The white stone used to make the steps leading down eventually overtook the natural rock of the cavern. As we ventured deeper in, the ground remained wet but we were no longer wading through knee-height water. Despite Alton’s objections, the group took the opportunity to rest. Paco passed around emergency rations. Had it once been the Flying Shadow? Yes. Did I care? No. I even ate seconds.
Inevitably, the topic of Belkross’ location came up. Lilian said that he was still up above, taking out any potential threats. No point killing the king if another one was just going to pop up and chase us down. We didn’t know what kind of dangers were up ahead. The worst possible scenario was us getting boxed in by transmuted cannibals coming from one direction and vengeful cannibals from the other. Belkross would catch up to us as soon as possible. If not?
She produced a small, red-ribbon-tied scroll from inside her jacket. “We can use this,” she said. “Summoning scroll. One use only. To be used in the small chance that Belkross and I were separated, most likely in the case of an attempted kidnapping.”
While the others nodded, I just stared at her. She’s so good at it, I mused sadly. Twisting the truth. I glanced at the others. And now, after all we’ve been through, they believe her without question. Like I used to-Wait.
I did a doubletake. Salim was silently watching her put the scroll away. Studying it, and then her. He then looked away, a small, knowing smile painting the corners of his lips.
He knew! I didn’t know what he knew, but he’d still recognized Lilian for what she was.
Predator recognizes predator, the voice of Direwolf snarled in my mind.
Finally, after healing and feeding ourselves to the best of our abilities, we pushed forward, with Salim’s shade leading the way. No one spoke but our joined breathing echoed throughout tunnel we were currently traversing through. More pods decorated the walls. Some were big enough to fit two of me while others couldn’t have contained anything bigger than a small rabbit. They now reminded me of bubbles disrupting the surface of water. The majority of them were intact-
CLANG!
The sound of metal striking stone resonated from farther up ahead and was still ringing through my ears as Salim called out, “Enemy up ahead! Well four now. The first used a glaive to break open three pods.” He laughed. “So we have monsters incoming.”
The tunnel continued at a curve. Nakoda and I took the lead. By this point the walls and ground were closer in nature to smooth, solid marble. I had to slow down to keep myself from tripping over my hooves or sliding sideways into a wall. Even with half of my brain focusing on that, the monsters were still impossible to miss. Like the cannibals, they were human in shape and their skin was a patchwork of suntanned and albino white flesh, favoring the latter. Discolored fangs protruded from their lips and their eyes were milky white. They were flailing about, smashing at the ground or nearest wall, or even hitting themselves. They clearly weren’t taking their mutation well.
I caught a glimpse of someone up ahead, robed, and carrying a rusty glaive. But only a glimpse, because one of the mutants entered my line of sight, gave a wrangled snarl, and lunged at me. It was only then that I realized just how big these guys were. Easily twice the size of your average human and way faster than they had any right to be.
Luckily we had someone just as fast. Alton bolted to my aid and slashed his rapier across the mutant’s back. His impossibly muscular back kept the steel from cutting all the way through, but the strike did knock him off course. This gave me the inches I needed to hop sideways, avoiding a direct collision. The mutant hit the ground, hard. Pale pink blood oozed from his sliced back as he screamed, pounded his fists into the stone beneath like a baby throwing a tantrum, managing to break it. The other two mutants followed his lead, going after the nearest person to each of them. One was Alton and the other was Salim.
Alton managed to roll out of the way, but Salim wasn’t so lucky. He took a slash from overgrown and hardened fingernails to the chest. The blow sent him spinning through the air and crashing into Lilian. She swore, pushed him off, and slammed her fist against the ground. A fresh demon dog erupted from the ground and immediately attacked the mutant who had hit Salim. It leapt onto the monster’s patchy chest and clamped its teeth around his throat. Dark flames them erupted from his mouth and into the mutant’s esophagus. The mutant tried to scream but the only thing coming out was the fire cooking him from the inside out.
Boom!
Either out of mercy or sport, Paco put a bullet between his eyes, blowing his head off.
The mutant Alton slashed apparently wanted revenge. He scrambled after the ex-first mate. “Oh no you don’t!” I cried. I leapt and then slid across the ground. Like a big, horned cannon ball, I allowed myself to be carried forward by the momentum. Together, Nakoda and I collided with the mutant. His lance and my horn gored the monster, drenching us both in his slime-like blood. My brother and I shrugged the twitching corpse off and whirled around, searching for the third and final mutant.
He was still chasing after Alton. Behind him, getting painfully to his feet, Salim shot at the mutant with his bow. The arrow pierced through the monster’s sternum, but he pushed through, now more animal than man.
But still, like a fish in water, Alton ducked and weaved around the creature’s attacks. If not for the blood-like trail of his sword, his attacks would have nearly too fast to see. He chopped off fingers, hands, and finally cut open the mutant’s throat. He sidestepped the collapsing corpse, looking very pleased with himself. He glanced down at the mutant’s face resting within an expanding puddle of pink blood.
Alton’s expression became one of recognition, then horror. He knelt beside the fallen monster and traced his fingers across his back. Or really, the mutant’s faded tattoos.
“D-Dido?” he whispered, his voice cracking on the name. “…But…If it’s really you…then…then…” He looked around until he found the other two bodies. He then looked over his shoulder to address the rest of our group.
“I…I think…we just found the rest of my crew.”
Salim placed a hand to his wounded chest to heal himself with magic as he limped over to Alton. “Look at me,” he commanded. The other man did. “This is what you’ve been searching for.”
“…But…but these were my comrades-”
“Not anymore.” Salim pointed at the mutant Alton had personally killed. “Not anymore-”
“Maybe we can save them,” Nakoda interjected. “There’s a chance we can reverse this, change them back-”
“Oh? Are you a flesh warper now, Nakoda?” Salim asked sarcastically. “Or does your unicorn conveniently have power over the flesh now?”
“Besides,” Lilian said, cutting in, “they’re dead.”
“Not these friends,” Nakoda tried.
“Even so,” Salim said. “Can you fix this-?”
“I-”
“Look at them! Look at what they’ve become! You can fix that?”
I felt Nakoda flinch back as if he’d been struck. “I mean, I can’t, but…but you just gotta have hope. Hope that you can save people. Otherwise you’ll stop trying.”
Lilian showed him her hands. “Nakoda, listen, it’s horrible, but sometimes the only kindness you can give is death. I know that if I’d been turned into one of these things, I’d rather death than a lifetime of this.”
“Blind hope is for fools,” Salim sneered.
“Shut. Up.”
The words came from Alton and were directed towards the strange man. Moving like a man wrapped in very heavy, invisible chains, Alton stood up, glaring at Salim. After a moment of forced eye contact, he turned away to regard Nakoda instead. His expression softened considerably, looking tired. And grateful. “Hey, I get what you’re trying to do, little man,” he sighed. “And I appreciate it. Trust me, I do. But come on. Let’s just finish this. And we’ll go from there-Wait. Paco?” He arched a bemused eyebrow. “Is he actually asleep right now?”
Sure enough, job done, the gunslinger was taking the opportunity to nap across Turtle’s shell. Never change, Paco, I thought tiredly. Never change.
“Back on topic,” Salim said icily, “what weapon does your ex-captain favor?”
Alton frowned. “Anything that’s big, heavy, and hits hard.” He gestured with his rapier to the broken pods. “You think he’s the one who broke ‘em loose?”
Salim shrugged a shoulder. “Signs point to yes. Yet he’s likely not alone. Perhaps your captain’s not a captain at all, but a delivery man. Whoever Smuggler’s Shiv’s true lord may be, they need new meat. Not just for food and breeding stock for the cannibals, but to fuel these experiments.” He looked past Alton, towards the passageway leading deeper into the cavern. “Only a theory.”
“Let’s test it then,” Alton snarled. He stepped past his fallen, mutated former comrades, his sword drenching the air around him in bloody light.
“Alton,” Nakoda murmured weakly, his big eyes full of watery worry. With no other choice, we followed after Kovack’s former first mate. Mercifully, it wasn’t a long walk, though. Mostly because we eventually ran into a giant wall. It was forged from some kind of blue-toned metal. There were no pods in sight, but by this point everything else had been converted into glossy crystal. It was as if some great god had sliced an infectious blade into Smuggler’s Shiv’s body. Yet it was only once we all approached cautiously that I noticed a long, horizontal slit running across the wall.
So not a wall, I realized. Some kind of door or gate then?
There was a flash of red light. I turned and nearly jumped out of my skin at the sight of a giant black ant walking away from Lilian and towards the gate. It tried to pry the gate open, and even managed to slide it open a few inches before crunch! The metal clamped down around the ant’s limbs, breaking down off and making it chitter and spasm in agony. Looking annoyed, Lilian banished the ant. “Definitely a door of some kind. But a very, very stubborn one.”
“Not stubborn enough,” Salim replied smugly. His shade flew forward and phased through the gate. “…This is some kind of forge. Or was. Everything that the blacksmiths were working on have been destroyed or ruined beyond repair-Ahah! There are two cranks on either side of these doors, their centers lit up red for some reason. Maybe a locking mechanism?”
“I have an idea,” Nakoda said.
Everyone shot him skeptical looks.
He cringed back but still said, his words hurried in case of them (likely Salim) tried to interrupt him, “If we can hold it open for just a little bit, could you get something on the other side? Something to turn the cranks?”
Lilian’s eyebrows shot up, looking mildly impressed. “Yes, actually. I just need direct line of sight to the other side.”
The men all gathered around and on three pulled. It wasn’t until they were all huffing and puffing, faces drenched in sweat that they managed to get the gate open a crack. “NOW?!” they screamed at Lilian.
“Now,” she confirmed, snapping her fingers.
I had just enough time to spot goopy, bloody bodies appear on the other side of the gate before the men all jumped away allowing the doors to shut closed, lest they lose a limb. “Okay,” Lilian said to no one, and speaking as if to a toddler. “Okay, grab a crank…Good. And now push…push…push…”
After minutes of this, her words were finally partly drowned out by groaning metal as the gate begrudgingly slid open, inch by inch. A dim light poured across us from the other side. It revealed a ruined forge constructed entirely from the same blue metal as the gate, along with three bloody skeletons standing at attention, awaiting further command from Lilian. She also dismissed them with a wave of her hand and stepped into the forge. Everyone followed suit, though I stayed put long enough for Nakoda to climb back up into my saddle.
The forge had definitely seen better days. Giant clusters of ruined metal were strewn about, and the walls and high ceiling were marked with…claw marks? I didn’t spot any mutants or pods, and the white crystal that had infected the surrounding underground was nowhere in sight.
Boop-beep!
The odd sound made everyone jump, and Paco nearly shot his pistol on reflex. The sound had come from a column situated near the gate, connecting the metal flooring to the ceiling above. I glanced around and spotted more like it around the forge. Yet this one quickly recaptured my attention the instant it started to talk. Glowing sigils appeared and slid across its surface until they were facing the majority of our group. It spoke again in a language that I didn’t recognize but sounded humanoid. Intrigued, Lilian went to inspect it. She hesitated before tapping at the sigils with her fingers.
The column buzzed grumpily in response. Frowning, she tried again only to get the same negative-sounding buzz.
“Don’t think it likes you,” Paco mused, eyes narrowed. I followed his gaze. The same light illuminating the column’s sigils had flowed into cracks running along the walls and ceiling. The light was flowing backwards, towards the back of the forge. We all exchanged looks amongst ourselves (at least the humanoid members did) before moving through the forge. Lilian shot the column an annoyed look before taking the rear. The illuminated cracks all converged at a far wall. There were three much smaller gates here, more like octagon-shaped doors. The one dead center gained another set of glowing sigils. The other two on the other hand slid apart freely, seemingly activated by one of our group’s members simply stepping too close. On a whim, Paco egged Turtle on through the door, but just enough to get a good look inside. The flooring took on a dark blue tone and orbs of pale light decorated the walls, illuminating an otherwise dark corridor.
“How about I go left and you go right,” Nakoda called over. “And then we come back, tell each other what we saw.”
“Or, seeing as I’m already here, I go left, and you go right,” Paco shot back.
“That’s actually-yes.”
“Should we really be split up?” Lilian called out, exasperated.
Nakoda swung himself around so that he now sat on backwards on my saddle and addressed her directly. “We’ll cover more ground that way.”
“But what if you encounter more of those mutated things?”
“Then I’ll kill it, I guess,” the little Rider sniffed. He then mumbled darkly, “Because that’s all I can do apparently.”
“But what if it kills you?” she pressed. “Or tries to stuff you into a pod?”
“Then you’ll kill me, I guess.”
During Nakoda’s little tantrum, Salim ignored him (per usual) and sent his shade through the center door. Again, it met no resistance. Eyes black as night, Salim spoke over Nakoda, said, “This is a prison. Two levels, stacked upon one another. Each level houses perhaps two dozen of those transmuting pods, but these are more defined, lined with metal and are decorated with more of those sigils.” He tilted his head, looking curious. “There are two MUCH larger, mutant beasts here. And they seem to be guarding a sleeping, blue-haired princess.”