Chapter 34

“When you said you had a way to find the boss…” Caleb whispered to Donovan as they trailed several paces behind Chance.

Donovan let out a heavy sigh and nodded, a grim, almost embarrassed look on his face. “I was talking about Chance. Yes.”

About ten feet ahead of them, Chance stopped abruptly at an intersection in the maze. His head was down, eyes fixed on the eight ball cradled in his hands. They’d set off from the tent city, just the three of them, about an hour ago. Chance had been leading the way the entire time – or rather, his eight ball had been leading the way. Every time they came upon an intersection, he shook the ball, waited patiently for its answer to bubble up on the dark blue window, then turned and strode in whatever direction the ball had deemed correct. Sometimes it took him a few shakes, but every time, he obeyed the ball without question.

“You’re, uh… sure that he knows where he’s going?” Caleb asked. He had his doubts.

“I know how it looks, but trust me. Every time that we’ve found the Hearth of the Warren, it’s been because of Chance and that ball. He talks to it and it just seems to… know things.” He paused, glancing at Caleb. “Chance usually never lets anyone else ask it questions, but he let me give it a shot once early on in our time here. I asked it a simple question: ‘is the Hearth of the Warren down the hall to the left?’ while standing at an intersection in the maze. You know what it told me?”

Caleb shrugged. “What?”

“‘Cannot predict now.’”

Caleb blew a bit of air from his nose and grinned subtly. “So what? That doesn’t mean anything.”

Donovan side eyed him, face flat as stone, eyes hard. “That’s what I thought at first, too. But then I asked that same question twenty times. And I got the same exact answer twenty times. You know what the odds of that are?”

Caleb shook his head.

“There’s a twenty sided die in that eight ball, with one response on every side. To get the same response twenty times in a row, is twenty to the twentieth power. In other words, it’s not happening. You’re more likely to get struck by lightning five times in a single year.” Donovan shot a wary look at Chance, who was already shaking the ball again, before soon turning down the left-hand corridor. “Then I handed the ball back to Chance. He asked the same question. And you know what it said? ‘Without a doubt.’”

“I see,” Caleb said, watching the boy in the black hoodie and ballcap more closely. Aether level obviously didn’t mean everything. Was that some sort of skill? Or maybe a weird Truth? But Truth of what? Magic Eight Balls didn’t exactly seem like a grand law of the universe that he’d thought Truths were supposed to be.

But, of course, his understanding could just be wrong. Remove Magic Eight Balls from existence and maybe reality would come crashing down around them. Equally strange things had happened in the last couple weeks.

“Why haven’t you just marked the path to the boss?” Caleb asked as they walked through the maze. He’d seen markings they’d made in other parts already. “Or better yet, why not just ask the ball how to defeat the boss?”

“It’s not that simple,” Donovan replied. His tone made it clear that they’d already tried those things. “But for two separate reasons. First off, the Hearth of the Warren seems to move around. Each time we’ve found it, it’s been in a different spot. At first we thought maybe the maze was changing, but only the Hearth ever seemed to move, not the walls of the maze. Our markings in other areas of the maze always remained the same. Like it’s hiding from us.”

“Doesn’t that mean one of the Dungeon’s completion objectives would check on when you found it?” Caleb asked.

Donovan nodded. “And then check off immediately after we were forced to flee. But the reason we haven’t asked how to defeat the boss is a bit more complicated.” He kept watching Chance as they walked. Was that a hint of frustration in his eyes? Then his gaze dropped back down to the ground and he shook his head.

“Chance has always been a bit of an oddball. No pun intended.”

“You knew him before all this?” Caleb asked. He’d been curious about the people here ever since arriving. For so many people to have gotten trapped in a Dungeon right at the onset of the system, they had to have been all gathered together.

“He was my TA,” Donovan said.

“Teaching assistant?”

“Yep.”

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“That’s why he called you Professor earlier,” Caleb said.

Donovan nodded. “That’s right. I taught statistics. Chance was helping me with a new student orientation on campus when all of this–” he gestured around to the Dungeon “–happened. We were in a large lecture hall with a couple hundred incoming students and a few faculty when the floor cracked beneath our feet and everyone fell into a big shining light. Next thing we knew, we were inside this place. The first few days were pretty chaotic.” He paused. “A lot of kids didn’t make it.” Donovan’s voice trailed off, growing quiet. For a few seconds, the only sound was that of their footsteps.

“Chance is one of the most gifted, and laziest students I ever met,” Donovan said after a time. “I always thought the whole eight ball thing was a bit. A joke.”

“He carried it around before the System arrived?” Caleb asked.

Another nod. “Just like now. He always asked it questions. Him and that ball were basically attached at the hip.”