The dungeon under the ruins kept to it's first floor plan for the next three, and in the same way Corvayne and crew kept to the tactic that got them through it. Corvayne and Nyx in front, triggering traps and baiting monsters, with LBC, Brines, and Bearer in the back protecting Bell and Hylal.

The second floor had clean water flowing in shallow streams across statues of weeping goddesses. The shallow pools had a dark rainbow of sea life, some of which stung to the touch. The monsters on the floor seemed obsessed with ambushes, forcing the group to move at a glacial pace to catch a number of predators trying to attack from every direction.

The next floor had more straight forward monsters in that they were tough fish with legs. What made things difficult was the floor being a series of knee to waist high deep flowing water moving along a maze of glowing sea anemones. While they lit everything in warm light, touching the tan glowing creatures resulted in agonizing pain. With the currents sometimes shifting due to a complex series of holes carved in the walls. Some of them were positioned to where Corvayne could prune them with his spear, but others were in spots that would result in anything chopped off flowing back to the group, with one painful lesson on that before Corvayne spent more time looking at the currents.

The monsters, of course, were totally immune. Perhaps they were orange and white because they were mutant clown fish. They didn't talk as he killed them, so he could say that was probably it and move on.

The fourth floor was a series of stone balconies above a torch lit canal in a ruin studded cavern, water pouring out of stone carved buildings and cascading down stairs and along narrow walkways often missing railing. It formed treacherous terrain certain to split the party if anyone wasn't sure of their footing or tried to cross the wrong path. The cavernous length and flickering light meant that Corvayne had to be the eyes of the group to try to catch archers firing fish-jaw arrows at them. Corvayne took the opportunity to give them swift lessons in archery.

Being cautious meant that Corvayne had to do a lot of climbing and pulling people up by ropes to avoid trying to not get blasted a hundred feet down by white water rapids flowing through someones apartment, but as they finally found the stairs down to the last floor, Corvayne had felt a certain amount of mastery at the dungeon, a sort of confidence that the nice, easy floors of the Tower had prepared him for a much less friendly run through the hazardous aquatic ruins.

What worried him on first glance was that rather than deep in some dark vaugly underground place, the floor was under a dark gray sky with dark seas in a driving rain, the entire floor pitching like a boat in a storm the moment he stepped off the stairs back up. It looked like an interconnected set of steel boats, lashed together to parts of dungeon that bucked and swayed and crested then fell, water splashing up along railings in foaming globs. Anyone who fell into the water that wasn't Spears would almost certainly be lost, himself possibly included... but the storm and driving rain and swaying floors didn't give him nearly as much pause as what he saw, outlined in black against the gray sky, floating upwards if not for a chain holding it to the ocean floor or deck of the ships.

Nyx spotted the same thing, and over the rain Corvayne could hear his voice crack a little. "Is that a fucking old-timey SHIP mine?!"

Lady Blood Claw grumbled under her breath. Bell had heard Nyxion but looked confused. In pretty good Cascadian she asked, "What sort of monster is a oultimie shipmine? It's chained, can we not avoid it?"

Lady Blood Claw looked over at her. "You know, I have a question."

Bell looked back. "Okay."

"Are you naturally a linguist? It seems like you are as fluent as Hari in Cascadian, and she had months of extra practice."

Bearer picked up a rock, and started tossing it up and down one handed. "Corvayne's thing linking us is teaching us each other's language." Her voice changed pitch a little, becoming deeper and scratchy. "The Black Tower does not care if the sun ever sets on it."

Brines shied away. "What did you do? That sounded creepy."

Corvayne had his eyes glued on the stone she was tossing up and down, and caught the moment he saw her changing from letting it fall to her palm to grabbing it to throw it.

"We test that, if at all, on one where we are not likely to go deaf and knock half the floor into the ocean."

Corvayne was soaked from the wind rain and sea already, dampness and cold adding to the stress of seeing mines peppered into the landscape. He could see the rain and water slipping off Nyxion's shields and felt a bit of envy for the first time in a while at Nyx's gear.

Lady Blood Claw had already pulled Bell back to the door in a ship's tower that formed the stairs up. "Most of that ball is similar to the rockets that Spears had you fire. Imagine what a rocket that size could do. So, don't set them off."

Bearer gestured. "Notice it's not perfectly swaying in time with the wind."

Corvayne wasn't sure what she was saying, as it was an impossible mine floating in mid-air, but then he caught that there was something like a small bit of force that was having it bob in their direction, even though it was possibly a third or half a mile away.

Corvayne said aloud what he was thinking. "They are alive, or a monster mine, or an enchanted trap... now I gotta test the explosions and how the mines move off the chain, and how it influences the ships."

Bell perked up. "Can I watch?" Hylal chirped as she added. "Me too!"

Spears burbled. "Maybe if we hit one far away... and it doesn't cause a chain reaction."

Corvayne's enthusiasm dimmed. "Okay, everyone in the stairs."

Nyx shot him a look. "I'm watching too. If anything I should do it with my shields."

Corvayne didn't want to admit that it was going to be fun. Nor that he wanted to see if he could cause a chain reaction. First, he attuned his compass to an exit, and noted the direction. He spun the other way, leaping onto the rain slicked second floor of the naval tower. He scanned the horizon, gray metal and gray sky bright compared to the dark naval mines springing up from the ground and water like some sort of twisted garden. He pulled out Argyle's staff. Nyx put goggles on and gave him a thumbs up.

Corvayne activated [Cross Skill: Arcing Throw] and launched the staff into the air, aiming for a distant mine. There was a moment where it simply dropped through the mine that he thought they were duds, then there was something like a humming noise a moment before the mine glowed white then exploded. The rain formed a wall of water, the clouds parted, a huge circle around the mine was turned into glowing slag... and there was another humming noise.

Corvayne used his shadow arms to grab Nyxion and pull him down the stairs before the chain reaction slagged the boat they were on and even caused the wind to pick up past the fifth step of the stairway. All that was left of the area a moment later was a hot breeze pushing to the fourth step, and glowing clouds of metal gas sizzling the rain as it cooled to liquid moments after every mine on the floor went off, a haze of steam soon pushing up against the stairs.

Corvayne turned to the group. "I think there's a lesson here, but besides testing before we step foot on a floor, I don't know what it is."

Bell was frowning. "It didn't SOUND that loud. It just made it foggy."

"It turned the metal into gas for a moment." Nyx reported. "We've tested the stairs before, they act as a dampener for effects between floors." He turned to Corvayne. "I want to see what happens from far away when you do that."

Bell nodded. "Metals are solid. I don't believe you saying it became wind."

Corvayne clarified. "Gas. Like how ice melts, becomes water, then water evaporates and becomes clouds."

Bell folded her arms. "Clouds DO cause rain... you're saying they are water?"

Hylal looked at her mother. "Mom have you never been in fog? That's a the same as being in a cloud."

Bell frowned. "I can't fly."

"You don't need to! You can climb! Come to the mountain I live at."

Bell started to form objections, but as she was stuttering Corvayne got a sense she needed a little push, so he did just that, a gentle touch to her shoulder to push her forward a step closer to her daughter. She straightened, and nodded. "Nothing I can do is more important. After we are out."

Corvayne looked back at the steaming sea he had left behind. "Different stairs, one that will let us go down in a different spot."

Corvayne took the strategy from the Towers and twisted it, using his compass to find another stairway by working his way down whever possible. Several dozen arrows, and two near disasters where he had to catch Lady Blood Claw by the belt and Bell by the collar of her cloth armor when they got hit with a surprise burst of water out of shuttered buildings opening up, they reached a stairway at the end of a torch lit temple.

Thirty fishmen tried to rush into the chamber once Corvayne and Nyxion were fully in. Corvayne's moment of excitement was dashed when the monsters were not much stronger than the goblins Corvayne had fought alone months ago, or groups of bandits he had single handily defeated. The environment kept proving itself to be the real enemy.

The stairs down lead him to another part of the minefield floor, pristine if one overlooked places the gunmetal gray paint was bubbling, or hints of rust, or places where the ship had been patched. Corvayne this time held up a hand.

"We don't know how close the mines can get before they detonate. Do we want to test that?"

Nyx sighed. "How about we just don't set any mines off rather then lose someone to find that out?"

Corvayne sort of agreed, he wasn't too keen to keep risking falls in the previous floor, and it didn't look like the dungeon played nice and gave him a new floor with hazards. So they moved carefully, Corvayne checking corners and relying on compass and danger sense to keep them away from the mines, all of which were slowly drifting and straining towards the group, tethers causing them to bump like slow moving sinister dark balloons.

Corvayne had a moment of sheer terror when he nearly walked around a corner and spotted a mine between two walls right near him, but thankfully it seemed the devices were sensitive to touch rather than simply blowing up the moment someone was close. Still, there were mines behind doors, mines that would float up from between gaps in the boats floor to try to drift into him. They had to backtrack when a seemingly safe bridge was suddenly surrounded by mines coming from the water, a slow motion ambush that had Corvayne lightnen his gravity and grab Nyxion then leap out from a circle.

Bearer was amused. "It seems like it's a metaphor or something, turned into a dungeon floor."

Lady Blood Claw looked at her. "Perhaps when we are done you can try whispering it into a mine's ear and see if it agrees."

Bearer-of-Burdens had an impish smile. "Why don't you point to the spot on the mine you think it's ear is?"

Ignoring the two while searching for a different path, Corvayne saw a chest on a platform under the bridge, one that had raised with the mines.

"How can anyone get that?" Corvayne asked aloud. His mind instantly snapped to Hari. "Oh. Blink."

Lady Blood Claw was looking at the chest. "I think if your gravity power worked a certain way, you could have the chest fall off the platform it's on to say, the wall right by where we are, then we could haul it up.

Corvayne tried it, but got a sense he was hitting a mental wall on it, and after ten seconds he was winded, somehow, just trying to do nothing with the power. A few crystals chose the moment to rise up out of his skin, and he shook them off and cycled to [[Vitality]]. Brines helped with his regeneration aura, then swapped back to Stamina.

LBC looked ruefully at the mines. "Go around then, huh?"

"Unless someone has an idea to get that chest that doesn't involve us all blowing up."

Hylal poked Corvayne with a sharp talon on his arm. He looked over at her. "What can I do for you Hylal?"

"Well, dad..."

"Do not call me dad." "Hylal!" Bell snapped.

"Sorry. Anyway father, I was going to tell you that Spears is getting that chest."

"I think that's disrespectful to your real f-" He paused. Looking, he saw Brines, LBC, Hylal, Nyxion, Bell, and a very pleased looking Bearer. Turning, he saw Spears floating and slowly moving against the waves, still looking a bit like a wad of chewed up clear gum (which he paused to note he should not be thinking about the being he was currently courting and sleeping with in a way that equated them to something you find on the bottom of an unclean desk.). What was interesting was that some of the mines that were only visible at the low point between waves didn't move a inch towards her. She picked a spot and bobbed up and down in the water, then spit a pink slime at the chest. It splattered against the wood then started dissolving it, setting off a spring on the platform that would have likely thrown anyone opening it into the floating mines. She wait for the trap to finish and the platform to shift back down, then swam up to it and started using psudopods to grab stuff before gliding back over the water like it was nothing.

Corvayne had to help her get out of the water as the extra junk in her was heavy. His only question was. "Why?"

"Because water doesn't set them off, nor do they seek water. I'm totally safe as long as nobody else sets a mine off."

Corvayne folded his arms a little bit. "Please stop saying it. The universe gets ideas."

She dumped (barfed possibly, again, not what he should be thinking about his lady) the items in a pile at his feet, and he once more put them in his ring for later classification as cursed or not.

They reached the stairs down, and there was a moment that Bell turned to Corvayne, eyes pleading. Hylal looked between them. "Mom wants to DO IT!"

"We are not married." Corvayne stated, then pulled a rifle out of his bag. He handed it to Bell, who for a moment looked like a child getting a birthday present.

"Far better than all the rings from useless men tossed my way." She raised her nose in the air, and Corvayne smiled. Nature was healing. Then she turned and blushed. "Can I really... blow it up?"

She had started acting weird since Hylal was found, but he couldn't say what it was. "I do not like floors that any little mistake anyone makes will kill everyone in-" Nyx coughed. "Will kill most of the party. Also, don't fire that thing yet."

Nyx also got what he was thinking and arranged the group so his shield would protect them from both anything forward and the back-blast from the weapon, six stairs down which seemed to negate most of the airflow.

Bell waited until Corvayne gave her a thumbs up, then fired, aiming for a mine that was just over the railing on the last platform or boat. The shot hit, creating dent on the soon incandesent mine. Even inside Nyx's shields there was a sort of deep WUMP that Corvayne felt in every bone in his body, and a noise something like a thousand weapons breaking. Even in shields and steps the heat and light were enough to instantly start Corvayne sweating. Stepping closer to the entrance to the stairs, Corvayne could see twisted glowing parts of the ship raining down in alarmingly large chunks, leaving trails of steam and smoke as they plunged into boiling water, all while more distant retorts suggested a chain reaction still going.

Instead of looking at all the chaos she had caused, Bell locked eyes with him, even with an arm around her happily cheering daughter. It was the same sort of look he associated with a Watcher who once obsessed over a 'White wolf' he had spent years hunting across the dunes. Why was she suddenly looking at him like prey? And when would Bearer get that damn smirk off her face?

He turned away and started down the steps, the only other noise besides their footfalls and hissing water Hylal humming happily.