Kipo's head felt like it was being stabbed through with a bunch of knives. There was a sharp, throbbing pain on her right wrist and when Kipo tried to crack open her eyes, it felt like a thousand alarms started blaring in her head like an alarm. Kipo groaned. Her cheek was pressed up against something hard and cold. Her legs were submerged in some sort of cold liquid.

Kipo's eyes shot open as a sudden flash of her legs, broken and covered in blood, flashed through her mind. She sat up, quickly surveying her lower body. But her legs were fine, lying in a river of water. Kipo breathed a sigh of relief. Vaguely, she noticed her flower mask was gone, and, in expanse, the pink smoke.

Kipo drew her legs out of the water and up to her chest. Everything was starting to rush back to her. Adam, the bone dragons... Wirt.... Kipo winced. Was Wirt okay? Was Adam? The last thing Kipo remembered was Wirt being swept away in the claws of the bone dragon... she needed to help him...

Kipo shook out the pain in her head, taking a look at her surrounding. If she wanted to help her friends, she was going to have to figure out where she had ended up. However, her surrounding didn't help much.

Kipo reached out, running her fingers over the rock wall beside her. A few pebbles tumbled down, but apart from that, the wall stayed strong and intact. She was in... a cave, a rather small cave with an even smaller river running through it. The river, Kipo guessed, was probably what pulled her into the cave at the first place. It wasn't very big or fast, and if Kipo wanted to go to the other side, she probably could, easily.

The cave was pretty dark, but there was something on the roof, some sort of glow-worms or crystals or something that were stuck to the roof that gave everything a light blue glow. They allowed Kipo to see, and if Kipo wasn't so worried about Wirt and Adam, she'd think the sight was beautiful.

Kipo stepped forward. Now that she was looking, the cave was pretty long. Perhaps it was less of a cave, and more of a tunnel.

Kipo glanced at the river, according to the current, she came from the right. So, if she wants to get out of here, obviously she'd need to go to the right. Well, this seems easy enough: follow the river and get out of the tunnel. Kipo hurried down the tunnel.

But, of course, it wasn't that easy. It was long before Kipo came upon a fork in the tunnel, with both sides with a river.

Kipo's eyes narrowed as she looked from side to side. What was she supposed to do now? Which one led to the way out?

Kipo shook her head. "Really, Kipo?" she sighed. "Obviously, both of them lead outside. It doesn't matter which one I take."

Kipo stepped forward, ready to try and follow the left one, the one closest to her, but before she could...

A small clinking noise startled Kipo, making her jump back. It came from the right tunnel, and Kipo looked over just in time to see a human figure staring at her. But in the blink of an eye, it was running away.

"Wha-hey! Wait!" Kipo hurried after them, splashing across the river. Was it Wirt? Adam? No, they probably wouldn't be running away. Why was this person running away? "Wait, I'm not dangerous, I promise! Hold on!"

The person didn't slow down even a little bit, but Kipo did as she watched something small and glowing fall out of their pocket on tumble onto the ground. Kipo paused, looking from the small object to the retreating person.

"Hey, you dropped something!" Kipo called, kneeling down. She blinked at it. It was probably the same thing as the stuff on the roof. Kipo reached for it. "You dropped your... crystal?"

Kipo's fingers curled around it, and the cave suddenly disappeared. Kipo blinked, looking around her new surroundings. Instead of a cave, she was in a room filled to the brim with books and what looked like decaying scrolls. There was another person there, a human being, with their back facing away from Kipo. They had short brown hair and hair skin, and they were laughing at something the creature beside them said. Some kind of fox...? Before Kipo could really figure out what the creature was, the scene changed again.

Now she was looking at another person, a lighter skinned person with slightly longer, slightly lighter brown hair. They were holding a sword, swinging it around in quick precise movements at what seemed like nothing. Kipo only got a quick looked at the dull, grey room around them before it was gone, just like the last one.

Now the place Kipo found herself in was extravagant and filled to the brim with fancy, detailed wallpaper and expensive pots and statues. Suddenly, the door across from Kipo opened, and a light skinned, freckled face with short, dark blue hair poked through. Both her and Kipo's eyes met, and her mouth opened in surprise but before Kipo could say or do anything, the person disappeared.

The person was replaced by another light skinned person, this one with longer blonde hair. They were sitting down, and seemed to be playing around with things that Kipo couldn't see. The room was dark, only lit by a lantern in front of the person, so Kipo couldn't see where they were, or much about their surroundings. Kipo sucked in a nervous breath when something suddenly stepped into the light. It was larger, Kipo could only see its legs, and was covered in some odd sort of dirty yellow fur.

It was ominous, but Kipo couldn't call out to the person to warn them before they were gone, and they were replaced with a more familiar face.

Kipo gasped. Everything had changed once again, and now Kipo was in the air, in a very familiar storm, with bones that Kipo remembered well. But that didn't matter to Kipo right now, because Wirt was right in front of her, looking like he was sleeping or...

"Wirt!" Kipo cried, jumping to her feet and reaching out her hands, but she was reaching for nothing. The storm and the bone dragon had disappeared, and Kipo was once again in the cave as soon as her fingers left the stone.

It took a couple seconds for Kipo to finally wrap her head around what happened. It felt like her head was spinning at a million miles an hour, and her eyes were wide. She could hear her rapid breathing bouncing on the walls. It was... loud.

Eventually, Kipo finally turned around, back to the glowing crystal sitting harmlessly on the floor. The person who had dropped it was long gone now. Where the images it showed her real? Those people, were they really here in this place, too? And Wirt... the bone dragons still had him? Kipo needed to find him, quickly!

But before she started moving on, she hesitated, and wrapped her sleeve around her hand. Then, she cautiously scooped up the crystal and dropped it into her pocket. To her relief, nothing happened. Whatever this crystal was, it was probably important, but Kipo wasn't to keen on seeing a lot of dizzying visions again. She'd worry about that later.

Kipo glared at the path in front of her. "I'm coming for you, Wirt," she said. "Just you wait! And as soon as I find you, we can look for Adam together!"

But first Kipo would have to get out of these caves, which, as she would find out soon enough, was going to be harder than she thought. As she ran through the tunnels, she saw certain tunnels leading off and veering to the right and to the left. Kipo didn't slow down, but when she looked down them, she saw they were blocked off by what seemed like solid doors of rock with odd symbols written on them. They looked kind of like words, but Kipo couldn't read them. Maybe she was going too fast to read them, but she didn't think those looked like the Roman Alphabet.

But Kipo wasn't worried about that stuff, at least not yet. The path ahead of her was clear, a straight road to the outside of these caves. Kipo could almost see it now! Her eyes widened when she finally got a glimpse of sky blue, a sight she hadn't seen since she was in the clearing. The sky was waiting for her, and Kipo reached out her hand.

But suddenly, the blue sky disappeared, replaced by a rock wall that Kipo slammed into full force, falling back with a cry. Kipo slid backwards, rubbing her now aching head. The headache had returned at full force, but Kipo didn't notice it under her bewilderment and sinking feeling of disappointment.

"What the..." Kipo picked herself up, feeling the wall in front of her with her hand. It was hard and solid, but Kipo was certain that it had not been there a minute ago. Where had it come from...?

Kipo pounded on the door with her human hands, and then some more with her jaguar paws. But the structure stayed strong throughout it, Kipo couldn't make a dent, no matter how hard she wailed on it. Even when she backed up a couple feet and then hurled herself at the wall, it didn't budge.

Kipo backed up once again, tears in the corners of her eyes from the newfound pain in her shoulder.

"What the... what's going on?" Kipo stared at the wall in front of her. Did someone put this wall here? Did someone want to keep Kipo in the caves for some reason? What was going on?

Kipo huffed, and glanced down to the water she was following, as if the water itself had somehow betrayed her. Then she did a double take. If the wall itself wasn't weird enough, there was also the fact that it had managed to stop Kipo, but not the ankle-deep stream of water. It just seemed to pass on through, business as usual. Kipo's brow furrowed, and she put a hand to the rock wall. Yep, solid. Then how...?

"Oh hey! Do you need help getting through the wall?"

Kipo jumped, nearly up to the ceiling, and whirled around. A person with bright orange hair wrapped in a high ponytail and glasses was staring at her, titling in her head as if slightly bemused by Kipo. Kipo didn't really blame her, she didn't exactly what to know how she looked a couple seconds ago.

"Uh... you!" Kipo mind suddenly caught up to her, and she reached into her pocket, wrapping her sleeve around her hand and she drew out the crystal. "Here! I got this thing you dropped!"

The girl looked taken aback. "Huh? I didn't... drop anything, though," she said, peering into Kipo's outstretched hand. "Is that the things on the top of the cave."

Kipo frowned. "You didn't drop this, then?"

The girl shook her head. "No, sorry. I've never seen one of these things up close."

"Careful," Kipo warned her. "Don't touch it with bare skin. You'll, uh, you'll see some weird things."

The girl nodded, and when she was done with it, Kipo slowly put her crystal back in her pocket, for some reason disappointed. There was another person done in these caves somewhere then. Kipo hoped they were alright.

The girl stepped back, glancing at the wall. "Er... you probably want to get out right about now, right?"

Kipo nodded, and the girl stepped up to it. She pointed up a symbol in the middle of the wall that Kipo somehow missed. "See that?"

Kipo nodded. It kind of looked like...

"It's the number twenty-two," Kipo noted. Seriously, how had she missed this stuff?

The girl nodded, and looked down into a piece of paper she had been carrying. "Yeah, so that's... W. We just have to find a word that starts with W..."

Kipo glanced around her, down to the stream. "Something like... Water?"

The girl glanced down, too, and snorted. "Well, that makes it easy." Kipo watched as she turned back to the wall.

"Just do what I do," she told Kipo. She stepped forward, and calmly looked up at the wall.

"Water," she said in a calm, clear voice. And then, to Kipo's astonishment, she stepped forward and walked right through the wall. Kipo blinked, shell shocked for a second, before she finally stepped forward, resting her hand on the wall. Once again, solid.

"Woah," Kipo whispered to herself in awe. This was almost like magic.

Anxious to try it herself, Kipo stepped back, and like the other girl had done, she said 'Water', in a clear voice, keeping her excitement out of it. Then, she stepped forward, marching through the wall. It was like it wasn't even there anymore.

Kipo stepped out into a sunny day, halfway up a mountain and looking down into the place where the stream turns into a raging waterfall. She couldn't hear it before, but now the rumbling shook her deep in her bones. Kipo's eyes followed the river downstream and towards what looked like a small town. It looked... serene.

Eventually, Kipo managed to turn away from the scene, and back to the girl beside her. The girl, creepily enough, looked like she had been studying Kipo, but she looked away when Kipo turned to her. Kipo decided to ignore that

"Uh, yeah," the girl said. "So, the numbers on the walls just pertain to the order of the alphabet, and which letter the password is starting with. If you were wondering."

"That..." Kipo turned to the cave. "Yeah, that makes sense. I'm Kipo, by the way. I'm looking for my friends."

"Tulip," the girl told her. "I'm, uh, just looking for a way out of this train car."

Kipo frowned. "Train car?" she repeated. What in the world does that mean?

Unfortunately, Tulip didn't explain, she only shrugged. "It's not important," she sighed. Kipo was getting the impression that it was important. "Anyway, I probably should help you find your friends."

Kipo was surprised. "You're going to help me?"

"I usually have to do stuff like that," Tulip explained. "Even though I don't have a number anymore... it's not important."

Kipo blinked. This was going by way too fast. What was even going on?

"Uh... thanks!" Kipo told her. "That's great! I just have no idea where to start..."

"That's fine," Tulip assured her. "We have a map over in that town. We can start there."

"Huh?" Kipo looked from the girl to the town. "Uh, sure-wait who's we?"

Tulip had already started off towards the town. "Just some other people. Come on, let's go."

Kipo blinked. She really didn't have any clue what was going on. Was this girl trying to trick Kipo?

Well, if she was, it was working. Eventually, Kipo shrugged, following Tulip down to the town.