He flattened against the wall and reflexively charged his gun with frost again. The sound wasn't growing nearer. Probably. He started to regret not buying any enhancements to his Senses the way he'd upgraded things like Agility. With his attention focused on the slurping, he didn't notice Kura beckoning for him until she tapped on the stonework beside her. Vonn turned and nodded.

The liquid noise resumed behind him. He hustled. When she ducked, he did too. She poured out the vial she carried and left a black cloud in their wake. They went around a corner, clambered above a stone coffin that blocked the hall, and reached a downward ramp. An altar glowed dim blue at the bottom with a Human man's body sprawled across it, his throat cut. The floor was flooded with several inches of blood-scented water.

"What the hell," Vonn whispered. It was either fresh, or another decoration that the dungeon had put here to mimic things.

Kura shushed him and gestured to the walls, a question in her eyes. Vonn studied the path leading down and pointed out a suspicious discolored patch of floor. Kura crept ahead, avoiding the possible trap, then motioned for him.

Vonn went down to the sacrifice chamber. This world didn't use pentagrams as ritual symbols. But when he tore his attention away from the dead man he saw a dark design worked into the altar, like a fourfold labyrinth atop a crescent. Or maybe like a set of brass knuckles. In any case the design was abstract yet brutal.

Kura hissed. "Bastards."

"Onward?" Vonn said, trying to ignore the iron scent and the sloshing liquid around his boots. And the fact that yet another passage led onward, deeper into the bowels of this corrupted place.

The room grew subtly brighter. Vonn turned toward the ramp they'd descended. A shape loomed atop it, just darkness with a pair of sickly blue glowing eyes that didn't stay next to each other. His twitching tail froze. After a long moment the shape moved on and Kura felt it was safe enough to shine a small crystal around for a better look.

The altar's symbol was repeated a dozen times all over the walls.

Vonn took a step back and his right boot clinked against something. He stopped, whispering, "Check my foot. Did I trigger something?"

Kura crouched beside the altar. "Thank Winter! Move." She nudged Vonn aside and pointed out a crystal shard beneath the tainted water, creating the altar's glow. It gave off an unfamiliar shade like a blue-black bruise, or that last creature's eyes. She knocked the gem free with a knife.

Vonn now noticed a second one growing on the opposite side. "May as well." He reluctantly broke it free with his knife and wiped it dry on his pants. Staring into the finger-sized crystal caused the System to display the words, [Lesser magicite shard.] No comment labeling it as special. He put it into an empty pocket for fear of it contaminating his other pieces, and couldn't do more than pray it didn't directly hurt him either.

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Kura made the gesture for "done", and he nodded. But then she turned slowly toward the deeper tunnel.

Down that way, someone was talking.

They started back up the ramp, narrowly avoiding the suspicious spot. They vaulted over the coffin. She took out a mirror and used it to peek around the next corner, then pulled back and signed for that bony scuttling thing. Wait.

People below were arguing. An arrogant Kobold lectured someone with an Elf or Human voice. Vonn couldn't make out the words but they were growing closer. He gritted his teeth and got Kura's attention.

She cursed quietly. Then she signed, You and me, run, in three. He nodded and tapped his gun and her club with another frost spell just in case.

They took off, feet thudding on the stone floor. Vonn lost track of what direction he was going. Hopefully Kura knew. Around one corner, down a hall, and right into the face of the many-legged thing. Its jaws opened wide.

She walloped it with her club, making its jaw crackle with ice. A few teeth flew off. Then, insanely, she leaped over and around it in the corridor. Vonn had no good choice but to follow. His jump took him onto one outstretched spidery leg and only his enhanced Balance ability kept him upright. Some bony appendage lashed out at him and knocked him around, but he landed behind the beast and on his feet. Kura helped steady him while it was trying to turn around.

Something slurped from not far off on his left.

Kura tugged him off to the right. She'd misjudged the path. There was a loop and they now had to go around it while being chased.

"Someone there?" shouted the distant Kobold.

They rounded the loop, caught sight of that pair of bruise-blue eyes in the dark, and detoured under a low stone bridge. In the clinging, chilly fog where they crouched, Kura signed, "Guy you know?"

She must have some kind of enhanced sign-language power, thought Vonn.

That Kobold could be the prisoner Vonn was looking for, but the voice reminded him of the local Baron's man, a necromancer. Vonn tried to convey, "Probably not."

Now, if they were lucky, the people here would pass them by. Vonn and Kura waited. Vonn imagined the mist was coiling around him to attack, but it scattered when he flicked his tail.

There was only the distant noise of the floor's wandering creatures now. Vonn kept their weapons charged. Kura used her mirror again, then beckoned to Vonn. They crept up from beneath the bridge. No threats in sight. They made it to the stairs leading back to the first floor.

Sounds of struggle came from above. So they were being followed from below and now a _second_ group was coming in! Vonn silently muttered about "rush hour". He and Kura ducked to either side of the stairs, where shadows hid them. Before he was out of sight, Vonn glimpsed a man with bound wrists, being forced into the dungeon by someone behind. The captive had pointy ears. Elf. Not who he was looking for. Unless he was mistaken and it was a certain Human man. Vonn hated the fact that he was judging the value of this person's life by whether this was one of his group.

The secret world-travelers from Earth. The people who had the knowledge and perspective of being from a land completely outside of the System.