Cyrus waited a few minutes after Kylnar left, then gathered some wood as he returned to the ruins of the house, where Lyda was still asleep. He sat down and set up a fire, igniting it with a point of a finger. After adjusting the fire for heat over flames, he set up a cooking grill over it, a thin wire grid with a pair of metal legs on either end.

Pulling food and dishes out of his warehouse, Cyrus began cooking bacon and pancakes, Lyda waking to the smell of breakfast. They ate in silence, Cyrus adding strawberries and bananas to their meal, then cleaned everything off before sending the dishes away and putting out the flames with his magic.

"Let's move on," Cyrus told Lyda. "If you're ready."

"I am," she told him. "How long after I wake does it take for the sleepiness to become noticeable again?"

"Depends on how much you pay attention and how long you slept," he told her. "If you're paying attention, you'll probably notice it in the next hour or two again."

"Okay," she said. "Let's go."

Lyda pulled out the key and approached the cellar doors, inserting the key into the lock. Once it clicked open, she pulled open the doors, then descended the stone steps. Cyrus followed behind her, summoning up a globe of light to illuminate the dark hall.

"Do you have any flashlights?" Lyda asked. "In case we get separated?"

Cyrus produced a backpack from his warehouse and handed it to her.

"Cyrus," she said. "This looks and feels rather full. And it's not a flashlight."

"It's a survival pack," he told her. "It has a few days' rations in it, water purification tablets, a flashlight that works by shaking it, emergency blanket, first-aid kit, and a few other things."

"You don't strike me as the type of guy to need a survival pack," she said as she pulled it on.

"I assemble and sell them," he told her. "They run a hundred and fifty notes, which is cheaper than most you'd find with the same types of supplies in them, and mine are just as good, if not better."

"A side hobby of yours?" She asked.

"It gives me something to do with my hands when I'm bored," he told her. "There's a lantern in there as well, along with backup battery packs."

"A lantern?" She asked, surprised. "With battery packs? Isn't that expensive? There aren't many Dungeons lightning crystals form in. The lightning wire in the flashlight's much more common, so that's understandable. When I was looking into some stuff for packing for Dungeon or ruin trips, I saw the price tag on lanterns like this. Aren't they fifty notes? And the battery packs something like ten apiece?"

"Yes," he answered. "Benefit of owning an entire Dungeon excavation team and a Dungeon that produces lightning crystals is that I can get the stuff for much cheaper. Lead the way and don't touch the walls unless you're pretty sure there isn't a wall there."

Lyda gave him an odd look, but he ignored it. She'd figure out what he meant eventually, if she ever did. That tunnel's hidden passages weren't particularly important, not with it being that early in the ruins. They all either had nothing at all or a few pieces of supplies for the explorers.

Further into the ruins, the hidden rooms would also potentially possess traps.

After fifty yards, they came across a fork, the path moving either forward or left. Lyda looked in both directions before continuing forward.

"Why did you chose the forward path?" Cyrus asked.

"To keep moving forward," she answered. "If we come across a dead-end, then we can just turn around, right?"

"Right."

There was also the possibility that they would end up back at that fork, though he didn't tell her. He also didn't mention that the moment the entrance was out of sight, it would disappear from them, a new section of the path opening up in its place.

That wouldn't prevent another group from entering into the labyrinth, however. If another group came down, the entrance would remain missing to those who were there already, but visible to those who entered until it was out of sight. The first group would simply see the second appear in the tunnel.

Since he doubted anyone else would show up, Cyrus didn't mention it to Lyda, instead watching her as she walked, picking paths whenever there was a fork. If there was the option to keep walking forward, she chose that path. Otherwise, she alternated between choosing the left path and right path.

They stopped for lunch at noon, eating sandwiches and apples while drinking water. Nothing was said between them until they stood again, preparing to continue walking rather than taking the nap both of them felt the need to take.

"Cyrus," Lyda said. "Do you have any advice other than not touching the walls unless I'm certain there's no wall there?"

"You're not good at memorizing the path you've taken and gauging its distance, are you?" He asked, and she gave him a confused look. "I'll take that as a no. We've been going in circles all day. If you form a pattern, you'll always end up in a circle. Left, right, left, right, left, right. You end up in a circle, even if you go forward at every turn. Rather than picking a pattern, listen to your gut and follow it."

"Thank you," she said, then began walking again. "So follow my instincts rather than the pattern I picked."

"Yes."

They continued walking as Cyrus contemplated dismissing his globe of light. The only reason he summoned it was because most groups would turn on lights as soon as they entered the labyrinth. Lyda likely would have asked him for a flashlight anyway.

If he dismissed the light, however, the path would become clear. Mostly clear, at any rate. As long as any light not of the labyrinth was in the labyrinth, the glow would not reveal itself. A soft, green glow in striping down the tunnels. At every intersection, it would form an arrow, pointing in one of the two directions.

The trick was to ignore the arrows and go in the other direction. In a three-way fork, the choice was always to go right, because it was the right way.

In the end, he decided against it. As far as he knew, no one had ever realized that trick, because everyone always used a light. They needed to see, after all.

Another three hours were spent in the labyrinth before Cyrus and Lyda found themselves at a set of stairs leading down. Lyda gave Cyrus a glance before walking down them, and he followed after her.

The steps twisted and turned, eventually ending at an arched opening leading into a chamber with an altar at the back end of it, two dark green candles burning on it. They approached the altar and knelt, folding their hands as if in prayer.

A moment passed, then they found themselves on a floating platform in another chamber, the room illuminated by motes of light lazily floating through the air. The stone platform was thirty feet in diameter, and joined to another platform by a stone path.

From what Lyda could see, that stage of the ruins consisted of the floating platforms and either steps or paths between them. It spanned a massive cavern with no visible bottom or sides, the platforms themselves forming several levels.

"This is a maze, isn't it?" She asked.

"It is," he answered. "We'll find another altar. However, there are traps abundant as well. Lead the way."

"Why don't you go first," she suggested. "And I'll just tell you which way to go? As a god, you'd be more resilient to the traps, and-"

"You're expecting me to avoid the traps to avoid being caught in them myself," he told her, and her cheeks flushed crimson. "Two issues with that. First, I can intentionally pass over the traps without activating them. Second, I don't need to do that, because gods and Blessed Ones don't trigger them."

"Oh," she said. "I suppose Rynovar had that done in case a god or Blessed One was escorting someone?"

"Because when I was eight years old, I threw a small fit after being caught in a particularly nasty trap that Kylnar hid a tad too well."

"How small of a fit?" She asked.

"It was easier for Kylnar to just reset time to before I went into the ruins and changed the settings of all of the traps," he told her. "So I have no memory of the event. According to him, I completely unraveled the entire set of ruins, then sank Rynovar's island to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. I'm not sure if it's an exaggeration or not, I did have a small temper when I was little."

"That's not a 'small' fit," she told him."

"I have the power to completely wipe out life on Earth and reshape its entire geography in less than a day," he told her. "To a god, my supposed tantrum was rather small."

"Right," she said. "Sorry. Even after all this time, I can't help but compare you to, well, mortal standards."

"It's understandable," he said. "Shall we move on?"

"I'm kind of tired," she told him. "I know it's just the spell, but do you think we could rest here?"

"We most certainly could."

"But?" She caught his tone and expression.

"It's an experience I'd rather not go through again," he told her.

He could tell her what the motes of light really were, and what they would do to anyone sleeping in that chamber, but didn't want to frighten her. Her expression and emotions told her that she understood that he had his reasons for not telling, and she turned and began walking.

It took them four hours to make it to the second altar. Part of the time was spent just navigating the platforms and needing to turn back around several times, but part of it also came from Lyda walking straight into traps.

When they finally reached the altar, they both knelt in front of it and folded their hands together. A moment later, they were in the ruins of a chapel.

"It's not the same as before," Cyrus said as Lyda opened her mouth, and he indicated a statue on the other side of the altar.

It was made of marble, with a few vines growing over it. The statue featured a fit man with short hair, striking a pose with his member at full mast.

"Uh," Lyda hesitated. "Who is that supposed to be? It doesn't match the pictures of Rynovar I see sometimes. Is it Kylnar? Is that Rynovar screwing with Kylnar?"

"It's Rynovar's younger brother," Cyrus explained. "All of the statues you'll see in the ruins will either be of him or his wife. Or both. A few areas have their statues or paintings be of them having sex in various positions."

"Oh," she said.

"Let's head down the path," he told her. "There's a place we can stop for dinner and go to sleep at ahead that's more comfortable than a ruined chapel."

Lyda nodded, then left the chapel and began walking down the path. Cyrus followed her, listening to the birds chirping as they went. There were actual birds there, but nothing dangerous. Their presence was solely for the ambiance, a gentle, soothing sound to lift the eerie feeling that would fill the air if the ruins had no sounds at all.

After twenty minutes of walking, they reached a fork in the path, and Lyda looked both ways before looking to Cyrus for help.

"You're the one leading us," he told her. "Though it doesn't matter which way we go. We'll end up at a place we can rest comfortably at either one. And we'll end up moving on to the next area regardless of which one we take."

"Okay," Lyda said, then picked the path leading to the right rather than moving on ahead.

"Not going to go forward?" He asked as they walked. "You were doing that initially in the labyrinth."

"I chose the right path," she told him. "Because I figured, if it doesn't matter, then we don't need to move forward, we can just go right."

"It didn't matter," he told her. "Because only one of the two paths has the entrance to the next stage. This is the path leading to the ruins with it. Had we gone the other way, you'd probably search for awhile, eventually realizing there wasn't an entrance there. Then, you'd come back and take the right path."

"The… the right path," she groaned. "Rynovar did that for the pun, didn't he?"

"He did," Cyrus answered. "Rynovar set it up like that in a few places here."

Lyda snorted as she shook her head, continuing down the path. Cyrus debated on telling her that had she gone forward, then turned back around, the path wouldn't be on the left. Just to keep with the pun, the ruins and path would shift so that they were on the right-hand side when she came back to them.

He decided it wasn't necessary information, just a bit of trivia, and made a note to tell her about it after they left. He would do the same with the labyrinth they went through. There was always the chance she would end up back at the very start, though that was a low chance. Most return warps led to the most recent chapel ruin rather than the very start.

Two other labyrinths in that set of ruins also had similar enchantments to the first, so the knowledge would give her additional help if they came across them.

After another thirty minutes of walking, the two of them arrived at a set of ruined buildings on the edge of a cliff. Unable to help herself, Lyda approached the cliff, looking out across the forest below.

Cyrus could tell she'd forgotten they were in a reality marble, believing the seemingly endless forest to be real, the setting sun true.

"This is a beautiful view," Lyda told Cyrus.

"It is," he told her. "But I prefer a few others over this one."

"In here?" She asked.

"And outside of here," he nodded. "Aunt Lena's reality marble looks nicer to me, though these ruins have some nice spots, too. There's a waterfall we might come across I quite enjoy napping beside. The ambiance of it and the birds is soothing, and I sometimes go for a swim before or after the nap."

"I look forward to seeing it," Lyda told him. "Let's set up camp, shall we? I'll search for the entrance to the next stage in the morning."