Looking back on it, I'm embarrassed to say how long I spent thinking about rushing on ahead without backup, taking the Fairy Dungeon straight to Bo instead of going back. There's a chance that would have worked out, but honestly, the more I thought about it the more it felt like that was the old me coming to the surface, the one that was so sure he was invincible all while being a complete moron about everything.

I should take a step back.

The elevator arrived not long after the cable snapped into place, and I'd moved back from the ledge into the waiting room just in case there wasn't room for me out there. The fairy that emerged seemed surprised to see me, while also being very surprising to look at herself; I would swear it was a fairy mixed with a muppet, with a body that seemed a plush charicature of an elephant, a box tucked under her arm that she immediately and jealously guarded as soon as she realized she wasn't alone.

And when I say "jealously guarded" I mean her fake puppet fur raised and she hissed like a cat-elephant at me.

So I said, in order to calm her down, "I just want to go to--" and then I had to stop and think about it for a long minute or two.

I felt certain that I either could handle Bo, or that whatever help or advice I got wouldn't make the difference, but where did that confidence come from? I'd never seen the guy, and for all I knew he was getting help from that Fairy Queen that controlled him and was even more powerful than I'd known. If anything, that seemed to me to be an argument for rushing in, but really, I just wanted to rush in.

I didn't like admitting it to myself, but it was more that I didn't that I didn't want to face Kalamitus and Susie, or even Louise. This new Vampiric Cloak skill made me feel slick and oily, impure, and I could imagine them judging me for it. It was [ Evil ], most likely, although I didn't remember seeing that tag on the skill description; either way, I felt more like an outsider as I thought of using it around people than I had in a while. The last thing I wanted was more reasons why people would think I was abnormal.

But in the end, I decided, glumly, to continue on. "...Galveston's Wharf, Kalamitus' Tower," I finally announced to the fairy, who had pulled a cigarette from the box and lit it with some kind of magic spark while I inwardly debated.

I was just barely able to sense the fairy's magic as she set the destination on the elevator, and I certainly couldn't replicate the tangled burst of information that she used. I offered the plush fairy a polite, "Thanks," and stepped in, engaging the new mysterious sense that Merry had put together as the cable car shifted into motion and moved for a transfer station.

I wasn't long after we left the Dungeon behind that the skill rattled and came loose from my Dungeoneer core, but I was able to quickly press it back into place. With that new sense, I could swear that there was a signal in that empty region that must have been what kicked the skill out of gear; it was kind of a background noise, a magical tone that somehow resonated with something inside of me, turning the flow of energy into shakes that broke things loose.

It was interesting, but unlikely to ever be of use.

I was pleased when I got to the transfer station to find that Chyllu-llamaia was still (or again?) on duty, sitting at her desk floating in the center of a long cylinder with many windows and gaps in the wall around it. The rabbit fairy might as well have not moved since she left for all that had changed, though Merry sent me a quiet note of disagreement on that point, as she saw something I didn't. It didn't matter much.

The fairy knight took a draw on her hookah and looked down at me, I assume measuring my progress. She didn't look particularly impressed, but then, she kind of looked... emotionally drained. Perhaps surprise was just not--

Merry, of her own volition, slipped out of my magic into the room, and Chyllu-llamaia's eyes bulged comically out of their sockets.

"Holy shit, girl," said the knight, disappearing and reappearing inches from Merry, her head darting around and inspecting the smaller fairy from multiple angles. "That a custom body? How the hell did you get enough Star authority to make something like that?"

Star authority? I raised an eyebrow at her, but didn't interfere.

"Uh, we're definitely cheating on some things," said Merry with a shrug. "But authority? Nothing stood in the way of us doing this. Is it only for Dungeoneers?"

"Ugh, probably." The rabbit fairy made an ugly face. "The elders say they keep us starved and all of our powers sealed so we'll be good and desperate in the next phase, while the new guys get to play with their toys. It's disgusting, really, but we're just not allowed to live the good life. Honestly, you should see some of the shit people have to take as a form base; there's an old lady I know made of knives, and she hasn't had any good-good in a long time. People pity her, but nobody wants to get close."

Merry and I both absorbed that thought and then we both set it aside.

"If you want us to try--"

"Yeah, no," interrupted the knight, slipping back to her desk with a telekinetic grace that I envied a bit. "Gossip is fun and all, but doing the job gets us paid, and so we gotta fight. This time I'm gonna ramp up the challenge a bit, because you look like you can handle it. Try not to let me down."

Merry frowned, and I could tell even with her separate from me that she was genuinely disappointed that she couldn't make friends. But the fairy knight seemed as eager at the prospect of combat as she'd been to look over Merry's new body, so I guess she was really hurting for power.

Or money, or, food or something. I don't know how exactly it worked.

Again, the knight called on some kind of power, and somewhere in the void, a body was pulled towards us, preceded by desperate screams. The glimpse I got of the person who turned into a smear of gore after entering hurt my heart; it was a woman, relatively attractive, and clearly terrified. I only could glimpse her a moment, but I felt like that glimpse was burned into me as she died.

And then the rabbit fairy inhaled her burning offal, and the world shifted.

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I'd been starting to wonder if calling this place a "Fairy Dungeon" were entirely poetic, but I could swear that space bent as a bunch of walls and bits of scenery appeared from nowhere, dropping Merry and me in the middle of an obviously fake urban landscape, no detail more than painted on the walls, and the walls sketching out only a very general layout--in this case, a straight corridor lined with smaller, seemingly generic fairies stationed along the wall, each stationed next to a fake business painted on the wall. The fairies had soulless eyes, their mouths were twisted into sharp-toothed grins, and they were all looking our way.

"Come on," said the knight's voice from somewhere--I think, actually, she was standing on top of some kind of grate built into the ceiling. "Show me what you've got, and I'll see what kind of test you deserve."

I hesitated only a moment before stepping forwards, grabbing onto my Vampiric Cloak so it wouldn't shake loose and the spreading it through the generic-looking fairies. As I thought, like Dungeon creatures, each succumbed almost instantly to the effect.

I moved forward, and sensed the closest four fairies all instantly tense. They wanted to come attack me, as they'd been told, but because the cloak had so instantly put them under... I guess the description said it was [ Enthrall ], they now felt obliged to ask my permission to attack me.

Merry floated up next to me, her own magic slipping into the Cloak from outside, with my permission. She frowned as she ran her mind to the nearest one, and I could sense her probing the construct.

"They're just Dungeon creatures," said Merry, confirming what I'd thought. "And cheap ones. I don't think they let the fairies play with the good toys."

I heard an irritated huff from Chyllu-llamaia, but she didn't respond beyond that.

As though I were moving them with telekinesis, I mentally positioned the fairies before me; but instead of using force, I sent the thought down to the dungeon Fairies through the link, and they moved of their own will. The effect sent shivers down my spine, seeing living things move mindlessly to my will, and I felt disgusted.

More than anything else, it was old instincts, not new ones, that caught something, though without the skill I might have ignored it.

It was a whisper, and I realized that it came from the vent where I'd heard the fairy's voice. Oh, it said, quietly. You have power. I want to see it. I want to see you use it. You have my permission. I'd like to see it.

The words slid into a mental barrier that was almost too weak to stop it, but I flexed an old instinct, trying to keep the creeping spirit out of me. Quickly, before I got dragged into anything else, I pulled back at the skill, removing my control over the mindless fairies, which all instantly sprung and attacked me.

Not that they ever had a chance, even with me handicapped by having to keep my skills working. Throwing them around with the cloak's weight was more than enough to protect me, and it hardly took much effort to crush them with a sword.

No, I was more worried about trying to keep whatever that was away from me, but even the skill didn't find anything it could grasp, exactly. With the fairies dead, I turned back to where I thought I sensed it, finding that I could only just barely sense a thread of evil something hanging in the air.

I swung my sword, but whether or not that would have worked, the thread moved at the speed of thought, moving across the room at a thought like it was weightless, which I suppose it might have been.

It didn't taunt me, but instead retreated to the vent, or so I thought.

"Are you alright, bro?" Merry moved up to me, putting a hand on me, and I felt her concern, but also confusion.

"Get back inside," I said, a little worried, but when Merry slipped into my magic and reappeared in my mind, I could not feel any hint of that corrupting presence in her.

"You got a nice skill," said the fairy knight, and suddenly, the space I was in got all jumbled up, the walls turning thin as cardboard and spinning around like cheap computer special effects--including what I was standing on, but it receded, and I found myself floating in nothing for a moment until the floor slipped back under me, and I found myself in the center of a relatively wide circular arena, the walls painted to look like thousands of fairies were cheering in tiered seats around us.

This time, there were a dozen copies of Chyllu-llamaia, the real one obvious to me in the back, but all of them dressed up in steel armor and masks that hid their faces. "Alright," said one of the fakes. "Your test for this round will be this, then. Land a hit on the true knight, and you can leave. But hit anything else... and we'll take something from you.

I could feel some kind of skill radiating out from the rabbit, and the troop of fakes plus one, all moving the same, started to run around in circles around me.

I... I knew that I shouldn't. And yet, after having fought only the Administrator's puppet and those fake fairies, I had to know. I extended my cloak into the field of copies, and I could tell that the real Chyllu-llamaia had a moment of hesitation, but in order to blend in with her copies, faked slipping into the effect of the skill.

Unfortunately for her, accepting the skill was as bad as falling for it.

What I felt when the magic connected to me was like nothing I'd ever experienced. Chyllu-llamaia was not... was not ancient, but she was old, and she had known decades, maybe centuries of suffering, of fighting against other fairies in a war for resources deliberately spread thin by the Lord Beneath. There were bands of will going through her mind that were hard as steel, but they were strings, ribbons, not walls. She was very familiar with magic, but not this kind of magic.

Perhaps it simply wasn't something that happened within the Labyrinthine Star.

No, I thought as I dragged her and all her copies to a halt. I could tell now that the evil will that had been floating around had been hers; the corrupting will was present inside of her. Somewhere inside, she wanted to see me become a monster, though the thought didn't really make sense. It was a pained eagerness, like a beaten dog that still was happy to see its master come home; insane, from a certain point of view, but that didn't stop it from being real.

As she became certain that I knew what I was doing, I felt her throwing some kind of raw form of magic at me, felt it shaped by the items she had on her body, and those items empowered her greatly, making a relatively minor mental push into a mind-numbing explosion that severed the connection and made me want to black out. When I was able to focus my eyes on the real world again, the rabbit fairy had a hateful look on her face, and she had leveled one arm at me, the charm on her wrist shivering as it dangled there.

The charm that felt like a contained star, that she'd used to obliterate the wound she'd found inside of herself the last time.

I dropped all pretense of combat and backed off, though it looked like she'd thought twice about using it even before I got my mind back in order. She lowered her arm a bit, but her face didn't change much, and she scowled at me like she really wanted to do something she considered unwise, but knew that she dared not.

"Don't try that again," she said, and with a blink, swapped places with one of her copies, and they began circling me again.

So I didn't, instead just throwing a Soulforged dagger from way back at the right rabbit to prove that even without invading her mind, I could sense her, and she grudgingly ended the test there. When she did, the walls collapsed, and I felt space un-warp, dropping me back into the transfer station.

The fairy knight huffed, clearly upset by the fight, and took a long drag off of her smoke. "You're a nasty one, human," she said, sourly. "Never seen your like, but I don't like you. Get out," she said, jerking her head towards the door behind her.

I moved, though I could tell Merry wanted to stop and talk. I did, too--about a lot of things, about what she'd been through, what her people had been through. But, I didn't think it was wise, not when she was playing with such powerful toys and was in a bad mood.

I did pause at the exit, though, and looked back. "Thank you," I said, knowing again that it was the kind of thanks that someone in her shoes probably didn't want. "And I do hope thinks work out for your people."

The rabbit gave me a rude gesture with one hand without turning, and I left.