"The path ahead forks."

Aroust nodded. "We know that, Jack. We've been dealing with split passages for days, not to mention our new food source." He pointed at the gently glowing green mushrooms growing over just parts of the long tunnel they had claimed as their own. Strikingly delicious with a flavor of strawberries and vanilla custard, they all felt the explosion of sweet vitality caressing their souls with every bite, Veti whispering her awe that it could well be one of the fable Yellow Emperor mushrooms that was said to increase vitality and extend the lives of mortals a good half century. Even as adventurers they had felt invigorated by the fare.

Of course, since their normal method of survival in the deeps was to blast furnace every newly claimed section, only very rarely did Jack manage to claim a section low enough in monster density they could kill the few scurrying creatures with naginata, glave, Power Words, and Ice Blast.

Recalling the one night they had woken up to vampiric worm-like parasites trying to burrow in their flesh from cracks in the ground that were normally superheated and cooled... they didn't think it worth a repeat, beyond the tiny glowing cavern roof section of mushrooms they had managed to claim some distance back.

"The mushrooms explain why the monster density is so high. Just the one cluster we managed to claim is already spreading across the ceiling unchecked, and thank goodness Veti's curses and Drakes shouts managed to kill those damned burrowing parasites," Aroust nodded. "If it were all one long tunnel, the horrors down here would no doubt have killed each other off. But these tunnels snake and connect so frequently, with so many side passages sprouting everywhere, it's almost like a damned underground forest filled to the fucking brim with hostile wildlife."

Jack nodded, in complete agreement. "Agreed. But this is different."

Barlton furrowed his bushy crimson eyebrows. "Mind clarifyin' that just a bit, friend Jack?"

Jack took a deep shuddering breath, nodding his head before looking his dwarven friend straight in the eyes. "This corridor is different. If we turn left? We'll be back in the thickest part of the warrens, fighting Death Bears, Hellpedes, Calamari Worms, and worse. But at least we'll be alive. If we turn right?" He swallowed, turning his gaze to meet those of all his friends. "I think, maybe, it's the exit?"

Elof's eyes widened. Seeming to have made peace with the horrors of their existence, to focus only on fighting, training, focusing on self-improvement, reveling in the rush of potency from his kills and leveling up, his serene acceptance of life's odd hand came crashing down in a pile of desperate hope and anxious need when he was blithely informed that salvation, freedom from this endless nightmare, was a simple fork in the road away. "We can get the hell out of here? Finally?" His broken laughter held a twist of mad desperation too long kept in check, earning a worried from from An Li. "Well then what the hell are we waiting for?"

Drake was nodding his head in emphatic agreement. "That's a damn good question. Why the hell aren't we racing out of here as fast as we can?" He flashed a bleak smile. "Don't get me wrong, the rush of living the dark adventure of my dreams, reveling in every battle and laughing in death's face as I hit level 13 in a class I've only heard about in bardic verse, is a dream come true. Especially that now I'm able to tap into powers echoing the feats of the mightiest wizards recorded in the academy I spent so many years studying at.

But that wondrous glory aside, I'm tired as hell of having to fight for my life every damned day, not having felt the sun on my face or a fresh spring breeze for endless months, trapped in this dark nightnmare world breathing in air that tastes of the desert and parched flesh after we break open every killbox you make, going at a snails pace so everything properly cools before we claim yet another section of hallway after butchering all the beasts within, and all the while, we're just a single mistake from shrieking our last." Drake's rueful laughter was perhaps a bit more bitter than he had intended. "Besides. I'm tired as hell of being the lonely odd sap with nothing but nightmares to keep me company. I, for one, can't wait to get out of here."

These words earned a number of apologetic winces and sympathetic nods, because Drake was right. The desperation of fighting for one's life had lowered barriers and strengthened bonds like nothing else, all inhibitions melting away after the terror of mortal peril and the exhilaration of battle had left them all, each and every one of them, desperate for connection, solace, relief. And all of them had found a partner, someone to cherish and love and hold them through the long dark night of their lives.

All of them save Drake. The bright cheerful jester of the group who so often eased the endless hours they weren't fighting for their lives with humorous tales of academy or court life, regaling them as well with his own conquests and indiscretions, which they all honored with cheers, hoots, or polite laughter, savoring the warmth and memory of city lights and bright blue skies.

A momentary escape, for their minds, at least, from the crushing reality of their situation.

Yet when the last tale was told and all made their way to what were now separate sections of the growing corridor they claimed each night, it was only Drake who was forced to sleep alone, with nothing but the horrors of the day before to keep him company.

Yet whenever Jack would smile and catch his friends eyes and shoot the breeze in between training, resting, or claiming yet more corridors for their miniature domain as they fought off twisted horrors each and every time, Drake had always been ready with a quip and smile. His buried desperation Jack had always suspected but never seen only making itself known now, in what might well be their final hour.

"So again, Jack, why the hell aren't we heading to this exit just as fast as we damned well can?"

Aroust glared for long moments at Elof and Drake both. "Neither of you are idiots. I think you both know the answer to that question well enough. We shouldn't have to say a word."

Drake's eyes flashed with sudden heat as Elof groaned. "So assume I'm an idiot. Tell me!"

A worried Veti cleared her throat. "I think what he's getting at is that there's a..."

"Yes. A boss monster. I get it." Drake's bitter laughter rang discordant on their ears. "Of course there is! I mean bloody hell, how could it be otherwise?" His gaze hardened. "And I don't care how ugly or fearsome it is. Are we really going to let any damned horror stop us all from going home?"

Veti's jaw tightened, the pressure of all they had endured finally getting even to the most soft-spoken of all of them. "That depends on the monster, Drake. Don't you think? We need to understand what's ahead, how best to fight it, or if we even can fight it, before we dare take a step forward we can never take back! Or, you can just charge in like a blind fool and get killed, and then the rest of us can enjoy being hunted down by your father even if we survive this hell hole, because you were too desperate to think it through!"

Drake's eye's widened, surprised by the heat in her words as Veti took a measured breath and said. "Believe me, no matter how maddeningly sweet the power flowing through our veins now is, no matter how tightly I snuggle myself against my man's side, convincing myself I'm somewhere far, far away, sleeping safely in my bed each night before visualizing myself taking a walk in the forest, that I choose each day to adventure yet again, visualizing myself walking back to the Delve entrance by choice... convincing myself that every day is a wonderful opportunity to grow in directions I couldn't even conceive of, this time last year... that sweet bit of deluded fantasy pops like a soap bubble at the first flicker of hope that this nightmare might finally be over. I want to dash out of here like a madwoman just as much as you do, believe me, Drake!"

The last she said with a broken sob, eyes reddening with the intensity of her words, before leaning into the powerful dwarf standing so protectively close to her. "I want to get out of here more than you can believe, Drake. Take my winnings, buy a beautiful home by the lake in the nicest quarter of the city, and spend every day savoring the sunrise before studying magics from the most understanding of tutors at the gentlets of paces, before taking walks in the park, shopping along wizard's row, and just enjoying life's simple domestic pleasures, with my man by my side."

She took a deep shuddering breath, Barlton holding her close, knowing better than to say a word.

"Holding back when hope finally seems in sight is killing me too, Drake. But before we make a horrible mistake we might forever regret, at least let me scout out the area ahead."

Aroust nodded. "We'd be fools not to feel out our enemy as best we can, to understand his habits, patterns, weaknesses. Perhaps, even if whatever horror passes for a boss this deep in Shadow is far beyond us, perhaps there is a way we can slip past, regardless."

Drake slowly relaxed his clenched fists, he and Elof exchanging mirrored nods and bitter half smiles, more similar in those moments than they had been at any time before.

"Alright," they said in surprised unison, Elof blushing and stepping back, in that moment reminded of rank, even if most of the time it was the farthest thing from any of their minds.

"Veti, please, scout for us with our gratitude, and thank all the heavens that you diversified into scrying with your last level!" This earned more than one approving nod, all of them approving of Veti's latest foray into the arcane arts, different as it was from her specialized Bane spells.

After a few second's murmured chant and the slow buildup of power, Veti summoned forth a small one inch globe of pulsating crimson with the whispered words "Oculs Sanguinis!"

Jack whistled. "Looking good, Veti!" He said, before looking down at the small pool of blood being used as a scrying pool by her feet, Veti wincing as she forced herself to draw the blood before glaring Jack's way.

"I'm really not a fan of your crimson magics, Jack."

Jack smirked. "Hey, it's your spell, not mine."

She flashed a bleak smile at that. "More true than you know. But sadly, I only had one other source save myself to look to for inspiration, and your magic tends to be, well..."

"Delighfully savage?" Aroust finished for her with a grin.

Veti just shook her head. "Alright, guys. Our little orb's through the hole trap those beasties always love trying to squeeze themselves through to get to us juicy humans... now its slipping through the far barrier wall... thanks for opening the hole, Jack."

Her brow furrowed, her gaze growing ever more thoughtfull as they looked down at the winding corridor, Veti keeping her eye on a relatively northern path before it abruptly widened, all the winding intersecting tunnels seeming to converge in unison.

Jack frowned. "That is really strange."

Chu Hua glanced his way. "What's wrong?"

He gestured to the crimson scrying pool. "The fact that we only saw two shadowy creatures scurrying down one of the tunnels, and absolutely nothing is attacking our orb. Hell, the fact that nothing's there at all where the small winding tunnels converge. When was the last time anything like that has happened? Hell, when's the last time Veti's spell actually lasted more than a minute before something managed to snap it up and pop it like a grape?"

Veti winced at those words, though Chu Hua and her sisters exchanged thoughtful nods. "You're right. We suffer swarms multiple times every day. Any period of calm is short lived. This? This is... uncanny."

Elof beamed. "I think it's great! Maybe it means we're finally past the worst of it?"

But Aroust just shook his head, scratching his scruffy beard as he peered intently into the scrying pool. "Somehow I don't think that's how it works, Drake."

"Indeed it isn't," Aroust concurred. "When beasties abruptly thin out this deep in the Underdark, its usually because they don't want to end up prey to an even bigger beast."

Drake's frown deepened, handsome aristocratic features hardening as he gazed down at the suddenly widening tunnel the blood orb was now showcasing, the massive roof abruptly rising and arching in a magnificent natural ampitheater of a room, which had somehow managed to magnify the wrongness of this place in infinite detail, the rough stone sides of the structure under such intense pressure it had been forced to transcend the limits of mortal material, as if the entire structure had been given strength by a resilience room or the equivalent.

Of course, far more remarkable even than the stone walls radiating unspeakable resilience, more remarkable even then the absolute fortune in sparkling crystals that made Barlton hiss with wonder, was the cold iron door on the far side of the chamber.

And with a massive creak, the steel door opened, revealing half a dozen Death Bears of a size and potency that sent chills down their spine, followed by a shadowy tendriled figure right behind them, radiating a killing intensity they could feel, even through Veti's orb.

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Veti hissed. "Those creatures... they're nothing like the Shadow Bears we've fought up to now."

Then Jack's heart lurched in his chest as, for just a half second, the shadow figure to the rear of the scythe-limbed bears was revealed, only long enough for a single flash of something that might or might not have been a tentacle to strike Veti's eye.

Their sorceress abruptly cried out and lurched back as the tiny pool erupted in blood.

"Veti!" Barlton scooped her up in his arms, and Jack was relieved to see no trace of blood or injury.

Before their sealed off chamber rang with what sounded like massive sledgehammers pounding against rune-reinforced stone.

"Shit!" Aroust hissed. "That bastard, whatever it is, spotted us?"

Chu Hua nodded. "And now they're trying to break through."

And Jack couldn't help but shudder, feeling the weight of absolute destructive intent unlike anything they had faced before. For such was his connection to the arterial tunnel his ever growing fortification had claimed such a long swath of. Able to sense like the icy chill of dread now slithering down his spine the midnight horrors clawing and scraping and pounding at the wall and the stone faces adjoining Jacks warded barrier, like sentient waves crashing against an unforgiving shore.

And this time, much to his horror, he sensed that they might actually break through.

Jack, Aroust, and Barlton exchanged intent looks as the rest of their party all but quaked in their boots.

"That can't be natural," Jack whispered. "Can it?"

Aroust clenched his fists. "No way in hell that's anything but contrived. That thing behind the Death Bears was leading them. Controlling them. It must have been! They were moving not like wild beasts, but like puppets! But how? Why?"

Barlton furrowed his expressive brows. "Something unnatural's afoot, that's a given." He turned to his girl. "Veti?"

But the normally thoughtful, scholarly girl just trembled, skin taking on a deathly pallor they could sense even in the dim phosphorescent light the luminescent lichens they had been transplanted gave off, now almost as bright as day to their feat-enhanced or otherwise modified vision, all of them having left most human frailties far behind, truly embracing the wildest of dreams, that once again risked transforming into the most gristly of nightmares.

Barlton worldlessly swept the trembling girl in his powerful arms. "It's alright, luv. We'll get through this, same as we always do. That's all that matters."

Jack gave his friend a reassuring smile before frowning at the far door once more. "Well, it's obvious something odd's afoot. I mean, there is that door and all. And this is a dungeon, we're in the depths of living dream. Isn't it fair to say that any resemblance to natural formations and biological ecosystems, even underground ones, is more artifice than real? That just because it follows a pattern for a while doesn't mean it's stuck to the pattern, so why not swarms of nightmare horrors and steel doors in the middle of nowhere?"

Jack was surprised to see the cynical frowns his words garnered him. Normally his friends were more open to his wandering trains of thought.

"Jack?"

"Yes, Elof?"

His young friend did his best to drown out the howls and screams. "What is this door you keep referring to?"

Jack blinked in surprised, then frowned at his friend. - Was Elof having him on?

"Now's not the time, Jack!" Snapped Chu Hua. "Get your flames ready, in case those monsters actually manage to smash down the barrier!"

And even though he knew he had nothing to fear, his heart also lurched in his chest at the awful shrieks and howls ringing through the chamber beyond his final barrier, pretending he hadn't just cut open his thumb and double reinforced a rune that had never needed such before, for all that the sigil blazed with crimson fire as the howling hordes beyond continued to screetch, claw, and scream.

And Jack couldn't help flashing a wicked grin at his anxious friends. "You know, it seems to me that we have two choices."

"Which one of those involves not dying?" said a wry Aroust.

"The one where I subtly raise the stone a good twenty feet back before opening a fist-wide slit and blasting the make-shift chamber beyond into a roaring hot oven. Then rince and repeat."

Barlton immediately nodded his approval. "I like it! Lessen the pressure and fatten the purses of our souls!"

Jack gave a too cocky grin of agreement when he was suddenly knocked off his feet, jaw cracking with unexpected pain as his ears roared with a horrific sound he had actually been foolish enough to think he alone would forever be spared.

The pounding sound of potency and fury fused into one titanic whole that, if the cracks now forming on the wall as the girls shrieked and cried out almost uniformly, could well spend his doom.

After countless weeks of facing off against too-powerful opponents and obstacles, surviving only because they maneuvered their enemies to face them one by one, it seemed like turnabout was fair play after all, and at least one of their foes was about to burst through.

Heart in throat, his eyes widened at the sight of hairline cracks appearing in his formerly indestructible wall, pounded by a creature of unfathomable strength and speed.

"Move! Get back 5 chambers deep! Now, now, now!" Jack roared, already forming the trench he feared he would soon need and filling it with a caustic brew, his friends gazing in horrified stupor as massive beach ball sized orbs began flooding the chamber.

"Now!"

Veti's eyes widened in horror. Chu Hua, the strongest, fiercest, and sweetest girl Jack had ever let into his life looked ready to burst into tears.

He took a deep breath, forcing the numerous stone barriers he had formed over the preceeding days and weeks to ease ever so slightly open, crevices just wide enough for their largest, who thankfully wore chain, not harder more rigid plates, to slip through.

"Go! Go! Go now! Don't look back, run! We're out of time!" Jack screamed, as he twisted back around to meet the death coming for them all, horrific swarms of milky white tendrils slipping through the cracking rocks, a terrified Jack finally understanding the nature of their ultimate foes.

Only then did he allow the hyper reinforced barrier before him to melt away, gazing into the surprised nightmare octopedal face before him, now gazing at him with two surprised milky white eyes above eight serpentine like tentacles around a cavernous lamprey mouth filled with ghastly white threads writhing in serpentine fashion.

And how Jack wanted to wretch at the sight of the swarm of silvery white threads connecting the soul flayer to no less than half a dozen titanic sized shadow bears instinctively flinching in the heartbeat they could have attacked, their ursine bodies mirroring their masters robed humanoid body perfectly as it flinched back beside the glaring presence of a single helpless human.

The massive chamber echoed with serpentine laughter echoed by a monstrous hoots and howls. The swarm of tentacles surrounding the squid-headed creature's horror of a mouth contorted with alien mirth. "You are the one responsible for disrupting the flow of our prey? A harmless human?" said the horrific voice out of nightmare, it's soft, sibillant words now slithering across his soul.

Perception check made! Racial modifiers in effect!"

Quickness check made!

"That's right!" Jack said, trembling hand already gripping his mother's greatest gift to him in his right hand, the sparkle of silvery sheers flashing through the air so quick that he wouldn't have even caught it when first he dared his path, when his Quickness was far below 15.

And still he was slow. Too slow to cut off the sudden weight of a monstrous god-tier soul roaring for his surrender, demanding he abase himself and slice his own throat for the monster before him... such that Jack was horrified he might have actually complied, tearing open his own entrails at the nightmare images of inconcievable torment flashing through his mind... were it not for his mother's cold grey eyes now pinning his own as her husky voice told Jack of the horrors that had flooded their homeland long ago, turning a once proud land of glorious paladins and righteous kings into puppets for hideous mind lords determined to rule them all.

"The trick, Jack, should you ever feel their slithery tendrils enter your mind, is to move your body with the flow of their commands. To make their motions your own. You don't fight their commands, rather you let them take the lead in the dance of your mind. Only then do you dare switch the pace and reclaim control." Her mother's eyes twinkled with gentle mirth as she spent hours embarrassing a frustrated Jack with her utter mastery of his own body through his mind, making him dance like a little prince, dressing him up in his sister's clothes.

But his trembling limbs were no longer forced to dance in lace.

Now they were being made to tear open his own entrails, stopped only my his own mithril jack of plates.

"Mom! It's happening! He's in my mind!"

Her gentle smile hardened. "So do what you did when you finally understood the dance I forced you to embrace. Claim it. And make it your own."

And in that horrified endless instant the Mind Lord's tendrils had entered his skull, wasting precious seconds trying to push through crimson armaments suffused with his resiliency, Jack finally understood.

Surrendering at last to the rough commands of a puppeteer forcing Jack's unfamiliar body to obey.

Because instead of resisting, Jack embraced the flow.

Embraced the motions.

Forcing every twist and turn of his body in ever more exaggerated convolutions, compelling his arms to windmill forward in odd revolutions, controlling the anxious pounding of his heart, finally grabbing control of himself, his body, just as he did when trapped in a nightmare.

Grabbing ahold of one truth.

The movement of his arms. The motion of his legs. Not trying to fight it, with the metaphoric break line cut, but just grab ahold of the steering wheel, twisting into his kidnapper's turn so forcefully he sensed unseen cords suddenly snapping free.

A fierce surge of hope as he made his body twist around even faster, arms now windmilling like a mad marionette at risk of tumbling any second, but so long as he was the one making his arms spin, his body twist around, he was free.

Free for the precious seconds it took a supremely irritated octopedal horror to waste trying to control a new toy when it could have had him instantly slaughtere with a single command to its enslaved Death Bears.

Leaving Jack free to recall at last his mother's most precious, terrible weapons as father brought news of slavers daring to plague the roads between their sanctuary and Greyspeak, where so many youth spent at least a year of their lives in mundus before heading back home once more, often with fresh husbands and wives in tow, bringing new blood to their community, their time in mundus infusing and anchoring their souls, assuring their town wasn't lost to Regio and Dream. Yet there was a cost in keeping routes between mundus and the storybook place of his birth open, and somehow it was always the worst that humanity had to offer that managed to slip through the cracks.

And whether or not it was a reflection of the darkness within his own parents souls, their own nightmare past, made no difference, because the result was the same.

Murderers, slavers, predators of all shapes and sizes. Fierce of body, malicious of mind.

Monsters in human form who's malignant stares and vicious sneers, even after being bound and gagged, would inevitably turn to wide eyed looks of horror when the young boy that had been Jack, lost in dream and trance, manifested his mother's favorite tools as his father coldly recounted the wolf in human form's crimes, one by one.

And forever Jack had been strong enough to endure, buoyed by his mother's promise that he would always be free to forget come the first rays of dawn, forever losing himself in his favorite storybook adventures, even if he never could summon sheers of his own, pudgy hands waiting for his mother's own.

Until he was forced to gaze at the snarling countenance of the most massive, bloated slaver his father had yet to catch, solemn sad words said so softly that had never the less brought him to his knees.

"I'm sorry, Jack. We were too late." His father's sad eyes, superimposed over the Aboination’s, had been so filled with regret it had broken his little heart.

"Lisa?" he recalled so clearly his high pitched voice, gazing so hopefully at his father all those years ago when Lisa's mother had come to their farm, desperate eyes pleading as she was in a panic to find her little girl, everyone knowing without a word ever being said aloud that when trouble came to the village, there were no better people to talk to than Jack's parents.

Somehow, they got things done.

Yet not this time, the little boy Jack had been realized, blinking away hot awful tears as he felt a scream choke in his throat as the now roaring bloated stranger tied so tightly began to laugh, they had been to late.

To late to save the sweet little girl sharing his farm adventures, so quickly becoming his friend.

A girl he had forgotten until that very moment, dancing to the tune of a Mind Lord’s commands, haunted by memories that were boon and bane in equal measure as the slaver's foul words echoed once more through his soul.

"Was that her name, that little bitch? Was she your precious, you spoiled little boy? She got what was coming for her, just like you and your family will, you little brat! You think this village is somehow safe, protected by that joke of a ridge? Ha! My whole band now knows where you all live! You're beyond the duke's patrols, you fools have no town guard, you're easy pickings! And unless you want to end your lives in chains, you'll let me and my men go right now and pray we don't come back for your—"

Jack never did hear the rest of the monster's threat, just gazing into his shocked pig-like countenance, the monster's eyes widening in horror as blood geysered out of his nose and throat, gazing down at the horrific sight of Jack's pudgy hand holding an implement of silver.

Sheers of the mind so sharp Jack had used it to cut a living man's throat before his father had ever trained him on how to use a sword.

Sheers that still remembered the horror of a boy forced to confront the sneering pockmarked countenance that had been the last thing his childhood friend had ever seen.

Sheers forged of such sharp bitter hate they had sliced through realms of spirit to tear effortlessly through living flesh.

And the look of surprise his mother and father had both shown that day, having hoped only that Jack would be able to Snip and Spool perhaps a portion of their enemy's soul, was nothing compared to the octopus-faced Mind Lord watching his latest human marionette snip free his own strings.

Bulbous eyes widening as it took in the silvery sheen of the tool in Jack's hand.

"Your kind were purged!" The squid man gurgled as he stumbled back in disbelief.

Before being bathed in liquid flame.