Ben had three ideas to start with. The first was to see if the Smartest Phone that the Citadel Fly had attached to his crown had a self-destruct feature. Anna's answer left him frustrated that it couldn't be that easy.

His second idea was a frontal assault, which was promptly vetoed by everyone, including himself.

His third idea was, and I quote, 'we've got to do something with the Pocket of Sanctuary,' which as far as plans go, wasn't a terrible start but it had a long way to go.

They all agreed that the Pocket of Sanctuary was key to their success. It was the best weapon they had, but unfortunately it ran on mana, quite a lot of mana, and was useless without fuel.

“Ideas?” Ben whispered, the entire group huddled together while Red's airborn eyes kept perfect watch.

“Will we be able to supply the Pocket of Sanctuary with our mana,” Vivi whispered, “possibly, but it won't be enough,” he said, answering his own question, “the real solution would be mana gems, as many as we could get our hands on.” Ben looked at Vivi and nodded, smiling, extremely grateful the nerdy Aeon Slug was here for this conversation.

“All right,” Short Bus started to say verbally, but he was shushed by the group, because he was incapable of reliably whispering, “all right,” Short Bus said again, this time using telepathy, “we get some mana gems. Where are they? What do they smell like?”

“Like ozone and magic,” Vivi answered, “but the problem is that they only form in areas of naturally dense and highly refined mana-”

“Like a citadel,” Anna said, “like the citadel we're in right now?”

“Oh, uh,” Vivi said.

“Listen,” Anna whispered, her voice still forceful, “I like where you're going with this, but listen. I know I'm not much of an adventurer, but my parents run one of the largest mana gem processing facilities in Solas. A citadel like this one is guaranteed to have a treasure cache with mana gems piled as high as that man-shark's snout.”

Vivi's eyes got big on top of their stalks, and he mouthed 'that many?', and Anna nodded, and put a finger to her lips, like she was telling him to keep a secret.

“It's not in the main Treasury or Reliquary or Citadel Horde either,” she continued, and everybody leaned in closer in the group huddle to listen, “there are mana gems there, but those are treasure grade, processed and enchanted already. A Citadel like this exists for the sole purpose of refining mana and feeding it to the dungeon core. Near the core chamber, in a hidden room with no entrances or exits, the refined mana of the dungeon crystallizes into raw mana gems, food for the core,” she paused to take a breath, “in regular dungeons, it's a modest bonus at best, barely enough to get excited about because the dungeon eats the gems about as fast as they're produced.”

“Not so in a Citadel?” Ben asked, because even though they were in a time crunch, he was still curious.

“No. A Citadel core hungers for a much more purified and refined kind of mana gem, and to produce it is a two step process. First, it has to amass a gigantic pile of mana gems, which are then further refined down into something palatable for the core.”

“Risky,” Ben said, “what if the gems are gone, if they've already been refined? I don't think we're going to get to that hidden treasure room without bringing the entire Citadel down on our heads. So, before we do that, does anyone have a better plan?”

Ben looked from face to face and saw nothing that indicated anyone was holding onto an idea.

“I'm starving,” Short Bus telepathically said, his stomach growling, “and so are all of you, even if you don't notice it. We need some food.”

In response, Ben produced the rest of his raw fish, the same fish Short Bus had gotten for him all those three or four days ago. Felt like a lifetime to Ben..

“You going to be alright?” Ben asked.

“Don't judge me when I start eating those spider things,” Short Bus said, “but I'll be alright.” Short Bus ate the fish, but between the number of people in the party and the diminished supply, the portion sizes were a little small for the giant shark.

“Everyone, if you need to eat,” Ben whispered, “do it now. If you need to drink, do it now. If you need to relieve yourselves, do it now,” He said, an echo of his time as a roadcrew lead in his voice. Ben turned his head to look at Anna, “how do we find this crystal cache?”

“We'll need to keep an eye out for the Dungeon Map,” she said, then immediately corrected herself, “the Citadel Atlas, excuse me. Otherwise, we're going to have to find the Core chamber and start excavating the walls.”

“Question,” Vivi said, munching on some faintly glowing greens which looked strikingly like cabbage, but much greener, “if we find the Core Chamber, why not just,” he said and then thrust an eyeball like he was jabbing something, “touch the core and be done with it?”

“I'm guessing you never wanted to be an adventurer when you were growing up?” Anna said, and nobody could tell if she was mocking Vivi or not. So naturally Vivi assumed she was.

“Sorry, I wanted to get a real job.”

“Look how that turned out,” she shot back and then continued, “this isn't a regular dungeon core, it’s a Citadel Core. You can't just touch it and beat the dungeon, it's protected until the Citadel Monster is defeated. Even then, you've got to be quick to grab the core, because the Citadel Monster can be regenerated even if it dies.” She took a moment to look everyone in the eye, “It can come back, even if we do manage to kill it.”

“Unless we get the core,” Ghost Ears said from his perch on Ben's shoulder.

“Unless we get the core,” she confirmed. Red smirked, but didn't say anything. Due to her unofficial/official status as a horror-type creature, her smirking and not saying anything caught everybody's attention. Eyeballs started flicking in her direction, then looking away, only to start looking at her more frequently as she just sat there, eyeless face leaned into the huddle, her antlers empty of her eyes and also pretty close to hitting Vivi and Short Bus in the huddle.

Her smirk erupted into a full-blown smile, which sent a chill down Ben's spine. In that moment, he realized that he didn't want to know the kinds of things that made Red smile, because he had a feeling they would not make him smile, at all.

“Red,” Ben said calmly, “do you have something you'd like to tell us?” Her smile got even wider, exposing pearly white teeth that were just slightly sharper than human teeth.

“We don't need a map,” she said, then tapped her antlers, “because I'm looking at the crystals right now, and I know the way to get to them without causing a fuss.” Anna looked over at Red, her jaw hanging open.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

–

In a way, what they were doing seemed easy. Ninety-Eight percent of the monsters in the Citadel of Horrors were assembled in front of the Citadel Fly, who both loved to hear himself talk and was enamored by his own vision of an entire world completely enslaved and destroyed. The remaining monsters moved in a predictable patrol pattern, which just so happened to have an exploitable blind spot that they were able to slip into without much hassle. Red just so happened to have the ability to see through the walls of this Citadel, though Anna assured her it wouldn't always be the case.

An unreasonable set of convenient circumstances which just so happened to coalesce together at just the right moment, for just the right people.

However, compared to some of the bullshit that was going on with Charlie and his thirty strong pack of animals, Ben was getting absolutely raw-dog shafted by the Ring of Sacrifice. A stray meteor spell hadn't fallen from the sky and demolished his first dungeon, allowing him to just walk up and grab the core without fighting a single monster. Given the choice, Ben would have happily chosen ignorance, rather than risk being jealous of a three year old.

It seemed easy, yes, but it wasn't. The Citadel buzzed and clicked, sections of the living wall and floor occasionally vibrating like an insect's abdomen. The air was hot and humid and clogged the lungs like it was full of spores, and stuck to the skin like running through a steam room. Ben felt his bare feet impact against the sharp, knobby floor, the sensations of his [Magical] Leap-rechaun body alien, yet growing more familiar by the second.

Nobody talked as they ran, Anna's crystal feet didn't clink sharply against the chitinous floor because of her normal, uncursed leather shoes. Now that Ben looked a bit more closely, it looked like the shoes had brown rubber soles, or some rubber equivalent. Ben really hoped that was rubber, but somehow, considering the source, he doubted it.

Short Bus was the quietest of them all, practically invisible as he kept near the front of the group. He was ready to sneak past any threat and attack it from behind, while the group hit it from the front. It was basically the only bit of tactics they had come up with, and it was optimized for fighting in hallways. Ben would be lying if he said he was comfortable with how little of a plan they had, which was basically, 'avoid monsters, steal crystals, use Pocket of Sanctuary somehow, don't die,' which had a lot of blank spaces in it as far as plans went.

They slowed and met Red's eye as they floated, dim and concealed, above a shut doorway sealed away by a silver lock.

“There is only one locked door along this route,” Red said, her voice low, “Lord Ben, I know you have a key left. Once the doorway is open, we must be extremely quiet. There are monsters inside this place, but they are. . . sleeping,” she said, clearly enjoying herself. Ben glared at her, and the smile slipped from her face. Only then did he produce 'Old Lucky' from his Utility Pocket, looking at the key fondly, the way a man might look at a favorite hammer or wrench in his garage workshop.

“Come on, don't fail me now,” Ben whispered, and put the key into the keyhole, pushing past the resistance, and turned it. No voice called out, and the both silver key and the silver lock dissolved.

Ben felt numb inside, watching as his key faded away to nothing. Ghost Ears looked from the key, to Ben's troubled expression, then back to the key. The [Royal Vizier], the official class Ben had given the True-Elf Fairy, frowned and then rolled his eyes and smacked Ben's earlobe, hard.

“Get over it,” he hissed, and Ben felt a little embarrassed. Short Bus looked back and grinned, then put a meaty finger to his dangerous looking mouth, the universal gesture for shush.

The door finished dissolving and Red's eye silently flew in, giving off practically no light. The party stepped through the threshold into a scene out of a sci-fi nightmare.

The room was huge, at least four thousand square feet, arranged like a rectangle. It was darker than the rest of the Citadel in terms of natural light, but the things inside gave off enough light for the group to see clearly. Ben's vision fixated on a large, completely transparent, floor to ceiling, cylinder. It looked like glass, or some biological equivalent, and was secured to the ground by a black and purple mass of pulsing, wet tissue. It was secured to the roof of the room the same way.

The interior of the cylinder was filled with a faintly glowing orange fluid, and floating in the fluid, was. . . was. . . something.

It was bigger than a person, almost as big as Short Bus, and had features like an ant, and a beetle, and a centipede. It was chimeric in an artificial, sloppy, experimental way. Worse still were the bits of non-insect creatures that had been fused into the mutant abomination; alien hands, a bit of a Gray's head fused to the abdomen, and other parts of it were crystalline in the way Anna was.

It twitched faintly, floating weightlessly, neither touching the bottom, top, or sides. Ben couldn't stop drinking in the details, the way he saw the mass of flesh on the ground pump, and a bit of purple fluid mix in with the orange, seeping up through the fluid like a slow moving bubble of dye.

Then Ben shook his eyes away from the sight, only to see another mutated abomination. Floating in a different cylinder, the creature was as different from the first as a cat from a frog, yet they were both nightmares in their own right. There were dozens of them, spaced equidistant away from one another in an example of well-thought-out room design. Aside from the dim light of the mutation chambers, which is what Ben called them in his head, the room was unnaturally dark.

Red had a serious look on her face and put her finger to her lips. Everybody nodded and walked slowly, carefully, into the chamber. Ben couldn't feel it, but his heart was racing, and he didn't know it, but his eyes were fully dilated. He was breathing with deep, quiet regularity, unconsciously avoiding getting too close to the mutation chambers.

He hadn't known the monsters of The World knew about. . . science and shit. It was a frankly terrifying thought, and he pointedly ignored the mutation chamber that had his own, recently vacated, corpse floating in it.

Or at least he tried to. Honestly though, he was a human being, and there were some things that anyone, anywhere, would do. He started to veer off from the group, who immediately panicked, stumbled a bit, and followed him as he deviated from the plan.

Ben stood in front of the huge apparatus, a bit of bio-technology more advanced than anything Humans from his era had ever even come close to producing. The orange light cast him in the color of nightmares, a jack-o-lantern on an evil Halloween night. It stained the white trim of his robe, and the cylinder was reflected in his eyes with a mirror's perfection, birthing the illusion of unnatural, glowing, slitted pupils.

The entire body was puffy, swollen with fluid. The eyes had been ripped out, and the features mutilated. Bits of it were in the process of transforming, patches of skin turning hard and shiny, insectile. The wound, the hole from where his heart had been pulled, hung open and ragged, leaking dead man's blood that mixed with the orange fluid. Ben's mind was still like sub-zero ice, thoughts skidding across its hard stillness, unable to find purchase.

It was the first time he'd seen a depiction of himself since coming to The World. He'd avoided mirrors, frightened of the possibility of seeing his new alien form, of the loss of his identity.

“It has my face,” Ben whispered, voice completely devoid of distress, “he looks just like me,” Ben said, turning his head to look away, to look at the others. Ghost Ears was flying next to him, a horrified expression on his face. There wasn't a single one of them who wasn't affected; Short Bus had it bad, but Vivi had it the worst. The Aeon Slug was, under his new clothes, turning transparent, all the color draining from his body and his eyes were wide.

“Come on Vivi,” Ben said, walking over to the Aeon Slug, reaching up to pat him, “it's ok, I'm right here. I'm ok!” he said and smiled a big smile.

“Your face,” Vivi whispered, and Ben realized nobody had been looking at his corpse, but staring at him. Ben blinked, not understanding at all.

“I'm fine,” Ben said, feeling a flutter of panic in his chest, struggling to keep his voice down, “see?” he said, and reached up to touch his face, then frowned when he felt something like quicksilver run down his finger, down his hand, down his arm and drip against the floor. Ben blinked rapidly, then touched his face again, and more alien liquid came from his eyes.

“Holy shit,” Anna said, looking at the corpse, then at the silently weeping [Prince].

Ben's smile slipped, and he plastered it back on. It slipped again, and he unconsciously touched his stomach, the same spot he'd been hurt before. He put the smile back on and jerked his hand away from the spot, clenching his jaw.

“No time for that,” he said, with a forced smile, then he [Whap'd] his own corpse right from the mutation bay, and he said 'Whap!' like how he'd said it in Vivi's dungeon, like it was a big joke. If he'd been in a more ornery mood, he would have stolen all the corpses, but even with his expanded utility pouch-

“Ben,” Short Bus said, interrupting his racing thoughts and hugged him, picking him up to do so, and squeezing him tight. The shark opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then shut it, and just hugged Ben a little harder.

“Put me down,” Ben said, but only after a long moment, “no time for it. Later, later.” Short Bus put him down.

Ben wiped the strange tears from his eyes, and then looked up, straight up at the ceiling, probably to take a deep, dramatic, shuddering breath, the kind of breath that would fortify him to face the remainder of the citadel.

What actually happened was he looked up and saw the incredibly stealthy spider-woman monster hanging on the roof, moments before she grinned evilly at him, and started to drop.

Ben screamed, and a new fight began.