Briefing took place in Arun's office. Chris was pleased to note that Wolfgang and Adili had already arrived. Wolfgang stood as they entered and bowed to Ishani. He was dressed in his street clothes, khaki cargo pants, the pockets stuffed with what he called his essentials (mostly snacks), a black tee-shirt with the name of a band dead and forgotten before he was even born, and some seriously flashy trainers. The whole look was somewhat ruined by the fact that in the high magical area they were in, his form was that of a dwarf, standing at just over a metre tall. His trousers were held up by the stacked pockets on top of his trainers, which flopped and wobbled as he walked over to them. Luckily most of the worst was hidden by the tee-shirt which was well on its way to becoming a dress.

"So, you're our new recruit. Delighted to make your acquaintance.", Despite his name, the ancient trope of dwarfs being Scottish and the fact that he had grown up in Lagos, Wolfgang had an Australian accent.

"Give the poor girl a chance to settle in before you try buttering her up. Get it, up?" The slight fae with the shocking pink hair laughed at his own joke. "That said, are you an actual human type then? Or a shape-shifter? Your file probably says it, but I prefer to get some information directly from the horse's mouth."

Drawing a breath, Ishani seemed to almost inflate with confidence that had been sorely lacking when she was interacting with a god and their chosen avatar. "I am human, though I've been stacking strength and agility, so I'm not as slow or as weak as a standard human."

Arun, somewhat overshadowed in his own office rather testily added that if people would simply read the materials he provided, no one would need to waste time with these introductions. Furthermore, if such introductions were needed, there would be plenty of time on the plane ride to the ASEAN federation to get that done.

"Excuse me," Isahani asked "but why are we here? I thought we were getting our equipment."

"There's no better kit than the briefing pack", Chris said as he stepped forward to grab one off Arun's desk.

"Thank you, at least your leader has some sense in him. Though he could instill more discipline in you all" Arun complained as everyone filed up to the desk to take a briefing pack.

"You're my manager, shouldn't you be making me lead better? Anyway we had a divine visitation, everyone's a bit shaken they need this to relax themselves."

"Yes, fine. Well I guess that's true. I'll give you the headlines. This dungeon is obviously strange, or we wouldn't call you in. The flux at the gate boundary tells us it's a category four, which is really not something we'd call you in over, except that the time dilation is twelve to one and rising."

"Rising?", Ishani asked incredulously, "Isn't that impossible? The laws of dungeon formation dictate that as a dungeon grows, the time dilation shrinks, and if the category is positive, then the dungeon must be growing, right?"

Lin smiled and started to explain, "Yes, for the tame dungeons on the main sequence. They have one entrance, are connected to only one realm and they're generally very straightforward. That's where nearly every team that works for the Divers spends most of their time. They can be dangerous, but they are predictable. We're more a specialist team. they call for us, and you are one of us now, when things go off the beaten path."

"Like this one.", Adili smiled as he struck a pose, brandishing the unopened folder in his hand while pointing at it with his other hand. Behind his desk Arun's head sank into his hands in resignation. "It's growing and it's getting faster. That can mean a few things, but a good bet is that it has a second entrance somewhere else that's already drained its locality of resons. You barely touch on it in the academy, but resons mediate reality, they're the gauge bosons of actuality. That means it must either be a location in another realm or in space. Either way unless we kill the core and close the dungeon, it's bad news for us. Our realm getting an unguided breach into the between, or a second realm disgorging its rules into us through a runaway dungeon would probably kill what's left of humanity. So it could well be trying to grow here, but not being fed enough at the other end, so it's shrinking and still cat four."

"Of course, that's not the only solution. We just hope it is. The others are much worse." Wolfgang chipped in.

"Yes, lovely. Now if you've finished trying to impress the newbie, maybe you can look at the environmental report we have on the interior, back page. As you can see it's got a standard nitrogen/oxygen mix, a little lower than us on carbon dioxide which is no bad thing, There's nearly no complex organic molecules in there, which is decidedly odd. The temperature range at the gate is about five to thirty Celsius, so we're expecting a desert. That said, the soil sample didn't happen because the probe hit dressed stone. So we're looking at a mimicry creation or, given the time dilation, there might be a civilisation there. You're cleared to take a portable and set up a refugee camp if needed. The ASEAN governments are keen to resolve this as soon as possible, and they wouldn't say no to a new HMZ they don't have to pay for on the outskirts of one of their major conurbations. Now, get down to the armoury and get some kit. You're going to be on a timebox, no more than sixty days experienced before you come out. If it looks like it's going to take longer, we have the green light on nuclear. We'd like to avoid it though."

The Armoury was deep in the bowels of the Dome. No one wanted to live hundreds of metres down, but the magic saturated space was far too valuable to waste. The more mundane items were actually stored outside the Dome proper. There was very little that actually needed a high magic zone to remain functional, but those were things that you did not want to suddenly fail in unexpected ways. Things like a magically enhanced nuclear weapon, or a magictech artificial intelligence whose moral code was part electronic and part soul.

The lifts were cramped, especially when they contained a rock elemental and a massive leonine, but space was at a premium in the Dome, no one wanted to waste it on things like lifts or staircases. Relatively few people actually lived in the Dome, they were the medics, scientists and researchers who absolutely needed to maintain their magical exposure. On the other side of the bridge, low magic areas were also in high demand for delicate research, the flow of magic from one realm to the other had led to the same solution on both sides. Build a sphere and use every cubic centimetre to the utmost.

It all made a lot of sense, but it didn't make life any easier for the dwarf, fae and human trapped between a rock and a hard body as they descended in silence for several minutes. Adili pulled out the briefing and started to read it as the lift kept going down.

"By Ngaboux's eyes! They've messed this up completely. This is not a category four. We need to go heavy. This is a cat six at the lowest."

"Why do you say that?" asked Chris, turning awkwardly in the confined space.

"Because the flux isn't steady, it's fluctuating on a subjective daily cycle, which means that the core is starting to manifest. The lowered level of flux is because it has multiple Gates. The readings were taken three days ago our time, which means that by now, it's got to be category six, maybe as high as eight."

Wolfgang sighed deeply, his barrel like chest rising under his tee-shirt and actually managing to fill it out so Ishani could see the legend AC/DC emerge from the wrinkles before his loud exhalation hid it from view again. "I told you it was worse."

Chris pulled his phone from his pocket and angrily poked it wit his paw, his elbow narrowly missing Ishani's head. "Arun what absolute blind idiots do you have reading these reports? Have you realised it's a manifested core? We cannot take anyone under level fifty with us, at all. This is a death sentence, I will not do it." A pause followed while muffled arguments rose from the other end "Look, I don't care what the probabilities say. There's no way we're doing it. I can't let someone get killed for bureaucracy's sake."

The gentle chime of the lift finally reaching its destination interrupted the flow of his tirade. Outside the lift stood a young looking elf. They were wearing what appeared to be an antique crushed velvet suit in deep purple, a pair of red leather boots and a somber black bowler hat.

Chris dropped his phone with a shocked expression on his face as he saw the elf standing there. "Oh this is not good."