The 8-yr-old stares at the blinking cursor, thwacks his desk, and types:

>Hit door

‘It does not budge.’

>Kick door

‘Your foot feels pain, it feels nothing.’

He yells at the screen, amusing his father watching from the hall.

“I can’t get past it!”

“You can.”

“How?”

Silence. The boy slumps, shuffles his pjs and stares at the cursor. He closes his eyes and the Apple //e fades away. When he opens them he is standing on a wooded path in front of a massive door nestled in a hill. He’s cloaked in black leather armor. In his satchel are the stolen letters of Lady Brianna. Confounded, he caresses his lockpicks, thinking.

>Feel keyhole

‘You feel no keyhole, only runes and the dragon carving.’

Thermofax. A legendary ice breather slain centuries ago by Lord Grisham, who perished in the fight. Brianna’s grandfather. Why engrave his killer, though?

>Burn door

‘The wood burns then magically extinguishes.’ No surprise, it’s enchanted.

>Touch runes

‘You touch them for the fifth time. Nothing happens.’

A voice from the heavens cries, “Lady Brianna sure did hate Thermofax, didn’t she?”

The master thief retrieves the parchment from his satchel and examines it. A simple story, easily deciphered, but irrelevant. Her sigil also brings no clues. Then his skillful fingers feel the imprinted seal. He turns over the parchment and brings the two pieces together.

>Fix broken seal

‘You put the seal back together. It’s a crossbow with two arrows.’

Of course! Thermofax was killed by two arrows to the throat. I’d already pressed the arrow rune, but just once!

>Press arrow rune again

‘Done.’

>Press neck of Thermofax

The wood creaks and the earth rumbles as the ancient door lowers into the ground, revealing a dark stairway down. Cameron squeals and turns to his father, ecstatic. “I figured it out!”

“Well done!”

They high-5. The boy plops down, pulls the keyboard in, looks at the dark passage, unsheathes his daggers and with glee steps forward.

>Take stairs

@tomorrowsvig / wkly fiction