Eugene stood at the threshold of the unknown, one hand resting lightly on the cool, smooth stone of the wall beside him. The air inside Syzzyzzy's lowest level hung heavy with dust and a faint metallic scent, but Eugene no longer felt the sharp fear he once had. This place, strange as it was, belonged to Krungus. That fact gave him an odd, stubborn confidence. He did not feel like an intruder anymore.
He thought about how far he and Krungus had come. When they first met, Eugene had barely understood magic, barely understood himself. Now he had fought alongside the old wizard, survived battles that would have torn lesser men apart, and learned lessons that felt stitched into his bones. Krungus was not just a powerful wizard anymore. He was a friend, gruff and infuriating, but loyal in the ways that mattered most. Eugene smiled faintly, the memories flickering through him like warm coals in a cold room.
Cozimia's soft glow hovered nearby, the lantern shedding a circle of gentle light. Around them, the vast storage vault loomed, a cavernous expanse of smooth obsidian walls that seemed to drink in the light. There were no crates, no relics, no shelves piled high with forgotten treasures. Just the quiet hum of old magic and the cold, featureless stone stretching outward, silent and imposing. It was a place of storage in name alone, a threshold to secrets Krungus had deemed too dangerous or too precious to leave exposed.
Eugene's footsteps echoed faintly against the stone as he scanned the chamber, the silence broken only by the occasional clink of Cozimia brushing against a dangling chain or a loose fragment of debris. He flexed his fingers, willing himself to stay calm.
"Alright," he muttered to himself. "First door on the left."
The door creaked open at his touch, revealing a narrow hallway that stretched farther than the pyramid's outer walls should have allowed. Space bent strangely here, twisting logic into something Krungus would call "an acceptable inconvenience."
Cozimia brightened, sending waves of light down the hall. The air felt thicker, heavier, and Eugene swore he could hear faint whispers, like memories of footsteps that no longer had owners. Far at the end, barely visible, stood another door, plain wood with a tarnished brass handle.
Eugene set off, his boots tapping cautiously against the floor. Halfway down, he felt the floor shift under his step, a barely audible click beneath his heel.
Before he could react, a hiss of gas burst from hidden vents along the walls. A sour, burning cloud enveloped him, searing his lungs and blurring his vision. The stench hit him like a punch, a foul mix of rotten eggs and moldy cheese that crawled up his nose and shoved its way down his throat. He gagged and staggered back, choking and flailing his arms like a man trying to fight the air itself.
Cozimia moved instantly, her light intensifying and swirling around him. Strands of golden magic coiled into Eugene's body, pulling the poison free before it could take permanent hold. The burning in his chest eased, but the taste lingered, stubborn and disgusting, coating his tongue like he had licked the inside of a sewer pipe.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and let out a furious, croaking cough.
"Krungus, you miserable old wizard," Eugene rasped, wiping his mouth again with a grimace. "You could have just left a note that said 'stay out' instead of fumigating me like a cockroach."
Cozimia drifted apologetically beside him, her glassy shell catching the light with an almost sheepish shimmer.
Of course Krungus would trap his own storage rooms. He probably thought it was common sense. Eugene could practically hear the wizard's gravelly voice in his mind: "If you cannot survive the vault, you have no business plundering it."
Breathing hard, Eugene pressed on, slower this time, every step deliberate. His mind sharpened, and he promised himself he would not trust even a single tile of this place without suspicion.
As he moved forward, he caught himself muttering under his breath, not prayers exactly, but promises. Promises that if he made it through this, he was going to find a way to rig Krungus's socks to explode. Or maybe his hat.
Cozimia pulsed quietly beside him, her light steady and strong, her presence a silent reminder that Eugene was not truly alone in this.
With absolute paranoia guiding every step, Eugene crept forward, his eyes darting to every tile, every seam in the floor, every shadow that could be hiding another trap. His breath came shallow, and he moved with the slow precision of someone defusing a bomb. As Cozimia's glow pushed back the darkness ahead, he could now clearly see the door at the end of the hallway, an imposing slab of obsidian with no handle, no keyhole, only a faint geometric engraving in the center.
All of a sudden, a sharp clattering sound echoed from behind him, faint but distinct. It sounded like hooves striking stone. Eugene froze, his entire body locking up. He turned slightly, listening. The door to the hallway had closed behind him, but through the thick silence he could still hear it: the unmistakable clop of hooves, moving around the entrance room, pacing for a moment, and then fading away into nothing.
"Did you hear that?" Eugene whispered, glancing at Cozimia. Her light dimmed slightly, a subtle confirmation.
"It sounded like... hooves," she said quietly.
Eugene tightened his grip on his belt, where he had tucked a short dagger Krungus had given him "for emergencies only."
"Krungus did say there might be things still down here," Eugene muttered. "Old things. Forgotten things."
Cozimia swirled in place, her glow shifting nervously across the walls.
"Do you think it heard us?" she asked.
"I am trying not to think about that," Eugene said, forcing himself to turn back toward the obsidian door. "Let's just keep moving before it decides to come back."
As they approached, Eugene noticed something strange. The faint geometric engravings on the door began to shimmer, the lines subtly shifting as if responding to his presence. He squinted, stepping a little closer. To his astonishment, the shapes twisted and straightened, resolving into letters. English letters.
He blinked hard, not trusting his eyes. He had not seen English script since he had arrived in this world. The newspapers in the City had always been translated automatically by his Jennie interface, rendering the local language into something readable. But this, these letters forming before him, looked raw and real.
"Cozimia," he whispered. "Tell me you see that."
"I see it," she murmured, her voice cautious.
As they watched, the letters settled into a short riddle, written in a curling, playful script that made Eugene immediately think of Krungus and his fondness for riddles and rhymes. The inscription read:
Speak not a truth, nor utter a lie,
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Offer no answer, yet still you reply.
If you would pass, you must understand,
How silence itself obeys my command.
Eugene exhaled slowly. "Oh man, a riddle," he said aloud, unable to help himself.
The moment the words left his mouth, the door flashed with blinding light and a concussive force blasted him backward. Eugene hit the ground five feet away, landing hard on his butt with a grunt.
He sat there for a moment, stunned, blinking up at the ceiling while Cozimia floated anxiously nearby.
"Of course," Eugene muttered bitterly. "Of course it would be like that."
The weight of it all started pressing down on him. His chest tightened, not from any lingering poison, but from the sheer enormity of where he was and what he was expected to do. He was no great wizard. He was a guy who got lucky, who made friends with Krungus, and now he was standing in a deathtrap designed for people ten times more powerful and a hundred times smarter.
Eugene set his staff carefully on the ground. It stayed upright without needing to be leaned against anything, just as Bahumbus had designed it. The sight of it, so casually magical and perfectly ordinary to this place, only made the knot in his stomach tighten.
"I need a break," he said, more to himself than to Cozimia.
Without waiting for permission, he focused inward, letting the pull of the Hearth Behind the Stars take hold. The world around him shimmered, and then he was standing inside the lantern's inner sanctum: the warm, timeless inn Cozimia maintained inside her magic.
The Hearth was quiet, with a fire crackling gently in the stone hearth and the empty scent of old stone and smoke hanging in the air. Eugene sagged into a chair near the fire, resting his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands.
Cozimia, in her human-ish form, approached and sat across from him. Her appearance was an elegant echo of humanity, composed of delicate, translucent glass-like shards that floated just close enough to suggest a solid figure, yet always shifting imperceptibly. She was a little rotund, her form rounded and comforting rather than angular or sharp, like a warm memory given shape. Her hair was a shimmering cascade of prismatic fragments that caught and refracted the lantern-light into soft rainbows, and her eyes were deep pools of molten gold, warm and ever-shifting. She wore the faintest impression of a long, flowing gown that seemed stitched from threads of starlight and memory, giving her a presence that was both comforting and uncanny, timeless and deeply alive.
"You are troubled," she said gently.
"I have no idea what I'm doing," Eugene admitted, his voice muffled by his hands. "I am in way over my head. I thought... I don't know what I thought. But it wasn't this."
He stayed there for a moment longer, the cold of the obsidian floor seeping into his skin. Finally, with a groan, he pushed himself upright. Setting Cozimia down, he let the lantern hover in place, its magic holding her steady in the air.
Eugene pressed his hands against his face and dragged them down slowly. "I have no idea what I am doing," he admitted, his voice low and worn.
Cozimia floated a little closer, her light softening. "You are not alone," she said gently.
He nodded, though the motion felt heavy. The Hearth behind the Stars, the inner resting place within Cozimia's magic, stirred at the edge of his senses. He let himself lean into it, pulling a breath from the quiet strength it offered.
After a long moment of silence, Eugene leaned back in his chair, staring up at the wooden beams of the Hearth. "We need a plan," he said. "We have to get back to the city."
Cozimia hovered nearby, her form pulsing faintly. "We do not even know where we are, Eugene," she said gently.
"Yeah, I know," he muttered. "But we have to start somewhere."
They began to talk through what they knew. Syzzyzzy was isolated, disconnected from the Weave, from everything familiar. There were no obvious exits. No roadmaps. No guarantees.
"There are other doors," Eugene said. "Eight total in the entrance room. Maybe... more riddles. More paths."
Cozimia drifted a little closer. "Or allies. Hidden places."
Eugene rubbed his temples. "Or monsters."
They both fell quiet again, but now there was a thin thread of purpose between them, fragile but real. They would have to figure it out piece by piece. No shortcuts. No guides. Just them and the way forward, however hard it turned out to be.
Krungus had never been a patient man. The interior of Rhyzomund's sporeship stretched around him in every direction, a grotesque labyrinth of pulsing fungal growths and twisting organic corridors. The air was damp and sour, thick with the constant drift of microscopic spores that glittered faintly when caught in the dim bioluminescent light bleeding from the walls. Every surface seemed to breathe slowly, as if the ship itself were alive and dreaming. Amid this endless, shifting expanse, Krungus stood alone, feeling his irritation boiling over into fury.
"RHYZOMUND!" he bellowed, his voice hammering against the pulsating walls. "Face me, you mold-ridden coward!"
The ship swallowed the sound without reply. The walls flexed lazily, as if mocking him, the distant hum of spores vibrating through the air.
Krungus waited a heartbeat longer, then scowled. "Fine," he muttered. "We will do it the old-fashioned way."
He gripped his staff and jammed its metal-shod end deep into the nearest wall. The spongy surface gave with a sickening squelch, releasing a burst of foul-smelling vapor. He wrenched the staff free and stabbed again, and again, gouging deep wounds into the living ship.
On his fourth strike, just as the staff was about to slam into the wall again, the surface twisted beneath him. The spongy flesh retracted with a wet hiss, folding and stretching upward. Krungus stumbled back, startled, as the wall reshaped itself into a colossal mouth twenty feet tall, lined with glistening fungal teeth. It smiled at him, wide and slow, as if savoring the moment.
When it spoke, the entire sporeship seemed to vibrate with the sound.
"Little krill," Rhyzomund's voice rumbled, thick with amusement. "Flailing your stick against the tide. Did you believe you could wound the sea by pricking a single wave?"
Krungus planted his staff firmly on the spongy ground and glared up at the massive mouth.
"Why am I here?" he demanded. "Where are you dragging me? What have you become, Rhyzomund, since the day you were cast out like the rotten core you were?"
The fungal mouth stretched wider, a low, rumbling sound vibrating through the walls—laughter, thick and derisive. Rhyzomund offered no answers, only more mockery.
"Questions, questions, always questions," the mouth drawled. "Still you think yourself important enough to deserve explanations. Truth be told, I have no idea how you ended up here, crusted and crumbling like the last biscuit in a dying man's pocket."
Krungus narrowed his eyes. "Glad to see the centuries have not improved your taste for metaphors."
The mouth chuckled, a thick, wet sound. "And yet here you are, bobbing through my domain like a stubborn chunk of phlegm. I should be furious. Instead, I am delighted."
Krungus raised his staff in a mock salute. "Happy to brighten your day, you decaying lawn ornament."
"Flatterer," Rhyzomund cooed, the mouth twisting into a grotesque imitation of a grin. "Stay a while. I have been preparing for you for a very, very long time."
Krungus's mind sharpened with a sudden urgency, pushing past the insults. He tightened his grip on his staff.
"Have you seen a human man?" Krungus barked, voice cutting through the humid air. "A mortal, small and stubborn, not from this world. Tell me if you have crossed his path."
The colossal fungal mouth quivered, its wet teeth grinding together in amusement. Then, in a voice oozing mockery, it replied not with an answer but with a riddle Krungus recognized all too well, one the old wizard himself had invented long ago.
"Trade your secret for another," Rhyzomund intoned, his voice dripping with theatrical gravity. "Yet find yourself empty-handed. Ask for what you want, and receive only what you deserve."
Krungus's nostrils flared in fury. "Stealing riddles now, are you? What is next, stealing teeth from the dead?"
The mouth grinned wider. "I have had millennia to admire your craft, Krungus. I thought it fitting to recycle the garbage along with the rot."
Krungus sneered, tapping his staff once against the ground.
"A mushroom king with a spongy crown," he said, voice dripping with mockery. "Drifts in circles, sinking down. Thinks himself fierce, thinks himself wise, but he is just fungus with delusions of size."
The colossal mouth twitched, the walls of the sporeship flexing with a low, irritated groan.
Krungus straightened, ready to unleash another round of insults, but before he could get the words out, Rhyzomund unleashed a brown, boulder-sized loogie right into Krungus' face. Krungus attempted to scream but the mucus blocked it from escaping.
"That's right, bitch." Rhyzomund chortled as the mouth on the wall disappeared.
