Getting Hylal a fresh set of clothes, some food and water, and a healing potion did a lot of good for both her and Bell. Corvayne used Gravity and strained himself a little to ferry Hylal and Bell back to the group. It was well worth a bit of fatigue, as Corvayne could feel himself relaxing at the sight of them hugging, at Bell trying to wipe away tears, and running her hands along her daughter's beak and watching the bird girl curl up against her.

Sitting in the dungeon, even with it's purple and blue haze, dank slime coated walkways, and the slight smell of sea life decaying... it couldn't stop him from enjoying the moment. Right up until he started thinking about the next steps they'd need to take to actually get out of a one way Dungeon. They had reached the bottom, now they needed to re-surface.

"It feels low level, at least." Lady Blood Claw said, perhaps reading his mood as she kicked a fish corpse off the pathway.

"Brines, Spears... can I have you two help carry Hylal?" Corvayne figured they kept Brines in the center of their formations, with Spears as a sort of sling, it would keep the young bird-woman out of harms way. Besides the mass of feathers and the young girls beak, the plumage she had was the same red as her mother's hair.

Spears slid off his back after a squeeze, then rolled up onto Brines's workout clothes with sewn on armor. Corvayne noted that Brines looked VERY uncomfortable, forcing a smile anyway when Hylal said "Thank you uncle!" and wrapped her finger clad wings around his neck, some of the loose feathers sticking to the slime where spears was.

"Oh of course." Brines said, before sneezing.

Spears manifested a head. "Are you allergic?"

"No no." He said, nose starting to run. He sneezed again. "It's probably a cold from all the dungeon air."

Corvayne was about to step in to suggest someone else carry Hylal, but Bearer leaned over to Brines. "Wow, who'd think you would be willing to suffer to help that girl out? Now I think you WOULD make a good dad."

Corvayne caught Nyxion muttering under his breath. "Sadistic."

Lady Blood Claw didn't bother to hide it. "It makes sense because he's the middle of the formation, and isn't going to have his legs give out like your mom will."

Bell looked upset. She even added in Cascadian "I can carry!"

"Your job is to motivate Corvayne." Nyx folded his arms and gestured at Brines. "Brines doesn't have to do that all the time."

"What does that mean?" She looked over to Covrvayne, angrily, as if she understood perfectly and he had anything to do with it. All she did was ask him to help her, that hardly counted as motivating.

"All you did was ask me to help you. They are teasing us." Corvayne explained, considering giving Nyx the bird.

Bell, after a moment of glaring at Nyxion, turned to Corvayne and smiled, actually taking his hand for a moment to squeeze it, then turned to Hylal and ran her hand along the feathers on her head.

"I had always wished to see mom again! I was thinking, when I was getting sleepy just now, maybe I'd get to see her one more time! Thank you for making my wish come true, Step-Dad Corvayne!"

There was a pair of snorts, one that to Corvayne's ear was sure was Bearer, the other suspiciously watery from beyond where Hylal and Bell were both looking at him with wide eyed expressions.

"Please, don't jump to-"

"Uncle Brines, Step Dad Corvayne, thank you for saving me! You as well, Queen Bloody Thorn! Big Bro Nyxion, Twisted Sister Bearer, and huggy slime!"

Corvayne could see Bell herself looking confused. "Okay, we'll sort out our real names and titles on the way home. We got a dungeon to run."

A loud sneeze punctuated him turning to lead the way.

During the following navigation first floor, Corvayne learned that Hylal had survived by killing fish and pulling them out of passing cubes and getting fresh water by using magic to condense the moisture in the air into a little canteen. She has two older half-brothers, and may be either the princess of the tribe or a total pariah, given that her father is something like a king but she herself lived really far from everyone else and spent a lot of time growing up in the company of a few injured hunters who taught her pretty much everything she knew.

This story went on while Corvayne was trying to make sense of collapsing paths, endless spear and arrow traps, and a boatload of aquatic monsters that, while pathetically weak taken alone, had a level of spite that he hadn't seen since he barbecued a porcupine and lost an eye for it. The crabs exploded in spiked shards, some of the walking fish had organs that melted their bodies and smoothed out the stones, some of the tangles of snapping eels were charged with electricity even after death, and worst of all were cute seal like creatures with pathetic attacks that once killed revealed they were writhing with parasites. Worms and fanged things would boil out of the body the moment it was still, trying to seek out and burrow into flesh.

Corvayne just started using his fire-breathing dagger every time, resting between fights be damned. He didn't want to imagine having a single one of those monsters touch him.

There were more subtle dangers. The stone paths were slippery and had narrower bridges in places with a slight slope that made them treacherous. The threat of a fall was dire too, even though they could spot water no more than a hundred feet below. Corvayne couldn't see obvious points to try to get back out after looking dozens of times at the lowest floor. It made the large shadow shapes just below the water even more threatning.

It was slim pickings on the loot, as well... wayward daughters aside, of course. There was one chest they discovered wedged in a salt encrusted grate... and it was trapped to the point of damaging it's contents. Hylal took a mostly intact robe with singed sleves, replacing the rags she had been wearing. Some of the potions had broken but Corvayne pulled out a slighty molten healing potion. He got a sense that the magical items not damaged were cursed and put them away for someone to ID, either Hari or Seru.

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Nyxion helped take some of the attention from the endless traps, and from behind Hylal would sometimes pepper enemies with her spells, unassuming bolts of fire, lines of lightning, and shards of ice that injured but rarely killed the ever present monsters. Lady Blood Claw kept casting spells on Corvayne, mostly some sort of effect that hardened his skin further.

He had lead them up for a few floors before finding an orange sealed stairway upwards. He didn't comment about forgetting that they were going DOWN in a tower-like space now, but instead worked his way forward and down to the inky ocean below, keeping his eyes open for cubes drifting at their path. More than once he had to backtrack as he saw the potential of being stranded on a pillar with both pathways dragged away, the slowly moving impossible blocks of water having a sort of maliciousness in how innocent the paths looked until one saw a potential checkmate from a cube drifting downwards.

It was slow, and he resisted an urge to test how well they could just swim with a cube past problems. There were fish that looked to Corvayne a little too close to piranhas for him to want to risk anyone not as tough as himself.

Down on a path nearly touching the water, Corvayne had to pause. "I have no doubt there's going to be a lot of monsters from the depths. I want to move like a double wedge, with me and Nyx near the front clearing the way and triggering traps, Lady Blood Claw blitzing through whatever we leave, and the others following up."

He gestured, not sure if the others could see the little building and it's tell-tale faint blue glow, nestled in the pillars supporting platforms far above them, that looked to be the down stairs. He took a deep breath, made sure [[Vitality]] was on, and started down the path.

Almost immediately the dark waters churned with white froth and segmented worms, grasping tentacles, scurrying barnacle encrusted sea-roaches, and fish with human-hand like feet swarmed the platform. Corvayne used [Cross Skill: Circle of Death] to cull the herd, careful to not hit Nyxion. Nyx used his fear effect and his whip to batter an open line ahead, then simply let his shield knock anything that remained on the path off. There were splashes and more thrashing as monsters struggled in the dim waters, sometimes too injured to float, other times getting back up and clambering at Corvayne.

The real threat wasn't just the spines, teeth, stinging cells, or whatever the hell else was crowding him and breaking against his incredibly durable Jam-Jammies. No, the problem was now and then weightier monsters would hit him from the side, pushing him closer to churning water.

He doubled down on his own weight while Nyx simply floated along with a tentacle battering him off the path, shields holding and his whip lazily flicking out, melting the titanic appendage. Behind them, Brines spun, both daggers slashing with lightning and fire anything trying to get at Hylal, who was also flinging spells around.

Corvayne even saw Spears jabbing away with her weapon, head only formed enought to direct her eyes but arms handling her spear like an expert glued to Brine's back.

Lady Blood Claw hissed. "Keep going forward!" as she cleaned up the monsters that had tried to seperate them. Corvayne didn't need to be told twice, using [Storm Thrust] and [Flow-Like-Water] to keep up with Nyxion, who alternated between doing something to drive the monsters wailing off the platform into the water, then gathering clumps of them before detonating grenades just outside his shield.

The end effect was that the path was slick with monster guts, some of them smelling like cooked fish, the rest reeking of whatever measures they took to try to poison or explode their killers.

They were just about haflway there when, even with gravity keeping him steady, a flailing limb, bouncing off Nyxion's shield, came at him, catching him in his center of gravity as he was walking on a gore-slicked brick. He stumbled and tried to windmill his arms. He tried to shift his weight all into his foot but the power resisted the attempt and he fell backwards into the water, cold shocking him as he tried to orient himself.

At the same time, something big brushed up against his leg before swarms of smaller monsters converged. With no land to stand on, he simply took whatever punishment their fangs and claws and fins could do, putting his spear away and stabbing out at the monsters with his glowing red fire-sword. The molten weapon caused rents of steam to surface, even as fish-like monsters clamped onto his other arm and started ripping. The pain of it's needle teeth breaking the skin wasn't as unpleasant as how heavy it was, trying to drag him further down as he slammed his knife into it. The monster burst like a fleshy popcorn kernal and started drifting upwards.

Corvayne could see flashes of fighting above and was swimming up, lungs starting to protest, when something clamped onto his leg and ripped him further downwards, something bigger than him and made of coiling muscles.

He had no time for this. [Cross-Skill: Flow-Like-Water] let him free his leg and shoot upwards, breaking the surface with a crest of froth and landing him in the middle of their formation, where a wounded Bell hit him with her sword. Thankfully on his armor, meaning only a secondary effect of a nasty shock came through. Nothing compared to the golem.

"Sorry! Sorry! I thought you were a-"

Corvayne shoved her to one side and Brines to another as a huge open mouth came flying at them. Corvayne protected his head and neck as it bowled him over and tried to bite down. He crashed into the dark and cold water with his mouth open and inhaled some. His lungs instantly started to hurt, and his instincts caused him to panic, pushing him to try to bash the armored scales with his free hand still outside the mouth, legs and torso being battered by teeth that couldn't push past the Jam-Jamies. He clenched his butt, mostly just trying to flail, and the saved meteor charges exploded in the monster's mouth, strawberries embedding themselves in the stiff flesh and filling it with a salty and vile mix of salt water, sweet berry jam, and rancid monster blood. The sensation of drowning and wanting to gag for a moment overwhelmed him, and he was sure this would be his second death.

The monster was flailing, but tried to bite down again, huge jaw hammering his arm even through his tremendous durability.

He steeled himself and put on his poker face. He would not die without doing everything he could to fight back. He opened his eyes, despite the misshapen teeth filling multiple jaws and blood filled water. He pushed his face through the water towards one of the berry meteorites in the monster and tried to breath in the goop flowing from it.

The identify had not lied about the pants, as he was able to get a single clean breath out of the slime before more water dispersed it. One breath was enough for him to clear his head. Even as the monster kept trying to break him by chewing, Corvayne pulled his other arm into the monster's mouth and then braced himself, searing dagger pointed at the roof of the mouth. No room to draw his main weapon, so he would become a spear himself.

It bit down again, and as it did Corvayne activated [Cross-Skill: Shield Wall] and formed his own barrage of spines, each one a searing dagger that lit up the horror's mouth in orange light. At the same time his shadow limbs all pointed upwards, and as the jaw shut he pushed everything at the roof of the mouth. It felt like charging into the front of a bus, the painless sensation of his shadow arms getting hit hard enough to snap unpleasant to say the least, but the fish's upper jaw then pushed into the multiple lines of daggers. In an instant they seared the monster, flesh glowing as each knife flash boiled it's blood before bubbles of steam burst into his face. Corvayne scalded himself, but it was nothing compared to every point burying itself in the monster.

There was a moment when his chain mail kicked in and formed a bubble of clean cool water, not a moment too soon before something gave in the monster's skull and Corvayne was sent rocking out of it in a torrent of gore. He adjusted his own gravity down and in turn buoyed up out of the water with too much velocity. With his first gasp of real air after coughing up sea water mid flight, he started screaming. Mostly because he could literally feel his ass cooking from steam trapped in the berry pants, but a detached part of him suspected would have been screaming anyway as he fell back down to the stone walkway, or would have crashed if Lady Blood Claw didn't catch him in a perfect princess carry before sliding on her knees right to the stairway down to floor 2.

She gave him a glare, then winked once with a faint smile. He winked back. Thanks LBC.

He looked back and saw that Spears had extended her arm to the water and was retracting it, but also looked a little queasy on her slime face. Her color was off too, darker than it should be. Corvayne felt agony with every little movement., because he had cooked himself like a lobster to the point all the skin he could see on his hands were bright red and felt hard to move, but he still moved over to Spears.

"Corvayne! You scared me!" She sounded relived but even shouting her voice sounded weaker.

Bearer chuckled. "She's pushing herself to get stronger! She was about to pull the entire ocean up and flip it upside down!"

"You are having trouble keeping Hylal on Brines." Corvayne stated, pulling the girl off Brines and then gathering up the now much less cohesive girlfriend. "Trust in me."

She curled around him, less constrictive. "You always... worry about others instead of..."

He took out a healing potion. "Drink."

She slipped around it, then handed him back an empty cork and bottle. She felt... limp. The short fight with the golem... he was starting to worry that it wasn't as temporary a set back as he had hoped. Spears kept mumbling. "I didn't know if you swam well enough to-"

"Good enough to get back to the surface. Rest."

With nothing more to say, he lead the way down to floor 2.