"Our retreat put us closer to the exit than to the triangle."

Kate lifts her gaze from her hands to you. "Thinkin' we should go for the exit?"

You reply with a small nod. "Yeah. I think the triangle's something but with how little we know, any information at all is useful. Seeing what it's like outside might help contextualize... uh... what the hell this place even is."

Kate smiles. "It's cool, this part's lame anyway. Giving me flight and then trapping me in a sewer is some, like, ironic punishment type shit."

You laugh, a little bit. "It IS basically a sewer. You know what else I hate? Fucking sewer levels."

Kate laughs, shaking her head. "Damn, dude. Yeah, let's blow this popsicle stand."

You proceed to the southeast cellblock. The first hall you enter is, as you expected, structured like the one you just came from. At first glance it's fairly empty, but there's a number of the needly worms wandering along the floor and up the walls. You nod to Kate, who nods back; the room doesn't look all that dangerous, but one of those corpses could be 'resting' somewhere.

You don't exactly whisper, but you do keep your voice low as you move down the hall toward the west. "I usually glance in the cells to see if anything stands out, but there's too many of them to check them more thoroughly than that."

While you check out the cells on one side of the hall, Kate alternates between checking the cells on the opposite side and trying her newfound fire powers out on the stray worms.

...It still looks like a bit of a fight, as Kate has to put her hands in roughly needling distance for her flames to reach the worms. She jerks back and re-maneuvers a few times. Once she gets back to checking cells, however, her casual flight speed is better than your walking speed--she manages to keep up in spite of the distraction.

Even if her new form doesn't grant her god-like control over fire or anything, being smaller, quicker, and able to fly is pretty damn useful here.

"So have you just, like, memorized this place?" Kate mixes it up a bit, trying various techniques like clapping her hands together or imitating attack motions. Still, just burning hands.

"Kind of?" You give a small shrug as you peek through another set of bars. "I saw a rough map on the first night and assumed all the cell blocks have the same layout, at least on this floor. So far that's held up. Humoring the idea that the top of that map was north, and the bottom of it south, also helps me keep my bearings. I'm garbage at navigating but I've spent a lot of my life staring at minimaps, I can kind of picture the layout in my head."

Kate stops, having checked the last of her side's cells. "There's... a big ass iron gauntlet in like the third room, and a bunch of barrels iiin..." she flies a few doors down, "this one."

"I keep seeing those barrels," you comment, "but I need like... a crowbar or something to get them open."

"Oh," Kate replies, before grinning. "Whoops."

You smile back, and shake your head. "What we learned about the house is way more valuable. This side..." You glance back down the hall you just walked, trying to mask your disappointment. "An axe, but also firmly in the way too fucking big category. And more worms. That's it. The rest is... junk beds and empty bookshelves. Oh, and a bucket."

"Have you thought about just, like... sleeping with a gun?"

You shake your head. "I don't think I trust myself to own a firearm."

You both head into the curved corner room, turning southward.

You grab Kate's tail before she can fly straight to the center of the room.

"That's a chest," she points out.

And indeed, there halfway between the ends of the room, is a straight up JRPG style treasure chest.

"I haven't seen one in the dungeon before," you reply. "It's probably trapped and it's definitely locked."

Kate turns back to you. "Have you seen keys in here before?"

"Just mine," you state. You reach into your pocket. "My house key unlocked a door the other night... it might unlock chests, too. It only works once per night, though."

Yup. House key's still there, which confirms it respawns when you do.

You pull the key from your pocket. "House key! The only locked doors I know of are on the other side of this floor and we're going the opposite direction, so... trying the chest might not be too much of a gamble. ...Traps notwithstanding."

Kate takes the house key from your hand as your opposite hand retrieves the brochure from your pocket.

You stare at it. The brochure.

Kate's already halfway to the chest when she stops and turns around. "...What's up?"

You shake your head. "I don't know."

You slowly

open

the brochure.

. . .

"...This brochure Temperance gave us is outdated as shit," you mutter.

Kate tumbles through the air laughing. "Seriously?"

"Does Ninelives have a fairgrounds?"

Kate flies up to gaze into the brochure with you. "Holy fuck. I mean, it did when I was a kid? Geez, none of these places are still around. This brochure's a straight up time capsule. ...Hold up."

Kate drifts a little closer.

She taps the corner of the brochure with her... uh...

you're not sure she has fingers, per se

(which means you're also not sure how she grabs things, but you have greater concerns at the moment)

someone has handwritten a word in the inside corner of the (very outdated) brochure.

"Somniplan," you read aloud. "...Are those magic words? What am I looking at?"

"Sounds like a drug," Kate remarks with a smirk.

"Ask your doctor about Somniplan," you say in a proper commercial voice.

Otherwise, the brochure just seems to be a... brochure. A very old brochure.

You fold it back up and shove it in your pocket.

Kate resumes floating toward the chest.

She begins to insert your key--

"Wait."

Kate turns, and stares at you.

You stare back.

The rational part of your brain says the treasure chest could be trapped, or a mimic, or... anything.

Some ...

Some other part of your brain feels confident that it isn't, though, and you're not sure where that part of your brain is coming from.

"Think it's trapped?," Kate asks.

"No," you reply... suspiciously.

Why a no?

Have you been here before?

It's not... deja vu.

It's something else.

You squint at the chest.

It feels like...

pounding.

Like pounding at the walls.

"...If this place has an intelligent design--and I believe it does," you begin, "then the chest nearest to my spawn point should be safe. It's basic game design--it's training the player. ...Either it's not trapped or most of my theories about this place go right out the window."

Kate grins. "What if the designer's just a massive asshole, and made every chest a trap?"

You shake your head. "Even then. Logically, the maximum dick move would be to make every chest except this one dangerous, lulling me into a false sense of security and causing me to anticipate future good chests that will never arrive. The hope will be sparked, only for it to get dashed over, and over, and over. If the first chest in the 'game' is trapped then I would just immediately know that's how it works and all the fuckery is gone. The most anti-player move possible is a single safe chest, right at the start. The most player accommodating play would also be... a safe chest near the beginning. Either way, if I'm right about this place being an intentional gauntlet instead of a real, natural location--"

Kate pffts at you. "You've thought about this. Sounds about right though--exactly one fun chest is the most sadistic way they could do this, if there IS a they doing this."

You can only shrug in response. "I obsess way too much about game design. ...And I think there's definitely a they somewhere. I don't know all the rules yet, but the dream has rules which means someone had to make rules."

The feeling of something beating at the walls begins to fade.

You watch as Kate inserts the key.

You hold your breath

as she turns it.

The chest clicks

and the key disappears.

. . .

Kate lifts the lid with both hands.

"Plaire," she says,

"I'm not going to believe this," you whisper.

"...What?"

You shake your head. "Something fucking weird has happened in this room and I have no idea what it is. What's in the chest?"

"Oh, uh--" Kate takes a quick glance into the opened treasure chest. ...A glance that turns into a lengthy stare, then a bewildered squint. "...There's a sword in here. Plaire, there's like... a whole-ass sword in here."

You're surprised, but--

somehow, you're more surprised as you glance through the southmost door, into the next hallway. Countless chains hang from the ceiling, some dangling loose, some wrapped up in each other. Some are strung from one part of the ceiling to another. Near either end of the hall, you can... faintly make shapes out through the bars. Big, bulbous... shapes wrapped up in chains, similar to the chain cocoon you saw near the end of the second night.

For whatever reason, you really thought there would be something different in the hall ahead. You don't know what else you expected, if not huge chain cocoons. You approach the chest

and after staring into it for what feels like a month, you reach in

and grab the handle.

You pull out an entire sword.

It's not broken. It's not even damaged, or worn out.

The chest doesn't spring to life and attack you.

... It's just a sword. A free sword.

You hesitantly nod to Kate. "...I think it's okay."

"Cool," Kate replies with a relieved smile.

You're still ... mildly suspicious of this corner room, but you're not sure why.

Maybe it's because a free, fully functioning sword in a non-trapped chest just feels wrong. Is the dungeon trying to kill you, or isn't it? If you're right--and this is all deliberately constructed, and following at least a few basic guidelines of game design--then what the fuck. That just raises more questions.

Like, a shit ton more questions.

NONETHELESS

You pull the next door open and you press southward, into the next hall. You realize quickly that your sword's pretty heavy--not impossible for you to carry with one hand, but if you plan to actually swing it worth a damn you'll probably need to two-hand it.

Kate follows as you step into a hallway full of chains.

And things ... wrapped in chains.

You're still not even remotely sure what the chained cocoons are. It's good to learn that the one you saw farther north wasn't one of a kind, but you're in no hurry to do any more cocoon science.

You move cautiously.

Quietly.

You avoid touching any of the normal, dangling chains whenever possible. Though you don't mention your concerns about the chains to Kate, she seems to pick up on your hesitance and moves more carefully herself. It's ... slightly easier for her to navigate the room, due to her size and not carrying a big ass sword.

When you can't avoid touching the chains, you do so gently.

Slowly.

You hold your breath the whole time, terrified of making a sound.

You barely even glance in the cells, and mostly just to make sure nothing's about to rush out and ambush you. The idea of opening some doors and rooting around for items here does not really appeal to you much.

In the silence, it's pretty easy to hear.

"I have a right to know."

You grit your teeth, resisting the urge to scream an expletive.

Kate stops, whirling around to face you with wide eyes.

It's fine.

It's

fine.

The voice was muffled, distant--still pretty deep in the walls somewhere.

It'll take a bit before it reaches you.

You haven't seen anything enter the hall.

It's still just you, and Kate

and yet the chains on down the hall have begun to sway.

Jingle a little.

You're about halfway to the exits.

You begin to move down the hall a little faster.

You're still hesitant to move too quickly, since you don't yet know what could be jiggling the chains... or even what the chains are for.

You duck under and maneuver around chains, keeping your sword in front of you, hazarding the occasional glance back the way you came. The chains long behind you begin to sway, as well.

Kate stays silent, staying close to you but not too close.

You can see the exits--one to the south, headed upstairs, and one to the west, which circles back the long way toward the downstairs.

As you start to approach the last cocoon hanging between you and those doors, however

the bulbous shape suddenly swings toward you

and opens its mouth.

"FUCK!," Kate yells out as she goes tumbling backwards, narrowly avoiding the split jaws of the creature. You almost trip over your own feet (and a chain) stumbling backward yourself, the monster's jaws slamming shut inches from your face.

It continues to swing and snap at both of you.

You begin to try and maneuver to its left, but it swings left.

Kate starts to fly around to its right, but it swings right.

If you really squeezed yourself up to the wall as you passed, you're not sure it could swing far enough to reach you--but you're not sure.

"If we go at the same time--" you begin,

"Then it'll definitely get one of us," Kate interjects. "I'm faster. If I go first, I can distract it while you--"

"Are you fast enough for that?," you interject.

"Dunno," Kate replies. "Better odds than us both going at once."

You mull it over for a second, the monster's chainlink exterior loudly shaking as it thrashes and bites at the air.

"I could spike you past it," you suggest. "Worst case scenario, I don't really have volleyball powers and I accidentally clock you in the back of the head."

"No," Kate says bluntly, "worst case scenario you spike me right into that fucker's mouth."

"I have a right to know," says a voice quite clearly from down the hall behind you.

"Stab it in the mouth," Kate blurts out with a bit more urgency.

"If I don't kill it in one thrust, I'm basically feeding it my sword," you point out.

"Okay fine but we need to do something," says Kate, her attention bouncing between the giant chain thing trying to eat you and the tube creature now making its way down the hall behind you. "Just... fuck it, I'll try whatever." You give it a moment of thought...

and then a nod.

"Okay. I got it."

You take the notebook out of your pocket--the one you got from Bebe. You rip one page out of it, squeeze it into a ball and hold it out to Kate. "Light this on fire."

"Yes ma'am," Kate says with a smirk. It's a little odd with her puppet face, but it's definitely a smirk. She hovers over and holds out one hand, lighting a small flame at her palm. Once the page is definitely on fire, you step forward; the chain monster opens its maw, its enormous jaws snapping at you.

You chuck the ball of flaming paper right into its mouth.

The jaws slam shut with a thunderous sound

...and the creature doesn't instantly die or anything, but it does briefly thrash about.

It definitely doesn't like fire.

You take a deep breath.

"The bony... dangler guys are afraid of fire. If it's just one, you should be able to scare it off. If we can keep it away from this thing, then neither of them should be an issue. You're also small enough to go back down the hall and head it off without disturbing the chains--I don't know if that's part of this, and I don't really want to."

"What are you gonna do?," Kate asks.

You stare the monster down. Once its recovered from the burning paper, it begins trying to bite you and Kate again. "What I usually do," you finally reply.

Kate maneuvers between the chains on her way back toward the entrance, flying a bit more steadily than she was earlier. You backtrack a bit, as well--forced to be a little more cautious in darting between the chains, but you only need to go back as far as the last torch you saw.

You grab it from the wall and return to the chain monster.

You step just close enough to get it snapping again, and--

"OP strats, don't fail me now!"

you chuck the torch into its gaping maw.

The jaws slam shut.

You see the chains that form its hide tighten.

It growls, smoke seeping out the seams of its horrible mouth as it begins to thrash and flail wildly. You instinctively step back, gripping your sword's handle with both hands as the creature swings and rumbles and--

the ceiling above it begins to audibly crack.

"Oh, shit-- no!"

With a massive crash, part of the ceiling collapses. The tail end of the monster breaks loose, and its immense mass slams into the floor in front of you. It lands with enough force to shake the hall, the reverberations in the floor briefly stunning you.

"Plaire...! Hey!" You hear Kate yell from behind you. Her voice sounds like it's approaching, but you don't dare turn around--not until you've seen how fast this son of a bitch can move now that it's on the ground. "I scared off two and I'm pretty sure I killed one but there's like four more--the fuck?!" Kate screeches to a halt not far behind you, having likely seen what's transpired at your end of the hall.

The chain thing begins to crawl toward you.

Like a worm.

Like a fat

...metal worm. Okay it's not fast at all. You start to go left, and you can hear the screech as layers of metal chain drag across stone floor. It turns quicker than it crawls but it's a low bar to clear. You should have a pretty good shot at--

"I. Have. A right. To know."

"I have a right to know."

"I h-have a right to know."

God dammit.

They're coming up fast and at a glance you only count three.

You might be fast enough to just... book it.

Maybe.

...Maybe not.

Maybe if you--

"Fuck it," Kate blurts out. Before you can interject, she flies straight at the chain snake... and abruptly zips out of its range as it begins to bite at her. And again, she narrowly banks out of its reach. And again. Steadily... turning it... to the right...

"Go!," Kate shouts, and you make a run for it--rushing past what would now constitute the back side of the monster.

It turns a lot faster than you thought it did

but not fast enough.

You feel the rush of hot air on your ankles as the jaws slam shut at your heels. This would not have worked if that thing hadn't been turned entirely around by Kate. Kate, upon seeing you slip past, immediately stops kiting the monster and resumes flying straight after you. You rush down the hall with little regard for the chains now, simply trying to put as much distance between you and everything in this god awful hallway as possible.

One of the right-to-knows begins emerging from a wall ahead of you.

The missing fourth, you presume.

You don't even stop running, you just swing. The weight of the sword almost takes you off your feet, and subsequently the blade almost gets caught up in a length of chain.

You do manage to cut what you could see of the bastard in half, though.

"Hoooly shit! Yes!," exclaims Kate.

You quickly resteady your balance and continue running,

You barrel straight through the southmost door--

and stop just short as a great plume of green... smoke rises up from a huge square vent in the floor.

Kate, having not quite mastered the brakes yet, goes hurdling straight through it... only finally skidding to a stop on the other side of the vapor. You carefully scoot around the outskirts of the vent, into the cleaner side of the room. You make sure the door is shut behind you.

Kate gasps from the other side of the green fog, having apparently held her breath the whole way through it.

"Are you poisoned?" It's the first thing that pops into your head.

"Don't think so," Kate replies. "I was holding my breath."

"Yeah. ...Wait." You squint at her. "Do you actually breathe like that, or--"

You trail off, but Kate doesn't immediately answer, either.

Just... kind of stares back at you.

And then loudly breathes in and out. "Okay yeah. I still breathe."

Cool. Poisonous gas is probably inhale only, then--it's not contact poison. You don't know that the gas constantly chugging out of the floor vent is poison, but it's bright green vapor and you don't need to be a toxicologist to--

"I h-have a right to know," says a voice uncomfortably close to the door you just ran through.

You and Kate both hurry to the next door on the east end of the curve.

You stop short of opening it, though.

You hold a hand up, signalling for Kate to hang back, as well.

Through the barred window of the door, you can see the hallway ahead.

It looks clean. Just a standard hallway, lined with doors. Just like you expected.

No monsters.

No giant holes.

No toxic vents.

You just experienced what you would consider your first trap.

Visible. Obvious. Easy to avoid.

The stairs upward will be in that hall. This is, in theory, the last room of this floor.

If this place is really trying to tutorial you, like it did with the chest...

you might also just be getting paranoid.

You can hear the scratching as the thin tube fellas begin pulling themselves into the curved corner room with you.

"I think the hallway's trapped," you mutter under your breath.

Kate nods. "I'll go first."

You nod back.

You kick the door open. Kate rushes forward.

You poke ahead with the full length of your sword, testing the floor for any switches or traps that might lie in your path.

...A section of the floor immediately gives, and sinks several inches.

The trap was right in front of the fucking door.

"Kate!"

Kate whirls around. "What--"

Hearing the hiss, you have time to duck your head back into the doorframe for a last gasp of clean air.

Kate does not.

She sputters as green vapor floods the entire hallway ahead, spraying in through cracks along both walls. "God-- *hack* dammit Plaire!" Kate laughs between coughs, luckily taking the fact that you just gassed her in good humor.

It's not a short walk to the stairs, you can only hold your breath so long, and the thickening fumes are rapidly obscuring your view. Also, you can hear the right-to-knows fumbling behind you.

You take off, straight into the gas, cheeks puffed out. You grab Kate by the tail as you run, clutching your sword in your other hand; she's still struggling to get the miasma out of her lungs.

Lungs?

She has to have lungs, right? To breathe?

...Little devil doll lungs?

You stick close to the wall, counting the doors and veering left when you think you're at the stairs. You clip the corner a bit with your shoulder, and maybe bounce Kate off the wall a bit (it's hard to see through the fog, but you definitely hear her... uh... squeek, between wheezing and gagging on toxic fumes), but you make it onto the staircase. You exhale hard and take a fresh breath of non-green air, and Kate starts to catch her own breath.

Your dead sprint peters out rapidly; there's a lot of stairs, and you've been doing a lot of running. Once it becomes clear that the bony boys aren't following you (they may have succumbed to the poison?), you and Kate stop to rest on the stairs.

"Are... are you poisoned now?," you ask.

Kate takes a deep breath... and sways a little, staring off into space. "UhhhI'm gonna say yes? Stomach hurts, head hurts... kinda dizzy. Pretty sure this is what being poisoned feels like."

"It's... good to know that it's so obvious?"

"It'd be cooler if it wasn't," Kate replies with a dry smirk. "This kinda sucks."

"I should be running out of juice soon, anyway," you point out as you begin making your way up the stairs. "So in a way, we're both on a countdown."

"Man," Kate huffs as she flutters after you... not nearly as energetically as before, "we fought all those monsters just to die to like... this shit. We should tell Cici we were killed by a dragon."

"I mean..." you shrug, and offer a grim smile to Kate. "There's still time."

You eventually make it to the top of the stairs.

"This place sure likes its long ass hallways," comments Kate.

"Good," you reply. "If we're in a hallway, we can't fight anything bigger than... well, a hallway."

Kate quirks a brow. "You expecting a dragon, or...?"

"I'm expecting a boss fight," you reply. "It wouldn't be much of a game without one. ...Probably not a dragon, though. Maybe. I don't know."

The walls are the same, but the doors are normal looking doors--with doorknobs, but no handy windows with which one might peek inside. The floor is carpeted now, too; it's moldy, wet carpet, but carpet nonetheless. It reminds you a little of the church you used to go to--you were bewildered when they decided to spend some ridiculous amount of money on redoing the carpet, even though the carpet the church had was fine and that money could have gone to the poor, or a hospital, or... fucking anything but shitty green carpet.

You brought it up to your dad, and he was a big asshole about it and you never mentioned it again.

You check the first door on your left. "Locked." Ughhhh

Kate huffs. "Damn. If I was in my body I could just kick that fucker in."

You bet she could, too.

The next door down, on the right, is just a plain door; you start to turn the knob, but decide to check the rest of the hall first. You did just get to this floor, after all, and for once you can't hear any stupid spine things mumbling in the walls. You've confirmed this one isn't locked, at least.

The fourth door from the stairs--nearest to where the hallway turns left, and out of sight--is cracked and splintered, out toward the hall. ...Like something has attempted, and failed, to break out of the room.

The third door (also on the left) is what seems to catch Kate's attention, and after passing it to examine the splintered door, you return to it. It's a pretty normal door, like the others, just...

there's a giant heart painted on it.

...In what absolutely looks like blood.

"Talk about mixed signals," Kate chuckles before coughing.

"Think it's real? You know... actual blood?"

"Oh, definitely," says Kate. "It smells like blood. That thick, it should dry in like... I dunno, an hour, tops."

KATE SURE KNOWS A LOT ABOUT BLOOD "...So this was done recently."

Kate nods. "Yeah."

You squint at the door. "...Unless it's some convoluted magic blood that never dries and just normally shows up on this door. ...For some messed up reason."

"...Yeah? I guess," Kate says with a shrug and another weak smile. "Look, I have given up trying to get how your funky brain dungeon works."

You gently knock on the heart-marked door.

. . .

Kate snorts. "Seriously?" And then coughs.

You turn the knob and push the door open.

It's ... dark. There's a bed against the right wall, slightly out of line (like someone was moving in in a hurry and half-assed putting the bed there).

The room shares the same shitty carpeting as the hallway, but the air feels different. Less... oppressive, and not smelling like a damp cave. The wallpaper, though--

Kate peeks inside. "Whoa," she remarks, "is this your old room?"

"No," you reply bluntly. "I'm... not really sure what this room is. The wallpaper--those are the colors I was wearing my first night in the dungeon. ...I've never seen that bed before, though. It's not mine, it's not Lora's, it's... I don't know. I don't recognize the bed, or this room, at all."

"Spooky," Kate comments as she flutters on in, hovering her way toward the bed. "What if you sleep in this bed, and it takes you to another dungeon?"

You cautiously walk in after her, casually examining the walls. "I can't picture myself ever falling asleep in a place like this. ...Maybe if I'm in the bed when I fade out? That feels way, way too specific, though."

You approach the bed, which Kate is already laying in. "It's a pretty nice bed," she says. "A little too soft, but whatever." You stare at her for a moment, trying not to laugh at tiny Kate relaxing with her little doll hands tucked behind her head. She shrugs. "What? I'm keeping an eye on the ceiling. Could be dangerous, you don't know."

Also on the bed is a piece of paper; the writing, like the heart-shaped symbol, appears to be blood.

You check under the pillow: nothing.

You look under the bed: also nothing.

You don't see any switches, cabinets, panels, windows, vents, chests... nothing.

You're not real sure what to do with this room.