Chapter 14: The Cradle of Rust - Part 1
The archway did not deposit them onto solid ground. It spat them out into a viscous, waist-deep fluid that was not water. It was lukewarm, thick as syrup, and stank of rotting meat and chemical waste. The "Cradle of Rust." The entire floor was a single, vast, subterranean swamp of this corrosive sludge, stretching into a darkness broken only by the faint, sickly phosphorescence of fungal growths on the cavern walls and ceiling.
The moment they landed, the sludge began to burn. It wasn't an immediate, searing pain, but a slow, insidious corrosion that ate at their leather and metal, and made their skin itch and blister.
"We can't stay in this!" Maya cried out, her healing instincts screaming at the pervasive damage.
"There's nowhere to go!" Liana shot back, her voice tight with pain as she held her injured shoulder above the muck.
Ryley, supporting the barely-conscious Jax, scanned the environment. The only features were occasional, skeletal trees of blackened, petrified wood, and thick, hanging vines that dripped more of the foul fluid. In the distance, he could make out a series of larger, moss-covered mounds that might be solid ground. It was their only hope.
"Those mounds," he grunted, adjusting Jax's weight. "We have to reach them. Move. Now."
The slog through the sludge was a nightmare. Every step was a monumental effort, the thick fluid pulling at their legs. The corrosion was constant, a low-level health drain that Maya's depleted powers could barely mitigate. After ten minutes, their health was slowly, inexorably ticking down. They were being digested alive.
Then the swamp came alive.
The first attack came from below. A whip-like tendril, covered in razor-sharp barnacles, lashed out from the sludge and wrapped around Liam's ankle, yanking him under. He disappeared with a choked gurgle.
"Liam!" Maya screamed.
Ryley and Liana reacted as one. Ryley shoved Jax against a petrified tree and plunged his arm into the muck where Liam had vanished. His hand closed around something slimy and solid. He pulled with all his might, Liana grabbing his belt for leverage. They hauled a sputtering, terrified Liam back to the surface, his leg bleeding from a dozen deep cuts.
"They're in the sludge!" Liana yelled. "Everyone, watch your feet!"
The journey became a hellish, slow-motion battle. "Sludge-Lurkers" attacked without warning, their tendrils trying to drag them under. The party could never stand still. They had to keep moving, fighting off attacks while wading through the corrosive soup, all while their health slowly drained.
It took them two hours to reach the first mound. It was indeed solid, a rocky island about twenty feet across, covered in a thick, pulsating yellow moss. They collapsed onto it, gasping, their bodies covered in burns and bleeding cuts. They had lost a quarter of their health just from the environment.
The reprieve was brief. The moss beneath them began to move. It wasn't moss. It was a colony of "Spore-Scarabs," thousands of insectoid creatures that detached from the mound and swarmed over them. They didn't bite; they burrowed. Tiny, needle-like proboscises sought out their existing wounds and the soft tissue of their eyes and mouths, injecting a neurotoxin that caused seizing, agonizing muscle spasms.
It was a torture designed to break the mind. Jax, in his unconscious state, convulsed violently. Maya, trying to heal, found her hands cramping into useless claws. Liana rolled, crushing them by the dozens, but for every one she killed, ten more took its place.
Ryley, his mind screaming, did the only thing he could think of. He channeled his magical energy not into a blade, but into a raw, uncontrolled pulse of heat around his body. It wasn't a spell; it was a scream of will made manifest. A wave of force and fire erupted from him, incinerating the scarabs in a five-foot radius. The effort left him dizzy, his mana bar—a resource he was only now viscerally aware of—nearly empty.
The swarm, momentarily repelled, began to regroup.
"Back in the sludge!" Ryley croaked, his throat raw. "Now!"
They stumbled back into the corrosive muck, preferring the slow death to the immediate, mind-shattering torment. They huddled together, back-to-back, as the Spore-Scarabs gathered at the edge of the mound, clicking furiously, unwilling to enter the fluid.
They were trapped. On the mound, they were swarmed and poisoned. In the sludge, they were slowly dissolved and attacked by Lurkers. They had been on the third floor for less than three hours, and they were already facing an inescapable paradox of suffering. There was no enemy to fight, only an environment engineered to break them, body and soul.
Jax moaned in delirium. Maya was sobbing quietly. Liam was catatonic. Liana's eyes held a hollow, thousand-yard stare.
Ryley looked out at the darkness, at the next distant mound. It seemed a million miles away. To continue was madness. To stay was death. The Cradle of Rust was living up to its name. It was cradling them in a relentless, corrosive embrace, and it would not let go until they were nothing but rust themselves.