Kim watched as Damon followed the dragonspawn. He was staring at his staff like it was a prom date. She took a moment to take a breath and center herself. Her gaze traversed the dead j?rk, the broken table, and the torches. It was a real room. The smell was real. She was a real world. I have to keep telling myself that, she thought. This is real. This is real. THIS IS REAL.

  But it remained more surreal than the Metal on Metal Mayhem festival.

  She noticed that four of the six stars on the floor had burn marks. The one near the broken table was where she had appeared. And Damon had likely been in the burnt one behind her star. And she'd seen Shayne appear in the one behind that. But who were the other three for? Fiora surely must have "spawned" in one. That left two other stars that didn't have burn marks. Two more people were meant to come to this room. Her uncle had briefly hovered over the furthest star from her. And the other one was for someone else, but who?

  "Hey, Frizzy!" Fiora shouted through the hole where the door used to be. "Stop daydreaming and be useful."

  Kim took one last glance at the spawning stars, then went into the other room. Dull light came from the glowing white moss on the stone walls. The ceiling, too, had a layer of moss, which gave just enough light to reveal a messy collection of bones in the nearest corner. She didn't look too closely at them in case they were human bones.

  "This is where the j?rk lived and ate," Fiora said, sounding very much like a tour guide. She stalked along the perimeter of the room. Damon shadowed her. Anything she touched, he touched. Kim wondered if his survival instinct was to become a mimic of the alpha in a pack.

  "Blayre likes to hide his doors," Fiora said. "He thinks it's funny."

  "Blayre has a devious mind," Kim said.

  "He has only one tenth the deviousness of his father, Gene, The All Powerful Wizard of Thunder and Blood," Fiora promised."He led the fight to defeat D?s-K?, a horrid dancing mage with shaking hips and grooves of great destruction. Gene sacrificed his life driving that scourge out of Metaloria, when Blayre was only a boy. The son will never live up to his father."

  Kim walked to the center of the room, which, sadly, smelled like the j?rk.

  "What do we do now?" Damon said when they were done with their circumnavigation of the room. "Is there a spell that would open a magic door?" He lifted the staff. "Perhaps one that uses clever words like, 'Speak friend and enter.'"

  "Speak friend?" Fiora said. "What kind of idiot would use a spell like that?"

  "Dwarves," he said.

  Fiora had eyebrows made of scales. They moved like little angry snakes as she said: "And what are dwarves?"

  "You don't know what dwarves are?" Damon punctuated the sentence with an open-jawed, agog look. "What kind of world are we in?"

  "Long ago, there were killer dwarfs. They all died in a heavy mental breakdown that resulted in a tragic power chord explosion. Those are the only dwarfs we have"

  "I'll just ignore that you're not using the proper pluralization," Damon said. "But in our literature, dwarves were short people with beards. Stocky, too. And they dig mines. And are often ugly."

  "Those are elves," Fiora said.

  A faraway look entered Damon's eyes. "No, elves are tall and lean and clean-shaven and smell like lavender. I don't think they even have facial hair. And they're ethereal."

  Fiora laughed. "You have tall, ethereal elves in your world?" She continued pressing against the stones on the wall. "I suppose they don't smell like three-day-old dead fish, either."

  Damon pushed a hand onto the wall behind Fiora, then wiped the moss onto his trousers, which now glowed with his handprints. "Well, elves are only in books. We don't have them or dwarves in the real world. The incantation I mentioned was used in the Lord of the Rings. Most people don't know it's a single fantasy novel. But Allen and Unwin published it as a trilogy because it was so long."

  Kim thought that perhaps this was not the right time to bring up minutiae about Lord of the Rings, a book she'd never read and a movie that had caused the end of her relationship with Bryce, The Ex-Boyfriend Who'd Dragged Her To See Lord of the Rings In The Theatre Without Warning Her It Was A Trilogy. Part of the reason they broke up was that he cried at the end of the movie while muttering, "I was meant to live in Middle Earth with the hobbits."

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  Kim realized in a way, she was living in Middle Earth now. She'd change places with Bryce in a heartbeat.

  "The world you come from is clearly mad," Fiora said. "Let's stick to the task: we have to exit this stinkhole."

  She made another navigation of the room, this time punching selected sections of the wall, chipping the rock. Little flames were fizzing out of the dragonspawn's nostrils. And her ears. Kim didn't know how the second trick was possible. What else was burning in there? Maybe her brains could be cooked and still function.

  "Well, I'm stumped," Fiora said. "No obvious keyholes or pressure stones or invisible portals."

  "Friend!" Damon said loudly, and the word echoed back at him sadly. Then he shouted: "Mellon!" The room replied with another sad echo.

  "Why are you shouting for a melon?" Kim asked. Maybe she'd misread him—he might not be adjusting to this new reality all that well.

  "It's the elvish word for friend," Damon explained. "The dwarves used it to open the gate to…" He clearly saw that her eyes were glazing over. "Sorry, I was Tolkiensplaining."

  "Well, it's good that you are attempting to use whatever rattles around your empty head to help," Fiora said. "Any ideas, Frizzie?"

  "My name is Kim. You can use it."

  "No point in learning the names of the soon to be dead," Fiora said. "So Frizzy and One Dimple it is."

  "I called him One Dimple," Kim said. "That's my nickname for him."

  "What are you two talking about?" Damon asked.

  "That which is obvious," Fiora said. "Now, Frizzy Kim, do you have any ideas about how to escape the room? Or do I have to pluck them out of your skull?"

  "I have ideas," Kim muttered. "I do."

  "Then, pray tell, what are they?" Fiora folded her scaly arms across her chest. That move should hurt considering the dragonspawn's leather wrist bracelets had rather long spikes. Perhaps her scales acted like armour.

  "Well…." Kim followed up with a long pause. The kind of awkward pause that happens when someone passes gas at a funeral. Or drops a family heirloom down a stairwell. Or is trying to cover up the fact they don't have an idea.

  "Well?" Fiora tapped her foot. Which made her toe claws dig into the stone. And that drew Kim's attention—Fiora's claws were painted with red nail polish. It was endearing. Maybe a dragon thing who would take the time to paint her claws with nail polish while in a dungeon had a sweet side.

  Then she noticed something else below those sharp toes.

  "We've looked in all the obvious places," Kim said. Confidence rose in her, and she straightened her back. She pointed her blade at the floor. "We haven't looked down."

  The stone was loose where Fiora had tapped her foot. Kim sheathed her sword, careful not to slice a finger off while doing so, and knelt down. She wrestled a stone out of the floor with ease and discovered an iron ring. "I have a feeling we just pull on this."

  "Oh, so you aren't just a pretty face." Fiora shouldered Kim to the side, which meant she was close enough that Kim noticed the dragonspawn smelled like flowers. Fiora grabbed the ring and pulled. Her muscles, clearly visible beneath the scales, flexed, and, meeting resistance, she redoubled her efforts. Finally, the door in the floor lifted, squeaking open on rusted hinges. Fiora peered into the round black hole. "I haven't seen this floor portal trick before. Blayre must have strained his brainpan dreaming it up." Fiora poked a clawed finger into the darkness. Light music played.

  "I almost know that song," Damon said. "My dad would know."

  "There are always songs," Fiora said. "You must live in a stupid world if music doesn't hold it together. Light doesn't go through this hole, so we can't see what's on the other side. One of you must stick your head in there."

  "Will I lose my head?" Damon asked.

  Fiora shrugged the shrug of a dragonspawn who didn't seem to care. "If I lose my head, both of you will certainly die. But if only one of you loses his or her head, then the other has a better chance of living. It's what we call math in my world."

  "I don't like your math," Kim said.

  "Well, you could stick your hand through," Fiora suggested. "And pat around until it's ripped off. Anyway, find your inner metal and take a look. Just dab in, look, and dab out before a set of malicious jaws can chomp your hea off."

  Kim was going to make a joke about dabbing, but she remembered it wouldn't make sense here or even in the current decade back on Earth. It was a dance move her uncle would consistently reference, as if jokes from the 2010s were still funny.

  "I'll do it this time," Damon said to Kim. "And the next time we run into a horrible choice, you take the risk. I'm totally a feminist in life-threatening situations." His smile showed that one dimple again.

  "It's a deal," Kim said.

  Damon's smile widened. She decided he was handsome. "Okay," he said. "Here I go. I'm about to do it. I'm taking a breath now."

  "Be quick," Fiora said. "I don't want to drag around your headless body as a distraction for war pig zombies."

  "Here goes." Damon shoved his head into the hole. Kim counted silently, and when she got to three, he pulled his head back.

  "It's amazing!" he said. "So colourful. And so many flowers!" He looked at Kim. "You like flowers, right? Do you want me to get you flowers?"

  "What? No!" Kim snapped. "I mean, I don't mind them. But this is the wrong time and place for flowers."

  "Shut your cakeholes about flowers," Fiora snapped. "Was there anything with tentacles or teeth?"

  "Nothing like that," Damon said. "It's a heavenly garden. And bright, too. Almost like being outside. And there was a beguiling and pleasant scent to the place." He looked at the dragonspawn and added, "It smelled a little like you."

  "I don't smell pleasant!" Fiora hissed. Kim thought in the light of the glowing moss that Fiora was blushing. So dragonspawn could blush!

  "Well, anyway," Damon said. "It was a delightful scent. Way better than this room. In fact, I really want to smell it again. Here I go!"

  "Wait!" Fiora shouted.

  But he had plunged his head back into the hole. And Kim counted again. When she got to two, Damon wiggled his legs, then pushed with his arms and tried to pull his head back. Fiora reached for him, but before she could close her hand on his shirt, he was yanked bodily into the black hole.

  "Rock'n'Roll Damnation!" Fiora said. "There goes another one."