The eleventh floor was, at the best of times, confusingly mazelike, prone to whimsical changes in layout and having entirely new species pop up randomly then spread explosively. Many were then swiftly culled, until they fell back into the background, becoming just one more shape in the endless sands, but sometimes some would find their way into prominence. The most recent example of this was a creature that, on the surface, resembled something like a very large shrimp, or a very odd lobster.

Most striking, perhaps, were its claws, or what it had in place of claws, anyway. An arm lay folded against either side of their bodies, the lower half dominated by a single, horrifically sharp blade. Their bodies were a sandy yellow striped with rich blue, leaving them almost invisible in the newly cerulean sands of the floor, and free to skewer anything wandering through as a result. The sapphire-spear mantis shrimp may have been new, but it stood out as a potent threat to anything near its own size, and a bone-deep hazard even to the true rulers of the floor.

Or rather, to most of them. The kobolds and some of their more evolved kin had reasonably tough scales, but the shrimp was adept at finding the places they were weakest, whether they were scarred and mangled or simply shed, and when it struck, it was blindingly fast. Without fail, the thin, razor sharp knife would find itself buried up to bone, or occasionally even completely through the other side of a foot or leg.

However, one member of that tribe had no reason at all to fear. Not because they had scales sturdy enough to resist, nor because they had the reflexes to dodge, and to lash out. No, the Kelpie wasn’t afraid of these new creatures because he feared nothing. He welcomed it when the blue sand beneath his feet suddenly rippled, and a spike found itself punched right through his fetid flesh. In fact, he even enjoyed it, partially because their dull, stupid animal minds couldn’t understand why their knives went so easily in, yet refused to budge even a millimeter when they tried to pull them out, but also simply because he felt it. The cold severing of muscle giving way to burning pain as his skin and tissue healed right back, sealing their implements of pain within his body, which he could then play with at his leisure.

Sadly, the blue and yellow creatures weren’t much fun to toy with. Their mindless instincts meant that he could always rely on them to attack, wandering over to them whenever he spotted one move too close to the tribe, but it also meant that they would never react like he wanted. They fought for their lives, sure, but it was a token effort, the pitiful struggles of a thing touched by life, not one truly graced by it.

They were little more than a snack, both to his appetite for violence, and his appetite for food. The crunch was nice, but beyond that they were only a scant morsel of flesh. The kelpie still laughed in that whinnying, grating way as he slowly pulled another shrimp out of his lower leg, feeling the severed tissue knit itself back together even with the skewer still in him. The tail was already mostly chewed, smashed to pulp by his blunt teeth, and his leg was bent upwards at a truly unnatural angle for him to even reach it, making for a sight most would at least grimace at.

His rider, however, was not most. She’d grown painfully familiar with the way he acted, and this was hardly the worst she’d needed to put up with even today. This familiarity with his antics led to a wild shift in attitude for her, what was left was mostly a callous, morbid bitterness that left her feeling increasingly ostracized by the Tribe. She still hunted with them, their raids were a borderline sacred event, and the bonds of kinship were far too strong for her cold attitude and her majorly unnerving mount to find her truly exiled. Still, between the growing changes in her demeanor, and the new chaos the tribe was going through with their hatchlings, hunting was about the only thing she did with them any longer.

And after what happened to the Ruler, even that might be coming to an end. Nobody said anything, but the Ruler’s disappearance just moments after their most urgent call for a Hunt they’d ever experienced was a terrible omen, if one somehow didn’t consider Their absence a tragedy all its own. Afterwards, the tribe had been feeling lost, as had she, and they took to hunkering down in their slice of the caves.

She, however, had not. Instead, she walked out, intending to explore the new changes to the floor, and there were many indeed, before finding herself mildly lost. The entirely new color palate was surprisingly disorienting, as was the fact that she had never tried actively navigating it. It was much easier to follow a chief, or to follow the Ruler Themselves. With neither of these things, she was mostly stuck in the labyrinthine halls with her mount, that detestable creature.

Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t noticed the fact that he had snuck up behind her until she felt a hoof to her lower back, one that swiftly pushed her over, face first, into the rich aquamarine grains. She struggled to push herself up, her limbs going through the wet sand like it was a syrupy liquid, and the kelpie walking across her back easily didn’t help.

Still, she managed to struggle out after a moment, and the sand fell off her coal black scales in clumps. Unfortunately, some got tangled in her long, oily mane of feathers, but it was only a handful of grains among the veritable beach already matting her plumage. Once on her feet, she turned to the kelpie, and smacked him across the flank with her spear. There was a wet thump as the flat depressed his side like clay, and he turned to look at her with a far-too-smart and much-too-cocky grin while the indent slowly smoothed out.

She held back from giving him a new stab wound, knowing from experience how inconsequential, and even gratifying, such an action would be for him. Instead, she just grumbled, turning into a growl by the end, and walked up to him as he slowed. She put one hand on his side, the other on his back, and dug the claws on her feet into one of his hind legs so she could climb onto his back. Thankfully, he hadn’t opted to leave her trapped like he had the shrimp, since most of the time she needed to pull the sharp claws out by the root, or shatter them if she was lucky, and ever since the Ruler’s absence none of her injuries healed even remotely quickly anymore, something the kelpie soon realized too and was sure to keep her constantly aware of.

She had been lucky, only suffering tiny scrapes and uncomfortable bruises, both some of the most minor hazards of being near the kelpie for any real length of time, but she knew it might not last. Already, she could see creatures suffering from wounds, bloody fish or crabs with shattered shells. Before the disappearance, she had never seen a creature under the Ruler die without being attacked immediately before. That changed when she happened upon an eel, sheared almost clean in half by something, get washed onto the blue sands, struggle weakly for a moment, and then dissolve into motes of life that were carried lazily downwards on some unseen wind.

It had only been a few hours since their Ruler had vanished, yet every second that crept by felt more stifling and oppressive than the last. The emptiness in their minds where They should have been was far more than mere silence, every creature was intimately aware of how alone they were, now.

This frustrated the kelpie immensely, because not only did it loathe the discomfort it felt, it had nothing to vent this agitation out on; all but the dumbest residents of the myriad halls were acting skittish and flighty. The shrimp, new and exciting as they were to him, were growing monotonous quickly, and his companion was likewise losing her appeal of late.

The two were bound together still, the Deep One had decreed so and Its orders were still ironclad even without It present. But, after months of near constant interaction, she no longer reacted quite like she once did. She used to be timid near him, where every jerky motion left her jumping in fright, and she couldn’t even meet his gaze. She would shy away from his mouth, not that it would matter, when his neck was both deceptively long and impossibly flexible, and would always try to wash away his tarlike excretions. She even went so far as to nearly skin herself once, much to the kelpie’s delight, but the muscle beneath her tightly grouped scale was just as stained.

The novelty had died off, sadly, and her initial trepidation was worn away into exhaustion and resignation. She would retaliate any time he was too brazen, often leaving gouged flesh or broken bone when she did, but it wasn’t even for the right reason. She knew the kelpie savored her abuse almost as much as he did abusing her, and she had long since given up trying to break him. As a result, her retribution felt hollow and lacking to him, and while he still prodded her any time there was nothing else to play with, she would just go along with him any time the Deep One wasn’t issuing them victims.

Their months of mutual malice had left a more blatant, physical mark, too. While she was still a coastal kobold, the sandy scales iconic to her species were nowhere to be seen. She took after the kelpie, instead, with an oily black scurf that was simultaneously flaky and slick with tar. The mane of seafoam feathers on her head were equally defiled, and all that was left were gnarled tangles matted beyond repair, resembling seaweed rotting along a shore. Even her eyes and teeth were unrecognizable. The former had taken on a lusterless grey shade in the sclera, and irises so dark they were indistinguishable from her reptilian pupils. Her teeth too were greyed out, dark and unhealthy looking, and the gums they sat in were a withered dark green.

Her entire body looked skeletal, in fact; her eyes were sunken into her skull and her lips were almost nonexistent, leaving her teeth constantly exposed. She shouldn’t have been unhealthy, but she looked and moved like it regardless, save for those few moments she allowed herself to be lucid during a hunt. Then, she would move with a predatory grace that not even the two dragonkin chiefs could quite rival, made all the more unnerving by the fact that those smooth, fluid motions just didn’t seem quite right, with her frame and the skeleton beneath. Her joints bent slightly askew and her limbs seemed to be longer than her bones should allow, all of it was enough to make a careful observer a little squeamish even before she turned that huntress’ gaze on them.

It was pleasing to the kelpie, knowing that if he had to lower himself to cooperate with something then they should at least look the part of his partner. Still, aesthetics were only worth so much, and with his patience wearing thin he couldn’t care much less what the wretch on his back looked like. He needed to move elsewhere, somewhere not so garishly blue, not nearly so cramped, and with things smarter than just the scant few shrimp that he could coax into attacking him. He followed one tunnel, tasting something familiar in the air as he did, and found himself growing excited once more.

He hadn’t really been allowed to roam freely, being almost shackled to his reptilian baggage and her tiresome ilk, but it seemed like she wasn’t going to prod him back towards the nest of screaming young he was so infuriatingly prevented from playing with. With the sudden liberty, he found himself finally able to go settle a conflict, possibly. He hadn’t been to the twelfth floor almost at all since his evolution, and any time he had was to fight invaders and come home. There was a resident down there who had taken advantage of him when he was still very new to his power, and he had never let go of the resentment that brought. It was his place to prey upon the weak, not to be preyed upon himself, and now it was time to see if he could even the score.