A/N: This chapter should have been more straightforward than I was making it – instead, it felt like an utter slog. I always thought that the djinn's game was stupid, especially given the scenario, so what took the most time was modifying it to make more sense as more than a passing plot point.

Let's be real: Irenicus' dungeon IS a total slog, so I shouldn't be surprised that I'm having such a hard time writing it. I'll be glad when I wrap up all of these scenes and get to the real meat of the story. As I don't plan to chronicle every detail of the way out, that'll be sooner rather than later.

Thanks again to Blue Inked Frost for the feedback!

Dynaheir, Eli, and Imoen joined him at the nearest tank. Tall and made of thick glass, it was hooked up to a complex web of cables and metal boxes, all anchored to the wall – ostensibly, the thief figured as she surveyed it, there was some sort of system that powered it there. Whatever kept it on, though, was failing - the lights inside the tube were sputtering like a dying torch. Floating inside was a wizened, pathetic looking creature that was also hooked up to a complicated web life support.

Khalid reached forward and touched the glass. The creature inside – it looked to be a man, albeit very pickled – didn't respond. "Are they… d-dead, do you think?"

Eli frowned deeply, staring into the tube's depths. "Dynaheir said this was a preservation room… if a body was dead, you'd preserve it to keep it from rotting, but if that's the case then why are they hooked up to so many things?" He touched the glass himself, laying his thin-boned hands against it near where the figure's face fell. The half-elf looked at it for a long moment, then turned to Imoen. "Maybe there's something else in here that'll give us a clue what all this is for."

"How about the other bodies?" she suggested, a trace of 'duh!' in her voice. "There's loads of these tubes. Some of them look a little more powered than the others."

"Well… then let's split up and cover the whole room," he agreed by way of planning, turning to the rest of his ground. "Khalid and Imoen, you take the far corners. I'll take Dynaheir and we'll cover what's up here."

"R-right!"

The Rashemi wizardress cleared her throat slightly. Imoen was startled by the noise – she was starting to get used to the new Dynaheir that never spoke and was more or less utterly checked out, but it seemed the Wychlaran was coming to her senses. "Let me…" she began haltingly, turning her hazel eyes to Eli. With effort, she continued, "Thou… needn't exclude me, Elioth. I am as… capable… as any of you."

There was a moment of awkward silence while he pondered that, then the wizard turned to her, offering her as supportive a smile as he was capable of producing. Imoen personally thought it looked more like a grimace, but then, she wasn't the target or recipient. "I'm glad you're back with us, Dynaheir," he said, offering a hand. The unmasked woman looked down at it for a long moment, with the same glazed look she'd worn before; her own hand twitched slightly as she reached out to accept it, but she jerked it back at the last second, fists clenched.

Blushing furiously at her failure, she nodded. "Thank thee for... for thy convern. I… shall take… take the corner opposite thee."

Eli shot a glance at Imoen, who had watched the whole scene (unlike Khalid, who had gone off and done what he was told). The thief shrugged in return – what can you do? – then went exploring her corner. There were a LOT of tubes, and most of them were filled with other pickled things of various types, all naked save the tubing and cables that connected them to the system they were hooked into. Most were human; some were elven. A few were completely unidentifiable, as their tanks were off and the ravages of time and decomposition had taken their toll. Imoen dutifully stopped by each one, exploring briefly while checking for any major differences between the occupants and their states of being, but there was nothing of interest.

"B-bubbles!" Khalid exclaimed suddenly, his dark, elfin eyes widened at the tube in front of him. "My tube has bubbles c-coming out of the mouth of whoever's inside." An old human hung limply inside; true to his word, small bubbles indicating breath flowed between his mouth tube and the top of the tank.

"Can we ramp up the power in there?" Eli asked. "Most of the tanks in my corner were broken…"

"Same," agreed Imoen. "I think… maybe there's a problem with the power cells on the sides? The ones that are on look like they're dying, and there's no way to revive them without somehow powering them back up. I doubt he's got a stash of fresh cells laying around, though." She made a face.

"If I had access to my spellbook, I could focus a lightning bolt through the conduits to see if that would help," Eli mused. "Except I don't… so that's not helpful…"

"Well, awesome. We're stuck, again." Imoen blew a few stray strands of pinkish hair out of her eyes.

Khalid looked shifty, inasmuch as a man with that honest a face could muster such an expression. His fingers tapped against the glass of the tube a few times before he finally said, "There's an option w-we've yet to explore, you know. The l-lamp in the c-cave we passed to get here? Maybe what's inside could l-lend a hand via information. Or a s-spell."

"No." The other half-elf shook his head. "We agreed to leave it be, remember? It's just as likely whatever genie's inside would try to trick us, or try and make some bargain, and we simply don't have the time for bargains right now."

"Djinn," Khalid corrected his pronunciation. "We also d-don't have another way out, though. Imoen's l-looked and the other doors are magically locked. Y-you yourself have p-pointed out that we're running out of f-food and water. Desperate times c-call for desperate measures, Elioth."

"… Khalid's right," Imoen agreed after a few moments' thought. "I know we agreed to skip it, but in light of all this, I think we should go back and see whether or not the lamp gives us another way out. You get what, three wishes from a genie?" She frowned – she was pretty sure that was right, but genies weren't exactly something they'd encountered in the past.

"N-not all," Khalid corrected. "Only s-some, and only the greater ones. A-although… that would make the trip out easier if we were lucky."

Eli looked to Dynaheir, who simply nodded her assent with what Khalid and Imoen said. Defeated, the half-elven wizard sighed. "All right... the democracy speaks. We'll backtrack and see whether the lamp's any help in unraveling all… this." With a sweeping motion, he gestured at the room around them. "I have a bad feeling about it, though."

The lamp was perched at the edge of one of the cave-like room's pools, just like it had been when they passed it last. It was an odd chamber, very different from the rest of the dungeon they'd seen up to that point – the center housed a large mass of red crystals that stretched from floor to ceiling. There were more scattered around the perimeter. They provided a soft, warm glow to the room, illuminating everything within with a cozy, fire-like light. Giving a different sort of glow to the room were the pools. Theirs was a colder gleam, white, like moonlight reflecting off of fog.

Imoen reached the lamp and its corresponding pool first. Dynaheir, despite her increasing lucidity, still moved more slowly than the rest of the party, and both half-elves rightly stuck to her side. The formerly pink-haired girl sat at the edge of the pool and bounced her legs for a bit, then – out of curiosity – she peered inside, through the pale fog. The mists swirled oddly, as if an invisible hand was parting them, like a pair of ethereal curtains. Touch the water, the pool compelled her. Touch and see…

Imoen did.

The young thief was transported to a parched, dusty plain under a dead-looking sky. She took a step forward to steady herself; underfoot, the ground crumbled, rising up as red dust as her foot broke dry, crackled mud. Around her, stretching to the horizon, were corpses. Big ones, little ones, men and women of all races, ages, and sexes, and all wounded gruesomely and mortally in a variety of manners. Imoen was suddenly glad for her strong stomach.

"Hello, hidden one."

It was Sarevok's voice that spoke to her. She turned around slowly, half expecting to see nothing but more corpses, but there he was, true to the form he'd taken when last they met. His heavy armor was dented and covered in blood, his sword broken, but his dark face wore nothing but an expression of smug satisfaction. "W-what did you call me?" Imoen asked, taking another step back.

Sarevok Anchev responded by taking a step forward of his own. "Welcome to the Great Death, Hidden One, where brothers slay brothers for the ultimate prize. Take Elioth, for instance." With his free hand, he pointed. Even though the little thief knew better, she followed his gaze. Sprawled on the ground nearby, the half-elf lay dead. His robes were stained with blood, which pooled underneath him and trickled away, mixing with the rusty clay around him. Sarevok's broken sword was also bloody – somehow, the thief didn't think the two were unrelated.

"You're the dead one, Anchev. I saw you die – I helped Elioth take you down!" Her voice was shaky, but she attempted to rein the fear in enough to keep it hidden for now. "Take me out of here!" she commanded the pool. "I don't want this! I don't want him!"

Sarevok raised his sword. "In the game that we play, Imoen Who Remains Unseen, you don't get to make those choices." He grinned from behind the toothed helmet. "You want peace? You'll find it in your grave."

Imoen braced herself, bringing her arms above her head uselessly to help deflect the blow, but instead found herself in Khalid's arms on the dusty stone floor of the crystal cavern. She yelped, pushing him off, and scooted back several feet away from both him and the fountain.

The Calishite fighter frowned at her while he picked himself up and dusted off. "What was t-that?"

"I don't know." The mage/thief shuddered. "I looked – I looked into the pool and… Sarevok was there. I think… I think it was some sort of illusion."

Elioth was nearby, still walking with Dynaheir over to them. The sight of her friend alive and well calmed her nerves somewhat – she let out a short, self-deprecating laugh at the entire situation. "Of course. It had to have been an enchantment of some sort, Eli's still around… there's no way any of that could have happened." Then, to Khalid, "Don't scold. I know that was stupid of me, looking in there. This whole place is full of tricks."

Khalid's frown deepened; he went over at the pool, and even went so far as to run his hands through the mist, but did not look inside or touch the water. "Imoen. T-tell me about what you saw in there. If there's a c-chance that Eli could g-get hurt…"

"I doubt that'll happen, not unless he listens to the pool too." She swallowed; suddenly her throat felt very dry, but the water they'd gotten off of the goblins had to last. "Later, Khalid. I'll tell you about it when we rest."

The fighter nodded and dropped the subject, but didn't look any more convinced about her explanation or relieved about the situation. Instead, he picked up the lamp, glanced at it, then passed it over to Eli. The mage let go of Dynaheir to accept it, turned the brass object around in his hands a few times, sighed, and rubbed it.

In the stories Imoen remembered, djinn – genies, as she and Eli had always called them because neither could wrap their mouths around the Alzhedo word well enough to get the pronunciation right – were humongous creatures, frightening, clad in rich fabrics, with shimmering skin and the ability to grant three wishes. While this genie did impressively take its form from a gush of smoke emanating from the bottle, and while he was certainly larger than any of them, his olive skin and plain silk vest were kind of a letdown in light of all the tales they'd read.

"Elioth!" he exclaimed happily, fine features molding themselves into a smile. Imoen's eyebrows creased slightly – he didn't even sound all that powerful. Lame. "Welcome! Welcome all of you! I am Aataqah. You're here rather later than I'd hoped."

Eli gave the creature a skeptical, sidelong glance. "Is that so?"

The djinn shrugged. "Time runs differently in the lamp, I suppose. Regardless, you've all my welcome to this little corner I've set up. I do try to keep it more appealing than the steel cages and preservation tanks."

The party looked around at one another, not entirely sure what to make of the overly friendly newcomer. "How do… you know my name…?" Eli began hesitantly. "We've never met before. I never saw you in any of… what went on here."

Aataqah smiled. "Your name's well known to those who know what to watch, young elfling. Indeed, your life's thread is quite bright, though in your path in particular lies many a dark, frayed end." Eli opened his mouth to ask more, but the genie held up a finger, imploring him to wait. "It's not my place to ease your mind about the specifics of that path, nor am I able to answer such questions as those that surely plague you. My apologies."

Imoen had had enough of Aataqah already. "Then of what use can you be to us?" she asked, cutting off whatever Eli was going to say next.

The genie's grin got wider, and a gleam appeared in its black eyes. "Such assistance as you all will get from me depends on yourselves. Winthrop's ward… hmm. Are you prepared to answer a question?"

She looked to Eli, who shrugged at her. "Sure, if it leads to you starting to make any sense."

"Then here it is, purely hypothetical of course." He brought his clawed, bejeweled hands up to help illustrate his point. "You and a friend are captured by a mage, locked in separate cells, unable to communicate." Imoen snorted – of course he'd ask about something that had already happened. "The mage responsible appears to you and speaks, explaining a most sadistic game: in each cell, there is a button. If you press your button but your friend does not, then you will die, but he will go free."

One of Imoen's red eyebrows was raised high at his little game. "And if I don't?"

"Excellent," Aataqah praised her, clapping his hands together. "The spirit of inquiry is strong with you, I see. If your friend presses the button but you do not, then they will die and you will go free!"

"But… what if neither of us presses a button?"

"Then…" Dynaheir cut in, uncertainly at first, but gaining strength as she spoke. "Then both will die via refusal to… to play the game. A variation on 'The Prisoner's Dilemma'. 'Tis a… a logic problem. Of sorts."

"And I'm guessing that if we both press the button, we'll both die? I mean… it seems that pressing the button ensures that the presser will die, right?" the half-elf half-explained and half-asked. Both Dynaheir and the djinn nodded their assent, which made him sigh and the thief frown.

Imoen cocked her head to the side, and her fading pink hair touched her shoulder. "How long does 'the mage' give us to make this kind of terribly important decision?"

"One turn of the hourglass." Aataqah steepled his long, tan fingers and floated over to Imoen, looking down on her from the end of his pointed nose. "Tell me, Imoen, would you press the button to save your friend? What about you, Elioth?"

Eli looked over at his companions – Khalid looked sympathetic, Dynaheir thoughtful, and Imoen blank as she mulled over her own choice. "I… don't need an hour to decide," the half-elf began, his gaze lingering on Imoen for a moment before turning to the dijnn. "I would –"

None of them heard his response, even though his lips moved. Imoen started at the sudden silence; Khalid was reaching for his weapon, but Aataqah had raised his hands up in the air in the universal sign for peace. "Privacy, good adventurers," he said smoothly. "I wouldn't want the elfling's response to influence what his young companion has to say; peer pressure and all, and the point of the game is that the prisoners are separate. Need you more time, Imoen?"

The girl shook her head, and suddenly, the noises of the cave around them vanished – she was awash in her own sphere of silence, just her and the genie. She narrowed her blue eyes at him. "My decision is that your game, and this question, are stupid. You're determining what by this - my morality? Based on whether I'm willing to kill for some hypothetical mind game?" Imoen laughed harshly. "You don't know anything about me, about Eli, or any of us."

Aataqah drew himself up to his full ten feet and crossed his arms. "So you are willing to let your friend die by your refusal to play?"

"No!"

"Then what?"

"I'd pick the lock, rescue my friend, kill the mage if I had to, and get the hell out of there. Damn his buttons." Imoen grinned rather sardonically up at him. "But that's not what you want to hear, is it? Your game relies on my base instincts – kill or be killed. I die if I don't play, I die if I do, and I have to take the chance that my partner decides to do the noble thing and off himself in order to walk out." She licked her lips, still feeling quite parched. "The only thing to do in a situation like this is to press the stupid button and cross my fingers that my friend doesn't. Unless my friend isn't really my friend, in which case it doesn't matter what I do, but since it's obvious you're referring to Eli, I'd press it." She raised her eyebrows expectantly. "Not to nitpick, but… in The Prisoner's Dilemma, don't both players get something for cooperating better than death?"

The djinn regarded her with an odd expression on his face. "You and Eli are cut from the same cloth, and yet the differences are astounding…"

"Tell me about it." The little thief shrugged. "His father was a great mage and a Harper – he got magic and an overweening sense of nobility. Mine was an innkeeper; glean from that what you will."

The background noise came back in a rush. She'd either passed or failed his test – not that she cared either way – and the genie was mulling over the two responses he'd received. Eli had, no doubt, sacrificed his life, in a typical show of Eli's self-sacrificing and somewhat pessimistic nature. No doubt he'd explained that his friend almost certainly had the capability of getting out better than he did. Well, that wasn't her deal – the question was flawed, and she hated mind games. Imoen hoped she'd thrown a wrench into whatever the stupid elemental was plotting.

"Truly," Aataqah began, "You two are the most unique specimens the madman has ever brought into this lair."

Eli looked skeptical. "That's… a compliment, I think?"

"Indeed." He smiled, white teeth gleaming in the dimness of the cave. "No actions can be performed without consequence, the two of you. Normally I'd summon your trial, the 'reaction', if you will, to whatever path you chose, but I must admit that the pink-haired girl's response has… intrigued me."

"Glad to be of service," she said faux-chipperly, proud of herself for ruining his game.

Eli looked alarmed. "What did you –" he began, but the look she game firmly told him 'no, I'd rather not say'. Instead, he cleared his throat, switching topics. "So… can you tell us how to get out of here?"

Aataqah nodded serenely. "I can even do better than that," he said. "If you agree to do something for me."

"No more mind games," the mage said quickly, his tone turning serious. "We've had enough of those, from both you and the man who captured us."

The djinn's laugh was loud and unsettling. "Little elfling, I have no love of Jon Irenicus myself, nor am I bound to whatever plots and intrigues he has in his deranged head. I ask for myself, not him."

"Jon Irenicus?" Eli looked around at the party, gauging their reactions to the name. "Is that who captured us?"

Khalid saw that his charge had gotten off-track, so he picked up the younger man's slack, addressing the djinn directly for the first time. "T-then what… what ARE you suggesting? We have nothing to g-give in return for any favors y-you might ask." His tone towards the elemental was polite - deferential almost – and it was the first time Imoen saw a hint of the half-elf's heritage outside of the off-handed comment about pronunciation.

"Don't you?" There was a gleam in his sharp black eyes. "I propose a trade. I have a friend nearby who seems to have gotten misplaced… help me help him and transport us out of here, and I will help see to it that you all leave in one piece. My friend and I can make our way back to Calimshan once we leave."

"T-that's it?"

"… it seems like an innocuous enough deal," Imoen admitted, though she hated to do so after Aataqah's little attempt at armchair psychology. "Eli? Your thoughts?"

The half elf was staring past the genie with searching blue eyes, brass lamp still clutched in his hand while his thoughts wandered. It took him a few moments to come back to the rest of them. "…he had ample opportunity to attack us and didn't… so I'm game. For now," he started, "so long as he plays under our rules. For starters, he tells us what our next move should be."

The djinn considered this, then nodded sagely. "All right, then. Seek out Rielev, one of Irenicus' forgotten servants. He's been waiting for one such as you for a long time. Offer him the release he craves, and the focus of your journey will shortly thereafter become apparent."

Imoen made a face at his 'advice'. "What does that even mean? And where can we find him?" she asked, but the genie was beginning to lose form and retreat back into his bottle.

Rielev, he repeated before dissipating away.