Descending through the elevator shaft at terminal velocity was doubtless a different experience than taking the elevator. After the first hundred feet or so, one of the stone walls opened, revealing darkness beyond. At elevator speed, it was likely that their vision would have expanded to reveal the underground city beneath them in a dramatic preview, but they were moving too fast. Before they could get a glimpse of what was out there, the stone wall closed up again.

Shortly after that, the floor rushed up at them.

Kaldalis didn’t know what Ess’s strategy was, but he didn’t activate his Jump ability until he saw the floor. The reduced duration of his Jump ability had him worried that the fall would be way too far for his duration.

He barely managed to get it up on instinct before he hit the ground.

“Nice. Superhero landing,” Myrin said, giving an insincere applause. “You know that’s impractical, right?”

“Yup,” Kaldalis said, staggering back to his feet. “Yeah, even with the cooldown my knees feel like someone took a crowbar to them.”

“She had the right idea,” Myrin said, pointing over at where Ess had landed. “You should be taking notes.”

Ess had taken the fall like someone who knew what they were doing. Instead of absorbing the entire impact with her knees, she had hit the ground in a roll, dispersing the landing over a wider area.

“Whatever. Jump cooldown OP. Fall damage mitigated.” Kaldalis waved a hand dismissively. “Let’s move on.”

As expected, the city was before them now. After the strange curvy ruins they’d encountered on the surface, and half the dungeon being just mud tunnels, it was nice to see the familiar Lataxinan architecture again. The buildings were primarily composed of blocky stones, with exterior columns being the most enduring element of most of the structures. Kaldalis wanted to take the lead, but the crew on the elevator had seen the overhead view on the trip down, so he let Courbois take point.

“It’s different this time,” Ess observed as they entered the city.

“It seems pretty similar to me,” Balrim said. He gestured around them. “The street layout seems different, but it looks like it’s just because there’s less rubble funneling us forward.”

“No, not the city, us,” Ess clarified. “Last time we were all business. March through the city, fight the big bug thing, and get to the tablet. This time, we’re moving much slower. Looking around more.”

“We’re all explorers at heart,” Balrim said with a laugh. “Otherwise, why would we even be here?”

Reno cleared her throat to catch their attention. “We’re on the clock here, aren’t we?” she asked.

“I’d love to explore a bit more,” Kaldalis said, trying to ignore the small open space between two nearby buildings, where three different sets of tablets stood. “But Reno is right. We need to hurry. We can run this again later for exp farming, and do all the exploration our hearts desire then.”

Courbois, Balrim, and Myrin grumbled at that, but the group picked up the pace. They weren’t really rushing, but they were no longer rubbernecking at every corner. Kaldalis trusted that Courbois knew where they were going. They were moving slow enough that he was able to see a few unusual things in the surroundings.

There was a collapsed building with what looked like actual renaissance-era machinery sticking out of the rubble. Once he recognized what they were, he realized he shouldn’t have been surprised. They were printing presses. And considering the Lataxinans' devotion to learning, it seemed natural that the production, reproduction, and preservation of the printed word would have been an important industry to them.

There were also many more of the tablets. They were worn down by time and the elements, and they didn’t stop to examine any of them, but some of them were familiar enough that Kaldalis recognized them on sight. There was the same story of the teleporting Lataxinan using their power to make a fool of a whole group of attackers. There was the same story of the Lataxinan whose power was unleashing destructive lightning bolts. Another one was familiar, but not because he’d seen it worn and aged in the previous dungeon, but because he’d seen it in pristine condition in the library there. It was the part of Kaia’s story where she flickered a city to save it from a monstrous storm.

Balrim was right when he’d said that there was less rubble blocking the streets, but the primary result of that was that the path Courbois set was a beeline straight to their objective. They didn’t get a chance to really explore, but when Courbois pulled up short, what was before them took his entire attention.

It was the boss arena, obviously. Even before they stepped into it, his vision globe expanded to wash over it, dramatically revealing the end of the dungeon. It was a large courtyard, like what they’d seen in the other dungeon, but the building at the far end was smaller. It looked more like a fortress than a library, with arrow-slit windows and encircled by a fortifying wall, separating it from the courtyard before it, though the gap that had likely held a gate before was now empty.

The courtyard itself wasn’t the wide open space of the previous one, either. One of the buildings on the edge of the courtyard had collapsed in this direction, and had been a taller structure. A huge mound of stones stretched halfway to the center.

In the center itself, the courtyard was dominated by a huge metal sculpture, at least fifteen feet tall and twenty feet long from tip to tail. It was green with age, so Kaldalis assumed it was made from copper. The enormous sculpture was a rampaging Irritator, the bipedal feathered dinosaur monster Kaldalis had fought on his first day on the islands. Each one of the thousands of feathers across its body were meticulously detailed, and if it weren’t for a few of the creature’s features being distorted for dramatic effect - larger jaws and teeth, cartoonishly small eyes and forelimbs - he would have expected it to come to life as the end boss of the dungeon.

Slightly ahead of the copper statue was another, smaller statue. Absolutely dwarfed by the giant irritator was a small robed figure, maybe four feet tall. It stood defiant before the giant green jaws of the monster, hands on its hips. Unlike the irritator, this statue was a dark but shiny brown color. Bronze, rather than copper.

“Kinda derivative, don’t you think?” Myrin asked. Despite her grumpy tone, she kept her voice low.

Standing on the precipice of the final boss fight was ominous enough to make them all keep quiet.

“We’re on the clock,” Kaldalis said, gritting his teeth as he took the next step, moving past Courbois. “Let’s get this done.”

Balrim scoffed. “Come on, we used to have fun with these. Where’s the big dramatic opening one-liner?”

“In the words of my generation,” Kaldalis said with a smirk, “up yours.”

He charged into the courtyard, spear ready, eager to pop all his cooldowns and pounce on the boss when it appeared. He wasn’t sure where it was going to come from, and he hadn’t quite counted out the statue.

Of course, when the boss did emerge, there was no mistaking it for what it was. It crawled over the rooftop of the huge building at the far end of the courtyard.

This creature was a nightmare cross between a beetle and a crab. While it’s shell was vaguely iridescent, it was dominated by a dull brown color, reducing the brilliance of the rainbowy sheen. The shape of its body was like that of a stag beetle, but instead of two huge pincers in front of its face, it had two huge crablike pinchers.

It was enormous, and Kaldalis feared that it was going to crash down through the roof of the building it was atop. At least fifteen feet wide, and twice that length. It was clearly the contemporary of the giant silverfish thing they’d fought in the first dungeon.

The creature made a chittering noise that was deep and bassy as it scuttled over the roof of the building and down the front of it, charging in response to Kaldalis’s intrusion on its territory. For a brief moment, it vanished behind the inner defensive wall of the fortress, but a second later, it burst through the stone wall, spraying bits of stone and mortar into the air.

As soon as it had a clear line of sight to him, its posture changed. The brown, iridescent wing casings parted, and its abdomen circled upwards like a scorpion’s tail, though instead of a stinger, the end of it was a glowing red bubble, about three feet wide.

Kaldalis wasn’t sure what to expect from this thing. Considering that Voker’s group had taken three hours to get through the dungeon, he had to entertain the idea that this boss was an overwhelming difficulty spike. He wanted to be cautious. Taking the fight nice and slow seemed like it would be the absolute most intelligent course of action.

Of course, thinking about Voker’s group reminded Kaldalis of Voker. The taste of bile that crept up his throat at the thought of the man washed away his caution.

“That fucking guy,” he muttered under his breath before mashing his mental hand across all his cooldowns at once, hurtling himself towards the giant crab-beetle.