We trudged deeper into the maze, and Anabeth peered over my shoulder. “Sir Henry,” she murmured, “I believe it is time for a more... refined strategy.”

  “No more theatrics,” I warned. “If your legs suddenly grow a third illness, I’ll drag you by the cape.”

  She pointed at the beating membrane. “This dungeon is modeled after old marshfold patterns. Living labyrinths like this maintain circulation routes. Most explorers get lost because they drift toward chambers with more movement.” Her nails clicked again against the wall. “But if we keep one side—preferably the right—we will eventually navigate the entire structure and find a stable exit.”

  “I thought you had never traversed these dungeons before. How, then, do you recognize such patterns?”

  “Ah, well,” she began, “The Tomb of Kervalen has the same patterns!”

  “The what?”

  “You know... It’s an accessible location where one could collect preserved bone slivers for their rock summoning rituals. I was able to summon three Durands with just one sliver once!”

  Don’t necromancers use that sort of thing to...

  She hummed cheerfully. “It’s perfectly routine, of course.”

  I resisted the urge to shiver. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I had no time to dwell on her unsettling necromantic anecdotes. Something about the slime walls made me pause. The pulsations weren’t uniform—here and there, the greenish gel throbbed more slowly, forming thin, branching patterns that definitely shouldn’t be where they were.

  Instinct screamed at me: trap. My experience with slime dungeons was extensive enough to know when the substrate itself was lying in wait. Not every wall in Gallowmere’s sloughs was passive; some must’ve been designed to strike when provoked.

  Anabeth peered over my shoulder again. “Sir Henry, what is it?”

  “There could be a pressure-triggered slime pit. Observe carefully. Notice the rhythm of the pulsations and the places where the slime forms denser veins. The bulging and contracting segments are the areas most likely to react to pressure or touch.”

  “Fascinating! And how do you usually test these hazardous zones, Sir?”

  I couldn’t admit I just prod things with my sword. That would sound so undignified. “You show me your method.”

  She clambered down, conjured three small glowing stones, and held them between her fingers.

  “These,” she chirped, “are reactive quartz. They’ll tell us if the slime secretes acid—or anything nastier.”

  She hurled one, Plopped it and wobbled it. Nothing.

  “Excellent! Non-acidic, minimally reactive, but potentially sticky. Useful data!”

  I allowed a bitter smile. At least she was efficient.

  Then she crouched lower, inspecting the junction where two veins intersected. “I think a small-scale pressure test is warranted,” she said, brandishing a tiny footstool she’d produced from her satchel. She set it on the floor and stood on it, peering down at the slime beneath like a botanist surveying a rare bloom.

  I narrowed my eyes, studying the junction she crouched over. She was way too close now, and the blob was swelling.

  I opened my mouth to warn her. “Lady Anabeth—”

  Too late.

  A thin branch shot out from the junction, attempting to ensnare her. “AHH!” she yelped, leaping back. Her hands scraped against my armor as the slime surged toward her like a living net.

  “Trap!” I barked, dragging her just out of reach of the snapping tendril. The tendril lashed at me instead, and I got into my Knightly Guard Stance just in time to parry it.

  I gritted my teeth, swinging my arm to shove the last writhing tendril aside. The junction shivered, then went still, probably waiting for the next careless foot.

  Breathing heavily, I allowed myself a brief glance at Anabeth. She was crouched a pace behind me, and didn’t seem the slightest shaken.

  “I’ve got it!” she proclaimed. “It quivered before striking and hasn’t reacted since. They trigger once, with a short delay. We just need to set off each trap before we walk past.”

  “And to do that, we need something to prod them safely?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Exactly! And we do have the perfect object.” She gestured to my sword.

  My sword. Of course. Perfect prodding object. We’d gone full circle.

  It took us at least another ten minutes of cautious prodding before the maze began to feel less like a living trap and more like a living thing that wasn’t a trap. Each time a vein quivered under the tip of my sword, Anabeth marked on the wall beside it with a number, etched with the point of a conjured stylus.

  “So far, no numbered sections yet,” she murmured. Which meant we at least weren’t doubling back. Not yet, at any rate. That was a relief, though my brain refused to settle.

  We’d kept right the entire way. By all logic, we should have crossed our own path at least once. How was it possible we hadn’t circled back on ourselves?

  Anabeth glanced over her shoulder. As if reading my mind, she said with certainty, “Ah, Sir Henry, it’s precisely the ingenuity of living labyrinths. They don’t adhere to your linear expectations. Circulation routes fold upon themselves, but only after several sequences of movement. One could walk for miles, always keeping right, without ever crossing the same junction twice. Only the truly inattentive get lost.”

  I almost expected the next corridor to yield a numbered junction like a cruel joke from the Saints above, but there was nothing. The slime had thinned, no longer pulsating like nauseating hearts, and my dexterity no longer bled away with every step. We had somehow emerged from the living part of the maze.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Anabeth sheathed her stylus and let out a contented sigh. “A prudent pause, Sir Henry, I daresay. We should rest and allow your stamina to recover before venturing further.” She sat even before I had a chance to protest. “And if you’re still inclined toward experimental refreshment,” she added, “I have several more vials of these cultured slime samples for your... cultured taste.”

  I grimaced at the memory, but the truth was, the slime concoction had given me excellent resistance against slime attacks. Disgusting as it was, it worked.

  So I took the vial she offered. “Thank you,” I said.

  She stared at me for a good second before lighting up like a festival lantern. “My first thank you from Sir Knight himself!” she squeaked. Her notebook snapped open instantly. She scribbled furiously: Received verbal gratitude. Month 04 of 12, Year 3956. Emotional quality: mild, sincere. Notable event. She even added a tiny star beside it.

  Great. That killed my chance of ever having a proper conversation with her.

  I truly wanted to talk to her like a normal person would. I could start by asking her where she came from, and what she did when she wasn’t wandering through dungeons or collecting questionable substances in glass vials. Maybe even ask how she’d managed to visit the Tomb of Kervalen, a place at least a hundred miles north and decidedly not open to casual tourism. However, she had constructed some eccentric image of me: some stoic, unfathomable knight with arcane instincts and inscrutable habits. If I spoke too honestly, would I shatter that? Would she be disappointed to discover I was just a mortal, with mortal needs?

  I opened my visor just enough that my mouth was visible and consumed my slime in a single gulp.

  “You seem to love consuming slime! I shall have this noted down.” She proceeded to scribble fervently into her notebook.

  I promptly clamped my visor shut so she couldn’t get another glimpse of my unfortunately mortal mouth. Then, without warning, she shut the notebook, lifted both hands to rest on my armored thighs, propping her chin atop her fingers as she peered up at me with star-bright anticipation.

  “Soooo... Sir Knight?” she sang, “Which realm do you come from? I read that some knights were preserved inside the Aetherrealm—on the far side of magic—after the collapse of the Holy Knighthood. Are you from the Holy Knighthood?”

  I stared at her.

  “Oh!” she added, “But you look far too unkempt to be one of those.” She nodded to herself, as if this were a compliment. “Their armor was pristine for a thousand years! Not a speck of tarnish, not a dent, not even bloodstains unless ceremonial. Then you must be from the Obsidian March instead! The knight-order is said to have marched across the Nightfall Chasm without torches, guided only by their own indomitable will! Some historians believe their souls turned half-feral from the pressures of darkness. It would explain your silence!”

  Where did she even get her knight knowledge from? These knighthoods were not even real. They were myths. Exaggerations upon exaggerations, bedtime stories for academics who didn’t actually want children. A knight from the Holy Knighthood capable of slaying ten thousand mages with a single swing? Ridiculous. Even our strongest siege engines couldn’t manage half that.

  She leaned far too close now, and her huge eyes dewy with expectation. “Sir Knight... are there more like you?” she breathed. “Does your order still persist in secret? Do they all don armor forged from the purest silver like yours?” She tapped my breastplate. “Is this alloy formed from condensed moonlight? I promise, I’m only talkative with the right person! I shall not tell a soul.”

  Saints save me.

  “And that beautiful part around your neck!” she continued, her finger now tracing a line in the air just above my plated collar. “The gorget—oh, it felt quite tough when I latched onto it earlier, a truly exquisite piece of engineering! Is it based on the designs from the pre-Order era? It has that distinct late-Third-Age articulation, but then those incredible, tightly-woven chainmails visible beneath it... I wonder which period that came from! The work seems exquisite; a mail standard of that quality usually suggests the artisans of some of the Lost Citadels, but your overall style is clearly Northern Marches. Which school of armor-crafting did your order favor?”

  Saints save me indeed. She actually knew about the design terminology! Gorget. Standard. Third Age articulation. I didn’t even know myself which period the suit came from, let alone the school of crafting. It was passed down by the last owner, who’d passed it down from the last owner, and if the man who had worn it last before Roland had cared enough to speak of its origin and provenance to him, he hadn’t cared to explain it to me.

  Roland could recite the lineage of his horse’s grandfather, yet when it came to the steel that shielded his heart, he offered not a single word of its making. A grievous lapse of duty. It was just plate and mail, designed to keep a man from bleeding out. Why must she intellectualize every rivet?

  Her fascination with me was unmistakably not because of me. It was the armor, and the fact that I hadn’t yet corrected a single one of these absurd misconceptions. And I absolutely could not tell her the truth that I was just an orphan boy who stumbled into armor by accident and kept stumbling forward until people stopped questioning it.

  I needed her around, at least until I could gain enough power to save the Knighthood of Saint Merin.

  “Oooh—wait.” Anabeth tilted her head, quill already halfway out. “I heard you mention Saint Merin earlier. That wasn’t rhetorical, was it?”

  Oh no, I did.

  “There is a younger Order that venerates the Saints,” she continued thoughtfully, tapping her chin. “But I can’t quite parse the name. It’s not one of the recognized Saint Orders under the Old Concordance. Curious.”

  So she didn’t know all of them.

  Not the real ones, at least.

  Mine was literally named the Order of Saint Merin.

  She brightened, then just went on and on. “Sooo, what blessings does Saint Merin grant? I know the Order of Saint Lauren, for instance, was famous for regenerative miracles. Their knights could knit flesh back together mid-battle, even purge venom from their bloodstreams. Very flashy. Saint Helior favored battle-fervor. Saint Caedryn—unyielding endurance. But Merin…”

  I drew myself up and bellowed, imitating Ceralis as best as I could, “A SELF-SUSTAINING KNIGHT, WORTHY OF SAINT MERIN, REQUIRES NO BLESSINGS.”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure you don’t,” she said cheerfully. “But every Saint grants something anyway. Symbolic, passive, posthumous, obscure—there are patterns! If you tell me what Merin grants, I might be able to parse the Order’s origin.”

  I said nothing.

  If Saint Merin ever granted anything beyond this Ceralis, it must have been long past.

  Even Sir Roland hadn’t received anything notable from him, unless one counted an exceptional tolerance for alcohol, which I strongly suspected was earned through devotion rather than divinity.

  “Sooo... will you tell me?” She asked in a honeyed voice.

  I boomed, “SECRETS ARE NOT GIVEN, ANABETH OF ARCHIVAL HOUSE. THEY ARE WRESTED FROM THE WORLD BY THOSE WHO DO NOT BREAK. IF YOU SEEK MINE, PREPARE TO BLEED FOR EVERY SYLLABLE.”

  Great. I maxxed out an attribute I didn’t need.

  “Ohhhhh...” Anabeth’s breath hitched. “Say it again. I—I mean—your voice modulation is profoundly motivating, Sir Knight.”

  Splendid. No more truth. Now I was back to being the terrifying thing in the room.

  Which lasted exactly three seconds.

  The floor trembled. A wet groan echoed from the darkness ahead.

  Anabeth turned toward the sound in haste. “Sir Knight... that was not me.”

  A shadow blotted out the bioluminescent glow as an immense mass of writhing, translucent flesh heaved into view.