Something burbled behind them.
Kaylor turned.
The old road had divided beneath the trees, one branch bending toward a dark hollow while the other continued north through the corrupted forest. Until that moment, nothing moved at the intersection except fog drifting between trunks and the occasional fall of water from leaves that had grown where no rain had fallen.
Then the earth swelled.
Mud pushed upward in a slow, obscene blister. Roots shifted aside. A wet sound came from somewhere below, and something forced itself through the soil.
Fendor stared.
“No.”
The creature that emerged was difficult to understand as an animal. It possessed no obvious legs and no sensible method of locomotion. Its swollen body was pale, slick and rubbery, hanging several feet above the ground after it pulled itself free. Thick folds of flesh sagged around an irregular central mass. Chains dangled from it, some trailing loosely through the mud, others appearing almost embedded in its body.
Whether they restrained the creature or belonged to it was impossible to tell.
Greenish fluid ran down its surface.
Nethnarel looked at Kaylor.
“You wanted to know what came next.”
Kaylor drew the Hammer of Thunderbolts.
“I regret asking.”
The floating thing turned toward him.
There was no face.
Nothing Kaylor recognized as one, anyway.
He reached outward with the sense that had once been one of the cleanest gifts of his faith. Celestial. Fiend. Undead. Categories that had seemed useful in a younger life, before Kaylor encountered gods who lied, angels who defended demons, paladins who broke oaths for the right reasons and landscapes that detected as vaguely celestial while killing everyone who entered them.
The corruption pressed against his awareness from every direction.
Not one creature.
The whole place.
A trace of something infernal or demonic remained tangled through it, but the sensation was so diffuse that Kaylor could not separate the thing before him from the forest around it.
“That helpful?” Fendor asked.
“No.”
“Good. Consistency.”
Kaylor advanced.
The hammer struck the floating body.
It should have crushed bone.
Instead the creature deformed around the weapon.
Its flesh compressed beneath the impact and then rebounded with a horrible elasticity, the hammer glancing sideways as though Kaylor had struck an enormous sack of wet rubber.
The thing quivered.
Kaylor looked at the hammer.
“I hate it.”
The creature answered by vomiting acid at him.
A pressure built somewhere within its body. The folds along one side opened, and a torrent of green fluid erupted across the road.
Kaylor moved.
Most of it passed him.
Most.
What remained struck his armor and immediately began smoking. Acid ran across steel in glowing streaks, seeking seams and joints.
Kaylor tore one gauntlet free before the liquid could work beneath it.
Fendor drew the Vorpal Longsword.
“That seems more promising.”
Kaylor put the hammer away.
“Agreed.”
Above them, Nethnarel rose beneath the canopy.
There was barely enough room to fly. The corrupted forest had become denser with every mile, branches woven together overhead until the sky existed only as pale fragments through leaves.
It was enough.
She pointed down.
Scorching rays crossed the gloom.
One struck the floating creature.
Then another.
Then another.
Fire burned across its wet skin, and before the first flames died, Nethnarel multiplied the assault. More streaks followed, hammering into the thing from different angles until steam and smoke rolled from its surface.
A star from her Crown descended through the branches and struck with radiant force.
The creature sagged.
Then something reached outward from it.
Kaylor felt it first as weight.
Not on his shoulders.
Inside them.
Fatigue entered his body with unnatural speed. His arms became heavy. His breathing changed. For a moment it felt as though he had walked without sleep for days, fought without rest, carried the Hammer of Thunderbolts across half the kingdom and then been ordered to climb a mountain.
Hexen recoiled.
Nethnarel faltered in the air.
The sensation continued.
Poison.
Not the familiar burning kind. Nothing moving through blood toward paralysis or death.
This poison attacked endurance itself.
Hexen understood a heartbeat later.
The feast.
Magic answered.
The exhaustion tried to settle into them and found something already there—a deeper protection woven into muscle, mind and spirit by the meal Hexen had prepared that morning.
The weakness broke.
Kaylor straightened.
Nethnarel steadied in the air.
Hexen laughed.
Fendor looked over.
“What?”
“The breakfast.”
“The breakfast again?”
“Yes.”
Fendor turned back toward the creature.
“I am beginning to respect breakfast.”
The floating thing spat another stream of acid.
Kaylor twisted aside.
Fendor closed.
The Vorpal blade entered the creature far more easily than the hammer had. Thick flesh parted beneath enchanted steel. Dark fluid sprayed across the road.
Fendor cut again.
The creature convulsed.
Something inside it made a wet, bubbling scream.
Hexen changed.
He had spent enough time in the corrupted land learning which forms were useful and which merely provided the enemy with a larger target. Flesh became flame again. His body lengthened into the shape of a living inferno, heat rising from him in waves.
He moved close.
The creature recoiled from the elemental fire.
That was something.
Not much.
But something.
“Fire,” Kaylor said.
“A little,” Hexen answered, his voice coming through flame like words spoken inside a furnace.
“Better than the trees.”
“Low standard.”
Hexen raised one burning hand.
A globe of flame formed in his palm.
He threw it.
The fire struck the floating creature.
For an instant nothing happened.
Then the swollen body contracted violently.
Its dangling chains pulled tight.
The entire mass collapsed inward.
Fendor took one step back.
“That looks—”
The creature exploded.
Acid went everywhere.
Kaylor threw an arm across his face. Fendor turned his shoulder into the blast. Hexen vanished behind a sheet of green fluid that became steam the moment it touched his elemental body.
The road hissed.
Leaves dissolved.
Mud bubbled.
One nearby tree lost half its bark in seconds.
When the spray finally stopped, almost nothing recognizable remained of the creature.
Fendor lowered his arm.
His cloak smoked.
“So.”
Kaylor wiped acid from Final Word.
“So.”
“We should stop standing close to things when we kill them.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“Will we?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Hexen returned to himself.
The forest did not.
That was the part nobody said anymore.
The strange creature was dead.
The fog remained.
The road remained dark.
And somewhere northeast, the corruption continued.
They followed it.
The forest ended suddenly.
Not the corruption.
The trees.
One moment the heroes were walking beneath the tangled canopy, the old road barely visible beneath roots and black mud. The next they reached a section where the earth had been torn open.
Kaylor stopped at the edge.
The hole was enormous.
Not a natural sinkhole. Not entirely.
Something had burrowed here.
The opening descended beneath the road at an angle steep enough that darkness swallowed the bottom. Its walls were scarred with long parallel striations, as though something vast had repeatedly dragged itself through earth and stone.
Fendor peered inside.
“That is large.”
“Yes.”
“How large?”
Hexen studied it.
“Large enough.”
“That was deliberately unhelpful.”
Hexen smiled.
Then changed again.
His physical body dissolved into rushing air.
The Air Elemental hovered above the entrance, its whirling form pulling leaves and dust toward itself.
Fendor watched.
“You know, when we first met, you turned into animals.”
The elemental rotated toward him.
“Progress.”
“That is one word.”
Kaylor descended first.
The passage widened beneath the surface. Soil gave way to stone, though the marks continued across both. Some stretches looked naturally formed; others had been carved recently enough that loose fragments still littered the floor.
Nethnarel followed through the air.
Fendor came behind Kaylor.
Hexen flowed through whatever space remained.
The tunnel opened into a cavern.
A drop fell away ahead of them into deeper darkness.
Near the edge stood a statue.
Kaylor approached it.
“Of course there’s a statue.”
Fendor remained several paces behind.
“You say that like statues have been good to us.”
“They haven’t.”
“Then perhaps stop touching them.”
“I’m looking.”
“That is how touching begins.”
Kaylor ignored him.
The carving had been deliberately made to resemble a person from a distance.
That was the unsettling part.
A robed figure.
A head.
Shoulders.
A vaguely humanoid posture.
Then Kaylor moved closer.
The proportions stopped making sense.
The head was enormous and skull-like, but not the skull of anything he recognized. Its features suggested a gargoyle only because Kaylor lacked a better comparison. The face was alien, distorted by a sculptor who had either possessed a terrible imagination or had seen something no one else should have.
The robes concealed most of the body.
Almost.
At the lower edges of the carving, shapes emerged from beneath the stone folds.
Not feet.
Tentacles.
Several of them.
Kaylor leaned closer.
The darkness behind him moved.
Fendor saw it.
“Kaylor.”
Too late.
A massive tentacle erupted from the pit.
It struck the dragonborn hard enough to turn him halfway around.
Another followed.
Kaylor avoided that one.
The first curled back.
Its underside opened.
Suckers.
Except some of them had mouths.
Tiny circular openings lined with teeth.
The tentacle wrapped around Kaylor.
The suckers found armor.
Most slid uselessly across steel.
Several found gaps.
Kaylor felt them attach.
Then came the acid.
It seeped from the mouths, working immediately into every exposed seam.
Kaylor snarled and pulled against the thing.
It tightened.
“Fendor!”
“I see it.”
The Vorpal sword flashed.
Fendor attacked the tentacle where it emerged from the darkness rather than where it wrapped around Kaylor. The blade cut deep.
Blood sprayed upward from somewhere below.
Not from the severed section.
From the darkness.
Fendor stopped.
“That’s attached to something.”
Kaylor looked into the pit.
“Obviously.”
“No. I mean something large.”
Another tentacle emerged.
Hexen swept across the cavern as living wind.
The Air Elemental struck one of the appendages, then followed with fire. Flame rolled along the slick flesh.
The tentacle reacted.
It did not burn readily, but unlike the living forest above, it felt the heat.
“Fire works,” Hexen called.
“Everything works eventually,” Kaylor said through clenched teeth.
“Optimist.”
Nethnarel hovered above them.
She looked at the two tentacles.
Then at Kaylor.
Then at Fendor.
“Move.”
Neither man had time.
The air around the tentacles dried.
Abi-Dalzim’s Horrid Wilting passed through the cavern.
Moisture vanished from flesh.
The effect did not destroy the appendages the way it had devastated the giant plant beneath the swamp—they were not plants—but the magic still tore at living tissue. The tentacles contracted, their surfaces drying and cracking under the assault.
Kaylor used the opening.
He pulled.
The tentacle held.
Another star descended from Nethnarel’s crown.
It missed.
The radiant bolt vanished into darkness below.
Fendor looked up.
Nethnarel glared at him before he could speak.
“I said nothing.”
“You were going to.”
“Yes.”
The darkness answered for him.
Two more tentacles erupted.
Both went for Nethnarel.
The first struck her in midair.
The second caught her before she recovered.
They wrapped from opposite sides.
Nethnarel disappeared between them.
Fendor moved.
“Neth!”
She could not answer.
The tentacles squeezed.
Acid began leaking from their suckers.
Infernal fire erupted across Nethnarel’s body in response, flame rushing over her skin and armor. The tentacles recoiled slightly.
Not enough.
They held.
The cavern became chaos.
Kaylor was still restrained by one of the first appendages.
Nethnarel was trapped between two.
Hexen darted from target to target in elemental form.
Fendor hacked at whatever section of tentacle he could reach without cutting one of his friends in half.
And beneath all of them, something moved in the darkness.
Kaylor heard it.
A wet dragging.
A body shifting against stone.
The tentacles were only what reached them.
The creature itself remained below.
Kaylor tightened both hands around the Hammer of Thunderbolts.
He had put it away for the floating thing.
This was different.
He struck the tentacle holding him.
Thunder boomed through the cavern.
Again.
The second blow drove the appendage against the stone lip of the pit.
The creature below screamed.
Fendor heard it.
“There.”
He drove the Vorpal blade into the flesh near the edge.
More blood sprayed from below.
Whatever body the tentacles belonged to was close.
Nethnarel cried out.
Kaylor looked.
Both tentacles around her tightened.
The acid had begun running down her armor.
Her fire still burned.
It did not matter.
She struggled once.
Then stopped.
Fendor froze.
“Nethnarel?”
The tentacles squeezed again.
Nethnarel went limp.
The fire around her dimmed.
Something terrible happened along the underside of the appendages.
The mouths opened wider.
Not biting.
Feeding.
They began drawing her inward.
Skin lifted beneath the suction.
The tiny mouths started working against exposed flesh.
Fendor moved toward her.
Kaylor could not.
The tentacle still held him.
He swung the hammer again.
Then abandoned the attack.
Strength had always been one of Kaylor’s answers. It had become an almost absurd answer since the Hammer of Thunderbolts came into his possession.
He planted his feet.
Grabbed the tentacle.
And pulled.
For one terrible moment nothing moved.
Then the suckers began tearing free.
One by one.
Kaylor ripped himself out of its grasp.
The tentacle snapped backward.
He dropped the hammer.
Ran.
Nethnarel was being eaten alive.
There was no elegant way to understand it.
No useful euphemism.
The thing beneath the cavern was pulling pieces of her into itself while the tentacles held her suspended over the pit.
Kaylor reached her.
His hands found what part of her he could reach without touching the acidic mouths.
Divine power answered.
He poured everything he could safely give into her.
Life returned violently.
Nethnarel inhaled.
Her eyes opened.
Pain reached her before understanding did.
She screamed.
Kaylor held her as best he could.
“You’re alive.”
“That is currently debatable.”
“Good enough.”
The tentacles tightened.
Kaylor looked toward Hexen.
Hexen was gone.
Not dead.
Gone.
The Air Elemental had vanished.
Something much worse stood in its place.
Massive wings unfolded beneath the cavern roof.
Red-black hide stretched over a body built like a nightmare’s idea of a warrior. Horns rose from a monstrous head. Claws dug into stone. Heat radiated from the creature.
Fendor turned.
For a moment even he forgot Nethnarel.
“What the hell?”
The pit fiend looked at him.
Hexen’s voice came from it.
“Still me.”
Fendor stared.
“Of course.”
Kaylor looked once.
Then returned to Nethnarel.
There had been a point somewhere in their lives when Hexen becoming one of the great devils of the Lower Planes would have required a longer conversation.
Today it barely ranked among their ten most urgent problems.
The pit fiend moved toward Kaylor.
The tentacle that had been attacking the dragonborn recoiled.
Not from fire.
Fear.
Hexen’s new form radiated it.
The appendage pulled back toward the darkness.
Kaylor watched it retreat.
“That’s useful.”
The pit fiend grinned.
It was not a reassuring expression.
“Very.”
Hexen turned toward the tentacles holding Nethnarel.
The infernal presence reached them.
One began withdrawing.
Unfortunately, Nethnarel was still attached.
The tentacle dragged her toward the pit.
She felt the movement.
“No.”
The word contained considerably more determination than strength.
She twisted.
The suction cups pulled.
One tore free.
Then another.
Acid burned along her side.
She pulled again.
Kaylor reached for her.
Nethnarel tore herself out of the last sucker and dropped.
Kaylor caught enough of her to keep her from striking the stone hard.
The tentacle withdrew.
“Thank you,” Nethnarel gasped.
Kaylor nodded toward Hexen.
“Mostly him.”
The pit fiend raised one claw.
The remaining tentacles stopped.
Not hesitated.
Stopped.
Hexen reached into the mind of whatever waited below.
The magic was almost invisible.
No explosion.
No lightning.
No divine light.
The unseen creature simply ceased struggling.
Hold Monster.
The enormous appendages stiffened.
One remained suspended above the pit.
Another lay across the cavern floor.
The body below pulled once.
Could not.
Fendor understood immediately.
He raised the Vorpal Longsword.
“Now?”
Hexen held the creature fast.
“Now.”
Fendor ran.
The first sword stroke cut into the nearest tentacle.
The creature could not recoil.
The second struck the same place.
The third nearly severed it.
Fendor shifted his footing.
The blade came around again.
The tentacle separated.
The free end struck the stone.
The portion connected to the creature vanished downward.
Fendor was already moving toward the next.
The Vorpal Longsword had killed dragons.
Giants.
Celestial beings.
Things Fendor had never learned the names of.
Against a paralyzed tentacle, it was almost unfair.
He cut.
Again.
Again.
The second appendage came apart.
Something massive shifted below.
Hexen maintained the spell.
Fendor reached the edge.
For the first time he glimpsed part of the body.
Only part.
Enough.
A swollen central mass clung somewhere beneath the ledge, surrounded by the roots of the severed tentacles. More appendages dragged uselessly against the walls. Mouths opened across flesh that should not have possessed mouths.
Fendor did not try to understand it.
He struck.
The Vorpal blade entered the exposed body.
Once.
Again.
The creature tore free from whatever held it to the cavern.
For an instant the whole monstrous mass hung below the ledge.
Then it fell.
Tentacles followed.
The body disappeared into the darkness.
They heard it strike once.
Then again.
Then nothing.
The cavern became still.
Fendor stood at the edge with the sword extended.
Hexen released the spell.
Kaylor remained beside Nethnarel.
No one spoke.
Eventually Fendor looked down.
“I was beginning to think we might need to run.”
Kaylor stared at him.
“You?”
“Yes.”
“You?”
“I have judgment.”
Nethnarel leaned against Kaylor while the last of the divine healing settled through her.
“You were waiting until after I was eaten to mention it?”
Fendor looked at her.
“You weren’t eaten.”
“Parts of me disagree.”
He considered that.
“Fair.”
Hexen remained a pit fiend.
This made the conversation more difficult to take seriously.
Nethnarel looked at him.
“How long are you staying like that?”
Hexen looked down at himself.
“As long as it remains useful.”
Fendor glanced into the dark tunnels.
“I suspect it will remain useful.”
They returned to the statue.
Kaylor had lost interest in touching it.
Nethnarel had lost interest in statues generally.
Fendor examined it from a safe distance.
Hexen stepped closer.
The pit fiend’s infernal form made the carving seem almost restrained.
Almost.
It was nothing they recognized.
The sculpted head belonged to no race Kaylor knew. Beneath its stone robes, the suggestion of a humanoid body dissolved into multiple tentacles.
A disguise carved in stone.
Something pretending to stand like a person.
Nethnarel looked toward the pit.
“Related?”
“Maybe,” Kaylor said.
That was all they had.
Maybe the statue depicted the creature beneath them.
Maybe it depicted what the creature worshiped.
Maybe the thing in the pit had been drawn here because of it.
Maybe the carving had stood underground for a thousand years and the tentacled horror had arrived yesterday.
The corruption had made every explanation equally possible.
They searched the cavern.
No treasure.
No useful inscription.
No hidden door revealing an answer.
Only more passages.
The deeper tunnels were different from the chamber around them.
Fresh.
Kaylor knelt beside one wall.
Stone had been scraped away recently. Loose debris still lay beneath the marks. The cuts were irregular but repeated, like something had been digging or dragging itself forward through the earth.
Fendor joined him.
“A nest?”
Kaylor looked at the marks.
“No.”
Hexen’s pit-fiend shadow fell across them.
Nethnarel followed the tunnel with her eyes until darkness swallowed it.
The burrow did not feel like a lair.
The tentacled things had not settled here.
They had been moving.
Working through the ground.
Opening passages beneath a countryside that had already transformed beyond recognition.
Searching.
Kaylor stood.
“For what?”
Nobody answered.
Far below, something skittered through the tunnels.
Then another sound followed it.
And another.
Moving away.
Whatever remained beneath them knew the pit fiend was there.
And it was afraid.
Hexen smiled with a mouth full of infernal teeth.
Fendor looked at him.
“That expression is going to become a problem.”
“Probably.”
The old road lay somewhere above them.
The fog still covered it.
The dragon’s path still continued northeast.
But beneath the road, beneath the swamp, beneath the forest that had tried to kill them, something had been digging through buried ruins.
Kaylor looked once more at the alien statue.
A false human shape.
Tentacles hidden beneath robes.
Then he turned toward the deeper tunnel.
“Keep moving.”
The four descended.
And behind them, in the darkness of the cavern, the stone thing continued pretending to be a man.