By the time Char led us into their camp, the other two ellids were sitting around a small fire pit that Enila must’ve carved from the stone the same way she had made the rest of the place. She had even made a handful of rocky seats in various sizes, each covered by a soft coating of that same moss-like substance. Similarly, the artificial cave featured several mossy platforms inset into the walls, apparently makeshift bedding.

  Noticing, and mistaking, my glance, Enila shrugged. “I know they’re not the most luxurious beds ever, but I can only do stone and moss reliably, so you’ll have to deal.”

  Like Char, the female ellid had ditched her combat gear, and there was no sign of her bow or her deeply hooded cloak from earlier. Her skin turned out to be as dark as Char’s, though tinted differently–where theirs was a deep, sun-baked bronze, hers was the dark, rich tone of polished wood. Her hair was a wavy combination of bashful orange and dark green that, together with her skin, made her look like a tree on the first day of autumn.

  “We spent our last rest sitting on the ground with our backs to a wall, and were planning the same for our next,” I told her honestly. “Moss and flat surfaces are a massive improvement.”

  Fallon, who had better manners than me even while in shock, added, “Thank you.”

  Char clapped us each on the shoulder. “This is what we do,” they said simply. “Now how about a meal?”

  Soon thereafter, we were sitting around a cheery campfire, drinking our fill of water and eating long skewers of soft, tangy meat and dense, savory vegetables, neither of which seemed quite right to my palette–but after two days of hunger and fear and thirst and exhaustion, we ate and drank our fill anyways.

  The skewers, water, and firewood were all produced by crystals just like the one we had found earlier, that had allowed us to pull sandwiches out of midair.

  “They’re called supply crystals,” Char explained, when we mentioned the one we had found. “No one is sure exactly how they work, but they come into being already pre-filled with a stock of certain items.”

  Eni added, “Delvers like us get the more survival oriented ones–always water, some sort of food. The firewood was Char’s contribution.”

  Although it hadn’t been said, there was a quiet but obvious air of command to the androgynous knight, with the other two subtly but consistently deferring to them. Still, Char waved off the compliment, as seemed to be their preference. “Firewood isn’t as in demand as planks or trees,” they said simply. “It wasn’t really that expensive.”

  Fallon and I traded a look. She was picking at her second skewer, while I was halfway through my third and chewing enthusiastically. We both watched as Gellert grabbed the water-filled crystal, held it over his earthen mug, and simply poured water out of it like it was a tap. We had been through a lot of bumps and turns on the “magic isn’t just real, it’s extremely common” rollercoaster, but seeing it used so casually was still a new one for both of us.

  “Are they all found in dungeons like this?” I asked.

  “In dungeons, yes,” Enila said. “Like this, no.”

  “Informative, yet meaningless,” I observed aloud, as if speaking to the universe at large.

  Char and Gellert laughed, but Enila gave me a peckish look that was magnified by her uncanny, alien features. For a moment, I thought she was actually upset, before she said, “Well, someone is recovering fast.”

  “You try waking up in another world with no weapons, no training, and no idea what’s going on,” I told her. “You learn to bounce back reeeeal quick.”

  “So that’s really how it happened?” Enila asked, her eyes widening a little bit. “One moment, you were at your home, and the next, here you are?”

  I nodded a brief confirmation, but Charrin lifted a hand before I could elaborate any further. “No need for all that tonight, Eni. Let’s give them both some time to relax–I’m sure the magisters will have plenty of questions for them once we get back to campus.”

  “Campus,” I echoed. “That would be the campus of the academy you mentioned, right? Primalus?”

  “Primevus.”

  “Sure. But why are you taking us to a school, of all places?”

  “More’n a school,” Gellert said. The massive, wild-looking man was far and away the quietest of the three, and on the rare occasions that he did speak, his words were uniformly growled and succinct.

  Still, both Char and Eni nodded, as if this had explained things. “Primevus is the only place where delvers–class-bearing fighters like us–are trained. That alone makes it an incredibly important organization, and guarantees it no small amount of influence.”

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  “And if that wasn’t enough, it’s also the home of the Church of Facet,” Enila added, counting off points on her fingers as she continued, “and essentially the capital of the Central Provinces, and the head of the Primevus Alliance, and home to the most informed crystemitrists in Elida, and probably the wealthiest organization in the world thanks to the supply crystals…”

  “Suffice it to say, Primevus is much more than a school,” Char said simply. “The magisters should also know how to handle, ah… people like you two.”

  “Humans?” I asked, to clarify.

  Char traded an opaque look with their companions, then nodded at me.

  “Okay,” I said, “do you mind if I ask some questions about that? Because I still don’t get how you know what a human is.”

  Char’s washed-out lavender eyes glinted, and I suspected he had been waiting for just that question. “Humans have appeared here nearly as long as the dungeons themselves have, ever since the First Delver emerged from the Grand Dungeon.”

  “That’s not to say people like you are common, mind you,” Eni interjected. “I’ve certainly never met a human before today.”

  Like the claim was a poll, Gellert promptly grunted, “Me neither.”

  “Nor I,” Char agreed. “As far as I know, humans are believed to only crossover every five to ten years.”

  “Maybe,” Eni said. “No one’s entirely sure on exactly how often it happens, or why, or… really any of the specifics.”

  Charrin nodded, their face quietly apologetic, but Fallon, unsurprisingly, felt the need to probe a little deeper.

  “How can you not know?” she asked. “It’s not like it should be that hard to just track how many you find.”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Char explained reluctantly. “Humans only crossover in the bottommost floors of dungeons. And…”

  Fallon drew a sharp breath through her nose, and I made a soft sound of understanding as I figured it out.

  “They usually die,” I finished for them.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Charrin said, their voice grim. “Even a well-trained ellid, without a class, would be hard-pressed to survive in the bottom floor of even a grade one dungeon. From what we’ve gathered, most humans have comparably little self-defense ability, and so they rarely make it to safety.

  “But we made it,” Fallon observed, her voice as empty and distant as it had been since we were saved. “Why?”

  “The ecology seed,” Enila said.

  “The what?”

  Char gave Eni a brief look, then nodded some sort of deference for her to continue.

  “All dungeons come into existence with certain traits, what we call ‘seeds,’ that decide their nature.” Enila gestured vaguely around them. “This one has the cave biome seed–I’m sure you can guess the meaning of that one–but it also has the ecology seed.”

  “And this seed saved us?”

  Eni nodded. “The ecology seed modifies the resident shadows as they’re spawned. The vast majority are reduced to a state far weaker than the norm. Since this is a grade three dungeon, that dropped them down to be more in line with a grade one–the sort of dungeon you two could have a chance of surviving in.”

  “Right, the prey shadows,” I recalled from my action log. “So if it wasn’t for the ecology seed weakening them, then…”

  “Every shadow you fought would’ve been significantly faster, stronger, more durable. They might have even had some powers of their own.”

  “Like that thing you three fought…” Fallon said, dropping her eyes to the ground.

  Eni shook her head. “Not quite that bad, no. See, while the ecology seed weakens most shadows, it strengthens a rare few, making them ‘predators.’ Our first goal when we got down to this floor was to kill any predators, so that we could explore freely. We had been chasing that one for a while when it–and we–stumbled on you two.”

  “I’ll confess to a small curiosity, though,” Char mused. “You said you were down here for two days–How did you survive as long as you did? Even with the prey shadows being so weak, I wouldn’t have thought two unclassed humans could make it that long.”

  I looked at Fallon, seeing if she was okay answering, but she had resumed staring off into the fire, receding into shock at the reminder of our near-death experience. Deciding that meant I was free to make the choice, I explained, “We didn’t, to be honest. I mean, I managed to fight off a couple of them–”

  “How?” Gellert rumbled.

  “I stabbed them with a crystal I was using as a light. But once a bunch of them caught up with us, we had to run away and, well…” I paused, not really sure how to describe what had happened from there. Looking back, even after everything we had been through, the crystal slide, the pool, the altar, it all seemed impossible. So I simply said, “We managed to find some… I think they were called identity crystals. A set of four.”

  The ellids all expressed their surprise in small, but unmistakable ways. Eni took a sharp breath, which contrasted with Gellert’s amused huff. Char simply blinked, one eyebrow lifting by a hair.

  “And you used them?” the leader of the group guessed.

  “A couple, yeah. We could only use one each, and…” I swallowed, suddenly realizing I didn’t know what had happened to the spares. At some point in the fight, they, along with the supply crystal that had given us the sandwiches we had eaten, had vanished.

  “Well?” Eni asked. “Don’t just keep us waiting! What classes did you get?”

  “I got rogue.” I didn’t know why, but that made Enila grin, made her brilliant leaf-y eyes glitter.

  “And you?” Char asked Fallon.

  For a moment, I thought Fallon was too distant to answer. I considered doing it for her, but decided that wasn’t my answer to give.

  “Cleric,” she finally said.

  Char sucked into a sharp breath through their teeth, and Eni rolled her eyes. Gellert rumbled another small but obvious chuckle.

  “Well. The magisters will definitely want to see them now.”