“Urrich?”

“Mm?”

“Can you tell me anything about”—Nyx paused to stretch—“about dungeon cores?”

They were lying together in the grass of the greenhouse, under clouds tinted lavender and orange with sunrise. It was all a recreation, more beautiful than life.

“Why would I do that?” said Urrich.

“Aren’t you good for anything?” said Nyx, grinning up at the centipede’s enormous, faceless face.

“I do enough for you. And besides, I like how you don’t know things.”

“So it’s fun to watch me struggle?”

“Yeah.”

“Wouldn’t it be fun to watch me grow up?”

They reached around Urrich, hoping to give him a passionate, convincing kiss. He was in a human shape now, so it was possible. But he didn’t budge. He stayed on his back with a vacant smile. Nyx backed away, giving up.

“It’s fun to watch humans crawl in the mud.”

“I’m not human.”

“I know,” he said, with an irritated edge that said ‘and stop nagging me about it.’

“...You know,” Nyx mused, “it seems to me that the world could get along fine without the other one dragging it down.”

“Darshanna does seem like the child hanging onto the parent’s leg, doesn’t it?”

Actually, Nyx had meant it the other way around.

Nyx shrugged. “Humans are inherently needy, I guess.”

“Just humans?” said Urrich. “Can’t you ever stop calling it ‘the human world?’”

“Sorry. I know there are more races—it’s just force of habit.”

“I’m more bothered by the fact that you think humans are in charge of anything, that they know anything.” Urrich turned to face them, leaning on his arm. “I’ll tell you something about dungeon cores, Bev.”

“That’s not my name anymore.”

“Demons might not be born from Darshannan soil, but dungeon cores are as much a part of the earth as they are of the underworld. There is a mild flow between the two places...humans becoming demons once in a long, long while, and...”

Nyx was hungry for the end of his sentence. Either he forgot what he was saying, or he chose not to conclude it.

“Come here, sweet,” he said, reaching out. Nyx rolled away and turned their back to him. He only laughed.

***

“Bev. Bev! We made it! Yes, of course I know this isn’t the end, but we’ve come so far, Bev. This floor...it’s like a museum, laid out especially for us. You know what I think? I’m thinking the dungeon wanted us to come here. It wants to give us some modicum of comfort. It wants to enrich us and delight our senses. One can only wonder what we’d find if we weren’t down here purely to kill as much as possible...what sorts of scientific discoveries we could make by staying down here for an extended period of time and studying the soil, the ecology, the unique properties of slime cores—hm, maybe we could even deactivate them...

“Bev...sorry, hold me...hold my arm, I’m crying.

“I didn’t think I could do this. I didn’t think I would be this good at it.

“You think we can last much longer? ...Yeah. You’re right. We haven’t had any deaths yet. Let’s not jinx it! Or, wait, is it too late not to jinx it?”

The corkscrew stairs went on and on, until they fizzled away and the battles began again.

Soon even the battles were gone.

What an adventure this had become.

“Bev!”

She was gasping for air with every breath. She was flat on her back, looking toward a crystal ceiling. All the echoes of her voice were deafening, bouncing everywhere as if she were everywhere.

“Bev... I can’t move, but I suppose that was obvious. Bev...Bev, can you feel them? I—” She stopped to hiss with pain. “I can’t breathe. I can’t even throw them off. It’s a little better if I”—she wheezed—“if I keep talking, it’ll distract me from the—agh...”

She was speaking for both of them, for they were sharing the same fate. Tiny demons were swarming over them, threading through their flesh.

“Bev,” she panted. “Bev, who did this?”

Ethel’s voice was parched. It ripped her throat with every word. She stared upward through dry eyes, remembering the tears shed hours and hours ago in this very chamber. Eyes dry and hard like crystal. She felt the end coming as her blood pooled and her soul fire, sucked by the mouths of the demons, was taken.

“I saw...someone...I don’t know...if it was...”

He’d taken them when they were sleeping. They figured that must be the case, because between then and now, neither had any memory of leaving the party’s camp.

But it was Beverly who could see through a particular crack in the ceiling and into its band of bright blue. Just as the two had been waking up, their first flurries of movement stilled by their living shackles, Beverly had seen what looked like a boot up above. For one moment. A familiar boot, patchy and brown.

It had been hard to process at the time. She lost interest in processing it now. What was the point of knowing who’d done it when the two of them were about to die?

Beverly made a pitiful attempt at moistening her lips. “You know him...you thought he was...”

“Oh! That one,” said Ethel, and, hearing her talk so cheerfully, Beverly could almost believe they were elsewhere. “I sure did. But you can’t blame me, can you? He had shaggy hair, but not too shaggy. He didn’t look athletic. He was—urgh—he was the type you dream of. A crinkly old rock star.”

“Shut up!”

It came out wrong, like an angry roar. Inside Beverly was crying, and laughing. Ethel was laughing for real, a thin chuckle.

“You know I didn’t want... He was never...going to date us...”

Centipedes threaded through their bodies.