They stood in the fountain room a little longer than was sensible, which was quickly becoming their primary adventuring skill.
The air was wet with leftover violence. Water dripped from ledges. The cracked marble basin that had recently tried to drown Alona sat innocently, like it hadn't just committed attempted murder. Across the way, the well waited—still and wrong in a way that made the back of the brain itch.
Alona looked at it and narrowed her eyes.
"This feels like a trick question," she said. "Are we staying here, or going back to the others?"
Mouse, still damp, still irritated on principle, blinked. "Wait—our porter. The one we paid to get eaten by architecture."
"…Cuix'tli," Alona said, pained.
"His arm is still in the wall, isn't it?" Mouse added, as though this was a minor inconvenience like forgetting a coat.
Morgul—who had already woken up once today into horrors beyond comprehension—offered, "We could… lubricate him?"
Snuffles nodded seriously. "Alchemy jug. Bag of holding."
"Or," Morgul added, with the confidence of a man suggesting something that had never worked for anyone ever, "we have oil of slipperiness."
Snuffles' eyes flicked to Alona. "How good are you at healing? Because we could cut his arm off and—"
Alona's stare could've turned stone to dust.
"We are not solving this with amputation," she said. "Not until lunch."
They debated. They stalled. They did what all heroes do in a dungeon: they sat down and pretended it was strategic.
A short rest, as Snuffles described it, was "lying down while still being emotionally prepared to eldritch blast something at a moment's notice."
Mouse, slumped against the wall, eyed Alona. "Easier than carrying your body back."
Then, in her mind, she imagined dragging Alona up the stairs by her ankles and whacking her head on every step like a morbid percussion instrument.
Alona, reading the mood with the seasoned dread of a cleric who had adventured with these people too long, said, "If you are thinking about the stairs, stop it."
Snuffles rummaged, checked their pockets, and then—because life in the temple was apparently full of tiny mercies—found the key Alona had nearly died for.
"Worth twenty-one gold," he said.
Mouse stared at it. "Twenty-one gold is not worth drowning."
Alona coughed. "It was… an experience."
They poked everything in the room out of stubbornness. They found no keyholes, no hidden panels, no obvious new ways forward. Just the well—dark, smooth, and deeply suspicious.
Their light went out at just the wrong moment, and in the brief dimness Mouse caught it: the faintest ring of silver light, like moonlight leaking beneath a door.
From the well.
Mouse pointed. "Guys. There's some mysterious things afoot. I vote we smash the well."
Morgul, who had spent most of his life learning restraint and stealth and subtlety, surprised everyone by saying, "Honestly? Smashing up the place sounds like the best plan we've had today."
Snuffles hesitated. "Reminder. It's fake water. Glass."
Mouse hefted her maul with the calm certainty of someone meeting a moral imperative. "How strong can obsidian be?"
Mouse swung.
The well shattered with a sound like a cathedral window dying. Black glass collapsed inward, tinkling down into darkness, and a chute yawned beneath—angled away, disappearing out of sight.
And from it poured soft silver light.
Mouse leaned over the edge. "There's light coming out of the well. Anyone?"
"Don't go towards the light," Morgul said automatically, as if he'd been trained for this since childhood.
Snuffles peered down and sighed. "I don't think it's a good idea for us to go down a slide with broken obsidian. But I can send an imp."
Mouse brightened. "Yes. Send the disposable one."
An imp appeared with a pop of infernal irritation.
"Hello, mister," it said.
Snuffles pointed into the chute. "Job for you. Ride down the fun little slide. Tell us if there's anything sharp. Then tell us what's at the bottom."
The imp stared into the darkness. "I think I can see glass."
"No," Snuffles said firmly. "You'll be fine."
The imp sighed the sigh of a creature who had, against its will, joined an adventuring party.
"You know I can fly, right?"
"Yeah," Snuffles said. "But we can't."
There was a pause. Then, very reluctantly, it angled itself sideways, dropped in—
and went: "Weeeeeee."
Snuffles closed his eyes and looked through the imp.
And for a heartbeat, the world became… absurd.
A vast room unfolded beneath them—its floor a giant painted diorama. Tiny clay people struggled to roll a boulder up a hill while a devilish figure whipped them onward. Around the edges, other scenes sprawled: a burning desert with devils at work, a grassy plain with hunters, an icy waste, a bubbling marsh, a lava canyon, a steaming chasm where miniature worms chased miniature naked people with miniature despair.
Snuffles opened his eyes slowly.
"So," he said, voice distant. "We found… hell-themed model railway enthusiasts."
Mouse stared. "Any doors?"
"Two doors," Snuffles confirmed. "One barred. One… not barred."
Morgul raised a finger. "We are not going into the diorama room until we have processed the sentence you just said."
The imp, meanwhile, drifted through the open door to scout further—because it did not get paid enough to have survival instincts.
Beyond was a modest room with shelves, a glazed flask, a small urn, a thin stone cylinder—
and a lumpy pile of earth in the center.
The imp hovered closer.
The pile moved.
The air thickened. Black tar boiled up like something waking from a nap and choosing violence. It lunged.
Snuffles watched through the imp's eyes as the darkness struck, swallowed sound, and—
The imp screamed.
Then the vision snapped back.
Snuffles blinked at the group. "The imp is dead."
Mouse nodded solemnly. "That tracks."
Morgul leaned over the well and peered down as if he could see the death. "I have a feeling we shouldn't go down there."
Alona, still damp, still bruised, still very much in the mood to be contrary, said, "Shall we go down the tube?"
Mouse blinked. "There isn't anywhere else."
Snuffles rubbed his face. "We could go back. I mean, it's not a terrible idea."
Mouse stared at the chute. "Can we climb back up the slide?"
Alona brightened. "I have a climbing kit."
Morgul's eyes lit with terrible inspiration. "Or we sit on Steve and he slithers us back up."
Mouse pointed at him. "Don't you dare tiptoe near Steve, he might get hurt."
They compromised, as all doomed parties do: rope.
Alona tied it off around the rim and tested it. Solid enough. Fifty feet, plenty of slack. She lowered the end into the chute like she was feeding a line into the throat of a patient beast.
"Who's first?" Snuffles asked.
Mouse immediately looked at Alona. Alona immediately looked at Mouse.
Mouse said, "I'm healthier at this point."
Alona sighed. "Fine. Go on, meat shield."
Mouse swung herself over the lip, let the rope glide through her hands—
and descended with all the dignity of a determined avalanche.
Halfway down, she glanced left and saw it: a section of plastered wall, cracked and crumbling, not natural rock like the rest. Something inside it had been digging.
She reached the bottom and called up, "Be careful. Falling rock. Send the lightest first."
Snuffles, from above, said, "So we know there's an evil slime, falling rocks, and you still went down."
Alona, without hesitation, went next—slowly, cautious for once in her life.
She made it ten feet before she saw a ragged fingernail hook through the plaster.
Then a grey hand.
Then the plaster peeled like wet paper.
Something inside had an eye—reflective, animal-bright. It saw her.
Alona swallowed, and called upward with the level calm of someone who has accepted their fate.
"Zombie."
Then she let go.
The last ten feet was not elegant. It was survival.
She hit the bottom, turned, and immediately whacked Mouse lightly on the back of the head—purely on principle.
Mouse turned. "Ow."
Alona pointed upward. "Zombie."
Mouse looked up, looked at the walls, looked at the ominous silver-lit chute, and then did what any rational barbarian would do.
She began doing the Macarena.
Snuffles, still at the top, sighed the deep sigh of a man who had summoned multiple imps today and learned nothing.
"I might send another imp down."
Mouse called up, "I'm waiting for Morgul to stealth down."
Alona added helpfully, "Yes. He sneaks down and nobody notices."
"Morgul is the darkness," she declared, like it was a comforting proverb.
From above, the plaster began to fall more quickly.
Whatever was inside was trying harder now.
And then, as if the universe decided the chute wasn't enough, something else happened—
Because when you entered the diorama room by landing on the hill, the hill did not like you.
A force pushed at them, trying to slide them down its painted slopes into whatever miniature afterlife waited below.
Mouse dug her heels in. So did Alona.
They held.
For the moment.
Up above, Snuffles sent the imp down to stab at the emerging thing in the wall, because of course he did.
The imp darted in, stung, and retreated like a horrible little medic with no bedside manner.
The plaster ruptured—
and a creature launched itself out upside-down, clinging to the curved wall of the diorama chamber like a cockroach that had learned to hate.
It was emaciated. Human-sized. Decorated with faint gold. Needle-teeth bared. Drool shining black in the silver light.
It stared down at them from the wall with a kind of hungry reverence.
Mouse squinted up. "It's definitely a vampire."
Alona, with the weariness of a cleric who had absolutely not signed up for this, said, "Of course it is."
The vampire launched itself—fast, desperate, claws out—
and Mouse, somehow, caught it.
Mid-air.
For a heartbeat, they were locked together in the stupidest tableau imaginable: barbarian flexing and vampire scrambling, snapping its teeth inches from her face.
Mouse grinned. "Can you train a vampire as a pet?"
"No," Alona said, immediately.
The vampire scrambled away, leaping into the painted burning sands section of the room like it had a reservation.
Mouse stared after it. "I hate that it's nimble."
Alona raised her hand, muttered a prayer—
and missed her spell completely.
The diorama hill, delighted by this incompetence, shoved her sideways off-balance.
Alona slid down into the grassy plain section.
Her boots hit painted grass.
And suddenly—
everything was perfect.
The air smelled like sun-warmed fields. The world softened. Her shoulders unclenched. Her worries dissolved like salt in water.
Alona's face went slack with bliss.
Mouse blinked. "Alona?"
Alona smiled serenely. "This is paradise."
Morgul, still above and hearing all of this like a man listening to his own funeral from upstairs.
Snuffles, dangling on the rope, fired blindly at the vampire because it was the only thing he could emotionally process.
The diorama, meanwhile, continued its slow escalation of nonsense.
From the door the imp had opened earlier, the black tar-thing began to creep out—oozing forward with patient, horrible inevitability. It wasn't fast.
It didn't need to be.
Mouse watched it coming.
Alona was frolicking.
Morgul was swearing.
Snuffles was dangling like a cursed lantern while being clawed at by the vampire on the wall above.
The tar rolled closer and—
glopped over Mouse's legs.
It burned.
It hurt.
And that pain, blessedly, violently, ripped the happiness spell out of her like a bandage.
Mouse gasped. "Oh no. It doesn't feel good anymore."
Alona, still blissed out nearby, waved lazily. "Hello, friend."
Morgul, seeing his opening, slapped Alona hard with a book titled Guide to Not Dying, because the universe had a sense of humour and so did whoever wrote Morgul's inventory.
Alona did not wake up.
Morgul stared at the book like it had betrayed him.
Mouse, now very much not frolicking, grabbed her axe, roared, and hit the ooze—
and the ooze split.
Mouse froze. "Oh."
Snuffles blasted one half. His imp stabbed the other. They began trying to reduce the problem rather than multiply it, which was a novel approach for them.
Meanwhile, Morgul took a running start, used his ring of jumping like an angry spring-loaded ferret, and stabbed the vampire on the wall.
Once.
Twice.
The vampire hissed, tried to retaliate, and then—when Mouse finally got in range—
Mouse jumped.
Not even a proper jump. More like: "I am tall and I choose violence."
She brought the axe up in two brutal strikes, and the vampire's head came off so cleanly it took a moment for the body to understand it was dead.
The head fell into Mouse's hands.
Mouse looked at the treasure on it with satisfaction. "I'm keeping this."
The body slid off the wall and collapsed onto the hill like a discarded coat.
For one glorious moment, it looked like they'd won.
Alona blinked, finally snapping out of her bliss with the abrupt shock of someone waking up from the best nap of their life.
She looked around at the acid scars on the painted terrain, the ooze splitting, the dead vampire, Snuffles dangling, Morgul sweating, Mouse holding a vampire head like it was a shopping basket—
and said, sincerely, "Well. That grass smelled great."
"Welcome back," Morgul said through his teeth. "Now fix this."
Alona sighed, raised her holy symbol, and unleashed spirit guardians that tore into the ooze like judgement made manifest. The remaining slime melted, hissed, and died messily.
Silence returned.
Everyone stood there, panting.
Covered in acid.
Holding a vampire's severed head.
Standing on a magical hill that had repeatedly tried to yeet them into themed suffering.
And then Mouse looked up at the chute they'd come through—the silver light still spilling down—and said:
"So… we've killed everything. Great. Love that for us."
Snuffles wiped his face. "We still can't climb back up the slide."
Morgul looked at the broken glass above. "We also still have a porter upstairs whose arm is in a wall."
Alona stared at them, then at the diorama floor, then at the two doors—one barred, one not.
She exhaled.
"Right," she said. "Guess we pick a door."
And somewhere in the diorama room quiet, patient, unseen something clicked, as if the temple had been waiting for them to feel relief first.
Mouse froze mid-step.
"…Did you hear that?"
Alona blinked. "Hear what?"
Morgul swallowed. "Don't say click."
Snuffles, very softly, said: "That was a click."
And the silver light in the room flickered just once, like the dungeon was blinking.