They had to travel to the centre of the map. With every other dungeon cleared, their goal to leave this world behind via the Long Way connection was one dungeon clear away. Getting to that dungeon was entirely eventless. They got to the hospitable part of her south-eastern continent, flew across the strait, then spent a day wandering on solid ground so Reysha wouldn’t go crazy in different ways than she was already. On the northernmost tip, in the shadow of a massive tower of dark stone, they took their final rest.

It was called the Trickster’s Tower. The circumference of its base was wider than some villages and the roof pierced the clouds. Filled with puzzles and riddles, it was a challenge for groups or individuals that wanted to face a different kind of dungeon. The rewards that could be gathered from there were varied and almost entirely random. Although the trio wondered about how well they would fare inside there, they weren’t willing to invest the time.

They inspected their equipment and slept in the relative peace of the grassy landscape. Fully rested, they then made their way to the entrance of the Long Way.

Information on the dungeon was scarcer than for the rest of Azenia-Ra. Even the people that headed to White Ice ultimately came back to the Adventurer’s Guild, selling their info for a couple free beers or hard cash. The Long Way was different. People that bothered to go into it often did so with the portal in mind. Between the people who left and the people who died in there, less than one in a hundred people going in returned to give any sort of recollection of what they encountered. The majority of information that did exist came from a guild financed expedition that had happened over a hundred years ago.

 There was enough to work with in that report that the group didn’t feel like they were going in completely blind. The bigger problem was getting there though. For two reasons, there was no conventional way to get to the dungeon entrance. Number one was the lack of demand for ferrymen to go there, as only the infrequent adventurer party wanted to go there. Number two, somewhat related, was that ONLY infrequent adventurer parties wanted to go there, no regular people. There was no trade route that went by, nor were there people fishing in the area. A giant whirlpool surrounded the dungeon entrance and leaving it required clearing the dungeon and then not taking the portal. No sane boat-owner would even sail in those waters.

Consequently, the regular adventurer had to buy themselves some kind of small vessel, a rowboat would do, and go on a trip that either ended with them dying in the dungeon or conquering it. The group could fly and therefore didn’t have that issue. Their biggest problem was Reysha. The tiger girl was both immensely bored and had to cope with the fact that she didn’t touch any solid ground for almost a day.

Overcoming both hurdles, they descended on the whirlpool during the early hours of the night. It was a particularly dark hour. Thick clouds covered the sky, blocking light from both moon and stars. Far out in the ocean, there was no source of light and the swirl of black water beneath could have hidden anything underneath its rushing surface.

Even with their sensitive eyes, the Apexus and Reysha had an issue finding the centre of the whirlpool under these circumstances. The slime went on a slow, spiralling descent while Aclysia scouted the way with her glowing spheres of magic. Once the light touched a platform of stone, they knew where to go and went down.

“We’re pretty lucky that it didn’t start to rain,” Apexus said, while Reysha hastily got off his broadened back. “Would have made things considerably harder.”

“Flying over the ocean always carries an uncomfortable amount of risk,” Aclysia hummed, looking at the almost pitch-black sky. “A Scout would be useful for such things… they can learn to predict the weather in limited ways. A sudden storm could be our demise.”

“It’d be fun at least,” Reysha commented, while dancing over the stone plateau. The re-found freedom of movement had to be celebrated. “Crash landing is fun.”

“Your love of danger is ever puzzling – how can a being whose existence is likely to end permanently upon their demise be this eager to face it?”

“Your love of safety is equally stupid, given that you’ll just live on in one way or another,” Reysha responded.

“What do you mean?” Apexus asked.

“She’s an angel so…”

“No, no, I know that part,” the slime clarified quickly. “I mean the ‘likely to end permanently’ bit. Why likely?”

“In select cases, gods may decide to preserve the spark of a mortal and use it to form a new being. Typically, this either means a reincarnation without memories or a new body in the form of an angel. Such a boon is granted either to a particularly devout follower of a deity or someone who fulfilled some kind of Divine Quest.”

“Not even sure what the point of a reincarnation without memories is,” Reysha said, her dance having transformed to taking long strides along the edge of the stone platform. It was small enough that they could hear her, but she still had to shout over the rushing water of the whirlpool. Magically, the water directly around the platform was calm. “It's just a person with your talents being born somewhere after you die.”

“Presumably there is a way to regain one’s memories as life progresses? I have no further information on this.”

“Think he might be a reincarnation?” Reysha asked jokingly, while doing a headstand.

“Darling does not possess a Divine Spark, the chances of this are therefore null,” the metal fairy denied the possibility. “However, you may need to pray for a chance at rebirth if you fall into the water.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“You can barely see underneath the surface, there might be some variety of shark hiding underneath.”

“I’ll worry about that if I fall into the water.”

“With your current choice of action, the question is not if, but when.”

“I know! Isn’t that just exciting? Think of the possibilities,” Reysha walked on her hands. “This is why ya never have stories to tell, bubble butt. When I’m not around, ya just sit on your squishy behind and… dunno, read a book or something.”

“I would love to afford literature at some point…” Aclysia mumbled.

“Perhaps we will have time and funds wherever we end up,” Apexus suggested and looked towards the dungeon entrance. It was a rectangle of marble, its inside empty like a doorframe. The image of another place wavered in place, as if observed through a thick sheet of glass and water. Apexus walked around the portal and found that the other side was an exact copy of the image. Not a mirrored one, just the exact same. It was a long corridor with a marble floor and distant walls that were covered in vines. “Everyone ready?”

Reysha pushed herself off the ground and landed on her feet. “Ready as I’ll get,” she answered.

“I do not look forward to this,” Aclysia sighed and they lined up in front of the portal. “According the guide, the Long Way is a shifting dungeon, so we will have to improvise our path,” she reminded her companions.

“All eyes on Apexus’ ass, got it,” Reysha responded.

The slime raised an eyebrow. “That sounds inadvisable. I’ll be the tail of the initial formation.”

“I mean that we should follow your intuition and stuff, boss-slime.”

“…I can’t say often enough that language is stupid.”

“Sure thing. Know what else is stupid? Not getting in there!”

“Right,” Apexus agreed and lost no further time. He started running towards the portal.

Coming into contact with it was like pushing his body through some kind of non-sticky sap. There was some resistance, particularly where he first touched the portal, but it tore away quickly as he pushed through.

The trio emerged on the other side into the vine-covered corridor. They took no time to take in the scenery, instead started to move as fast as their feet or wings would take them. Their arrival caused a number of sentient stalks to rise out of the vines. They were tipped with fleshy, dark brown bulges, from which a pair of eyes and several dozen tentacles grew. There was a gap in each of these central pieces, about the size of a bottle’s base.

The monsters were the Common Thornspitters the group had previously encountered in Verdany and a whole lot of them. They covered the walls and the ceiling, awoke in response to the invaders and each other. The trio had to get ahead of the chain reaction, if they wanted to have any chance to make it through this initial challenge unscathed.

The thorns started flying all around them. The initial stretch of the corridor was the most dangerous – a straightforward line with nothing to hide behind. Nothing but Apexus, who sacrificed quite a bit of his speed by opening his wings wide enough to form the best shield they had. Several projectiles hit his feathers instead of his girl’s backs.

Their first break, but also first problem, came in the shape of a crossroads. “Left!” Apexus shouted, after seeing that the corridor was the shortest one. They heard the hardened wood bounce off the stone floor behind them, as they left the line of fire of the original Thornspitters and entered the domain of a whole new cluster.

 Consequently, they were not finished running. Their next break was just twenty metres away, however. They stormed as quickly as they could while keeping a mostly unified speed. Any group member that pulled too far ahead would cause Thornspitters to rouse faster than necessary.

For that reason, they all saw that they were heading into a dead end at the same time. “That’s unfortunate!” Reysha giggled and all three turned around as quickly as possible. Apexus barely felt how the ground under his right foot gave on the final step into the corridor. A ‘click’ preceded a series of louder noises and a bunch of hisses above them.

“Get back!” he warned, pulling back the hovering fairy. Reysha reacted fast enough on her own, leaving only Apexus underneath the hatch that opened to unleash a rain of snakes on the corridor. They were the same as they had faced in the cave segments of the Drowned Altar. Their bite was bothersome to Apexus, strong enough to pierce through his naked skin, but the poison they injected him with wasn’t strong or quantitative enough to inflict more than a little pain before it was neutralized by his acid.

Tearing off the one that had sunk its fangs into his neck, Apexus felt the first true dread in a while when one of the ensuing barrage of thorns punched through his fused ribs. A cold feeling rushed through his limbs, as the tip of the thorn hit his core. It failed to do more than damage the surface, but Apexus had to wrestle to stay in control over base flight instincts.

“Straight!” the slime shouted, several snakes still gnawing on him, and ran forwards. If there was any benefit to the situation, it was that the Thornspitters directly around them were now out of ammunition. Several of the snakes tried to catch Reysha’s feet in passing, but the red, enchanted shoes were too hard to be bitten through mid movement.

Going straight wasn’t necessarily the best of the two remaining options, but at least they didn’t enter a dead end this time around. They triggered another pressure plate at some point, but were past the falling snakes before they could harm any of the three. Several more thorns punched holes into Apexus’ wings. One of them hit Reysha in the calf, luckily missing anything that was important to running.

They hit a short break in the form of a zig-zagging stretch. While it was a drain on Reysha’s stamina, the constant turns meant that they were safe from Thornspitters as long as they kept moving faster than they could rise. The corridor transitioned into a long curve, the end of which was another straight corridor. That one, however, was just pure, polished stone on all sides. No more Thornspitters in sight. About a hundred metres ahead, they saw and heard the telling signs of a healing fountain – steam and flowing water.

Motivated by the sight of this safe haven, the trio accelerated. They were curbed in their hope by another pressure plate causing walls to descend in front and behind them, sealing them into a long room. The ceiling opened and out dropped water and a number of light grey slimes. The surface of the blobs were covered in red dots, the nucleus black and spiky like a sea urchin. The Grapplegoos, yet another monster from the Drowned Altar, were quick to attach themselves to whatever surface they found and then reach out to the group.

The water rose quickly. An occasional additional goo was flooded in. The group had to kill them quickly, particularly the ones that attached themselves to Reysha. It was easy at first, but got harder the further the water rose, slowing down weapons and making Aclysia’s magic entirely ineffective against the Grapplegoo under the surface. Because of the size of the room, Reysha could eventually swim safely out of reach in the middle of it, however, leaving Apexus to tear apart whatever specimen still bothered them.

The question of how to escape was eventually answered by the mechanic that entrapped them itself. That water went high enough that they could swim to the hole in the ceiling and enter the tunnel above. High enough to surround their ankles, saltwater flowed through the dark corridors only lit by the occasional crystal in the wall. The ceiling was low and various pipes cut across the ceiling. Apexus bumped his head more than once, despite keeping it lowered in the first place.

They had a moment of relative calm and Apexus ripped off the last snake that had, somehow, remained attached to him through that whole ordeal. “We should look for a way back down,” he said, while Aclysia healed Reysha’s leg.

The metal fairy was about to answer, when a screech echoed through the dimly lit floor. All three recognized the sound as the scream of a Laghast, the boss monster of the Drowned Altar. They kept their mouths shut to not attract its attention needlessly and nodded at each other.

Finding a way down was the first easy thing they got to do while entering the dungeon. Knowing the direction they had to go into, Apexus just took the lead and concentrated on the sensation around his feet. If there was an opening, the water would likely flow in that direction. Moving quietly through water was difficult and they heard several Laghasts screech in the distance, some coming closer. The layout of this floor resembled a labyrinth and seeing anything approach from far away was impossible. At least, however, the water ensured that they wouldn’t get caught completely off guard by any large predator.

Soon enough, they found a metal grid, through which water fell down into some kind of pool. Apexus could remove it by gripping the bars with both hands and using sheer force. Afterwards, he dropped down. It was confusing for a moment, as he was surrounded on all sides by thin waterfall and ended up in some kind of small lake. A number of small fish monsters attacked him before he surfaced. He dispatched one of them before Aclysia and Reysha were in the lake with him.

Surfacing, they found themselves in some kind of grotto. It was beautiful, the green on all sides, the crystal in the ceiling that simulated sunlight, the small lake and waterfall. The problem was the several Thornspitters who stirred in response to the trio. When the projectiles started flying, they hid under the surface of the water. That didn’t fully protect them, but it was enough to keep any damage to negligible levels.

They got onto land afterwards unmolested and killed the Thornspitters one by one in melee range. Bereft of their projectiles, these monsters were relatively easy to isolate and kill. One solid blow to the fleshy centre usually did it. The movement of their tentacles were noticeably faster than Apexus remembered. That was no surprise though, given the level difference between the original and this dungeon.

Drenched, somewhat exhausted, and happy to have gotten through the gauntlet of an entrance, the group found their way to the healing fountain without further incidents.

They were now on the Long Way to leaving Azenia-Ra.