Through the eyes of a bedazzled ape

  Feet brush against the soft leaves of glowing, blue moss carpeting the rolling hills which flow across all directions. Long stems bend and dance under the gentle breeze, turquoise light bleeding into the air to grasp at the dark void above, speckled with tiny dots of light. Drips echo across the cavern, syncopated taps of water interacting with itself and singing its arrhythmic tune. Lines draw themselves in the plains, critters and rodents pushing aside the moss as they traverse the jungle of lights, leaving behind a wake of closing paths.

  Gol Dhee leans down to the ground, his knuckle gently brushing into the flowing moss, which meets his touch in its gentle, thoughtless embrace. A dark red grips the ground, its roots sinking into the hard stone and leading up along its deep-blue stem. At the tips lie small bulbs, each emitting a faint, blue glow, the numerous sources of light unifying into a homogeneous collective of shifting and wavering intensity. "So this is the world above. Is this what you call, 'surface'? The stars are just as described." He muses in awe of the sight, a tiny spider gracing him with a blank expression while a robust elf scrunches his face inscrutably. "Monkey... Buddy... We're not even half way up. This is just a mossy cave." "Trust me. When we get there, you'll know." "..."

  "This is all moss?" "Always has been." "Hoh..." The unknowable one lumbers over, each heavy step uncaringly crushing a patch of blue fibres, only for them to pop back up unharmed. "Last time I was here I almost died. Fun times." What a dangerous place this must be, to threaten even her... "How?" "One of those invisible plants bit me." "Where?" "There." Gol Dhee squints his eyes at the patch of nothing the dragon gestures to, moss and stone laid out in equal measures to any other location. "Invisible indeed..." "Hold on." The unknowable one steps forward, planting her paw on the empty patch and disturbing the ground. Tendrils of white shoot out from behind unseen petals, wrapping around the leg and trying impotently to sink their razor-thin spines into the tough scales. "..." Perhaps I shall ride the unknowable one for the duration of this layer...

  Through the eyes of an inquisitive demon

  Diala pokes at the thin vines attempting to constrict the dragon, each prod only prompting them to grip tighter until their meal simply walks away. The dejected plant chews at the air, grasping at what once was, what could have been, a fate of satiety and happiness stripped away by a force beyond its perception. How tragic! She silently consoles the plant, leaving it to its sorrows as she skips back to the group.

  Bounding her way to the the elf she pauses ahead of him and walks backwards, eyes meeting his. "Hey Fluffy! Got any interesting animal facts?" Ignoring the frustrated squints emanating from behind him, she continues her inverted traversal unheeded. "Do you have the lifespan to hear them?" He jests in response. "I'm functionally immortal at this point, so I'll mark that as a maybe." Whipping around, she snags a random critter as it tries to sneak past, claws swiping and jaws squealing in futile resistance to its sudden restriction. "What's this thing?" "Juvenile earth drake. Younger form of that mountain-sized drake we encountered a couple of days ago."

  Diala holds the lizard to her face, number of thoughts quantifiable as a non-positive value within its unsapient gaze. One can almost witness the grandiose conflict of its sparsely scattered brain cells colliding in attempt to form a coherent idea. "Neat. Do they get smarter?" "Not really." What a travesty! "Can you see where you're going like that?" Releasing her hold on the lizard, she allows it to scamper around her body and back to the safety of the tall moss, free to eat rocks once more. "I can see in any direction my shell is exposed to light in. Remember, these eyes are just projections." Her eyes orbit each other, body performing a twirl with her head locked in place.

  Fluffy strokes his beard, fingers getting caught in the untamed scraggle. "Speaking of light... How would you describe this light?" "From the moss? Hmm... It's something of an exotic flavour. We don't get much bioluminescence where I'm from so it's a nice departure from what I'm used to. I'd say it's wibbly and dispersed, not quite smooth but also not coarse either. I give it a seven out of ten." "Huh... And for reference, what would you rank the light cores?" "Three. They just don't have enough frequencies to taste any good."

  Through the eyes of a nostalgic dragon

  Feels like just yesterday that I was here, eating rocks, almost getting killed by a giant snake, eating gross goo, almost getting killed by a weird plant, drinking water with mild amounts of neurotoxin... Fun times! Local cuisine could be better though... Aleph prowls through the moss, her footsteps lighter and more gentle than a creature of her size ought to be capable of. As plains begin to transition into rocky bluffs, she pauses, paws falling flat to the earth. "You know... I started walking out of habit, but there's nothing stopping us from just flying up and digging the rest of the way to the surface, is there?" Oh please no... "Hold on, not yet." Lyly interrupts, saving the day. "I have somewhere for us to go first."

  "Where?" "It's a secret." "Seriously?" "Deal with it. We're heading this way." The stalwart heroine, er... The stubborn arachnid leaps from her perch, tiny body swimming back through the brush. What is she up to...? Aleph follows, companions skipping and striding by her side and resting upon her back. The critter follows a straight line through the cavern, her charge as unrelenting as Aleph's own. Tall grass gives way to bulbous mushrooms, speckled with transparent, cube-shaped growths, covering the rocky floor in a fungal forest of refracting hues. Lyly winds between the stems, no consideration given to the much larger individuals following her through the cramped and unruly terrain.

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  The spider stops, turns here, turns there, looks up, and shoots off in a new direction. Unable to rest for even a moment, the group continue to follow, the forest growing thicker and the ceiling closing in to make things even more claustrophobic. Small streams of glowing water bundle down the sloping terrain, drips reflecting against the ambient blue of the cave as they race down long vines clung to the ceiling and fall from the tips. The dragon slithers through the overgrowth with an impossible dexterity, managing to avoid contact despite her size, as if taking challenge to the spider's persistent traversal. Once more she pauses ahead of them, skittering atop the cap of one of the mushrooms and looking around once more. Left, right, a scritch of her head, and straight up. "Shit. We're directly below..."

  Aleph curves around the stems, reaching the base of Lyly's perch as the others follow shortly behind. "Do you even know where you're going?" "Eh. I have a rough idea, this place is just a maze. Hard to find where to join things up..." This wide and open cavern is a maze? Her gaze returns up, slowly shifting, seeming to follow something through the wall. Curious, Aleph pushes her Aether through the stone, following line of sight for all eight of the critter's eyes. Ah, I see.

  Through the eyes of a different spider

  "Fuck this place!" A tiny arachnid squeals, her white and blue setae lit by a gentle wisp of light tailing behind her. "Fuck this maze!" Her voice echoes, too soft to reach beyond her line of sight. "Fuck these rocks!" The rocks do not respond to her frustrations because they are rocks. She knows this. She says this anyway. "And fuck you too lizard!" Her cyan eyes turn to a rock lizard, mouth agape and leaning in to bite its noisy prey, yet seeming to pause as if deciding whether to be offended at the sudden insult. "Watcha! Killer move! Serious series: Serious laser!" Her legs swiftly weave runes into the air, glowing brightly before the earth below the lizard bursts with red-hot energy boring a hole through the creature's torso. The lizard collapses, no fight permitted before its conclusive death. "Cheh! Fool! You're seven-hundred years too early to challenge me!" Now if only I can find an opportunity to say that to someone who isn't a walking rock...

  Okay, where am I...? Right below me. I think there was a way through past one of these tunnels. Eight eyes each peer into one of eight tunnels which fork and bend randomly within the serpentine tunnels. Which one was- Is the dragon seriously digging a hole straight to me? The earth directly below her turns violet, then shatters into a fine powder, funnelling into itself as it flows down to the layer below. Shit! No time! I have to start now! Her body is dragged alongside the sand by gravity, space opening up into a wide cavern of blue and grey as her tiny eyes meet those of her own.

  "Fuahahaha! Behold! For it is I! The great! The glorious! The- Geh!" The unrelenting force that binds all subject to the concepts of mass and energy shows no mercy in its pull as she is slammed against the pile of powder without hope of finishing her introduction. "Damnit! Do you know how long I spent working on my big reveal?! Why couldn't you just wait?!" Lyla shouts, Lyla standing up to join herself in glaring at the insensitive fool. "Um... Sorry?" ""Moron."" Lyla and Lyla murmur, Lyla dusting away the powder while Lyla skitters over to collect her smaller body. "Were you at least surprised?" "It's an amazing and grand revelation, no?" "For while I might appear at a glance to be a solitary arachnid of uniquely artistic beauty..." "I am actually many!" "Fifty-six to be precise."

  "I already knew." Yep. I don't want world domination. I just want to destroy it! "Are you fucking kidding me?! All of you? How?" The dragon tilts her head at Lyla, not a hint of shame in the eyes which just shattered a poor soul's dreams. "Distributed consciousness was one of my first theories. You let a few things slip every now and then, so by the time we reached Haven I was already pretty sure." I bet she cheated. Her gaze moves to the elf, his eyes scrutinising her with a renewed sense of intrigue. "I once spent weeks studying the white shadow. A white spider who also happens to be a divine beast isn't something you see every day, so the pieces weren't difficult to put together." "You never mentioned anything?" "You made it clear you didn't want us to guess." Okay, he has a point at least. The dragon is still dead to me.

  Her gaze falls to the remaining pair, the demons expression impossible to parse while one can almost see the cogs turning in the monkey's head as he attempts to compute how Lyla just duplicated. "Did you guys know?" "I still do not understand..." "I had no idea!" Sixteen eyes squint in unison at the demon, her friendly mannerisms doing nothing to give credit to her words. "I don't believe you." "I literally can't lie..." "Could be a half truth." "It isn't..." "So you admit it isn't even half true!" "That's not what I..." Well, my day is ruined. At least I can still be friends with the monkey.

  "Okay, whatever. Now that I'm here we can get to business." "Digging our way up?" "No. Later. First, we need... a plan!" No reactions follow her declaration, the four of them simply waiting for her to elaborate. Well... three of them. The monkey is still shifting his perplexed gaze between the two Lylas. Just not my day today... "Why can't we just dig up? It's been working for us thus far." The dragon asks, breaking the silence. "Digging isn't the issue here. The issue, is how we actually get out of this place in one piece. We have a couple major roadblocks that need dealing with, and you idiots don't even know what they are. We won't leave until I'm satisfied with our next steps."