of agreement with the rest of the species living here, telling them that they would not be haunted at night, as long as they stayed in their abode and didn't live in the forests.

The forests, of course, were reserved for humans and other lone species that had the misfortune of being dropped into this hellscape. Since those creatures didn't have the numbers and were not part of the 'native population', they were seen as free meat for the Zombies, who could freely hunt them while everyone was in their home, safe.

Of course, accidents still happened, and home invasions in town occurred when the zombies got desperate enough. But those were simply a necessary evil to be tolerated until the Supreme could discover land with more creatures for the zombies to eat.

Which was likely where he was off to now, according to Uncle Max.

Why everyone didn't just kill the zombies so they could live happily? That was the question. Uncle Max didn't have an answer for her.

He also told Lexie that zombies typically slept during the day.

These wounded ones didn't look very sleepy, nor did they look curious about what Lexie was up to. Perhaps they didn't care because they simply thought she was trying to go through the Challenge herself, which would benefit them in the long run.

On the way in, a few of them tried to sneak-attack Lexie, but she sent them flying almost immediately.

It had become something of a game for her to pass the time while Cecilia worked.

Meanwhile, Uncle Max kept glaring at the castle entrance as though he was itching to enter. He never did, though, and, in her boredom, Lexie was tempted to offer for them to go together, but she didn't want to leave Cecilia alone.

Eventually, Cecilia was done with her studying, and they started the practice of sending stones and random body parts of dead zombies through her newly minted portal.

For now, the experiments involved porting them into the courtyard, so they could see if they were getting it right.

Lexie let Cecilia focus on maintaining the portal while she focused on isolating the right destination. She used her soul card three times, accessing Yasycht's power each time and trying to use Pvilycht's decoding power to sense exactly where the stone would be going.

DECODE proved Lexie's earlier theory was right. The farther away she had to travel, the deeper into Yasycht's essence she had to go. She'd only barely touched his power before, which was why she'd been transported to an adjacent plane that was connected to her previous dungeon.

Had she gone deeper, she would have been able to teleport farther.

But the deeper she went, the more complicated it was to understand exactly what she was looking at.

There were rungs of power made out of chaotic spheres, and the first rung gave her access to the base doors, the places that were close to her.

Even within that first rung, it was hard to isolate exactly where she needed. There were so many places defined as 'close to her' that her discovery almost meant nothing.

But it wasn't exactly nothing.

Lexie also discovered that the deeper you went, the more metaphysically complex everything got. That was when you started to teleport into other dimensions, other time periods, other planes like the dream world and the Eldritch Realm.

When she got confused, Lexie began to talk to Yasycht, knowing the interaction made DECODE work better.

"Am I ready?" she asked herself and him. "Am I ready to face you yet?"

She thought he wouldn't answer, but she heard his voice loud and clear. "It's not just me you must face. It is also those who keep me captive."

"The Fae?"

"Both the Light and the Dark. But you can free me. Or you can become a part of me."

Become part of him? Like he would eat her?

An Eldritch had tried to eat her once, and Naem had denatured it. But somehow, she felt that it wouldn't be that easy with Yasycht.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Lexie suddenly remembered the warning human-Lexie had given her when it told her she would have to choose between moving forward or backward very soon.

It told her that she couldn't stay in the dungeon for too long, otherwise she would be incorporated into its landscape. Was that what Yasycht was referring to?

Was that what had happened to the creatures she'd fought at the entrance of the dungeon? They were simply mindless drones controlled by the dungeon, forced to play its game with no hope for escape.

Did that happen in this dungeon, too?

Was that why Yasycht's tests were endless, and the ones, like that on the mountain, encouraged endless warfare? It wasn't just for its entertainment.

It might also be because the dungeons were eventually digesting their inhabitants and absorbing them, to use them at a later date? Perhaps as monsters to protect treasures in the outer dungeon?

Huh.

Did that mean Yasycht had been trying to devour her? Or was it Neqal? He wanted to steal her power and let her die in the dungeon.

But why wasn't he coming to kill her himself? Was he afraid of her? Or was it Naem holding him back?

Why? It wasn't like Naem cared about her.

So many questions, so few answers.

But the interaction with Yasycht did help her learn more about slowing the images in her head so she could focus more clearly on them.

She even figured out how to use Ryn's weaving power card to thread and call forward the image she needed most, the courtyard.

It almost hurt to add another card to the mix, but it worked.

But, it also didn't.

There were many images of the courtyard. How did she know which one was the right one?

Not just the right one. The right one in the right dimension at the right time.

It reasoned that the one that felt closest to the base was probably the right one, but even that gave her numerous options, numerous minidimensions.

This would not be easy at all.

Lexie picked one of the courtyard scenes and tried it.

The first attempt did not send the rock into the courtyard. The second didn't either. Neither did the third.

Lexie didn't use the card back-to-back. She left spaces in between each trial, enough for her headache to subside and her soul to steady.

They were taking one such break near midnoon, and Lexie left the outhouse to find a whole crowd of creatures on the compound.

In front of them was Uncle Max, who was arguing with Sly. The rest of he creatures looked mostly reptilian, or some other kind of animal humanoid.

A few gnomes here and there, too.

When they saw Lexie coming, they backed up, like she was some kind of monster.

"What's going on?" Lexie asked her Uncle Max, and he gave her a wry look.

"The townspeople are concerned that you've come to destroy them."

"Me?" Lexie frowned. "But I didn't even do anything to them yet."

"Yes, but you devastated most of the zombie population overnight, and it seems not everyone's comfortable with that."

"Who's not comfortable?" Lexie asked, genuinely wanting to know, but no one came forward with the accusation.

Instead, one of the other lizard people shoved Sly, urging him forward. They nodded for him to speak.

"Erm, you see," he coughed and laced his reptile hands together. "You see, it's a very delicate ecosystem we have here, one that's prone to disaster if the scale tips too far to one side. Outsiders tend to tip that scale, which is why most of the townspeople don't like having them, even though we sometimes tolerate their presence if they do not cause too much damage." Sly eyed Max. "But we've never had an outsider do..." He gestured to the courtyard. "...this, before."

Lexie raised an eyebrow.

"Not to say I blame you, but it's just that we have limited resources here. It's not just food. There's a limited amount of everything: air, space...magic. Just because the dungeon is stagnant does not mean life remains that way. Such stagnation is counter to nature, and it makes magic stale and everything finite. We force things to continue so that we sustain ourselves. We have to create a sort of ordered chaos within our ecosystem, or we will die."

"You create your own chaos?"

"Yes. It was the Supreme that warned us of this," he continued. "He is very wise and knew that if we did not create chaos, then the magic of this place, which keeps everything alive, would die. And we will die with it."

Ah.

So that was how stagnation led to chaos. The dungeon essentially used its captives to feed its magic while it slept.

Lexie tutted. Shame on it. Lazy behavior.

"Now that you have killed the zombies," he continued. "The Supreme will find something more treacherous to take its place, and we are not sure we can negotiate with it as we negotiated with these ones."

Lexie glanced at Uncle Max, who was watching Sly. "So you sacrificed those to the Challenge, not just because of the animals. You needed them to fight and die for their chaos to feed this dungeon."

"I am not proud of it," Sly said. "And I have helped as much as I could, but I need to survive too."

Lexie thought about it. "I will take care of it. When the treacherous thing comes, I will ensure that they negotiate with you."

Sly breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Lexie. Your Uncle was right."

"Right about what?"

"I told him, a long time ago, that you would make a very good benevolent dictator," Uncle Max said as he reached out and ruffled her hair. "Well, mostly benevolent. Are you guys done here? We need to eat something."

"I don't know. I want to keep trying."

"We can try again after you eat."

"We will bring you food!" Sly suggested. "Of course! It's the least we could do."

And then, before their eyes, the crowd melted away, dispersing into the market and returning a few moments later with baskets of food that Lexie couldn't identify.

It didn't matter. She'd eaten all manner of strange things anyway.

Lexie ate in the outhouse with Cecilia and Max, who scarfed everything down after checking it with poison drops.

"They're very timid," Lexie said. "You told me the creatures of this village are terrifying."

"They are. They just happen to be more terrified of the incoming treacherous calamity they will be subjected to, and they will do anything to appease it so they get a fair deal."

Lexie nodded, but Uncle Max was still watching her, a growing smile on his face.

"You have no idea what I mean, do you?"

Lexie shook her head.

"Think about it."

Lexie did, and she replayed the conversation in her head.

"They think I'm the calamity, don't they?" she asked Uncle Max.

"Yup." He chomped on what looked like hard bread.

Lexie didn't know how to feel about that. Once upon a time, when she was a younger Eldritch, she would have enjoyed being feared. But now...

Now, she wasn't sure.

That seemed to be a constant state of being for her.

You will enjoy it again. Once you get rid of Max and Cecilia and your last human connections. Then you will be happy to be Eldritch again.

Eldritch are powerful. Edlrtich are pure. Eldritch are excellent.

'"Uncle Max?"

"Yeah."

"Why do you want to kill the Supreme?"

He paused before answering. "He killed the Elf who saved my life. I saw him myself, murdering him in cold blood, in the forest. I don't know why. I couldn't understand what they were talking about, but I think it concerned another creature the Elf had saved. Or maybe the Supreme was mad that they'd saved me. Either way, he died, and I vowed to avenge his death." He sighed. "I know it sounds stupid. I didn't know the Elf that well anyway, but I just felt like it was all my fault. I had to make it right somehow, and that was the only way I knew how."

Lexie stared at him after he was finished. His eyes reflected his sorrow and anger, but short of offering to kill the Supreme again, she didn't know how to comfort him.

Perhaps Cecilia would.

Lexie turned to Cecilia, who sighed and said, "I know how you feel." She picked at the fabric of her loose cotton pants. "I already told Lexie this, but I should tell you too, because I don't want to live with the guilt anymore."

"Guilt of what?"

"I'm the cause of Lara's death."

Max was speechless. Cecilia continued.

"The only reason she stayed in that dungeon that long, even though the dungeon was acting strange and there was no healer for backup, was to find me. That was what the mission had been about. I'd been stuck and couldn't get out, and I sent her an SOS. She came into the dungeon to get me out, but it was all a trap."

"Set up by who?"

"John."

Max's body locked up. His eyes flared. "You mean that Vulcan asswipe?"

Cecilia appeared surprised. "You know him?"

"Know him? He's the reason I was trapped in the dungeon in the first place! He–" Max bit off the words and instead released a litany of creative vulgar phrases. "Wait, is he the reason you couldn't leave too?"

Cecilia nodded slowly. "Yeah. I guess that's his MO."

Lexie vaguely remembered Vulcan, a man of average height and average demeanor, wearing what looked to be a pirate costume.

"God, my only regret is not being able to kill him."

"You still could," Cecilia said quietly, and Lexie shot her a look, warning her not to alert Max of what was coming.

Cecilia pressed her lips together in chagrin.

Thankfully, Max was too incensed and caught up in his own murderous thoughts that he wasn't paying any attention to them.

"That's not your fault, Cece," Max said finally. "That bastard is tricky."

"But it is my fault. The only reason I was in that dungeon anyway was that I was learning Alchemy with a man I should never have been talking to in the first place."

"The Alchemist?" Max asked, and she nodded shamefully, putting her hands over her face.

"I was just so tired of being powerless," she whispered. "Of always needing someone to save me. Of being smart but having nothing else to show for it. I wanted...I wanted, for once, to be the strong one. To have magic. To be special. And he convinced me that I was."

"You are special," Max said, in that brash tone. "You were an Engineer. I'm a tinkerer too, and I don't know too many people who can create the things you can. And you worked for the freaking ISTS. It's harder to get hired there than it is to be elected a world leader."

She gave him a half smile. "Thanks."

"No problem." He shoved a whole branch of what looked to be lettuce leaves into his mouth. "I really should have killed him."

Lexie agreed.

After the meal, Lexie and co. went back to it.

They finally managed to port the stone to the courtyard, but it had felt completely random. Nothing had jumped out to her about that courtyard picture out of the rest of the other ones. It was simply by trial and error, which wasn't good enough.

But she couldn't give up.

Come on, Lexie. You're a genius. You can figure it out.

Maybe not today, though.

They spent another night and day attempting it, and Lexie would have kept going, but Max and Cecilia were tired, and they couldn't sleep comfortably in the Zombie's manor.

So Cecilia teleported them to Max's cave that third night, so they could get some rest.

While they slept, Lexie kept thinking.

The crux of the problem she was facing was exactly the same as Naem had warned about with teleporting through dreams. The microdimensions. It was easy to get lost in them.

If only there were a way for her to link objects from the same microdimension together.

That way, she would only throw the stone at a picture that matched the same dimension.

She had a faint idea of something that might work.

Ryn's skill could see soul covers, essentially identifying aspects of the soul. Did that include the age of the soul and what dimension it came from?

And though objects didn't have souls, could Lexie do the same thing for a rock?

Lexie decided to contact Ryn through Pvilycht and instructed him to create a cellphone like the one she had, using whatever materials he could find.

She thought it would take him time, but he did it within minutes, saying that he had some experience with a similar artifact. Then he handed it to Ryn, and Lexie spoke to her.

"Are you safe?" she asked first.

"Safe is relative," Ryn answered, while her breathing sounded labored.

"I'll be back soon," Lexie told her. "But I had a question."

"I will answer it in just one moment."

Lexie waited until Ryn was done fleeing from whatever she was fleeing from, and then she laid out her entire thought process and the challenges she was facing with teleportation, in all the detail that Ryn would like.

When she was done, Ryn said, "Hmm. That's an interesting premise and a fascinating solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem. It almost reminds me of–"

"Ryn."

"Oh, yes. To answer your question as directly as possible, objects on their own do not have soul essences as they are not alive. Some objects, however, particularly objects vital to or frequently worn by an individual, do sometimes take on that individual's essence."

Okay. She could work with that.

"What about places? Do they have essences?"

"Places take on the essence of the people there. But the identifying essence would depend on the one reading the place. You will automatically be drawn to the essence of the one most important to you, and that will stand out the most."

"Hmm." Maybe their ending up in the forest with Uncle Max hadn't been a complete coincidence after all.

Maybe she'd subconsciously recognized the importance of this place by virtue of who was here. She could have felt his essence somehow in Yasycht's mind, or maybe Cecilia had read it. Maybe it was a joint effort, identifying someone close to both of them.

That link had tugged them into this dungeon, so that was where they appeared.

But all that still felt random because Lexie had no idea how she did it, and there were too many questions attached. Not to mention, it would be dangerous to try to replicate without understanding it fully.

"Okay," Lexie said. "So if I took an object with an individual's essence on it, and a place with that same essence, would I be able to match them together?"

"You might. Do you remember the skill I taught you about how to bring attracting particles together to create water from air?"

"Yes." She had a card for that, too.

"It might help to have a similar technique."

Lexie thought about it, and the intent simply floated in her mind.

LIKE TARGETS LIKE

Without further ado, Lexie hung up with Ryn and began creating the card. It was a card that would read essences together, and would attract that with the strongest matching essence. Lexie figured that she could use that to draw the picture that was closest to their own dimension, time, and all of that.

She tried the card first thing the next day, not using a rock, but instead using Max's gun. It was his Beretta, his favorite one, and Lexie used the card to read the essence on it, and also that on the eyepatch.

Then, when she entered the trance with Yasycht, she called for the place in the dungeon that best matched the essences.

She saw the forest. Saw Sly's home. Saw a variety of different places that she did not recognize

Then she saw it. The cave. The entrance.

Earth.

She'd found the door.

Right as she did, her head pulsed, and she removed herself from Yasycht's core in time to hear Max say, "Good thing you're back. The Supreme is here. And he brought company. Lots of it."

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