So bright, Adon sent. This should be impossible, right?

  It should not be here, Goldie agreed. As far as I know, at least…

  She and Adon stared up at it nevertheless. The looming impossibility poised far above their heads. The sun.

  We’re still inside, though? Adon sent. He was turning his body carefully, trying hard not to throw Goldie off-balance as he looked around. She slowly shifted back to a normal posture, less unstable than the precarious position she had initially adopted to look up at the sun.

  I think we would have noticed if we had somehow left the dungeon, Goldie replied. And I do not see the open sky. Just the sun—and stone, everywhere.

  Adon sent a simple Yes back. He couldn’t easily see the area immediately surrounding the indoor sun—the area was blindingly bright—but if he looked just feet away, he saw nothing but stone above. Ceiling, rather than open sky. They were still within the dungeon, still indoors.

  There was just a sun inside. Somehow.

  Adon sensed movement out of the corner of his range of vision, and he swiveled to catch whatever it was—but the life form had pulled back beyond the cliff’s edge. It was at the very top of the structure above the valley he and Goldie inhabited.

  Could it see me? Adon wondered.

  What was that? Goldie sent.

  I was trying to figure that out myself, Adon replied.

  Do you think it saw us? she asked.

  The butterfly was about to say “no,” but he thought better of it and shifted his posture again to look down at the ground.

  Darn.

  What is it?

  He started to point with one limb, then reminded himself that he was invisible.

  Below us, he sent. You and I are still invisible, but that weird fake sun—the light is refracting through our bodies. You can see some funny shadows. I hadn’t seen this coming. Didn’t realize this place would be so brightly lit.

  Goldie moved around on Adon’s back until he knew she was near his rear, forcing him to adjust his balance so she would not be at risk of toppling off.

  Oh, no, she sent. It looks just like us…

  There was a sort of refracted, shadowy image of the two arthropods, following their movement patterns on the ground below them.

  Not that what we look like is the problem, Adon replied. But the fact that we are so big—it’s impossible that whatever creature saw the ground below us could have ignored that. Not if it was alert at all. The shadow, he observed without articulating, was at least as large as the two of them stacked on top of each other. We need to get moving.

  Definitely, Goldie sent. Especially now that they seem to know we are coming…

  Adon took them higher up without further discussion, passing the many holes that pocked the walls on the way. He was not particularly trying to observe the activity in those tunnels—he was attempting to get through the space as quickly as he could and see what lived at the top of the valley, what had been watching them—but, in passing, he did notice that the holes in the walls seemed to be deep. Probably deep enough for some long creatures to be living deep inside of them.

  And there were so many holes, so tightly packed, that Adon felt certain many of them must intersect. His mind gave him the visual image of a vast, hollow inner space, where any number of enemies might be lurking.

  Telepathy told him nothing, however. If the openings they passed contained life, it must have been too deep within to be detected.

  The holes come in at least two different sizes, too, don’t they? he thought. Two different kinds of creatures burrowing? Or more? Or maybe it’s adults and their juvenile offspring.

  He continued ascending, however. If he stayed to explore into the pits the diggers had left behind, he and Goldie might never manage to scout out the real layout of the dungeon. He could easily see them falling prey to some ambush.

  In the air, they were as secure as they could be.

  Then they rose above the walls that had constrained them.

  As they floated up over the ridge above the valley, Adon and Goldie could finally see everything.

  The world before their eyes was vast but grim.

  Scattered all around them were thousands upon thousands of holes similar to those they had passed on the way up. There were deep pits in the flat plain that topped the ridge, holes in every cave wall within sight, and in the distance, there was even a collapsed section of the dungeon where the tunneling had become so pervasive that the roof had caved in.

  At least that was what it looked like. There was a massive pile of debris, stretching from floor almost to ceiling, and as Adon stared at it, he thought it might be right underneath the place where the tunnel to the last level had been—where the subsidence in the floor above had taken place.

  There were other areas on the floor where dozens of smaller mounds of debris had fallen. In some of those areas, the ceiling that was otherwise flat seemed to sag slightly.

  His mind leaped back to that moment when everything had seemed to shake.

  Are the monsters on this level trying to collapse the upper levels? Adon wondered. Why?

  Can we fly closer to the shiny pile of rocks, Adon? Goldie asked. Maybe there will be something valuable there. The spider seemed to be mesmerized by the loose mountain of rubble.

  Adon sent a little telepathic shrug.

  Sure, Goldie, he sent.

  Wait, what was that? he thought. What was that Goldie said about the rocks?

  He focused his attention on the debris pile, and he noticed that she was right.

  It is weirdly shiny, he thought. There was a glitter about the rubble.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Adon flew closer to investigate.

  As he moved, a gleaming movement near the arthropods distracted his attention. Adon tilted to look down, and he saw a golden-colored head peek out of a tunnel near him. The head appeared to be insectoid.

  What is that? Adon sent.

  Then the creature emerged into the light, and Goldie replied: It looks like an ant. Somehow.

  An ant, covered in gold paint, Adon sent. And about the size of a big dog…

  That was what they saw. An ant built like a Rottweiler, cautiously darting around outside its tunnel.

  So, that is the enemy, Goldie sent. Strange that I do not feel much pressure from it.

  I’m pretty worried, Adon replied. You remember how terrible the ants in the garden were?

  Until you learned magic, Goldie replied. Or perhaps some other ability that made them non-threatening. It is almost nostalgic now.

  If you say so…

  Adon flew in a circle around the ant, not moving on to the debris pile just yet, waiting to see what the creature would do.

  It ducked into another tunnel almost immediately, and the arthropods were disappointed for a moment. Then a gleam of gold reappeared. The ant stepped back out of the tunnel, carrying something in its mandibles.

  Is that gold? Adon sent.

  It is the right color, Goldie replied in a deadpan tone. You would know better than me about that, Adon. There was very little gold in the garden.

  The lump of metallic ore in the ant’s mouthparts was the same color as the giant insect’s body. Shiny, reflective dark yellow.

  What’s it doing? Adon transmitted.

  Adon, use Identify on it! Goldie sent.

  He did.

  Gold-Digging Ant (Worker).

  Oh.

  Yes. I think it was digging for gold.

  The ant started walking away, and they observed with interest until it reached one of the walls and then disappeared down yet another of the ubiquitous tunnels that made up so much of the level.

  How are the explorers who come into a place like this even supposed to find and kill these things? Adon wondered loudly.

  I guess they are not? Goldie sent. The plan must be to make it very difficult to find and exterminate the monsters on this floor. The dungeon only needs to slow people down on the upper levels, especially if it is constantly improving its defenses.

  But if the monsters are playing hard to find, the people who come through the dungeon can just walk out through the exit, Adon sent.

  Which one? Goldie replied. I see hundreds of holes, and a significant proportion of them are large enough for humans to pass through.

  Adon pivoted and slowly looked over the surrounding walls again, and he realized that Goldie was right.

  There were hundreds, if not thousands, of holes in every surface across the landscape, and there were at least a few square miles worth of ground to cover once one came out of the shallow valley where the entrance lay.

  Oh, and there are other valleys, Adon thought. Doubtless, those would be pockmarked full of little tunnels too.

  The only untouched bit of rock at ground level was a solid stone structure that jutted out from just above the level’s entrance and extended up to the ceiling, but that was probably where the shaft leading down from the previous level was.

  Adon tried to find some visual indicator of where the tunnel down might be, but he gave up after a couple of minutes of searching. It was utterly useless.

  And Goldie was right. The holes he kept seeing were of extremely variable size. Some were large enough for humans, some were larger—perhaps the size of some other creature, built like a rhinoceros—some were barely big enough for the giant ants, and others appeared to be too small even for the Gold-Digging Ant Adon had seen already.

  The only other place that did not have tunnels carved into it, besides the one stone structure Adon had already noted, was the ceiling. But every level thus far had been below those previous, and Adon guessed that the ants had simply not tunneled up, because the dungeon core was aware that might drain the previous level’s magma down into this floor—counterproductively to both areas.

  For a wild moment, Adon wondered if that might be the actual solution to this level—bring the magma down here—but he just as quickly dismissed the idea. That was actual insanity. The Gold-Digging Ant did not look especially dangerous or tough, and it might not even be aggressive, if Goldie was correct in how this floor worked. Whereas magma would make the environment passively harmful to the arthropods and the knights alike.

  They had all kept their mana defenses active throughout the previous level, and Adon imagined that trying to cave the roof in would only make this level similarly exhausting—which it was already likely to be, given the sheer amount of ground to search for the route to the next level.

  Damn, he thought. I have no idea what we do about this.

  As he was flapping his wings, hovering in place, Adon noticed a furry creature move within one of the smaller holes. It stood in the shadows, hesitating at the threshold of coming out.

  He pointed it out to Goldie with a simple telepathically transmitted gesture, and the words, Look over there!

  If only we had some way of tracking every creature we see in here, Goldie sent. Then we would have an easy way of figuring out where the exit was.

  If they’re like everything else in the dungeon so far, I could sort of observe their brain activity with Telepathy, Adon replied, but I have a range limit, and I’m guessing there are way too many monsters for me to use that effectively here anyway.

  They spent another minute spitballing strategies—with the occasional ant popping by, walking around, and then returning to a tunnel—before Adon’s attention was drawn back to the furry creature in the small tunnel. It poked its head out, and Adon got an impression of a rabbit’s head—oddly with small horns poking up from the top—and quickly used Identify.

  Common Jackalope (Male).

  What is a jackalope? he wondered. There’s a monster that’s a jackrabbit with little horns? Was the Goddess making a joke that day? Was she drunk? Or is the dungeon core the one playing a joke?

  Can we investigate the mountain of debris over there now? Goldie sent, interrupting Adon’s rather useless train of thought.

  Right, sure, he sent back quickly. The wall near the debris still had bits crumbling away as he looked in the mound’s direction, so a closer view of that might also tell them if this level of the dungeon was actually secretly unstable.

  He fluttered across the pockmarked landscape, never touching down or even getting near the ground despite their invisibility. It was always possible something would have the ability to detect them anyway, and they were not there to fight. They were there to scout.

  As they drew near the mountain, Adon shifted course slightly to fly around it to the side and get a new angle of approach.

  It was as he was circling around the pile—which he now realized glimmered with flecks of what was probably bits of gold—that he saw them, some gathered around the giant mound, more of them tearing apart the walls and the ground, others at a lower elevation.

  The Gold-Digging Ants had created a large valley behind the pile, and Adon could see that the wall might further subside as they continued their excavation. They appeared to have hit a vein of gold, because the ones that were not tearing apart the soil had bits of gold in their mandibles and were walking it into a central hub tunnel, which Adon guessed led to their underground hill.

  The creatures were behaving far more aggressively in strip mining this area, hidden behind the debris pile, than they had been elsewhere.

  Unless most of the work they’ve been doing is hidden underground…

  The thought gave him a sinking feeling.

  How many of these things are there?

  The number of ants he had seen before he reached the debris mound was orders of magnitude smaller than the scores of the golden-colored insects he saw now. But he was fairly certain he knew that ants typically kept the bulk of their numbers underground at any one time.

  There could be thousands of them…

  Back in the garden, when Adon had encountered ants, he had remembered that a group of them was called a colony. But there was another name for a group of ants that was commonly used. That one seemed more appropriate here.

  As Adon watched the oversized golden creatures darting back and forth, dozens of them digging and destroying the stone all around, others excavating the gold and returning it to their central tunnel, he knew he was observing an army.