The passage is eerily empty as we descend; I’m surrounded by the slow drip of moisture from the slick walls as the algae spreads in patches across the floor, making footing treacherous. The dungeon breathes. I can feel the air pulsing back and forth rhythmically, warm and moist. I’m used to the smell now.

  I’m nervous at missing another trap or being ambushed by some crazed monster so I’m slower than I could be. Aviela doesn’t press me to move faster, content to stroll behind without a care.

  “Aren’t you worried about traps?” I ask her as my nerves fray.

  “Of course not. That’s your job.”

  “What if I miss one?”

  “You won’t.”

  “But what if I do?”

  She sighs. “Then I’ll say some nice words over your resting place and clear the dungeon on my own. You forget that I was doing this long before we met.”

  I grumble into silence and follow the passage, content to let the layered lines cast by my eye lead me on. The change in the air is gradual; it becomes cooler, the echo of our footsteps bounds back to us distorted and I slow. I scan every surface with my real eye and false for any sign of a trap but it is in vain.

  “Blazing sun.” I step into a cavern the size of a mountain. The ceiling is hundreds of feet over head, the walls the same away in all directions, and the ground falls away into a vast pit filled with spires of rock and a thick, milky mist.

  “I don’t like the look of this.” Aviela walks to the edge of the pit and kicks a rock into it. We both stare, blinking, as the rock skitters along empty air until suddenly it drops into the deep.

  “That’s not right.” I sink to my haunches and peer at where the rock had traveled. “How did it stay up?”

  Aviela lets out a huff of air through her nose, drops her pack to the side, and sits back against it. “Puzzle. You’re up.”

  “What do you mean, puzzle? I’m up? I don’t…you expect me to just.” I point out at the chasm. “What, get us across? I don’t have wings.”

  “This is part of training your intellect, little acolyte, and right now you’re not impressing me.”

  I stare at her. Smug. Comfortable. Completely and totally unhelpful. Maybe it will be just like finding an obelisk?

  It isn’t.

  I follow her lead and toss a stone, only for mine to tumble into the canyon unimpeded by whatever force had halted hers. I try again. It skitters. And again. It falls. Each spot is different. I toss another and this one falls too; it falls upwards. I gape as the stone tumbles up a few feet above my head and sticks there as if the world has turned itself upside down and an invisible hand holds it true.

  “Do you see that?” I point at my find. Aviela cracks open one eye.

  “Have you solved it yet?”

  “No.”

  “Then quit yapping and get back to it.”

  “Can you solve it?”

  Aviela groans and sits up to look at me. “Yes, I can solve this. It might take me some time and a bit of trial and error, but I’ll solve it.”

  “It’s just…” I rub a hand through my hair and my fingers tug on knots that I’ll need to finger-brush loose. “I’ve never had to think like this before. Up until a few weeks ago all I was good for was tagging along with my tribe and trying not get killed. I don’t get this stuff. I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “You know the architects give us memories with the cocoons; they give us words, knowledge of tools, all those kinds of things? They’ve given you this too. Somewhere deep inside that empty head of yours is a mind that works; one that can solve this and get us across.”

  Aviela sits back against her pack and tucks her chin into her chest. “Don’t wake me until you’ve got it, all right? Start with what you know and go from there.”

  “What I know?” I mutter under my breath and toss a stone from hand to hand. “What do I know?”

  I toss the stone as far and as hard as I can. It sails through the air in an arc, then changes trajectory to arc upwards, then down, until it is caught inexorably in the grasp of gravity and tugged into the abyss halfway across.

  “So. What do I know?” I hunker down on my haunches and gather more small stones about myself. “Some stones fall down. Some stones fall up. Some stones stop like there’s something holding them from falling down; and some stones stop the same way going up.”

  Gravity is wrong. Just like the trap into which I’d stumbled, the gravity out across the abyss is odd. Some places it is inverted. It is not a great enough revelation to help me figure out the puzzle; Aviela probably saw it at a glance and she hadn’t even been recently stuck to the ceiling.

  “Up and down don’t work right. So. If I find all the downs that don’t let the stone fall, then we can get across.” I smile. Genius.

  I take my pile of stones and toss them one by one until I find a spot near to the edge that is down and solid. I glance back at Aviela; her eyes are closed and she is either pointedly ignoring me or she is actually sleeping.

  My next stone I roll forwards; it skitters along an invisible surface for a while and then drops suddenly into nothing. Helpfully, my new eye traces its motion in a faint blue line, at least until it falls.

  I try again, this time my stone is diagonal to the first and zips upwards after a third of the distance. It clangs to the ceiling with the sound of stone on stone. I try the opposite direction and that one goes up too, but it stalls at a few feet above my head.

  My head hurts. I keep tossing rocks, trying to parse some logic out of the strange puzzle. Each of the solid places seems to be a square of one meter on a side. Each vacant space is the same size but absent of any platform.

  No matter the direction I walk with the rocks, they eventually tumble to the ceiling or into the chasm and I’m none the wiser as to the true path.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Aviela springs to her feet as a klaxon shrieks through the room; the light about us turns from the harsh white of her conjured light to the deepest red. It’s as though I’ve been drenched in viscera.

  “What did you do?” Aviela demands, dropping into a fighting stance and conjuring two more balls of light.

  “Nothing. I was just throwing rocks like you did.”

  She frowns as if she doesn’t believe me. The chasm shimmers; all the stones that I’d landed on solid spaces, up or down, fall down into the depths and the whole chamber shudders. There’s a flash of darkness that washes over us, it’s only the strength of Aviela’s magic that pushes back the encroaching black.

  Then it’s done; the cavern returns to quiet and the black fades, the red recedes and it only us, standing on the edge of the abyss with clear air between us and the boss.

  Aviela tosses a stone which falls down. “That was solid before. Looks like it set itself a new path.”

  “What?” I throw my hands up and stomp across the dirt. “How is this fair? How am I supposed to find a path if they just change it! I was making progress too.”

  “Right. I’m sure you were just about to crack the whole thing open.”

  “I thought you believed in me?”

  Aviela drops back down and leans against her pack. “I do believe in you, Pik. This is training, remember, you’re supposed to struggle. It’s not like that big fellow from the last segment. You can’t just throw your body against this puzzle and come out stronger; you need to try, fail, try again until it clicks. That’s part of advancement; breaking through the limits that you’ve unknowingly put onto yourself.”

  “What if I can’t do it?”

  Aviela shrugs. “We go back, try something else.”

  “You wouldn’t solve it for us?”

  “No. That’s not the point of this dungeon. You need to do it or it has no meaning.”

  She’s true to her word; she leaves me to try and fail and try again while napping against her pack. Even when the world turns red again, twice, she doesn’t stir except to tap on the wall beside her and summon a water obelisk. I’m still awed by the ease at which this sector provides for its people. It would have been days of travel and hopeful exploration before my old tribe could have found one obelisk, only for it to be snatched away a day later.

  My eye, my new one, is the key to my understanding of the puzzle. I still cannot read the words that it displays, but I notice that it tracks the motion of each stone I throw. The lines are faint, barely perceptible, but every rock I toss appears as a track overlaid on the real world.

  Each time that I feel I’ve made progress I’m stymied by a change. I think that the diagonals alternate until they don’t. I think that there cannot be three the same in a row, and then there are. I think that there must be a path of logic until there isn’t. But there must be something out there that the architects have laid before me to solve.

  After the second shuffle I grow braver; they came with the same period between so I’m confident that another one won’t come along for some time. I can only throw rocks so far until they get stuck in some gravity or other so I need to go deeper out over the chasm to make progress.

  My first step is terrifying. I’ve walked narrow paths and scaled peaks, but this is different. I’m stepping out over nothing with an invisible floor beneath me. As much as I am certain that there is a solid platform, I still hesitate on the edge, rocking back and forth until I finally gain enough mental momentum to take the final step.

  “Right. Down, up.” I brace myself and sneak one foot out over the edge. Instantly I feel the tug of gravity upturned; the world wants me to fall upwards towards the rock that I used to test the path. “This is stupid.” I grumble and turn myself over on the small platform so that I’m leading with my legs as I push them out into the next space.

  I crumple against the platform and look up, which is down, into the chasm above me. “No, I hate this. This is so wrong. I can’t…”

  “You have it figured out yet?”

  “No!” I shout back to Aviela. “This is awful.”

  “You want to give up? We can go outside?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “That’d be worse. I’m trying something here.”

  “Right, I’ll leave you to it.”

  From there I’m lost again, one more step upside down and then there is only a void into which my stone falls. No matter the direction, I can only go two before it goes wrong. I backtrack and try more routes and every one ends in failure.

  I scramble back in a harrowing twist and turn of ups and downs and make it back just before the puzzle resets. I stare for a while; stumped, then return to tossing stones. There is only one spot that stops my stone from falling down; that and one solid place that stops it falling upwards.

  I blink. I hadn’t tried up. Why would I go up on my first step when there’s an easier path?

  It takes two more resets before I have a pattern.

  With the room still red around me at the third, I wake Aviela with a grin.

  “I’ve got it. I think I’ve got it. It alternates; starting with up, then up again, then down, but the down is to the side, then it’s up, then down, then up.”

  “That sounds like a lot of flipping up and down, are you sure?” Aviela stands and shrugs her pack onto her shoulders.”

  “Yeah, sure. I made it halfway. It’s a pattern. You go one more each time and it starts the pattern back at the beginning. You go up. Then up and down. Then up and down and up. It keeps going and every time it repeats you take the next space then turn sideways left then right.”

  “Right…”

  “Left first.”

  “You’re making my head hurt, Pik. Can you get us across or not?”

  “That’s what I’m saying, I can do it. I got halfway; there’s enough time to get all the way across if we go now.”

  “But not enough to turn back if your pattern breaks?”

  “I’m sure it’ll work.”

  Aviela pinches the bridge of her nose with two fingers and sighs. “Right. Let’s not waste any more time. Lead on.”

  I skip to the edge; I’ve tossed a stone already so I know where I’m going. I’m a dab hand at turning upside and down so my feet land on the upturned first solid space with a light thud. I toss a stone to the next space, even though I know it’s right, and drop down right after it.

  Aviela is unperturbed by the topsy turvy nature of the chasm puzzle and follows close behind me as I toss stones and take a step.

  Up.

  Up. Down.

  Up. Down. Up.

  Up. Down. Up. Down.

  Up. Down. Up. Down. Up.

  Aviela smiles as we progress. I’m unerring, each of my stones lands square in the centre of the next space and I step without waiting as I’m so certain.

  Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. I throw and step as one motion. My stone tumbles at my feet, still plastered up as I am prepared for a fall and I crumple to the ground, scrabbling for purchase as my sense of place is lost. I’m falling. I scream.

  A hand like iron pulls me back onto my place and I pant with fear, my eyes wide as I stare up into Aviela’s face.

  “The pattern broke?” She asks, levelly.

  “I don’t understand, it was perfect. It alternated.”

  “Wrong pattern.”

  I look back at my path outlined in blue by my new eye. It snakes back and forth just as I thought it should. Then I look ahead. It’s wrong. Is it? I pull myself to my feet and, with shaking hands, throw another stone.

  Up.

  I take another step and turn to my right. Another stone.

  Up. I can do this. The pattern is still there, it’s turns and counting, I can do that.

  Down. Up. Down. Up. Up. Up. A new pattern then? I’ve reached the end of my count and my head hurts from numbers I’ve never had to use before, not earnestly.

  Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Up. Up. Down.

  The stones save me on the unexpected change. I take the next step and turn.

  Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Up. Up. Down. Down.

  I step from the final solid piece and onto the other side of the chasm with my whole body feeling like I’d run for a day and a half.

  Aviela lands beside me with a crunch. “Looks like you solved it. How do you feel?”

  “I didn’t solve it, Aviela. I thought I did, but I don’t know what that pattern was at the end. If I hadn’t had the stones I wouldn’t have made it.”

  “You knew that it was a sequence, you might not have got the pattern just right, but there’s no shame in that. We’re across and you did it.”

  “I’d have fallen off and died if you hadn’t caught me.”

  She smiles. “What did we learn from that?”

  “That I should rely on others to make up for my weaknesses?” My eyes crinkle at the edges as I grin.

  “How about, wait for the bloody stone to land before throwing yourself into the abyss. Hubris, Pik. You should be full of that after your life. Be sensible.”

  “Yes mistress.”

  I’m in the air now. Aviela has grabbed me by the front of my shirt at my midriff and has lifted me off the floor.

  “We don’t have many rules for what we’re doing here, Pik. This whole apprenticeship thing. But let’s introduce one. Let’s never call me that again.”

  “Yes… teacher?”

  “Aviela. Just call me Aviela and don’t make this whole thing weird.”

  “Yes boss.”

  Aviela rolls her eyes but opens her fist and lets me tumble to the ground. I bound back to my feet, my grin unfaltering. I solved the puzzle. Kind of. Now for the rest of the dungeon.