Even as we cried out in triumph, I sensed that something was amiss. Darkness clotted around us, rising like supplicant hands from the monster's corpse, and the stones below, surrounding us in nebulous wrongness, engulfing us in a cold, vaporous maw.

We were forced to our knees, bowed as if laden with a collar of wrought iron, held to the earth as if our limbs had been staked to the earth. Darkness stole my sight, its foulness clamping iron hands over my mouth, choking me, its cloying scent filling my lungs and driving the air from me. Then, it was over, we were laying upon familiar flagstones before a familiar door of bronze. The labyrinth. We had been cast here once more, thrown as far as possible like an insect flung away in disgust and the keen terror only a child can muster.

"This place again?" I heaved myself upright, glancing around yet seeing that Or'do was no longer by my side.

"What do you expect." His voice came from the other side of the door, which he heaved upward, showering us with dust as he heaved it past its locking mechanism and with a reverberating crash wedged it in the ceiling.

I chuckled, amused at the sight of Or'do standing there befuddled, his shoulders gray with dust, his expression on of confusion."Why did it not separate us this time?"

"It tried." He closed his fingers into a fist, tongues of darkness licking the air like curious serpents tasting the wind in search of prey. "But I told it no."

"You told it no?"

"I told it no." He folded his arms proudly.

I sighed. "Not going to explain that are you?"

"No, my maiden." He stepped aside, gesturing through the now quite empty doorway. "Ladies first."

I glowered at him, yet held it no more than a second before bursting into a fit of laughter. Shaking my head, I strode past him into the corridor beyond. "Don't worry, this maiden will find us a way out."

"Of course." Or'do stepped past, indicating a ladder with a dramatic sweep of his gloved hand. "Be careful my lady, wouldn't want you to soil your gown."

"I'll soil you." I muttered, leaping past the ladder and crashing to the ground with the force of a crumbling mountain. Ahead loomed the portcullis, and behind it an ancient, mighty creature that would at our capable hands soon learn the meaning of fear.