Bodies. Not the withered husks of the pale folk, but true human bodies. Piled in a mound, twisted into a single diffuse form. The tangle stood over them like a living creature, blocking any flight from the caverns. A half dozen heads rose above the mess. They were dead, and yet they gazed in unison upon the three thieves.
Banros only hesitated for a moment. He bolted, dodging to the creature’s right side and plowing forward to pass it. Alger and Jeanette moved to follow. But a chain of arms—each gripping the stump of the next—lashed out from the tangle. They slammed into Banros’ chest like a club, sending him straight onto his back. He curled in pain, but manged to force his body back onto its feet in time to avoid a second blow.
“Run!” he squeaked, his voice knocked out of him. The group sprinted back through the main cavern, but the way back was blocked. The cavern had begun to fill with pale folk. Jeanette expected to see the same terror on their faces that she knew was on her’s. But she saw only rage.
“What is it!?” she screeched to Eclesius when she saw him.
“Be silent, barbarian whores!” the caller bellowed, his pale face ruddy with rage. “We accepted you into our homes! Into our beds! You shared our food, now you rob us! You murder us!”
Jeanette was trying to form some convincing lie when Alger shoved her aside. She stumbled, then wheeled around to snap at Alger, but she stopped. Alger’s sword protruded from the old man’s back. A clean thrust through the chest. The cavern was still. In the quiet, Eclesius blood poured onto the sand like pattering rain. When his body fell to the ground, the pale folk began to scream, and fled to their caves.
Another howl rose behind them. Not a single voice, but a chorus of screeching sounds tumbling together into a single expression of hate. The corpse creature was swift. In an instant it was upon them. It lashed an appendage at Alger before the soldier had even turned to face the howl. The strike flung him back, rolling over his head and coming to rest flat on his belly.
Banros drew his own sword, attempting to hack at the creature’s limb. But before his blow could fall, the chain of arms withdrew into the mass. Banros fell off balance, and the limb lashed out again. Even as Alger climbed back to his feet, the creature sent Banros sprawling to the side.
Jeanette fumbled to get her dagger in hand, but didn’t move to help. She backed away, hoping to avoid the monster’s attention. But the moment a glint of steel appeared in her hand, the creature’s many faces spun on her. She dropped the dagger, and spread her open palms wide as she continued to step back. The monster didn’t heed surrender. It took two quick steps towards her. A downward slash from Alger sliced through its side.
One of the creature’s many bellies burst open, spraying dark blood on Alger’s face. Black and withered intestines sprang from the wound as well. The ropey innards wrapped round Alger’s wrist and swung the soldier to the side. He stumbled, and the creature continued to charge Jeanette with swift, lurching movements. Its many eyes had never left her.
She fled, arcing towards the cavern’s exit and the freedom of the world above. The spray of sand thrown up by the creature’s charge grew dense around her. She could hear the others shouting something, and risked a glance over her shoulder. The monster was three steps behind her, keeping pace. The tangled bodies were shifting. They separated—a mouth opened. The opening loomed behind her. Every muscle in her body pressed against the ground. Away from the creature. Towards the exit. A blow to her ankle sent her stumbling forward. A wet, claustrophobic darkness closed around her. Then crushing pain.
—
Alger helped Banros to his feet.
“It can be cut; it can be killed!” Alger encouraged. He shoved the other man’s weapon back into his hand before taking off after the monster. Banros paused, and took a long look at the path between himself and the exit. It was clear of obstacles. He could even pick up a bag of gold on the way…
But he wasn’t fast enough to make it out before the monster finished with the other two. Then it would come after him, and he’d be alone. His best chance at survival was sticking with them. Which meant fighting that thing.
“I’m going to die.” Banros muttered.
He sprinted towards the fight. The corpse creature was gaining on Jeanette. Its body was shifting, opening up.
“Look out!” he heard Alger shout.
“Keep running!” Banros called. Jeanette turned, and tangle of corpses closed around her. She was gone.
“Don’t stop.” Banros commanded. “We still can’t run. We still need to kill it!” Alger never broke stride.
But the creature took no notice of them. In fact, Banros realized, it hadn’t moved at all since the witch had tumbled into its maw. The bodies were writhing. They rose to the mound’s surface, then retreated beneath it again. The whole mass was pulsating. Alger must have noticed it as well, because he slowed to a stop a few steps outside sword range. Banros stopped next to him.
“We need to run.” Banros said, already beginning to jog towards one of the discarded sacks of gold. Alger moved to stay beside him.
“It will catch us!” Alger hissed.
“Maybe. If it starts running. But killing it was a long shot.” Banros hissed back. He handed one of the sacks to Alger, and hefted the other over his own shoulder. “We were never going to kill it. It was going to kill us. But fighting was our only chance, so I thought we should do it. Now we have a better chance.”
“What about the witch?”
“She’s dead.” Banros replied. He fiddled with the sack, trying to find the best way to hold it without slowing down.
“You don’t know.” Alger sounded morose.
“Do you think she’d stick around if it was you?” Banros asked. “Hell, she was running when we were both on the ground. She thought she could get away while the fucking thing ate us.”
Alger didn’t answer.
They reached the passage that led to the drawbridge. Banros tore off one of his sleeves and wrapped the cloth around his sword blade. He leaped, dunking the blade into one of the channels of black oil that lit the cavern. The makeshift torch was sloppy, but Banros didn’t intend to stop to make a better one. With all speed, the pair charged into the darkness.
They had covered a hundred yards when the howling chorus rose behind them again. It was coming closer. The howl was growing louder faster than any creature could move.
“Run!” Banros screamed. Alger’s chest burned as the drawbridge came into view. Maybe they could climb it–
He felt a sharp blow. He sped forward, but his feet weren’t on the ground anymore. Both men slammed into the raised drawbridge, rolled down it, and landed in a heap. Banros screamed again, this time in pain. He slapped his own face to put out the fire that was burning there. In the tumble he’d struck himself with his torch. The pitch boiled away at his skin. He screeched in panic and pain as he flailed.
The corpse creature loomed over them. Its many faces leered with toothy grins. They were trapped. Alger didn’t think. He dove forward and plunged his sword down one of the grinning throats. He didn’t even remember drawing it. It didn’t matter. He pulled it back and plunged the sword forward again. The beast surged forward. Alger was elbow-deep in its gullet. It rammed him against the drawbridge. It pressed on him, crushing his body against the wood. The sound of cracking rib echoed in Alger’s ears, and he roared in pain. If he could have collapsed to the floor he would, but the press of flesh kept him upright. He focused every survival instinct he had on pulling his sword arm back again. He hacked at the creature. He sliced down, separating one of its heads, leaving a gaping hole.
—
“One of us.” echoed a dozen voices all at once. “Blood of our Blood. Kinswoman. Nobeli.” Jeanette’s mind was fuzzy. She recognized that she was hearing words, but she had forgotten their meaning. She was being pressed flat, crushed. Her breath came in gasps. Everything hurt. She couldn’t think.
“You will merge. You will become us. Nobeli. Once of us. One of us. One of us.” The voices began to repeat the final words over and over. As they went on, they separated from each other. The chorus became a discordant argument made up of a single phrase. They bandied back and forth in different tones. The fuzziness began to lift from her mind. The crushing sensation disappeared as the press of bodies passed through her like water. She drew a deep breath of air, and as she exhaled her body flowed out with her breath. It became a shade. She drew more air into her mind. She exhaled, and some part of herself she’d never noticed before left her. Then it returned, buffeting her like the winds of a hurricane. She waded in sensations of important meaninglessness.
Then there was silence. Pounding vibrations shook her. Hatred rose in her. Hatred for the lessers. Then pain, pain and more hatred. Feelings she had no words for overwhelmed her. Her mind was too small. She had to reach out to the others. Connect to them.
And then she was back. The press of bodies was crushing her. Her breath came in gasps. But there was light! Light she could see with her eyes. It felt real. And everything that had just washed over her now felt cold, and dead. She became aware of her body again. Her arm ached, but she reached out for the light, and felt something clamp on to her hand and pull. She slid forward.
Jeanette choked on a lung full of air. Alger had her hand. His eyes were wide. He pulled, and she felt her other limbs untangling from the corpse creature. A wet sucking sensation began to pull her back, but Alger’s grip didn’t slacken. Once her other arm was free, she shoved against the creature too, inching her body free of its grip. When her hips slid free, the creature spat her onto the ground in a pool of sludge.
Alger dropped her hand, and leaped onto the offensive again. He plunged the blade deep into the gullet Jeanette had been spat from. He sliced into something fleshy before the gullet snapped closed on his arm. The corpse creature twisted. It flung Alger like a toy, slamming him into the cavern wall before spitting him out. He laid unmoving where he fell, gasping for breath. Jeanette scanned the ground for his sword, but it was gone.
A rapid clicking sounded above them, and Jeanette looked up. She saw Banros on a small catwalk, standing beside a spinning crank. With a great crash, the drawbridge fell open, exposing the path to freedom. Banros dropped from the catwalk, and landed feet-first on top of the corpse creature. Carried by the momentum of his fall, Banros’ knees bent, and he plunged his sword into the fleshy mass. Without pause, he rolled off its side and knelt beside Alger. A cascading scream bellowed from the many rotting heads.
“Can you move?” Banros asked Jeanette, even as he hefted the wounded soldier to his feet. Jeanette felt weak. Any other time she would have said she couldn’t…but she didn’t have a choice. She forced herself upright, and stumbled away with Banros and Alger beside her. The recovering corpse creature was only a few feet behind.
A sound caught in Jeanette’s ears. It was small next to the pounding of feet. The old chains were groaning, and the decaying wood was creaking. They were struggling under the weight of the corpse creature. They wouldn’t break. Not quite. Not in the two steps the creature would need to get back to solid ground. She turned.
Jeanette watched the monster’s weight come down on one of its forelimbs. She felt what she had felt before. A sensation rushing through her. A current of knowledge without meaning. And as it rushed outward she directed it. She curved herself towards one of the chains holding the bridge aloft. The chain snapped, and the bridge drooped. The creature’s foreleg reached out for solid ground, but the strain overwhelmed bridge. It collapsed. The corpse creature tumbled into the blackness below. Silent, until the faint thud which marked the end of its fall.
Jeanette stared after it in gape-mouthed astonishment over what she had done. Banros and Alger had made it halfway across the chamber before the sound of crashing bridge caught their attention. They rounded just in time to see the monster tumble into the crevice below. They shuffled back to the edge to stand beside Jeanette.
Banros broke the silence first with a forced, humorless laugh. It failed to take, and silence reigned for a minute longer before Alger said
“Are we safe?”
“Yeah.” Banros answered.
“How…” Alger began.
“It is the single luckiest event of our lives.” Banros interrupted. “Don’t question it or god might take it back.” his words hung in the air for several minutes before Alger spoke again.
“Seems a waste. All the trouble and no gold for our burdens.”
“Actually,” Banros said, grinning. “I managed to strap my bag to my back.” He turned to show the others his jerry-rigged backpack filled with gold. “It’s not what we thought we were going to get away with, but it’s not a bad haul.”
“We could always go back” Jeanette said. Her voice was ragged. “With the creature gone, we could take anything we wanted.”
“No.” said Alger. His tone was firm.
“Yeah.” Jeanette agreed. “I don’t want to go back either.”
“In fact,” Banros’ added, “I think we should leave immediately. There’s nothing in camp we need that much.” Jeanette and Alger both agreed.
Without a torch, the party had to navigate the passage to the surface by feel. Alger and Banros kept their spirits up by discussing how they’d spend their share.
Jeanette couldn’t think of anything but what the fuck it was she had done to that bridge.
The End.