Dungeon fairies had been part of dungeon ecosystems so long that no one remembered when they’d arrived. Millennia ago, they served as advisors to the first keepers — tiny, glowing consultants who helped mortals figure out how to poke a dungeon core without immediately exploding. Time, bureaucracy, and the Republic’s Department of Dungeon Support eventually turned that job into a civil service nightmare, and the fairies quietly pivoted careers.

  These days, they worked a much lower-stress gig: Acting. Chatty, sparkly role players to add some polish to the dungeon experience.

  Technically, dungeons could generate their own talking Templates — monsters, statues, ominous flaming skulls that engaged in witty banter as they tried to help you. Did those ever work properly? A lot of dead adventurers said no.

  The templates took to combat concepts admirably, but even a faint accent could throw them off, and when any given party might have a hearty dwarven brogue or a melodious elven song, and even the bog-standard human might be cockney, there was a decent chance that the only thing a party would ever get out of them was “I didn’t quite get that.”

  Enter: the fairies. Fragile, magical, overly enthusiastic, and marginally more reliable.

  Oz didn’t know any of that. What Oz did know was that when fairies showed up in a dungeon, it usually meant you were doing something right. In every tale he half remembered, a delver talking to a fairy was a good sign. The trick was keeping them alive. The bodies that they manifested for their roles were barely real and had the survivability of wet tissue paper in a hurricane.

  Oz stepped closer to the pair of glowing figures watching him from their cages. Something crunched underfoot. He winced and tried to look non-threatening, brushing at the blood on his clothes, which of course only smeared it around like war paint.

  Brilliant start.

  He stuffed the chain, still dripping viscera, into a pocket that really didn’t have room for it, and tugged down his face mask. The smell got worse. So did the vibe. But at least he looked slightly less like a mid-level boss.

  “Erm, hello?” Oz opened with, already wincing at the sound of his own voice. It was extra deep from all the smoke.

  “This one is a fool, sister. A dangerous thug, here to eat our flesh. This strange assignment gets stranger,” said the one that looked a touch more masculine.

  “Oi.” Oz scowled at the first one to speak. He knew this was likely a puzzle, not some actually imprisoned fairies. Oz knew there was some kind of deal between fairies and dungeons, that much he remembered. They liked word games. How a dungeon got fairies he hadn’t the foggiest. Perhaps they just moved in like rats.

  “Brother, be nice. Clearly he is a kind soul who has come to save us,” the feminine one trilled. Her voice was less grating than the boy’s.

  “You sound nicer. Let’s talk with you instead. Now, how do I get you out of these cage things.There are no doors and my gut says just hacking at them won’t go down well.” Oz asked, but the fairy just smiled and waved at him.

  “He’s keeps talking sister. Why does he speak wear a blood-stained cloth around his neck? Is it stained from eating monster flesh?” Okay, the little tit had a fair complaint—he must look kind of horrifying—but too far. Then something twigged in Oz’s brain.

  “Wait, do you not understand me? Or can you not hear me?” Were the cages warded against sound? No, that didn’t seem right, otherwise how would he hear them, or they hear each other? For some reason he could understand them, but they did not understand him. Undoubtedly part of the puzzle.

  “Do you think he’s going to threaten me, sister? Do you believe he wishes to grind up my bones and rip off my wings?” The ‘brother’ rubbed his hands with glee. Oz raised an eyebrow.

  “I really hope whatever this is isn’t part of the puzzle.”

  “He thinks we can help him. We should give him a hint,” the girl said, and Oz immediately nodded. Some people would like to complete a puzzle without any aid. Oz was not that man.

  “You’re too soft, Maizette. It’s just some hidden levers behind the stage. I mean, it’s not that hard, he just needs to look around. Idiot didn’t even let us watch him burn the monsters,” the shrill brother complained.

  “Don’t use my name, ‘brother’! It’s rude to tempt fate so. You may have done this countless times, but this is my first real role, and I don’t want to mess it up.” Maizette snapped back, Oz ignored the drama between them and headed to the back of the stage where the ‘brother’ had implied the ‘levers’ were. True to form, hidden behind the form of the Tower, the cables came down to a single box. It had eight switches labelled with numbers and a note tucked into it.

  “Oi John, a reminder for you about how to let the cages down and open them.

  “Don’t screw this up, otherwise you’ll mince the fairies rather than releasing them. If you do this wrong you’ll be lucky if the cast don’t murder you. And you’ll be the one cleaning up the mess.

  “Okay, you need to start with switch 1. Make sure you end with switch 1 too. Flip switch 6 the first time before you have to flip switch 3 and 4, one after the other. Don’t forget to flip switch 5 before you switch 2. Flip switch 7 once, but do that right before you go hit switch 1. Remember, switch 1 and 6 get flipped twice. If you think you’ve got it wrong, flip switch 8 before you flip the ninth and last switch. That’ll reset it.

  “That’ll trigger the end of the performance and release them as part of the conclusion of the play. Remember, get flipping when the Dungeon Lord says his bit about the ‘Aardvark’.”

  Looking at it, Oz felt the whole thing seemed suspicious. How the text appeared on the page—it was printed and sat in the centre of the paper—yet the tone was of something handwritten by an angry maths teacher who was tired of asking how many apples each child had and had decided to branch out into murder games. Still, he was certain this was a puzzle.

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  It felt wrong, just like the paper. Like it was kind of low energy. He had heard people debating puzzles, and there were elemental idols and stuff. This was just some switches. He kind of hoped he’d missed something, if nothing else because this was the kind of puzzle that he loathed, and the Other wasn’t any more help. He looked at it, trying to lean on his newly enhanced mental attributes, but they didn’t make you smarter, they just made thinking easier, which was not the same.

  He briefly meditated and found he still couldn’t purchase any upgrades to his attributes. His soul was apparently still stabilising.

  No last-minute boost to Processing. He knew Processing wasn’t intelligence. It was to do with memory and how you processed it. It was great if you needed to track a lot of stuff going on in a dungeon, as you could absorb more. It also tended to help some puzzles, as it was easier to remember all the parts.

  He’d also heard higher Will made studying easier, allowing you to focus more, but the attributes didn’t turn you into a genius.

  As he came out of his meditation, he heard the male one laughing to itself.

  “Oh, look at his stupid face, he’s bamboozled by a simple logic puzzle. Maybe he will become enraged and the cages will shred us.”

  There was definitely something wrong with this guy. And it wasn’t just cultural. Maizette looked horrified.

  “I’ve not been waiting all this time to be turned to ribbons. Even if it is all illusory. I want to work through the whole script. Oh, look, he’s looking at us. How should I act?”

  “Who cares? It’s not like this is a big role. We’re just set dressing. We don’t even get a speaking role unless this oaf gets lucky and frees us. Otherwise we’re heading back to—” The sister cut him off with a huff.

  “I’m part of a puzzle. I like puzzles, and I’m going to do my best no matter what.” Maizette looked hurt, and Oz felt for her. Thanks to the Other forcing him to look over his life, he now had a few too many memories of being like her ‘brother’, just blasting through things as fast as possible, no matter how much others were enjoying it.

  Nether, he’d been such a dick at times. It had made sense at the time, but in a foggy way he’d just blocked out all the glares and the looks he got and ploughed on. He wanted to try to be better with people, and part of that was going to include paying attention to others more. He really didn’t want to shred her, but was genuinely worried about his chances.

  Wait, she said she liked puzzles, didn’t she? Could they read?

  “Oh look, he’s coming over. Idiot doesn’t realise—what’s he doing! Wait, what are you—” The voice was muffled as Oz picked up some fabric from the debris on the floor and threw it over the nasty one’s cage.

  Oz did aim to be better at people. But he’d start with the ones who didn’t insult him mid-rescue.

  Chops took that opportunity to settle in underneath the angry fairy, perhaps deciding the little tit needed guarding. Oz then approached Maizette’s cage and held up the paper.

  “Oh, you’re asking me for help. I’m not sure that’s in the script. But this puzzle is a bit boring, isn’t it. I mean, it’s just a string of numbers?” That meant she could read. Great. He got out his pen and wrote 1 at the top of the paper, holding up one finger, and then did the same at the bottom. The task said 1 at the beginning and end. Then he held up two fingers and wrote a 2 off to the side. The little fairy nodded.

  “Oh, fingers, yes!” The little fairy started to flash her fingers, and Oz had to gesture for her to slow down. He also had a moment of confusion. As something wasn’t lining up, and he then realised she only had three fingers and a thumb on each hand. Still, by the end he had a code.

  “Thanks a lot, give me a mo,” he said, more for his own benefit than hers, before heading over to the switches.

  Oz took a breath, then another. The switches sat there like smug little landmines, waiting for him to make the wrong move. Get this wrong, and he was apparently turning fairies into chunky glitter paste. Not permanently. It wasn’t even a respawn for them, just an end of their manifestation, but it would tank his chances of getting out of this dungeon unscathed. No pressure.

  “Okay,” he muttered, rolling his shoulders. “Flip one to start… six before three and four… then five, then two… seven just before one again, don’t touch eight unless I screw it—”

  He winced and hit the first switch.

  Clank.

  The sound echoed through the theatre like a Chops-sized mousetrap going off.

  He froze, then with utter care followed the exact codes on the sheet. He was trembling by the time he hit the last switch.

  Clank. Clack. Klunk. Metal strained. Gears somewhere behind the walls groaned with the mechanical death rattle of something ancient waking up after a very long nap.

  Oz took a step back, holding his breath.

  “I swear,” he muttered to Chops, “if this thing explodes and I die solving a fairy puzzle, I am going to scream.”

  Ding.

  A light chime rang out, soft, melodic, and entirely out of place amidst the carnage.

  Oz blinked. The cage holding Maizette shimmered, then dissolved into golden motes of light.

  “Oh, thank the Nether,” he breathed. “I am a genius. A terrified, sweat-covered genius.”

  Chops looked at him.

  “For asking her, of course!” Speaking of her, he turned to see a smiling Maizette flying where her cage used to be.

  To Oz’s great amusement, her brother’s cage had also dissolved. The faux fur lined cape he’d hung over it fell down and trapped the angry little bugger. He couldn’t help but laugh as he saw a small lump start to move around beneath it. His sister matched his laugh with one of her own, as he’d landed on top of Chops, who was investigating the wriggling form.

  It became very animated as the hot breaths of two mouths floated over it.

  “Thank you for saving my brother and me.” Maizette stifled a laugh, then spoke properly. Her voice was clear now, no more of that strange ringing, like they’d been talking inside a giant bell.

  “No worries. Thanks for helping me with the puzzle. Can you understand me now?” Oz asked. It was nice to get something right, and she was so clearly enjoying her role it was kind of infectious.

  “Yes. Now the cages are gone, we are no longer banned from using your language.” Oz felt he was missing something there but paused before he interrupted. She probably had some lines to get through, and he didn’t want to mess up her flow.

  “Thank you for your aid. For your help, we can also offer you a boon. A path to defeating the vile creature who controls this dungeon, and secrets we have spied. We wish to see the Jackal Master vanquished. Please help my brother. He spotted something you should know.”

  “No worries. I just hope he’s not going to be an arse.” Maizette looked very pleased at getting through her lines and how he called out the brother. Oz gently pushed away Chops and lifted up the fabric.

  “What the hell? Why didn’t he help me? I knew he was trash!” The male still had the chiming voice and looked furious.

  “Oi, stop being a prick. Maizette says you’ve got something to tell me.”

  “What did you say?” The little man recoiled in shock.

  “How do you know my name?” The girl looked horrified. Oz sighed. This was why he didn’t do people. He was always doing something to annoy someone.

  “Er, he said it?” Oz pointed at the brother, only to have Maizette collapse in floods of tears.

  “I’m dead! I’m so dead!” she screamed.

  Oz sighed. This time he didn’t even know what he’d done wrong.