Beyond the wall of roots the muddy ground gave way to scattered stones - jagged and broken - before they formed a proper floor. The stone room was empty, but heavily spattered with mud. It looked like whatever collapse had happened here to open up access to the underground passageway had been a messy event. Either that, or prior to the roots closing the place off, creatures had been tracking mud into the place. And throwing globs of it at the walls and ceiling.

“I wonder what happened here,” SeventyEight said, peering into the room nervously. “And how long ago.”

“What do you mean?” Kaldalis asked.

She pointed around the room, and then at the door. “It looks like this might have happened while the place was inhabited. There’s no furniture here, or rotted remains of anything. And the door is sealed.”

That put Kaldalis’s attention on the door, where he saw that she was right. Lighter-colored mortar had been filled into the gaps around the frame.

“Are we stuck?” Reno asked. “I don’t want to be stuck. I should have said something sooner, but I’m not a fan of being stuck.”

“We’ll be fine,” Kaldalis said, though he wasn’t sure how. “They wouldn’t put a dead end here. If that door doesn’t open with a little effort, it just means this isn’t the real exit.”

“Considering the loot chest was here,” Myrin said, “I think we’ll be just fine.”

Kaldalis moved to the sealed door and put his hands against it. Setting his feet, he started to slowly apply more and more pressure, starting from a gentle push and working his way up. By the time he was putting his entire weight into the door, the mortar was starting to show its age - cracking and flaking off - but the door itself was unmoved by his efforts, even when he moved his feet back and leaned diagonally into it to push with his entire body.

“Step aside, stretch,” Myrin said, waving him off. “Let me show you how it’s done.”

Kaldalis moved out of her way and she drew herself up and launched herself at the door with a barking shout of effort. Smashing into it with her shoulder, the door shook violently in its frame for a second, filling the air with powdered mortar. Kaldalis thought the door had held fast, but when Myrin gave it a shove, the thin layer of remaining mortar crumbled away, and the door opened.

“Easy,” Myrin said, dusting off her hands, and then patting at her hair and shoulders to clear the accumulated mortar dust. “I don’t know why we even brought you along, Kal.”

“I’m guessing because I’m one of the only people who will put up with your shit,” Kaldalis shot back.

Myrin pointed at him, opened and closed her mouth twice, and then nodded. “I’ll give it to you; you got me there.”

“I see you’ve grasped how being friends with Myrin works,” Balrim said with a laugh. She immediately socked the Talsar in the arm, though the little hop she had to do to reach just made him laugh harder.

“We’re near the end now,” Kaldalis said, waving for them to stop. “We don’t have time for shenanigans.”

“Voker’s time was over three hours,” Reno said with a laugh. “We’re just now approaching the hour mark. I’m not worried about our time.”

“Listen, I came down here for one reason,” Kaldalis said, holding up one finger. “Spite. We’re not here to finish just a hair faster than his time. We’re here to smash his time and make him look like a fool.”

“Alright, alright,” Reno said, gesturing at the door. “Lead on, then, Spitey McSpite.”

“Ooh, nice one,” Myrin said with a chipper grin.

Kaldalis ignored them and led the group into the hallway beyond, towards what he knew was coming.

The stone hallway was narrow here, and it appeared to go both to the left and right, but the left side was entirely closed off, filled with mud-caked rock.

It made it easy to figure out where they were supposed to go. The narrow hallway had lanterns hanging from the ceiling, but they had long since run out of fuel and gone dark. At the far end of the right passage was another pile of muddy rubble, but not before there was an opening to the left.

The opening led into a chamber unlike anything Kaldalis had seen before in any of the ruins they’d explored so far. It was small, barely ten foot square, and the floor was made of wood, not stone.

Tapping it with his foot, it seemed solid. More than that, it made a raspy stony sound, like it was petrified.

In the middle of the ceiling there was an opening, and a chain snaked out and down, anchored to the middle of the floor by a huge iron ring.

“What do you think?” Reno asked, peeking into the room over his shoulder. “Deathtrap? Tiny boss chamber? Trick encounter? Mimic room?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Myrin said, peeking in around Kaldalis’s hip. “The scariest boss of all.”

“Balls,” Balrim cursed, leaning forward to try and use his superior height to peer through the forest of horns Kaldalis and Reno presented. “Here I was hoping the tech level of this world was going to spare us.”

“What are you talking about?” Ess asked from the back of the group.

“Let me guess,” Courbois said with a laugh from behind Ess. “Elevator?”

“Elevator,” Myrin confirmed with a nod. “Once we put enough weight on it, it’ll start to descend.”

“Uh, that’s probably fine.” Kaldalis said. He gestured for the knot of people behind to make room. “Everyone else first. Ess and I can use our Jump cooldown to avoid fall damage.”

“What?” Ess asked. “Why?”

“If this elevator is weighted, then the fall rate will be set to be normal at four players,” Kaldalis said. He gestured around the group. “We might fall a bit faster than that.”

“My Acrobatics cooldown can also mitigate fall damage,” Courbois offered. “Though it doesn’t entirely eliminate it.”

“Jump will eliminate fall damage completely for us, so I want you to stick with the group, in case they need a tank right when they land,” Kaldalis said, gesturing for her to move past and onto the elevator. “And when you all get to the bottom, stay on board until we come down to join you. I don’t want the elevator to come back up and block us in.”

“Alright,” Myrin said, carefully leading the way onto the elevator.

With just Myrin in the room, the wooden floor didn’t move. Balrim joined her next, followed by Reno. With the three of them, it started to sink just a little bit. For a moment, Kaldalis wondered if four people were actually not enough, and another hour of Voker’s time had been spent trying to circumvent the elevator. But once Courbois joined them, it was less like they had matched the mass of a counterweight and more like they had tripped a trigger.

The elevator started down at a reasonable clip, and Kaldalis and Ess watched their friends vanish down the solid stone shaft in only a few seconds. A chain rattled its way down while they waited, filling the air with the grinding sound of metal on stone. The echoing din precluded them making small talk, since they would need to shout to be heard, but the wordless moment they shared wasn’t awkward.

Kaldalis and Ess had spent a lot of time together since she’d come to this world, and Kaldalis was starting to think of her as not Amy the Waitress or SeventyEight the Esports Idol, but as Ess, a separate person from both.

Of course, once he’d come to that realization, it was a small step from there to realize that he was also thinking of himself as Kaldalis, not Dylan. He wondered if this was going to have any detrimental effect on his mental state when he went back to Earth.

He had already known that when he was back in his real body, he would duck under doors to spare horns he didn’t have, and probably stagger off-balance expecting the safety of a tail he’d left behind.

But mentally? Emotionally?

Was he going to come back to Earth as a restless and reckless hero wannabe? If he had to sit down and do accounting work right here, right now, he could do it. But after another year of this? Three years? Five?

At his core, he felt like Kaldalis and Dylan were the same person, but their respective behaviors and actions were dramatically different.

Who was he, really? And who would he be at the end of all this?

Before he could get too deep into the nature of identity, the chain stopped moving. The sudden silence was disorienting, but it was also their sign that the platform had reached the bottom.

“Ready?” Ess asked, patting Kaldalis on the shoulder. “You looked a little pale for a second there. Do you need another minute?”

“No, I’m fine,” Kaldalis said, shaking his head. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”

They jumped.