A dungeon to some small degree reflected the space around it when it first came into being. The Prime Dungeons, though — the dungeons that were the core of every Kingdom, and powered most of their supply of mana crystals — those were the exceptions to the rule. Over time, they'd grown to reflect the kingdoms they belonged to, though those kingdoms had been built long after those dungeons appeared.

The dungeon that now stood before them was one example of three. Vex had no idea what the Anderstahl dungeon looked like; the Elyran one was the only Prime he'd had the opportunity to study. And even then, in the year and a half since he'd been gone, it had changed.

The major details were the same. The dungeon was still underground, located in a crater in the center of a massive cavern. That crater was host to what was effectively a enormous chandelier that hung from the ceiling. A long time ago, that had been nothing but rocks and stalactites; the original dungeon had been one of earth and stone, and as the kingdom of Elyra had grown...

It had turned into crystal. In some ways it seemed like a dedication to wealth and opulence, which caused no small amount of debate amongst scholars; in other ways, it simply looked like a reflection of Elyran society itself. The upper tiers of the chandelier were lit in the colors of the various noble Houses, casting multicolored lights onto the rest of the crystal. Crystals on the lower tiers of the chandelier reflected and refracted those upper-tier lights, bouncing light around until it struck the walls of the cavern.

Where it was different was the fact that some of the crystals that represented their noble Houses had cracks in them. Some of the crystals that represented the lower tiers of the chandelier had grown. And the thing it all hung on — a long string of indestructible metal — looked considerably thinner than Vex remembered.

Vex couldn't help but notice that the Ashion crystal was cracked nearly all the way through.

"Holy shit," Misa said, whistling. "I didn't think Prime Dungeons looked like this. Damn. It's actually kinda beautiful."

"Very deadly, though," Vex noted, trying to ignore what he saw of his own family's crystal. The dungeon wasn't a predictive force, he told himself; it was a reflection. And that reflection was... not inaccurate, the way things were now.

The dungeon wasn't for low-level adventurers. Vale had more or less perfected the art of dungeon-delving, at least for this particular dungeon — they were familiar with almost all the tricks and traps the dungeon had to offer — and even then they didn't have a complete success rate when it came to dungeon completion. The dungeon would often come up with something new, as if in a deliberate attempt to throw them off.

Fortunately, even without the dilation of a bonus room, this dungeon itself dilated time by about three or four times, fluctuating based on ambient mana levels. Which meant they'd at least have the time to be careful.

"I'd give you a tour, but I really don't have time," Helix said, glancing around nervously. "I think Vex knows everything he needs to get you guys into the dungeon. Try to avoid any delve or research teams you come across. There shouldn't be one scheduled right now — we got you in during a shift swap — but the research guys wander where they shouldn't all the time and the delvers follow them around, so be careful."

"I'm kind of amazed you got us here at all," Vex said, then paused, giving his brother a hesitant smile. "I'm glad it wasn't a trap. Thanks."

"I wasn't that bad," Helix said. He pulled the wagon around, starting to cart it off back the way he came. "Uh, I mean, maybe I was. Sorry. We should... catch up sometime."

Vex nodded, and his brother disappeared quickly around the corner. The lizardkin didn't wait before he started clambering towards the chandelier-dungeon; the glittering crystals scattered on the floor made traversing that terrain a challenge, but he picked his way across fairly easily. Derivan had an even easier time of it, where he would have had trouble before. His armor simply molded around the ground.

Sev and Misa... tripped a few times. It was fine, probably, even if Misa grumbled a bit.

"Your family has that [Reinforcement] buff too, right?" Misa asked him quietly, as they were headed towards the chandelier.

"...Yeah," Vex said. "I've been trying not to think too hard about it. Most of them already bought into Elyran philosophy in the first place, so I don't think it changed them too much. It might even have helped Helix and the others in the opposite direction. I'm hoping they didn't apply it to Riss."

"They did not," Derivan said. "I did not see evidence of that buff on your father, either, for what that is worth."

"...I was hoping that he did have it on him," Vex said quietly. "Would've been nice to have something to blame. I mean, Helix changed his mind after I left. The fact that Dad didn't—"

"He's not worth your time, Vex," Misa said. She softened a little bit when she saw the way the lizardkin sagged, and placed a hand on his shoulder. "If he hasn't changed by now, I don't think he's going to. And even if he does, are you actually going to forgive him?"

"I don't know," Vex answered honestly. "I've been trying not to think about it."

"Well," Sev said. "You're going to have all the time you need to think about it soon. Because we're here."

The entrance to the Elyran dungeon sat right at the bottom of the massive, ethereal-looking chandelier; it was a small doorway carved into the very tip, a large crystal hanging just an inch off the ground and slowly rotating. Within that crystal was a room that was barely enough to fit four people, though Vex knew from experience that the internal space was much, much larger than it initially appeared. There was some debate about whether or not that first room simply teleported you to a different space or whether it was actually engaging extreme spatial compression, but with what he now knew of the system, it was probably yet another Shift.

"I don't see any research teams around," Misa said, glancing around quickly; [Guard Stance] flickered quickly over her body, along with a few other skills, as she rotated through the various forms of precognition she had. "Nothing in adjacent timelines either. I think we're good. Once we go in it'll close off the dungeon to others, right?"

"Yes," Vex said. "But we need to do it one at a time. The dungeon likes separating people that enter together; if you enter one at a time, there are better odds that you end up in the same place as someone else." He pointed up. "Once we get through the starting room, we'll end up in any one of those spires up there. We can meet up when we head towards the center."

"Any idea where the bonus room is going to be?" Sev asked.

"No," Vex said, then hesitated. "...But if it's anywhere, it's going to be in the Ashion wing."

He pointed to the colors of his House in particular, in one of the southwest spires of the chandelier. The cracks that ran through it were uglier, from up close, and he tried not to look too closely at them. Maybe the cracks were there because of his bonus room, and not because of anything related to his family.

"We should meet up in the center first still, though," Vex said. "We'll appear in the lower tier and have to make our way up to the upper tier together, anyway, and then head for the Ashion section."

"What should we expect in the starter room?" Misa asked.

"It's a pretty simple puzzle. The point of it is mostly to make it take longer for people that enter one by one, I think," Vex said, wincing slightly. "It's just a maze. The faster you make your way through it, the faster the rest of us can get in. The time dilation works against it, here, so you have more time to try to make your way through."

"But it does mean we have to stay outside the dungeon and wait," Sev noted.

"Yeah," Vex said. "It's not... the best plan. Worst case, we can head in together, and just deal with being separated."

"We'll try the one-by-one strategy," Sev decided. "If the next shift starts heading over, whoever's left should just jump in. They might be separated from whoever went in before them, but that's better than all of us being separated."

"Then we better get started," Misa said. She stepped forward, through the barrier—

"Shift," Derivan noted with curiosity. He stared at the entrance to the dungeon. "And... hmm. I would like to be last, if that is possible. There is an oddity I would like to examine."

Misa, Sev, Vex, then Derivan. That was the order they settled on, mostly because Misa had gone through first before they could fully settle on a plan; otherwise they probably would have sent Sev through first. Vex would stay behind for his knowledge of the dungeon, if it was needed, and Derivan would be last so he could observe all three of them pass through the dungeon barrier.

"It'll flash with light when Misa is done with the starter room," Vex said. "And in the meantime, the dungeon will start summoning monsters outside. We don't have to worry about that, though. There are enchantments to automatically deal with the summons."

"So entering the dungeon one by one is an intended mechanic?" Sev asked. "It doesn't even guarantee that you end up at the same place."

"Intended implies that dungeons have intent to them, and there's obviously some measure of intent, but I don't know if it's something that was explicitly designed," Vex said. "I'm of the opinion that most dungeon challenges are emergent. There are basically four possible locations we can end up. If we enter together, we each end up in a different spot. If we enter one by one, the odds that one of us appears in the same spot as someone else is minimally 25%. When people discovered that, the dungeon evolved a counter. It's not necessarily intended, but it is cooperative design."

"Which is weird for a dungeon that's trying to kill us," Sev noted.

"I'll give you that, yeah," Vex agreed. He glanced at the dungeon entrance again — there was no trace of Misa, still, though he knew that she was there. Derivan was half-paying attention to them, and half-paying attention to the dungeon entrance. "How's Misa doing, Deri?"

"I can sort of... sense her," Derivan said hesitantly. "Through Shift. But it keeps changing, like she's constantly moving— Oh. She's using her timeline skill."

The entrance room flashed with light; it had taken her all of a minute to get through the maze. Vex was fairly certain that was record-breaking.

"She has left markers for us," Derivan said. "...Interesting. I believe Shift is used to contain her timelines... the dungeon is attempting to scrub her markers, but it is taking longer, as she has left them across many different versions of herself."

"Then I'll be quick," Sev said. He stepped into the entrance, leaving only Vex and Derivan standing behind; Derivan seemed focused on the dungeon, leaving Vex to stay on the lookout for anything approaching them.

The Elyran dungeon had many, many automated traps and enchantments built into the area, specifically to make this process easier. Vex could already feel the outpouring of mana into their environment as various traps triggered, interrupting monsters as they were created. There was a question here he wanted to answer.

What were monsters?

The opportunity he had here was unique. He'd wanted to answer this question for Derivan before, but they hadn't yet come across anything that could answer that question. Here, though, was a unique opportunity — the Elyran dungeon didn't just call to monsters like mana nuclei did during crystal collection.

It created them.

The monsters that attacked when it was being entered came from spawn points that their researchers had identified and categorized. It was a predictable, reproducible response, and therefore it had been easy to create a defense against them; there'd even been some attempts to study how those monsters were created, though not much progress had ever been made in those studies. There was a gathering of mana around each spawn point, but no apparent spell being cast.

Mana and monsters were related. But they weren't the same thing. If there had been a spell, then Elyra would have found it long ago; if there was simply some way to turn mana into a creature, then Vex felt he would have detected that process in some way.

There was a secret here. What was it?

Vex felt more mana gathering, this time somewhere close by.

Slowly, with an application of [Splash of Mana] and his paintbrush, he began to draw his Sign.