Beta: ShadowMeister234

There was a ramp running alongside the cavern wall that led down into the city and about halfway down that there was a sort of guardhouse. Jaune carried Yang inside and Emerald followed barely able to keep on her feet.

The first thing he noticed was that everything inside was made from that same perfectly smooth stone they had been seeing everywhere: the chairs, the table even the door had been made out of it. None of the stone furniture looked comfortable to sit in and it was so miserably cold and dark in here that it seemed impossible that people could have ever lived here.

He laid Yang down in the area that was probably the living room and was quick enough to catch Emerald as she collapsed because of it. He laid her next to Yang then braced all of their backpacks against the front door since there was no way to lock it. He doubted the backpacks would really stop anything that tried to get in but they would give him enough warning while he was focused on helping the girls.

He didn't like the way either of them looked one bit. Their bodies were flushed with sweat, their breathing was labored and their faces winced in pain every few seconds. One time Jaune's youngest sister had eaten some bad seafood and suffered through food poisoning for three days. He and his sisters had taken shifts to take care of her, and the way Emerald and Yang were looking now reminded him a lot of how she had looked through the worst of it.

The first priority was to try and warm them up. Unfortunately, since this entire place was made out of stone there wasn't anything to burn. He guessed he could go back up to the surface, but it wasn't like there had been many trees out there and bringing down piles of grass wasn't practical. Doing that would mean leaving them behind if he did that. He had been able to carry Yang down but with Emerald no longer in walking condition, there was no way he could carry both of them.

Using a fire etch wouldn't work either since those only created the first flames. If there wasn't anything for it to latch onto and burn it would go out immediately. The only etches he knew of that continuously produced their effects was the gravity one he used on the subterranean porcupine grimm and the pitiful light one he used in the spider-slug fight. The heat etch in Junior's club that had supported his grill, in a much simpler time, hadn't actually been a continuously effect. He had later discovered that the strobing lights forming and reforming the etch had just made it seem that way.

Long story short, etches weren't going to help him here.

His last option was to move them somewhere else one at a time. Outside the house, under the crystal lights of the cavern, was warmer but not by much and taking them all the way back to the surface and leaving them out in the open seemed like a bad idea no matter how safe it had seemed up there.

With no better option available to him, Jaune pulled out every blanket and warm article of clothing they had in their backpacks. It wasn't much but it would have to do.

Before he covered them, he went to each of them and took off their shoes along with as much extra clothing as dared, trying to make them as comfortable as possible. When he draped the blankets over them, they each grabbed at them as if they would fly away. Jaune was a little afraid that one might try to yank a blanket from the other, but they actually scooted closer together so they could share and possibly use each other's bodies as warmth. It would have been a cute sight, with Emerald nestling her head into yang's flowing locks, if they didn't look like they were on the verge of death.

Next, he took the medicine he had and forced them to take it. They weren't resisting the pills, but they simply weren't strong enough to do it on their own. Jaune had to hold the back of their heads and watch them as they took short sips from the water bottle he held to wash the pills done. He didn't really think the medicine he had could help them but it was worth doing just in case.

Lastly, he took two washcloths and used the bottle the girls had just drank from to dampen them. Once he was satisfied with that he placed one on each of the girls' foreheads. They took to those much less enthusiastically than the blankets and kept trying to throw them off. It was a fight in itself getting them to accept the cool fabric but eventually, he managed.

Jaune took a step back and having done as much as he could for the girls he decided to explore their new dwelling more thoroughly. It was a small place with only two open rooms on the ground floor. There was the living room where Yang and Emerald were and then a kitchen(?) by the front door. There was a counter and stone slabs coming out from the wall to act selves but there wasn't any cooking equipment like pots, pans or bowls. In fact, there weren't any items on the ground floor at all.

No even the stone chairs in the living room counted because they weren't actually furniture. None of it was. It was all connected to the floor or the walls. It was like the place had started out as a stone cube and whoever made it had just hollowed it out, cutting around the furniture they wanted.

Jaune supposed it was an efficient method of doing things, but he couldn't imagine not being able to rearrange things once it was done. Not that he would have wanted to live in a stone home anyways.

With nothing to find on the ground floor, Jaune headed to the indented slits on the wall opposite the door that formed a ladder to the upper floor. The slits weren't that deep and he was worried his finger would slip as he climbed, but he made it up just fine.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much to find. The upper floor was just a bedroom, the bed being just a raised part of the floor, with windows, which were just rectangular holes cut out of the wall, on all sides. In front of each of those windows was a stone chair permanently attached to the house like all the rest.

There wasn't any dresser or desk or anything where something could have been hidden. He did look through all the windows but he didn't seem anything he hadn't seen from the outside. He even tried the "bed" to see if there was some magic that actually made it comfortable, but that was a big no. Honestly, what was the point of even having a "bed" if it was the exact same as the floor?

Nothing in this place made sense. No human or faunus could ever live here, and while Jaune was aware it was very possible Cryphilictal's inhabitants didn't have to be strictly human everything he had seen so far was too human-tuned for him the considering anything wildly different. Massive tentacle monsters or multi-legged insect creatures wouldn't need to build chairs and doors that easily accommodated him.

Although that wasn't to say those things couldn't have moved in after the original denizens were gone.

If they were even gone, at all.

Looking at the place he was in now, it sure didn't feel like they were. There was no dust on the floor, no cobwebs in the corners, no crumbling stone. It was almost like someone had been maintaining the place just moments before Jaune had arrived.

Deciding to try a little test, Jaune brought out his sword and smacked the wall with it. Unlike with the stone in the riddle door room, a section of the wall cracked open and spilled a couple of pebbles onto the floor. Jaune thought that would be the end of it, but a couple of seconds later he watched in horrid fascination as the discarded pebbles began to move on their own. Crawling on the floor and up the wall like little spiders, they fitted themselves back into their original spot, mending into the wall so perfectly that by the time it was done you couldn't tell there had been any damage done at all.

Jaune had to shake the thought that the stone was alive, even though that very well might be true, from his mind for the moment. There was something else he wanted to try.

He hit the wall with his sword again but this time grabbed some of the falling debris.

The ones that he missed crawled back up like they had before, but the ones he held in his hand began to pulsate when they realized there was no path for them to get back to the wall from within his closed fist. The little pebbles threw themselves at his finger and he eventually had to let go when they started hitting hard enough to flare his aura.

Instead of crawling back like the others had, these pebbles floated back to their destination like drunk house flies, bobbing up and down until they mended back into the wall. Once again there was no sign that the wall had ever been damaged in the first place.

Jaune had to take a seat after witnessing the phenomenon for a second time and think about all the implications of this "living" stone. The city was self-repairing; he had already seen that much. It was probably why everything was so clean and looked so new. More concerning than any of that, though, was that as far as Jaune could tell, every structure in this city, except maybe that upside-down tower, was made of this stone. If it could move on its own then that meant Cryphilictal could rearrange itself anytime it wanted.

It would explain why ever description of this city in the book had been so different. Cryphilictal could change layouts as easily as a person could change clothes, and the moving stone was probably just the start of what Cryphilictal could do to change itself.

Jaune was suddenly filled with the urge to go back down and check on the girls. Dread clutched his stomach as he felt certain that he would go down and the girls wouldn't be there. That in fact, he wasn't even on the second floor of the guardhouse anymore. That Cryphilictal had already changed everything.

But, when he climbed down he was still in the guardhouse and the girls were still in the living room, laying on the floor in a restless slumber.

Jaune let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. As he walked passed them he brushed his hand along the top of their heads just to make sure they were really there. He sat down on one of the stone chairs and although it didn't move in any way like normal chairs do, now that he knew what the stone could do he couldn't shake the feeling that there were thousands of little insects crawling around beneath him.

It made an already uncomfortable chair even more unpleasant.

Then without warning a blood-curdling scream ripped through the air. The girls curled closer together as the wail worked its way into whatever fever dreams they were having. Jaune bolted from his chair as the distinctively human screamed continued to assault his ears. He made his way to the door, kicking the backpacks out of the way, and headed outside.

The screaming was clearly coming from the main city, but from his position, Jaune wasn't able to see anything but the buildings. Then as quickly as it came the scream cut off leaving only the sound of the distant running waterfall in its place.

Jaune was both relieved and terrified. On one hand, it was over, on the other, that terrible scream had felt like it had filled the entire cavern and Jaune wasn't sure if that was possible, no matter how loud someone was. Maybe it was how sound echoed in this carven, or maybe the sound hadn't come from an actual person at all

Random screaming would be just perfect for the city's aesthetic, would it not? No saying that Cryphilictal couldn't have a sense of humor and Jaune wouldn't put it above the city to play with its food before it ate.

He stood out there a little longer looking at the city to see if anything else would happen, but the city was still. If those screamed had been from a real person there was nothing Jaune could do for them.

As he walked back to the guardhouse, his thoughts traveled back to the message the city had left them in the riddle door room.

"Welcome to Cryphilictal, Dirty Gem, Golden Dragon, and Ceaseless Knight."

He certainly felt welcomed all right.

A few hours passed, or maybe it was many more. Without the changing sky, time slipped away much faster than Jaune would have thought. The only thing he knew was that he had gotten hungry enough to eat once.

He had tried to get the girls to eat something too, but that had been a hopeless endeavor. Neither of them had the strength to will their mouths open and even if Jaune had forced them, he doubted they could have kept it down.

At their stage, it was hard to tell if they were getting worse or staying the same, but they definitely weren't getting any better. Jaune had looked after them, doing everything he thought he should, like change their washcloths and rotate the blankets when the bottom who became too slick with sweat. At the very least they didn't seem cold, quite the opposite in fact; they felt like they were on fire. He had considered removing some blankets entirely, and using them on his own freezing body, but decided against it. Neither of the girls had tried to escape from their blanket cocoon and them being a little hot was better than them suffering through the cold.

There wasn't much to do why he watched over his patients, Cryphilictal had been quiet since the scream, so Jaune just sat around thinking, and the question he thought the most about was, why wasn't he sick?

He had shed any notations that Emerald's and Yang's sickness was any natural illness early on. He didn't have any hard proof for that, but in this situation, he felt that his instincts were perfectly valid.

This was Cryphilictal's doing and for some reason, it had left him alone. Was the city just incapable of infecting him somehow, or had his health been decided from the start? Had one of them needed to be well enough to help move things forward and he had been the lucky one, or had he been chosen specifically?

Why was Cryphilictal doing it anyways? To keep them out didn't seem like the answer, they had been welcomed after all, and if the city had truly wanted to keep them out then the riddle door could have just never opened. That said, Cryphilictal didn't necessarily have to be of one mind. In fact, it was probably foolish to think that there weren't multiple forces at work in this city. Some might want them here, not necessarily for good reasons, some might want these intruders out, and some might be completely apathetic to the humans that had wandered in.

If nothing else worked out then Jaune would accept that simple cruelty was the reason behind Yang and Emerald's condition.

But, whatever the reason was Jaune knew he wasn't going to find it sitting around here. The answers laid in Cryphilictal proper, and it was about time he went down there. He stood from his chair on legs that were shaking a little more than he cared to admit.

Before leaving he decided—really just procrastinating—to change the girls' washcloths one last time and leave some food and water next to them in case they found the strength to eat while he was away.

After that was done, he thought it would be best to recheck his supplies. He was traveling light only taking a little bit of food and water for himself and the transdimensional plate that he hadn't left back at the apartment this time. He didn't know what he might need it for but it was best to have just in case. Everything else was being left here. No matter what he found or didn't find down there he wasn't planning on leaving the girls alone for too long.

Of course, that only applied if nothing deadly happened to him down in the city.

Thinking of that he decided that he should leave a note explaining where he was and what he was doing in case they got better while he was away, or in case he never came back at all. He wrote it by tearing out an empty page from his journal, of which there were fairly few left, and placed it by the water.

Once the note was finished, and he really didn't have any other excuses to not get a move on, Jaune released a deep sigh, gave the girls one last look and headed for the door, or he would have if Emerald didn't stop him by grabbing his foot.

Well "grabbing" was a bit of an overstatement. It was more like she flung her hand across his foot to get his attention. She struggled just to get her head high enough off the ground to look at him and her eyes were so glazed over that Jaune doubted she could see more than a few inches in front of her.

"…where…going?" she mouthed more than she said.

Jaune bent down to his knees and slowly pushed Emerald's head back into the blankets. "I'm going to get help," he said running his fingers in tiny circles on the back of her head. "I won't be long. You just focus on getting better."

Emerald's eyes fought to stay open. "…Don't…leave…I …need," she probably wanted to say more but her eyes lost their fight and she dozed back off into uneasy sleep.

This was why Jaune had sat around doing nothing for as long as he did. He couldn't bring himself to leave the girls unattended. They were so weak that a particularly vicious house cat could have killed them if it tried, let alone whatever might be wandering around in this cavern.

There was also the fear that he was being lured away. That this was a trap to get him to head into Cryphilictal alone. If it was then it was a damn good one because Jaune didn't have a choice. It was either sit here and watch his friends waste away or take the risk and hope he found something before the city gobbled him up.

It wasn't lost on him that he was in the same position Yang was in with Ruby. Three had come into the city to try and cure one, and now one was going to travel the city to try and save three.

The scales had been tipped even further against them. Maybe it had been a bad idea to come here—no it definitely had been a bad idea to come here, but there was no turning back now.

The ramp down to the city wasn't that long, but to Jaune, it felt like he spent hours walking down it instead of minutes, listening to the waterfall and his thumping heart the entire way. He remembered reading something about how the cruelest component of reality was how time seemed to drag on during the worst times but sped headed during the best.

There was no gate or wall separating the proper city from the rest of the cavern, but the division was as clear as day. It was where the smooth stone of the ramp gave way to very clearly designed streets. The road was still made out of stone just like everything else but it was made from long stripes running parallel to the curb. As far as Jaune could see these stripes never broke and curved along with the road. It reminded Jaune of railroad tracks except with the boards going the wrong way.

He had never seen anything like it and couldn't imagine them being practical or comfortable to walk on, and he was proven right when tried. The indent between the strips made it feel like his foot was hanging off a ledge and they were deep enough posed a serious tripping hazard. Jaune transitioned to the sidewalk, where thankfully the construction was a much more familiar brick pattern.

Being on the sidewalks put him much closer to the buildings, that ran right up against it, and he noticed that not everything in this city was made from stone. There were some black, metal bars acting as windows for some of the nearby buildings, and farther up the road, he could make out a street signpost made from the same metal.

Jaune first steps inside the city were used to go towards that signpost. While he walked, he was surprised to find that it didn't feel like a million eyes were watching him. Actually, it didn't feel like there were any at all. For now, the city felt empty and still, and he couldn't decide if that was a good or bad thing.

Reaching the signpost didn't reveal any information. There were words written on it, but they were in those symbols that he couldn't read. Knowing what they actually meant didn't really matter for navigation, though. As long as he knew what each word looked like he could still use it for navigation.

Another interesting thing to note was that the road didn't break apart into right angles like every other road network Jaune had ever seen. Instead, this one split and curved off in different directions like a snake with two heads. (Later he would discover that all of Cryphilictal's roads split and curved instead of using normal intersections.) The buildings curved right along with it making some appear much wider than they otherwise should have. Honestly, it looked a bit like one of those optical illusions where if Jaune could just find the right place to stand, his perspective would snap everything into focus.

It also could have been that because all the buildings were connected, making them feel more like walls than anything else, it was hard to tell where one began and another ended.

Jaune decided to slip into one of these buildings to see what he could see. He chose the one that made up the space between the split in the road. The building was shaped like a funnel with the door stationed at the tip, and apparently, Cryphilictal was having an open house since there weren't any locks to stop him.

There hadn't been any locks on the guardhouse either. Maybe there wasn't any way to make locks out of stone, but he didn't really believe that. If Cryphilictal wanted to have locks, it would find a way.

The interior held the same funnel shape and dimensions as the exterior suggested which, in this city, Jaune hadn't been completely positive it would. It was very similar to the guardhouse with stone furniture growing out of the floor and no other items to speak of.

However, there was a metal sconce on one of the walls that held a crystal that was the same as those that lined the cavern ceiling. He approached it to see if it was something he could take back to Emerald and Yang to give them some extra warmth, but despite it producing light it didn't give off any heat and actually felt cold to the touch.

He left the crystal alone. It wasn't worth carrying around a beacon of light he couldn't turn off even if it could probably be contained within his backpack. He considered striking the sconce to see if the metal would reform itself in the same way the stone did but eventually decided against that too. The information wouldn't really help him whether it did or didn't, and he had a feeling that if he kept poking Cryphilictal's architecture it would start to poke back.

There were stairs to this building this time around, so after finding nothing on the first floor, Jaune headed up to the second. Up there he did find something of interest. The second floor was completely bare, except for a huge mural that covered an entire wall. It wasn't made from paint but colored stone and, in this city of grey, it was a sight to behold.

It depicted four girls, each containing a single color of either blue, purple, orange or green, sitting in a circle. They all looked up at a silver moon while grimm-like shadows moved in to surround them. There was also something written under the picture but once again it was in that unknown language.

He had seen this picture somewhere before, he knew he had, but he couldn't remember where that had been.

Maybe he could have figured it out if he thought long enough, but his thinking time was very suddenly interrupted when he felt something wet hit his lip. He brought his finger up to touch it and when he pulled them away, he saw they were stained crimson.

There was no headache this time around but the blood that poured out of his nose was like a waterfall. Plugging his nose didn't help as the red liquid still managed to run past, flowing into his mouth and splashing onto the floor. The sheer amount of blood being pushed out his nose was so ridiculous that it would have been comical if he weren't the one experiencing it. Right now, he was seriously worried that he might die from blood loss. He was already starting to feel lightheaded and it looked like that was enough blood on the floor to fill a sink.

All that would have been bad enough, but just as the stones had done, the blood that had left his body began to move on its own. Jumping off his skin and flowing along the floor his blood traveled towards the mural. It ran up the wall and congregated on the silver moon painting it to a deep red, and maybe this was just the blood loss making him see things, but he could have sworn the girls in the mural reacted to the change in color while the grimm shadows crept even closer.

Taking that as his cue to get the hell out of here, Jaune rushed towards the staircase, overstepped the second step and fell the rest of the way down. His head bashed against the hard stone slabs, aura being the only thing that kept him from cracking his skull wide open, and his arms and legs scraped against the stairs in an effort to catch himself. By the time his back smacked the ground floor, his whole body was sore if uninjured.

Crawling to his hands and knees, he discovered that at the very least the faucet that was his nose had stopped leaking. A finger shoved up there came back clean as if there had never been a problem at all.

But, it had happened. He hadn't dreamt it nor had it been an illusion. He still felt lightheaded and there were still a few patches of blood on his shoes and shirt that had remained stuck to him.

How much blood had he actually lost? He could still stand and he could still think so maybe it wasn't as much as he had originally thought, but if that was the price for entering a house, he would be going bankrupt rather quickly.

Having no desire to try and go back upstairs, Jaune exited the house and was relieved to see that everything look the same. Ever since he had seen those stones move on their own he was constantly worried that every time he turned away the world would shift behind his back, but for now, it was alright. The buildings were the same, the road was the same and everything was still bathed in a calm blue light instead of a bloody red, another thing he had been worried about.

But just because it looked the same didn't mean it felt the same. The feeling of being watched that had been missing so far had finally come. It wasn't a million eyes that followed him but one. One the seared a hole into his spine and made his skin tingle. It was so potent that he didn't even need to guess where it was coming from.

Jaune looked up at the upside-down tower that was still clearly visible from where he was standing. He suspected there wasn't a place in Cryphilictal where you couldn't see it, and thus, any place where it couldn't see you.

That tower was his goal. He didn't know if it had what he was looking for, but the clearest landmark in the city was a good place to start. It was bound to be dangerous but what place in the city wasn't. He was only a couple steps past the entrance and already nearly been murdered by a mural.

Walking up to the signpost, Jaune manifested his journal and sketched the alien symbols into it, marking the path he chose to follow. It would be useful for when he needed to backtrack. Assuming he even got the chance to try.

"Stay safe you two. I'll do the best I can," he whispered before traveling deeper into the city.

Just because he could always see the tower didn't mean he knew how to get to it. It should have been simple but with the roads curving in whatever way it wanted to, it was impossible to keep a straight path. He could be heading directly towards the tower at one point only for the road to decided it didn't like this direction and swing around competently. Sometimes it seemed like they made complete U-turns.

He couldn't cut between roads either since all the buildings were physically connected. This city was like a labyrinth, and its difficulty of navigation was only cutting into his time. Again, it was hard to tell down here, but he was sure he had been wandering around for a least an hour or two. He hadn't even encountered anything that could be considered dangerous yet and that was making him paranoid. Granted, he hadn't entered any other buildings since the first, but he wouldn't believe that all of Cryphilictal's horrors were tucked away indoors. There had to be some minotaurs patrolling this labyrinth. Was he just fortunate not to encounter any or was the city waiting for something?

Jaune took a break on a street that looked identical to all the others. He could still feel the gaze of the tower on him as he debated whether he should go back. With how vigilantly he had marked his path he was sure he could make his way back to the entrance rather quickly. His only issue was that he wouldn't have anything to show if he did.

He wouldn't call it a waste of a trip because he had learned a little about the city and perhaps that was enough for now. If he went back to check on the girls and then came back, he could take a different path that might lead him to the tower quicker.

But what about the tower? If he went back wouldn't he be leading the tower's gaze right to the girls? Was it even possible the city didn't know where they were? Was the reason he hadn't encountered anything yet so he could give away Emerald's and Yang's location while they were in such a vulnerable state? But the very building material of this city could move on its own accord which meant there was some degree of control within every piece, so surely the city would know what laid inside and on top of it. Was it that the tower and the city weren't the same? The tower did look to be made of something different and it did have its foundation on the ceiling and not the city. Did that mean something?

Damn it!

Jaune grabbed his head and shook it. All this second-guessing and overthinking was only going to drive him insane. He needed to stop and just make a decision, but that was easier said than done when one misstep might mean the death of you or your friends.

He took several deep breaths, calming himself as much as he could. Okay, the street he was on made another curve up ahead. He would walk down that and if he didn't see anything by the time it straightened out again he would head back and check on the girls.

That was his decision and he was sticking to it.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it, Jaune was leaning toward the latter, he did see something. It was a building which in itself wasn't anything special, but this one had a competently different presence to it. First off, it capped the street creating a dead-end which was something Jaune hadn't encountered before. Secondly, it wasn't plain and flat-faced like the rest of the buildings.

This one had stairs leading up to the door which was under an overhanging roof. That overhang was supported by two pillars, and it was those pillars that really brought out the difference. They were made to look like a spiral of hands and arms with one arm growing out of the palm of another and so on and so on until it reached the top. To Jaune, it looked like the hands were clawing at the arm growing out of it as if it was trying to pull it back in, or maybe trying to pull itself further up the chain.

Whichever it was, it was a disturbing sight and would have felt more at place in a horror art book than actual architecture.

He was already starting to regret his decision, but this place was definitely something worth investigating.

The stone of the street and the stone of the building weren't any different but when his boot slapped against that first step, it sounded like a whip's crack and the second sounded like a nail being hammered in. Both felt like they could have been heard all throughout Cryphilictal.

The arm pillars didn't try to reach out and grab him when he passed, and when he pulled on the door leading into this building, he found it just as inviting as the mural house had been.

It was dark inside with the only light coming through tiny slit windows at the top of the building. Not dark enough to where he couldn't see, but dark enough to make him considered bringing out his flashlight, for the comfort of having it if nothing else. He didn't for obvious not wanting to announce his presence to anything that might be looking reasons, but he still thought about.

The building was also much longer than Jaune had thought it would be. Basically, it was just one big rectangular room although most of that room appeared to be a level below where he was since he appeared to be on a balcony that ran the entire perimeter of the room.

Jaune started to cross the distance between the entrance and the balcony's railing to see what was below him but stopped halfway when he heard a noise that sounded like someone trying to slurp the bottom of a cup through a straw when their drink was gone. That noise was soon joined by a dozen others, each having its own variance of awfulness.

Sweat broke out on the top of his hand and he crossed the rest of the distance stepping ever so lightly. Once he got to the railing he nearly reeled back in horror at what he saw. Everything he had gone through so far, and yet there never ceased to be sights that could catch him off guard.

Below him was a pit of completely smooth walls that ran at least a hundred feet deep. Inside that pit was perhaps thirty or so creatures wiggling around at the bottom. It was hard to make out any specifics in the low light, and for that he was glad, but Jaune could tell that those things weren't part of the normal world. There were tentacles, razor teeth, fleshy skin, glowing eyes, extra appendages and disfigured structures.

With the massive pit, the many monsters and the viewing balcony this place reminded him of a holding pin, or if he wanted to think theatrically, an ancient battle arena. Not that any of the things down there looked to be fighting one another. They were just kind of wandering around down there.

There was one other thing that drew Jaune's attention, however. Taking up almost the entirety of one of the pit's walls was a giant glass mirror reflecting the pit's residents with perfect clarity. It was an odd thing, but at least it didn't have a frame of legs and feet, so Jaune would give it a pass.

Given the pit of monster a wide breadth, Jaune explored the rest of his floor although there wasn't really much to see. The balcony was completely flat and devoid of any features. It wasn't until he got all the way to the other end of the building did he see another door.

While he was contemplating opening it, he heard what sounded like wind chimes coming from the pit and against his better judgment he went over to see what it was.

The mirror was rippling and about halfway up a black, red and brown goo was pushing through like puss from a wound. It was only then that Jaune realized that the mirror in the pit was the exact same as the mirror in the Schnee mansion and what his knife was made of.

Quickly after having that revelation, the slime finished its rebirthing and fell onto a worm-like creature. The worm gave an angry, painful hiss as it seemed to melt under the slime's body. The worm thrashed around and tried to bite the strange half-liquid half-solid substance that had assaulted it, but it was to no avail. Its movements ceased and it collapsed to the ground, steam rising from its corpse.

All this action had disturbed the herd and soon it was full-blown madness. Jaune couldn't tell if they were all attacking each other, or just trying to kill the slime, or if it was just an uncontrollable frenzy.

Whatever was going on, the chaos caused one of the creatures to be flipped upside down, and when that happened its eyes were pointed upwards and saw him. Jaune tried to back away but it was too late. The creature righted it, spouted wing from its back and flew up to get him, but before Jaune could even prepare for a fight an arm made from what looked like condensed shadows shot out of the pit's wall faster than Jaune could see.

The shadow hand snatched the flying creature, stopping it before it came anywhere close to escaping the pit. The flying creature struggled to escape, but the force that held it was immovable. Then the hand's finger squeezed down popping the poor creature like a balloon spilling blood, guts and all sorts of other ichor back down into the pit.

It was the smell though. Oh lord, the smell. It was the most rancid scent to ever assault Jaune's nose. His cheeks wrinkled and his eyes watered as he kept backing away until he crashed into the door and basically tumbled through it.

He was only dimly aware that he was back outside when the scent finally surpassed Jaune's limit and he expelled his latest meal from his throat. It landed with a wet splat onto the stone sidewalk and the smell it emitted was almost pleasant compared to what he had just come from.

While he tried to wipe the taste of vomit from his mouth, Jaune took stock of where he was and saw that to his left instead of the unwalkable roads he had come to know, there was a path of water. One of those canals he had seen from his lookout atop the ridge.

The water was the clearest blue he had ever seen and it looked so refreshing that he couldn't help but be drawn towards it. The water level was only an inch or two below the walkway and easily accessible to Jaune when he knelt onto his knees. His hands moved towards the pure liquid in hopes that it would alleviate the aftertaste in his throat.

"I would advise against that action. That's the type of water that drinks you," A voice said in a single unbroken tone.

Jaune's hands stopped and he looked a bit farther up the canal where a gondola—a wooden gondola waited and a man(?), with a grey cloak covering every one of his features, sat.

Jaune took his hand from the water's edge and rose back to his full height. His sword was already manifested by the time he did. If the cloaked figure took any offensive to Jaune arming himself he didn't show it.

"You spoke to me in my own language," Jaune said.

"If you prefer, I can switch to Old Senteal."

"No, please don't…who are you?"

"A ferryman."

Jaune hadn't lowered his guard but he was more relaxed. He didn't think this person was going to hurt him. Didn't think this person was really a person at all. Just another part of Cryphilictal's design more alike to the moving stones than to him.

"So, you'll take me wherever I want to go?"

"As close as the canals come."

"What about the upside-down tower? Can you take me there?"

"Yes."

Jaune took a few steps closer to the gondola and stopped when he thought of one more question to ask. "There isn't any price, is there?"

"All guidance services are free of charge to all Cryphilictal residents and tourists."

Jaune chuckled a bit at being called a tourist, but he guessed that wasn't wrong.

He walked the rest of the way to the gondola and kept an iron grip on his sword as he stepped on keeping an eye on the ferryman for an indication of an attack.

"Where to?" the ferryman asked as Jaune took his seat in front of him.

"The tower," Jaune said leaning in to see what was under the ferryman's hood. There wasn't anything. Where a person's head should be, there was nothing but air. Jaune's guide wasn't a person wearing a cloak but was the cloak itself.

"As you wish." The ferryman picked up an oar from the bottom of the boat with its sleeves and set them on their way.

The tower's gaze felt heavier than ever.

Excerpt from the book

The worst thing about Cryphilictal isn't the monsters or the magic. It's how you feel like your every move has already been decided. That the city already knows your fate and is playing you along like a fisherman reeling in its latest catch. For just as you make the decision to turn back or try something else that would take you off the rails, around the next corner is something that keeps you locked in as if the city knew all along and had placed it there just for you.

Keeps you curious, but we all know what they say about curiosity and cats.

Does Cryphilictal really know? Does it really tailor the experience for every person and group that comes to it in its own twisted way of having fun? I so badly want that answer to be no, but at least some part of it must. How else could it welcome everyone at the door if it didn't?

I suppose the real question is if you believe in destiny and if so do the forces in Cryphilictal get to decide it. The moment you step into the city, and perhaps long before that, is your fate already set in stone, or does everyone have a chance to succeed?

That accursed city is powerful beyond measure, that much is certain, but I refuse to believe it's perfect. It's called a ruin because it fell at least once before. It can slip up and it can be tricked and it can be beaten.