TAKE ANY OR ALL OF THE GEAR. YOU HAVE TWO HOURS TO PACK. YOU MUST BE ABLE TO MOVE YOUR GEAR.

  I had a minute and a half left when I touched the wall. It disappeared like all the others.

  I was suddenly struck by how quiet it had been since I arrived, as the room I was about to enter was filled with the voices, noises and rumbles of a large crowd of people.

  Conscious of the probability that I would loose the travois and all of my weapons if I did not act quickly, I suppressed the panic brought on by so many strangers in one place. I dragged my travois through the gap, which closed behind me.

  The weight of the thing was quite a lot too much for me. I had to lean all my weight into pulling for the meter or so I needed in order to clear the doorway. My burden landed on the wide flagstone pavers with a cacophonous clang, clatter and thump.

  I drew rather more attention than I would have wanted.

  A tall, skinny, nearly emaciated man laughed nearby. “Ha! There’s one every few days. Hey. Hey. I’ve been here longer than any of these guys. What style of fighting are you planning on? Not in here, of course. I mean…” he pointed at a difficult to read notice on the opposite wall. “No violence is one of the rules. You went balanced gear and midpoint between value and choice? Smart, smart.”

  “Carver! Stop annoying the newbie. Nobody is going to trade their spellbook for the nothing you have in return.” The new speaker was a broad woman in armor. She looked like the cartoon opera lady, horned helmet, round breast covers on her cuirass and all.

  “Aww, Clarice, you have everything you need, why are you even…”

  “Because I have a weapon to trade for one of theirs.”

  “She/her.” I said stiffly. While I was aware I was andrygenous and it must be difficult to tell past the three armors, it still grated a little to hear the neutral pronoun. My flat chest and boyish figure had been a topic my bullies harped on incessantly.

  The weird kid always has bullies.

  “She doesn’t need your crappy low quality sword, Clarice.” Carter groused.

  We had drawn a big crowd.

  “Hey, kid. I’m Max.” A huge muscular man said from the side. “Promise I won’t steal, stealing counts under the no violence thing, but we do need to clear the portal. Mind if I drag your gear?”

  “Uh… yeah.” I stepped away from the crude harness I had rigged. He pulled straight out, into the center of the huge room. That was not where I would have chosen to set up shop but I already seemed to hand the attention of every person in the place. I spotted a tiefling in the crowd and then started to notice she wasn’t the only fantasy person in the group. As he angled away from me I saw Max had wings and a tail.

  Augmented I surmised.

  “Carter, what path did you take?”

  He winced. “Library, download version. I don’t have any books to trade, just knowledge.”

  I nodded slowly. “So if you had a spellbook and so forth you would be able to use it?”

  He shrugged, then nodded.

  “For helping me to make reasonable trades in this situation I will give you this hat and everything inside it.” I said, lifting the garish purple gold and silver monstrosity with the tan mage robes hanging over the brim.

  “You got it.” He grinned.

  I smiled and started untying and unwinding the travois.

  “Nice knots.” Someone mid crowd tried to push forward. “Are you Navy?”

  I blinked up at him. “No. Im spectrum and knots are one of the many topics I just know too much about.” I felt my cheek twitch just under my eyes as I remembered the body binding classes I had taken and then been a subject of.

  “Spectrum?” Someone else asked, a small woman who had just woven her way to the front.

  “It’s a catch all for neural divergence, including things like ADHD and autism. We… hyperfixate.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  The travois began to unravel under my hands.

  “My brother is autistic. You don’t seem anything like him.”

  I frowned in the general direction of the voice. “That’s why it’s a spectrum. I didn’t say what my diagnosis is. You don’t have a need to know. Just acknowledge that I’m different and I probably don’t mean an insult if you feel insulted.”

  I looked around. “And that’s true in any interaction. Sometimes I just can’t tell how other people perceive me, much less how I should respond to them. Ok. Clarice. What weapon do you have your eye on and what are you offering for trade? I don’t want the sword.”

  She frowned mightily. “The big axe. I… I still have a whole bottle of the satiation pills. Each one is a whole day of rations, magically.”

  “Alchemically.” Carter muttered, but he nodded. “Fair for first choice of weapons. You should reserve something, kid.”

  “Nevaeh.” I offered. “Call me Nev.” I had handled all the weapons. I didn’t have any confidence in my ability to swing any of them. I chose a lightweight metal spear that reminded me of the beskar one Din Djarin had in the show. I set it at my feet. Carter raised his eyebrows.

  I had dashed it against the shelf holding the weapons to the fullest of my strength and it hadn’t even dented even though it cut right through the wood and a sword that was still on the rack.

  “I have an assortment of knives under my tunic as well.” Any knife that had a sheath to hide around the body, actually. And more in sheathes sewn into the ninja pajamas.

  Carter grumphed. “Do you know that it’s Mithril?” He asked curiously.

  “Oh. Uh… I did see the description.” I opened the booklet to the chart comparing the various provided weapons. It was not the only Mithril weapon, but it was the only four star mithril weapon in the collection. The axe was three star and made of Night Steel and Adamantium.

  It was also too heavy for me to fully pick up.

  I took the pills for it and she backed away, happy. The crowd parted enough that I could see she had walked straight to a blank doorway that turned into a portal. Then she was gone.

  “Is five pills per star fair?”

  Carter pursed his lips. “Close enough. You can tell which one is which?”

  I let him flip through the booklet which did indeed provide enough information to conclusively identify.

  “If anyone has a book or a storage item like a bag of holding they’d be willing to trade? I’ll give them next chance, but in a line, not a crowd.” I began unpacking the larger bag. A lot of the survival gear had multiple items for the same use, like fire starters. There were six and they were all different. I had kept two. I set the crafting sets- other than the alchemy one which I was keeping- together with some space between them. I was hoping for fewer trades.

  I sat on the bag and did not take anything off, loading pill bottles into my tunic.

  Trading took a long time. I got six different books(two on alchemy from the person who wanted my heavy armor), a water bottle that refilled itself over time, a plethora of pills and other first aid items, and by the end I was kinda giving things away.

  What I didn’t get was a storage device. Several people mentioned they had ones they didn’t want to trade. They mostly got them from Patronage packages.

  “There are sleeping alcoves over there. I recommend re-packing in private.” Carter said, eyeing the bundle in the hat.

  “Yeah. Makes sense.” I agreed, handing him his payment.

  “And it’s going to be difficult in the dungeons. Get some rest and eat something. If you eat the satiation pills you won’t need to poop.”

  I smiled weakly and nodded. I slowly packed the books and assorted remaining items I planned to take with me in the big pack.

  I moved slowly to watch Carter unpack the hat. I felt like an older sister watching a younger brother open a Christmas present that I had lovingly chosen and wrapped. This is a situation I am quite familiar with. I have (had?) two younger brothers.

  He was crying silently as he pulled item after item out of the hat. “You kept wanting a storage item.” He said with an odd smile. “It’s only about double the volume, but this hat is bigger on the inside.”

  I chuckled. “Well, keep it. I’m not wearing that.”

  He smiled as he repacked the hat and set it on his head. He put the robes over his thin body.

  “When was the last time you ate?”

  He looked at me, surprised I was still there. “Oh. Uh… I don’t know. You can’t die here, not in a safe zone I mean. I ran out of those pills a long time ago.”

  “Here.” I had memorized the pills and their bottles by now. I checked the contents and handed him a twenty piece bottle of food replacement pills.

  “I…”

  “Take it. I have more than enough and a recipe in one of my books. I can make more.”

  He nodded and took them.

  We walked slowly to the sleeping alcoves.

  “It’s too bad we won’t see each other again, or not for a long time.”

  “We won’t?”

  I looked around. The crowd hadn’t just dispersed, they had mostly disappeared into portals. I left the rest of the weapons which I didn’t want to tote around. They were one star and later arrivals could grab them up.

  He shook his head. “Almost forgot you hadn’t even read the notice yet. Entrance to the Labyrinth is random placement in categories. Like the halls coming here. You can set danger, athleticism, reward level, temperature and more. But each decision alters where you can put the slider for the others.”

  I nodded.

  “And it’s a solo portal. You can stay here as long as you want to trade and whatever. The downloaders like me stay the longest. I started with a small bag of stuff, mostly pills and water.”

  I grunted and nodded.

  “So. I’m going to take a food pill and a nap before I go. Probably take some time to get my spell book ready. I… I have all the knowledge I need to succeed as a mage and none of the equipment. At least until now.” He patted his hat. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t see myself using magic in battle. I would love a spell to clean myself so I never needed a bath or something. Maybe a ward to keep my tent safe.”

  He nodded slowly. “Hmm. When you wake up don’t go anywhere until you see me. I want to say goodbye before you go.”

  I smiled awkwardly and nodded. I didn’t mean it. I was likely to leave without talking to him or anyone else.

  The sleep alcoves had the familiar writing on the blank walls in the doorways.

  PRIVATE CHAMBER

  CAPACITY TWO

  TWELVE HOUR TIME LIMIT

  I chose a room at random.