Little black pins materialised in Elsie’s hands as she gestured for them to stay behind the column. Rose and Parek nodded, as the little doll darted off towards the wider space running through the middle of the room. A moment after she stepped out from behind the column, beams started shooting in her direction, a shrill sound accompanying them as the thick bars of white light followed Elsie zigzagging across the ground to the columns on the other side. She was trying to take the attention of the spheres to herself.

  Rose watched the beams graze the columns then sweep across the floors and the walls, small chips and shards of blue stone exploding in clouds wherever the beams hit. The damage was negligible. She was confident they would be safe as long as they stayed out of sight. Parek had returned his sword to his sheath and ran a hand through his stubble as he kept his eyes on where Elsie had run.

  “We’ll be okay,” Rose said, though her heart pounded and her breathing was shallower than it should have been. “Elsie will take care of them – you’ve seen what she can do.”

  “Have you been in a dungeon before?” Parek whispered back. “They don’t work the way you want them to. I doubt it will be that easy.”

  Well, wasn’t he just a bundle of fun? He had a point though, and enough had happened in the past day to her that it would be sensible to get a better understanding of what they were dealing with. Besides, they needed to get to the door at the far end of the room. She turned away from the back of Parek’s head and glanced to her right. There was a large gap to the next column, then another similar gap to the wall beyond. Gaps larger than the width of the guardian spheres.

  She snatched her staff from the ground, fingers wrapping around the smooth wood as she stood and leant with her back against the column. She pulled mana through the invisible pores around her body, a torrent of lava and ice flooding through her. She forced the raging streams through the unseen mana channels deep within her limbs. The staff became her paintbrush through which she traced the required sigils in the air, painting on an empty canvas with thin, precise strokes of golden mana. Each line she drew hung in the air, each arced streak lingered, each shape persisted until the pattern was completed and the mana awakened, golden strokes glowing.

  Where the sigils had been, a small mirror materialised into existence, the golden mana threads dissipating. She used it to check the far end of the room, in the gap between the columns. The sphere that had been there was gone.

  They weren’t static then. It must have moved towards Elsie.

  Keeping her eye on the mirror, she whispered over her shoulder. “Do you think we should try to move to the other side?”

  The response didn’t come right away, so she glanced towards Parek, who was peering around the edge of the column. There were no beams coming in their direction, but she could still hear shrill whines so she assumed Elsie was engaged in battle somewhere out there. She was about to tap Parek on the shoulder when a glimpse of movement caught her eye, towards the ceiling on the opposite side of the room, past the last row of columns.

  She looked up.

  A five-pronged dark-grey claw shot forth faster than any mechanical arm had the right to. The claw dug into the ceiling, blue debris crumbling to the floor below. Another arm followed soon after, and a moment later, the spherical body of the mechanical guardian pulled itself forward on those arms, gears whirring and grinding. The eye was focused on the wall ahead of it, but once the guardian had cleared the column, its spherical body began to turn slowly in their direction. Parek hadn’t noticed.

  She slapped his shoulder, nodded at the guardian and shouted.

  “MOVE!”

  She swung around, grabbing Parek’s arm and dragging him behind her, though she didn’t need to. He ran faster than she did, rolling around her to her right side, his back slamming against the column. Both of them let out a deep breath.

  This time, there was no beam aimed at them. Maybe the guardians needed to set themselves, or couldn’t move and attack at the same time. Whatever it was, the fact they could move complicated matters further for them. They couldn’t wait around for Elsie.

  The mirror she had conjured floated ahead of her and she directed it to her left. The guardian was slowly moving in their direction, using those monstrous legs to hook into the ceiling and drag itself forwards. It wasn’t particularly fast, pulling forwards on its front two legs, then having to wind in its back ones. The eye in the middle moved slightly, focusing on the small mirror, but it didn’t begin to glow, instead continuing towards them.

  They had enough time before it got to them, but they needed to move soon.

  “There’s a large mirror over there,” Parek said.

  Rose pulled her small mirror to her and followed Parek’s gaze. There was roughly six metres between the column ahead of them and the next one to their right, and on the wall beyond, in the gap between the two, was a mirror half as tall as the spheres.

  “We need to get to the other side of the room – to the exit,” Rose said.

  “It’s not going to be that easy,” Parek repeated, turning to her. “It won’t be open. We need to complete some sort of task to open the door. That’s how dungeons work. You enter a room. You complete a task. You move on.”

  “But it would still be better to be on that side, right? Elsie takes care of them, while we–”

  She peered beyond Parek’s shoulder and trembled, her feet frozen to the floor. Parek couldn’t see what she was looking at, but he froze too seeing the terror in her eyes. While they’d been talking, at the far end of the room, two guardians had snuck into the row that they were standing in. One was on the ground squeezing through, its outer edges brushing the posts at its side. Above it, another hung sideways, its metallic-grey claws burrowed into a column.

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  Both eyes were focused on them, a faint white glow beginning on the outer edges of the black discs and working inwards, glowing ever brighter. A shrill hum began to sound.

  Rose didn’t even think, running at Parek. His eyes widened. She rugby tackled him to the ground, wincing when her chest clashed into his mail breastplate as the beams passed over their heads. She could feel an intense heat above her, like she was a trussed up chicken stuck under a grill.

  She looked up. The eyes were slowly moving the beams in their direction. Parek sighed, his head tilted back as he saw the guardians.

  They had no time to adjust.

  “Guess neither of us get out of here alive,” Parek said.

  If Rose thought hitting Parek’s breastplate hurt, she yowled when something booted her backside, sending her and Parek sliding across the floor to come to a stop next to the second column closest to the wall. She looked back to see Elsie, pink lips curved into a delightful smile like she was having the time of her life. The white beams stopped and disappeared before they hit Elsie.

  Rose gasped. The beams stopped. Why? Then she frowned as she stared across the room. There was another mirror as big as the one behind her on the opposite side.

  “Want to get off me now?” Parek whispered. She tilted her head down, the middle-aged man’s nose almost touching hers. Blood rushed to her face. She jumped up, snatching her staff off the floor, her conjured mirror hovering by her side.

  “Sorry! Sorry!”

  Parek stood up after her. “No need to be sorry. You saved my life.” He turned to Elsie and mouthed a thank you.

  Rose used her small mirror to check the gap between the row of columns they had just been standing in. The guardian that had been hanging was clawing its way around the column, moving towards the wall. The other one was walking towards them, its eye focused on Elsie but it wasn’t attacking.

  “Elsie. How many of these things are there?” Rose asked.

  Elsie held up six fingers, then she whirled and motioned stabbing and slashing attacks with her hands, then her lips curled downwards.

  “What does that mean?” Parek whispered.

  “She was attacking the guardians but she wasn’t able to damage them.”

  It was like Parek had said. Dungeons don’t work the way they wanted them to. If this was outside, Elsie would have had no trouble. Rose moved her small mirror to the gap between the columns and the wall. The guardian hanging on the last column on the far end was moving towards the ceiling, but Rose’s eyes were drawn to two more mirrors against the wall. One between the fourth and fifth column, and one between the seventh and eighth.

  She glanced at the mirror opposite.

  “The guardians have specific targets,” Rose announced. Elsie gave her a thumbs up. Of course she would already know that when they wouldn’t attack her back.

  “Okay,” Parek agreed. “Maybe two for each of us?”

  Elsie nodded.

  Rose turned to the mirror nearby. “There’s the mirror opposite and I can see two more along the wall on this side. If we assume there’s mirrors opposite those two on the other side as well…”

  “…you’re thinking we can use them?” Parek said.

  Rose looked at him. “If Elsie can’t damage them, maybe they can damage themselves?”

  She opened herself to mana again, painting sigils behind the mirror to move it but it wouldn’t budge.

  “We need to move it physically. Magic won’t work.”

  Elsie bounded past them, turning her head at Rose with a wink and a smile as she ran towards the large mirror. Rose glanced in her smaller one. The guardian on that side was crawling along the ceiling, eye on Elsie. It was at the sixth column. Rose shifted the mirror to the other side. The guardian there was slightly ahead, drawing alongside the fifth pair of columns. She glanced to the ceiling of the wider space between the two sides of the room. She could just about see the tip of a claw of the third guardian.

  “She can’t move it,” Parek said. Rose turned to see Elsie pulling at the corner of the mirror but it didn’t move at all. Elsie turned around, pointed at Parek and beckoned him over with a finger. He hesitated to move. Rose shifted her mirror again to that side. The guardian was at the fifth column.

  “Just go – she’ll make sure you don’t get hit,” Rose said.

  Parek turned as if to disagree, then his eyes widened. She looked up to see the third guardian edging closer, one leg stretching forwards and its claw digging into the ceiling.

  Parek ran to Elsie a few metres away. Rose watched her mirror but the guardian’s eye wasn’t beginning to glow. Its target was her. And if they were right that two were targeting each of them, that meant that either the one between the columns walking towards her or the other one on the ceiling between the two sides of the room was also coming for her.

  “Hurry!” she screamed, as the guardian on the ceiling to her left put forth its second leg. It would pop out any moment now.

  Parek grabbed the mirror and was able to move it without any problems. It hovered away from the wall with the slightest of tugs. Quickly, he turned it around to face the guardian crawling towards him and Elsie.

  The guardian to Rose’s left, on the ceiling in the middle had poked its sphere out and the eye was turning. She dove to join Parek and Elsie behind the mirror, then the three of them stepped backwards, Parek tugging on the back of the mirror until they were alongside the first column, out of sight of the other guardian.

  “Let me see something,” Rose said, walking closer to the mirror. She pulled on it but it didn’t budge. Elsie tried too and still it wouldn’t budge. Parek barely pulled and it moved back slightly.

  “The mirrors can only be moved by me,” he said.

  “We have three of them coming towards us. The one ahead is targeting me,” Rose said.

  Parek looked towards her and pursed his lips, his brows furrowed.

  “I have an idea. I’ll turn the mirror. You stand there until it’s ready to shoot, then the doll will pull you back and I’ll spin the mirror to reflect the beam. What do you think?”

  She repositioned her smaller mirror to the adjacent row to see where the second guardian – walking between the rows of columns – was. It had almost reached the third column, but even more worrying was the third guardian on the ceiling was also coming into view. They were running out of time. If they took any longer, they’d be cornered.

  “Do it,” she shouted, gripping her staff. Her heart was pounding, her breathing loud and fast. If they miscalculated, hopefully Elliott’s shield would save her. Parek turned the mirror to its side.

  The guardian crawling on the ceiling towards them stopped, its eye focusing on Rose and that faint glow started on the outer edge of its black disc – a ring of white light creeping inwards. The shrill hum began too. Elsie stood on her other side, ready to push her.

  A quick thought passed through her mind that maybe she was becoming as insane as Elliott was. Then another thought. Maybe that’s what it took.

  The build-up lasted no longer than a second, the guardian’s eye fully white as the hum rose to a whine. A beam of white light as large as the guardian shot out, but Elsie was faster, shoving Rose back as the beam screamed towards her face. Parek’s timing was perfect, the mirror spinning into place as Rose stumbled behind it.

  A monstrous clang rang in her ears, echoed between the columns. Heat bent around the edges of the mirror like burning fingers grasping at them.

  And just as suddenly, the hum cut-off and only the heat lingered.

  Quickly, she directed her small mirror to the side of the big one, turned it at just the right angle to see what had happened.

  The beam was gone and her heart sank.

  The guardian still crawled towards them.