Picture it. There I was, feeling as strong as I’d ever been, and Zeno had just left me, disappearing through a weird swirling portal to vanish into parts unknown. The bowling ball had reappeared on its platter, leaving no trace that my friend had ever touched it or attempted to do anything with it.
I felt the weight of terrible responsibility once again settle over me. It felt suspiciously like a heavy leaden ball.
Except that I, when normally faced with staggering tasks, managed them. This time, the ball slipped from my grasp and thunked back down onto the banquet table, immovable.
Annoyed, perhaps seeking reassurance of my own competencies, I checked the room for traps. There were none, though there was an inscription on the bottom of the plinth.
I was definitely going to get that ball next time, mark my words.
Then, inexplicably, Zeno bounced back into existence through the portal in front of me.
“Oh, hey!” I said.
He threw up by way of greeting.
“Ew, gross.” I stepped around it. “Where have you been?”
“Don’t worry, kid.” Zeno wiped his mouth. I wasn’t sure if he meant not to worry about a) his whereabouts or b) the barf. “We’re doing great.”
I looked down at the barf again, but somehow still felt motivated. Maybe just to do well enough so that I could brag about being the one who didn’t vom. “Oh, now I’m worried,” I said anyway.
“Song and Dance Crew: one locus, one foci. Dwarves of Egonia: two focus, zero loci.”
Well, that had to change.
I picked up the heaviest object in the world.
“Actually,” I grunted, surprised at my ability to lift the ball, “maybe it will be okay! Zeno, where does this go?”
“Is there a number on that?” Zeno asked, offering literally no help. “Maybe southwest.”
“Okay.” I felt around the circumference of the ball, searching for any indentations. I found nothing, just four rings. Not a language I knew. But–
Four.
“Want help?” Zeno asked.
I blinked, surprised for real this time. “Yes.”
I moved with the ball and Zeno, now distracted after his fit of gallantry, picked up a goblet that had caught his eye. A ding sound reverberated through the maze.
“Hey Set,” said the half-elf who had offered me help literally a breath ago, “you carry yours and I’ll carry mine.”
“Oh my god,” I grunted. “I can’t believe I made you strong.”
“Song and Dance Crew: three focus, one loci. Dwarves of Egonia: one focus, zero loci,” came the announcer’s voice. At least I had a handle on what the focus and locus stuff referred to now. I had the weird thing (the focus) and now I would put it in its appropriate weird swirly portal (the locus).
There was only one way out of hell, and that was through.
“Come along, Zeno,” I said, straining. “I’m moving.”
And so I moved. I couldn’t move as fast as I had previously like this, but we were getting somewhere. In between my slow steps, I checked for traps. I was not getting destroyed carrying this thing.
Zeno passed me in the hallway. I had a dark moment where I hoped he stepped on something awful, but then reminded myself that I’d be the fool for expecting him to actually help me with physical labor, even if he’d offered.
“Watch out for traps,” I said, sweating.
“Yeah, I’ve been this way,” he said, waving to me as he strode confidently ahead, blithely forgetting that the traps had only been activated recently.
“Okay,” I called back.
In the distance, I heard the sound of something catching on fire. Hopefully not Zeno.
“Incorrect portal, returning to original location,” our disembodied voice said. “Song and Dance Crew: three focus, one loci.”
They did not list a score for the Dwarves, which we all interpreted as a sign of immense disappointment.
I caught up with Zeno, just in time to spot a metal eyestalk swiveling around on the ceiling. I nearly lost my shit.
“Zeno, I cannot do this right now.” I gritted out and described the offensive object to the bard.
He looked up, momentarily nonplussed at the addition to his old path. Then, he moved forward and the eyestalk focused on him.
Faster than I gave him credit for, he cast a spell and the eye stalk…defocused. It stared off into space, as though the room around it had lost fixity.
“Set!” he called as he beheld the next room, passing under the blinded eyestalk. “I found…not the portal I intended to find!”
“Okay?” I said miserably. “Want me to come after you?”
The bard paused on the threshold. “I, uh, don’t know!”
I nodded. Perfect. Absolutely tracked. Zeno had no fucking clue. “Vibes, okay.”
The announcer relayed the same score as last time as I entered this new, wider room. There were a lot of columns. Beyond those loomed another portal.
“Is this the one I have to go through, Zeno?” I had only been through the portals once and like, I was not desperate to try this out.
“Maybe?” he said. “Or the northwest?” I could have sworn those were different directions than he’d given me before, but whatever. “If it’s not, then go through again and you’ll be at your ball.”
Momentarily stupefied by this sentence, I blinked. “Uh, okay.”
Then he ran through this portal.
There was another bad noise.
“Incorrect portal,” said the announcer. “Returning focus to original location.”
Zeno must have picked it up again, because the next time the announcer read out the score, it was still us with three and one.
With that, Zeno was gone again.
“I don’t even know why I bother,” I said to no one.
“Monsters will be released the next round,” chirped the announcer, after they kept the score.
“WHAT!”
This was too much to bear. I read the stupid plinth. This is the seventh in the cycle of portals. There are two distinct groups.
“Oh my god,” I groaned. “This does not match. Seven does not equal four. Yuck. Gross. Ugh.”
With much weariness of soul, I headed to the northwest.
But then Helli stepped out of the portal.
“Oh man!” My weariness dropped away. “All my friends are visiting me!”
Dronie even popped through the portal and then left through it, but like, that was fine.
I told Helli of my northwesterly intentions and departed. The announcer stated the three focus score again, so I figured Zeno had reunited with his goblet yet again.
“Starting at the end of this round,” the voice said, “a monster will be released from every portal until you lock a locus.”
Encouragingly, I found a dead end. I turned to follow after Helli, who had disappeared ahead.
A scrabbling noise echoed through the hallways around us.
I moved forward and sighed bodily. Eventually, after a few more repetitions of the same score, I reached the scene of the fire.
“Oh my god, I cannot believe this.” I stopped before a literal carpet of fire. Someone had goofed on the trap front and here I was, reaping the benefits of their folly.
The voices in the other room turned out to be my good friends, Zeno, Helli, and Tem.
Zeno told me with a barely repressed smile that he thought he knew where the portal was that I had to get to. “It’s southwest. Tem just stepped through this portal to get there.”
I seethed inwardly, knowing that taking that portal would get me to the right spot but absolutely not get the focus I carried there.
I mentally prepared myself for another long and shitty slog.
“Rest assured,” the bard said, scenting my despair, “I have a plan.”
How many times did I have to hear that line before I stopped believing he really did?
Not enough, I guess, because I tilted my head up. “Let’s hear it.”
Angsty Teen Breakfast Blog 