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Tony uses his magic detecting rod to outline a perimeter around the castle. Curiously, it’s not a circle or any other regular shape. Instead it’s extremely irregular, in some places extending minutes worth of walking into the forest, in others coming within a few paces of the castle walls.
It takes hours to completely trace the perimeter, Tony planting surveying stakes periodically along the boundary he traces. Stephen follows him throughout, but he’s silent, never protesting the process.
When Tony finally returns to his starting point, he wipes sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and turns to face Stephen. The mass of purple-black tentacles is still writhing, but it’s much slower now. Because he’s calmer, or because he’s tired? Tony momentarily curses himself for not observing Stephen himself more regularly, but, well, if he truly is trapped here for three months, he’ll have more opportunities.
“You must be tired,” Stephen says after a moment. The mass of tentacles doesn’t change at all when he speaks. Magical sound projection, or is his speaking apparatus just hidden under the tentacles? “There is a room in the castle suitable for… visitors.”
Trespassers, Tony substitutes silently. “Do you get a lot of visitors?” he asks aloud.
“More than I’d like,” Stephen says shortly. He floats down the path towards the castle. Tony follows, keeping quiet. Eventually, as he’d hoped, Stephen continues. “Three or four a year. Mostly so-called adventurers.” He snorts derisively. It’s a very human noise, to go with his human name.
“I take it they don’t come to help,” Tony says.
Stephen’s quiet for a moment. “You’re the first to even suggest help is something I might need.” They arrived at the castle steps. The tall double doors are closed. “You’ll have to open the doors,” Stephen says. “I can’t.”
Interesting. Tony takes hold of the handles and tugs firmly. The doors swing open stiffly, but they’re neither jammed nor barred. “How did they end up closed? I can’t imagine your visitors stop to close them on their way out, and if you can’t…”
“The castle and the grounds reset to their current state every morning,” Stephen says. “So I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done about the state of the place.”
It’s obvious what he means when Tony steps inside. The great sweeping staircase that descends into the entry hall is shattered, only a narrow path next to the right surviving. The left bannister is in pieces. The remains of several statues and a chandelier litter the floor. The destruction looks recent, for all that the villagers reported the castle’s anomaly starting hundreds of years ago. Courtesy of the morning reset, Tony assumes.
“The reset doesn’t affect you,” Tony states. That’s obvious, given that Stephen has been able to tell him about past visitors. “Will it affect me?”
“No.” Stephen pauses. “How is it you’re so calm?”
Tony turns from the destruction to look at Stephen instead. “My friends say my sense of self-preservation abandons me when I’m faced with a mystery,” he says lightly. “And all of this is an even bigger mystery than I thought.”
“I question whether you have any sense of self-preservation at all,” Stephen says dryly.
Tony laughs. “Maybe not.”
Hard to develop one when the lack of it leads to opportunities like this.