Frisk recognized the room a moment too late.  She had been bringing up the rear, snapping her teeth at the long whisk of Asphodel’s tail in front of her, saying, “Next time we’ll let the hellhounds maul you, and save ourselves the trouble—”

“You may try,” Asphodel answered, immovable, but the flick of his ears was cross, too—

Neither of them was paying attention when Meleph, crossing the threshold first, lowered his head to nose across an abandoned desk.  Vex squeaked from where it had tangled itself into Frisk’s mane — rising urgency.  Its tiny teeth pricked Frisk’s neck; she jerked her head up, irritated; took in the sight of Meleph at the desk, the familiar corridor that stretched before them on the far side of the room, and—

His shoulder bumped something on the desk.  It clicked in a way that objects should not when knocked over — the tipping of a lever. 

“Great job,” Frisk said, flatly, in the second that she had left, listening to the strange, distant sounds of cogs moving beneath the stone, of old magic or machinery shuddering to life. 

Then the room spun.

---

“Ow,” Meleph said. 

It had been faster this time, Frisk thought — a more violent lurching, as if the dungeon had shifted by critical degrees, as though the slide of stonework no longer moved as though greased, as though calibrated by the hand of an inventor.  She had caught herself before falling; had watched Xochitl stagger and splay out all of their limbs, whiskers quivering:  Meleph and Asphodel had not been so lucky. 

Asphodel was glaring as he scrambled to his hooves.  He snorted sharply. 

“Did I do that?” Meleph asked, wincing, sheepish. 

“No shit.”  Frisk stepped over to him, helped him up with a nip to his flank to drive him forward. 

“And now the path has changed,” Asphodel said.  He had turned away from them towards the set of four corridors that stretched from the room.  “I cannot see where these lead.” 

Frisk couldn’t, either.  

Two of them glowed with strange light — so brightly that she could have mistaken them as daylight, but coldly.  Ghostlight, she thought, and did not say.  The other two dead-ended to shadow in a way that felt unnatural, too — airless, maybe, as though the quality of the darkness was too thick, had grown viscous over time and isolation. 

“Well…”  She stepped towards one, and then another.

Xochitl made a quiet sound behind them.  A little noise to catch their attention.  They said, “I know which way to go.”

---

“This one.” 

Illuminated by the ghostlight, they waited at the mouth of the tunnel.  Their head tipped patiently as the others joined them — reluctantly. 

“Why this one?” Frisk asked. 

“It just — it is a feeling,” Xochitl said. 

“Well, that’s a shit answer.” 

Meleph made a small noise of agreement, but said nothing. 

Xochitl’s eyeless head swung towards Frisk.  Their whiskers shifted in the dead air.  “I cannot explain it if you cannot already feel it.  It is the smell and the temperature and the stone.  I have been listening to the dungeon my entire life.  This way will take us where we want to go.” 

Frisk hesitated. 

“You do not have to come with me,” Xochitl said.  “But I am going.”

They turned and started down the corridor.  Frisk watched for a moment — the way the ghostlight consumed them, coldly radiant — and then ran to catch up.