The sharply-dressed talking white rabbit plunges into a hole in the ground. The four-eared three-eyed cat pounces in right after it. Burdock doesn’t even hesitate to dive after them.

“Wheeeee!” Anise exclaims, leaping into the hole.

“It’s… it’s safe, right?” Rowan asks, looking warily at the hole.

“Try to keep up!” Meadow says, gesturing to him to go ahead of her.

I certainly don’t wait to jump down a rabbit hole. Rowan comes in a moment above me, with Meadow bringing in the read after making sure to keep the party together.

You have discovered Wonderland. Skills increased: Athletics (Jumping)

“Oh Talgarth, we’re all going to die,” Rowan cries, covering his face with his arms.

“Relax, Rowan,” I say. “I have a feeling that we’re going someplace incredibly silly, though.”

“Burdock, I got your staff,” Meadow says. “I’ll give it back once we land. Try not to forget your equipment next time.”

“Sorry,” Burdock says.

We’re still falling. Down, down, down. All around us blur stone walls covered in glowing fungi, a window looking into a room full of singing white pod things, a glass tube past an entire underground ocean, wooden walls, brick walls, a giant beehive, cupboards and shelves with jars and books, and finally we land in a pile on a wooden floor. Whatever effect prevents us from going splat upon landing doesn’t stop us from softly landing on top of one another.

The room we’ve landed in is plain and sparsely decorated. A purple curtain hangs on one wall, which I pull back to reveal a tiny door too small to admit even Mipsy. To the side of the room stands a table with a tiny key and a tray covered in teacups along with a hot, steaming teapot. Each cup, as well as the pot, is marked with the words ‘Drink me.’

“We fell an awful long way,” Burdock says. “Did we fall all the way to the Underside?”

“Yep,” Anise says. “Don’t worry. You’re safe inside the dungeon.”

“Remember, don’t spoil everything, Anise,” Meadow says.

I’ve already read this story, but it seems this dungeon that decided to imitate a 19th century children’s book has randomized things a little for variety. A teapot instead of a bottle, for instance.

“Obviously, we’re supposed to drink the tea,” I say wryly.

Burdock takes the teapot and pours a shimmering orange liquid into five cups and a saucer. I pick up one and take a sip of something warm and smooth, tasting like caramel, orange marmalade, and something. Before I can start considering mouthfeel, my perception warps. The room just got bigger around me, or more specifically, I got smaller. Only a little shorter, so still too big to fit through that door.

“The tea is cursed!” Rowan exclaims. “You’ve shrunk! I hope it’s only temporary.”

Anise just smirks and stands back watching us. Meadow, for her part, isn’t smirking quite so widely, but neither of them are offering insight.

“There isn’t any other way out of here except that door,” Burdock says. “There’s not even much to the puzzle. Just drink the right amount of tea.”

Burdock goes over to grab his own cup of tea, carefully drinking down a little at a time to get just the right size to fit through the door comfortably. Mipsy laps at her saucer somewhat reluctantly, and shrinks down to a relative size to be as tall as Burdock.

Mipsy scratches at the door. Burdock goes to open it, only to find that it’s locked.

“Was there a key?” Burdock asks in a high-pitched voice.

Rowan sighs and picks up the itty-bitty key off the table. He passes it to Burdock before taking his own cup of tea and sipping himself tiny.

“This is really disorienting,” Rowan squeaks.

“And we’ve only just begun,” I add with a grin.

The rest of us follow suit, with Anise and Meadow going last. Burdock gets the door unlocked, but before he can rush through it, Rowan musters his courage and pushes to the front.

“I’m supposed to be the Guardian here,” Rowan says, hefting his shield. “I should be going first. Even if Anise assures us that there’s no serious danger, we shouldn’t get into bad habits. If we had a Rogue, we ought to be checking everything for traps.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” I say. “My psychic detection skills might spot things out of the ordinary, but they work better for living beings.”

“Be sure to give us a heads-up on any monsters you detect, then,” Rowan says. “Anything past that door, before we open it?”

“Plants,” I say. “No monsters in sight yet. Doesn’t mean they aren’t potentially annoying, though. Plants might also be aggressive, so keep your guard up.”

Rowan cautiously opens the door, bright azure light streaming in through the gap, and we slowly head through behind him.

We emerge into a lush garden teeming with life. Drooping ferns hang overhead like enormous palm trees. Mushroom caps extend their shade like overhanging roofs. Enormous flowers in a myriad of colors brighten the landscape. And above it all, a bright azure sphere shines overhead like a blue ‘sun’.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“What is that?” Rowan asks, shielding his eyes as he looks up.

“That’s Tiganna,” Anise says.

“The skymote?” Rowan says. “It’s so big and bright!”

“Yeah, it’s a lot closer than the other skymotes.”

“I’ve only ever seen the glow over the edge of the domain,” Rowan says. “I never thought about how bright it must be to light up the air like that.”

Seeing Tiganna fills me with a pang of nostalgia, and reminds me that I miss the sun. I never thought I’d say that I miss the sun, given how much of my past life I spent avoiding it.

“I’m detecting some monsters around us,” I say. “Insects and worms, mainly.”

Rowan stops staring at the sky and remembers he’s in a dungeon and should be paying attention to his surroundings. An orange-and-black butterfly the size of a skyship lands on a pink blossom towering above us, but none of the monsters here seem hostile. At the moment, at least.

Leaving [Fractal Consciousness] to watch for monsters, I focus a bit on my [Mapping Step] skill as we explore the garden, trying to level it up as skills tend to level up faster inside dungeons. As I’m using my psychic skills for the bonuses, I notice aether flowing from the environment and into my feet. Anise’s description might have been a bit poor.

According to the books I read, there are four classifications of skills: Self, World, World-to-Self, and Self-to-World. Discipline is the Self skill category for Willpower, imposing order upon yourself, while Maintenance is its World counterpart to impose order upon the world. The enhanced attribute skills are classified as World-to-Self, while the more flashy magic skills are Self-to-World. Watching my feet slowly gather power makes me realize exactly what “World-to-Self” means.

Skills increased: Enhanced Feet (Mapping Step), Clairvoyance (Aether Sense), Enhanced Soul (Fractal Consciousness)

If I’m using them constantly, I’m probably going to max out my Clairvoyance skills long before anything else. I don’t mind, though. Every level makes them cheaper to use. I might as well play into my strengths and see if I can unlock some sort of psychic crafter class when I grow up.

“We might get a better view if we climb on top of one of the mushrooms,” Burdock suggests. “It’s hard to see which way to go from here and there’s no path.”

“I’ll give you a boost,” Rowan says, cupping his hands in front of him.

Burdock puts his foot in Rowan’s hands and clambers up to the top, almost slipping off of the leathery surface. After a moment, he shields his eyes against Tiganna’s light and turns in place as he scans the area.

“Any sign of the rabbit?” Rowan asks.

“Not from here,” Burdock says. “But there’s a caterpillar in a hat on top of another mushroom.”

Burdock points off to the left. After doing another sweep to make sure he hasn’t missed anything interesting, he slides down from the mushroom and lands lightly on the dirt.

“Let’s go have a chat with it, then,” I say. “Lead the way, Rowan.”

Rowan dutifully takes a point. “You think it’ll chat?”

“I hope so,” I say. “I’m hoping it doesn’t want to play cards with us.”

“Did you have to mention the cards?” Rowan says with a groan.

“Sorry.”

Rowan pushes past blades of grass taller than we are, muttering, “I wish I had a sword that was actually sharp to cut through these. I spent all my money on the shield.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and one will drop,” Burdock says.

An giant gray worm pokes its head out of the grass to watch us for a moment before burrowing into the mud. Rowan watches it tensely until it’s gone from view.

We continue on and come to a large blue mushroom Burdock says is the right one. The cap is wide and flat, so we should all be able to fit up there (except possibly Mipsy). A red caterpillar-shaped aura confirms it.

Category Monster Race Insect Gender Male Rank Basic Mood Nervous Disposition Neutral

With the increases to my psychic skills, now I’m able to gauge a being’s disposition toward me and my party as distinct from merely their mood. I telepathically send the system box to my party members.

The concepts I can see have gotten way too complex to handle actually seeing them all at once anymore. I’ve shuffled [Aspect Analysis] off onto the memory of my past self when I have the Inspiration to do so, but left on the basic outlines of beings by colored by category as they had been at the beginning, but now I’m thinking disposition might be a more useful default. It’s important to immediately know if something is likely to attack me or not, and unveiled hostility is so easy a thing for [Empathy] that even an otherwise useless starship counselor from a scifi series can detect it.

After a moment, I figure out how to swap over the visible auras in my third eye and keep the rest of the information for system boxes to quantify. Under disposition vision, the neutral caterpillar is yellow, Rowan is green, and my family members are violet.

Meanwhile, Burdock and Rowan are trying to figure out how to actually get everyone up there, and ultimately decide to just have an indignant Mipsy help boost us up.

The fuzzy green caterpillar saw us coming the whole way from his vantage point of slightly higher than the surrounding grass. He doesn’t doff his purple top hat to greet us, and eyes the monster cat uneasily.

“You’re a funny looking lot,” the caterpillar says. “Who are you all?”

We give a round of introductions, and after the caterpillar doesn’t respond with his own name, I ask, “Who are you?”

“I am the Caterpillar.”

“Have you seen a white rabbit go by?” Burdock asks.

“Perhaps I have,” says the Caterpillar (with a capital C and everything). “Is that the only reason you came to me? To ask for information or directions? No, no, that simply won’t do at all. Tell me in rhyme, why are you here?”

I clear my throat. “We saw a caterpillar in a hat, and decided to stop by for a chat.”

“Terrible,” the Caterpillar says. “Do you even have any skill at poetry at all?”

“Nope,” I say with a smirk.

He looks toward Burdock and Rowan. “Surely one of you can do better. I cannot imagine you could possibly do any worse.”

“We jumped down a really deep hole, because exploring this dungeon is our goal,” Burdock says.

The Caterpillar doesn’t even deign to comment on that and looks at Rowan.

“Um… um…” Rowan stammers. “Crap… uh… we’re looking for a rabbit… let’s not make this a habit?”

Nobody here is actually speaking English, so I have no idea what the system auto-translator does with rhymes. I think it must psychically translate rhymes and puns somehow, but how is an open question.

“I believed your [Psychic Child] was the worst at this, but I am sadly mistaken. You are all hopeless. Tch. I do hope none of you aspires to become a Bard.”

We all shake our heads.

“Can you give us a hint at least?” Burdock asks.

“Oh, very well,” the Caterpillar says. “One type of mushroom here makes you larger. Another type makes you smaller.”

Without another word, the Caterpillar crawls off, leaving us looking over the various colored mushrooms and realizing there are more than two types here.

Burdock’s emotional state shifts to ‘dismayed’. “Oh Corwen, I’ve been trying to learn about plants and funguses, but I can’t remember all of them and Daisy’s book doesn’t talk about all the ones only found in dungeons.”

“Fungi,” I say reflexively, deciding not to think about magical auto-translation while in the middle of a dungeon.

“Well, I know even less than you do,” Rowan says. “And while I dislike the idea of randomly munching on weird mushrooms found in a dungeon, it doesn’t seem like we have much choice unless we want to wander off while tiny and look for another way to get big again.”