“—olm. Colm. Wake up.”

Somebody was shaking me. Then somebody slapped me. Not hard. Not soft, either.

I opened my eyes. Agnes was kneeling over me with her hand up, ready to go again.

“Oh, thank Althea.” She grabbed me and hugged me so hard my ribs creaked. Then she let go, sat back, and punched me in the arm.

“Ow.”

“One touch,” she said.

“In my defense—”

“You don't have one.”

Fair. I sat up. My head felt like somebody had packed it full of wet sand.

We weren't outside anymore. We were in a hallway. The walls were dark red brick, the color of old wine, and they curved away in both directions. A thin layer of purple mist covered the floor, ankle deep, not moving at all. Same smoke as the door, I figured. Just a lot less of it.

“Where are we?”

“Inside, I think.” Agnes had her lantern back. She'd also found her prayer book, and she was holding it against her chest like a shield. “I woke up a little before you. There's no circle.”

She meant a teleport circle. When a trap zaps you somewhere, it leaves a ring burned into the floor where you land. Everybody knows that. I checked under us anyway. Brick and mist. That's it.

“So how did we get in here?”

“I was hoping you'd know.”

“I was unconscious.”

“So was I, Colm. That's why I was hoping.”

Okay.

I stood up. My legs worked. My sword was still on my back. My pack was still on my shoulders. Whatever brought us in here hadn't bothered to rob us, which was either good news or very bad news.

“We can't just sit here,” I said. “Let's walk until something happens.”

“Which way?”

I pointed left. No reason. Left felt lucky.

We walked. For a long time, nothing happened. The hallway kept curving, the mist kept not moving, and the only sound was our boots. Mine squished a little. The hole.

Then a door showed up on the right side. Plain wood, with a torch burning in a holder on each side of it.

“That wasn't there,” Agnes said.

“It's there now.”

We both looked at it. It just sat there, being a door.

“We're not opening that,” I said. “First rule of dungeons. Don't open a door you don't need to open.”

“You have a lot of rules for someone who just touched a door.”

I didn't answer that. I took one of the torches off the wall, though, because more light seemed smart. Agnes took the other one. Now she had a lantern, a torch, and a prayer book, and she looked like the world's most nervous parade.

More doors showed up after that. One every few minutes, always on the right, always with two torches. We left them all alone. Agnes counted them under her breath. I hummed to fill the quiet until she asked me, very politely, to please stop.

The bricks never changed. The mist never moved. After a while I stopped being able to tell if we were going anywhere at all. My feet hurt. The hole in my boot was getting bigger. I'd started thinking about that eleven copper like it was a lot of money.
Then Agnes stopped walking.

“Colm. Look.”

She was pointing at a door on the right. Plain wood. Same as all the others. Except on each side of it was an empty torch holder.
I looked at the torch in my hand. Then at hers.

“That's ours,” she said. “We took those.”


“Maybe somebody else took them.”

“Who?”

“A different, very unlucky guy named Colm.”

She did not laugh. “That's fourteen doors. We've gone in a circle.”

I looked down the hallway one way. Then the other. Same bricks. Same mist. I had no idea how long we'd been walking. It felt like hours. It might've been more.

“Okay,” I said. “New plan. We open a door.”

“You just said—”

“I said don't open a door you don't need to open. Now we need to.”

Agnes looked at the door. Then at me. Then she held her torch up higher, which I took as a yes.

“If something in there eats you,” she said, “I'm not healing you.”

“Yes, you are.”

She sighed. “Yes. I am.”

I pulled my sword off my back and put my boot against the door, the good boot, just in case.

“On three,” I said. “One… two…”

I kicked it on two.