The floors below the flame were like a completely different world; Tesla had a surreal feeling as soon as he stepped into them. To make matters worse, Book began broadcasting danger signals.

"Where are we?"

Janek nodded sympathetically. "The maintanence spells are better than I thought. There aren't even any stray cobwebs down here, let alone allowing the fires to breach this place." The first of the clean floors was an open space supported by thick columns. The surrounding artwork and furniture gave the impression of a lobby like the one at Mystletayne's PDE website superimposed with the feel of the security checkpoint outside the old temple prison. Tesla felt out of place covered in the smut and sweat born from the flames and battles above.

"What'd they do down here that required preservation spells so thick not even an infestation of monsters or a conflagration could scratch?"

"The Sisterhood of Aurora's Caul was entrusted with transcribing both the diocese and the kingdom's oldest documents, including things like property maps, treatises, court rulings, encyclicals from the greater Temple, tax records, and more besides."

Tesla stretched a little, then brushed at the soot collecting in the grooves of his light armor. "I get it; paperwork too old to survive on its own, but too important to be left to rot, has to be copied with an official seal of approval." It's not like they can save it to a hard drive or the cloud in this world, he thought. "I guess that's why they thought it was safe to research what was found in the mines here; their scriptoriums are "clean rooms," after a fashion."

"Yeah, well, the Taskmaster didn't agree." Janek stomped his way to the only other passage and looked in; of course, it led down. "Research and development of anything obtained in a ruin is the duty of the kingdom, not the Temple, but the abbess refused to let anything go. She claimed that the artifacts obtained from the mine were of no strategic value and insisted they remain with the convent."

"-And she had enough friends in high places to make it happen?"

"Ye've seen this sort of thing before."

"Politics; it's a stain no matter what world you come from. Nothing good ever comes out of it-"

"-Then the military's left to clean up the mess. Ye got the full up-and-down of it, rube."

As easy as the previous floors were, the subsequent ones were practically impossible for two men and a pair of gardening golems. Not only were the fallen nuns of the remaining floors higher-levelled than their sisters upstairs, none of them were suffering bad status effects or lowered HP from all the fire and smoke. As a result, the dwarven / ryujin duo were forced to change their tactics.

From that point forward they started to hunt down a relatively safe zone in each level, passing as silently as they could along the edges of walls and behind the backs of alert spiders. Tesla was forced to rely a great deal on his defenseless bird golem as a short-range scout. He would send the construct flitting ahead, one room at a time and ever-watchful for enemies, to trace patrol patterns and search out useful hiding spots. The trial was nerve-wracking, but the halls were dimly-lit due to so much magical energy being redirected to protect the facility from its own occupants. Once a useful cul-de-sac was found the real work began.

"Kiting" was the tactic of choice. One by one, Tesla would use his golems to draw a single spider into leaving the view of her fellows, pulling her into the safe zone he and Janek created, then attacking her from behind. By spamming Nocturne Dust and their heaviest blows the two men would whittle away the spider's life until it finally collapsed in a gush of smoke. Even Janek was forced to pull out a couple of axe skills to break through the exoskeletal armor of some of the larger arachnids, though the techniques themselves looked no different from his usual frenzied attacks.

The strategy worked, but it took hours to clear a single floor. Janek reassured Tesla that new nuns weren't going to spontaneously appear the moment he wasn't looking, but the fear of a very game-like respawn point becoming a real issue kept the younger man on edge and had him cursing his previous wish that it would actually happen. Three floors in, the duo was forced to call it a day.

"We're going to run out of time at this rate." Tesla stiffly dragged his pack off of his shoulders and laboriously began to dig for his bedroll again. "Arledge is going to think we failed." Luckily, the floor they cleared turned out to be another dormitory so it was a simple exercise to pick a room and lock themselves in it. There was a bed, but that was propped up against the door as extra insurance; hence, the bedroll.

"If we can't make it back in time then we'll try for a nearby village. If we're lucky, we can send old Arledge a letter by messenger-bird." Janek tossed the ryujin a canteen and a chunk of bread.

If we make it back; I didn't peg Janek as an optimist. Tesla chewed numbly at the tough baguette and washed it down with lukewarm water. The mission would have been so much easier with a large party. I don't think this quest was meant for solo players with one NPC for backup. "How are we going to know when this fortress-cum-maze is cleared out?"

"When we find the source of the infestation and crush it." Janek twiddled with his mustache for a moment, then began to fumble around for his pipe. "Hopefully before the rest of our lost sisters figure out what we're doing and finally get around to coordinating against us."

"You think they can? Judging by their behavior so far they had to have lost a lot between the ears when they became corrupted."

"Maybe they can't on their own, but there's got to be some intelligence leading them by the nose or else the lot of them would have pulled up stakes once the hunting became scarce. So, when we take care of that central authority, I'm betting our little spider problem will self-destruct as a side effect."

"Or they could be freed of their controlling influence, at which point they scatter." Tesla climbed into his bedroll with a groan. "In the end we're still left clearing the entire convent, floor-by-floor."

"Not by this point." Janek stuffed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, then proferred it by the long stem to his companion. "Winter's coming on, and winters in Diatom are no joke. How long do ye think a spider would last in the snow?"

Tesla rolled over, turning his back to the dwarf, but the tin golem hopped out of his pack and quickly lit Janek's pipe by clapping its wings together and dropping a spark onto the tobacco. "Depends on how much of their constitution hasn't been taken over by an arachnid's biology, but if they lack the intelligence to wear warmer clothing or start a fire then they'll freeze to death just as easily as anybody else."

"Then there ye go, it's still a win."

"Of course, if this place had some kind of built-in security outside of preservation techniques then the whole problem would have been resolved immediately."

"Just another reason why the sisters should've stuck to paperwork."

"Oho! A rare item!" Five floors down, Tesla scooped up a gold ring that fell at his feet. "Most of the time all we get are a few coins and the occasional potion." It was a relatively plain band, unadorned with any gemstones, with a braided pattern around its circumference. "I wonder if it has any magic attached to it."

Janek tugged at his beard thoughtfully, then shook his head. "Best ye not risk wearing it till ye can get it appraised; might be cursed with something. Especially given where it came from."

Book?

Legendary class, huh... "Janek, you think this might be something from the mine?"

"No; sometimes monsters drop items when they die and there's no explaining why they would have something like it. I knew a guy who killed a hatchling dragon, fresh from the egg, and found a wedge of cheese. Not even the whole wheel, just a wedge! There's even myths about Epic Class weapons and armor dropped by livestock at slaughterhouses way back in the past, but I think those are made up."

Tesla imagined frantic bug corrections during Diamondback's beta testing years, and chuckled. "Yeah, that sounds a little out there."

"Anyway, ye should wait to get an appraisal from an experienced jeweler; I know a guy who'll look into it for cheap."

"I'll think about it." Tesla pocketed the ring. "Coincidentally, what's this about "Epic Class" items?"

Janek waved his prosthetic hand and pointed to the hall their little alcove was connected to. "Right now, it doesn't matter. Focus on the mission, rube, we're heading out."

Book chimed in.

McGuffins, then; each one probably has enough flavor text to sink a cargo ship, so finding one when you go to butcher a sheep definitely qualifies as a bug. The rest sounds like your average power versus rarity tiering. Still, the simple marriage-style band felt heavy in his pocket; that name didn't exactly inspire confidence, either. It may be tied to the mission, somehow.

Difficulty level rising! Dungeon parameters are now shifted from Yellow (Enhanced Difficulty) to Orange (High Difficulty) compared to current party's combat readiness. Recommending immediate withdrawal.>

"Ho... lee... shit." Tesla wasn't sure what he was expecting when he and Janek descended to the next floor, but an overgrown botanical garden several hundred acres in diameter wasn't even on the horizon of his thoughts. "This is the must-have on every scriptorium's wish list. I mean, who doesn't want a poisonous jungle-swamp in their basement?" Cypress trees and stagnant water surrounded a crude wooden catwalk that stretched in a haphazard fashion into the surrounding murk, while lillypads and water grass bobbed as armored somethings powered along below the water's surface. Webbing appeared again, though it was nowhere near as thick as that found in the upper floors; apparently, the environment was too nasty for a spider to completely dominate even with the scriptorium's magical protections lifted. There were profusions of flowers sprouting from the swamp waters or wrapped like ivy among the trees. Some of them were so poisonous they were literally producing a toxic purple haze in their vicinity. Tesla watched a two-foot long dragonfly striped with dangerous "hey, look, I'm venomous enough to kill you with a look" colors shrivel and die in an instant when it inadvertantly flew too near to the violet fog.

"Looks like we're not just below the plinth anymore, we're below the Krakenside iteself." Janek added a few terse expletives under his breath for greater effect, then shook his shaggy head. "So, what now?"

Tesla arched an eyebrow at his dwarven companion and snapped his tail back and forth. "I'll take that to mean this place isn't supposed to be here, and that we've just jumped into "something two men and a couple of golems can't handle" territory." At Janek's nod, the ryujin scratched idly at the horn-like protrusions where his ears should have been and said, "In that case, I'd recommend we seal off this staircase somehow. That should keep the sisters out of the convent proper while we compose a message to send back to Arledge and the Taskmaster. After that, we'll have to make sure the staircase remains sealed until reinforcements come."

"Oh?" Janek shot Tesla another measuring look. "What makes ye think we got the manpower to spare?"

"It doesn't matter if the diocese has the manpower to spare or not. It's obvious that the Sisterhood of Aurora's Caul was corrupted long before they were compromised by whatever caused their arachnosis." Tesla waved a clawed hand at the marshy jungle spreading out before them. "I don't know exactly what this was used for, but it sure as hell wasn't used for copying manuscripts. I'm beginning to think you and I've run into an old, well established, black-ops research facility that's given up the ghost because some experiment went out of control."

Janek's eyebrows lowered. "Ye think the Temple's-"

"-No," Tesla interrupted, "I don't think this has anything to do with the diocese, at least. Otherwise the bishop wouldn't have bothered sending two men after an entire investigative team went missing, because the loss of the team would have given him an excuse to deploy troops. The fact he requested another investigation proves that both Bishop Lott and Deacon Arledge had no idea what they were throwing us into." The young ryujin turned back to the stairs and shook his horned head. "Come on, Janek, let's get this place blocked off and then I'll see if I can't modify my tin canary to carry a message back to Diatom."

"He did want to send troops." Janek slumped his shoulders and stumped back up the stairs after Tesla. "We didn't have anybody to spare."

Tesla shook his head again. "He wouldn't have taken no for an answer if he knew what was down here. Security forces from all the surrounding countryside would have been scraped together immediately, regardless of how much danger that put those territories in." He shrugged his broad shoulders with a sigh. "Now, he'll have to do it anyway; this place is a disaster waiting to happen. In Bricoleur terms, the chimney's way too big and clogged up for two men to sweep clean."

Phyneas Phlatt was a veteran of Diatom's temple aerie, a man with remarkable patience for flighty birds of all stripes and scarred hands from overexcited raptors unwilling to give up the messages tied to their legs. The old gnome had dealt with kites, owls, pigeons, hawks, and more besides. He'd peeled off letters tied to the legs of bats and glued to the underbellies of giant insects with total aplomb and, when deep into his cups, would wax on and on about a hyperactive young phoenix that nearly burned the tower down when Phlatt was still a novice.

Thus when an overburdened mockingbird made of tin, with a crudely spot-welded message tube on its back, crashed into the lintel of the aerie's great open window, Phyneas Phlatt zipped over and snatched the golem out of the air before it fell to the courtyards below as easily as if he knew it was going to happen. Before anyone else in the cacaphonic birdhouse could react he'd already pulled the message, noted its stamp, set the golem to one side, and dashed to the messengers' office below. The spry old gnome scampered to the nearest desk, slapped a worn-out spot on its side, then hopped backwards so he could look the young woman seated behind it in the face. "New message, novitiate: Maximum priority. Take it to... no, he's out right now. Take it to Deacon Arledge, post-haste."

Gothen Arledge's carefully-plucked eyebrows crept higher and higher the farther down his eyes traced the opened scroll in his manicured hands. Depopulated lands... fire... the sisterhood corrupted... unknown facilities... suspect activities... possible outside influence... The deacon shuddered in outrage, then shot to his feet. "Take me to the bishop."

Bishop Lott's careworn face went slack as he read the contents of the message Arledge passed on to him. Then he abandoned his breakfast table and shakily carried himself to the edge of his favorite veranda. The sound of the comings and goings of the bustling temple below usually calmed him, but at that time shock rendered him deaf to the noise. Finally, his expression hardened. "Veralika Nolqim, you old shrew! That you would sink this low..."

"If there is one level below the original convent's blueprints, then there could be more. The abbess must have planned this out long ago." Arledge remained as still as a statue beside the bishop's table. "I always did wonder why she picked the plinths beyond Krakenside to build upon."

Lott placed a hand on his hip in a workman's stance, then pinched the bridge of his nose with the other. "It doesn't matter now. Inform His Highness the king and assemble a force to deploy." The bishop glanced at Arledge, then chuckled weakly. "Don't give me that look; he has to know, and it's better he finds out what the sisterhood was up to straight from us rather than from secondary sources. The Temple is supposed to stay out of research and development of military resources, after all."

"Are we so sure she was-"

"Of course she was! What else would have required that much secrecy, or that much potential space? What I want to know is who bankrolled her, and why!?" Lott thumped a fist onto the veranda's balustrade with a grimace. "Can we have those two investigate her quarters?"

Arledge shrugged. "Probably not; anything potentially damning will most likely be found in these unknown levels. Besides, they are too busy manning the passage leading to this "facility" to spare time scaring up a paper trail. If they are not careful they could be swarmed under by a mindless horde of who-knows-what."

The bishop sighed, then turned his back on Arledge and leaned his elbows on the veranda's railing. "I suppose our young Spark has done well, for his first job?"

"I effectively ordered him to purge the convent of any corrupted elements, but I had no idea the whole sisterhood was compromised to this degree. The ultimate consequences of this travesty notwithstanding, I find myself in agreement with your assessment."

"Have you spoken with the Taskmaster?"

"Not since he left, obviously, but I would assume he will be in agreement. All that remains is whether the boy, himself, will be interested."

King Augustinian Diatom, the 47th to inherit that name, was a mighty young man with a level of musculature on par with a certain ryujin Dream Eater; he fairly burst forth from his royal regalia every time he moved, and his red-gold mane flowed like a river of fire down his back. It was said that Her Majesty the queen watched over her excessively-virile mate like a hawk, jealously protecting her territory from the slightest hint of poaching. Wherever the king went so, too, did the queen, and they had a dozen children between them to prove it.

Augustinian was also at his breakfast when a message from Bishop Lott reached his hands, but the hardy lion-breed zoan merely chuckled and continued to eat with gusto as he perused the contents. "Ho-ho, looks like old Karaktacus has bitten a sour pickle, this time!"

"Oh?" Queen Amidala Diatom rose from her seat and effortlessly sailed around her king to look over his shoulder, but her movements were so graceful and smooth the infant tenderly clasped to her bosom never woke. "Oh, dear," the statuesque lamia muttered critically, "I would say the loss of an entire territory's population is somewhat more than "a pickle," August. This is a catastrophe."

"Enough of one that I'd want to march to the Temple myself for a reckoning if I'd heard it from anyone else," the king agreed, "but at least the man had both the balls and the good grace to fess up right away."

"Do you think he knew?"

"Impossible; if that old badger was any more upright the Central Temple would saint him while he's still alive." Augustinian's leonine tail twitched as he reached out and rang a small silver bell. Within one heartbeat a side door leading out of the opulent dining hall soundlessly opened and a liveried attendant slipped in with a bow.

"My lord?"

"Two messages: First, inform the bishop that we will be providing equal forces to participate in the recovery of the convent at Aurora's Caul. Second, inform Camp Nevermind to ready troops for sortie. We've two good men corking a rotten wine bag the size of Lonely Mountain. It's under pressure, and cannot be left alone. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my king."

"Then see to it."

"So, Janek, what do we do while we wait?"

The dwarf snorted and pulled out a pair of dice. "Loot rolls; what else?"