A blood mass, immobile and smiling, with teeth like horns, was in front of him.

The beast threw itself on him like a mad animal.

Ran, the Shield, charged it, pushing it with a shoulder.

The massive creature was a large red snake. It rolled over in the filth of the rotten floor, moving everywhere like a headless insect.

It attacked again!

Ran stepped in front, the beast’s shiny teeth circled the man all around, and the putrid mouth advanced over him, swallowing the metal knight in a forest of piked bones… But he stood still!

“Come on, move!” Aien’s legs were shaking… his muscles were clamped from the horror and the cold glaze of the soulless beast inside his own.

“Death to the Rippers of Souls!” He shouted to give courage to his cowardly instinct.

His blade was out… He attacked the face… He pushed his sword under the worm-like skin and ripped it off altogether… Then, a swarm of snakes flowed from the wound all over him… Their fangs attacked his clothes, and they got inside them, while the giant’s teeth still gnawed Ran’s metal plates.

Ignoring the horde of pests leeching on his skin, Aien kept cutting all the way down the red thing.

He rejoiced as it dropped dead, but there was still the mass of small snakes... He was being chewed from under his clothes.

“BANG”

A wave of air blasted through the cave, bouncing on every wall it reached. It was a shockwave of energy from Lise, that she had channeled since the beginning.

Aien felt dizzy… his ears rang like within a thunderstorm… his legs failed, and he stumbled to his knees. The worms got paralyzed from the choc. Removing them was easy, but they came out with chunks of skin. Therefore, he stopped feeling his red arms.

The medic ran toward him, while Ran walked out of the viper’s mouth, in triumph.

“To win without risk is to triumph without glory!” He said to Aien, as his sensations slowly came back. The sheared nerves in his hands were regrowing.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

In the end, they took a break, shocked, sitting on the rocks over the blood-filled water.

-----

Everything ended fine, it seemed.

As said earlier, these caves were full of monsters. Their snake-like shapes allowed them to slide in the narrow paths and reach places where men couldn’t be.

“Everyone’s okay?” Says the medic.

“Looks good.”

They were shocked by the gruesomeness of the scene, but it would pass. They were trained for these encounters, and that was only one monster.

“Still,” Lise said, “one is too few for this place. Where is the swarm we should expect?”

She breathed heavily as her energy refilled after the sound attack. She may have been stunned too, but she wouldn’t have admitted it.

Close to where the snake appeared, they heard a stream of water. Getting closer, they noticed an entrance in the rock, leading to an extremely wide cave. The surrounding walls were very steep, and water flowed all over them like small rivers, deep down to an unknown place, in the dark.

They would have avoided this path, if it wasn’t for the rope tied right here, on a stalagmite.

“Did they descend?” said Nila.

“What madness… What is there to find?” said Lise.

“Nothing is known from this place… No maps, no ways… The abyss below the abyss. We can’t force anyone to go there. Those who wish to go back are free.” Ran said.

After a short moment, it was clear that no one would flee. Therefore, they went down along the rope, following the slopes, above the void.

The walls were wet from a constant flow of cold water, reaching at times their knees. The shoes dug their way through the profound mud on the rock. They slipped a lot… better keep holding the rope.

They couldn’t see the entrance anymore, nor the wall on the other side, nor the floor below. Their lights were small, they gleamed like a circle on the wall around them. Everything outside was a mystery.

The glacial fluid soaked their clothes, freezing their muscles, and slipping their hands. They walked on a vertical wall… The rivers turned into waterfalls… Water flowed on their faces… In their eyes… In their ears. Their senses were blurred, and they breathed the cold flood in their lungs.

If someone screamed to renounce, they would have heard nothing but a torrent, drowning their words like a tide.

Unfortunately, the cord ended here, hanging over the precipice.

“Where is the way?” said Aien, but his words were just breaths underwater.

Did they have to climb back now?

Ran, who led the way, gave Aien a hand sign. There was a white light beneath them, so subtle he didn’t notice, with the water veiling his eyes.

So Ran started adding their own rope to this one, struggling to make a strong knot, as the current pushed them around like a storm. They hugged the rope with their lives, waiting for him to finish, in the water and the precipice.