They had been searching for hours. No one dared ask whether anyone else knew where they had come from, where they were going-- down the featureless spiraling halls no longer familiar to any of them. They set out with a mind to find their missing comrade, whatever condition Melite might be in. Privately, Jasmine feared her lady's maid had been eaten alive. Sucked into the floor of this strange, haunting place, or dissolved into a pile of goo. She tried not to let that stifling fear consume her. Did not dare give it breath, lest sharing make it true. They would find Melite... wherever she had run to, for she was surely lost and not dead, and she and Jasmine would return home together. 

Somehow. 

"Does this corridor look familiar to you?" Cyneric drawled, and Jasmine had to bite her tongue to keep from snapping his off. He had not taken this situation seriously for even a moment, and she could only guess who long they had been looking. As far as Cyneric was concerned little Melite had taken her opportunity to escape her servitude-- bolted back to the surface never to be seen again. And of course, he wouldn't care either way if she was dead. 

"Everything here looks familiar, m'lord," Rajinder answered dryly. He, at least, seemed slightly distressed by his own part in Melite's disappearance. 

"Well then, how do we know we aren't just walking around in a circle?" Cyneric wanted to stop. Wanted to give up. Jasmine could tell. How her mother could want her wed to such a useless sack of horse-meat, she would never understand. 

"We most likely are," Rajinder gave his mane a toss and glanced back the way they had come. Jasmine didn't dare follow his gaze. Everything here seemed to ooze inky black shadows. "Some folk say the dungeons only let you go where they want you to go. This one must want us here." 

"There has to be some way to follow Melite!" Jasmine's voice burst out of her control-- biting, angry, punctuated by a sharp hoof-beat on the cobbled floor. At first she thought the stomp had echoed a little bit too far. It seemed to go on and on, cutting the stunned silence which stretched between the three of them. Then, Rajinder looked down. 

"M'lord!" the knight shouted, and piled all his weight into his haunches to throw himself at Cyneric. The prince shouted a protest as he was hurled to one side of the hall, unaware as the floor itself seemed to grind and shift and peel away. Jasmine staggered frantically back, nearly landing on her own tail in a bid to escape the passage slowly opening beneath their feet. Rajinder, in his haste to save his god-prince, was not so lucky. Together, the two nobles watched the knight stagger, slip, and plummet away into the yawning void beneath. 

Silence followed. The fiances stood on either side of the hole in the floor, shocked. No way to get across to one another. No safe way down. 

Stranded.