Beyond the mural room, there were more stairs down, taking the quartet deeper into the ground. The moss on every stone surface was starting to get a little patchy, with the green-stained stone showing through in places. When Kaldalis reached out to touch the wall, his hand came away damp, but not wet. The deeper they got, the less this was an overgrown tunnel of cut stone, and the closer it got to being true ruins.

As if to underline the point, the narrow stairwell widened diagonally, going from about four feet wide to ten over the course of two dozen steps. Shortly after, the stairs ended in a larger hall. It was a square at least thirty feet wide, with a ceiling that vanished up into darkness as they entered. From the entrance, Kaldalis could see a couple of pillars sprouting out of the floor and vanishing up into the darkness.

This large room was mostly clear of moss, with a few large splotches along the walls and in the corners. The floor was almost entirely clean, and the flowing, curling engravings on the rounded pillars were almost entirely visible.

Seeing the carvings in their entirety, Kaldalis noticed that as abstract as they were, they also evoked images without being explicit. The lines running up the pillar to his left evoked the rough shape of a large reptile, looking mostly like the grizzled dragon Kaldalis had fought a few days ago. Meanwhile, the curves on the pillar on his right resembled humanoid figures standing on each other’s shoulders.

As the quartet entered the room, Kaldalis drew up short. Something was wrong. He noticed first that the edges of the moss patches were ragged and uneven. The moss wasn’t failing to grow, it was being trimmed back. But by what?

That was when his vision radius started to expand.

Kaldalis tensed as more of the hall came into view stretching forward away from him. The spacious hall ran forward for a surprisingly long way, and his anxiety spiked as it went, revealing another pair of pillars every few dozen feet.

His vision revealed the hall ahead out to fifty feet…

Then to a hundred feet…

After two-hundred feet, the hall ended with a large stone arch, and even from here, Kaldalis could see the heavy metal portcullis poking down in the arch. It stood half-open, and Kaldalis worried that it would slam shut before they reached the far end of the hall if they failed some obscure test.

He looked down at the floor, almost expecting to see stone tiles with letters on them, wondering what the password wouldn’t be. But it was just smooth cut stone, with no hints as to what might be required of them. Maybe there was something with the pillars.

He took a step towards the nearest one before someone grabbed him.

“What?” he asked, turning to find Balrim’s clawed hand on his shoulder.

The talsar was staring up at the ceiling.

“SHHH!” Myrin hushed him. She was also staring straight up.

Kaldalis followed their eyes up, finding that the increased vision radius had also revealed the ceiling. It was only about twenty feet up, but it looked lumpy and uneven, where it had been smooth in every other room. As Kaldalis squinted up at it, it came into focus why.

Leviabeetles. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. They were a little smaller than what they’d been facing so far, being only about four feet long from the tips of their giant pincers to the end of their abdomen, but what they lacked in size they made up for in number. They appeared to be resting. Many of them were still, and the ones that weren’t were just trundling around, climbing through the narrow gaps between each other.

The purpose of the hall became clear. They had to get to the other side, and close the portcullis, or else be overwhelmed by the enormous number of beetles. Unless they could possibly sneak by and get there without attracting attention, it was going to be a challenge.

Kaldalis looked back at his friends and put and gave a nod, showing he understood. He started with a single careful step forward, entering the room on tiptoe. Behind him, everyone followed suit, and they started to make their way across the room as stealthily as possible. It was slow going, made all the more agonizing by the size of the room, but there was no other-

A clicking, chittering sound came from the ceiling right above them. And then another, and another. A chorus of angry insect noises. Kaldalis looked up to see the swarm of beetles no longer still and quiet, but roiling, dozens of giant bugs moving around each other angrily, skittering down the walls in force.

“What happened?” Balrim snapped. “Why are they coming down here?”

“It must not be an aggro range we can avoid,” Myrin suggested. “Maybe they automatically attack us when we’re this far into the room.”

“There’s too many to fight,” Haldir said, “what do we do?”

“That portcullis,” Kaldalis said, “that’s the only way. There has to be a way to close it on the other side.”

“So we’re running, not fighting?” Myrin asked.

“Fast as you can,” Kaldalis said, taking off towards the exit.

The hall was filled with the clicking and chittering of the beetles swarming down at them. They flowed like water, and Kaldalis struggled not to be mesmerized by the movement. But they were closing in around them. In a moment, the way ahead of them would be closed off. If they were forced to fight, it would be the end of them. Sure, they could make a fight of it, and possibly kill a few dozen of them. But this was too many for him to hold threat on at once, and there was no way Balrim could kite them when they came down here and literally carpeted the entire room. They needed another way. A plan started to form, but he needed to get the pieces into place.

“Balrim, go!” Kaldalis yelled. “You’ve got the move speed, just run!”

“What about the rest of you?” Balrim yelled back, even as he was putting on the speed and running past Kaldalis.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kaldalis called, “just figure out how to lower the door and get ready to drop it behind us!”

Balrim had no further protest, and broke into a full sprint.

“You actually have a plan to get us through, right?” Haldir asked, picking up his pace to run alongside Kaldalis. “You can leap over the top, but Myrin and I can’t.”

“We’re about to find out,” Kaldalis said, activating his Jump ability and his Endure cooldown at the same time. “Just try not to touch anything.”

Based on what Kaldalis knew about mob aggro, along with what Haldir had said about dungeons, activating his cooldowns would give him the highest hate level with all of the aggroed monsters, as long as no one else did anything. They would all focus their attention exclusively on him. Kaldalis looked up. The ceiling in this room was rough and uneven, having been worn down by constant grip of hundreds of beetles. Perfect for his purposes.

He kicked off of the ground hard, launching himself up as high as the jump would let him. He had angled towards the nearest pillar, and he held out his arms to try and direct himself to land feet-first on the curved stone. As soon as he touched down, he kicked off again, leaping straight up. His upward momentum started to drop well short of the ceiling, but he was able to kick off of the pillar one more time to get the last little bit he needed to get to the ceiling.

Kaldalis scrabbled at the rough stone as soon as he reached it, and for a terrifying second, he started to fall back down. His fingers scraped across the stone, trying to find something - anything to grip. Just when it seemed like everything was about to fall apart for his haphazard plan, his fingers found a crack in the ceiling. His fingers slid in, and there was a slight lip on the inside. Just enough that his fingers curled around, securing a grip. There was another moment where he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to hold up his weight, but his grip held, as did his shoulder.

He looked down to see that his plan was working. The swarming beetles had reversed direction, running back up the walls towards him instead of continuing down towards his friends. He hung there, watching the wave of beetles part in front of Myrin and Haldir, as Balrim had nearly reached the exit gate. He had a few breaths before the beetles would close in on him, and he intended to use every second - he still had to run for the exit himself once he dropped back down to the ground.

The wave of beetles was nearly upon him. Someone yelled his name, and he looked down to see Haldir almost to the door, looking up at him.

“Time to go,” Kaldalis said to himself. He kicked his legs once, swinging himself forward, and then swinging back. As soon as he kicked his legs forward again, he let go of the ceiling.

A leviabeetle pincer snapped shut in the air right behind him as the swarm converged on where he was, but nothing caught him. It was a long drop to the ground, and Kaldalis landed hard. He tried to hit the ground running, but as soon as he touched down, his knees folded under him like a cheap plastic chair. He managed to turn it into a roll into a kneel instead of sprawling out on his face, but he was mentally made aware that he’d taken fall damage to the tune of an outrageous-seeming two-hundred and fourteen damage. He reasoned that it had to be scaled off of the percentage of hit points, or else he would have died outright from that fall when he was lower level, even as a tank.

“Get up! Let’s go! Let’s go!” Balrim yelled. Kaldalis looked up to see everyone standing behind the still-raised portcullis, yelling and waving.

He scrambled to his feet as fast as he could, struggling just until his feet were under him. Despite the fall damage, his Jump cooldown was still active, and he launched himself forward, leaping like a cricket. His legs were still sore when he landed, and he almost fell on his face, but the instinctive motion of his tail balanced him, keeping him on his feet. He leaped again, and halfway through the air, his Jump cooldown wore off. This time he managed to hit the ground running properly, taking to a full sprint as soon as he was sure his knees were going to support his weight.

The swarming beetles were running down the walls, and Kaldalis was chagrined to see them running down the far wall around the exit gate. They were halfway down the wall and he still had twenty feet to go. They were going to cut him off right at the door, and he couldn’t Jump again.

He wasn’t going to make it.

“Go!” Balrim yelled. “Go!”

Haldir and Myrin darted out of the door, weapons raised. As the beetles swarmed down towards Kaldalis, the pair of them started to attack the beetles that passed closest. The giant insects turned their attention towards them and away from Kaldalis, and he saw what they were doing. The knot of leviabeetles engaging in combat parted the rushing river of monsters, opening a gap for him.

“Thank you!” he yelled as he sprinted through the gap. Haldir and Myrin broke away from the beetles attacking them and dove for the portcullis. He couldn’t see Balrim, but there was a loud clanking noise, and the metal bars fell straight down.

Myrin, with her short suyon legs, almost didn’t make it under before the metal slammed down.

The metal rattled and shook as dozens of beetles slammed into the bars that were just barely too narrow for them to fit through.