So there I was, trapped alone in a dark cavern with two attractive women. One was an overpowered holy paladin, the other possessed an uncontrollable succubus aura that, I was coming to realize, only seemed to affect men.

Ugh, sounds like a bad sitcom plot. One I wouldn't particularly even enjoy watching, much less being stuck inside of. (Of course, the sitcom version probably wouldn't involve the staccato tapping of some sort of claws against stone, or gleaming orbs reminiscent of eyes slowly approaching our only source of light. And that those details definitely did not make it any more enjoyable to me!) I quickly created several more balls of magelight, tossing them around the cavern, then shuddered at what I saw: a scorpion the size of a small horse was clacking its way towards us.

"Get behind me!" Felicity said, charging the thing, shield held high. It struck with its enormous tail, and she angled her shield just right to turn it away harmlessly, then counterattacked with her mace, crushing thick chitin in one of its pincers as it raised it to try to claw at her. The creature let out a chilling, warbling screech and struck with the other one, which she managed to block with her shield.

Of course, with her dashing forward, we were behind her without having to do anything. I had no idea what kind of spell to use on a gargantuan bug, but all beasts hate fire, right? I started throwing bolts of flame at the base of its tail, moving off to the side a bit so I'd have a clear shot at it without hitting Felicity. The scorpion screeched again and tried to dash around her to get at me, but she held her shield across her body and shoulder-tackled it, knocking it back a few steps, then following up with a vicious mace strike that cracked one of its legs hard enough that it broke off above the first joint!

Unfortunately, it still had seven more.

I danced backwards to try and keep the heavy armor in between myself and the death-bug, but then I heard more clacking sounds from behind us. "There's more of them!"

Joanna was behind me, and she let out a strangled gasp and almost by reflex threw up some sort of barrier. "I can hold it back, but... not for long," she groaned, her voice thick with strain. "Hurry!"

As the paladin continued to fend off the giant scorpion I poured mana into my next spell, trying something I'd seen but never actually tried before, really hoping it would work. "Felicity, dodge left on my mark, as far as you can!" Filling it with more and more power, compressing it with my mind until I couldn't hold back any more. "NOW!" I held it half a second longer, then threw a writhing, boiling mass of liquid flame directly at her back, really hoping whatever holy sense guided her would give her the reflexes to get free. I backpedaled myself a bit, and she didn't even hesitate, breaking left and sprinting away a few quick steps, then turning and crouching behind her shield right as the spell struck, detonating into a roasting conflagration that engulfed the giant scorpion. I was well outside of the blast radius but I still felt uncomfortably hot as the flames washed over it.

It howled with rage and charged me, and this time there was no frontline in the way! I may or may not have let out a bit of a scream of my own, frantically trying to conjure a barrier like Joanna was holding, but that fireball spell had really drained me! But just as death approached uncomfortably close, Felicity smashed another two of its legs in rapid succession. Having lost three on the same side, it collapsed, tried to raise itself up, then warble-shrieked as the fourth leg snapped under its body weight.

Felicity quickly moved around it. "Finish it off," she said as she ran to relieve Joanna.

I wasn't really sure how to feel about slaughtering a defenseless foe, but after a moment's thought I pushed a stream of flame directly into its face until it stopped howling and twitching. I figured either it could regenerate, in which case I really wanted to kill it quickly, or it couldn't and was trapped there in agony, so putting it down would be an act of mercy. Really wish I didn't have to in the first place, though! Especially with the way it smelled, a stench of burnt popcorn mixed with some sort of foul, thick smoky scent starting to fill the cavern.

Might want to use something other than fire next time.

Well, it was next time already. I heard more clangs and cracking sounds. Here we were in a cave, so... maybe a bit of stone shaping was in order? Letting my power flow downward into the stone floor, I pushed my will into it, letting the power build for a moment, then shoving the stone upward into a sudden, sharp stalagmite that pierced through its underbelly, trapping it, leaving it an easy target for Felicity to finish off.

"Good work," she said once the thing stopped moving.

I leaned against the cave wall, panting for breath. "I... I just threw a fireball." I clutched my stomach, feeling a little bit queasy.

"Drain shock," she said. "You cast above your level. Sit down and breathe deep and slow until you feel better."

So I did, but I couldn't stop my hands from shaking. Fireball! What had I gotten myself into? That spell was a staple of old legends, not something you really heard about people doing in the modern Age and certainly not in civilized lands like the Empire! "Any idea what's going on? You grew up here, right?"

She shook her head. "I did, but... no, I never heard of another dungeon beneath The Motionless Caverns."

Wait, what? "Another dungeon?"

"Yeah," Joanna chimed in. "Giant scorpions live out in the desert, and not even on this continent. Only reason we'd see them here is if something or someone conjured one up. So either we're in the secret lair of some mad mage... or a dungeon."

"Well sure, but what do you mean by 'another?'"

"The style's all different," Felicity said. "The walls flow like natural caverns and the monsters aren't elemental-themed. Plus it's exceptionally rare for any dungeon core to build new floors beneath its own location. They're generally located at the deepest point available." Then she looked over at me. "Are you shaking?"

I felt my cheeks starting to flush. "Sorry, I... I've never been in real mortal peril before!"

A groan of frustration came from within her helmet. "Þaneþ's claws, of all the times for that to wear off..." She slowly walked over towards me.

Huh? "What's wearing off?"

"That power your bard was using, pep-talking you to put steel in your spine. She was laying it on you pretty heavy up there, and now you're coming down from it." She came and crouched down in front of me, raising her visor, clasping her gauntleted hands together in an almost pleading manner as she looked into my eyes. "I... I'm sorry," she said softly. "I don't know that trick. All I can do for you is this."

Huh what? Kayla had been using some sort of Inspiration on me the whole time? Well, what she said right there at the start might have been a power, but... now that I thought about it, everything after was kind of a blur.

And somehow I was too lost in thinking about what had been going on up there to really notice what Felicity was doing as she slipped off one gauntlet and suddenly gave me a hard slap to the face. "PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, SOLDIER! THIS IS NO TIME TO BE COWERING AGAINST A WALL WITH THE ENEMY APPROACHING!" she screamed right in my face.

I wanted to stumble backwards, but I literally had my back to the wall, so I did the only thing I could do: I shot to my feet. "Uhh... yes, ma'am?"

"I'm sorry," she said again as she re-fastened her gauntlet. "But you're our hardest hitter. We really need your head on straight if we're gonna make it through this."

"Me?" I boggled at that. "You're the one with the holy hammer!"

She snickered at the term. "Yeah, and it would take me and my 'hammer' ten or more good hits to kill one of those things. You can do it in two. I'm mostly a big living shield, buying you the casting time to get those heavy strikes in."

"...and Joanna?"

"She helps Meþas shield me. All so you can have time to fulfill your role, Brad." She pulled a dark glass bottle out of her bag. "Here, take this."

There was no label on it. "What is this? Soda? Beer?"

"Potion of Æther. Tops off your mana reserves. Tastes nasty though, so you'll want to chug it down quickly."

I slipped it into my own bag. "Thanks. I'll hold onto it for a bit; I think touching the Core filled me up, but this will definitely come in handy later."

"Could I get one?" Joanna asked. Felicity already had one out, tossing it to her. Joanna opened it and gulped it down. "...oh. Wow, yeah, that taste... I see what you mean!"

Felicity nodded. "Now comes the rough part. We need to clear this dungeon."

I boggled at her. "WHAT? We need to stay right here until the party gets back with ropes and stuff."

She shook her head. "I don't think that'll work."

"Why not?"

She found a good-sized stone on the ground and picked it up. "Because." She threw it up into the air, up towards the staircase high above us. It got about halfway up and then hit... nothing. But whatever nothing it was that it hit, it audibly smacked hard into it, then fell down to the ground again. "There's a barrier up there. Stuff can cross in, but not out. If someone lowered a rope to us, I don't know if it would break the rope or just injure us when we tried to climb out, but either way we'll never escape that way."

Well crap. Of course there was! It's not like today wasn't bad enough already or anything, no siree, there just has to be a barrier too!

"All right. Any idea which way to go?"

"Joanna, can you set your empty bottle down? On its side?"

Joanna gave her a quizzical look, but she did as Felicity asked. It slowly started rolling away. "All right. Floor's not perfectly level, and that way's downward. Cores like living at the bottom of their dungeons, so my best guess is that way." She pointed in the opposite direction from where the bottle was going.

"You want to go away from the core?"

"At first, yes. Just enough to clear out anything behind us, so we can't get attacked from the back."

"You sound worried," Joanna said.

"Well yeah! You saw those things! They're tougher than anything up there except the boss, and closer to that than I'm comfortable with. If we screw up, we could easily die down here."

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"Sure, but... I mean... what about your faith?"

"What about it?" she asked. "It tells me that everything will end well in the grand scheme of things, but that hopeful ending reaches beyond mortality and I'm in no particular hurry to get there! It also tells me that I'm here, as in specifically in this cave at this particular moment, for a real purpose, and whatever that purpose is I can't accomplish it dead. So come on, let's get moving." That last bit, she turned to look straight at me, and even with her visor closed I could feel her eyes on me. She never said "and so are you," but just the same I heard it all too clearly. Whatever that creepy Guidance had been about, I could tell she believed it was somehow pointing to this dungeon.

We started walking "uphill," though honestly the grade was so slight that I couldn't really tell it was there. Even Felicity had specifically said this was nothing more than her best guess. But then again, it would still be possible to have monsters behind us from the other way no matter which direction we went, so maybe it didn't matter particularly much. And... as experienced as Felicity was, she really should know that. "Are you sure there isn't another reason why we're doing this?"

"Hmm?" she asked.

"We go down, monsters could attack us from above. We go up, monsters could come at us from beneath. There's a 'behind us' whichever way we go. But you specifically want to backtrack to the start."

"Do you know what happens when two dungeons expand to the point where their territory overlaps?"

I looked to Joanna who shrugged. "They... merge?" I hazarded a guess.

Felicity let out a mirthless little chuckle. "'Merge' makes it sound so harmonious. No, dungeon cores coexisting peacefully has only happened in legend. They fight. They send their monsters against each other until one of the cores is destroyed, and the victor takes over the newly-vacated territory.

"We can only guess as to why this one has lain dormant for so long, but now that adventurers are inside slaying its monsters, it certainly will not remain so. It is deeper and stronger than its neighbor. If the two fight, The Motionless Caverns will fall. And if the tourist attraction gets taken over by a much more serious dungeon, the consequences for Sharliya are ugly."

"What do you mean?" Joanna asked.

"Best case scenario is Imperial Army coming to pacify the dungeon. Worst case is a breakout, and the Army ends up having to pacify about a third of Chitothia, if not—" She took a step forward and vanished in a flare of bright green light.

I blinked, looking around for her, but it was just me and Joanna nearby. "What just happened?"

She looked worried. "I think it was a teleport trap."

"A what?"

"They're really rare, even in dungeons that have traps. Basically, you step on one and you get randomly bamfed off to some other point anywhere in the dungeon."

"Anywhere. Beautiful. So if we go looking for her, we could be either getting closer or further away."

She nodded. "And if we don't, she could be overwhelmed by monsters before she fights her way back to us."

"And... how random is it? If we step on the same trap, will we end up with her, or scattered?"

"Uhhh... scattered I think. Not really sure but... I wouldn't wanna risk it!"

I sighed. "All right. Well, she never explained what any of that had to do with going up. But with another dungeon just above this one, my gut says we have to be either on the top floor or maybe the second one. She's a lot more likely to be below us than above us. So I say we head down. You OK with that?"

She thought it over a moment, then nodded. "I think you're right. Do you think we can fight those things without her?"

"Actually... yeah. If you can use your barrier spell to hold them back, I can bring them down. It will be harder, but we can do it." I turned and started walking deeper into the cave.

"Wait," she said. "If there are traps here, make sure to use your pole."

"What pole?"

"...you don't have a ten-foot pole?"

I thought back to the comically oversized staves in the equipment shop. "No. Should I?"

Joanna sighed. "They're one of the most useful things an adventurer can possibly have! I thought everyone knew that!" She reached into her spatial bag and pulled out a stick nearly twice her height, then held it by one end, offering it to me. "Here, use mine. Run it across the ground in front of you like a blind person's cane. If there are any traps, it should trigger them without hitting you."

I felt silly doing it—and I had some real concerns about the noise it made, scraping wood repeatedly over stone—but the advice sounded reasonable enough I guess. We didn't see any more traps, but we came across another giant scorpion quickly enough. It tried to charge us, but was held fast by Joanna's barrier spell, giving me time to shape a stone spike to impale the thing, then a concussive Air Implosion to crush its head. That way still got a bunch of smelly ichor splattering out, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the stench when you burned it!

It wasn't too long before we reached a staircase. But this one was headed upwards! Joanna looked between it and me a couple times. "Any thoughts?"

"Well, I don't see sunlight coming out of it, so we're not on the top floor. Still I bet we're close to the top. Might be quicker to get out going up than down."

She nodded. "Unless..." but she just trailed off.

"What?" She hesitated, so I gave her a bit of verbal prodding. "Come on. You've been in dungeons before; this is literally my first time ever doing this. If you have any relevant experience at all, I'll value it more highly than my own conclusions."

She gave a slow nod. "It's just... Felicity said she'd never heard of this place, and I haven't either, so I'm guessing it's pretty old. And between that and the barrier..."

I wasn't following. "What about them?"

"...promise you won't laugh or say I'm crazy?"

I nodded. "I literally lack even the small basis of experience needed to have preconceived biases about what's reasonable and what's not. So this reminds you of something 'out-there' you heard about?"

"You at least know how silly that sign out front is?"

"I've seen the memes, yeah, but that's about it. There are tons of other dungeons all making the same claim."

She shook her head. "Not tons. Exactly twenty, and here's where the crazy conspiracy-theory junk starts: out of all the records we have from past Ages, when they speak of dungeons, no one's ever been able to verify them or match them to locations of modern dungeons, except specifically these twenty. That's a fact, no one knows what it means, and so of course all sorts of crazy grows out of it, especially with the number twenty attached."

I shrugged. "It's just a number. Number of digits on a kith's hands and feet, number of gods in the panþeon, years until a human is legally considered of age, maximum faces that can exist on a sacred solid, and so on."

"It gets worse. Apparently the descriptions of the surviving ancient dungeons don't match what we have today."

That got my attention. "Was the one at Sharliya supposed to have giant scorpions?"

She shrugged. "No idea. Never really got into all that junk; it's just stuff I've heard mentioned from time to time. But... seeing this, now, it wouldn't surprise me. And the barrier is the really weird part. I've never heard of a dungeon having one before."

"All right. What are you suggesting?"

Her face contorted into a grimace. "I... I'm really not sure. But something weird is clearly going on here, and... you know how when you've been working with schemas enough, you can kinda tell when something going wrong was a mistake and when it was written deliberately and you just don't understand everything about why they did it that way? This just feels deliberate."

I couldn't help but laugh as a thought struck me. Joanna scowled. "Hey!"

I held up my hands in a placating gesture. "Not laughing at you, just... when people talk about conspiracy garbage, the term 'cover-up' comes up a lot. It just occurred to me that if someone put another dungeon on top of this one, it was literally covered up!"

She didn't laugh; she just rolled her eyes. "Bleh, puns."

"Forgive me. I have transgressed, and I willingly accept my pun-ishment."

"No, no, please, don't even start!"

"Or you'll send me to the punitentiary?"

That one actually got a laugh out of her, followed by a soft "dammit" under her breath. Then, more audibly, "can we please get back on topic?"

"OK, sorry. So... we've got a hypothesis. Let's test it." I grabbed some rocks and took a few steps up the staircase, then started chucking them upwards. They flew just like you'd expect rocks to, and I'd pick them back up when they fell, advance a few steps, and do it again. But once I got up about where I'd estimate halfway to be, the rocks started hitting the same "nothing" that I'd seen when Felicity did it.

I headed back down the stairs. "Yeah, there's a barrier up there." I didn't notice Joanna standing right around the corner from the entrance to the staircase, peeking up, until I got too close and started to feel her aura. I froze, and she gave a little yelp and took a few steps back.

"Hey, we've really gotta do something about that," I remarked as I came down to the cave floor. "Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the way you try to protect me like that, but we're in a dangerous situation here and I don't want to get separated too far!"

She gave me an odd look. "Wait... you think I'm protecting you by keeping my distance?"

Obviously. "Yeah, so I won't be affected by your aura. That and... you know, abjurer. Protecting others is kinda your thing, right?"

She gave a weary sigh. "How does it affect you, Brad? What does it make you want to do?"

I squirmed. "Uhhh... to be honest, I probably shouldn't say."

"Don't worry. I already know, because it works both ways. Everything it makes you want to do to me, it makes me want to do to you too. Probably even stronger. I'm protecting myself by not getting too close!"

Wow, that sucked! But it was also actually kinda hot...

She rolled her eyes when she saw my expression. "You're thinking that's actually kinda hot, aren't you?" What do you even say to that? When I couldn't reply, she continued. "Does it still sound hot when you realize that's what I want with any and every guy who happens to be within ten feet of me at any given moment?"

"...crap. That sounds awful!"

"Yeah. Any guy, I stand near them for more than a few moments and I just wanna pounce them. Regardless of age, race, looks... whether or not they're already taken... none of that matters to the succubus inside me, and I can't get rid of her! Doesn't matter if they're not my type; honestly I'm not even sure what my type is, because there's no one I can not-want enough to tell the difference!" She started breathing harder, her voice going a bit panicky.

Well that was the last thing I needed. "Please calm down," I said as gently as I could. "I don't know how to do Inspiration or the drill sergeant routine..."

She giggled at that, but there was a hysterical edge to it.

A thought came to me, followed by a mental facepalm. I really don't want to do this. And I bet she doesn't either. I started walking towards her.

"Wait, what are you doing?" she asked. I got closer, ignoring the way her aura made me feel. "Please, don't..."

I did anyway, stepping up to the now-frozen tiefling and putting my arms around her. I pulled her in and rested my head on her shoulder, just holding her tight.

"Brad, please stop! ...wait. What are you doing?" she asked, sounding confused now rather than panicky.

"Well, it's typically called a hug..."

She let out a soft gasp, then suddenly she threw her arms around me, clinging to me and... crying? What in the world? "Gods... no one's done this with me in so long!" she panted out between ragged, sobbing breaths. "Not since..."

She trailed off, and I just let her, holding her until she was able to get herself under control. I knew it was time to let go when she started trying to squeeze my butt and nibble on my neck, so I squirmed out of her grasp and retreated several feet before I lost myself too deeply in this sweet, deliciously vulnerable girl.

"Oh gods, was I coming on to you there? I can't believe I did that..." she said, trying to look away.

"Hey. It's all right. I understand... at least a little."

She gave me a shy little smile. "Thanks. But... please don't ever do that again?"

"All right."

"...unless I ask you to? Because seriously, you have no~o idea how good that felt!"

I just laughed. "Sure. Come on, let's get going."

Deliciously vulnerable? Seriously, what the Abyss? I didn't think about girls like that, not even privately to myself. But apparently I did under the influence of succubus aura! Ugh!

"So... if this way's sealed off by a barrier, any good reason to believe the Core's exit wouldn't be?" Joanna pointed out as we walked deeper into the dungeon.

"Aww crap."

"What's our goal here then?"

"Find Felicity. She seemed to be more clueful about what's going on than either of us. I bet she'll have some idea how to get out."

She nodded. "I suppose. And at least now we know she's not behind us."

"Good point."

"At least as long as we can assume the teleporter only reaches within this dungeon, and not beyond the barrier..."

"Ugh, don't say stuff like that. You'll make me all paranoid!"

It wasn't long before we ran into the next giant scorpion, but we had a pretty good routine down for fighting them now. That made me wonder something. "These guys really aren't that tough once you've figured out a strategy for them."

"You sound like there's a question in there?"

"Just wondering. If this really is a past-Ages dungeon, shouldn't it be a challenge for legendary heroes who thought level three was weak?"

"Wow, you really don't know any of the theory, do you?"

"No, I keep saying that!"

"This part's actually pretty straightforward: the Curse of Vance."

"...wow. Yeah, I didn't even think of that. People constrained by spell slots couldn't simply figure out the most efficient way to blast monsters and do it over and over again, could they?"

"Exactly. Some people theorize that part of the reason high levels are so rare today is because with ætherics, low-level people are ridiculously powerful by past standards. We just don't really need high levels the way they did."

It was actually kind of fun getting to know her; she was normally so withdrawn and quiet at work, but when we got onto a topic she was interested in, she proved very articulate and animated. It kind of drew me in despite being a subject I personally had no interest in.

We easily cleared out the first floor, then headed downward upon reaching the staircase. No Felicity yet. Hopefully she'd be on the second floor.

Well, for all I know, she might have been. Unfortunately, I got distracted by the discussion of magical theory and must have missed a spot when poking at the dungeon floor with the pole, because one moment I was there talking with Joanna, in a room lit by the balls of magelight we'd been tossing around liberally, and the next I was somewhere else, in the dark, with her voice gone, replaced by a distant echo of weapons clashing with screaming monsters.