Riana wasn't sleeping when Bladefin came swimming in to poke her with his nose, but she wasn't paying much attention to her surroundings either.

The past hours of waiting while Mr. Morrison cleared the way for their escape were both incredibly tense and oddly boring. It had given her time to do some serious self-reflection - perhaps too much so. She'd always have imagined herself to be adventurous and daring, and facing the reality of her own reluctance to act was painful.

So when a flying fish came nudging at her, she welcomed the distraction.

"What is it?" she asked, then frowned. "Shouldn't you be with Mr. Morrison?"

Bladefin bobbed up and down and side to side in complex patterns that she couldn't begin to interpret. Then, with one final bob as if satisfied with his communication abilities, he turned and swam out the door, darting back and forth when Riana didn't immediately follow.

"Alright, I'm coming." Maybe he was back and it was time to evacuate?

But instead the fish led her to one of the other rooms, where she found Peter crouched over a collection of crafting materials with a focused scowl.

"It's not going to unlock until level fifteen," Riana told him. "However much you stare."

Peter looked up just in time for Bladefin to ram nose-first into his chest, the flying fish eagerly waving his stubby little fins.

"You want to show us something?"

Bladefin darted away, bobbing and weaving as though he were perpetually swimming against invisible currents, though the air down here didn't really move at all.

"Let's go see what he found."

Riana only glanced back toward the stairs up once before nodding. "Okay."

They crossed through three of the prison levels, descending in curved hallways and uneven stairways that alternated weirdly between human-made and dungeon-shaped.

Then they reached the bottom, a block of cells without doors installed yet, dim and empty. Bladefin immediately darted to the side, into the first empty doorway. Instead of a cell, a short stairway led to a room with six doorways leading off in different directions.

"Is it really okay for us to go down here alone?" Riana asked.

"Of course!" Peter declared with absolute confidence. "Bladefin wouldn't lead us anywhere bad."

Bladefin confidently chose one without slowing, forcing the pair to run to keep up with him.

They came to several forks and turns, each a good distance apart. Every time Bladefin either continued straight or chose one of the side passages, never pausing.

They continued like this for a very long time, taking so many turns that Riana completely lost her sense of direction. Sometimes they went up stairs, sometimes they went down.

Did this multi-level labyrinth fill the entire region beneath the mountain? What was its purpose?

The excitable fish bobbed on ahead of them happily, choosing another door off the current five-option room.

They crossed several more halls before climbing up a final set of stairs, emerging into the center of a round room. The floor sloped up in all directions. Around the top they could see a eight openings into deep alcoves, all but one blocked off with thick bars.

"A challenge arena?" Riana's eyes flicked across the carvings set above and around each opening. Each depicted a different type of creature present in this dungeon.

The central floor was smooth and free of seam or crack, the high ceiling seamless.

Peter immediately ran over to the first opening, the only one whose entry was open. Riana entered more slowly, uneasy at the atmosphere of the place.

The arena - she couldn't think of it in any other way - was broken up by four different-height plinths of rough brown stone. It would provide an obstacle course to anyone charging in, a minor opportunity for cover to a defender.

A way to make the encounter a bit less of a foregone conclusion, perhaps. With Riana and Peter, the conclusion would be equally foregone regardless.

There was a sense of danger, ominous looming peril, even though nothing indicated any actual threat.

She couldn't think of any good reason for there being this many cages around something so reminiscent of an arena that didn't involve terrifying and deadly creatures. They were empty at the moment, but that could change at any time without warning.

"I think we should leave..." Riana tried, but Peter was already inside the first alcove - the one depicting a stylized dire-turkey - and from the sounds of it he wasn't paying any attention to her any more.

With one quick glance at the other seven alcoves to be sure they were still empty and sealed, she ran across the arena floor to join Peter and Bladefin.

"Peter!" Riana hissed, when she saw he was prodding at a sequence of glowing stones on the wall. "Be careful, we don't know what that does."

"It's a puzzle." Even as he spoke, he tapped in another sequence, and this time the lights illuminated and stayed lit.

Grinding sounds from outside indicated they'd accomplished something. Exiting their alcove, Riana saw the one on the opposite side of the room had opened. Peter grinned and ran across the arena, jumping from the downward slope onto the top of the plinths with a quick burst of stamina, bounding across the two between him and his destination, then landing lightly on the far side.

Riana envied how effortless he made it look. Half the time she didn't even think of her system stats as being available resources, let alone practice with them to the extent that she could do something like that.

Part of her wanted to run after him, while another part wanted to run away. She stood a moment, paralyzed by indecision, but this was her adventure, wasn't it? She'd wanted something interesting to happen for so long, she felt guilty for being unhappy when it actually happened. They were solving puzzles in a secret room beyond an underground maze beneath a prison inside a monster-filled dungeon. Shouldn't she be more excited about it?

"Come on, Riana! It'll be faster with two of us."

Peter's voice broke through her paralysis, galvanizing her into action. She threw caution to the winds and started running, then hurled herself forward in a mad stamina-fueled leap before she had time to talk herself out of it. She'd pushed a little more stamina into the jump than she'd realized, soaring all the way across the room and very nearly colliding with the far wall.

It was exhilarating in a way she'd forgotten, after being so caught up in talking and training and recruiting, and then being captured... she'd forgotten how much fun it could be just to flex her new inhuman powers and play.

Laughing for the first time in what felt like ages, she jogged over to join Peter in the second alcove.

The wall was more complicated than the first, with six buttons and pattern sections instead of three, all twisting over and around and through each other.

Each time Peter pressed a button, one section lit up, then slowly faded to dimness again. Riana started pressing buttons too, but it quickly became clear that there was more to the puzzle than 'turn all the lights on at once'. Sometimes turning one on instantly deactivated another, or when two were ignited at the same time they both fizzled out.

The patterns weren't clear, but the more they pressed things the closer she came to seeing the underlying logic of it.

"Aha!" Peter pointed out a sequence. "That, then that, then this, then these two, and then the last one there."

Riana followed his lead, pressing the buttons on her side of the wall in the sequence he'd indicated, while he followed with those on his side.

The pattern flashed, shifted, then ignited all at once.

"Yes!"

Stone shifted, metal grinding as the third alcove opened behind them. Riana turned to accept Peter's high five, then they turned to run out across the arena to the third opening.

Alas, while they'd been busy pressing buttons, something had changed. The beast alcove marked with the snarling jaws of a many-legged furry monstrosity was no longer empty. As the bars slid open, its inhabitant skittered out.

Thankfully, it was significantly lower level than the creatures outside the prison tunnels had been. Unfortunately, it was still higher level than either of them.

Level 11

(Spider-Skunk)

Health 100%