Rory was not often wrong, or at least egregiously wrong.

This was not one of those times.

Twenty-six days. It took him twenty-six days to crack the code. His mistake had been assuming each of the dials functioned the same.

That wasn't the case. The first dial was correlated with the number of turns and the missing letter. The second dial was not. Or, not as directly.

The first letter, T, had been a simple twenty turns.

The second letter, which turned out to be M, wasn't thirteen turns as one would expect. No, it was seven turns in the opposite direction.

Rory was simply glad that it had even worked, as nearing the end of combinations, turning left or right hadn't obviously worked, subtraction based on the letter had been his next best guess.

In short, the first letter, T, was letter number twenty, requiring twenty clockwise turns of the first dial. The second letter, M, was the thirteenth letter. But because it came before T, Rory had attempted to turn the second dial counterclockwise as a representation of the backward movement.

Once that had worked, the third letter was easy, as every single word Rory could think of that fit the igt mold always had an H as the fourth letter. Rotating the third dial five times counterclockwise, twenty-six days of trial and error came to an end as the loudest click of all rang out, and the entire wall blocking his path began to sink into the ground.

"Oh, finally," Zoey appeared within moments, having heard the sound from down the hall. "Didn't think a small puzzle like that would take so long."

"It was the lockout period," Rory said, defending himself. "Without that, I could have solved it in a day."

"Uh-huh," Zoey nodded noncommittally, not worth dying on that hill.

Just relieved to be past the stupid puzzle, Rory was looking forward to-

"God damn it," Rory sighed as a sight from nightmares appeared.

Another blocked path.

"Right," Zoey muttered. "I'm just going to go, oh, I don't know, drown myself or something for fun while you figure that out."

Kicking a pebble and walking away, Rory was left alone as he stared at the altar before him, blocked off by a cage of red light that screamed danger to his senses.

The reason that Rory knew it was a puzzle, aside from the clichés of the situation, was that just beneath the altar was a particular-looking 'diagram' of sorts. It was split into three layers. The first two layers had two symbols; the first symbol was a 'diamond' made of four unconnected lines. The second symbol resembled a triangle, with three unconnected lines.

The second layer had three symbols. The first was another diamond-esque symbol, albeit with five unconnected lines. The second was a repeat of the very first symbol on the first layer, and the third symbol was simply a single line, disconnected from anything else.

The third and final layer featured a single symbol: a diamond composed of seven unconnected lines.

Looking at the strange puzzle, Rory was afraid that it would be another laborious task to solve, only for his eyes to widen as something caught his attention.

Twenty-four.

The number of unconnected lines forming the odd symbols was the exact same number of letters within the phrase that had been part of the key blocking their path with the last puzzle. Had Rory not spent the better part of twenty-six days mulling it over and constantly thinking about it, he might not have caught on quite so quickly.

An anagram?

If it really was an anagram, then the odd number of lines forming each symbol was likely a representation of just how many letters were in each word.

And the first word starts with four letters.

"Them?" Rory offered, only for nothing to happen.

"Meth?"

Nothing.

Alright, didn't expect anything from that one.

"Ford? Heat? From?"

Finally, something happened as Rory spoke the word from. The first symbol suddenly glowed, its four lines merging into a single, complete symbol.

Bingo.

"From…. Three letters, five, four, one, seven… Well, one-letter words are either I or A."

"Ate… For? Wait, no, think, if I've already used an F, R, O, M, I've already used up both O and R."

Puzzling it over, Rory snapped his fingers together.

"The."

Another success, the three unconnected lines of the second symbol merged and completed.

"From the…. five-letter word."

Busting out a sketch pad from his inventory, Rory quickly wrote down the original phrase, counting the letters and then subtracting those that had been used.

Four As, one N, four Ts, two Hs, four Es, two Fs, one R, one D, one O, one I, one G, two Ms. I've used up the R and O, one F, one M, a T, and an H.

Mentally tabulating five-letter words, Rory frowned as a specific word struck a chord.

Oh. Yeah, no doubt.

"Eight."

Another success, another completed symbol.

"From the Eight, four letters, one letter, seven letters. Why do I have a sense that the eight is referring to us?" Rory muttered.

Alright, four letters, I've got four A's remaining, an N, two Ts, two Es, an F, a D, and one M. If the fifth word is one letter and I've got only A's left and no Is, I can assume that one of the As will be used there, meaning really, I only have three A's remaining.

Having ciphered that out, Rory nodded to himself, list of potentials narrowing.

"From the eight, blank A blank. Hmm.. Four letters in the fourth word means probably a single A, not a whole lot of double A four-letter words."

Rattling words off, Rory continued for nearly a minute before he smiled as the fourth symbol completed.

"From the Eight, Fate a…" Rory muttered. "God, talk about pompous."

Having used up all his other letters, only a single word fit.

"From the Eight, Fate a Mandate."

With that, the final symbol was completed, as they each began to weave together. Upon doing so, the red barrier flickered and then vanished.

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Could have been worse.

Approaching the altar, Rory glanced down to see yet another key and another piece of a greater chain.

"Rory!"

As Rory waved his hand over the two items, they vanished. He turned to see Zoey jogging toward him; a massive grin plastered across her face.

"What's up?"

"I had this idea I wanted to run by you and- oh, you finished the puzzle already?"

"No lockout, so I was able to bulldoze through."

"Oh, sweet," Zoey nodded before shaking her head as she reminded herself of her goal. "So, I had this idea. Remember that weird prize I got from a delve a while back? That strange little stage?"

"Yeah, I've been holding onto it for you. Why?" Rory asked. It had been strange enough that Rory had opted to keep it on him, investigating it when he had time.

"Well, I had a rather clever idea."

"Being?"

"Can I see it?"

"I mean, it's yours," Rory said with a shrug as he retrieved the strange toy stage and handed it over to Zoey.

Grabbing the item, Zoey seemed to widen her eyes as if trying to imprint the sight of the altar room in her mind. Then, the Scepter of Terawa appeared in her other hand.

"Do me a favor, grab my Horizon Mirror."

Grumbling Rory did. While he wasn't pleased to have been her junk drawer, she hadn't had room in her own inventory to store the miscellaneous items of interest. Plus, there was the matter that she hadn't even had her own inventory until this expedition across the B4 of the Deep Chambers.

"So, here is my thought. You said my mirror is busted, right?"

"Essentially."

"And this Scepter can manipulate terawa?"

"Yeah, obviously."

"And terawa seems to have some sort of concepts that tie into moving or transportation or something."

"Weirdly enough, yeah," Rory half-frowned, beginning to see an inkling of where Zoey was going with this all.

"And this stage can isolate an image to interact with."

"Yeah, essentially."

"And we've got a problem of a pissed off tier eight monster that probably really wants to eat us."

"Yeah."

"Alright, so hear me out," Zoey raised her hand like a teacher preparing to lecture. "The mirror might be busted, but what if we lightly tapped into it? We use the stage item, lock into place the image of one of these rooms, then, using the scepter, we beam straight into the next and final altar room."

"I….huh." Rory frowned.

"What?"

"That's smart. Really smart. Who the fuck are you, because you certainly aren't Zoey."

A moment later, when Rory found himself flat on his ass, his nose bleeding for a moment from Zoey's punch, he sighed.

And this is where HR would have written me up.

"Done being a smart ass?" Zoey asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

"Yeah," Rory grumbled as he stood back up. "So, jokes aside, it's a good idea. It needs perhaps a bit of refinement, but in all honesty, I can probably set up some ritual magic that will solve that within… a day, maybe?"

"Great!" Zoey clapped before frowning. "Because in all honesty, if that Queen came at us again, I'm pretty sure we just lose unless she attempts a similar mindless assault."

"And even stupid monsters aren't mindless by tier eight."

"Bingo," Zoey agreed.

It was Rory's turn to clap his hands together, mind already racing to extrapolate how exactly he would go about setting up the ritual required.

"Alright, well, give me a few hours, and let's see how this goes."

Less than three hours later, Rory found himself nodding to himself, satisfied.

Not bad.

While originally Zoey's idea had been for her to capture the image of the altar room, Rory quickly took control, given that he could nearly perfectly mirror the image in his Mind Palace. The most problematic aspect of the entire idea was the Horizon Mirror; it was in a delicate state, given the abuse Zoey had subjected it to in the past without any maintenance.

Thankfully, aided by his Vambrace of the Early Void, an item he only used for its inventory feature for quite some time rather than its primary function, being that of a Void Carriage, he could essentially reduce the 'strain' on the mirror to near zero. The next part of the equation would be using the Scepter of Terawa to form a 'tunnel' through space. On its own, it wouldn't have been possible. Still, on a planetoid filled with the stuff, and used alongside the aforementioned items, it was possible.

Finally, there was the star of the show.

A Stage in the Palm of a Hand

Rarity: Aberrant

To those with a love for theatrics, the entire world is their stage. For those who aren't of the same theatrical cloth, a proper stage may still be needed. Once a day, a scene may be portrayed and projected, allowing for limited interaction and disregarding physical boundaries and limits.

By capturing the image of the current altar room and tweaking the specifics with the ritual he had whipped up in under three hours, Rory was feeling confident.

All that was left was to try.

"Ready?" Rory questioned, glancing at Zoey, who was oddly fidgeting.

"Y-yeah. Just a bit nervous."

"You?"

"What? I'll admit, I'm accustomed to relying on your plans or ideas. This was me, so honestly, I'm a tad bit worried it's going to go wrong."

"I don't see why. You're overthinking it," Rory waved her concerns aside. "C'mon, grab my hand. It's probably not necessary, but I think it's probably better to avoid us somehow becoming separated."

Exhaling loudly, Zoey blew a strand of her hair from her face before she walked next to Rory, who was standing in the middle of a multitude of bound circles, runes scribbled onto the ground and around them, and even some floating in the air in contained magic circles.

"If this goes wrong, I just want to say, I have no intention of taking full responsibility."

"Ehh, it's fine, I'll just haunt you after the fact."

"Is it haunting if we're both ghosts?"

"No idea," Rory chuckled, before snapping his fingers and activating the entire ritual. Power surged, and then they were gone.

It was not a pleasant experience.

Feeling like he was being squashed and stretched, it was entirely unlike any time he had stepped through space using his Null Window. At times, Rory felt like he was watching himself from an out-of-body perspective, observing his body as it was subjected to an episode of Looney Tunes as it was twisted, bent, stretched, and folded upon itself like a piece of Laffy Taffy.

And then it was over, the two of them inside a dark chamber.

Or, mostly over. Clutching his stomach, Rory bent over before vomiting a small pond of orange faux-fluid, a puddle of terawa on the ground.

"Ick," Zoey said as she watched him retch, before burping. Her face paled, but pressing a hand to her mouth, she forced herself to swallow back down.

"So," Rory said, finally recovering. "Turns out, I didn't perfectly factor in certain variables, such as the fact that we were traveling through a spatial bridge through terawa, not void."

"Meaning?"

"In layman's terms? We ingested a substantial amount of a substance t. I'm going to warrant that would have typically warranted a 'toxic' label. My guess is that with any less durability, we would've died. It's why I had such an adverse reaction, whereas you just burped it away."

"Uh huh." Zoey nodded. "So… did it work, otherwise?"

Looking around, Rory smiled, even with his stomach feeling like he'd swallowed a gallon of spoiled milk spiked with gasoline.

"Looks like it. Also, I don't think it was expected that we would essentially teleport directly in."

Pointing away, Zoey half-frowned as she took sight of a hallway littered with swinging axes, gouts of fire, lightning rain, and other such fun obstacles.

"Cool."

Turning away from looking down the distant hallway, the duo instead turned toward the altar in their way.

"One problem," Rory frowned. "I don't see a puzzle to bring this barrier down."

A barrier of infinite space had protected the first altar. A red dome of scary light had protected the second altar.

As for the third altar, it was protected by what appeared to be condensed air, crystallized into a nearly solid object.

"Hand me a barrier gem, would you?"

Doing so, Rory glanced at Zoey with a look of questioning, only for the woman to punch through, sweeping her hand over the altar before withdrawing her hand.

Or what remained of her hand, now looking like a skeleton prop from Halloween.

"Are you an idiot?" Rory nearly shouted. "Who knows what that could have done?"

"I really didn't feel like waiting around for you to solve more puzzles, especially if there wasn't a clearly defined puzzle."

"Jeez, that barrier had to have been enough for even a tier eight to second-guess punching straight through."

"Yeah, but even most tier eights don't have my durability," Zoey said smugly. "Anyway, we got all the keys and chains, right?"

Their confirmation appeared a moment after she spoke, barely fazing either of them.

Primary objective of the Deep Chambers cleared:

[X]- Reach the Hidden Depths

Secondary objectives remaining:

[0]- Survive and find the exit

Remaining bonus objectives:

[X]- Locate the Oblivion chains

[0]- Slay the Queen of the Hidden Depths

"Dope," Zoey said with a grin. "Also, I wonder what these keys are-"

Cutting her off, a new notification appeared.

The Keys of Dominion have been unsealed. A challenge has been leveraged. Brace yourselves, for only victory or death awaits.

"Rory?" Zoey turned to Rory, looking for answers.

"Ah, shoot. I think I know what those keys were for."

"What? What were they for?"

"There is a reason the 'locate the Oblivion Chains' was slotted above the 'Slay the Queen of the Hidden Depths' objective because locating the Oblivion Chains and the keys with the chains would trigger an unavoidable challenge. We probably could have hunted for the exit freely had we not initiated this chain of events."

"W..Was that pun on purpose?" Zoey glared at him, arms crossed.

"That's what you're fixating on right now?" Rory questioned.

"I mean, it wasn't the best."

"Says you!"

Bickering, the two Founders vanished once more, teleported away as they were sent to face the greatest challenge of their lives.

It was time for regicide.

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