Sariel had made a tidy profit from his first day bartending. Common knowledge stated that you'd make a killer profit from sales at night rather than during the daytime, but unfortunately certain circumstances prevented that from being possible.

Grantz and Johann stumbled out of the shop after handing over fifteen marshmallows. Good enough for Sariel, he decided. Around a quarter of the cost of an Aspect Gem, and it didn't even cost him anything. Every battle that he fought felt like a mockery when he could print power so cheaply. He sighed. That last sentence was, of course, a lie. He couldn't just sit back and sell alcohol and try to survive. Gaining Spirit was naturally just as important.

Interestingly, you were cleansed of nearly all negative effects when you dove into Otherside. Drowsiness, exhaustion, fatigue, and naturally alcohol intoxication (Sariel had the displeasure of hearing about how some idiot Dreamers overdosed on suspicious mushrooms in the waking world). Everything except insanity.

Washing the shot glasses and stowing away his materials, he decided to move towards the gathering area to fall asleep rather than the upper floor of his own store. He had gotten quite comfortable among everyone else; it was such a comfort to be able to share in your burden with everyone else. The burden of staying awake.

The bell tolled, the fires crackled, and the sensation that was becoming uncomfortably familiar hit Sariel once again. Back to the lovely, wonderful place known as Otherside.

---

Something was very wrong.

Sariel was immediately aware of the off-kilter pressure skimming his body. All his senses were muffled as if someone had stuffed him between two giant cushions. Unfortunately, as comfortable as that sounded, they had intended to suffocate him. He opened his mouth to gasp, before shutting it swiftly. Something was very wrong, indeed.

He pried his eyes open and they stung with a burning pain - still, he forced them to stay unclosed - and quickly, his vision adjusted to assess the situation. He was underwater. That explained the agonising wails of his lungs when he had taken an involuntary breath upon awakening. He openly gritted his teeth to bear the unavailability of oxygen, but all that did was let a cluster of bubbles painfully run from his mouth. He opted to shut his mouth into a tight line.

He moved his arms to attempt to get some semblance of bearing. Rough and chunky rocks jutted against his palms. His squinting eyes darted to a wobbling streak of light and concluded that he must be in between two tall crags. He began swimming - except you couldn’t exactly call what he was doing swimming. It was more like bumpy gliding and knocking shoe soles on sharp edged rocks to gain momentum. He continued to push his weight upwards, putting the arrows of pain that drummed through his feet to the wayside, attempting to find safety whilst his skull was throbbing in dizzying fury, threatening to pass out.

Sariel was almost at what he hoped to be the surface after seconds that felt like hours. His hands slashed at the rippling but unceasing ocean around him. His palms were outstretched towards the light just a hand span away, but admittedly, Sariel was at his limit. He could feel the intense blare in his head, the give of his diaphragm and the increasingly stabbing ache alarming him that his body was progressively shutting down. With his energy completely drained, Sariel's extended arms lolled down, sinking slowly in the dense waters.

Then, he saw a figure on the surface. Instinctively, he took a deep breath, choking into the water, but sending a chain slamming into the entity. He pulled himself with all his might and leapt out of the water, landing on the platform with a desperate blow. Sariel couldn’t help but sharply intake a healthy scoop of the air that was abruptly presented to him, though it threw him into an uncontrollable fit of coughing. Staggering, Sariel cleared all the water that he unwillingly swallowed away, moving backwards whilst attempting to look at what he had latched onto. Surprisingly, it was someone that was familiar to him.

"King?" Sariel questioned while attempting to wring off the sea that clung to his clothes.

"Take it easy, Flower. So you got transported here too, huh?" King grinned.

Sariel assessed the surroundings with his eyes. He stood atop a course floor and all around him resided large, recumbent boulders. The atmosphere was damp and redolent of a thick-aired swamp. He figured they were in a cave. The ceiling was so high, Sariel could barely distinguish the precarious stalagmites it accommodated, but the chilling darkness that swept over the cave might have contributed to the difficulty of locating them. He knew the triangular shaped rocks were there, though, because they occasionally slipped tiny droplets of water from above down to the ground.

Sariel was about to ask if King had seen any other Dreamers, but before he could open his mouth, a flock of quiet footsteps echoed as they made their way towards the golden boy. 'Another one, huh?' Through the incredibly dim lighting, Sariel spotted five other Dreamers moving forward. A lantern sign, a pen, a blade, a pair of linked circles, and a paw. 'Have any of you seen this place before? Where on earth are we?'

The Dreamer with the lantern symbol spoke up. 'I do believe we're somewhere in Archipelago, although the situation seems unprecedented. I've never heard of people dropping in underneath the ground.'

Sariel decided to look around the platform. It seemed that they were stuck on a circular platform, and he emerged from the water below. It was likely that they were on top of some sort of underwater pillar, and around the pillar was the water that they had emerged from. However, there were walls around the pillar, separating it roughly into three sections. A northern facing area (or at least, what Sariel just presumed to be north), a south-eastern opening, and a south-western opening. He peered into the opening he emerged from, and noticed the walls that blocked them off. It seemed they went for a ways further, but it wasn't possible to look any further from his position.

Suddenly, the sound of bubbling sent all of the Dreamers rushing towards the northern opening. King got there first, diving in to pull them up. Rosary rose from the water, coughing out the liquid and breathing deeply. 'That's the eighth, now. How many of us were sent here?' The Dreamer with the pen symbol clicked his foot on the ground impatiently. 'How is it possible that not a single person ever reported on this drop location before?'

A silence followed his question as everyone simultaneously reached the same conclusion. 'Well,' Lantern said slowly, 'It may be because nobody made it out of here alive before.'

---

The next five minutes showed more and more Dreamers surfacing from the water. A dreamer with a glass window, a globe, and one with a drop. Sariel was trying really hard to remember everyone, but it was not very easy as more and more people emerged from the depths. Some needed to be rescued, and some used their Aspects to get out. Sariel watched the water in front of him ripple as a familiar white-haired Dreamer teleported into the air. Not the one he wanted to see, though.

Butterfly landed on the platform next to Sariel, shaking off the water nonchalantly. Sariel thought about fighting him as payback for last time, but decided against it; in an unknown situation, allies were worth more than everything else. Butterfly looked to him with a questioning look on his shameless face, but he was met with a 'we'll discuss what's going on when everyone emerges.'

'It seems we're at twelve now. Oh, another one is coming up!' Everyone moved to the southwestern opening, peering into the cloudy water to see another Dreamer rising up. But something was off.

A flash and a blur in their vision. A flash of white and teeth and bone and brutal splashes of red as the water clouded in a mesmerizing red. Sariel watched on in horror as the blocked water remained unable to fully obscure the brutal butchering of the thirteenth Dreamer.

Sariel watched from the platform in horror as the scene unfolded below. A person was thrashing in the water, desperately trying to escape the jaws of a massive shark. The water was a churning mass of foam and blood, and Sariel could hear the screams of the victim echoing across the ocean. As he watched, Sariel felt a sense of helplessness wash over him. He longed to dive in and save the person, to fight off the beast and bring the victim to safety. But it was just impossible. Impossible, once he read the cold and unfeeling stat box of the beast.

Sariel clenched his fists in frustration, his eyes never leaving the scene below. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins, his heart pounding in his chest. It was a moment of pure terror. Transcendence forty-two. The meaning of that number was something else entirely. What on earth was this thing? Could anything destroy it? Without a doubt, a single bite would mean death.

It wasn't just that it was one of the strongest things Sariel had ever seen. No, indeed, he had witnessed the existence of a transcendence forty-seven demon lord. It was the sheer speed and dexterity of the creature. And it was the impossibility of combat against it. Nobody could traverse in water. You were nothing less than dead in the water if you misstep.

Despite the horror of the scene, Sariel could not look away. He watched as the shark dragged its victim deeper into the water, disappearing from sight. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of the waves and the beating of his own heart. Sariel took a deep breath, steeling himself against the fear and sadness that threatened to overwhelm him.

A large air bubble popped on the surface, snapping everyone out of their trance. The blood rose to the surface, coating it in red. A few fell to the ground, shivering in terror.

'What the hell was that?'

---

Ten minutes later, no other Dreamers surfaced. It seemed like everyone that would be surfacing had already done so.

Sariel looked around the room. A total of twelve of them were present, some sitting and some standing around the slowly dissipating red puddle. He cleared his throat and looked around. 'Well, I think we should begin with introductions?'

Lantern glanced at him and shook her head. 'I think that'll not be necessary. Let's just take a deep breath, pause, and relax.' She looked around, and sighed. 'I think everyone needs some time.'

Sariel nodded, agreeing. It wouldn't matter too much, since everyone would be parting somewhat soon. He looked around once again; there was nothing to kill, and nowhere to go. It was just a box.

He had no idea what this place was. Throughout all the experiences he went through, he never saw anything like this. He heard the heroes in his dreams speak of an underground facility that he was never able to see; naturally, he could only float in the sky, and so he was never able to go underground. Rumours of an underground cavern, however, never reached his ears.

Was he just meant to huddle on the ground, occasionally getting hit by a droplet of water, until the night ended? What was the Abyss even planning, here? It was true that it managed to take one of the Dreamers, but was that really it?

The quick pulse of Darkness around the area signalled something familiar to Sariel; dungeon entrance. This, he could understand.