Chapter 4 – Part Four

The big man turned with a jerk, his body framed by the cool light streaming through the cave mouth behind him. His face was so pale as to be nearly white, a sheen of sweat gleaming on his forehead. Mycah’s torch lay guttering on the ground by his feet, forgotten now that freedom finally seemed so close at hand. 

“You made it out.” He said hollowly. “That’s good. That’s really good. I knew you would.”

“Don’t you give me that shit.” Philbey took an unquestionably threatening step forward. One of his hands seemed to be itching toward the knives on his hip. “Fuck, man. I always knew it would happen eventually, I knew. But it’s a different thing to finally see it.”

Something shifted in Mycah’s eyes. Voice going slightly quieter, he said, “It’s like you told me. One of us had to make it out of this place, right? To tell the Guild what happened here. It’s… It’s more important than either of our lives-“

“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll be telling them a tall rotting tale, won’t we?” The halfling growled. “About how our captain ignored both the well-being of the crew mage and the counsel of his handler, got half the crew killed and ran like the coward he is while he was doin’ it? I think they’ll find the whole story pretty fuckin’ interesting, don’t you?”

Even the pretense of friendliness dissolved from Mycah’s body language. He moved his hand to rest on the hilt of his sword. “I need you to be careful of how you speak to me, Phil. When we make it back to the hall, I am going to tell them everything they need to know, and you are going to keep your little mouth shut. Is that clear?”

“I’m terribly sorry, but are you two actually doing this?” Nil cut in. The goblin gestured toward the cave mouth. “Right now? Can we please at least step into fresh air before you start murdering each other?”

Mycah’s gaze slid past Philbey. “You ought to take the same advice, gob. I haven’t decided what we’re going to do with you two yet.”

Nil’s eyes narrowed. “What did you just say?”

“In fact, there’s something that just occurred to me.” Mycah went on, “Didn’t have a spare moment to think about it until right about now. You knew, didn’t you? You knew something was going to go wrong when Arlum opened that box.” He let his palm drift down to rest on the hilt of his sword.

“Hey, hey hey!” Philbey shifted himself into the space between Mycah and Nil, holding out his hands defensively. The halfling let out a deep exhalation. “She’s right, okay? We lost half the crew today, so let’s just… let’s all just keep our heads and get out of this fuckin’ nightmare before we…”

He trailed off, eyes widening as they wandered upward. Nil and Dahlia followed his gaze, squinting up at the ceiling just beyond where Mycah stood; there was something there, a large, lumpy mass hidden in the stark shadows cast by the cave mouth behind him. It flexed as they watched, twisting and undulating in half-seen shapes that confused the eye as slivers of light caught here and there against its moist bulk. 

“Get back!” Dahlia shouted, feet propelling her forward before her brain could offer a second opinion. “Get back, there’s something up there!”

Mycah turned in what felt like slow motion. Above him, a massive lump of unspeakable anatomy sagged into the light, somehow becoming more confusing as more of the thing revealed itself; nonsensical tangles of limbs unfolded and stretched, groping blindly with what appeared to be random combinations of animals’ claws and humanoid hands and feet; raw musculature heaved, pulsing, covered in some places by fur or skin and left open and glistening in others; huge, twisting cords of what looked like intestines drooped and squirmed, looping in and out of its mass like gigantic worms. 

In a flicker of silver, Mycah’s blade jumped from its scabbard – and not a moment too soon, as a hoof shot out from somewhere within the mass and struck for his chest with terrifying speed. The big man grunted, barely managing to deflect the attack at the last moment; even so, the sheer force nearly took him from his feet. 

With a sound like a slaughterhouse accident the full mass of this new threat thumped to the ground, its various growths and loose organs sloughing flabbily out around its flanks. Then a central core reared up, dragging itself around to face the party. 

“Oh, gods.” Philbey whispered hoarsely. 

The creature before them stood as tall as Mycah at its highest point, with a humped, misshapen barrel of a body supporting its lolling head. It took the survivors a moment to decipher the shape of what they were looking at, so twisted and mutilated was the creature from its original form; it was the corpse of the wylds bison, slain by false hounds and left to rot, now incorporated into an amalgamation of churning flesh and bone that defied the reasonable mind’s description. 

Something smooth and dark moved against the side of the bison’s neck. What seemed at first to be but a random bit of the creature’s patchwork hide unfolded and lifted a second, smaller head, staring out at the survivors with milky white eyes. It was Arlum – what was left of him, at least – his lower torso sprouting from the bison’s shoulder, his left arm bent backwards to disappear into the animal’s loosely hanging jaw. The mage’s mouth opened wide, far wider than should have been possible, and let out a deafening scream.

“Oh. Oh gods, no.” Mycah took a step back, then another, voice going thick as he fought down the urge to vomit. “No, this can’t…”

Dahlia appeared at his side, lifting her shield. “Hey, big guy. Just don’t think about it, okay? It’s just a monster. One of it, four of us.” She jabbed him lightly with her elbow. “We got this, right? Right?”

“Uh…y-yeah.” Philbey said, handing his torch to Nil and drawing his daggers. “Don’t think about it. Good plan.”

The flesh amalgam gave the group no time for further discussion. It gathered itself up and charged, the assorted limbs lining its underbelly dragging it forward with startling speed. Dahlia’s gaze tracked upward, watching as the abomination of blood and bone seemed to expand until it filled her field of vision. Terror welled up in the back of her mind, clenching in her stomach and pouring ice water across her bones. It wanted her to turn and run, to hesitate just long enough to get herself killed – but Dahlia had practice aplenty in letting the fear wash over her and pass, and so it did, blowing past her like a sudden chill breeze on a summer day. There was only really one thing that scared her anymore.

Don’t think. Act.

Dahlia ducked low and dashed toward the howling meatpile with her shield poised just above her forehead, moving like a boxer going in for an uppercut. Something scraped heavily against her shield; she shrugged off the attack and punched forward with her hammer, stabbing as if she were wielding a spear. The monstrosity was so large, its anatomy so unreadable that it was difficult to find a place where it could even be wounded by her tiny hammer – so she followed her first instinct, jamming the head of her weapon directly into the bridge of Arlum’s nose.

With a sound like someone putting their boot through a rotten melon, the upper portion of Arlum’s face caved in around the hammer. Dahlia sucked in a sharp breath and tried to pull away, only to find her weapon stuck fast; the unfortunate mage’s skull was filled with writhing pink tentacles, dozens of which had already coiled around her wrist. She felt the bones in Arlum’s face working from the inside as the body opened its mouth once more, shrieking in her face. 

Mycah appeared at her side like the answer to a prayer, plunging his sword into the bison’s mangy forehead with a wordless roar. The entire amalgamation spasmed, howling from mouths seen and unseen as Dahlia felt her feet lift from the ground. She glanced at Mycah; he was hanging from his sword with both hands, staring back at her with eyes as wide as hers felt. Then the world turned sideways, something smashed into her ribs, and the emberling found herself sailing through the air. 

“Shit!” Philbey exclaimed. The halfling held his body as if poised to attack, but seemed to be having difficulty spurring himself forward. “Shit. We have to do something.” He looked back at Nil. “Right?”

“You want to fight that thing?” Nil said incredulously. She gave a pointed look to the daggers in Philbey’s hands. “With those? I didn’t mark you as suicidal.”

Philbey’s pained expression made it clear he was having similar thoughts. “Damn it woman, there has to be something, just…wait. Wait, do you see that?”

Nil’s eyes followed to where Philbey was pointing. The amalgamation’s back end was nearly as gruesome and inscrutable as the rest of it, all glistening muscle and stretched, half-melted skin – but then she saw it. Some sort of mutated organ, heart-blood purple and pulsing, was nestled deep in the layered folds of the creature’s back. 

She stared at him, watching as Philbey’s hands gripped tighter around his daggers. “You aren’t serious.”

“If you’ve got a better idea, please let me know.” The halfling turned to Nil with an expression that was desperately trying for a casual grin. “Please. Otherwise… What did your friend say? Don’t think about it?”

Before the goblin could answer, Philbey burst into a sprint toward the amalgamation’s wide back.

“W…wait, you idiot!” Nil shouted. “Don’t take her advice, of all people!”

But Philbey had evidently made his decision. The halfling sprinted across the chamber within two seconds, flipping his blades into a backhanded grip as he prepared to scale the creature like a cliff face. And then, just when he came within a distance that might have allowed him to leap onto the amalgamation’s back, an eye opened on its flank. Then another, and another. Three mismatched eyes, their sclera stained a sick yellow-brown, rolled open and locked onto Philbey.

He faltered, stumbling slightly as the element of surprise vanished. At the same moment, Nil caught movement out of the corner of her eye.

“Philbey!” She shouted, “On your right, watch out!”

The halfling swore colorfully and dove to the ground as a tentacle thicker than his torso unfurled from the monster’s side and swept viciously through the air above his head. Nil dropped unconsciously into a half-crouch as the hideous protuberance continued past him, stretching vaguely in her direction – then it continued on, probing at the ground for something off to her left. As she watched, the tentacle’s tip began to split apart, peeling into a cluster of smaller feelers that spread out to trail lightly across the ground. A malformed hand with too many fingers, groping blindly for something.

Suddenly, it seemed to find what it was looking for. The feelers went taut as they brushed over a large lump in the ground and the tentacle pushed forward, sinking into the meaty surface like a finger pushing into warm wax. Something bulged and twitched obscenely under the “skin” of the floor, and Nil found herself once again challenged to keep down the contents of her stomach as it rose, blood and viscera sloughing from its shoulders. It was one of the false hounds, its lifeless body mutilated from when it had been slain earlier that day; the tentacle’s wormlike extensions had pierced it just above the right hip and were spreading through the corpse, weaving in and out of its limbs and skull and melding with its flesh as they went. The hound lifted itself on shaking legs, its body spasming violently. It turned to look at her with one rolling eye, the other side of its face a collapsed and bloody ruin, and growled.

“Oh, you can’t be serious.” Nil muttered, disbelieving. 

The hound turned and bolted for her, bloody saliva spilling from its jaws as Nil stumbled back, heels slipping against the slick and spongy floor. She held out her dagger as it came, angling the little blade to let the creature impale itself with its own momentum and knowing it would not be enough.

Puppeting tentacle trailing behind it like a lifeline, the hound leapt through the air and smashed Nil to the ground with a full-bodied tackle. She felt more than saw her blade catch under the hound’s jaw, sinking into the soft flesh underneath the mandible and popping out under its tongue. If the thing felt any pain at all, it didn’t show it; the hound strained for her neck, jaws full of broken teeth snapping in her face even as the blade caught against the back of its throat. Nil found herself pinned, the hound’s fore paws scrabbling painfully against her chest and shoulders, the failing strength in her arms the only thing keeping it from tearing into her face. 

Dahlia tumbled to a stop, groaning. As usual her armor had managed to absorb most of the attack, but the bruise she’d earned jumping off roofs in Kaldemere had awoken and did not seem to appreciate all the excitement. She rolled over and found Mycah not far away, relatively unhurt and miraculously still in possession of his sword. 

Wait a minute, Dahlia thought, right hand opening and closing around nothing. She looked down, finding her hand was indeed empty; she looked up, saw the crater of Arlum’s face with her hammer still wedged firmly inside. 

“Bad news, friend.” She said, pushing herself to her feet, “I appear to have lost my weapon.”

Mycah’s head snapped toward her. “You what?”

The emberling stuck out her arm, pointing toward the amalgamation as it let out a mournful lowing and started toward them once more. “Yeah. Stuck in, right there.” Dahlia stepped quickly to his side, raising her shield. “But don’t worry, already got a new plan. We fight as one.”

“One? What in the Hells are you talking about?”

Dahlia waggled her left arm. “One shield, one sword. No time to explain, you’llgetitinasecondwhoah!”

The amalgamation came upon them with a startling burst of speed, lowering the single horn on its bison head toward Mycah’s chest. He shouted something unintelligible and jumped to one side at the same moment that Dahlia put her shoulder behind her shield and threw herself bodily into the creature’s path. They collided with a tooth-loosening crunch that once again sent Dahlia sprawling – and the amalgamation staggering, a fresh shower of blood streaming down the side of its shaggy face as it bellowed in pain. 

To his credit, Mycah did not hesitate this time. With a smooth motion he took one long step forward, sword slashing in a clean vertical arc that bit deeply into the bison’s neck. Another tentacle burst from the amalgamation’s side and shot toward him in a counterattack; Mycah pivoted to one side and stepped back, letting the appendage stab uselessly through empty air before bringing down another chopping slice that nearly bisected it. The tentacle shuddered and pulled away, a section the length of his arm hanging limp from a few shreds of skin and muscle.

“See?” Dahlia said, appearing somewhat breathlessly at the big man’s side. “We can do this.” She lifted her free hand to tap her knuckles against Mycah’s vest. “You and me.”

Mycah gave her an annoyed glance. “Just keep that shield up.”

Nil’s arms shook with the effort of holding back the hound. In a few moments, either her strength would fail her or the blade would snap – and she would die, torn to pieces in some disgusting hole in the ground, a thousand miles from anything she had set out to do. Nil gritted her teeth and drove her knee into the animal’s ribs once, twice, three times, seemingly to no effect aside from bruising her leg. She wasn’t a fighter, after all, and never had been. The dagger’s hilt, coated in blood and slobber, slipped a fraction of an inch in her hands. 

Philbey slammed into the hound from its side, driving both of his daggers into the trunk of the beast’s neck. Hound and halfling both tumbled to Nil’s left and rolled away in a snarling, swearing tangle of arms and legs, allowing the goblin to scramble desperately to her feet; Without thinking she turned and pounced on the beleaguered hound, jamming her blade into the side of its skull with a wordless cry of rage. 

“The heart, Jezel!” Philbey shouted. The hound bucked and thrashed beneath them, refusing to die despite the ruination of its body. “Leave this thing to me and go for the heart!”

She stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m not fuckin’ sure!” The look in Philbey’s eyes was pleading and slightly manic. “Now will you please get moving?!”

Biting her lip, Nil nodded and put her elbow to the hound’s muzzle, pinning it against the ground. She wrapped the other hand around her dagger and yanked with all her strength, jumping away and nearly falling back onto her rump as the animal curled its neck to snap at her. Thankfully the hound could not right itself to come after her; the instant Nil was on her feet, Philbey managed to adjust his awkward hold on the creature and jam one of his blades just behind its jaw, keeping it from bending back to take a chunk out of his face. 

“Go, go!” He grunted. “Dunno how long I can hold this…slippery bastard…”

She didn’t need to be told a third time. Nil turned and bolted for the amalgamation’s back, adrenaline sizzling in her veins. Then she leaped, slamming into the wet slope of the thing’s hindquarters. Almost immediately, Nil felt herself begin to sink; she looked down to see her legs disappearing past the knee in squirming viscera. Gagging, she reached as high above her head as possible and plunged her dagger into the most solid surface she could find, beginning the arduous process of dragging herself upward. 

To say that scaling the creature was slow going would have been a painful understatement. It was like trying to climb a tower that had somehow been constructed of roast beef and mucus; it felt as if for every few inches of forward progress Nil lost her footing and slipped back a foot, shaken loose as the amalgamation continued its battle with the other survivors. That was to say nothing of the smell, which cloyed so horrendously at her sensitive nose that the goblin feared she might faint. Still she pressed forward, dagger in one hand and Philbey’s torch in the other like climbing spikes. 

“It’s not working.” Mycah gasped. The big man’s posture was half-slumped, his hair plastered across his forehead with blood and sweat. His sword hung loosely from his hands, its blade chipped and bent. “Nothing’s working!”

He was not entirely incorrect. Time and again Mycah had managed to strike solid blows against the amalgamation – but no matter how grievous the wound, it took only moments for mutated flesh to grow in over the damage, further twisting the forms of the creatures that made up its body. 

“Just…gimme a minute.” Dahlia wheezed. She had earned several new, sizable dents in her armor and her left eye was purple and swollen nearly to the point of uselessness. “I am absolutely, definitely…very close to formulating some kind of plan.”

“Don’t bullshit me!” Mycah said. The reedy note of panic was slipping back into his voice. “We gotta find a way to get out of here!”

The amalgamation held off from another charge for a moment, watching Mycah in particular with the bison’s single remaining eye as if it were listening to their conversation. Then it started toward them, slowly, lifting its front end toward the ceiling and weaving slightly from right to left as it approached. Unidentifiable membranous lobes and tangles of intestine hung obscenely from what they could now see of the creature’s underbelly, limbs of every size and shape stretching out from the morass of gore to claw their way across the ground. 

“Oh, now what’s the fucker doing?” Mycah muttered, bringing up his sword. 

Dahlia suppressed a shudder and followed suit with her shield. “I…I don’t know, just…” She wracked her brain for a better plan than simply fighting until they couldn’t fight anymore and came up empty-handed. Dahlia was exhausted, mentally as well as physically. “…we just have to hold out as long as we can. Jezel is smart, she’ll…she’ll think of something.”

Another tentacle unfurled from the amalgamation’s skirt of trailing viscera and rose slowly into the air, coiling in anticipation of its next attack. Dahlia shifted her stance slightly, watching for any twitch or flex that might tell her when the blow was coming – and failing to notice the way Mycah had shuffled back and out of her line of sight. 

“Here it comes again,” Dahlia said, “you ready?”

“…Yeah.”

Dahlia felt something hit her in the small of her back – not hard, certainly not with enough force to do anything through her armor. More of a push, really. A push that sent her stumbling forward, off-balance as the tentacle moved like a whip cracking in slow motion and surged toward her. And just like that, the world became a dark, painful jumble.

Meanwhile, and despite everything, Nil had finally managed to climb to the apex of the creature’s back. Exhausted, arms and legs shaking with fatigue, the goblin witch dragged herself to the edge of a slight indentation wherein her goal lay, nestled in stringy webs of skin and pulsing maliciously; a heart, or what might have been a heart before the wild magic of this place had seen fit to twist these bodies together like a child playing with clay.

I’ll never eat meat again as long as I live, Nil thought, stuffing down another wave of nausea and lifting her dagger. She plunged it in, bracing herself for anything as midnight-purple blood welled up around the hilt, and then…nothing. A slight tremor in the organ itself, perhaps, though even that could have been her imagination. 

Nil felt her heart sink into her stomach. She yanked her dagger loose and stabbed it into a different spot to even less reaction than before. Of course. Of course it wouldn’t work. It had been wishful thinking to imagine that a being such as this would follow any assumption of basic biology. Naive, idiotic, wishful thinking. Nil pulled the blade out and rammed it home again, and again, and again.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” 

Something moved in the periphery of Nil’s vision. The goblin looked up; a patch of pale, smooth skin she had not noticed before was shifting, peeling itself up and away from the mass of flesh around it. An elbow, the curve of a spine, a patch of bedraggled blonde hair came into view, and from one second to the next the form unfolded into nightmarish clarity.

Nil now found herself face to face with what was left of Niven.

As with everything else the amalgamation had incorporated, the elf’s body seemed incomplete and partially melted. The arm Mycah had cut loose was gone, fused at the shoulder with the mismatched flesh Niven’s legless torso now sprouted from. The vessels in her eyes appeared to have burst, filling the sclera with a diseased crimson that contrasted starkly with the green of her irises.

Before Nil could recover from her shock enough to react, the elf’s remaining hand shot out and clamped around her neck. Nil could only gasp involuntarily before her windpipe squeezed shut, Niven’s implacable grip cutting off her oxygen and driving ragged fingernails painfully into her throat. She tore her dagger from where it lay buried in the heart and plunged it into her assailant’s wrist, felt the grit of metal against bone as the blade passed between Niven’s radius and ulna – the elf’s grip only tightened in response. 

Desperate, Nil yanked the knife free and swiped madly at Niven’s face and shoulders, slashing and stabbing at whatever her stubby arm could reach. She succeeded in further disfiguring the elf’s visage, but little else. Nil’s lungs screamed; her vision pulsed black at the edges as her consciousness threatened to slip away. 

Then she remembered Philbey’s torch, still clutched in her other hand. It was spattered in slime and gore, its oiled cloth half unraveled from the shaft, but somehow the tip still glowed with a few stubborn embers. Half conscious, with no reason or thought other than flailing desperation, Nil jammed the smoldering torch into Niven’s face. 

The elf’s skin hissed and bubbled like wax, foul-smelling steam spraying from her mouth and nostrils so suddenly that Nil nearly lost hold of the torch. Niven screamed, and Nil could feel as well as hear a dozen other voices join in from below, baying in pain. The hand at Nil’s throat fell away, allowing her at last to draw a breath of blessed air – she rolled to one side, gasping and choking as the entire amalgamation quaked beneath her. 

Simply filling her lungs felt like the most difficult thing Nil had ever done. The goblin pushed herself up on one elbow, the other hand instinctively moving to cradle her bruised, swollen throat as she forced her eyes open. Through the hot saltwater filling her vision, Nil could just make out Niven’s body continuing to thrash and scratch at itself, a charred and bloody ruin where its face had been. She felt the fear and pain bleed away, retreating to some dark shelf in the back of her mind as a feral rage bloomed in her chest – a rage that drowned out all thoughts of terror and fatigue and disgust, leaving only violence in its wake. Nil pounced on the mutated elf, wielding the torch in both hands like a spear and driving the smoldering tip into the base of Niven’s neck, just above the collarbone; her chest gave way as if made of little more than particularly sturdy papier-mâché, smoke and blood boiling up out of the wound. A wordless, growling screech erupted from Nil’s throat and she leaned forward, pushing the torch in further and further until the embers sputtered their last and the elf no longer thrashed. 

The first thing Dahlia noticed upon swimming back to the surface of consciousness was pain – heavy and pounding in her skull, sharp at her hip. She opened her eyes, blinking away the multiple images of the room circling in her vision as she looked down. The armor just above Dahlia’s right thigh had crumpled, bent in on itself deeply enough that she could feel new edges biting into the skin underneath. To make matters worse, the damage had interlocked and effectively fused the joint; her leg would be stuck straight out, stiff and immovable until it was repaired. 

Dahlia raised her head, wondering distantly how it was she was still alive. The amalgamation churned above her, wallowing and thrashing as if in pain. Like a big dog trying to shake itself dry, she thought, an image so unexpectedly comical she nearly smiled despite herself. It bellowed in a dozen voices, one shrill, animalistic shriek rising above the others and prickling the hair on the back of Dahlia’s neck.

She lifted herself on her elbows, digging into the floor with the heel of her left leg to begin dragging herself away from the creature. Dahlia’s mind prodded dimly at her jangled memories, trying to piece together what had just happened – had she made a mistake? Tripped? Her head rolled back, catching the upside-down image of Mycah with his back turned to her, running for the safety of the cave mouth. 

Oh, her mind said to itself, he kicked me. But that couldn’t be right. Must’ve realized who we are, somehow. I told Nil I was no good at this secret identity stuff. 

“Dahlia! Dahlia, are you still alive down there?”

The fog hovering over Dahlia’s mind cleared a little at the sound of Nil’s voice. She looked around – then up, finding the goblin’s pale green face peering down from the monster’s back. 

“It’s fire!” Nil went on, “Or…heat, or something, I don’t know, but we need that torch!”

Ah, she thought. Mycah’s torch was gone, discarded and cold on the opposite end of the chamber. Well, that’s a shame.

The amalgamation ceased its thrashing and dropped low to the ground, grunting and murmuring, its various components twisting and folding over one another. A deep chuffing sound emanated from somewhere deep within its mass, once, twice, three times – and what Dahlia had come to think of as the creature’s head pulled upward, moving with erratic, jerking movements. Despite the thing’s lack of a singular face, Dahlia would have sworn she could see anger in its body language – but the snout of its shapeless form was not pointed in her direction. 

Dahlia felt a cold weight drop into her stomach. “Hey!” She shouted, watching helplessly as another tentacle rose from the amalgamation’s flank. “Hey, ugly, look over here! Hey!”

The creature paid her no heed, its attention locked squarely on Mycah’s back. Swearing under her breath, Dahlia kicked out with her good leg and rolled herself over. She gritted her teeth, ignoring the jolt of pain that shot through her hip at the sudden movement, and began dragging herself arm over arm toward certain death. 

“Mycah,” she screamed, “look out!”

A glistening blur whipped through the air, almost black against the cold light streaming through the cave mouth. She watched Mycah turn at the last second – much, much too late – and saw his fevered eyes go wide. The tentacle swept into him just above the ankles, taking both legs out from under him, and he went down hard and flailing. Before Mycah could even hit the ground, the tentacle encircled his legs and constricted, dragging him back into the chamber. 

“Shit! Wait, no, no no no!” Mycah wailed. He twisted in the monster’s grip, alternating in a panic between clawing uselessly at the slick ground and fumbling for his sword. After a moment he managed to pull the weapon from its scabbard – and have it slip from his grasp as he reeled back for an awkwardly angled swing, whisked away in a second as the amalgamation dragged him further in. 

The big man’s babbling became largely incoherent at this point.

“Mycah! Over here!” Dahlia shouted. She was close now, the muscles in her shoulders screaming as she dragged herself into Mycah’s path. Almost there, almost. He began to slide past her and she reached out, stretching her arm as far as it would go, cursing the inflexibility of her armor. Just inches short. “Grab my hand! Please, just-!”

Mycah slapped at the meaty floor, fingernails digging shallow trenches as he went. His eyes met Dahlia’s, and for an instant she could see the purity of the terror that had taken hold of him. There were no thoughts behind those eyes, only the desperate, animal need to survive. He reached out toward her hand.

It wasn’t close. He slid by with a foot or more between them, pulled along like a bag of potatoes on the end of a rope. 

“I’m sorry!” Mycah screamed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I – you have to help me! Somebody fucking help!”

But there was no one who could. Even as Dahlia tried to force her body past its limits, the distance between them grew. Someone else was shouting – multiple someones, perhaps – but the words were lost, drowned out by the image of Mycah’s face as the amalgamation reared up behind him. The black pit of his mouth, the shining whites of his eyes, the spittle flying from his teeth as desperation turned to rage. 

“This is all because of you!” He shrieked. “You and that fucking cave rat, you…what did you do?!”

Dozens of mismatched limbs reached out as Mycah’s feet came into contact with the amalgamation’s squirming underbelly, crawling over his legs like a swarm of insects. His screams abruptly went up in pitch.

It was too much. Dahlia squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her forehead against the ground. Trying not to hear the screaming, the wet, slurping sounds of Mycah’s fate. She pounded her fist into the floor, the soft, spongy texture denying her even the satisfaction of her frustration. 

Soft. Pathetic. Weak. 

Dahlia’s eyes snapped open. What had Nil said? Something about fire? There was so much happening at once that she’d hardly registered it. She lifted her head; the amalgamation had pulled into itself, huddling against the ground and burbling softly. Mycah was nowhere to be seen. 

“Hey. Ugly.” Dahlia called out. 

A wave of bristling movement ran over the surface of the creature. It raised its fore end toward her, curiosity showing somehow in the slack faces of its stolen bodies. Dahlia felt a vicious grin spread across her face. 

“Yeah, that’s right.” The emberling propped herself up on bruised elbows. “Over here. You’re still hungry, aren’t you? Come on, I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

The amalgamation slithered cautiously toward her, grunting and snuffling, as if it knew enough to be suspicious that its prey was not attempting escape. Two small tentacles sprouted from its underbelly and ventured forth to poke and prod at her; Dahlia simply endured, unmoving. Satisfied, it wrapped both slimy appendages around her waist and began to drag her in, rearing up once again to reveal the grasping nightmare of its underside.

“Dahlia?” Nil called out desperately. “Dahlia, what are you doing?!”

She remained perfectly still, focusing on keeping her breathing steady as the wall of flexing hands and sucking, needle-toothed mouths grew larger, larger, filling her vision until she could have counted every fang and ragged claw. The longest appendages reached out to embrace her, curling almost gently around her horns, hooking into the gaps and joints of her armor to pull her ever closer. Close enough to reach out and touch it, now.

She ducked her head and curled to one side, waiting for the instant that she felt the armor just above the back of her neck make contact with the surface. Warm, wriggling tendrils found the edge of her collar and began to venture within, squirming horribly at the nape of her neck – and Dahlia put a hand to her breastplate, whispering a rapid-fire series of verses. She took a deep breath.

“Dahlia, no!” Nil’s distant voice screamed. “The Thinning has already bloomed, if you cast a spell now-”

The goblin’s voice faded rapidly as Dahlia sank into the amalgamation – it felt like what she imagined it must be like to be overtaken by quicksand. Significantly slimier, perhaps. She felt it crawl over the back of her skull, then the crown of her head, then her face as she clamped her mouth and eyes shut. Her neck, then her shoulders, then the upper half of her torso submerged, leaving only Dahlia’s legs sticking out into the open air. Inside was only darkness, darkness and horrible pressure, bones and tongues and fingers and broken teeth pressing in on her from every direction. The emberling felt a burning tingle, the beginnings of pain against her exposed skin as it began the process of digesting her. 

Then she felt it. A blossoming heat all around her, rivaling and then surpassing the sickly warmth of the amalgamation’s innards. A heat that grew until she felt the sea of flesh around her twitch with confusion, no longer pulling her deeper into the mass. Dahlia reached out with both arms, flattening her hands like a swimmer, dragging herself further inside. She could see nothing, the unspeakable tide of meat pressed against her face as it was, but she could feel the heat continue to rise – warm, then hot, then scalding as every plate of her armor bloomed a glowering crimson. A sizzling sound filled her little pocket of darkness, followed immediately by the nauseating smell of burning flesh.

Everything around Dahlia jumped and swirled. She could hear it now, muffled by hundreds of pounds of flesh and bone, the gibbering of the amalgamation’s many voices rising in pain and dismay. No longer simply sizzling, the flesh that came into contact with Dahlia’s armor began to crackle and pop like globs of fat upon a skillet. Something grasped her by the ankle and pulled, trying to extract her from the monster’s gut; Dahlia fought back doggedly, clawing with both arms and kicking out with her good leg, burrowing deeper and deeper as the heat continued to intensify. 

Dahlia’s entire body was thrown to one side and the next, up and then down with stomach-churning speed as the monster spasmed and screeched in distress. Slowly she curled herself into a ball, keeping her eyes squeezed tightly shut and concentrating on letting the heat flow through her.

Nil held to her little alcove atop the amalgamation’s back with everything she had, waiting for the end. If Dahlia succeeded in whatever she was trying to do, the magical reaction within an already active Thinning would make everything they had seen so far seem like a child’s game in comparison. If she did not, well… perhaps such things were better not to think about. Better to be vaporized then slowly eaten alive, after all. She was still weighing the hypothetical pros and cons of her own demise when the piled flesh below started to shake.

A particularly violent spasm tore through the amalgamation and Nil found herself momentarily airborne, tumbling and bouncing down the monster’s sloped side. She rolled to a stop on her back, tangled in a net of her own hair and dimly amazed to still be alive. 

Still the amalgamation howled and thrashed, the source of the reaction nowhere to be seen – until Nil noticed the thin streams of smoke that had begun to leak from a dozen places across its bulk. Sections of its carcass-pile body bulged and deflated at random, various tentacles and appendages coiling and snapping like bisected worms. Then the beast stretched itself toward the ceiling, screaming, thick clouds of smoke pouring from its mouths…

And collapsed. 

Almost as if it had been dropped from a great height, the humped form of the amalgamation’s body flattened and spread like liquid in all directions, an enormous plume of eye-watering smoke erupting from its core and dissipating against the ceiling. The center continued to bubble and steam, melted flesh boiling away until a figure could be seen lying huddled amongst the pooled viscera.

Nil scrambled to Dahlia’s side, finding the emberling still curled into a ball; her wrought-iron carapace ticked and hissed as it cooled, plates fading once more to black from a dull red. She was not moving. 

“Dahlia, are you…?”

“Aaaugh!” Dahlia shouted, unfolding with a jolt and turning to stare wild-eyed at Nil. “Don’t touch me! You’ll burn your fingers clean off!”

“Yes, I…I wasn’t going to touch you, Dahlia, but…” Nil looked around in disbelief. “How did you…you should not have been able to perform that spell without setting off another reaction, without…killing all of us.”

“Yeah, well, like I told ya about a hundred times,” Dahlia said, pushing herself into a seated position, “I ain’t a wizard or sorcerer or anything else…” 

She knocked her fist against the damaged plate at her hip, and a moment later the metal began to shift, bent edges pushing outward until they had regained their proper shape. Dahlia stood, grunting with the effort, and made a half-hearted effort to strike a villainous pose. “The dread power of Dahlia Scratch comes from no one and nothing but Dahlia Scratch herself! The – the, um…”

Dahlia trailed off, staring toward the back of the chamber – where Philbey sat staring back, half tangled in the corpse of a twice-dead hound. He bled from a shallow wound in his forehead, shirt hanging in tatters across his heaving chest.

“What in the fuck,” he said slowly, “was all that?”

***

“I knew it! This whole time, I knew something wasn’t right with you two.”

Six had entered the dungeon earlier that day – now three remained, bruised, battered and exhausted, taking what little shelter they could from the drizzling rain under the branches of a single tree standing alone on the prairie. Some ways off, a hazy cloud of steam rose into the chill air from the mouth of the living dungeon; they were still close enough to hear it groan from time to time, its voice reverberating through the earth. 

Dahlia sat with her knees drawn up at the base of the trunk, staring quietly at the dirt between her feet – Nil, meanwhile, stood squared off against Philbey with her hands on her hips.

“Mages, both of you. Mycah and Niven had you pegged from the beginning, and you-” Philbey scrubbed both hands through his hair, growling with rage. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew something was wrong with that place, just like Arlum did.”

“Yes.” The goblin said matter-of-factly. She watched Philbey pace back and forth in front of her with a hooded, emotionless gaze. “From the moment we entered.”

“And you never said a word!” Philbey shouted, rounding on her. “You let my friends walk into their graves, knowing all the time you could have saved them! Warned them what was down there!”

“And then what?” Nil snapped. “What do you think would have happened, hm? After I made the honorable choice to reveal myself as a rogue mage? How do you think we would have been rewarded for saving all of your useless lives?”

The halfling paused, taken aback.

“You won’t answer because you already know.” She took a step forward, jabbing him in the chest with one claw. “Our bodies would be cooling deep underground right now, tucked neatly away where no one would ever find them.”

Philbey straightened his back, muscles bunching at the back of his jaw. “…I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“Oh yes, it seemed as if those longlegs held you in a great deal of respect.” Nil said with bitter sarcasm. “The Convent, then. You were Arlum’s handler. Did he ever chance to tell you what it was like in there? What they do to us, to keep mages quiet and obedient?”

Philbey didn’t answer, only glaring back at her until, for a fraction of a second, his eyes dropped to twitch back and forth across the ground by his foot. “It doesn’t even make any sense.” He muttered to himself at last. “There are no goblin mages.”

“And yet, here I am.” Nil spread her arms. “But you make a good point, don’t you? I would never even see the inside of a Convent. Not before they had me in pieces on some Arcanum dissecting table.”

“…It doesn’t matter.” The halfling spoke through clenched teeth after another pause, refusing to look her in the eye. “You’re a danger, to yourself and to everyone around you. Those of the curse cannot be allowed to run free.”

“And you’re a fool,” Nil hissed, pushing her face threateningly close to his, “who will be very lucky if I do not slit you open and leave you to bleed here on the side of the road.”

Dahlia looked up, eyes sober. “I’m sorry for what happened to Arlum.” She said quietly.

Philbey just stared at her.

Dahlia pushed her back against the tree and stood, hoisting her traveling pack over her shoulder. “We’re leaving now. Don’t follow us, okay?” Her voice was leaden and colorless. “If Nil decides to kill you, I’m not sure I can stop her.”

“Nil.” The halfling said darkly. “So that’s your real name.”

“Maybe.” Nil said. “You won’t hear it again. Goodbye, Philbey.”

Philbey sat under the boughs of that tree for some time, listening to the rain plink gently against the leaves. Watching as Nil and Dahlia’s backs steadily grew smaller and more indistinct, their shapes swallowed by the haze of the rain. It was only once they were long distant that the first tear rolled down his face.

He pulled up his knees, allowing his head to droop between them. “Gods.” Philbey murmured. “What in the fuck am I going to tell the Guild…”