Chapter 3: Level 2 dungeon

"Aaaand... DONE! Thanks to the Holly Current, the stains should be no more!" - Zean concludes his magic without hiding his satisfaction.

Turning to their flying companion: "Tinks? Maybe you want some of this too?" - he rises his brews again, trying not to laugh, seeing how funny - normally slender and very graceful - body of Tinks look... now fully covered with fur.

"Or we should be heading up, through the tunnel? Already?"

"To be honest, I'm not sure if this is a curse, or a side effect of the 'invisible friend' that's been hanging out with me since the room where we found this ring. I would hate to imply that it's a curse when there's been no ill effect aside from a fur coat. Let's hold off on any attempt at removal until and if it proves to be detrimental. I mean, every girl likes a fur coat."

"Yeah, I'm ready to head up through the tunnel if everyone else is good."

All of it is bad if you ask me. Throgin pats Zean on the back and takes a breath

I lead the way to the tunnel and start heading up.

I'm going second.

Throgin stays right behind Zean

When you return to the tomb, you are surprised to see no crawlways behind the gargoyle mouths.
All four huge stone gargoyle heads protrude from the walls at the same places they were before.
The room still smells of wine and coffin closed just like before sparkles in sunlight streaming down from the chamber's vaulted ceiling.

Perhaps it was all but a dream: the wine, the wine monsters ? you may even wonder

"Well. I think this is an alternate reality bear we may not want to poke. What say the rest of you?"

"Dare we open the coffin again?"

"Strange... let's think..." - Zean started to pet his beard deep in thoughts - "Huh! Do you remember the strange effect that we have seen during the night? My hypothesis is that... if we are in some kind of pocket dimension/plane... it may be refreshing... or should I say resetting after some time? Maybe once per whole day? At midnight? So... I think... if we would open the coffin again - everything would go as the last time... and the wine monsters will be here too... we are richer for our experiences... but still if we open the coffin we have to kill the monsters again before going the small, narrow tunnels. I'm really curious what is there... But do you have any ideas what to do DIFFERENTLY to not fight them?"

"My brain says if this pocket dimension is resetting daily, there's unlikely to be anything in it that we can remove and take back to our reality.

"Hmmm... fair enough! Nothing psychical... at least. What about some clues? Information that can be used out side of it? But is it worth such a risk..." - Zean clearly at a loss, stroking his beard.

"So what are our alternatives? We go other way through circular corridor, on the other-other side?" - he smiled about the new term he just coined.

"Zean, I am reminded of the old proverb about curiosity and the cat. I, however, do not have nine lives, and have had enough of wine floods and weirds in this one. If we can devise a method for removing the coffin lid from outside the room, perhaps with some rope or magic, then I would consider it, but I for one am not going through that whole scenario again."

I fold my arms and stomp my foot for emphasis.

"Let's leave this mirror nightmare for the real nightmare out there," Ixion agreed. "At least this place is somewhere we might fall back to if necessary."

"Fair enough! Let's wash before getting some more wine!" - Zean joked - "So where do we go? The south door at the balkony maybe? Throgin... I think some bashing will be in need if we agree to go there!"

"We've no reason to stay in this alternate dimension. Let's go back to the original and see if we can pull the coffin lid off from the hallway using some rope."

I start flying back towards the "circular " hallway that leads back to our original dimension.

Ixion followed Tink's lead back to the real world.