The sillhouettes surrounding the stone table all laughed as a projection of Silk snatching the map played out.

“OUR PLAN IS NEARLY COMPLETE, OUR WORKS AND SCHEMES COMING OUT NEAT!”, shouted the Abyssal Lord of madness. The armored figure shifted a bit in its seat, clanking as it did so.

“Yes, we will soon be able to manifest It if all goes well. No more will we be bound by that infernal barrier of The Sage. All we have to do is wait for that map we planted to be followed to the source of that horrid thing and have it be broken once and for all.”, said the armored voice in a metallic monotone.

“I just can’t wait for the fun we are going to have”, whispered the figure shrouded in cloths in an echoey voice.

Silk, after going back to the now ensnared ship for her pack, took out a torch and lit it using two pieces of flint.Strolling around, Silk noted that the crimson, hairlike grass was cut short enough to appear almost like a lawn. The occasional monster loped around, seemingly unaware of the crew. Each one carried a tool of some kind, whether it be a sledgehammer, an axe, or a telescope.

Eventually, they noticed a cave, with far denser concentrations of creatures not unlike the one that had attacked them. Out of nowhere, one lept out from behind a rock, eerily silent as it took out a massive warhammer made of the same watery pink crystal. Moving with a swiftness that belied it’s size, it proceeded to bring down the warhammer. Victor flinched, prepared to block the strike coming at him, no matter the impact on his health. Before he did so, Silk tackled him to the ground.

“No fighting. That’s an order”, she said.

“But -”

“I said no fighting”, interjected Silk.

The creature hobbled further, prepared to strike, until Levi came in with a crippling slash at it’s “ankles”.

Landing on it’s knees, Silk quickly hoisted both her and the injured Victor onto their feet, before moving out of the range of the now-hobbled beast.

Moving through the cavernous, veinlike structures was a massive inconvenience. Everywhere they went, there was always another mutated worker, chipping away mindlessly at the walls for some reason. Most of the creatures without weapons were passive, never once making any remotely aggressive move against the party.

The worker concentration became denser and denser, until they entered a massive cavern with the fleshy growth positively bustling with a crowd of mattock-wielding monsters. The cavern was shaped mostly like a spherical cavity, except for the corner of a massive black cube jutting in from the side. As they watched in part wonder and part disgust, the corner rumbled and shook a bit, banging upwards.

Silk took out the map they had “liberated” from acna’s treasure room and flipped it over, looking between the two rapidly.

“I can’t believe this”, she groaned in exasperation.

“What?”, asked Victor.

“You know the ancient flying castle this map said it would lead us to?”, said Silk.

“Nope. You didn’t let me take a look at it for fear of me deciding to eat or draw on it”, replied Victor.

It wasn’t a misplaced fear, to be fair. Victor had once drawn all over the town charter in Scinticius and taken a bite out of the deed for the city hall for revenge against the mayor calling him the town’s second most wanted criminal.

“Well, that’s what this map said. And that flying castle’s bottom just so happens to look exactly like that matte box’s corner.” explained Silk.

“Well, there looks like there’s a maintenance hatch up in the corner we could crawl into. I don’t think those things have figured that out yet, so I say we go in.”, suggested victor.

“What hatch? I can’t see anything.”, responded Silk.

“You have way better vision than me. How the hell can you not - it’s the ring again, isn’t it?”, responded Victor.

“Probably”.

“Okay everybody, just follow my lead”, Called victor to the rest of the crew.

Doing an array of flips and twirls, Victor flamboyantly parkoured his way up the rocks like a coked up squirrel, his injuries seemingly doing nothing to stop him from the ridiculous movements. Silk and Levi followed suit, with the former simply using her blades as climbing hooks by stabbing them in sideways and the latter using her feline agility to climb up at an albeig slower pace.

“Uh.. hate to bother yeh ladies, but I think my climbing days are kind of past me”, responded Henry.

Bundo nodded in agreement.

Victor sighed dramatically, which then resulted in a series of unhealthy sounding coughs. “My ribs”, he squeaked dramatically.

“Just toss me a rope or something. I’ll anchor it to the bottom of the vent”, responded Victor.

Bundo proceeded to unscrew his peg leg, pull a coil of rope out of it, and gave it to henry. The old man then threw the rope up, which Victor then caught and anchored with the help of his knife. The tip sank deep into the polished black stone, with a firm sailor’s knot being attached to the handle for support.

Silk crawled up into the vent, with Levi doing the same. Following in a straight line, Bundo was the last to enter the vent. He almost forgot to retrieve the knife, but Victor called out,

“Hey, Bundo. Can you grab my knife before you go? I kind of need it for, you know, not dying.”

As they entered the turns and twists of the dusty tunnels, the floor of one of the shafts creaked menacingly before collapsing suddenly, leaving everyone but bundo to fall into a central atrium roughly five metres tall.

Inside was a hovering matte table carrying a tablet, with glowing purple hemispheres on the bottom of each corner replacing what would normally be it’s legs. Victor slapped the table harshly, with it wobbling around until it re-oriented itself.

Victor tilted his head and flipped the table over, forcing the stone rectangle atop it to clatter to the ground in a cacophony of echoing smacks. The table then proceeded to fall onto his toes far harder than what it normally should have been, as if it was accelerating twice as fast as an ordinary object would have. As he started hopping around in pure agony, Silk slapped him upside the head in retaliation.

“Don’t mess with things so recklessly. It’s hazardous to your health, dimwit.”, she snapped. She sighed. The only thing that ever seemed to reign him in was brute force, as if he was an unruly dog requiring housebreaking.

Victor scrabbled over to the spot directly below the vents and asked Bundo for his knife back.

“Sure thing, friend Victor!” said the diminutive elf while sossing down the sharp object.

Victor caught it between his index and middlfe finger at the point nonchalantly, before flipping it end over end and catching it by the point. He then proceeded to pry off the purple hemispheres from the table, pocketing them in his satchel accordingly.

He then proceeded to inspect a large vertical slit in the wall, jumping back in suprise when it revealed itself to be a pair of sliding doors that receded into the walls.

From the other side, the face of the Abyss Lord that had nearly ended Silk and Victor’s lives leered at them menacingly.