Koruk and Oben both stared at the pile of date seeds, as if daring it to do something. It did not. It was in fact, merely a pile of date seeds. The same pile, in all probability. After a long period, Koruk managed to say something.

  “What..?”

  “Is trick.” Oben retorted.

  “What do we do? Should we keep going?”

  “Maybe go up? Maybe split up.”

  “We only have the one lamp. We should stick together.”

  Oben nodded and the pair began walking the way they had come.

  Three turns left.

  Four turns right.

  After four repetitions, and a wasted half hour, they arrived to find themselves standing beside the pile of seeds again, albeit from the other side.

  “Well that’s just great.” Koruk said. He sat down and rummaged around for something to eat, pulling out a few more dates. He chewed them and dutifully spat the seeds into the pile.

  “Maybe split up?” Oben suggested.

  “Alright. You take the lamp. I’ll try to feel my way along. Maybe we’ll meet back here.”

  Koruk looked over his shoulder and watched Oben disappear around a bend. After he turned it, the hallway fell into blackness. Koruk held his hand in front of his face and wiggled his fingers, but couldn’t see a thing.

  “Why did I give him the lamp?” Koruk muttered to himself. Keeping his right hand on the wall, he started working his way forward through the gloom.

  After a time he spotted a flickering light ahead of him. Koruk sighed. He had looped back around again, he thought.

  As he turned the corner though, he found himself walking through a doorway into a large room. In the centre of that room, sitting on the floor, was the oil lamp.

  “Oben!?” Koruk called out. He was greeted with silence.

  With trembling hands Koruk picked up the lamp and made out the room. It was squareish, the walls seeming to taper inwards as they did in the corridor that led there. Dividing the room in half was a deep chasm falling into inky blackness, and a narrow bridge of square cut stone blocks spanned it, connecting the two sides of the room. The bridge had no railing, and two orcs would have struggled to walk side by side across it. As Koruk approached the bridge, he caught a glint of something on the other side. Cautiously, he started across, careful with his footing on the smooth stone lest he slip and fall into oblivion. Out of the gloom the glint he had noticed resolved into another figure, crossing the bridge from the opposite direction towards him.

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  It was Oben.

  Koruk smiled and raised his arm to wave in greeting, but his words died on his lips. Oben had a knife drawn. The flickering firelight danced off its sharp metal blade.

  “Oben?”

  Oben didn’t respond. Koruk continued edging closer to his traveling companion, who had not yet sheathed his knife. For a brief moment Koruk thought about drawing his own blade, but quickly shelved the thought.

  “I thought I had lost you in this place! I found the lamp on the floor over there!” Koruk said, gesturing back the way he had come. “What happened?”

  Oben didn’t reply, but when he reached the midway point of the bridge, he halted, and drew himself into a combat pose, left arm angled in front of his body to deflect blows, and knife drawn back at his side ready to stab.

  “What are you doing? Why won’t you talk to me?!”

  Oben slowly began to advance on Koruk, maintaining his defensive posture. Sensing the danger, Koruk sat the lamp down behind him, and drew his sword. The bronze weapon once owned by the skimmer captain felt light in his grip, but he didn’t relish the idea of using it.

  “What’s wrong with you!? Snap out of it!”

  Oben lunged at Koruk with the knife, and the orc quickly backpedalled, nearly knocking the lamp he had set down into the abyss. Koruk lashed out with an uppercut punch, but with surprising resilience Oben blocked it with his free arm. The impact knocked the human back a few feet, but he immediately sprung into another attack.

  Koruk saw it coming, and slapped his thrusting knife aside with the flat of his sword. The impact sent the knife tumbling out of Oben’s hand, into the darkness. Koruk quickly grabbed the front of Oben’s shirt, and headbutted him, knocking the human out cold.

  “What the hell? Shit.” Koruk said to himself. He slung the unconscious Oben over his shoulder, and carried him to the other side.

  “You better not be dead.” He said as he laid the human down on the smooth floor. He examined him for injuries, and sighed in relief that he didn’t seem to have broken Oben’s neck. The little man seemed so fragile.

  Still, he wasn’t really sure what he was going to do now. He supposed he’d have to carry Oben, but what if the human tried to attack him again? Was he possessed? Maybe he could bind his wrists?

  Koruk shook his head. No. He wasn’t going to tie up his friend and treat him like a prisoner. He didn’t know what was going on, but he wanted to give Oben a chance to explain himself after he woke up without feeling like he was being treated as an enemy.

  He hefted Oben up onto his shoulder, and started trudging forward. He hoped Oben woke up soon because the weight was going to kill him if he had to do this for the rest of the day. Ahead of him he could feel a breeze and smell fresh air. There must be a door or a passage ahead, he thought.

  The air smelled peculiarly like flowers.

  Sure enough, at the far end of the room he found another door. This one was closed, a massive slab of stone being set in the archway. Koruk gently laid Oben down on the floor, and ran his hands over the slab. He found handholds on it, and as he pushed it he found that it rolled out of the way without much resistance at all.

  As he stepped past the doorway he was greeted by an amazing sight. He found himself outdoors, in a vast field of flowers and tall grass. A river sparkled in a valley below, and he could see smoke lazily rising from a village next to it.

  An orcish village. Red roofed huts were clustered in a rough circle, and he could see figures walking amongst them.

  He sucked in the fresh, clean air through his nostrils, and all his stress seemed to disappear. He smiled, and turned back towards the door to retrieve Oben, only to find it had disappeared, along with the temple. He looked back at rolling hills and blue sky, as far as the eye could see.