“The keeper,” he replied. His expression fell into one more serious as he spoke. I wanted to probe deeper and ask more, but in truth, the fear living inside me was winning the battle against my curiosity. So, I stayed silent. He picked up his bag from the crate he’d been using as a table and threw it over his shoulder.

“Well, come on. It’s a long way down El.”

“It’s Eladren,” I corrected making sure he remembered it.

“I know. El, saves time.”

I wondered if all mimics were this unpleasant. We walked out of the room back into the dark hall he had chased me through earlier. The hole in the floor from the trap looked like a deep void as we passed. Then I noticed the soft sound of something shifting. The bricks were slowly moving back into place as they worked to cover the trap. I stopped watching in awe. Once in place, the bricks stuck back together with a gooey-looking substance that emitted a dull glow before solidifying.

“Hey, come on. We have to keep moving if you want out of here soon.”

“I know. I just-. I’ve never seen magic like this before.”

Breaker scoffed stepping next to me to look down at the bricks.

“Honestly, I’m surprised the dungeon is even bothering to fix this. It stopped fixing the ones in the entrance years ago.”

“The dungeon is sentient?”

“Not entirely, no. It’s mostly an extension of The Keeper’s magic.”

“So, that’s why I didn’t run into any when I was at the entrance? Hmm.”

“Well, not exactly. That was mostly because I got tired of fixing them after the last one of you came running through here.”

Whipping my head around to Breaker I yelled, “Excuse me, you what!?”

My voice echoed through the room. He sighed and looked back at me replying, “I told you, I can’t just let thieves and pretend heroes do whatever they want down here.”

“So you killed them?”

“No, the traps did that.”

“It’s the same thing, Breaker.”

“Hmm. I don’t think so.”

A disgusted exhale that border-lined a scream escaped my lips. I stomped off fuming and cursing him in elvish. That is until the realization hit that I didn’t know the way.

“To the left,” he called out from behind me. The amusement in his voice was apparent.

“Thank you,” I called back sarcastically continuing to the left adding a few more elvish curses under my breath.

I could hear him chuckling to himself as he caught up with me. My mother’s books hadn’t mentioned how much of a pain-in-the-ass mimics could be. Maybe I could make a guide to dealing with mimics and make a small fortune when I got out of this place. At the very least it could pay for the amount of drinks it was going to take to forget this whole ordeal when it was over with. Then again, drinking is part of why I was here, maybe I should spend my theoretical fortune on something more useful. I could buy a small shop in some faraway village that my mother could run her apothecary out of or hire a hit man to get rid of the elders.

“Just right through here,” Breaker said interrupting my thoughts as we rounded the corner behind the pillars from the side I hadn’t explored.

In front of us was a stone door, barely able to be differentiated from the rest of the wall save for the archway that lined it and came out a couple of inches extra from the wall. In its center was a small sculpture of the giant’s head. Its eyes bulged from the stone.

“How do we get in?”

“Like this”

Breaker pushed the head of the giant. There was a grinding sound and the eyes lit up with a crimson glow. The door began sliding downwards.