After choosing Gareth and some of the better scouts among his troops, Brome and his men accompanied Aren into the Ancient temple. Progress was slow, however, and not just because the young wizard had to frequently stop and disarm or help them navigate various traps. Aren was right about the dimensional magic. The temple was already big on the outside, but after several hours of walking its vaulted corridors they still hadn’t reached the end.

Eventually the party was forced to stop for the night. As Brome was taking a drink from his waterskin, Gareth came over to talk. 
 “Morale isn’t looking too good, Brome. I know Aren said this would take a while but the men are getting concerned.”

“I know, Gareth, I know.” It wasn’t just the time taken either. The vaulted stone hallways were majestic, but they were also forbidding, and the only light in the place came from the torches they had brought with them. The passageways twisted and turned as they progressed, and even the most level headed among them had long since lost track of the way back. Aren assured them that wouldn’t matter, since the inner sanctum would have everything he needed to open a safe passageway in and out, but still…

Brome walked over to Aren’s tent, determined to get whatever concrete answers he could out of the young mage. When he was a few feet from the tent, however, the glow coming from between the cracks in the fabric suddenly tripled in intensity, and the whole tent was ripped to shreds by a maelstrom of blue-and-silver aether. As the storm of magic power grew in size, the rest of the party’s sleeping bags were stripped from the rocks and poles used to anchor them and sent flying far from the camp itself. Even the men’s clothing started rippling, although no one was actually sent flying by the spontaneous spell. Finally the aether stabilized in the form of a dome just outside of the camp perimeter, blocking the once-invisible tendrils of golden mist that were sneaking up on the unwary soldiers. Aren stood in the wreckage of his tent, panting and trembling, his eyes wide and his face as white as parchment.

“What the HELL was that about, boy?!” shouted Brome. “You said this spot was safe!”

“It was, when we made camp,” replied Aren, still shaking and white faced. “That madness curse shifts location every so often. Thieves mistake this spot for a safe zone and stop to rest, then it infects the group and makes them kill each other. I barely blocked it in time. I underestimated this place.”

“That’s an understatement! We nearly died because of y-”

“I need to talk to you in private, captain” interrupted Aren. He cast a second dome around the two of them, and suddenly the cries of the soldiers were cut off. Their faces were blurred too. “I don’t want to admit it, but I think we’re all going to die here.”

Frigging green brat, thought Brome, One slip-up and he loses all confidence. “Look kid, it was just one mistake. All we need to do is get our supplies together, rest for the night, and finish the job tomorrow. You can’t be too hard on yourself-”

“I can’t find the way back out anymore.”

That wasn’t good. “…What?”

“I said I can’t find the markers I used to trace our path out. They’ve been erased.”

“But you can still get us out once we reach the inner sanctuary, can’t you?” asked Brome.

“Yes, but only if we can reach there. My markers weren’t erased all at once, the outer ones went first. Worse, the later ones took less time to vanish.”

It started to dawn on Brome, although he didn’t want to believe it. “What are you saying?”

“I should have realized it earlier. I’m pretty good, yes, but this place has attracted looters for millennia. I’m far from the first wizard to come here, and I’m probably not the strongest either, or most skilled. Why hasn’t anyone else conquered this blasted temple? The shifting traps? Those are dangerous, but not invincible, as long as you can figure out the patterns. But what if they don’t move in set patterns? What if someone is actively moving them? What then? We’re not just dealing with traps.”

Oh shit. “Just spell it out, boy.”

“I’m saying that we’re dealing with living Ancient wizards! This abandoned temple is actually a very inhabited fortress, and our lives are in the hands of a group of people who no doubt want us dead!”