Rose laid the tiny dress on her palm. The fabric was soft to the touch, a supple light-blue cotton lined with delicate pink embroidery along its edges, with a red belt stitched into its waist. Miniature flowers – in shades of pink and red and yellow – had been sewn into the hem, each with details so fine it was clear they had been painstakingly stitched by hand.

  “What do you think?” the stall keeper asked in a voice that was almost musical. She was a couple of inches taller than Rose and willowy beneath her violet dress. She had porcelain skin with an ageless quality to her face – she could just as easily have been fifteen as fifty. A narrow jaw rose into high cheekbones beneath exquisite green eyes, and long silver braids were tucked behind ears with tips that stretched to the top of the elf’s head.

  “It’s beautiful. Did you make it yourself?”

  “Everything you see here was made by me,” the elf said, sweeping her hand across the stall. Behind the dollmaker, tables had been lined with wooden stands, some holding hand-stitched dolls like Elsie, while others presented hand-carved wooden figures. Small outfits hung from pegs, while baskets brimmed with colourful balls of yarn and thread, several having knitting needles stuck through them.

  Rose swept her eyes around the stall. Behind her, Godfrey stood a little to her side as shoppers brushed past talking in excited tones or whispering in hushed murmurs as shopkeepers barked at them to come and have a look at their wares.

  Rose’s eyes fell on another dress, similar to the one in her palm, except with inverted colours. The dress was light-pink, the embroidery light-blue and the flowers were green, violet and blue.

  She was sure Elsie would love both.

  “How much is it?”

  “Two gold,” the shopkeeper sang.

  “And that one,” Rose pointed with her finger at the pink dress.

  “Two gold.”

  That seemed reasonable for the quality of the work. The details were so intricate that even if it was a little on the expensive side, the elf deserved it.

  “I’ll take them both,” Rose said, handing the dress in her palm back to the elf, who had a beaming smile on her face.

  “Thank you,” the elf said, turning to grab the other dress and began wrapping them in paper.

  “Miss?” she heard a young voice from behind her. “Please, miss?”

  She turned to see Godfrey with his arm across the chest of a young boy, dressed in rags, dirt streaked across his face.

  “Could you spare me some coin, miss?”

  “Please, miss.” She felt a tug on her sleeve and spun around to a second child, a girl no older than eight. Rose yanked her hand back.

  The shopkeeper had turned around too. “Hey! Be off with you now! Don’t make me call the city guard!”

  “We’re hungry, miss,” the first kid said. Rose shuffled a little to the side to get some distance from the girl on her left, but then she felt flows of mana in the air. Her eyes widened at the girl, but she had already begun to walk away. Rose whipped her head around. Two more children had appeared. Godfrey stood between her and them, both his arms out stopping them from getting closer to Rose.

  “I said, stay back,” Godfrey shouted. Passersby stopped, looking towards the commotion.

  “Please, miss,” the three kids ahead of her pleaded.

  Rose was about to draw upon mana but stopped herself. She’d left her staff behind. She wouldn’t be able to control the flows for the spell. She scanned the area looking for any hint of where the mana flows were coming from but just as quickly as it had appeared, it had gone. She glanced around. The girl who had tugged at her sleeve was nowhere to be seen. She turned back to Godfrey. The kids there were walking away.

  “Sorry, miss,” they said in unison. “We were only looking for something to eat.” Then they laughed in that way that children do when they’d done something mischievous. Rose narrowed her eyes as she watched them run off.

  Godfrey turned around and shrugged his shoulders. “Have to expect it when you’re in the market,” he said with a rueful smile.

  “That will be four gold, please,” the elf behind her said. Rose turned back to her and reached down to her waist for her money purse.

  It wasn’t there.

  She glanced down, patted her belt with both hands all around. She scanned the floor at her feet. She dropped to her knees, looked under the gap between the stall front and the ground. Nothing.

  She got back up, looked towards where the children had run off to, catching a fleeting glimpse of a small figure vanishing around a corner.

  Elliott reached out with his hand towards the dungeon entrance. If it would accept him, it would feel like that wormhole that had brought him here – the colourful door should reach out like a fluid, wrapping itself around him, sucking him in and spitting him out on the other side. But the swirling kaleidoscope of colour didn’t behave that way as his hand got closer. Instead, it continued to spin as his hand pressed against it like it was a solid door. It confirmed what Parek had said. It wouldn’t allow him to enter.

  He leapt back to where he had stood before and stared beyond Parek’s shoulder at the massive entrance of the dungeon. He was even more convinced that the entity inside was a god, so to speak. Definitely a being with power or knowledge beyond his own – after all, he’d never created a dungeon. He didn’t even know how. As powerful as he was, there were other magics out there that he didn’t know – dimensional magic being one of them.

  He glanced towards Elsie, who was marching along Isabel’s shoulder, her back straight, a conjured blue figure-hugging silk dress over her colourful stockings, and a tiny staff held to her side as she walked. It drew a smile to his lips. In some ways, Elsie was even more fearless than him. She was the reason he was convinced a god resided within the temple – a god that knew what Elsie was. The entrance had been designed to ensure that no living organic matter beyond the level of Adamantite could pass through the barrier.

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  But his sister wasn’t organic, though she was living.

  It could have been an oversight, sure. A coincidence from trying to keep everyone who was too powerful out, but then Elliott felt the spell would have stopped all living matter. Why would anyone specify organic matter? The fact that Aldric said the goddess Clea had summoned Elliott made him think that she knew Elsie would be with him. Why summon him if she knew he couldn’t enter the dungeon? Whoever this goddess was, she’d been planning for a long time. If the dungeon had been made six months ago, she likely had hoped to not need to summon Elliott, but she had built in a failsafe just in case.

  [Walls of Silence]. He placed it around him and Isabel, excluding Parek from the conversation.

  “What do you reckon?” he asked, as he nodded at his sister. Elsie was making it clear who she wanted going with her.

  “It’s going to be dangerous, even with Elsie there. Can she survive? If she fails, Elsie might get stuck. Do we even need this goddess?”

  “She apparently knows why we died,” Elliott said simply, meeting Isabel’s green eyes. His trusted friend nodded slightly, an understanding smile on her lips.

  “Well, if Elsie does get stuck, I have complete faith that you’ll find a way to get her out. Of course, that will probably entail sending me into danger, so I might need to go find somewhere to hide until it’s over,” Isabel winked at him.

  Elliott had a wry smile on his lips. “I’ll go get her. I need you to take Elsie to Tarnov. There are ten thousand soldiers there. If they didn’t take our message seriously, send them another one.”

  He dropped the [Walls of Silence].

  “Lyla,” he shouted over, as she completed another pyre. She’d managed to gather around a thousand dead so far. She looked over. “Parek’s going to help you. Bring the bodies, he can check for coin, then pile them up. I’ll be back shortly. And do not stand between these two chairs.” Elliott indicated his and Parek’s chairs.

  Lyla frowned slightly, but nodded. Elliott turned to Parek.

  “Same to you. You don’t want to be standing here.” The veteran made a small bow before walking towards the base of the marble stairs to join Lyla.

  Elliott turned to Isabel, pulling a small grey orb the size of a tennis ball from his waist. He created a [Portal Node] where they stood between the chairs. That’s why he’d warned the other two. They wouldn’t want to be standing there if the gateway suddenly opened. Portals weren’t the strongest magic, but the gateway would open no matter what. If something was in its way, it would be sliced clean through.

  After the [Portal Node] was set, Elliott poured mana into half of the orb’s surface, turning it silver, etching the metal with the [Portal Node] sigils that would link the orb to this portal. He poured more mana into the other half, which turned gold and had other sigils etched into the surface on that side. He handed the completed orb to Isabel.

  “Meet me back here in an hour.”

  Isabel made the orb disappear into her inventory and crouched down with Elsie holding on to her shoulder, the staff and blue dress gone. They sped off to the northwest.

  Elliott channelled mana into a line of sigils, matching the [Portal Node] he had created in the palace. The white light appeared on the ground, expanding into a screen slightly taller than him, then shimmered into an image of the living room in his quarters.

  He saw Rose and Korin sat in the carved wooden chairs by the marble fireplace at the far end of the room. Rose sat on the left facing the floor to ceiling windows while Korin sat opposite her. The girl seemed woeful, slouched in the chair with her legs stretched before her, her hands gripping the armrests as she glared at the ceiling above. Neither was aware of his presence as he stepped through the gateway and walked across the carpet towards them.

  “He’s going to think I’m an idiot,” Rose wailed, then dropped her head from glaring at the ceiling to glaring at Korin. “And you know what? He’d be right!”

  “You’re not an idiot,” the weary dwarf replied like they’d been having this conversation for a while. “They’re professional pickpockets. It could have happened to anyone.”

  “But it didn’t happen to anyone! It happened to me! And after he’d already warned me about them!”

  “You couldn’t have known they would use magic.”

  “No, but like an idiot, I left my staff here thinking I wouldn’t need it.”

  “Anyone can make mistakes,” Korin sighed.

  “Up until last night, I didn’t,” Rose whispered so quietly, Elliott had to strain his ear to hear her.

  “I already think you’re an idiot,” Elliott cheerfully called out as he got closer to them. “What’s happened?”

  They both looked at him. Colour rushed to Rose’s cheeks so they looked like two red apples on either side of her nose. Korin cast furtive glances at Rose but both of them remained silent.

  “Well?”

  “Why are you back?” Rose asked.

  “We’ll get to that. What happened?” Elliott repeated.

  Rose dropped her head and started examining the carpet at her feet.

  She mumbled something.

  “What?” Elliott said.

  “…los……pur….wasn’t my fault,” Rose mumbled again.

  Elliott raised his eyebrows at Korin.

  “She said she lost her purse but it wasn’t her fault.”

  “How did she lose it?”

  “Some kids pickpocketed her. Distracted her then used magic to take the purse.”

  Elliott frowned. “You sure it was kids?”

  Korin nodded.

  He didn’t press it any further. It was unusual, though. Children were rarely adept with magic. Even on Earth with the System. They just wouldn’t be trained enough or skilled enough before their teens.

  “Okay. Well, never mind that for now,” Elliott replied. “How would you like to go to the dungeon?”

  She lifted her head to meet his eyes. She blinked. Then blinked again. Then frowned. Then she turned to Korin, who looked no less confused than her, before turning back to Elliott.

  “The dungeon?”

  Elliott nodded at her. “I need you to go to the dungeon with Elsie.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need you to.”

  Rose shook her head. “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s the only one you’re getting.”

  She frowned, her lips pressed together. “Earlier you told me I’m not skilled enough or smart enough or strong enough and now you want me to go to the dungeon with Elsie?”

  Elliott fixed his eyes on hers. “I wasn’t wrong, was I? You’ve just lost a hundred gold to children, even after I warned you about them. You left your staff here because you thought others would protect you. You’ve lived a life being pampered and every need of yours taken care of.

  “You’ve always been surrounded by luxury like this,” he twirled his finger indicating their surroundings. “You have no idea what it takes to survive. But unfortunately, I need you to go to this dungeon and you’ll need to learn to survive. Otherwise, you don’t come back.”

  She remained silent a moment, eyes on the floor, but her lips were moving, almost as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t.

  “Spit it out. Don’t hold it in,” Elliott said.

  Rose’s head shot up, her eyes flashing with anger as she stared at him.

  He saw a tear fall.

  “SURVIVE?” she roared at him, standing from her chair, taking a step towards him with a closed fist. “All I’ve ever done is survive since the day you murdered my parents. Don’t talk to me about surviving. I’m here because of you. I’m in this mess because of you. Everything wrong with me is because of you.” Then she laughed. A melancholic laugh. “And you know what the worst thing is. Knowing that I have to stay with you if I want to survive here. It’s like a bad joke.”

  Korin shuffled his feet as he stared at the ground, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

  “Good,” Elliott said. “That anger you have inside you…that thirst for vengeance. Harness it. Use it. That’s how you survive. That’s how you prepare yourself to do what’s necessary.”

  “Why did you kill my parents?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Why did you kill them?”

  “Can you handle the truth? Are you ready for it?”

  Rose glared at the carpet beneath her, before turning back to Elliott.

  “Why do you need me to go to the dungeon?”

  “Isabel and I can’t enter. Only Elsie can. And people less powerful than us. I need someone she trusts to go with her. She asked for you.”

  Rose glanced over her shoulder at the circular oak table where a wad of coloured paper sat in front of the chair she had been on.

  “I’ll go with her,” Rose whispered. “For her. Not for you.”

  She turned back and met Elliott’s eyes. She put her feet together, arms by her side, fists clenched.

  “But first, I want you to tell me why you killed my parents.”