Corvayne passed across the threshold into a cool dark chamber. A bit of cold water flowed along the floor, not deeper then his ankle. No lobby, no inn. He can feel hostility coming from somewhere nearby, but there was also a faint blue ring around the arched stone they had walked out of. He wasn't surprised orange lines barred his way back. The rest of the group started filling in after him.

Looking around, he could it was something like a grid of dark purple and blue halls. What he did not see was the boss or bosses. There would be two, given they had a large enough group. The water outside of where they were stepping was still, and with the light of the spell Lady Blood Claw summoned he could see the water remained shallow even further from the circle. The glowing blue circle didn't move as everyone was in.

"I don't see the monster, and it's a large area, but it feels like the end floor challenge."

Lady Blood Claw drew her blazing sword. "We should be able to kill anything it throws at us, but expect two." He could see in addition to her shifting skin color there were some faint fields around her. Sometime he'd need to sit down with her and talk about magic.

He was already thinking about getting disemboweled by an acid dragon. Still, it was the last hurdle before they could start making their way up and out. Corvayne did a full circle of the ring containing the entrance, but didn't see hostiles.

Bearer looked relaxed, though Corvayne for a moment saw her dislocate her arm, rotate it in a full circle with a lot more cracking than sounded healthy, then put it back in place with a snap, then give a thumbs up.

Brines still had Spears holding Bell on his back, blue slime forming a harness that the bird was using to ride piggyback. Brines himself sneezed and sniffed. Hopefully once they were out of the dungeon, and the other dungeon, he could try using mend to fix allergies.

Bell had her sword, a shield, and looked with trepidation around the arena. Perhaps she had better instincts than Corvayne had assumed.

Finally, Nyxion floated past the band of light, which made a faint snapping noise. Corvayne fell in beside him, water sloshing as they moved deeper into rows of dark halls. The others followed behind, tentatively.

There was no attack and no sign of movement as they left the initial open area and stepped to an intersection. Faint lights shaped like twisted vines illuminated brass details on the walls, with lines of crowned figures etched onto the walls, all facing the same way. Corvayne stopped a moment to look as he saw what looked like the Magus pointing. There was a line on the wall at the Magus's back, and he could see there were tiny figures, stumbling and flailing.

He heard movement then, something like tapping and whirring, and had his spear ready. He looked at Nyx, and after sharing a nod he sprinted forward, water pattering as he jumped to the next intersection and turned, seeing something gleaming in the dark and skittering away.

"Another robot spider?"

He moved around the corner and his danger sense flared for a moment as hit foot hit something. His armor created a sphere of water a moment before he was flung backwards and upwards into a wall, slamming into it and going further up before spinning in a dizzy spiral down. He dropped gravity but still slammed into the floor, and heard another chime. This time his shadow limbs shot out and punted something away from him as gravity also kicked in. A moment later there was a blast and he was rolling through water, steam rising from where he just was.

"Fuck. More mines?" His hearing was coming back from a high whine, and while he was sore his armor had saved him from the initial impact.

Getting to his feet, he saw one of the creatures. It looked robotic, catching the glint of the dim lights on a chrome shell. It looked like detached metal hands holding and strangling something like an animal, metal carved eyes bulging, mouth open with rodent like incisors, steel tounge gently wiggling then falling out of it's mouth, falling still in the water as the limp limbs gently sloshed water.

He was willing to bet the little metal presents it was also leaving from it's backside were also mines.

He considered then Nyxion. Nearly immune to explosions, floating...

"I think you should find the other one. If you don't float near the walls or floor they can't hurt you."

Nyxion grinned. "Hah, content not to be the star of the show?"

Corvayne shrugged. "I just want to get us out. Glory can wait for when we don't have soft party members. Besides, if Spears was up to it, she'd be the other top pick."

He double backed to where the rest of the party had stopped. "Mines from a large robot. Hold your ground. Me and Nyxion will hunt them."

Bearer grabbed Spears off of Brines back while also letting Hylal down. The little bird girl waved to Corvayne's favorite blob before Bearer lobbed Spears-Like-Water at him, a small shriek punctuating the toss. He dropped his spear to catch her, shadow hand stopping it from hitting the ground. He gave the blueish orb a quick squeeze.

"Whats the big idea?" He felt himself glaring at Bearer.

"Robots and finding things in water. She's better at this than you. Just be her legs."

Spears wiggled into his Jam Jammies, which made him clench a little and fire off the meteor-berries that he had got from slamming into a wall. "Spears, this isn't the time or place or company to start poking around down there..."

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A muffled voice from his pants called back up. "This is just to fight the monster!"

He almost believed her before she giggled a little bit and gave a non-combat related part of him a squeeze. He clenched his jaw shut. A single eye extended from the top of the jammies while two feelers were trailing his boots out the bottom. "All right, with this I can feel the water."

He looked back. "Lady Blood Claw..."

The tall alien woman rolled her eyes. "We get it. We'll keep the others safe. Good hunting."

Bell stepped forward, looking slightly irate. "You don't need to do everything yourself."

"I'm not going to do anything besides support Spears here." And maybe throw a supersonic staff through a robot. Maybe.

He started stalking the waterways. He heard one explosion distantly in the direction Nyxion had been going, but guessed that one burst wasn't enough to break the shield.

The arena was not small. It was, by his estimate, something like a floor itself. There were different variations on the drawing he saw. People standing in front of an arch, or people in front of the royal palace, or stars crossing the sky. The sort of drawings he expected on tombs, and ones that aside from the Magus didn't seem to strike any chords. There was a small tug on his leg and he stopped.

"Trail of mines ahead." Spears said, generating a psudopod out of his pants and gesturing a curve.

"Maybe it started here?" Corvayne thought about it. They could try to follow a trail to find the monsters, even if they ran away.

"Hold still, I'll see if I can tell where things are moving."

Corvayne stopped, just breathing and waiting. Spears hummed for a little bit, and he saw blue lines spreading out from his pants leg.

"Do you think your going to recover soon?" Potions didn't work for regenerating her, apparently.

"It's going to be a few weeks. Sorry, I hadn't fought something made of electricity before." She stopped putting more feelers out and instead went back to poking him inside his pants, which he rapped on.

"As long as you are getting better... really though please focus on the area outside my pants."

"The water will wash away any evidence Corvayne." She start wiggling inside his pants.

"I'm not in the mood." He tried to state, while his own body started betraying him. Spears laughed a little.

"We are all alone in a dark place, we can make as much noise as we want..."

He pulled the hem of the strawberry pants open and looked Spears in the eye, doing everything in his power to ignore when she made a blue semi-clear breast instead of an eye.

"We want to find these things and get out. The longer we wait, the more mines." Keeping his voice steady to get her to stop. All the while he was thinking on if he would be self reliant... for a few weeks. He DID have a warm and willing blob he loved in his pants.

"Oh right, you're going to take Bell too."

He sighed. "That's not the direction I was going with this."

She created a thin line of glowing blue that floated above the dark water, circling where explosives were. "I didn't think you stop with me. I mean, Hari and Wick couldn't keep up."

If mentioning Bell had taken some of the wind from his sails, that stopped him outright. "Hari definitely kept up."

"Well, I can't give you the full attention you need right now, and you and Lady Blood Claw are playing some sort of waiting game, but Bell? She is waiting for you to ravish her. And it would secure your place as local royalty."

"She has a daughter."

Spears laughed. "They are both exiles. Where you go, they will follow. It will be good dad practice."

Corvayne could only think there were minefields everywhere. "Spears, I don't think I'm ready for a family, and I'm not sure I want to date multiple people again."

"Oh, so I'm enough for the rest of your life?"

While there was a taunt in the question, she also didn't sound displeased. He was then struck by how odd it was to talk to his slime girlfriend in his pants about other women. He had to stop himself from following the glowing line into a silver mine that had burrowed into the wall.

"I don't know yet. I feel like I'm a novice in these things, and everyone else is an expert trying to beat into me that I need to do better or that I'm doing things wrong."

"I'm not saying that! But I also always expected to share a husband. It's how the Watchers did things before. I heard before we were pulled to here the ratio of women to men was 1 to 8."

Corvayne tried to think about how many woman there were around the Village. "Do you know what here and there means? I know the refugee thing..."

"Aliens! A more advanced society with lots of races, and tons of women in case they needed to bolster our numbers quickly..."

"We are very different species. Basic biology..."

She tugged him to stop him from getting too close to a wall. He could see now little holes where silver mines waited. They must be able to move a little, or to drill into the ground.

"I was told that if I wanted kids, we'd have to 'go home' first."

Corvayne took a deep breath. "To the Watchers village, or the place before?"

"The place before."

"Well, to do that, we need to find the watchers, so let's find some more landmines then you can convince me that you really do want me dating other girls. I'm not opposed to it," Which he hadn't fully admitted until his mouth said it, "But I'm not going to put you through what I went through."

"Okay. Fine. I'll admit it. Me, Diamonds, Suns..."

He felt faint danger. "Do you sense movement?"

"Wait, this is important! I gotta tell you... oh yeah, the boss is ahead burying mines into the walls, but listen, I wasn't the only girl in the village who was going to marry you."

Could this wait? Until after they engaged a monster in a battle to the death? "... so when one of those other girls shows up..."

"Make up for lost time, and really, you need to see if you like us. Wick and Hari... you did make a good team with those two, but Wick was too advanced and Hari too inexperenced."

"And you?"

"Oh, I've been trying to date you for years. I'm a pro." She proudly proclaimed. "Okay, let's kill this thing."

She bubbled and a psudopod pushed something hard into his hands. Two pink bullets.

"Stop using your blood, I can kill it with dust storm." He muttered, then followed the glowing blue line around two corners, catching the monster making out with the wall. He didn't hesitate, running at the creature and starting [Sundering Strike]. At first he assumed it dodged, then he saw the hands had split off from the main body, revealing writhing silver mines.

Thinking fast he pivoted into [Storm Thrust] then yelled out "[Flows Like Water]!" while switching to [[Agility]].

Spears understood exactly and at nearly the same time they fell into the second skill, two jets of water hurtling around a corner as the creature detonated. Corvayne saw a hand picking one of the silver wriggling mines from the wall and pulled out the indestructible staff and hurled it with [Expert Toss] right at the mine-head. With a thump the hand was blasted into the opposite wall. There were three or four left.

"Where are they?"

"Left!" Spears called. She held up a hand and he passed her the spear, calling Argyle's staff back to his hand and then spinning as he saw something moving above them. Thinking fast, he used Gravity to slow the monster's fall then [Grand Slam], angling the attack to be more like golf than baseball, hitting the metal monstrosity clutching a clutch of mines and popping it into the air a few moments before it went off in a cluster of explosions. At the same time, Spears swung his weapon in a wide arc, water whipping behind it before she directed three spears to slam into the mechanical hand, each watery limb tipped with explosives.

Corvanye and Spears both saw the last hand trying to get away and she drew his rifle and he loaded the pink slime bullets, together aiming and firing two shots that connected. A moment later the metallic monster started spasmming, and the entire floor then groaned. He heard a thud, and Corvayne turned to see the walls were smashing together. He couldn't react as the thuds sped up until it was a cacophony and it felt like he was being whipped along the floor... to the area they had come into, stairway down and chest waiting.

Of course, Bearer was teaching Hylal and Bell some sort of card game. She looked up at him, a look so perfectly innocent on her face that Corvayne was once again completely convinced the woman was pure evil. "How'd your little chat with Spears go?"