We clung to one another as we were swept down deeper into the darkness. I could not tell what was above water or what was below, but I fought to keep my head in breathable air. This went for minutes or maybe hours. I was tired and my arms hurt, but I dare not stop moving. Joceline had that heavy pack and she was doing it. I could too. Lady Grace at least was capable of swimming and she seemed to be doing her own part.

The noise behind us faded and it was just the sound of the water sloshing around us and the odd drip of water from above. One droplet fell on my face. I didn't let it fall into my mouth. I'd swallowed enough water to last me a lifetime.

After a time, when I thought for sure it was quiet enough, I said, "I don't think we were followed."

"Good." Joceline said with tiredness in her voice.

"What the funnelhell was that for you little bitch! That dress was a gift from the royal family! You butchered it!"

If I had the energy I would have smacked myself in the forehead. Instead I said. "She just saved your life. You would have drowned." I felt the rope go slack as apparently Grace had gotten herself out of it. I wrapped it around and around my hand so I didn't lose it.

"Where are you? Oh there you are. Hold onto me." After an indignant shriek, Grace added, "Please m'lady."

"Not to mention those fallowstock would have murdered you if Joceline hadn't pulled you to me."

"Murder me?" She was incredulous as if that wasn't the point of the whole Funnel of Madness thing.

"Didn't you see me stab one before she was about to strangle you with the manacles? You know. You're not the only mistake sent here." I hissed. "Those two fallowstock didn't feel they deserve to be here either. They intended to take that anger out on you." And likely me and Joce soon after, I would add but I assumed that it wouldn't mean much to the noblewoman.

"I'm not supposed to be here." Still the whining voice, but it was quieter. At least she had gotten that in her head.

"Right, but since nobody has ever been summoned out of the Funnel once it has begun," or honestly never in its history, but I left that unsaid, "then we have to make some decisions right now. Do you want to live or do you want to die?"

She was silent.

I heard a tiny. "Live."

That was enough for me. "Then you have to decide if you are willing to trust us to work with us."

She said nothing. We floated in silence, the sounds only of the water rushing us along. Here the air was at least clean and damp. It was pitch black, but so long as we listened and stayed in the middle of the river, we hopefully wouldn't run into danger.

I strained to hear if the fallowstock had followed us into the water, but I heard nothing behind us except more and more water. I had a mental flashback of my paintbrush sticking out of the woman's eye. And the blood as it hit my face. Don't faint Mitka. Don't you dare faint.

I had to talk about something. Anything. I blurted out, "You have a Class, right?" I already knew she had a Class, first tier Astrologer. Whatever that was. She mentioned it in her speech. But I just needed someone to talk about something other than the fight that we just survived.

"It's not combative," she said with slight defensiveness and maybe a little bit of annoyance at some old slight.

"Doesn't matter. And you know it."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"None of us, other than you, have a Class."

"What's your point?"

"If I kill you right now—"

She balked and splashed as if to pull away from us and I backpedaled, "—I'm not going to kill you. This is hypothetical. Ack! Stop splashing me. I'm just saying that if that were to happen and you're dead and woah! I get an instant Class Unlock. Even if I don't learn it, I can send it out of the dungeon. Get a boon."

Joceline added, as if to explain further. "In here, Classes are transferable. Lootable."

"Is that what you want to do with me then? Kill me and loot my Class?"

"No." Joceline said with her earnestness.

I had a moment to think about how helpful a Tier 1 Class would be if we put it in one of the Return Chests. I had nothing but a rather tattered dress that was now waterlogged, a jar of ink in my reticule in my pocket, and that's it. My paintbrush was stuck in some woman's eye. It would have been smart to raid the buffet table and stuff my pockets with food, but I hadn't the foresight. A Class deposit would have gotten some helpful stuff for surviving the Funnel.

Still, I said, "No." in response to Grace.

I didn't want to kill her. I didn't want to kill anyone. At some point, I might have to. I didn't want to think about that. It could wait for that moment and I really hoped that moment was far, far off. The woman probably would survive the paintbrush in the eye if she survived the others in the room.

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Don't think about that Mitka. Deflect.

I said sardonically, "Neither of us have anything good to loot so I hope you don't attempt to kill us."

"It's a non-combat Class." She said in a huff. "What will I do? Strangle you with my ruined dress?"

Despite myself, I began to laugh. Floating down an underground river, in the Funnel, with some fancy ass noblewoman, probably going to die soon, and I just began to laugh.

"We don't know where this river even goes." Grace said, but the anger was mostly out of her voice.

She had a point, but I really didn't need her to know that. I really didn't need to think on that either. It was enough to know we lived just a little longer and it seemed like nobody followed us.

I held onto Joceline and apparently Joceline had Grace. We floated and our dresses pooled out into the water. It felt strange to have the dress layers pooling around my legs. I was lucky I didn't get tangled for it'd be really difficult to untangle myself in this darkness. It was fine for now, but I had a feeling all three of us were going to get really tired swimming in our clothes and gear.

"If either of you see some kind of exit, call out. All I see is dark." I said.

Grace sighed in resignation and she moved her arms with splashes. Hundreds of pinpricks that looked like stars left her fingertips and spread out, lighting up the cavernous air above us. They slowly brightened, but the watery world around us remained shrouded in twilight. The glittering tiny stars reflected on the ceiling which was marked by crystalline icicle-shaped formations. It wasn't bright, but it was bright enough to see the edges of the cave and our faces were at least visible. The dark water glistened in reflection, but did not share what was in its depths or even how deep it was.

The underground river we floated in was as wide as the tunnel and it seemed to move at a constant speed.

"What other spells do you know?" I asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. I wasn't sure how effective it was. I mean. She could have done that earlier.

"Why should I tell you?"

"It would have been useful to know you could make light with magic." I retorted. "If we know what you can do then maybe we can use it to get out of this water before we all drown."

She whirled at me, her panic-tinged anger so blatant on her face that gave me the sense that she was wholly unaware how absurd it was for the two of us to be floating down a river in what had to be the starting level of the Funnel, wearing ball gowns, and dancing slippers, but little else. "What are you able to do, hmm?"

"I saved your life by stabbing a woman with a paintbrush in the eye." I then blurted out something out of the fear broiling in my thoughts, "What does it matter anyhow? We have no weapons. No armour. No rations. We are truly, truly fucked. And by helping you, I've fucked us over even more so."

Grace looked ready to hit me. I had a thought that maybe it would be quite fun to hit her back.

Luckily, Joceline intervened. She did so by trilling in the exact inflection and tone of my mother. "Mitka. What do I always say dearest?" She really did have that imitation down pat.

I took a beat and smiled as the panic, anger, and frustration dissolved just enough.

Joceline and I intoned at the same time, "What would your father do?" The oft repeated phrase then echoed in this underground chamber. Father do? Father do?

What would he do? I then spoke the question out loud, "What would he do?"

"Get it together." Joceline said in her most like my mother voice.

I sputtered. "Stop." Joceline really could sound like my mother and somehow in this cavern it was almost eery how close she sounded.

"Get it together?" Grace queried. Clearly she was annoyed at us joking when she was just about as full of panic as one can get before they burst.

I felt charitable to her. "My father was Mid Stock the year I was born. He ended up in the Funnel and lasted a long time." That was an understatement. My father had lasted almost until the next Funnel reset. I knew because his loot was so lucrative for the royal family that we had benefited from it for years. The stipends had only stopped this year when I turned age of majority. Afterall, the Exemption was supposed to be the final payment.

"Her father lasted until almost the reset." Joceline said when I did not explain further.

"Wait. Until a reset? But that means that..." Grace trailed off.

"He was a Last Delver." I acknowledged.

"You should have been Exempt too." Not dumb was our Lady Grace. She could add one and two to make three.

I shrugged. "Sure. We both saw how that turned out this year."

"There has to be some way to contact the Royal Family."

"There isn't though." Joceline said with certainty.

I wanted to answer her. I mean, I knew there was.

My father was so successful in the Funnel during his delve, that the Royal Family even passed on the messages he scrawled onto the magic items he sent through the return chests.

I could see my mother in my thoughts. At the hearth in front of a cozy fire, sitting me and the twins down, as she forced us to listen to the notes that my father had left us. The twins, well they claimed they remembered him. I certainly didn't. I hadn't been born until after he was already funnelled.

My mother still reads them every year to us. Still read. Past tense. Right. I would never see her again.

Unless we got out of here. Somehow.

We could gather some loot and send it in the box with a message. If the royals had ways to summon us into the Funnel, then there had to be some kind of way to summon us out.

Both Lady Grace and I were Exempt so they would for sure honour that. I would have to come up with some way to get Joceline to come with us. We would need some kind of big bargaining chip.

Yet, I had to wonder what knowledge I should share with this woman I had only met a few hours before. I wasn't even sure if she knew my name since she hadn't said it yet and it seemed ridiculous to introduce myself now. I just had to hope that Joceline saying my name would be enough of an introduction to Lady Grace that I wouldn't have to do the polite thing.

I wasn't sure if telling her that we could communicate at least one way with the people on the other side of the Funnel was a good idea. Clearly, Joceline didn't know about it. I had been too embarrassed by the Exemption at the point we became friends to talk much about my father and anything to do with him. That included the letters.

"I'm sure we can figure out something." Joceline said with her cheerful optimism. "There has to be some way that they track us in here. Otherwise they wouldn't know who was surviving or not."

I decided to glom onto her statement. "Exactly. They have the survival lists that are put up in the town square every day. They have to have some kind of tracking of us."

Light around us dimmed and the little stars began to wink out. Lady Grace recast the spell so quickly I almost didn't notice it. The lights returned to the same level of brightness, which really wasn't much, but it was something.

The tunnel was narrowing around us. As the river narrowed, then we were floating a bit faster and faster. There were white streaks in the water that made me think of rapids. Rapids in already sodden dresses? I don't think I could swim that.

"You know what my father would do? He would try to find a way out of this water."