Vertex went in first, as they’d discussed the last time, and the Settlers followed after. As before, they had Bib and Pinion waiting outside, though technically speaking there was nothing for Bib to do, and he’d have been free to run off about the countryside, as was his way.

Hannah hadn’t told the others yet, but it was very possible that this was going to be the last dungeon she did. She’d been sending letters across Greater Plenarch and had even rejoined the guild, and she was feeling the itch to go get some of those things done rather than spending too much time cooped up in her entad. Marsh was quite supportive, even if it meant that they would be geographically separated from each other for a bit, though he also seemed to think that they’d find some entad solution for that. It had worked well enough when there were two hexes between them, but she thought it would work better when they could return to the same home at night.

There was a piece of Hannah that worried this was part of a long pattern that was hard to see. She’d itched to get out of the seminary and into actual clerical work, itched to get out of the temple and go do dungeons, and was now itching to speak with people again in the clerical way. Looking at herself from what she hoped was an objective point of view, it seemed possible that she would just never be satisfied no matter where she landed, that she was setting herself up for a life of flitting from one thing to another, never bringing anything to proper completion. It was too early to say for sure whether this was a true pattern, and she didn’t know whether it would even necessarily be a problem. She’d resolved to keep a watchful eye on it though.

The dungeon was by a river, in a nicely scenic location, which dungeon entrances often weren’t. It was in a hex that had only a small town, and one that was fairly far from the dungeon entrance. They hadn’t selected it at random: it had been picked because Verity had some sense that she would be able to make something she wanted to make there. As before, she hadn’t told them what it was she wanted to make, but they’d decided to be a bit less strict about it this time, in part because it was annoying to talk around the lack of information, and potentially deadly.

The dungeon opened up into a small room, which seemed, to Hannah, like such a common dungeon feature that there must have been a bias towards it. It was white and gold, though almost assuredly not actual gold, as it didn’t have the luster and dungeons weren’t supposed to make real gold. Double doors stood before them, fifteen feet tall and narrow enough that even with both open they’d have to go one at a time.

The lute that would start playing for danger wasn’t playing.

<Well> said Alfric. <We’re thinking no monsters?>

<I tried not to have traps, living things, animated things> said Verity. <Er, nothing that would hurt us passively or actively. I had a session with Pinion where we tried to hash it out, so I have Qymmic guidance on all the ways that I might have failed>

<I wish I’d been a part of that prep> said Alfric.

<I think we’re relatively safe> said Verity. <If you see statues though … it might be time to run, or to smash them>

When everyone was ready, Alfric opened the door.

There was a long hallway filled with alcoves, and in each of them, a statue.

<Welp> said Mizuki. <Time to smash>

<Are they magical?> asked Alfric.

<No> said Mizuki. <But I mean … I wouldn’t necessarily be able to see, if the magic was inside them, or outside them, or whatever>

The statues were all female, and most of them were nudes. There was an enormous variety of poses, clothing, facial features, expressions, and ethnicities, though that was harder to tell without skin color. The stone used for the statues came in wide varieties, pinks, blacks, whites, grays, and a few that were the green of jade.

<All women,> said Mizuki, shaking her head. <Typical.>

<I don’t think it’s lurid,> said Verity. She was gazing at the statues.

<Most of them aren’t,> Isra agreed.

<But they are all women,> said Mizuki.

<The female form is, aesthetically, superior to the male form,> said Verity.

<I’d say that’s slander, but I don’t want to get off track here,> said Alfric. <Right now, we’re in an enviable position to retreat. We could do that now, if we’re worried that the statues might come alive.>

<I think we’re fine,> said Verity. She was frowning somewhat. <Can’t we just collect the statues as we go, so we don’t get flanked?>

<I … suppose,> said Alfric. <Given the nature of stone, a single blow to the head from one of these might kill one of us outright, and brain injuries are notoriously difficult to deal with.> He gave a glance at Hannah.

<Come on, get the lute then, we’ll stash them away,> said Mizuki. <I’m about seventy percent sure that they won’t attack, unless they do attack, in which case I’m only twenty percent sure.>

They began transitioning the statues into the lute-space, which went surprisingly quickly given how heavy the stone was. None of the statues showed any signs of moving, and eventually the strumming to get them in was going quite quickly. There were forty of the statues in total, each with its own base to allow for poses that would otherwise tip the things over, and the party talked about each of them as they went into storage.

<I thought that one was quite pretty,> said Mizuki. <Prettiest we’ve come across, anyway.>

<They’ve all been pretty,> said Verity. <Now that I know they’re not going to kill us, I quite like this hall. And we should be able to sell these, shouldn’t we?>

<They’re of decent quality,> said Alfric. <But statues are very large, which means they don’t fit into small homes, and the bigger homes will have plenty to pick from. I’m not sure that in terms of subject matter or artistry these are really anything special. Henling artwork often sells poorly.>

<We could keep one in the house, if it stopped moving,> said Mizuki. <I’m not sure that we could secure a statue?>

<No,> said Alfric.

A white marble statue in a silk robe that clung to her and left nothing to the imagination was whisked away, and they moved on to the next, this one a nude.

<Must have been cold,> said Mizuki as she looked the statue up and down. <Hey, she kind of looks like me.> The stone was a mixture of colors, black and white going through it without respect to the geometry of the body. One hand was outstretching, pointing, and she had a faint smile on her face.

<Kiromon?> asked Hannah.

<Yeah,> said Mizuki, peering closer. <My height, my build, it’s weird.>

<She’s got the same expression,> said Alfric, who was standing back somewhat.

<What’s that?> asked Mizuki, narrowing her eyes at the statue’s face.

<The mischievous one,> said Alfric. <Like you’re about to do something … impish.>

Mizuki turned to look at Verity. <Is this me?>

<I don’t know,> said Verity.

<Historically, you have made statues of people you know,> said Mizuki.

Verity shrugged. <I think the cheekbones are more prominent and the nose is more narrow.>

<I love statues,> Mizuki said with a sigh. <Like a moment frozen in time.>

Among the statues they collected there were none others that so much as suggested a resemblance to anyone they knew, though the range of body types and ethnicities meant that you could stretch it a bit, if you wanted to. By the time they finished, Verity had a theory.

<I think this might be the result of me trying to prevent what happened last time,> said Verity, frowning a bit. There were now empty alcoves on either side of the hallway. <I was trying to weave in the opposite of that, and this is, I think, some of the influence of that leaking in.>

<Does that make sense?> asked Mizuki. <You made some lady statues because you were thinking about not making lady statues?>

<It makes sense to me,> said Hannah.

<Are we expecting to see anything else?> asked Alfric. <Things you were focusing on not having?>

<I don’t know,> said Verity. <It’s influence, not control. It’s taking a suggestion of a dungeon that I get from what I know, and in that split second we cross through, trying to weave in my own ideas about what we should find. I’m not even really sure how it works, to the extent it does.>

<Sometimes when you push against somethin’, it pushes back,> said Hannah. <Most things, if I understand physics right.>

<I don’t think it’s like that,> said Verity. <I think it’s like … if you avoid certain things, it becomes obvious?>

<Does it?> asked Mizuki. <Man I hate talking about this.>

<It’s important,> said Alfric. There was a touch of annoyance in his voice.

<I’m just saying that Verity hasn’t succeeded in making sense,> said Mizuki.

<It’s like if you wrote a book that didn’t do a thing that books normally do,> said Verity.

<Um,> said Mizuki. She had gone up to the next door, which wasn’t how they did things. Alfric had said that they were supposed to treat these dungeons as proper dungeons, with all that entailed, and Mizuki going forward to inspect doors wasn’t a part of that. Alfric said nothing though, and Hannah held her tongue. <I still don’t know what that means.>

<A book without people?> asked Isra. <Usually when people try to write those, they end up writing books where animals fill the roles of people. By trying to avoid people, you twist things that aren’t people into something similar.>

<Ah,> said Mizuki. <That makes more sense, I guess. Like a big book titled ‘This is Not About Bats!’ It’s kind of got to be about bats in order to not be about bats.> She was staring at the door, which was the same white and gold, though with a relief on it. There were skulls at the bottom, which trees were growing out of. <Are we ready to go on? I’m hoping it’s not more statues.>

<Let me go first, just in case,> said Alfric. He moved to the front and made sure that everyone was in place, then pushed the door open.

They were faced with a long, sunlit room with a few hundred pedestals, all lined up in rows. Each was affixed with a small label, made in brass. The place had a nice, rich glow to it, helped by the dark hardwood floors that reflected the light back warmer. The sunlight was coming in from holes in the roof high above them, a grid of windows on the ceiling that made spots of light in exactly the places where the pedestals weren’t.

<Is this … an entad museum?> asked Alfric. Each of the pedestals had something on top of it, the objects seemingly random, tools, implements, books, pieces of art, tchotchkes and knick-knacks, each of them with a label.

<It is!> said Verity. She was beaming. <I took some inspiration from that dungeon we went through, the one where Alfric got turned to stone — though come to think of it, perhaps that dungeon had some of these same influences.> Her eyes were moving over the entads, quickly hopping from one to another.

<Just one problem,> said Mizuki. <Which is that these aren’t all entads.>

Verity turned to her. <They’re not?> she asked.

<Nope,> said Mizuki. <I count three.> She looked sheepish. <Sorry.>

<Oh,> said Verity. She frowned. <Well, it’s still close to what I was trying for, I suppose.> Her bright mood on coming into the room had suddenly been swept away.

<It’s still three entads we have that we didn’t need to fight for,> said Alfric. <If we could do this every time, we could do ten dungeons a day, scoop up thirty entads, and have virtually no risk.> He placed a hand on Verity’s shoulder. <You’re doing remarkably well.>

<Thanks,> said Verity. She sighed and looked up. <There are other doors. I suppose there would have to be, if I ended up draining the magic stored in the dungeon again.>

<Let’s take what we can,> said Alfric. <And a selection of the others, so Pinion can see, not that I think he’ll be able to help much.>

They moved through the room, somewhat slowly, following Alfric’s lead. It did feel a little bit ridiculous that his sword was drawn, but there was a chance that something might happen. Of all the things they thought the lute might not immediately warn them of, poison was the one that Hannah was most worried about. They had been poisoned once before. The second problem that they might not be warned of was, of course, shifting rooms, which they’d also encountered before. Especially if the things Verity was trying to avoid could seep in sideways, there was some cause for concern.

<Aw man,> said Mizuki as she read one of the plaques. <This one would have been so cool.> She was standing next to one of the pedestals, peering down at the plaque beneath a tea kettle. <It says that it was an attack kettle that would create huge clouds of steam to attack your enemies, with a secret word and everything.>

<This sword would have cut cleanly through metal but not flesh,> said Alfric. He had picked it up and was looking at it. <I suppose we should be taking these things, but I see more doors, and want to get a good sense of the place, just in case it’s large.>

<We can just take everything,> said Hannah. She turned to Verity. <What do you suppose is beyond here?>

<This was all it was supposed to be,> said Verity. <Beyond those doors … I don’t know. I was trying to keep it small, to not drain the dungeon completely, but I wouldn’t put money on that having worked. It didn’t feel like it worked.>

<Is that a thing now?> asked Hannah, arching an eyebrow. <You can feel whether or not it worked?>

<I don’t really know,> said Verity. <I think so? It’s such a small bit of moment though, as we come in.>

<We could try slowing it down,> said Isra. <As with my bow?>

<I’m not sure that would work,> said Alfric. <It’s worth trying though, if it’s something that would actually help.>

Mizuki was the one who went for the three entads, which were spread out across the room. Among them was a salt shaker, a small silver spoon that Mizuki seemed enthused about, and an ice pick that came with a sheathe. Each had their own description, but Alfric was adamant that they do no testing of the entads, since if the plaques were wrong, they might be in some real trouble.

They didn’t end up taking all the henlings, just twenty or so for the sake of comparison, and particularly those that looked valuable. Alfric had said that if the other doors had nothing, they might grab the rest on the way out.

He still seemed to be stuck on the idea of stripping everything out of the dungeons that they could, but to Hannah’s way of thinking, that wasn’t very sensible in the long-term. If Verity was able to get this under control, the group wouldn’t want to spend most of their time ‘stripping’ dungeons, which was something that a lot of dungeoneering groups did if they were trying to minimize their risks. Going in with a crowbar wasn’t a good use of time when you could get entads with no risk of combat, and they’d had their fill of removing valuable bits when they’d taken most of the theater.

Hannah wasn’t sure how the party would get on without her. She was going to stay in the house for as long as possible, but this new era would surely mean changes. Hannah had always been Alfric’s second in command, right from the start, supporting him when it came to getting the party in order. There was a good chance that Hannah would keep doing dungeons so long as they were being dripped out over the course of many days, but if she eventually devoted her efforts elsewhere, Alfric would have to manage everything all on his own. He could easily handle all the logistics, but the personal matters were something else entirely, the easiest place where he might let himself — and the others — down.

Marsh was of the opinion that people didn’t actually need her as much as she thought they did. He was gentle about expressing that opinion, but it had still stung a bit. Of course, Marsh was also nearly blind to the total dysfunction within his own party, which he considered to have been resolved with the removal of Lola, but he had a point, and Hannah had spent some time pondering it. That pondering hadn’t actually led anywhere.

When they opened the doors at the end of the ‘museum’ room, Hannah had expected that they would find another room of some kind. Instead, they were met with sunlight and the smell of the sea. Thick, worn cobblestones went in front of the building they’d been in, and there was a village beyond the fountain that sat directly in front of the building. Any question about the scale of the dungeon was almost immediately answered, as they had an expansive view, and the village they were around seemed fairly large. Ships were in the harbor, and large, puffy animals floated in the sky with small pellets dangling down beneath them, almost like dandelion seeds.

<Oh no, people!> shouted Mizuki.

<Hold,> said Alfric. His sword was drawn, but it took him a moment to see what Mizuki had seen, which was a woman slumped over on a balcony. She had long black hair and a dress with silver stripes, and wasn’t moving at all.

<I was trying to avoid people,> said Verity. <There shouldn’t be people, it should be deserted.>

<I’m going to check it out,> said Alfric. It was good he’d said that, because Mizuki was clearly itching to go.

Hannah held back, waiting, mostly to defend the others if some kind of danger reared its ugly head. The lute would warn them if there was anything like dungeon madness, but it wouldn’t immediately start up if there was a trap or some other kind of danger they were walking straight into. This had something to do with what the lute actually considered to be ‘danger’, with intent counting for a lot, and something that didn’t have intent, like poison, counting for a lot less.

Hannah glanced at the building they’d come out of, the ‘museum’. It was sitting on the top of the hill, in a place of prominence in the village, but it was so large that it looked a bit ridiculous in this context, and the lack of windows was decidedly odd. The exterior had murals on it, wide ones that were sparse on details, depicting an island village which was presumably this one. Yet all the things inside the museum had been random entads with no mention on their plaques of where they had come from.

<It’s not a body,> said Alfric. He had gone up a stairwell and was inspecting the slumped over woman. <It’s … something else.> He lifted up one arm and then set it back down. <The whole body is five pounds, if that. Realistic, it’s got pores, the appearance of muscles, but nothing moves right.> He straightened up. <There are more of them around here. A lot more.>

<I really didn’t want to make people,> said Verity. <It’s one of the things I was worried about. But she’s not a person?>

<I’m going to make a cut,> said Alfric. He was up on the balcony, close enough for them to watch him. He poked at the body gingerly, with as much finesse as possible with a dagger. Hannah frowned, hoping that he was right that it wasn’t actually a person, because desecration of a humanlike corpse was … not strictly wrong, but made her feel ill at ease, even if these were in some sense dungeon creations. <It’s hollow.>

<Hollow?> asked Verity.

<I don’t know the material it’s made of, but yes, it’s hollow, fractions of an inch thick, pliable, with a pure white interior,> said Alfric. <The clothes are normal clothes, as far as I can tell.>

<Is she my size?> asked Mizuki.

<My guess is that there are hundreds of these things,> said Alfric. <There will be clothes everywhere. We should take samples for Pinion, at least a few of the … I don’t know what to call them.>

<Bubblefolk,> said Mizuki.

<No,> said Alfric.

<They don’t need a name,> said Hannah. <We can just call them bodies.>

<It’s unsettling,> said Isra.

<It’s more unsettling than just a village with no one in it,> said Verity. <I don’t want to be here, with these fakes. Can we go?>

<We’re here in the name of investigation,> said Alfric. <We’ve come across surprises, places that have your obvious influence, we want to learn as much as we can. I don’t want to waste the opportunity.>

<You think it’s a whole dead village?> asked Verity. <I would rather not see dead children, even if they’re just exact replicas. It makes my stomach churn.>

<It’s really not that bad,> said Alfric. He had made a second cut in the body, and was using his fingers to open it wider, tearing through the skin like it was paper.

<We don’t need to go further if you don’t want to,> said Hannah. <You were tryin’ to avoid livin’ people, and that’s more or less what you did, but if it looks like a village filled with the dead, that’s understandable that you don’t want to see it, ‘specially if you feel yourself responsible.>

<Thank you,> said Verity. She let out a sigh. <This whole village wasn’t supposed to be here, I was trying to keep it small.>

<You’re doing well,> said Alfric. <No danger yet.>

<It’s just creepy,> said Mizuki. <Like there might be danger at any moment. Like we’re being watched, actually.>

<Watched?> asked Verity.

<Just a feeling,> said Mizuki with a shrug. <Probably nothing.>

<No, I have that feeling too,> said Isra. <This place feels dead, sterile, no animals, plants that don’t know they’re dead yet, but also … something watchful.>

<I think that might just be your imagination,> said Alfric. <And I would like to explore, to see the extent of this place, get a better sense of what’s going on. We don’t know what’s relevant and what’s not, and anything we can do to refine our understanding will help.>

<If the party doesn’t want to go further, then we should retreat,> said Hannah. <There might be danger here, and the more we push, the more likely we are to find it.>

<A survey of buildings then?> asked Alfric. <We pick a single street, I go in and clear houses with the rest of you for backup, possibly with Mizuki to check for entads, then we leave. Could we agree to that?>

<We can,> said Verity. <I think I’m going to have nightmares about this anyhow, they won’t get worse from going down a single street.>

They regrouped and Alfric took a moment to look down the streets around them. They were high up on the hill, which seemed, from this vantage, to actually be part of a peninsula. Alfric considered carefully, then had them set off in what was, according to the position of the sun, probably east, not that cardinal directions needed to be followed here.

They saw more of the bodies as they went, all of them dead, or sleeping, or just having been created in the positions they had ended up in. Hannah didn’t have the same curiosity as Alfric did, and mostly stayed with Isra and Verity as Alfric and Mizuki went into the houses and shops. All of the bodies she saw were just people in the midst of their daily life, as though this village had been going about a normal day when something had swept through and killed absolutely everything in it with a swiftness and silence that nothing in the world could ever have matched. A man’s body lay dead, hands still clutching a bundle of flowers. It was like he’d been walking down the street and just … stopped living. That the bodies weighed five pounds, that they were shells only painted to look like bodies, wasn’t entirely comforting. Hannah had always found something mildly creepy about dolls, and that was what these were, at least approximately.

<It’s too quiet,> said Isra. <Where are the animals?> They were waiting outside while Alfric and Mizuki went into another house.

<I wasn’t trying to do animals,> said Verity.

<But these people … you were trying not to do people?> asked Isra.

<I wasn’t thinking about animals,> said Verity. <I really just wanted the entad museum, but it only had three actual entads. It just looked like the thing I wanted, it wasn’t actually it. And here, these people, they look like people, but they aren’t people, which I suppose is better than the opposite.>

<Things that don’t look like people, but actually are?> asked Isra. <Is that … possible?>

<Should be,> said Alfric. He was inside the house, but his voice was clear through the party channel. It was sometimes easy to forget that the party channel extended a conversation to people that were out of earshot. <Dungeons can create bastlefolk. I assume that Verity can create bastles that don’t have dungeon madness. There shouldn’t be anything stopping her from making people, and shouldn’t be anything that stops her from making people that don’t look like people.>

<A girl that looks like a bookshelf, a boy that looks like a dog,> said Mizuki. <Definitely possible.>

<I will do anything to prevent that from happening,> said Verity. <Though I guess we could undo it.>

<Would that be better?> asked Alfric. <Whether we left them in the dungeon or undid the day, they’d be gone either way. We’d be unmaking a life. It would arguably be equivalent to murder.>

There was a bit of silence after that. Verity had a frown on her face. Hannah had no idea what to say, because she wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t murder. And if they did find something alive within the dungeon, something that was approximately a person, it seemed as though they would have no choice but to pull it out and hand it over to the government. Creating entads was one thing, but creating life was something else entirely. And given the scale of the village, creating that much life was a real concern. Three hundred people uprooted from a life they thought they had been leading was a far, far more thorny problem than the bastlefolk had ever been.

<Found another entad,> said Mizuki. <That makes seven total, it’s a good haul. A bucket this time.>

<We should head back,> said Hannah.

<We’re getting an entad every ten houses or so,> said Mizuki. <If you multiply that out over the whole village, that’s … a lot, probably.>

<This was meant to be research, not exploitation,> said Hannah. <There’s every reason to think that we can do this again, better. We don’t need the money.>

<Hannah is right,> said Alfric. <As much as I would love to pick up ‘free’ entads all day, we’re still refining our approach. I think I might take out a loan to buy some entads that will help us with gathering and reconstruction, since these buildings seem pretty solidly constructed. With the right setup, we could gather up this entire village into usable lumber, bricks, and other things in a matter of eight hours or so.>

<But, entads,> said Mizuki.

<You said you had a bad feeling,> said Isra. <I do too.>

<I don’t, for what that’s worth,> said Verity.

<But entads,> said Mizuki.

<We agreed on a single road’s worth of houses,> said Hannah. <You’re almost at the end of the block, and it’s more than I expected us to do. Dungeons are an all-day affair, but there’s somethin’ uncanny about this place, and if it’s lootin’ that we’re doin’, yes, I’d rather be gone so we can regroup and talk it over. This is better than last time, and I’ve every reason to have faith in Verity that next time will be better than this one. All this death, or the presentation of death, doesn’t do wonders for me.>

There was a brief pause, and Mizuki might have been having a conversation with Alfric inside the house. It was hard to tell.

<We’ll get out then,> said Alfric. <It goes against my training, but I’m going to need new training, and we want to have the additional testing of the dungeon we talked about, to see whether it was totally drained again or not. We’re already up quite a bit.>

<Good,> said Hannah with a sigh. It was clear that Verity wanted out, and she thought it best not to press the girl too much, especially with all the unsettling questions that were being raised. Verity was good with death and violence, but this was something else, something that felt like a violation of an innocent place.

They moved, as a group, back up the street, past all the houses that Alfric and Mizuki had gone into.

<We did get lots of stuff,> said Mizuki. <I was basically ransacking, and we’ve filled Lutopia One with all kinds of furniture. The average dungeon is like, ten rooms or something, and this is a thousand rooms. All kinds of chairs, dressers, clothes, whatever. Seems like next time if we get a fancy place, we could make gobs of money.>

<I’ll try my best,> said Verity.

<You’ve been discouraged by the results?> asked Alfric.

<No,> said Verity with a sigh. <It’s good progress, and even bad progress wouldn’t have dissuaded me, it’s just a weight on my shoulders, more than I thought. I’m glad that these people were just shells, but I’m worried that I might screw up and make real people next time, rather than whatever these are. It’s a lot.>

<It is,> said Alfric.

<And the goal is to have other people be able to do this,> said Isra.

<Yes?> asked Verity. <I suppose so, but what are you saying?>

<I’m saying that not everyone will be like you,> said Isra. <Not everyone will agree, or show such restraint.>

<Ah,> said Verity. <Yes, that is something to think about. We’re some ways away, but —>

<But Pinion is writing down all his findings,> said Mizuki. <And he’s going to blab, blabbing is pretty much his job, right?>

<Right,> said Verity. She chewed her lip. <It’s something to think about.>

As they approached the museum, Hannah began to feel a bit of relief. They’d made it through the dungeon, and the unsettling feeling had amounted to nothing. They were clearly going to have to talk about it afterward, but she had a feeling that it would all end with them throwing up their hands and saying that it was weird, rather than having a moral or existential crisis about the whole thing. Hannah was feeling a bit pleased with the party for having been respectful of each other, even if it was clear that Mizuki was far less affected by the dolls than Verity was. It boded well for the future.

They were a block away from the museum when the ground began to shake. Hannah had heard of earthquakes, but never experienced one, and they all froze in place on the road, trying to keep their balance as the ground shifted.

The museum was moving more than anything else. The large building lurched from side to side, unnaturally, then rose from the ground, pulling long legs out of the stone foundation. It looked like a massive spider for just a moment, but then it began to move, and it was much more like a centipede, its steps sinuous and quick. It charged off down the hill, toward the peninsula, having emerged from the rock.

<After it!> cried Alfric. <That’s our exit!>