Well, the landing went sort of how you expected. And by that I mean our Fehicle landed flat in a puffy, jelly substance which sent us flying out in different directions.

Foggy didn’t go far, pretty much just rolling out of the thing after we bounced off of whatever we landed in. Ak didn’t budge at all, and Bellbane jumped out prematurely, landing on the squishy substance unharmed. Meanwhile, Aeronik sprung out like a rag doll and was sent flying off a yard from us, and I was just round and light enough that all I did was roll several feet off in the distance.

There, that was everyone. Everyone except for the special guest.

Six double-decker buses worth of fat, pale worm body came ripping from the tunnel entrance like a thick stream of Silly String. From overhead we could still hear its shrieks as it soared through the air and began its descent right on top of us.

“Move! Get out of the way!” I screamed, channeling my inner Ludacris.

The team got up, still groggy from the fall, and split in different directions as we tried to avoid the growing shadow of the collapsing worm. I barely had time to snatch up my pretty tiara- my crown as I ran at full speed, bounding over the jelly substance like an Olympic track star. I was grateful for my light weight yet again as I watched my team maneuver carefully, Foggy easily sinking through the jelly stuff while using his charge ability to carve through it whenever he got stuck.

The ground exploded and rattled as the creature slammed down. Its white, marred body landed in a fat heap of coiled worm, destroying our Fehicle in the process and splattering the jiggly stuff out like a volcanic eruption. It didn’t wait around to recover, jerking and slithering again after only a few groans of pain and rage. I glanced around, surveying where our part was in preparation for yet another against-all-odds battle with an overwhelming opponent, and I noticed that we had the thing surrounded. If we all let loose we might be able to take it down, or at least get it run off. I prepared myself to attack the worm before it could recover fully from the fall, checking to see what spells were ready, when something unanimously broke our concentration.

[Dungeon Alert: First half of the fifth trial has been completed. Reward: 5,500 experience points. Congratulations, you have unlocked the second half of the fifth trial]

[Dungeon Alert: Fifth trial continuing. Delvers of the Juniperscar’s Husk, welcome to the second half of your Fifth Trial, the Gut Biome-Dome, Team Reliance. This is a timed trial. Utilizing the raised platforms, your part must ascend to reach the crystal, Juniparscar’s Solidified Anguish. Each platform has a mechanism at the center that must be stood upon to raise the next platform, and the mechanism must remain depressed to keep the following platform raised. There are a total of 5 platforms. Be warned, each platform is protected by a guardian that must be defeated before the next mechanism can be used. Juniparscar’s Solidified Anguish will not be obtainable until all mechanisms are simultaneously depressed]

“Really?” I said to whatever entity controlled this dungeon. “You don’t think that maybe that’s asking for a little bit too much right now?!”

[You have gained a level. You are now Level 14. You are 7,169 experience points from Level 15]

[You have 1 unspent ability point. Please choose an ability from the Angiomancer skill tree. Ability points that are not applied within 24 hours are randomly assigned to an available choice]

“Oh, nevermind. Thanks!”

An all-too-familiar grinding noise rattled around us, and a wide, stone platform raised from one end of the stomach, sloshing the jelly substance around it and moving to reach just a few feet off of the ground. The platform had a stone pillar below it to support it, and as I examined the area in front of it I noticed that below the thick gelatinous substance on the ground there were more of the wide stone platforms arranged directly before it from one end of the stomach to the other.

I briefly looked up the lining of the stomach, seeing the way moss, vines, and ivy spread throughout the stomach and up to the ceiling, then I noticed it. Way up high, webbed and held to the wall with ivy, was a glimmering emerald crystal. The thing was nearly the same size as me, almost blending into the dense foliage around it if not for its subtle glow and shine.

“Focus on the worm! Then we will attempt the platforms!” Fogdahn called out from up high.

The eyeball moth had a pale green aura around him that hissed as it grew wider. He held his scythe out before him, allowing the power to coat the blade itself, then, like a fucking acrobat, Fogdahn began to spin midair to create a Beyblade of sickly green death that descended at full speed. I could hear his scythe carve the wind around him as he plummeted as he dropped like a meteor to the worm, hitting with all of the effect of a buzzsaw. The scythe churned the creature’s flesh, leaving deep fissures that sizzled and melted from the exposure to the Eldritch power. The worm shrieked in defiance, easily whipping around and charging Fogdahn with speed that was just simply unfair to have at that size. Its mouth peeled back, needle teeth out in the open and approaching him in the blink of an eye

It was too fast for Fogdahn to dodge, and he was swallowed whole.

“No!” Fogwarth shouted, brandishing his sword and shield then stomping the jelly ground below. Rippling waves of rough earth spikes shot forward, catching the worm's tail end and easily sliding through the meat of its body.

Despite all of the damage that the worm had taken, the thing still did not back down. With a cartoonish gulp, I began to charge into the battle along with the rest of my party. That is, until we noticed the sound of trickling liquid that seemed to come from all around us. What the Hell was that? I could hear it so vividly, it was as if it…

“The walls!” Aeronik called out, gesturing to a series of barely visible holes that seemed to coat the entire stomach, hiding behind the overgrowth.

A shimmering liquid slowly trickled from each hole, with dozens upon dozens of the holes spread out around us. The liquid looked sort of like murky water, but the longer I watched the longer I saw what was actually happening as each drop slid down to the stomach’s floor; the liquid was decaying the plant life on contact.

“Fuck! Shit!” I exclaimed. “It’s the timed part of the trial! It’s forcing us to ascent to the platform! Quick, get to the first platform!”

“Worm?” Ak-Lok groaned, firing off two imbued arrows then tossing another of its exploding frostfire orbs at it. “Lord Fogdahn?”

“I fear there is no time, my friend,” Foggy answered, rushing up to us as we made our way to the platform. “That toxic substance will reach us in mere minutes, and I fear we must face this monstrosity from the first platform. We will be at a disadvantage, but we will do what is necessary!”

Our group fled, with Aeronik in the lead, followed by Fogwarth and I, then Ak-Lok and Bellbane brought up the rear; I couldn’t help but fear that Bellbane would be unsummoned at some point given what had happened to Fogdahn, but we couldn’t worry about that now so I kept it to myself. The worm behind us writhed and flailed, clearly feeling the effects of the recent attacks, and it eventually coiled like a snake. Its mouth-head turned until it faced us, bloodied mouth full of teeth looming right behind us as it poised itself to strike again. We sloshed through the substance on the ground, careful to not get close to the walls for fear that the trickling liquid was beginning to puddle just under the jelly surface, then we finally reached the platform and Aeronik yanked himself up with the rest of us close behind.

Aeronik got all of his wasp limbs up on the platform and immediately moved to stand on the slightly raised block in the center of the platform, which had clearly been the mechanism we needed. However, and yes, of course there is a however here, the moment Aeronik began to move we heard a wet slurp sound call out from overhead, followed by the drop of something wet and heavy hit the other end of the platform, and our jaws all dropped one after another.

Stolen story; please report.

“We forgot the fucking guardian!” I cried out as the beast stood and roared.

The monster was in the shape of a huge rod, as if its body were an elongated pill that hooked at the end where a head should be. It had wiggling fine hairs all over it that were a fleshy pink just like its body, along with several pulsating holes on its surface that huffed a sickly black substance. The thing didn’t move, its wiring hairs sticking to the platform firmly, and in that way it reminded me of Goomba. Then it hit me… Maybe this thing was like Goomba. A structure-category mob that couldn’t move but was way too powerful for us. Just as I thought that, the new foe opened the holes on its body and excreted a streaming black substance that shot out like water from a firehose.

We quickly moved out of the line of fire, though Aeronik was the clear target as the streams blasted the ground around him with laser-like precision and more force than a cannonball. Stone debris flew up from where the blast hit, leaving a gash in the stone that I really hoped wouldn’t end up being one of us. As quickly as the blasts had come they had stopped, and now the creature was pulsating and throbbing in place.

I cursed again, this time keeping it to myself. The creature before us was plotting for another attack, while the worm behind us was rising up and moments away from charging us. We were stuck between two enemies that both clearly outranked us and we still had not recovered fully from the log-flume ride from Hell we just had gone through. We needed a plan, I needed a plan, otherwise we were done for.

Then the worm shrieked, and the satisfying sound of the sizzling scythe slash cut through the air.

Fogdahn was alive! He cleaved through the back of the worm, shoving himself out of the bleeding wound and pushing himself out onto its back. He was covered in dark gore, dripping from his eyeball head in chunks at a time, and his robe was little but shredded rags from the worm's teeth. I was stunned, feeling overjoyed that he was alive and that we had a fighting chance at this again. Unfortunately, this also gave me my first look under the robe of the Eldritch Horror Moth and… well, let’s just say he lived up to that name. His body was nothing but a mass of writhing, squirming oily black tendrils that slid over one another as if each had a mind of their own. At their center was a circular mouth, similar to the worm except instead of endless rows of needle-like teeth, Fogdahn’s were just four large fangs that seemed to have free-roam of the mouth to move around as they pleased.

Fucking. Gross.

Still, I didn’t look a gift Eldritch Horror Moth in the mouth; mainly because I really didn’t want to. With him back in the fight we actually might stand a chance as long as we were fast enough.

“Ak! Ranged support for Fogdahn!” I cried out, the golem nodding to me in confirmation and immediately retrieving an arrow. “Aeronik, you little bitch, you are the distraction for the guardian. It clearly is targeting you, so lead its aim away from the rest of the group while we all circle around and flank it! It’s clearly one of those structure things like Goomba, so as long as we don’t pull its attention we can get the drop on it. Now, Berry Boys, go!”

“Huh? What?” Aeronik said back with wide, startled eyes.

It was too late, because Foggy, Bellbane, and I all began to move around the rod-like blob creature just as it fired another three oozy streams at Aeronik. The bee was taken off-guard, narrowly dodging the first two but taking the third shot right to his leather abdomen armor which sent him flying back, nearly dropping off of the edge of the platform. Luckily he seemed to still be alive, despite most likely a huge chunk of his health from that one shot. He staggered, using his spear to balance himself, but he was up again and this time he was focused.

Fogdahn had risen back to his own feet… or squirmy leech tendrils, I guess. He shook himself off, fluttering his wings until they were clear, then he rose back into the air and began his assault on the worm. He threw down the two spells I had seen from before, the spear and the exploding orb, then dropped down with a volley of Eldritch-imbued slashes. The amount of Canaan Mist that had been forming from his slash attacks was intense, but luckily it clung low to the ground in here and barely made it above the platform we stood on as it billowed out from the worm’s mouth.

The worm itself shifted its focus and was once again all over Fogdahn, only this time the moth prepared for its unbelievable agility and managed to stay just behind the mouth at all times to avoid being swallowed again. Meanwhile, Ak continued to hammer it with arrows and orbs, then utilized the ability I had only seen once before which ripped up a row of enormous icicles that spewed flames from their tips, catching the worm and inflicting massive damage.

I briefly caught a glimpse of Fogdahn shifting his gaze to Ak-Lok, clearly impressed by what he had seen, before he moved back to his work with the worm. No, I wouldn’t let the bastard get off that easy. I wouldn’t forget that he openly thought to sacrifice Ak only earlier that same day. Fuck that.

“Let’s do this!” I shouted, refocusing on the guardian as we got close. The thing was far larger than Foggy or Bellbane, but like I had thought it didn’t move with our approach.

Foggy shot forward with a charge, slamming his shield into it and following it with a huge slash. The shield seemed to briefly stick to the fleshy hairs of the guardian’s body, but Foggy’s strength proved too much for it as he ripped it away, pulling the hairs from the thing's body and managing another two slashes of his pearl blade. Bellbane moved in, twin gouts of steam blasting the guardian and melting away the hairs and melting more of its pink body. I swooped in, casting my rose-hips beneath it for just a bit more damage then hammering with my sword at the hairless patch Bellbane had just revealed; I wasn’t dumb enough to think I was strong enough to get my sword back if it got stuck to the thing’s hair.

The guardian didn’t move, or squirm, or make a sound at all. It simply continued to pulsate until it was full enough to shoot more of the black substance at Aeronik. The bee had begun running in a zig-zag pattern around the wide stone platform, easily dodging most of the shots but stumbling and tripping on the gashes to the platform floor it had made.

“Perhaps this is what we require!” Foggy said, slamming a heavy boot down and summoning his stone barrier wall.

Instead of using it to protect Aeronik like I initially thought, the wall instead sprouted from right below the Guardian, rising up from below it and pushing its way up and into the thing’s body. The Guardian’s soft body fought against the wall, but in the end it was too powerful and the slab of stone carved right through the center mass of the creature, with both sides sloughing off of the stone slab and melting to either side in a soft pile of whatever pink substance it was made of.

Though on the way down the Guardian managed one more blast that hit the ground right where Aeronik was stepping, sending the bee face first into the ground. I couldn’t help but laugh at that one.

[Your party has slain E-Coli - Bacterial Guardian - Level 23. You are awarded 684 experience points]

“E-Coli?! Seriously?” I shouted to the stomach’s ceiling.

We quickly moved to Aeronik, helping the bee up to his feet with Foggy bracing him against himself.

“Here, I’ll heal you up and we can hit the next platform,” I said, about to cast my spores until Aeronik reached out and stopped me, shaking his head.

“No…” He said, breathing heavily. “No, I will live. Save your spell for now… There will be… There will be less and less of our party as we climb, and it may be needed on the final platform. I will survive, blueberry scum. Just place me on the mechanism and I will rest as you all continue your climb.”

“Are you… Are you sure?” I said, seeing the pain the bee must have been in. Still, he just nodded his response and Foggy did as he instructed, placing him on the mechanism which instantly triggered the next platform. “Alright, just hang on a little longer. We will get that big gem in no time, then I’ll heal us all up. I promise.”

Aeronik nodded once more but said nothing, and our party began to move on just as the next platform rose higher than our current one. Ak-Lok met us at the platform’s edge, firing off another shot as he did so while Fogdahn narrowly dodged another of the giant worm’s strikes. I looked down at the two battling below, seeing now that the murky liquid from the walls had risen to just about an inch across the span of the stomach but that it didn’t seem to injure the worm at all, because of course it wouldn’t. The two waged on in their David and Goliath battle, and we prepared ourselves to climb to the next platform.

“We need to be careful this time,” I said, glancing around at my team and getting a confirming nod from Foggy and Ak-Lok. “The second we get up there another guardian is coming down on us, and we can’t be caught off-guard again. Now, are we ready to do this?”

I looked at them with a confident smirk. Yup. The three amigos. All three of us. Definitely just three…

“Wait. Where’s Bellbane? Oh… Oh, God dammit!” I shouted as I watched the mist golem climb up to the second platform, hearing the huge drop hit the second platform.