While the night felt like a fiasco to me, the rest of the AP team disagreed.

  “Good work team, let’s call it early,” Marlo announced to the cheers of the other goblins.

  They wasted no time in leaving.

  Seriously.

  Within 10 seconds they were all gone, having slipped through a goblin door hidden behind a shelf.

  A door much too small for me to use.

  Thus leaving me alone in the back room, the giant table looming quietly, illuminated by the single lantern gently creaking above it.

  It wasn’t until I tried to leave the room and came face first with the absolute darkness of the tunnel leading back to the store that I realized it.

  I was completely, utterly alone.

  “Stupid,” I whispered into the dark, my voice cracking, hoping against hope that my little chaos gremlin would come flailing to my rescue.

  Only silence and shadows called back.

  I closed the door and tread back to the table. The absurd assassin vending machine silent in the corner.

  Somehow, it seemed less amusing now.

  I pulled my mask tight around my face. I don’t know why.

  Maybe if the shadows couldn’t see me, they couldn’t hurt me.

  “It’s ok. I’m just…alone. In a cursed magic store. What could go wrong Beeg,” I whispered to myself, gingerly climbing on the table to unhook the lantern from the ceiling.

  While the lantern didn’t cast much light in the hallway, it was better than nothing.

  And anything was better than nothing.

  I made my way slowly, trusting I wouldn’t come across anything unexpected in the stone tunnel.

  Truthfully, it was navigating my way through the store after that concerned me.

  ——-

  I slowly pushed the shelves blocking the hidden tunnel, the gentle creaking echoing through the dark.

  I knew I was somewhere at the end of aisle 25, though the lantern didn’t grant enough light for me to confirm.

  If I was at the end of Aisle 25—assuming the store hadn’t shifted on me, I was about as far from the entrance as I could get.

  I gulped, thankful for all the effort I had put into what I hoped was fostering a friendship with the store.

  As I crept through the dark - doing my best to avoid bumping anything on the shelves, it was the silence that got me.

  No creaking, no groaning.

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  No sound at all, save my padded footsteps.

  The store was asleep.

  I’m not sure if that made it better or worse.

  But it scared me the store was alive enough to be able to fall asleep.

  And I know I wouldn’t be happy if I woke up to someone sneaking through my home.

  I did my best to tread softer.

  As it turned out, the store had shifted.

  Meaning I was now at a dead end, having had to turn left at the end of Aisle 25, rather than right, to get out.

  I stifled something between a groan and a sigh. I just wanted to get out.

  As I crept my way back, the lantern illuminating my feet and little more, the darkness felt more and more…oppressive.

  Something creaked in the distance, but I could tell it wasn’t the store.

  Possibly some cursed jar.

  That, or Workman’s Comp.

  I really, really hoped I didn’t run into him right now.

  As my little pool of light illuminated a familiar burn mark on the floor, I realized I had made it to Aisle 7.

  Just four more Aisles, a turn down Aisle three - which I could navigate with my eyes closed - and I would be out.

  I was so close.

  So why did I stop at Aisle 6.

  ——

  I stopped because something down the Aisle was pulling me.

  I didn’t know what it was. But I had to know.

  I can’t explain why. I just…felt in my soul. I had never felt anything like it before.

  It felt…different.

  It felt like a truth.

  I stumbled down the Aisle, tracing its curve as it turned to loop towards the back of the store.

  Why was I doing this? Why was I going back.

  But I had to know. I almost didn’t feel I had a choice.

  “I wish It was here,” I muttered under my breath.

  I wasn’t allowed here. It was one of the forbidden aisles.

  Only It and Vaarg came here.

  Some days, the store would even grow a door to the Aisle entrance.

  But if I was here, I might as well see.

  I raised my lantern, glancing at the shelves in curiosity.

  Books.

  Each shelf, lined with books. Some newer, some positively ancient.

  All neat. All dusted. Even the floor was made of different wood.

  A deep, rich wood that did not echo when I walked on it.

  It was clean.

  Organized.

  I wasn’t sure I was in the same store.

  I glanced back, but the Aisle stretched into darkness.

  I couldn’t tell if that darkness led back to the store—or somewhere else entirely.

  I gulped.

  One thing I did know.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  The first half of the aisle had been chaos—but just around that bend…silence. Clean and ordered.

  Hidden from the rest of the store.

  It scared me more than any shadows. It scared me more than the sentient store.

  It scared me enough to turn back, curiosity be damned.

  And yet my feet kept shuffling forward.

  But then…that was when I saw it.

  Wedged comfortably between two books.

  The source of what had been pulling me. Calling me.

  Beckoning me.

  The book from which Vaarg had me read my first Rune.