06/01/2026: The Arman Situation

Ahead of Arman, the cavernous silence of the maze is punctuated by the echoing scuff of boots. The sounds bounce back to their ears, making it impossible to tell from which direction the noises come, despite the evidence of the listener's eyes. Then suddenly, from somewhere — perhaps around the next corner, perhaps from behind them, or perhaps in no place at all — there is maniacal laughter that belongs to no one present.

There is also quiet weeping, a child's, high and inconsolable, cutting through the sulfurous dark like a knife through smoke. The party pauses, exchanging looks, each of them slightly worse for having heard it.

This is truly Hell.

⚔

Reklaw and Thunk remain in the narrow corridor, confronted with Reklaw's painting come to life. The painted Thunk — an evil Thunk — is the maze's answer to the question of what can open the door that Reklaw must confront. He stands between the monk and the door, furious and freshly un-stunned. The Insect Plague he has conjured has yet to dissipate. The cloud of gnashing mandibles and vicious stingers circles in a frenetic spiral behind them. His comrade, the good Thunk, the real one, stands at Reklaw's shoulder, as chewed, bitten, and stung as himself.

Reklaw is not doing well.

He painfully injures his hand on the first strike. Thunk heals him. Then Reklaw slips on the slick carapaces of dying insects on the uneven stone floor, punching himself hard enough to stagger his own nervous system. This leaves him gawping and glassy-eyed. The evil Thunk presses his advantage and hurls him backward into the cloud of ravenous insects.

"I have no quarrel with you, Thunk," the copy says to the real one.

"We don't have to do this!" the real Thunk answers.

The painted Thunk receives this with an expression that is not quite contempt — it is more complicated than contempt. It is the expression of someone watching themselves lose a fight, and against himself.

The real Thunk hauls back and slaps himself across the face. The painted Thunk's concentration shatters. The Insect Plague fizzles, and the cloud of biting locusts and flies covering the stunned Reklaw begins to vanish.

The orc drags himself upright, bruised and chewed across all available surfaces, but is at this point arguably healthier than when the fight began — owing to Thunk's Prayer of Healing and the painted Thunk's catastrophic decision to cast Life Transference on a target it wanted dead. The copy takes serious necrotic damage and accidentally heals Reklaw in the bargain. It is something that only Thunk could be trusted to do: outside of his adventures in Hell, he is a shopkeeper, not a warrior priest. He has memorized the spells but not necessarily what they do.

The painted Thunk steps back. It looks at the door. It looks at Reklaw. It looks at the fresh blood spilled down his front.

"You need me to open the door," it says. Not a question.

"…Yes."

"I yield." A pause. "We are not friends."

It batters the door from its hinges with one blow and disappears into the dark beyond. The corridor is quiet. The weeping in the walls does not stop, but it feels, briefly, more distant.

⚔

While this is unfolding, elsewhere in the maze, Borark kicks a door off its hinges. The heavy door falls atop the creature on the far side, crushing it. Its breathless screams join the general chorus echoing faintly through the corridors. Kiki and Fork step cautiously into the long hallway Borark has exposed. Arman keeps his position at the back, watching and guarding the company.

Fork wanders ahead into a dead end. Here, he meets a warrior tiger standing upon its hind legs — which allows Fork to admire the enormous creature's enormous weapon, a temptation to the demon.

But the creature is not quite a tiger, though it has a tiger's face and a hunter's patience and stillness. It is a thing that has spent a very long time watching in the dark. It regards Fork with amber eyes.

"Greetings," it says. "I am here to warn you."

Fork, standing in a dead-end corridor that smells of old stone and brimstone, considers this. "About what?"

"The Armen."

Fork does not answer. He is trying to puzzle out this riddle.

Patiently, the creature continues. "We know you have an Arman in your group."

The herald is referring to their comrade Arman, a changeling who has, until this moment, been their friend and ally. Somewhere in the maze, waiting in ambush, are an army of Arman-shaped constructs — seven of them, each identical to the others, each bearing a Belt of Giant Strength and a powerful magic staff.

"The Armen are here to kill your party," the herald says. "But they are your only way forward, lest you remain in Malbolge forever."

"I don't know if I'm the right person to be talking to about this," Fork says.

There is a significant pause.

"Good luck, little demon," the herald says, and vanishes.

⚔

The party reassembles in a southern corridor, where seven copies of Arman wait in a loose formation, still and patient and armed to the teeth. They have his face — or at least the one the changeling now wears. They have his gear. They have the same wounds.

Arman himself hangs back. He watches. His loyalties are not in question, but his willingness to be seen right now is another matter entirely. He would also like to know whether the copies view him as friend or foe.

Kiki acts first, with the pragmatism of someone who has survived far too many situations like this one. She casts Haste on the nearest Armen — and then, immediately, drops her spell. The copy staggers, incapacitated, blinking at nothing, removed from the world for a few precious seconds.

Borark wades in. He swings his Drunkard's Cudgel with a brutal strike. He connects. He has absolutely zero interest in a philosophical discussion about identity. From the club's tip, a stream of viscous oil shoots, pooling slowly across the stone floor, catching the torchlight. Three Armen stand in it. None of them yet move.

The real Arman watches from the corridor. He does not attack. He does not flee. He is, as he has always been, waiting for the right moment.

The right moment has not arrived.

Screams echo from somewhere deep in the walls of the Maze of Deserved Sorrows.

The party cannot spare them a thought. The Armen have their full attention.