Party Wipe

“….What are we looking at here?”

Their first impressions of the mysterious third level of the dungeon didn’t exactly line up with the rumors they’d heard. It wasn’t a rush of combat encounters- in fact, they didn’t see a single monster, ignoring the metal scrap polluting the floor. The reason for this was immediately obvious- despite the fact that they were there and looking at it, the entire floor was in the very process of ongoing randomization, perpetually. Hallways appeared and disappeared, walls collided and crushed everything between them, rooms became sheer drops into either pitch blackness or more often the very visible internal systems of the ride, grinding gears and pulsating tech that would rip an adventurer’s body into pieces were they to be unlucky enough to fall inside. As a whole, the floor resembled a constantly moving Escher painting.

“…This can’t be right.” Greg agreed with Serah’s confusion.

“It’s not always like this?” Asked Katie, trying to gauge whether or not the mechanisms would actually be capable of killing you. It should’ve been obvious they most certainly would, but the tourist was still going through a bit of denial.

“No, that would be-“ The knight’s explanation came out forceful at first, but he calmed himself. “This place is messy and dangerous, but not lethal. Just what the hell’s going on in here?”

“The king wouldn’t do this.” Frankie deduced.

“How do you know?” Serah asked. “I mean, he has been desperate for press lately…”

“There’s been too many strange occurrences so far for this to be a coincidence.” Greg held onto his staff tightly, clinging to it. “We… might have stumbled onto something bad here.”

“You scared? Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” Serah poked his cheek as the more serious dungeon crawlers pondered.

“Someone doesn’t want us getting to the bottom of this place.” Percival said what they were all thinking. “They hired the player-killers, glitched the bosses, fixed our whole run to be unbeatable- maybe… this is why nobody’s beaten the dungeon?”

“I hate to admit it, but that might be the only explanation.” Frankie agreed with his reasoning. “I’ve seen what money can do. More likely than not, somebody rich and powerful is using this place as a base of operations… for some reason.”

Percy chuckled.

“Like a dragon.”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Oh my god guys-“ Greg creased his fingers over his staff. “Can we not joke right now…? We… might be in serious trouble… r-remember the man in the suit? What if he was… one of the people trying to stop us?”

“That just can’t be.” Serah brushed him aside. “Love, why would anybody take shelter here, even if they had the money for it?”

“Maybe they needed a base that was close to their target…” The pieces were slowly fitting in Frankie’s head even though she couldn’t see the full picture yet. “Somewhere they could corrupt Everfair from the inside out. Somewhere they could take it over from within.”

“Who’d want to take over this crappy park?”

“You don’t mean-“ Gregory suddenly understood everything.

Without warning, hands cuffed over each of the five explorer’s mouths. A wetness covered their faces and their eyelids grew extremely heavy, their bodies wilting as large men wrestled their weak teenage hands behind their backs.

Before they could scream, everything faded to black.