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He sits there a moment and takes stock of the situation. They’re both still alive and will both be working to get out of here. He seriously doubts if Jiron will even think about trying to follow the way he went.

The room he’s in is rather large, the ceiling rises up at least two stories. As all other rooms they’ve come across, this one is bare of any furniture or anything else that would indicate what its purpose once was. On the far side of the room lies a closed door, the only way to go other than the one he used to enter. He hopes Jiron can either find him or a way to the surface.

Crossing the room to the door he takes the handle and pulls. He has to exert a lot of pressure to get it to swing open into the room. Beyond lies a hallway leading further into the building.

James takes the orb in hand and passes through the door, holding it high to better see what lies ahead. He moves down the hallway until he the light from the orb reveals a door ahead that’s slightly ajar. As he nears the door he stops when it appears as if a faint, dark light is coming through from the other side. Canceling his orb he sees that there is indeed a dark light coming through the doorway, and it’s pulsating.

Stepping softly, he moves to the opening and peers around the door. “Unbelievable,” he says under his breath. “I know this place.” In one of the campaigns he designed for role playing, he devised a room almost identical to this one.

In the center of the room is a pulsating purple sphere of light that’s twice the height of a man. Lightning crackles through it from one side to the other. Empty cages line the side of the room to the right and to the left stands an altar.

Sitting on top of the altar is a four armed, twisted, humanoid creature which in the campaign he designed was the representation of the cult’s god. No one appears to be in the room. He stands there and watches for a minute to be sure the room is empty. A doorway lies on the wall between two of the empty cages with another across the room from where he stands in the hallway, both are closed. When no one makes an appearance, he opens the door further and walks in.

The pulsating sphere gives off a malevolent aura and if it’s like the one he made, will lead to the plane where the god rules. Not wishing to test that particular theory, he gives the sphere a wide berth as he walks around it toward the altar where the god’s statue sits.

Curiosity getting the better of him, he wonders if there’s a hidden compartment in the belly of the statue same as the one in his campaign. If there is, you pull the top left and bottom right arms down at the same time to open it. He realizes it’s sheer folly to tempt fate but he just has to know.

Stepping to the altar he takes hold of the two arms and pulls them both down at the same time. They both rotate down smoothly and the belly of the statue pops open. Within lies a ring. Now in his campaign, this had been a ring of three greater wishes and was guarded by a deadly trap. If everything has been the same so far, so must the trap.

Taking the statue in both hands, he rotates it upon the altar clockwise until it has come full circle. Once it rests in the same position again, he rotates the two arms back to their original position. Now, the trap should be nullified. If he’s wrong, he’s dead.

Hesitantly reaching out for the ring, he lays one finger on it and braces himself. Nothing happens. Breathing a sigh of relief, he takes out the ring and holds it up. Grinning in satisfaction, he contemplates whether he should use it. Of course there’s no guarantee that it will do the same thing as the ring in his campaign. Also, he remembers how he used to try to come up with the worst possible results when people wished for things. If they misspoke, disastrous things would happen.

One time when Dave had found a ring, he wished for a million gold pieces. So of course he had a million gold pieces appear, only problem was that they were fused together. Too heavy to carry, he was forced to leave all that gold behind. Grinning at