Dungeon cores may not necessarily have been connected to the underworld, but Farander Dungeon’s fifth floor certainly was, and Nyx could tell on account of it being sensorially incomprehensible.

They winced as they stared at it all through a sturdy glass window. Even their demon-y eyes hated looking at this. The space was as erratic as the sparks one sees in the dark, simultaneously natural and unnatural. Everything was flux and colors beyond the rainbow. Too bad Nyx had never dropped acid so they had nothing concrete to compare it to.

“Check that thing out, Ethel,” they said with a casual point.

The five adventurers were sharing a mobile cabin that strode effortlessly through the madness on long, elastic legs. Nyx figured it must’ve looked pretty Giger-y from the outside, because the inside of the cabin was fully organic and Ethel was sitting on a mattress-like tongue. She didn’t exactly look comfortable, but everything in here was equally moist, so she didn’t have much choice.

Ethel lifted her head and peered out Nyx’s window, though the flashing light made her vastly uncomfortable.

“Which thing?” she said. “I see simultaneously all things and no things.”

“Check out all of it. What are you seeing right now?”

“Looks like a bunch of...mental sludge.”

“Okay. Sounds like we’re seeing the same thing. That’s it, just wondering.”

“What?” Ethel cupped a hand around her ear. It was a little hard to hear Nyx when various engine sounds from the base of the cabin and Ragnorre’s drunkard sea shanty from right next to Ethel got in the way.

Nyx waved a hand to say “it’s nothing.”

At the front of the claustrophobic cabin, Hue focused hard on driving. How he was working out what direction to go in, or even their coordinates, was hard to say. How the organic and lumpen controls even worked, that was another. Maybe it was learnable by a mortal mind, provided that mind was turned eternal and given a hundred years.

“Look all you want. Just don’t open the window,” said Lark, reclining against various sizes of molar, who was moments away from passing out from sheer weariness. “Probably shred your nerves...”

“We’re here,” cried Hue.

“Ugh,” said Lark, unable to pass out.

“Really?” said Nyx.

Seconds later, the distorted lightshow outside receded into the recognizable. Several seconds later, Ragnorre stopped singing and began pawing the stomach-like walls in search of the door to leave. Besides her, a wave of calm passed through them all.

“Ah, that’s the light of the waterfall again,” said Ethel.

“Come see it,” Hue invited, unlatching the door. As it swung open, a high volume of saliva dripped out in streaks.

They stepped out of the cabin, and once they were out, Hue stroked it on its corner and spent several minutes compressing its flesh into the size of a sugar cube. Meanwhile, the rest of them watched the slime waterfall and felt instinctively soothed.

So the end of the fifth floor, the part just before the dungeon core, was normal-ish after all. That bafflingly elegant fourth-floor bridge hung so high above them that it hardly looked thicker than a strand of hair.

At their feet were clean, slimeless rock and a pool of rippling, foamy cobalt gelatin.

“It does feel oddly benevolent,” said Ethel. “Especially because—and I know you all noticed this already, but—the space we just passed through didn’t even seem hostile...”

“Like a trap, maybe,” said Nyx, “but one that we weirdly all feel confident in facing.”

“One that we can challenge thanks to over-leveled party members.”

“I hope there’s more,” said Ragnorre, stretching.

“More what?” said Lark, walking around and scanning the area. “The core’s right over there.”

Off to their left was a shadowy passage. Its edges were decked out in elaborate geometry. It didn’t quite look inviting. It looked imposing, challenging.

“Ready,” said Hue, after another minute.

They stepped forward. Ragnorre prepared her lantern, but Lark assured her that they wouldn’t need it. As they walked in, an ambient light emerged on its own, rising from the core itself.

Nyx knew Ethel’s heart must have been beating out of her ribcage—because Nyx’s own heartrate was spiking with anticipation, and if they were curious, then Ethel had to be ecstatic.

For once since they’d landed in the underworld, they didn’t have a clue of what sights to expect. And for whatever reason, they had a tourist’s confidence that what had been so well advertised would be worth all the trouble.

But it was pretty much just the model of the Positron Church that Nyx had fumbled their way into on their crummy trip to Positron Space.

They sighed.