You retrieve the quiver of arrows and consider your next move.

On the one hand: there's the very real possibility that drinking liquid gold has real world repercussions. The inside mana burning is not a natural, worldly pain regular people get, and the in-dream penalties for recharging your mana are thus far pretty underwhelming (at least to you, the mighty Fool). Staying in the dream longer could be making you sleep longer. Having your brain hooked into the house too long could have strange effects on your mind and body. Having Cici in your brainspace too long could have negative effects on her. The overall pain levels that you're reaching could have some unseen--

wait, shit,

fuck. When you wake up! You briefly feel a bit of whatever you were feeling when you went out. When that first right-to-know put the business in your brain on night 1, you woke up with a serious but short lived headache. When you faded away on night 2, you woke up feeling the acid burn on your calf, and the soreness from having a generally whooped ass.

This raises a fantastic series of questions, like: how much sudden real life mana pain would it take to induce circulatory shock? Or cardiac arrest?

Did you accidentally put yourself in an unwinnable situation?

Are you going to literally wake up dead?

... Maybe.

Maybe not.

If it is like you think it is--the way you've described it, living the remnants of pain you were experiencing at the end of the dream, then canceling all of your pain as you cut the connection should prevent you from waking up with any after-pain.

...To do that, though, you'll need at least enough mana to cover all the pain and discomfort you're feeling at that point, which means you can't do this by fading out (because then you'd have no mana).

You need to die.

You need to die to not die.

And on the other hand (man, that first hand was a doozie), if you can cover the burn for this much mana this easily, then you should be able to cover a little more. You're almost guaranteed to get shitmurdered here soon anyway, so you might as well get one more refill and then push on for a heart room or something. If you just call it here and drown yourself, you'll have to redo the whole gauntlet and fuuuck that.

So. You know.

Just something to keep in mind.

There's a non-zero chance you've already fucked this up and you're just delaying when you wake up to an extremely agonizing death.

You are peeking ahead first, though. There's already a soft glow from the east exit that's driving you crazy.

You take at least another second to just... sit here, drifting around on half a door in the gauntlet room,

because Jesus Christ. That was a gauntlet.

You take a deep breath.

Alright.

You paddle your way to the south exit first. You see... fucking nothing. It's a big pitch black tunnel.

You paddle your way to the east exit. You see a long tunnel, and-- oh, shit.

Bodies.

You count two-right-knows and one former worm corpse.

This way would be shrouded in darkness, too, but the bodies are slung over pipes running near the ceiling and also, the bodies are on fire.

Someone's been through here already and they weren't having any of it. It... doesn't really surprise you that you wouldn't be able to hear fighting outside the gauntlet room. Aside from the sounds of splashing water, the battles themselves, and the huge metal doors that stood between you and whatever the fuck was happening outside, this whole floor is just... kind of loud. Not in an intrusive, overwhelming way, but the pipes chug and the whole place echoes and it

sort of blends together if you don't concentrate on it.

One of the overhead pipes trembles for a moment, as though something large is traveling through it. After a few seconds, it grows still again.

You will ... come back to this later

You paddle your half-door raft back to the stairs, making your triumphant return to B1.

If one sip of wine is going to restore all of your mana regardless, then there's no reason to drink at 30% instead of, say, 5%. Thus, you:

• Replace your piece of flaming jagged wood with a fresh torch

• Use the taped knife to take down another cell door, giving you another whole raft

• Return the taped knife to the doorway of the small office

• Rip a page out of a random book in the small office and stab the taped knife through it, then leave the quiver on top of the taped part of the knife in the doorway to said small office (thus doing further science vis a vis the final whereabouts of the quiver, the paper, the knife and the door on subsequent runs)

• Retrieve the old sword from one of the cells in this block

And, finally, you return to the barrel-packed corner room.

You focus on blocking out the pain of drinking--

and you take a small sip.

... Your mana is fully restored. You suffer no ill effects.

You give a small arm pump.

You return to B2 and board your new door raft.

Through the pump room, through the gauntlet room... back to the east tunnel.

You paddle your way inward, under the looming pipes and still burning monsters.

You stop only when you notice something... amiss.

You almost missed it--a small, round... porthole, high up on the wall. It resembles the sealed off horizontal pipe you saw in the pump room, but it's barely big enough for a person to fit through--and someone seems to have removed the grating, if there ever was any. It's totally unsealed. It would also be pretty difficult to reach if you were at floor level, but you think you can reach it from your raft.

...

You poke around in the water with your sword.

After a little bit, you feel something solid and circular under the muck.

This exit did have grating. Someone did remove it. That hella confirms that someone's been through here, and these flaming bodies aren't just part of the default decor.

You drift a bit deeper into the tunnel.

At the end of it, you can see another big pipe entrance--just like the one in the pump room but already unsealed.

...And from the opposite side, from what you can tell.

So whoever it is--they came this way, entering the tunnel from the other end by removing the grate. Both that AND the smaller porthole in the wall don't have any visible damage or anything around the screw holes (?), so you're guessing they took the grates off properly, with a screwdriver.

You head back to the littlest porthole.

"Is anyone in there?," you yell into the open pipe.

After a moment

a voice echoes back. "Plaire? Is that you?!" It sounds like Cici!

"Yeah! Hold on, I'm coming!" Carefully, you climb into the pipe.

It is... a very long pipe.

The path turns numerous times, to the extent that if you didn't have a map in your head you would definitely lose track of where you are and what direction you're heading. Climbing through the pipe with a torch in one hand and a sword in the other is... a task, but you're already too committed to rethink it. Eventually, the pipe leads out into what looks like a heart room, flooded to less than ankle high.

...The striped wallpaper is beginning to remind you of a circus tent.

You look down at the couch.

"...Cici?"

"Yeah!," she confirms, and momentarily manifests a tiny light shield as proof. "I hatched! I've seen some THINGS tonight, Plaire!"

You don't want to say anything, but uhhh

she does not look hatched

she looks like...

like a yolk?

Her appearance is actually less aesthetically complex than her original form. Did she evolve backwards? ...Is it possible to do it wrong?

The fact that the first of the accomplice transformations you predicted occurred without you may also be contributing to your overall salt levels. Like... this is weird on its own but also you missed it ENTIRELY

"You alright?," Cici asks. "You look like you've had a pretty rough time, too."

Your immediate reply is a strained, weary groan that just sort of instinctually forces its way past your mouth.

Cici takes your torch and stuffs it between the cushions, allowing you to safely flop out of the pipe and onto the couch. You notice that her... little round feets are able to grab the torch's handle with no apparent issue, compared to her slightly clumsy talons of before.

Once in the room proper, you sit back up and just...

sit.

For a second.

In some games, taking damage causes you to change forms--like, you get hit and shrink, or lose your armor. Maybe that's what happened. Maybe Cici took a hit, and it de-shelled her.

Oh, god--what if it has something to do with the cell phone? What if you're supposed to somehow... manage, or facilitate your accomplices' transformations, and you somehow fucked it up by throwing your phone in the water? What is it with you and making things harder by throwing away cell phones

Cici floats back down to her seat. She sort of... inflates, and puffs out when she flies, complete with goofy little noises. You're glad to be wearing a helmet, because the face you're making would probably be very off-putting.

Before you can swap stories, however, you are distracted by--

"Is that a fucking soda machine?," you ask.

"Yeah!," Cici replies, as if it's not extremely out of place. "It even has a slot to put a dollar in! I don't have any money, though."

You squint through your visor. "You couldn't just break it open...?"

"I'm a bird," she says, "not an animal. I'm not just gonna vandalize random pop machines, Plaire."

You sigh, and smile. "Well, that's the biggest anachronism I've seen in the dream... I think that pretty well proves the heart rooms aren't coming from me."

Cici sort of shrugs her wings, a feat you don't want to think about too long. "I don't know a lot o' gaming stuff. What's an anachronism?"

Pft. "A thing from the wrong time period," you explain. "Like, that's clearly trying to fit the ancient dungeon aesthetic, but it's... it's a fucking vending machine. It's like finding an electric guitar on a viking warship."

"Ohhh," she says with a nod. "I got it. Between that and all the cans in your room, I just thought you had some real soda problems."

Pffft. "So what happened?," you finally ask. "How did... this happen?" You motion to Cici's new... uh, shape, and break out your slightly damp notebook. You begin to scribble a basic map of the area, so Cici can try and fill in the blanks. She handles the pen with ease and grace and zero fingers, just blobby little bird nubs.

Cici explains. "Okay, so--I tried to save you, but I couldn't find you, and that chain thing was still attacking me so I rescued the toolbox and took off. I flew until my wings got tired, and then I got flushed to... I think here."

She points out where on the map she believes she originally entered the floor.

"Somewhere around here!," she says. "I saw the screwed on grate, and I figured you couldn't have gone that way--so I wandered off. Down, I guess, and left on the map. Whenever I got too far from you, I got this... feeling? Like a switch in my brain, but I didn't want to flip it. Whenever I got closer to you, the trigger would go away... so I used that to figure out where you were. About here, right?"

She points to the gauntlet room. You nod. "Yeah, that room sealed up when I entered. I had to fight a bunch of monsters in a row."

"Ohhh," she replies, nodding in return. "THAT explains it! I thought those metal walls looked weird, but I couldn't figure out what to do with 'em. ANYWAY, I think YOU went the right way--you're supposed to circle around, fight a treasure monster, get a key, and use it to open a chest on the way to where *I* started. The whole area's big, and dumb, and the monsters had BOWS. Oh, and I had to solve a puzzle and I didn't like it."

"...Treasure monster?"

"Yeah! Those key droppin' ones!," Cici affirms. "Like the one you poisoned, I think. It looked like a treasure chest, but I didn't have a key, so I tried to bust it open with arrows and it turned into a monster."

"A mimic," you state. "They're a feature in a lot of video games. ...I guess I could've explained that better earlier."

"It's alright," she says, gently patting you with one of her wings. "I got it figured out! Oh, and gassing it like you did was a good idea 'cuz those things are bastards."

Hearing Cici say bastards like she's saying it for the first time elicits a small giggle from you.

"It was whoopin' me pretty good, so I went ahead and flipped that mind switch... and poof! I turned into this me!"

Hmm. "...And that helped? It's... it's a better form?"

"Oh, most definitely!," Cici confirms. "I have MORE mana, I'm tougher, I can grab stuff better, and now I can do... this!"

Cici proceeds to... enlarge.

Like

quite a bit.

She inflates herself like a balloon, expanding to almost as big as you are.

"The bigger I go, the more juice it takes," she says before returning to her normal convenient travel size.

...Huh. So it really IS an advanced form.

The fact that she could only achieve it while a minimum distance away from you is bothersome, though; aside from that being a very... strange and kind of specific requirement for evolving, it implies that the current stage--a yolk, that is, an egg that didn't fully develop--was reached because Cici was alone. It's not even a joke form, it's like... a sad abandonment form.

Cici seems pretty hype about it, though, so you don't want to explain how her new transformation is actually an aborted, forgotten sun because you're a bad accomplice parent.

You steer the convo back to the dungeon. "So you beat the mimic, it dropped a key, you took the key to the other chest which had... what?"

Cici puffs out as she inhales dramatically.

"A screwdriver."

"...Seriously?"

"Seriously," she states. "That whooole part of the dungeon I explored was all just to get a screwdriver." She floats over to the toolbox, opening it with far less difficulty than she experienced earlier--and revealing not one, but two screwdrivers. One is the screwdriver you brought in from the junkyard, the other looks more... dungeony. It's not glowing or sparkling or anything, it's just an old, medieval looking screwdriver. "See, you need a screwdriver to open the grate--"

"Yeah," you interrupt, waving your hand. "Yeah, there's... a few of those. So we could have skipped like half the floor?"

"Oh, more than half," Cici chuckles. "I've been on this floor a while. It all lead to this room... and where you fought those monsters, though I guess it was supposed to lead FROM that room."

So the intended path through B2 looks like...

"Yup!," confirms Cici. "That's about it! I've been all over that part of the floor, and I didn't see JACK worth going back for. A mime--"

"Mimic?"

"--A mimic pops up there if you need another key on the next run, but he's in there pretty far, so I don't even know if it's worth it. It was NOT as fun as surfing, and I couldn't find any cool ways to kill that mimic easier."

A significant chunk of the floor existing ONLY to give you a screwdriver is... well, not unexpected. It's pretty standard for the design of games like your dungeon seems to be based on--to provide non-traditional "keys" for cleverly designed "locks" (screwdriver for grates, fireproof suit for lava filled areas, etc). Though, that does bring something interesting to your attention. "...The screwdrivers don't disappear when you use them."

"Nope, they do not," confirms Cici.

So they're like keys, but not like keys. ...That also means if you can predict what other tools or non-traditional "keys" the dungeon might ask for, you could probably skip entire sections of bullshit just by bringing the equipment in yourself. Had you and Cici come here together, with the toolbox, you could have gone straight from that big pipe in the pump room to... wherever the hell this heart room is going, probably.

Then again, you'd have probably combed over every inch of the floor regardless because you have brain worms, and then you'd be pissed when you went to all that trouble for a second screwdriver.

Even now, you kind of want to go see what Cici saw, in spite of the fact that you now know this place is overall fucking MASSIVE and you kind of need to be hustling to beat whatever your countdown represents.

Hnnng your inner completionist is throwing a fit though

"Did you light the corpses on fire?," you ask, suddenly remembering that was a thing.

"Oh, yeah, that was me!," she confirms. "I get lost in here 'cuz everything kind of looks the same, so I started marking where I'd been by torching monsters."

Alright. Cool.

The lights in the room suddenly come on, signalling that the heart room is activated.

"Huh," you remark. "I guess I don't have to lay down, I just need to relax a little."

"How'd things go on your end?," Cici asks.

You tell Cici about the small office and the memory books, about riding a couple of doors, about the fact that you're the Fool and that you can, apparently, negate pain by spending mana on it. You sort of leave out the part where ending this night improperly could result in your actual, real life death.

"Oh! Hey!," Cici begins, fluttering excitedly, "I can do something like that, too!"

Though she struggles to put it into words, Cici gradually manages to explain that she can spend mana to increase her resistance to damage. Not resistance to PAIN, like you do, but actual damage. That is, if she's aware that an attack is coming, she can deflect it harmlessly off of her little body. "I bounced like five arrows off of myself," she claims. She demonstrates by putting her wing briefly in the flame of your torch; she can only do it for a moment, because she still feels the burn (which raises a lot of biological science questions vis a vis nerve endings and how physical damage functions in real life but you are deep, deep into physics as game mechanics and visa versa, at this point)... but her wing is completely fine. Not even a faint singe.

You, of course, have to keep a grim humor about demonstrating YOUR power. You hold your already fucked up half melted left hand into the same fire, lifting your helmet so Cici can see your face. You maintain a perfectly unmoving but deliberately cartoonish grin as you slow cook your gross hand, hearing it literally crackle and smolder while the rest of you does a silly little dance.

"That's messed up," Cici states. "Try doing MY thing! Maybe you can do both!"

You somehow doubt that you can do her thing AND your thing--she's a knight type melee fighting accomplice, it makes sense that pumping mana into her durability would be a part of her role or class niche or what-have-you.

You shove your burnt hand into the fire again, this time concentrating on--

ohhhhhhh shit?

"I CAN do it!," you blurt out.

It costs a lot more mana than nullifying the pain does, though.

"Cici!," you yell, "try MY thing!"

Cici shoves her wing back into the fire.

...And keeps it there. "Oh, damn Plaire! This changes the GAME! ...Oh that's some big ol' drain, though." She pulls her wing back out in a hurry.

You spend a moment explaining it all to her, but also kind of working through it yourself. Using mana to bolster your actual defense OR your resistance to ongoing pain (or discomfort, or heat, or sickness, or... whatever) is a thing ANYONE can do, but the cost varies from person to person--likely based on your class. It's not IMPOSSIBLE for you, the Fool, to totally facetank an attack and walk away clean... but it's more expensive in terms of mana. On the other hand, for Cici the Sun to just bulk up and take a hit is cheap, but staving off pain she's already acquired is more costly.

This incentives Cici to take no damage at all and blow through every attack with her mana, but YOU are incentivized to fuck up liberally and suffer no ill effects for doing science with your face. It is, perhaps, the Fool's job to tell the Sun what kind of fun she's missing by not getting stabbed, burned, or eaten.

Cici is unlikely to get hurt, but can't afford to.

You're very likely to get hurt, but it's not as big of a deal.

The fact that you CAN just straight up take shit and walk it off with sufficient mana is extremely good fucking information to have, though. That is... crisp, primo information.

The fact that your pain discount ALSO covers impairment--like, say, from the brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation--

is a nice bonus you've been maybe taking for granted.

...And by that you mean you may have just realized a way to exploit it.

You have a very Plaire Stevens idea.

"Cici," you state firmly while holding your burnt left hand out. "I need you to put an arrow through my hand."

"...Say that again?"

"I need you..." You give what you know has to be a very wry smile. "I need you to shoot an arrow through this hand. I have to try something."

She hesitates

but she doesn't argue.

Cici manifests an arrow, and shoots it straight into your already very fucked hand.

You discover the following:

• You can do a "partial block," making it harder for the arrow to pierce you but not stopping it entirely.

• The timing window for Cici's style of blocking kind of sucks at your price range. If you realize an attack is coming and you focus on it a moment too late, you will get part of an arrow in your hand. If you concentrate on it too soon, you burn through mana pointlessly waiting for the attack to come. Hitting the timing for an ideal "perfect block" with no damage but no excess mana buffer eating up the cost would be... tough.

• You can do both kinds of "blocking" at once, making yourself more resilient against the arrow AND causing the partial penetration to not hurt at all

• Once the arrow has faded and you are left with a pretty much useless hand, you test and confirm the thing you originally wanted to test and confirm:

you can spend mana to make your hand work.

It costs more--more than you'd really be content with--but you can do it.

No mana? Cannot curl damaged ring finger.

Spend mana? Can curl damaged ring finger.

No mana? Cannot pick things up with funky hand.

Spend mana? Can pick things up with funky hand.

You can spend mana to overcome impairment.

You explain this to Cici, as well, while pondering how deep this particular rabbit hole goes. If you lost a whole fucking arm, could you spend mana to act like it's still there? The cost would be ludicrous, but is it possible? Could you manifest a phantom limb?

Wait.

Wait wait wait.

"Cici," you suddenly blurt out. "Your eye. Can you spend mana to--"

"OH!," she shouts. "Oh oh oh lemme try, hold on!"

She squints.

Visibly strains.

You spot the exact moment she realizes how much mana it's going to cost to activate a non-functioning (and possibly absent) eyeball. "Ohhh no nevermind. I'll need a looot more mana to try that!"

You give a few small nods. ...That does imply it's possible, which is

fucking nuts.

You need more mana. Overall. In general. In total. Mana good.

You and Cici spend a little while searching the room. You check under the couch cushions, but find nothing--not even a note from your mysterious blood friend. The note may manifest in this room when you reset, now that this is your de facto heart room.

(You're not sure that's a proper use of de facto but fuck it, it's been a long night)

The soda machine not only takes dollar bills, it spits your dollar back out for being too soggy.

All of the buttons are blank, and the machine's just labelled DRINK. While you do find major brands Soda Cola™ and Cola Soda™ to have pretty unimpressive names, you've never heard of a drink called... Drink.

Despite the green buttons and machine decor, you suspect that any soda coming out of this machine would in fact be yellow, anyway. Just a hunch.

The door is unlocked, and in a... slightly different style than you've seen elsewhere in the dungeon. The convenient push handle feels very modern and workplace businessy.

You also (again, having almost forgotten in the midst of everything the fuck else) explain your mental map to Cici. She confirms that she does not have a similar map in her brain, and even in her presence, you can't seem to detect her on your own map. It may be an aspect of the Fool, but you find it more likely to be an accomplice/non-accomplice thing.

Alternatively, your map is screwed up because you're not the Hanged Man.