The light did a little circle around a spot on one of the smaller plant choked islands, not too far from the beach. Bell had ridden with him, with the glowing lights of the rest of their party not far behind. Corvayne could see the light fixated on a spot, but had his butcher cleaver as a machete to clear his way through the forest. Each chop made the light spilling from where the UFO was pointing stronger, until he saw a hatch more or less the same as the one he had seen on Cascadia. The thing was made of white stone, etched in a way that made him think of concrete. With the light on it, he could see the hatch was rusted.

Bell bumped into his back and Corvayne caught her and steadied her before turning back to the hatch and giving the ring a tug. It didn't budge, so he took a moment to think, then tried reciting Lythandies' prayer.

"Lythandies, mend that which is broken. Weave that which is hurt. Our flesh is clay. Help me build good things: life, health, joy. Knit the broken whole, scour rust, and restore this object to fulfill it's purpose."

There was a faint glow as a portion of the hatch and stone around it was restored to pristine conditions, even wiping dirt off. Corvayne spun the wheel and opened the hatch. A blast of cool air carrying the scent of the sea rushed out of the tube leading down.

Corvayne started climbing down then, shrugging, put his hands on the side, channeled [[Vitality]], and started sliding down into the pitch black tunnel.

He slammed to the ground feet first and surveyed where he had landed. There was some light, despite what he had been warned of: faded dark blue panels in what looked like a distant mural, shaped like the sky, cast enough light that his eyes could catch that he was on some sort of stone roof of a building buried in a cave. A few motes of light below suggested places where sea water had streamed in. He could smell sea water, and hints of stale death.

While the few points of light didn't show off much, he could hear lots of things crawling and sloshing through water. The sound was hitting the cavern ceiling. He drew his spear and used compass. It was still muddy, but the direction was clear like a weight in his gut. Down.

Bell arrived and Corvane put a hand on her before she could wander off. "Once we are gathered, we're going to go fast. We secure a path in that we can follow out." He could feel the compass starting to crystallize a path. Behind him, Lady Blood Claw and Nyx were next down the ladder, with Spears splashing to the bottom. Brines stepped out of the way and Bearer was last.

It was nearly pitch black on the platform, until Nyx activated his belt. "What's the plan?"

"I can feel it's downwards and there's something like a path I trade, so I'll lead the way. We move fast, no stops if possible. I got enough food and water for a few days."

Bearer lit a flashlight and clipped it to her shoulder, then cracked her knuckles. "I'll be rearguard with Brines."

Lady Blood Claw cast a spell, tagging them with lights. Corvayne walked over to the edge of the roof that had a set of handrails and saw it was a stairway down to the next level of the building.

From ahead there was a cry, then it was answered by an series of noises. Sputtering moans, gutteral hissing, something like a camel getting angry, and a roar that shook the cavern a little bit.

Corvayne started down the stairs and saw the first two pale monsters tried to block him, looking sort of like pale peach people but with four tentacle-like limbs and no obvious face. He pushed himself off the top of the stairs and used [Leap Strike] to bury his spear in the first one, cleaving it apart. The second he skewered where it's head should be, the bump having a bit of bone before he hit something that caused the monster to spasm and gush orange blood all over the stones. He wasn't waiting, moving as a wad of something like acid hit the wall near him, sizzling and treating him to an acrid smell. He could see a monster on another roof, maybe fifty feet away, looking at him with a single green eye. It opened a tri-jawed mouth and coughed into it's hand something that glowed green. Corvayne pulled his gun and stopped for one step to aim and hit the thing before it could throw again.

He didn't wait for confirmation that his group was behind him, letting his shadow hand holster his weapon and moving around and into the open arch. It wasn't much darker inside than out, and he could see well enough that the first monster rushing him got a spear right into it's torso, pushing him back and spraying him with hot monster blood that smelled like tomato. He pulled his spear out but wasn't quite fast enough to skewer the next monster, so he instead pivoted and used [Juxtapose] to get at it's back and with another strike broke the thing's spine.

Both monsters were on the ground, tentacle limbs thrashing as Corvayne kept moving. A group of acid throwers climbed up the stairs, one glob hitting Corvayne's leg but doing nothing to the strawberry pants, another clipping his arm. It felt like fire, but a single use of [Flow-Like-Water] and he was clear, spear tip catching two necks and an eye. The blood gushing from the things eye smelled like flowers, and Corvayne kept going, the sound of Nyx smashing the monster behind him letting him know his back was clear.

Corvayne slowed a moment as tougher monster with a bone shell and four metal hooves clomped to the bottom of the stairway. "Three types so far... flailers, spitters, clompers."

Nyx laughed. "Can't you come up with better names?"

Corvayne shifted to his cleaver, shadow hands holding his spear a moment. As the first clomper started clambering up the stairs, he started a [Cross Skill: Grand Slam].

The monster took three seconds to climb the stairs, arriving just in time for the delayed attack that sent the blue metal cleaver through it's eyeless snarling face, nearly knocking it's head off and sending it's half ton body into the one following it, bowling them both down the steps and through a stone balustrade. Corvayne heard the sounds of stones and the two bodies hitting water below, and stepped to the landing. Behind him, he heard a few other crashing sounds and felt Brine's aura kicking in. A spear moves forward.

"Nyx, take the right." He curved around the left stair and moved down the stone steps flying past broken plaster and blackened paintings, swapping to [[Agility]] as he shot down the stairs, thinking of himself as a missile as he hit the cracked marble floor. Looking around the large hall, the extra dark patches clinging to two vase stands and one plastered to the wall near a painting stood out to him immediately. Corvayne started moving to the closest one, and his danger sense flared and he dropped to the ground.

He felt the air move over his head, and saw Nyxion float down the steps.

"Hostiles!" Corvayne called out, and a moment later there was a flash as one of the patches extended a long spear-like tendril, slamming into Nyx's shield and blasting him back in a shower of sparks. Corvayne rolled as the third tried to skewer him, blasting a hole in the floor. Corvayne reached out and grabbed the spike as it tried to pull itself back in, and drew his firebreathing dagger as it shot him towards the patch. He thrust into it and activated the fire breath, turning the shadow glowing red for a moment before it burst into flames and started wailing as it fell off the wall and scampered around. One of it's allies skewered it a moment later, and pulled it in starting the second on fire.

Spears took out the third, moving around the tentacle then chopping it into bits with [Flows-Like-Water]. The last shadow screeched as she aimed her spear at it then blasted it with a [Aqua-Thrust].

Bell rushed into the room. “An army of monsters is moving towards this building!”

“Stay in the middle, shoot only if you are not going to hit us.”

“I can fight!” Bell had shaky legs. He knew she could fight other people.

“My job is to get you to your daughter.” No matter what that means. “We will handle the monsters.”

He paid a little more attetion to his surroundings: the large hallway looked like it had once housed trophies, some still remaining but decayed to the point of being nothing more than junk. It couldn't have been thousands of years old, given that some of it was recognizable. Focus. Exits? Entrances? Two big windows on each end of the hall. The stairs up they came down, two of them. He strode over and looked: Balcony and two stairs to an entrance hall.

Corvayne ran and checked both stairs. “Bell, which way were they coming from?”

She pointed, and Corvayne waved them to follow. “Run, find a better spot to fight.”

Lady Blood Claw grabbed a vase, cast a spell into it, then lobbed it over the balcony into a lobby below. “Sleepy time down there.”

They cut to the side of the building and Corvayne pushed down the stairs. On the third landing he got hit with a shadow tentacle, blowing a hole in his arm. He used his good side to hack the monster apart with his hatchet, drank a healing potion, and kept going with [[Vitality]]. A group of spitters at the bottom of the stairs tried to keep them tied up, but Nyx surged ahead and fell to the center of the group, and pulsed fear sending the monsters scattering. A moment later Spears took them out with well placed pistol shots.

Corvayne grabbed one of the dead acid cyclops and bashed it's face into a locked door, melting the lock and letting him kick it open to a seedy looking walkway along a raised canal. Dim lights in the water suggested... things... swimming in it. His instincts told him to keep the group moving along the aqueduct. There were gaps where he could see streets and pools lower than where they were, and buildings where clumps of green eyes were looking down at them. The last made Corvayne pull his pistol, starting a running gun fight with spitters. Nyxion and Spears together deflected and washed away acid bolts.

Corvayne was about to get cocky when a rattlesnake noise alerted him to a terrifying spine ball with four red eyes. The thing puffed up and fired a spread of spikes into the group. Lady Blood Claw parried with her blade and Spears used a wall of water to deflect and slow the ones aimed at Bell. Bearer moved in front of Brines and caught then hurled them back, killing two of the puffballs on her own.

Spears pulled an assault rifle and after a few seconds of sustained fire dropped one, but with three pelting them Corvayne took another hit, and Nyxion's shield failed for the first time, getting him hit twice, once in his arm, once in his chest. Whatever armor he was wearing under his uniform deserved some credit, as neither stuck in even though they drew blood.

Bell needed attention after she took a hit to the side of her head. “That whore! It nearly hit my eye!”

Corvayne winced a little but bandaged her head and made a motion to keep moving. He could see more monsters floating their way, and looking back there were at least three tall figures in the horde holding glowing amber staves that his instincts marked as mildly dangerous.

Right before they reached where the canal connected to a gate in the wall, a set of steel bars shot up and the windowless buildings on either side of the waterway melted. Or, the wall dropped, as grinding noises and gears alerted Corvayne to the trap moments before he saw a nest of shadow spears and floating quill monsters, sounds of rattlesnakes and quiet bubbling somehow suggesting they also were surprised.

Nyxion reacted fast, blasting another burst of fear at the monsters. The effect gave everyone a second to prepare, and this time Spears took charge, pulling water from the canal around her then sending a wall of spikes into one side of the trap.

Corvayne spun and used his Gravity power to leap across the canal at the other building, two stories of monsters starting to creep out. Three shadow spines came at him, but he gained weight and dropped like a meteor under them and a wave of new bone spikes, then pulled his dagger and swept it through the room once before ducking.

He didn't hear any pops, but did here something like agitated rattling, and he saw that these spike monsters did not, in fact, explode, but rather started melting. The shadows had burst into fire and were skewering each other, then one hit a floating quill ball, which fired back into the upper floor...

Corvayne knew, from the sixth floor of the Tower back on Cascadia, that monsters sometimes fought. But he had assumed the dungeon creatures were allies, given that they sat in a room with each other waiting to ambush him (possibly for centuries?) and that assumption was being shattered as monsters turned on each other.

His attention shifted from the chaos to a bright red button built into a statue on the back wall. Grabbing a spine, he used [Expert Toss] and landed it onto the button, which dropped the metal bars barring them from running to a doorway in the wall. Nyxion lead the way, as there was a new time of huge, centipede-like flying horror bearing down on the group. Corvayne pulled his weapon but Lady Blood Claw pointed and the monster went rigid and dropped out of the sky to whatever was in the gloom below it.

“Nice trick!” He called to her before he vaulted back to the side where his friends were, nearly hitting Bearer who grabbed him before he could fall in the water. She clearly was thinking about pushing him in, but managed to contain the urge and let him go.

“Don't jump at me in front of my boyfriend. You'll make your girlfriends jealous.” Bearer winked at him.

Brines groaned. “Now is NOT the time they are GAINING on us!”

He was exaggerating, the monsters clearly were having trouble getting up to the level they were on, but he agreed that it was a fight they could avoid. He ran past Bell and Spears and Nyx and LBC to the front, passing into a shadowy arch into a carved stone stairway winding down in a chamber where other stairs were visible winding down across a large open gap. A trickle of water from somewhere above, smelling of brine and dead fish, cut through the middle of the chamber and caught some of the green light panels that seemed to give up somewhere before the bottom of the shaft. It was a long way down.

Bell joined him at the edge and after looking down, turned to Corvayne and made a face that suggested she was having doubts at the moment. [[Unity]] and [[Understanding]] told Corvayne that she looking to him for assurance or anything. He also hoped he knew her well enough at this point.

“My instincts are telling me to keep going down. Way down.”

Spears was looking back. “Now I wish I had packed land mines.”

Lady Blood Claw folded her arms. “Now I also wish YOU had packed land mines.” There was a hint of light gray playing across her skin, paired with a bit anxiety. Perhaps from the large number of loud monsters they had left in the room behind them.

“We go down a few floors. Maybe cross the gap if they are really following us.” Corvayne gestured.

Bell was sweating, even though the air around them was cool. “Is she over there?”

Corvayne shook his head. “The route is telling me... down.”

“Is she moving?”

“I don't know.”

Nyx snapped his fingers. Bearer did too after seeing him do it. “Move!”

Spears put a hand on Bell's shoulder. “It will be okay. Corvayne will take care of it.”

Corvayne tried his best not to rush as he started leading the way down the endless twisting stairs, weaving in and out of view of the what felt like endless abyss. The jagged rocks, sometimes encrusted with coral, felt more and more like rows of teeth around the stairway. Their steps were mixed with thrumming sounds, and odd dripping noises that echoed far too long. Even without the sounds of monsters, Corvayne had a feeling that they couldn't stop.

They must have made their way down hundreds of stairs before Corvayne's compass started pulling him to a side passage, another stair down but one straight and off the endless spiral. He had to take a moment to steady himself on the cavern wall. Just a moment, as he could feel hints of anxiousness through [[Unity]]. He put his emotional shields up, both to keep their fears out and to keep his inside.

Following the compass to rescue someone who might already be dead, Corvayne stepped into a room glowing cold colors from what looked like blue magma oozing from containers and pylons, and pits glowing blue. Putting his hand near one, Corvayne felt lightning leap from the rock at him and there was a second of a buzzing sensation followed by sharp pain.

Corvayne pulled away from the rock, and looked to his companions. Lady Blood Claw put a foot near a blue rock then pulled it back, swearing.

“Fuck, don't tell me we have to go through here.”

Corvayne took his spear and pointed it the direction his compass was feeding him. On the far side of a lethally charged obstacle course made of melted blue rocks was their next goal.

Corvayne turned to the group. “We have to go through here.”