Marius

His dagger dangled above the shining black carapace of Edna - his benevolent sentient carriage.

He would've felt the pangs of sorrow in his heart for what he was about to do, but then again, one look at the humanoid terror draped in the pure darkness of an unfeeling, formless void that was slowly reaching towards him with a dripping mouth filled with malice, and he was pretty sure old Edna would take one for the team.

"Sorry gal," he murmured as he watched Yelena ready her blade, keeping one eye on him and another on her target. "I owe you a shot of grubs."

He took one final look at the raking black talons of the evil specter, and plunged his blade into the beetle's hide.

DMG: 6 PRC

Target HP: 10/80

She reared, screeched, started sprinting even faster through the sands, and as he held on for dear life to the side of her body he saw it (and smelled it):

Her gassy smokescreen, spewed from her hard-working insectoid ass.

The shadow-creature was instantly subsumed in the haze even blacker than its own shimmering, unreal skin. And as soon as the thing was totally immobilized, he called out to Yelena:

"NOW!"

Before the word had even left his lips her sword had leaped from its scabbard and cleaved through the air, launching its azure arc of energized light that tore through the hazy gas like the bright light of day slowly rising over the dunes.

He heard the roar of something filled with pure hatred assail his ears. He cupped one with his free hand as he felt it bleed profusely. Yelena somehow could stand through it, and once again he was confronted with the image of her stalwart toughness against everything that was fucking him up in this place.

But more importantly he saw the shadow within the cloud wince with pain as Yelena's shot struck true, tearing through its abdomen and splitting the creature in two neat halves:

Voidtouched (Greater)

HP: 110/150

"Double damage BAYBEE!" he yelled involuntarily, drawing a look of confusion from both Yelena and the Redhead.

"Hey, I can't celebrate a victory?" he shouted at them over the din of Edna's increasing squeals of pain as she thundered away from the ruined shadow-beast.

"Be wary of early celebrations," Yelena told him as he reached for his hand and yanked him back to his feet with little more effort than a child playing with toy weights. "We didn't kill it."

Marius followed her stare as, off in the far distance now, he saw the smoking corpse of the creature begin to knit itself back together again - thin, sinuous feelers stretching out from its severed waist and attaching themselves to its amorphous legs. It slowly began to rise, and stare at them as it regenerated its corrupted flesh.

And he could swear, even from a distance of about fifty meters and counting, that the beast was staring right at him with hatred so pure, so focused, that he almost felt it would be better to just lie down in the sands and let it take him now - because it was coming for him. Of that, there was no doubt.

Yelena nodded to him once and he returned the gesture, readying his weapon before he realized (oh yeah) that it was functionally useless in this fight.

That's becoming a theme...

He saw the Red-Woman brandishing the lead rod above Edna's head, calming her with her performance skill, stroking her bulbous face with care and whispering sweet nothings to her that he could only imagine were tantalizing enough to at least keep the creature going.

"How much longer?" Yelena shouted back, coming to stand in front of him.

The shadow rose into the sky once more, and the clouds swirling around its form darkened as its power ran through them.

Yelena's eyes went wide - and Marius knew why.

The Glance.

He saw the thing gather the corrupted energy from the purple, lightning strewn sky above and collect it in its clawed hands.

"Big Red, we're gonna need an answer from you in the neighborhood of, oh, RIGHT NOW?"

The creature's crimson eyes glared at them from above.

It raised its hands.

And as it lowered them to throw its sphere of pure Everloftian abyss at them, the Red-Woman's voice broke through the thundercrack of its strike:

"We are being here!"

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

As the eyes of Marius and Yelena braced to weather the oncoming missile of pure darkness trailing towards them, they felt the ground give way beneath.

A wall of sand rose up all around the form of Edna, swallowing her and her charges whole. If the dreaded creature's attack had any effect on this protective wall, neither Yelena or Marius could know.

Then, as a minute of nothing but rising sands went on, they noticed that this wall was not being erected around them at all - they were being lowered into the sands themselves, guided down by the protective runes that Edna had just stepped on.

"Hush now, Tar'Khalia," the Red-Woman said, stroking the beast with her slender, tanned arms, rubbing her veiled face on its feelers. "You are being safe. You are being safe..."

"I kinda wish she'd rock me to sleep," Marius said absent-mindedly, eliciting a frustrated slap on the shoulder from Yelena.

"Focus," she told him with a slight blush of annoyance. "We aren't safe yet."

He'd have made a little verbal bite back at her were it not for what he saw next: the walls of sand fizzled away to mere dripping grains and a gilded alcove stretched out before them: a room filled to the brim with runic symbols and mosaics decorating its walls, as well as intricately crafted pillars baring the faces of what looked like dog-men at prayer. As he studied the expanse of sandstone and devotion that stretched out now before him, Marius could only let loose a whistle of surprise.

"Hey, its actually a pretty nice place here, eh? Little much in terms of the art deco, and the ugly dog guys throw off the mystical feng shui the place has going on, but still, color me a little impressed."

"This is it," the Red-Woman said, rising and breathing in the underground air like it was cleaner by degrees than that above. "The Temple of the Lightbringer's coming: Bhashera."

Marius cocked his brow at her and at Yelena, who was for some reason entranced by the doglike images on the pillars. Then, right on time, the Everloft shoved itself into his head and left a little piece of graffiti on the side of his brain:

Catacombs of Bhashera, LVL 3

Enemies: Temple Guards, Scarabs, Scorpirex

Then, as he took one single step on the actual floor of the temple's bowels:

QUEST COMPLETE: Servant of Light

EXP: +100

Current EXP: 275/250

LEVEL UP!

SP AVAILABLE: 1

AP AVAILABLE: 4

Say it, don't spray it, Loftie. I can guarantee that no one's as excited about this as you are.

Presently he looked to Yelena who, judging by her vacant expression, had also just received the same announcement.

"Looks like we completed our first quest together, huh?"

She managed a chuckle that could hardly be called mirthful. "It only took us three near death experiences."

"Four," Marius corrected. "If you count the fact that ol' Edna here could've easily just thrown us off her backs when I nipped her."

He wandered over to where the great beetle was resting, and Yelena went with him, palming the being's hide and channeling her Guardian's Ward, letting the restorative energy flow from her body to heal the creature's sores and bruised hide. When she had finished the thing nuzzled into her, covering her in spit and potentially other fluids.

"She is liking you," the Red-Woman said with a chuckle so alien that Marius had to double take to make sure it had actually come from under that veil.

He watched the hulking creature lick Yelena again like a puppy and could do little more than giggle under his breath. But she was still scanning the crumbling roof above them, her unfaltering gaze focused on each individual grain of sand that fell from above.

"We are being safe here," The-Red woman said. "A Voidling not born of a dungeon may not enter. The Will of Everloft abides over all."

Yelena still looked unconvinced, and Marius was about to try his hand at calming her nerves when he noticed the Red-Woman brandish the led rod and raise it above a stone altar at the end of the room.

"Hey!" he barked involuntarily.

She looked back over her sun-kissed shoulder and, for just a moment, the look she shot back at Marius sent just the tiniest of shivers up his erect spine.

"Uh," he began, "Don't we need that?"

"This is being mark of a slave," she said, rounding on him with ferocious zeal. "We are free beings both - this beast and I. Tar'Khalia. Unbound. In breaking this thing of dominance, I break this creature's final chain."

Marius saw that Edna's bulbous, tired eyes were suddenly alight with fire, watching as the lead rod came down to splinter apart on the stone altar.

Either this Red-Woman must have had more strength than she was letting on, or there was something special about that little shrine, because the rod shattered into a hundred little fragments almost as soon as she she hit it against a corner.

Yelena was somewhat enraptured by the whole thing. She looked from the splintered object, to the triumphant veiled woman, to the beetle who's eyes had widened and who bowed - actually bowed - towards both women in thanks. Looks like there was more to old Edna than met the eye, after all. An intelligence was there, of a certain kind.

The emancipated beetle did not move away from the group as Marius suspected she would. Instead, she began lumbering towards him, head still bowed, and eyes slightly closed - an animal totally at peace in its environment for possibly the first time in her life.

"Ah, shucks," Marius said as the beast approached him. "You don't gotta thank me none, girl. All I ask, really, is that you'd offer us your services of protec-"

His ribs gave way as Edna speared him with her horn and sent him sailing up into the high ceilinged sky of the dungeon before he rocketed back down with a heavy thud.

HP: -10

HP: 5

Through the searing pain in his gut he could hear the laughter of the women all around him, cackling like harpies looking at spoiled dinner.

Yelena eventually meandered over to him and offered her his hand while Edna proudly marched back to nuzzle against the Red-Woman.

Marius looked at Yelena's hand with weariness beyond his years.

"Why is it that every woman I meet tries to kill me at least once?"

"Well, you can't expect to main a noble Lady like this and just get away with it, Marius,"

He let the girl lift him to his feet as the Red-Woman made preparations to build a fire in the center of the chamber, with Edna still drawing him daggers from her side.

"We are making camp here," she said. "We must recover energy before venturing on, and creatures of Bhashera grow stronger during the day."

Yelena bristled. "How can you know what time of day it is down here?"

"I am knowing," the Red-Woman answered. "We - Tar'Khalia - we all are knowing."

Marius rolled his eyes as Yelena accepted this explanation with a nod. He'd really have to ask her if there were some language details he was missing here that she knew from her Argent teachings. They all practically wrote the bible on the Everloft, right? Maybe now, with some down time, the girl could give him a few lessons. After his level up, of course.

"Marius," she asked as she knelt to help the Red-Woman with her flint and kindling. "How did you know your plan would work? How could you be certain that the beetle wouldn't have thrown us from its backs and left us to the shadow above?"

He blinked at her and wheezed a heavy sigh.

"Yelena, I didn't know. I'll be honest with you here - it was all a gambit. Most of my life is."

"A bad idea that just happened to work," she said gravely. "Like our escape from the palace."

She watched him kneel down with them, his face suddenly twisted and sore, as he felt himself detach from them both and clasp his hands together, trying desperately not to recall the past and knowing, equally, that such attempts were futile.

"Stick around," he said with a tiny grin. "I'm full of bad ideas."