Sorry, was Harry Pottering yesterday. And the day before.
I thought a moment. "Alright, I've got a plan. I'll head down to the cliff face where the heating pipe starts, from there I'll leg it to the shaft of light, and from there it shouldn't be too far to the cave. Faw, one of your shirts. Can you do something to speed me up, Araches?"
Our healer-turned-necromancer pulled off his blue overshirt and handed it to me while Araches pointed a gloved finger at my feet and said "haste!" I discreetly put Faw's shirt on under my armor (which is surprisingly easy to do when you have ninja-like agility), said "be right back" in hopes I'd be right, and sprinted away outside.
Back to the cliff face, I looked ahead. In the distance, across the smoking silver river, I could just barely make out the foggy shaft of light piercing the gray-red landscape. I crouched to get a running start, summoned up my inner racing-ninja, and darted out towards the horizon.
My face and feet felt numb in the freezing, screaming wind, but after a few seconds of running and bounding over a pipe I had reached the warmth of the light. I stopped to catch my breath and looked around, but despite my prior prediction, Leetzan was nowhere to be found.
"Leetzan?" I called. "L33tz4n?" I called with more numbers. Still no response. I guess this meant she was off somewhere dead. "Eh," I shrugged, not caring, and turned around to try to spot the direction to the cave. In the far distance to my left I could make out a large dark object, so I breathed in a bit of the slightly warmer air, dug me feet into the dusty red ground, and charged towards forward.
This was a much longer walk than it was to the light, and I got the impression that I should've been able to discern this from my knowledge of the circular map. Despite this, I trudged on at a rapid pace until I could barely feel my tiring appendages in the cold. After what felt like hours (two minutes), tired, cold, and hungry, I reached the door. It looked about as we had left it, though steam no longer poured out of the loose bolt from when the pipe was heated.
If I had the wrong key, it would be so ironic. And I'd probably die.
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