The black sludge from Silas—or whatever the hell that thing had been—clung to the tunnel walls like spilled molasses mixed with midnight, refusing to dry or dissipate from sight.
I stared at it, my stomach doing a slow flip-flop that had nothing to do with the stale air or the faint rot wafting up from gods-know-where, and everything to do with the way that creature's blood bubbled occasionally, as if something inside was still trying to giggle through the mess.
The walls around us seemed closer now, the stone sweating in the aftermath, beads of moisture trickling down like the cavern itself was crying over our stupidity.
Every breath tasted of gunpowder residue and burnt lies, sharp enough to make my tongue curl. I could practically feel the grit embedding itself under my fingernails as I clenched my fists without realizing it.
Well, Loona, my mind drawled in that familiar sarcastic lilt, you've officially graduated from orgy survivor to monster bait. Next milestone: becoming a permanent cave decoration. Maybe they'll name a stalactite after me—'Loona's Pointy Demise.' How flattering.
A couple of the lads lost their nerve right then, their faces going the color of week-old porridge as they spun on their heels and bolted deeper into the tunnel's gullet, boots kicking up puffs of dust that hung in the air like ghosts too lazy to haunt properly.
One of them muttered something incoherent about "not dying down here with freaks," his voice cracking like a pubescent boy's, while another just ran silent, arms pumping as if the darkness ahead held a pub with free ale and no questions asked.
However, before they could vanish around the bend, Brutus's roar exploded through the passage, a sound so primal it rattled loose pebbles from the ceiling and made my teeth vibrate in my skull.
"Nobody fucking move!" he bellowed, the words slamming into us like a physical force, rooting everyone to the spot as if he'd nailed our feet to the stone.
The runners skidded to a halt mid-stride, one nearly face-planting into the wall. Attaboy, Brutus, I thought, a hysterical bubble of laughter threatening to escape my throat, nothing commands respect like a voice that could wake the dead—or scare them back into their graves.
The silence that followed was thicker than Dregan's beard after a week without shaving. We all stood there, a ragged cluster of idiots who'd somehow survived this long, our breaths syncing up in half-strung harmony as the reality of our situation sank itself deep into our guts.
We had to figure out what to do now, that was the glaring obvious bit staring us in the face like a drunkard propositioning a nun, but nobody wanted to be the first to speak up and risk sounding like an imposter with a script.
Finally, Atticus broke the silence, his voice sliding in smooth and scholarly. "We simply don't have time for this dalliance with doubt," he said, tapping the rolled map against his palm like a professor scolding tardy students. "Lingering here accomplishes nothing but wasting precious minutes we can't afford. We need to press on before they manage another infiltration.
He gestured vaguely down the tunnel with that elegant flick of his wrist, as if the way forward was a forgone conclusion written in stone tablets.
Brutus grunted, his frame shifting with a creak, eyes boring into Atticus like he could see through to the man's soul—or lack thereof.
"And what if they've already infiltrated us again?" he rumbled, voice low enough to vibrate in my chest cavity. "We could have another one right here, wearing a friendly face and waiting to stick a knife in our backs."
The crew exchanged glances then, quick and loaded, eyes darting from face to face like we were playing a deadly game of musical chairs where the loser got eviscerated.
And that's when the chaos erupted, accusations flying faster than arrows in a poorly aimed siege, voices overlapping in a frenzy that turned the tunnel into a madhouse echo chamber.
"It's you, isn't it?" One man jabbed a finger at Dregan, his voice shrill with panic. "You were going on about that Tomas bloke—nobody else remembered him till you brought it up!"
Dregan barked back, beard bristling like an offended cat. "Me? Lad, I've been with this crew through thick and thicker—it's you who's been slinking about like a shadow with secrets! Probably giggling inside that empty head o' yours!"
Another jumped in, whirling on Renly with a glare sharp enough to shave with. "And what about the bard boy, always strumming away? Covering up the laughs with his tunes, maybe?"
Renly slung the lute back over his shoulder before freezing still, his face paling to match the torch's glow. "Me? Gods no, I would never!"
I was swept up in the whirlwind of it all, accusations pinging off me like hail on a tin roof, my head spinning as I tried to keep track of who was yelling what at whom without joining the fray myself.
Gods above, these creatures are playing with us, I thought, a dark chuckle bubbling in my mind despite the terror clawing at my gut, turning us against each other with a few fake memories, and we do the work for them. Like handing a pyromaniac a match in a fireworks factory and saying 'have fun!'
Someone shoved one man, who shoved back, and suddenly it was a tangle of limbs and curses, Brutus trying to bellow order but getting drowned out in the melee.
Mia shrank further into the shadows, her eyes wide as saucers, while Atticus pinched the bridge of his nose like this was all a mild inconvenience.
What do I even do here? Crack a joke about imposters and impotence? Sing a limerick to calm them? Or just wait for the knives to come out—literally? Brilliant plan, Loona, top marks for strategy.
Suddenly, Freya's voice cut through the bedlam like a jagged knife. "Loona, look out!" she screamed, her arm thrusting out in desperate warning, face contorted in horror.
I whipped around, but caught it too late—a man from the edge of the group lunged at me with speed that defied physics, his body blurring like ink in water. The knife in his hand was raised high and gleaming with malicious intent, a smile splitting the man's face so wide it looked as if his cheeks were about to tear.
The blade thrust forward in a silver arc, time stretching thin as I registered the emptiness in his eyes, the way his skin seemed to ripple unnaturally under the surface.
Oh, fantastic, my brain quipped in that split-second of doom, death by grinny mcstabface. At least it's original—better than tripping over my own feet or dying of embarrassment from a bad pun.
Before the knife could kiss my flesh, before I could even yelp, Renly—of all the unlikely heroes—threw himself in front of me, his body intercepting the blow with a meaty thunk that made my stomach lurch.
"Renly!" I yelled, the name ripping from my throat like barbed wire, raw and painful.
He didn't listen, didn't even acknowledge the steel buried in his gut. Blood welled up almost immediately, dark and viscous, soaking through his shirt in a spreading bloom that smelled of copper pennies and regret.
Then, in one fluid motion, he unslung his lute with a feral snarl, gripping it two-handed like a battle axe, and brought it crashing down on the attacker's skull with a splintering crack that sent wood fragments flying like confetti at a funeral.
The man staggered, knife clattering away, but Renly wasn't done. He grabbed the bastard by the throat with both hands, squeezing hard enough to make veins bulge in his own arms, blood dripping from his wound onto the stone in steady plops.
"Not him you fucker!" Renly gasped through gritted teeth, face twisted in pain but eyes burning with defiance.
Brutus called out then, his voice booming over the scuffle like a cannon. "Fire! Get me fire, now!" he ordered, eyes locked on the thrashing imposter.
Dunny thrust his torch forward without hesitation, the flame whooshing as Brutus snatched it. Dregan rummaged in his pack and pulled out a dusty green bottle of high-proof alcohol, the kind that could strip paint or power a desperate plan.
In mere moments, they rigged a makeshift Molotov—rag stuffed in the neck, soaked and lit, the bottle glowing with promethean fury in Brutus's massive paw.
Renly got the memo. He planted a boot in the creature's chest and kicked hard, sending it sprawling backward in a tangle of limbs, before dropping to the side with a pained grunt.
The Molotov sailed overhead, shattering on the thing's form in a burst of flames that whooshed up greedily, consuming the black sludge like it was kindling doused in oil.
"Just as I thought," Brutus growled, stepping back as the fire roared, casting erratic shadows that danced like imps on the walls. "Same shit as those escorts."
The creature shrieked then, a deafening wail that scraped along my eardrums like nails on slate. But there was something off about it, layered and resonant, as if the sound was designed to carry farther than pain alone.
It thrashed in the flames, limbs melting and reforming in grotesque puddles, the shriek echoing down the tunnel in waves.
Oh gods no...my mind whispered darkly, my amusement twisting itself into dread.
And then the giggles started, dozens at first, then hundreds, overlapping in a symphony of insanity that slithered from the darkness behind us. The sound was high-pitched and manic, bouncing off the stone until the tunnel itself seemed to laugh with them.
Atticus yelped, "Run! For the love of all that's holy, run!" he shouted, grabbing Mia and bolting.
We didn't need telling twice. In an instant we became a stampede, Brutus surging ahead with Dunny's torch in hand, its flame a guiding star in the gloom.
And yet those things were still gaining, the giggles turning to chittering scrabbles that scraped closer, a tidal wave of sound and shadow nipping at our heels.
I risked a glance back—big mistake, Loona, you curious idiot—and the sight nearly tripped me up for good.
The creatures poured forth like a living oil spill, limbs elongated into spaghetti nightmares that knotted and unknotted with impossible flexibility, bodies composed of that same inky black mass that absorbed the light rather than reflected it.
They held no eyes, no noses, just those perfect smiles carved into featureless faces, teeth gleaming white and uniform, stretching wider than physics allowed as they piled atop one another in a writhing heap.
They moved like a flood of shadows given hunger, tendrils whipping out to snag at the air where our legs had been moments before.
Sweet merciful fuck, I thought, it's like someone spilled a vat of nightmares and taught them to grin. If they catch me, will they smile while they eat, or just absorb me into the blob? Either way, dental hygiene clearly isn't an issue.
My lungs screamed for mercy that wouldn't come and hope was slipping away faster than sand through fingers. That was until an orange glow flickered ahead, the promise of the forge's entrance like a lover's beacon in the night.
Dregan shouted from the back, voice hoarse over the din. "There! There's the bloody forge. Keep haulin' arse, you lot!"
Brutus bellowed back, refusing to break stride. "Duskmetal! Does anyone have duskmetal on them?" Atticus yelled affirmatively, digging into his cloak and tossing a pouch forward, the contents rattling like deadly confetti.
We burst into the forge's maw moments later, the air shifting to something hotter and heavier, laced with ancient soot and the ghost of hammered steel.
I was the first to stumble through, legs jelly, whirling to watch Brutus hold the line at the threshold. "Move it! In, now—Freya, drag Renly if you have to!" he roared, counting us through with grunts and nods.
The giggles were upon us, the black wave cresting, smiles flashing in the approaching dark. The instant the last man crossed—Dregan, belching defiance—Brutus scattered the fistful of duskmetal across the entrance, the ores sparkling faintly as they hit the ground.
He hurled the torch next, backing up with his hands over his ears, shouting for us to do the same. The creatures lunged, tendrils outstretched, grins ecstatic, until—
Boom!
The explosion ripped through, a concussive wave that slammed us all backward, the entrance caving in a thunderous roar of stone and dust, sealing the passage in a grave of rubble just as the first tendril slithered past the threshold.
The forge fell silent save for our panting and the settling debris, the orange glow from old embers painting us in hellfire hues. I lay there on the grimy floor, staring at the ceiling's vaulted arches crusted with centuries of neglect, and laughed—a dark, wheezing sound that echoed my fractured sanity.
Close call? Understatement of the era. We just blew up a door to escape smiling inkblots. If that's not peak adventure, I don't know what is.
Renly slumped nearby, clutching his gut, but managed a weak grin. "Lute's kindling now... worth it."
Freya knelt by him, binding the wound with strips of cloak. "Idiot."
I pushed myself up from the grimy floor of the forge on elbows that felt like they'd been dipped in tar, the kind of slow, deliberate rise that comes after you've just outrun your own funeral and aren't entirely sure the reaper didn't tag along for the view.
The air down here was thick and acrid, carrying the faint, sulfurous whisper of magma that slithered along the walls like veins of liquid fire.
The forge was a double-layered hellscape, the lower level sprawling out beneath us like the belly of some forgotten beast, furnaces yawning open with mouths full of dormant coals that glowed faintly, embers winking like malevolent eyes in the gloom.
Anvils stood sentinel amid scattered hammers and tongs twisted by time into abstract sculptures of dwarven despair.
Up here on the second floor, the platform we'd burst onto lead to a walkway of rusted iron suspended over the chaos below, railings bowed under the weight of centuries and the occasional drip of molten runoff that sizzled when it hit the stone far below.
And just across the walkway was the service elevator—our golden ticket out of this subterranean prison.
Look at it, Loona, my mind crooned in that velvet sarcasm that kept the panic at bay, shining like a mirage in a desert of doom. All we have to do is stroll across a bridge that looks one strong breeze away from becoming a dusted relic, and we're free. Easy as seducing a saint.
My heart nearly skipped a beat then, not from the view or the heat that wrapped around my throat like a lover's scarf gone too tight, but from the sudden, electric realization that we'd made it this far.
I glanced around at the crew, their faces smeared with soot, sweat, and the kind of weary defiance that only comes from staring death in its grinning maw and flipping it off.
We all looked at each other only once, a single, shared nod passing between us like a vow sealed in blood and bad decisions—silent, solemn, the kind of agreement that didn't need words because we'd all seen too much to waste breath on platitudes.
It was time.
Time to move, to cross that godsforsaken catwalk and punch our way to the next layer of the city. We began to make a break for the walkway then, a ragged surge forward that felt more like a stagger than a sprint.
The heat intensified with every meter, a cloying embrace that turned the air into soup, heavy with the metallic bite of cooling slag and the underlying rot of something organic long since sacrificed to the flames.
I fell into step beside Brutus, my hand brushing his in that instinctive, tactile way I had—the gremlin in me craving contact amid the chaos.
But even as we pushed forward, the walkway groaning under our collective weight like an old man forced to dance, I couldn't shake the gnawing itch at the base of my skull, that primal whisper that said something was off, profoundly and cosmically wrong.
It was too quiet, the forge's symphony of creaks and hisses muted to a hush that pressed in from all sides.
If our plan had already been exposed, my mind raced, wouldn't there be more countermeasures at the final stretch? Ambush parties with pitchforks and poor attitudes, or at least a welcome mat woven from barbed wire and broken dreams?
I quickened my pace, glancing sidelong at the crew, their faces set in grim focus, but even they felt it—the subtle tension coiling in shoulders, the way hands drifted to weapons without conscious thought.
Freya's shout shattered the illusion before I could voice my unease, her voice cracking upward like a whipcrack in a library. "Above us! Gods, above!"
I nearly shat myself right there on the walkway, the world tilting in a heartbeat as my gaze snapped upward to the ceiling's archway, that vaulted maw of blackened stone where shadows should have stayed shadows but instead birthed something out of nightmare's wettest fever dream.
Descending from the heights was a hulking figure in obsidian armor, each plate as thick and unyielding as cooled lava flows.
In his gauntleted hand swung a massive, wickedly curved axe, the blade a crescent of midnight steel honed to an edge that sang faintly as it cut the air.
The High Warden—gods, it was him. Of course it had to be him.
He landed on the archway like a falling anvil given wings, knees bending to absorb the impact as the walkway shuddered beneath his weight. The iron groaned in protest, rivets popping like tiny screams, while his blade continued to fall, aimed straight for my skull.
But before the axe could claim its prize, before I could even muster a scream worthy of the opera, Brutus was there—massive, immovable Brutus—shoving me sideways with his good arm, the force of it sending me slamming into the walkway's railing with a clang that jarred every bone in my body and knocked the wind from my lungs in a whoosh of profanity.
The world snapped back into focus just in time to see the axe complete its arc, the blade biting into Brutus's outstretched arm with a wet crunch that rang louder than any bell in my skull.
Brutus's arm spun away like a discarded puppet limb, blood spraying in a crimson arc as it clattered onto the grating and rolled to a stop against the railing.