This town was hilarious. I swear, there were years worth of soap opera here. Those grannies haven't been sober in a decade. Everyone was sleeping with everyone else. None of the blacksmith's kids with his wife were his and he was the only one that didn't know. But at least one of the tanner's kids was actually the blacksmith's, and both knew it. I felt bad for the kid. It was that kid that warned Seth.

  This shit was wild. And utterly irrelevant to what I wanted to know.

  I had no way to steer a conversation, so I got whatever people were talking about. A whole fat load of jealous ranting and gossipy tea. Hilarious, but useless. So I headed back to the inn to meet up with the kids and see if what they got up to was more interesting than what I'd been doing.

  And it was.

  I snuck inside and got a feel for where Seth was, seeing as I didn't know which room was ours. Imagine my surprise to find he was in the basement. My first thought was the fuckers had taken him.

  But then I wondered why they would do that? He didn't have his own power, and they had to know that. Unless a power could be stolen twice. But if they didn't want him to have it, they wouldn't have given it to him in the first place.

  Oh, but I forget. That kid is a trouble magnet. If they took him, he provoked it. No worries. Chaos is my middle name. Or maybe my last name since I only have one name? Names are confusing.

  Ugh. I needed to find the basement door.

  Imagine my surprise to see the innkeeper and his wife slipping down a staircase behind a concealed door in the kitchen. So of course I followed. Into a very interesting dungeon. But not the right kind of interesting. The manacles weren't fuzzy, and the drapes weren't red velvet, and there were no pillows, so this was not the fun kind of dungeon. At least it didn't smell like misery, just cleaning products.

  Seth wasn't there, but he was close by. I was only half listening to the innkeeper bickering with his wife. Drunks don't make reasonable conversation partners. Dude had lost his keys and thought that guy Hugh, who had been asking questions and causing trouble, had taken them. The wife was convinced he'd dropped them somewhere.

  I had a hunch the sticky fingered Booth was the culprit.

  I watched them search the nearly empty room and got a good look myself. And when the innkeeper headed with purpose to a blank wall in Seth's direction, I figured there was another secret door.

  That actually pissed me off. I was wandering all over listening to a bunch of bored villagers talk about who was banging who and my man Seth was finding the good secrets without me. Bastard.

  Welp, I couldn't let my boy get discovered so I meowed, startling the couple. The innkeeper was inclined to ignore me. I wasn't keen on that. I also wasn't keen on the vibes I was getting from the pattern on the floor. Deja vu with a side of ick. Then the bastard called me stupid.

  I have such delightfully sharp claws.

  I got a good portion of the floor gouged up before I let them chase me upstairs. It was easy to give the drunks the slip and I headed back down. I hid under the stairs when they peeked down, looking for me. Once the coast was clear, I headed in the direction Seth had gone.

  Sure enough, a secret door. But it was no match for my amazing powers! By powers I mean my stolen ring. It worked great and opened that magically locked door perfectly. After the chair incident I've been a bit more nervous. I made sure the door shut behind me this time.

  The kids had already wandered off, and I was going to follow them when my whiskers thrummed. I paused.

  There was a strong magic near me.

  One of the best places to hide something is behind a door. Average people walk through doorways and never think about what is behind an open door. Which is fair, because most of the time what's back there is nothing.

  But this time it wasn't nothing.

  It took me a bit to find it. I needed my amulet light on, and I wouldn't have found it if I hadn't tried to climb the wall for a better look.

  A section of the wall behind the door was an illusion. Reaching up a paw to grab stone and there being nothing there was startling. What I found was a cutout in the wall, roughly window sized and deep enough for my ass to sit.

  Once I crossed the illusion, I could see behind it. And what I could see was a control panel.

  I had no idea what a control panel was, or a 'keyboard' that my brain also supplied. But that's what this thing looked like. Sort of.

  I stared at a board mostly covered in colored stones. Each of the stones had a few letters on them. I knew what the letters were, but I had no idea what they might represent. So much of my reading ability depended on 'hearing' the word in my head and it translating to English for me. These were obviously abbreviations. But, since I didn't understand the words, the abbreviations were beyond me.

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  The top row had clear stones, then four rows of colored stones, and then what looked like a crystal ball. There was a pinpoint of light in the crystal ball.

  This niggled a memory. I didn't know what this was and I was certain I'd never seen anything like it, in this life or the one before. Yet, it had a familiar feel to it, like it would work like something else I had used before.

  All right, let's see if I can get this to do something. I touched the crystal ball. The pinpoint got a little brighter. I touched it again and swiped a bit on the surface. The pinpoint moved. I wiggled it around a bit. Okay good. I had no fucking idea what that did.

  I moved on to the other stones.

  I tapped the top left stone. It was a dark blue stone and it lit up when I touched it. The leftmost stone on the top row now glowed a dark blue also. I watched the board to see if there were any other changes. Nope.

  Fine then. I tapped the next one, a light blue one. The next stone on the top row was now light blue too. Okay. Wait a second, did the dark blue one just go out? I tapped it again. The top row was now light blue and then dark blue.

  I watched it. After about thirty seconds or so, I'm stupid and didn't bother counting, the light blue went out, and just dark blue was lit now.

  Was it waiting for me to activate something? Was there an 'enter' key? I hit the stone in the middle row on the far right. It was a yellow stone. All it did was add yellow to the line up.

  I looked at the letters on the stones. I couldn't figure out which one might be an activation stone. I even tried to sound out some of the abbreviations to figure out what they meant. No go.

  I could hear talking down the tunnel, but didn't pay too much attention to it. The kids probably found something. I didn't feel like sharing the control panel at the moment, so I left them to their own thing.

  The top row was almost clear now. Fine then. How about Orange? Ooh, I like purple.

  The kids were banging something. Ugh. I should probably go help them.

  Nah.

  Ooh, there's a green one. Green means go, right? Lets do that. Should I repeat colors? Dark blue and then light blue. Yup. How about red? Red usually means stop, right? Nothing different happened, red just joined the others in the row. Whoops, I didn't mean to hit orange again, I wanted purple. Okay, done. Now what?

  The top row was glowing slightly, the stones now colored in the order I'd tapped the ones below. I stared at the board. Do I just leave it? Did it do anything? I still think I need to activate it or something.

  I tapped the green stone again. And again. Green green green.

  Was I thinking about this wrong? Should I be guessing a password instead? Was I on a timer to get it right? Is that why the lights faded?

  A flicker of movement in the crystal ball had me watching that for a bit.

  The tiny pinpoint of light was changing color. It was changing to match the currently lit color on the top row. I watched it change from green to yellow.

  The pinpoint of light moved very slightly. If the movement hadn't made the light flicker, I wouldn't have noticed it. As lights in the top row winked out, the little light in the crystal ball changed and moved slightly.

  So it was doing . I leaned in to see if my whiskers could sense any differences. Yup. My whiskers were thrumming. Whatever this thing was doing, it was using juice to get it done.

  The power was fluctuating, too. There was a mana spike every time the colors changed. I was about to poke the crystal ball and see if I could get that light to move more when an inhuman bellow scared the shit out of me and I jumped straight up into the air, whacked into the top of the control nook, and then nearly fell out.

  Cats have amazing reflexes. So fast, too, without thinking about it. My cat reflexes used my claws to catch myself. On the control panel. Yeah. My claws, sharp enough to slice stone, dug into the stone buttons on the magic panel as I scrabbled for purchase in the narrow space.

  Whoops.

  "That thing just turned in circles three times, farting each time," Booth said quietly. "And it's doing it again."

  Seth closed his eyes and listened. At the Rainbow Tower, the wind let him know when the people weren't real. And it let him know this time, too. The wind passed right through where the ogre was and didn't need to move around it.

  "Wait here," Seth whispered and climbed over Blaise to get out from behind the boulder.

  "Stop!" hissed Duvessa. "What are you doing?"

  As confident as he was that this was an illusion, Seth wasn't willing to risk the others without a little more proof. He kept contact with the wind, and prepared a strong narrow gust in case he was wrong.

  The ogre swung its tree as Seth approached, but it didn't react directly to him. Then it hitched, and was suddenly in a different position.

  "It's an illusion!" Seth called back. "And whoever is casting it just messed up. We should see if we can find them!"

  It farted again. Just as nasty and juicy as the previous ones. Seth, being right there, couldn't stop himself from puking.

  He staggered back. "It's still nasty. Don't get close."

  Booth was chuckling, partially from Seth's misfortune, and partially from relief that the monster wasn't real.

  "So sneaky!" Duvessa exclaimed. "They are hiding what they are doing with illusions!"

  "How much you want to bet the 'missing travelers' that are being blamed on the ogres are really those assholes swiping people?" Blaise asked.

  Owen agreed. "Ogres are dangerous. They're also rare. Most folk think most ogre stories are made up, or some drunk who got robbed and is exaggerating."

  "Hey, Mau. What are you doing down here?" Seth asked his familiar. She'd crept down the tunnel and was sneaking up on the ogre. "Its an illusion," Seth told her. "Be careful, it keeps farting and the stench is brutal."

  Mau titled her head and swished her tail. 'Follow me,' she was saying.

  "We need to find the caster before they get away," Blaise said. "They can't be far. Are we better off sneaking in the dark, or running after them with light? We should split up too, and search both directions."

  "This will be faster," Duvessa said, and summoned sparrows that winged off down the tunnels.

  Mau was stamping her foot. 'Follow me,' she signed again.

  "All right, all right, I'm coming," Seth said.

  He left the others in the tunnel and followed Mau back to the secret door. She showed him the control panel hidden by an illusion.

  "Oh wow," Seth breathed. "This– you think this controlled the ogre? I wonder why they let it get so damaged. No wonder the ogre was hitching there at the end."

  Mau shrugged and looked innocent.

  Seth stared at it. There were abbreviations for walk, scratch, fart, eat, shout, run, and many others.

  "Were you the one controlling the ogre, Mau? You look guilty."