Ashley guided me through the packed dirt arena with all the clown bodies. Sequins and polka dots strewn everywhere. I did my best not to look at anything as she led me to the far side of the space. The others were already gathered around the door on the far side that had appeared with the defeat of the car mimic.

  “You alright?” Oliver asked kindly as I came within polite speaking distance.

  I nodded my head mutely. What was there to say? I froze up and had a panic attack. I could have put all of us in danger if Mara hadn’t leveled up her abilities, and if John hadn’t been such a murderhobo, or if Ashley hadn’t suddenly developed the ability to teleport around while sniping suckers.

  Realizing I had no idea what had happened I turned to Ashley, “What was with you and the shadows? Did you teleport?”

  Ashley blushed prettily. The deep pink of her cheeks set off the scattering of freckles across her face. “Oh, well it’s part of what I picked up from the shadow essence,” she said.

  I looked at her uncomprehendingly. “I thought you said it was like some kind of shadow control or synergy or something.”

  “It is…but it isn’t,” her voice rose at the end in question. “I don’t know. That’s the first time we’ve had like real deep shadows for me to play with. I don’t know, I just felt like I could ride the shadows from one spot to another and it let me. It was super intuitive. I had no idea I could do something like that. It’s way better than anything I could have hoped for.”

  “Huh,” Mara grunted. “We’ll have to try out some things later. Like, do the shadows have to be connected for you to move through them? Can you jump from one shadow to another?”

  “I know!” Ashley was super excited now. “I bet there’s all sorts of things about our abilities we’re missing out on because we haven’t been testing them out.”

  “Right?! Did you see me lay the smackdown out there?” Mara slapped Ashley on the back.

  “Did you seriously shout some Dragonball shit out there?” I asked.

  “I mean, it just felt right,” Mara answered.

  “Nerd,” I said lovingly. She really was just like the annoying little sister that I never had or knew I needed. Mara really did make my life so much better and worthwhile when she wasn’t driving me absolutely insane.

  “Asshole,” she said back just as lovingly. She smiled at me before we both turned back to the rest of the group.

  “Alright, now we’ve all had our daily allowance of girly bonding time. Let’s get going,” John quipped.

  Mara gave him the middle finger, “I’m not sure I can do that too often though, it took a lot out of me.” We all kind of nodded our heads in understanding. She walked through the door into the next room with some extra pep in her step. Guess it didn’t take too much out of her.

  John hurried after her. She may have a powerful ability that could one shot a lot of the monsters we’d encountered, but he was still our tank.

  The room we found ourselves in had a large carousel spinning in the middle of the room. Horses, elephants, lions, and other creatures rose up and down on poles as they pulled sleighs and carriages behind them in circles. A merry little tune played on repeat as the ride spun around and around. There wasn’t any space other than the short walkway to the front of the carousel. The edges of the carousel spun within a foot of a wall that encircled the entire area.

  The top of the carousel had the same bright, eerily cheerful motif. I shivered when I noticed the laughing clown face painted on one of the panels. Other panels showed other circus performers. There was a strong man lifting weights, a trapeze artist jumping from one swing to another, and of course the clown. There were more panels along the top that I couldn’t see though.

  We looked around at each other and with a shrug we began stepping onto the spinning carousel. It was a little jarring going from a motionless piece of ground onto a moving carousel, but none of us fell over and we all managed to hop on easily enough.

  I looked around the room as we slowly spun around it. The walls were close enough to touch all the way around. And of course now that we were on it, the entrance hallway we’d first entered had disappeared. There was nothing but the enclosing walls all around us. Great. Because we needed another fucking puzzle room. Sure, better than clowns, but I begged with all my might that it wasn’t another riddle obsessed entity locking us in.

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  We all looked around us as we spun around in circles, but it was Oliver that noticed the door on the central column of the carousel that we were spinning around. He grabbed our attention and with very little fanfare and not much difficulty we made our way to the center of the carousel and then into the thick interior column.

  Once I was inside I noticed the sound from the carousel immediately dampened and changed in quality. The room was larger than it should have been, but at this point I wasn’t that surprised anymore. Dungeons seemed to warp reality way more than I had anticipated. But considering you entered it by walking through a blank walled obelisk I guess it wasn’t that surprising.

  The weirdest thing about the room was all the instruments hanging on the walls and larger instruments like the full sized harp and stand-up piano arranged against the walls. In the center of the room sat a small pedestal with a small opened box sitting on top of it.

  I stepped closer and looked down into the box. Inside it was a small spinning carousel and out of the box was playing the same tune that had been playing outside. When the tune came to an end the music box slowly closed on its own. The room fell into a heavy silence.

  “What the fuck are we supposed to do?” I asked into the silence.

  “I’d guess based on the décor that we need to play some music,” Mara quipped.

  “Do any of you play?” I asked.

  Everyone looked around at each other and slowly shook their heads. Fucking great. We had a musical challenge and none of us had brought along a bard.

  “Fuck,” someone muttered.

  “I have perfect pitch,” Oliver’s voice rose up at the end.

  “Are you asking us or telling us,” John teased.

  Oliver turned and smacked his husband in the stomach. He had fortunately already dropped his mithril skin skill. “I’m telling you. I might be able to kind of wing it. Does anyone have something I can write down the notes on?”

  “He really does have perfect pitch,” John confirmed.

  “I have some paper and pencils,” Ashley volunteered.

  “Boyscout,” Mara teased.

  Ashley stuck her tongue out at her in return. She shrugged off her bag and quickly rifled through it. A few moments later she was handing Oliver a notebook and a mechanical pencil.

  Oliver took it from her and went back to the music box on the pedestal. With slightly shaking fingers he flipped the top open and the song began to play. He proceeded to relisten to the song a million times before he was satisfied he had gotten every note correctly written down. I don’t think he could have gone any slower than if he had gotten one note from each repetition of the song. By the end I think I could have played the damn thing.

  The rest of us tried to move to the side and talk quietly, but apparently even whispering proved too loud for him to confidently pick up the notes being played. So we sat there and silently watched him piece the song together. I was soooooooo bored. I ended up tearing out a sheet of paper out of the end of Ashley’s notebook. She scrounged another pencil together. We played that silly game from our respective school days where there are a bunch of dots and your goal is to make as many boxes as you can one line segment at a time. I let Ashley win because that’s how nice I am and not at all because she was so much better at it than I was. Mara and John saw us snickering in the corner playing and ended up doing the same thing sitting on the floor beside us. Mara easily stomped John, but that’s because my best friend is just that good at most games.

  By my second great loss to Ashley’s strategy, I mean letting her win, the music box finally stopped playing on constant repeat. I looked up and a determined Oliver was marching over to the piano. Which made sense for someone able to pick out notes without having to learn silly things like fingering or whatever they called it.

  He sat down on the bench in front of the keys and began picking at them one by one. Then he started trying to play the song like a game of memory, trying to remember where each key was. Each attempt got a little longer the more confident he became in his ability to hit the right notes. It still didn’t sound like the song from the music box. He seemed to be more concerned with getting the notes in the right order than getting the tempo and melody right.

  I crept over and stole another couple pieces of paper from the back of the notebook. This time I challenged John and let Mara and Ashley duke it out for supremacy. John and I were much more evenly matched and I didn’t feel the urge to let him lose. Another game later, that I won, I noticed that Oliver had started trying to match the actual melody of the song. He started going over to the music box and letting it play through and then hurrying back to the piano. Mara remained undefeated at the dot game, though her victory was less overwhelming this time than when she played John.

  It took another game of the dots, this time John and Ashley won, before something happened. Suddenly in the silence left over from Oliver’s latest attempt at the song there was a grinding sound. I looked up and across from us a stone door was rising into the ceiling. I gave a great whoop of excitement and Ashley swept me up in an enthusiastic hug.

  John rushed over to Oliver and swept him up in a hug as well. I saw him whispering soft words into Oliver’s ear as Ashley twirled me around like I weighed nothing. Oliver leaned heavily into John’s embrace.

  “Finally!” Mara yelled.

  John shushed her and went back to loving on Oliver, placing little kisses on his face while Oliver just basked in it. It was so sweet seeing those two encourage and support each other. I almost wished someone would do that for me. Maybe Ashley would be willing to cuddle in bed tonight…like before she fell asleep and didn’t realize she was doing it. Being held by her now felt better than it really should have. Then I waved off that crazy thought and helped everyone collect up their bags and gear we’d set aside earlier. We had another room in this damn dungeon to clear.