A quick raid of the house for supplies, and the group was back and preparing Cormac’s plan.

Itra had taken to turning herself into a living bonfire to light up the night enough to properly get things in order. “How do you even think of these things?”

“He is very creative!” Ixia answered for Cormac as the two helped Gene into the enlarged silken robe that they had found that the silver skinned man was still struggling to put on thanks to his well built arms. “And deception and camouflage are tried and tested tactics by nature itself, this will work!”

Ed shook his head as he hefted a load of scarves and a worrying amount of duct tape next to where Gene was seated after finally managing to get the Gloomfang’s red silken robe on. “I both want this to work and don’t want it to work? It’s so stupid?”

“It is only stupid if it doesn’t work.” Cormac chastised him as he walked over to check on the twins busily applying some fast makeup to the severed head. It was up to those two alone as Ixia was still baffled by the concept and Itra only ever dealt with makeup as an automatic part of her own projected glamor.

The twins offered painfully forced grins as they revealed the fruits of their hard work in the form of a severed head with so much makeup caked on as to make the woman somehow paler than she had been in life. One of them noticed a trail of blood leaking down from her nose and quickly shoved a wadded up bit of cotton in it before wiping away the blood through several layers of foundation that the two started to reapply.

Gene groaned as he sat waiting. “Can you...figure out a way to double bag her neck? She’s bleeding an awful lot for someone who’s been dead for a while....”

“Yeah I got it.” Ed set about with a fistful of grocery bags and duct tape to ensure a minimal amount of monster blood would be leaking onto his friend. “There we go, now hold still while I get it attached with the scarves.”

“This is macabre.” Gene complained once more as Ed taped down the neck to Gene’s head before covering him with scarves. Already he was regretting the part of the plan that involved being led around blind. His muffled voice called out. “Think we can make some small eye holes?”

Ed looked to Cormac and Ixia, who looked over the disguise and tried to push aside some cloth to allow the silver skinned man to not be completely blind. Pleading eyes looked back at them and a small muffled “thanks” escaped.

“Great! Hardest part is done! Now for arm makeup!” Cormac announced as Gene groaned once more before the twins started slathering on every last bit of foundation that they could find in the house onto his arms to complete the disguise. After the process was complete, he stood as Itra approached with a dimming flame.

They all took in their hasty handiwork.

“We could have fought off a monster horde with dignity, but here we are with a gradeschool disguise...” The woman of fire complained as Gene tried turning around with the unmoving head

“Wise is the predator who uses slain prey as bait.” Ixia said as she hugged a pleasantly confused Cormac. “Their suffering shall soon be at an end, we must ask for the last of their fear so that their warped minds do not set them against us in our quest.”

After a moment of silence as they all reconciled that fact, Gene gave a thumbs up as Ed guided him over to the large stone door to pull it open. That same cacophony as last time was unleashed as a low roar from deeper within the ground to make everyone’s skin bristle. The silver skinned man, now in disguise of questionable quality, heaved a final sigh as he led the way in.

Twin balls of flame in Itra’s hands lit the way down a short corridor that opened into a vast pit like a colosseum holding a veritable sea of twisted wailing figures that only carried a vague indication of ever having been human. All of them warped in their own way, but the common look was that of men tall only due to having been stretched as all of their discolored flesh was pulled tight and twisted against deformed bones. Where may have once been faces now only remained dark bottomless pits for eyes and a tooth filled open gash to suggest a mouth.

At the introduction of Itra’s light, they all howled in growing anger as they looked up only to fall into silence a moment later at the sight of Gene’s disguise. The silence was short lived as the sea of twisted figures fell to their knees in otherworldly wailing, long bony fingers trying in vain to cover what one might consider eyes.

Cormac came very close to losing his nerve right then and there as he tried to remember to breathe from up here on this raised overlook. The sight alone was enough to freeze him in place, to say nothing of how he had come all too close to becoming one of them himself. Too close to vanishing into some other world, only to be thrown into a pit of actual wailing sorrow as all who ever might care about him never saw another trace of him ever again.

But then he did have someone counting on him right next to him, he thought to himself, now looking at him with great concern.

“Cormac?”

“Hmm?”

“We’ll get through this together, Cormac.”

“Yeah…” His throat ran dry, and as he remembered to breathe he was punished with the stench of death so powerful it proved to be another test of his will. One he scraped past as he focused on Ixia’s eyes locked on him. “We should move before we find out the limits of how dumb...or in despair they are.”

The rest of the group wasn’t faring much better, holding back barely contained revulsion and their most recent meal. As Ed was holding a hand to his rather green looking face, his eyes widened before he pointed to the center of the pit.

“There!”

In the center was a dais holding a black and gold altar, a shelf filled with books and loose papers, as well as a number of other shelves holding things too indistinct at this distance all around a large circular bed.

The raised perch they were on led down into the pit by way of carved out stairs that ended right at a group of the tortured souls fallen to the floor. Gene took a step forward to the stairs. “I’m going to need some help with those.”

Itra rushed to his side as he grabbed onto her forearm and she lit the way with everyone else following close behind. As they set foot on the upper levels of the carved out coliseum of sorrow the wailing figures recoiled back from the disguised Gene and cleared a writhing path with every step he took towards the dais.

“I hate this plan.” Ed said through grit teeth as he, along with all others, stuck close to Gene and kept his bow at the ready.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Me too.” Cormac’s teeth were also about to shatter if he grit them any harder, feeling horribly out of his league with only a shovel to his name right now. “Got any better ones?”

“Nope.” He admitted while trying to keep his breathing steady, offering no more words and resolving that the only way out was forward now.

The wailing wretches kept their eyes mostly to the floor, only taking the occasional glance up to confirm that the source of true horror was still there and parting the sea of them to make ‘her’ way to the dais as ‘she’ often would while relishing their agony and fear. As soon as they were upon the Dais the group fanned out, taking advantage of how the wailing wretches all gave the structure a wide berth.

“Fuck it, just shove everything that looks even slightly important in a bag!” Cormac called out over the wails as everyone took a trash bag from Ed while Gene patrolled the edge of the dais to ward off anything that dared to get closer. Through ill parted scarves he caught a glimpse of the circle of crushed obsidian at the perimeter.

All others had already begun ransacking the place while trying to ignore the sea of warped wretched out there with eyes to the floor, and how they were starting to steal more glances up at them. Cormac and Ixia tried to block out the wails as they emptied as much of the book shelf into the duffel bag as it would fit. All concerns of carry weight were cast aside by a wave of adrenaline that promised to save all those objections for later as they grabbed what they could by the light of Cormac’s glowing flower.

They moved to the altar, finding a massive amount of shattered obsidian sitting around a book containing pictures of various objects made from obsidian. Ixia quickly stuffed it into her own bag with a determined nod.

Itra was keeping one hand aloft with flame burning bright as she did her best to continue their ransacking with one free arm. Everything was thrown into bags as Gene paced the perimeter with greater urgency and growing nerves from trying to count all of them. Every estimate pushing that number higher and his eyes growing wider though not daring to risk uttering even a single word to risk that being the thing to break this disguise.

Though more of the garish ghouls were glancing up at him now, at his friends, daring to hold that gaze longer, and that was absolutely blood that was running down his face right now.

And that poor unfortunate soul kneeling there with two crooked slits that sat in the center of his face where a nose may once have been pawed at the skin there to hold it open as it sniffed the air right before slowly raising its ‘eyes’ to meet that of the Gloomfang.

Gene stomped a foot on the ground twice, and the twins looked over to him before shouting to the team above the rising roar of the crowd. “Time to go!”

The rest of the group looked up with wide eyes, scanning the crowd and seeing more wailing wretches clawing at their faces to let more air into their nostrils to sniff the air.

Cormac sucked in a lungful of fetid air through his teeth, regretting both that action and most actions leading up to this point. “That’s enough nightmares for now. TIME TO LEAVE!”

The guttural wails that filled the massive pit seemed to grow angrier as the group hefted trash bags full of unspeakable magic over their shoulders or shoved the very same into the arms of Gene to lift them without effort. The twins started to cast a spell in an attempt to calm the crowd as Gene led the way off the dais to a crowd that was parting with far greater reluctance this time.

“Once we’re at the stairs-” Cormac instructed as he held his shovel at the ready. “-tear the head off and just run!”

Ixia touched his arm, pointing to several members of the crowd now standing on their feet once more with toothy maws opening to let out wails so angry they seemed to accuse them of being the cause of such pain and sorrow. “Time to run right now!”

The woman of fire needed no further instruction as she extended a palm towards the stairs and unleashed a gout of flame as the abominations fell to the ground wreathed in flames.

“Hold this.” She shoved her bag of forbidden magic into Genes arms as he ripped the monster head off of his own so that he may see again, handing it to Cormac before they all broke into a sprint towards the stairs as Itra’s eyes and hair lit up and she unleashed further conflagrations on the writhing mass of wailing wretches now running after them with clawing outstretched arms.

The masses fell over themselves as they rushed the retreating group sprinting up the stairs as fast as their overburdened legs could carry them. Smoke and the stench of burning flesh began to choke out the already stale, fetid air in here as they ascended with Itra incinerating everything that came after them into a shrieking burning mass that was immediately climbed over or shoved out of the way by another fresh wailing wretch. The group of seven made it to the top of the stairs just as light was starting to pour from Itra’s mouth and she had shucked off her jacket to leave her in a black tank top as she gasped for air.

“Can’t...go...much....longer……” She huffed as she hurled a massive fireball back at the overlook where they had first seen the horrors.

Only as a mass of writhing, skittering scourges advanced over the edge as they all climbed up and over the mound of fallen.

Itra screamed as she unleashed a massive blast of flame from both hands at the advancing masses, right before she collapsed to the ground.

Ixia shot out a thick fine from her palm to loop under the fallen woman’s arms to drag her behind her as the vines were being seared and singed. She fought through that as they made it to the stone door and burst out just as they heard more of the monsters running at them through the short passage. The silver skinned man dropped the bags to slam the stone door shut, throwing his full weight against it as a mounting force on the other end tried to shove their way out.

The Dryad released the still burning woman with a cry as the vine had almost burned clear through. The Guardian looked to the silver skinned man struggling to hold the door shut, then down to the monster head still in hand. He dropped the duffel bag and punted the Gloomfang head into the distance, hearing the sound of the stone door sealing behind him. Gene collapsed to the ground a second later with a loud thump, steadying his breath as everyone else in turn collapsed and gasped for air. They all looked to one another with solemn nods before the Guardian finally broke the silence.

“Someone else please come up with a plan next time.” He said as he stared up at the foreign night sky.

“Next time?” The twins asked in unison while leaning their backs against one another on the desert floor.

Cormac waved some indistinct gesture as his breathing started to return to normal. “Yup, we’re all upgraded from random semi-hostile strangers to colleagues.”

“A crossover!” Ixia had regained her breath the fastest as her magical biology left everyone in the dust. “Wait….no…a team up!”

“No no it could count as a crossover, I think they all very clearly have their own thing going on-”

“Hey!” Ed shouted after the last of several ragged breaths and an eyebrow just as incredulous as he. “We just got through all of that and now you’re busy declaring us friends?”

“Work associates, with the possibility of promotion to friends later on.” Cormac noted as he tried to climb to his feet on shaking legs, the adrenaline not quite out of his veins yet. “We’ll talk stock options down the road.”

Gene sat up and tilted his head as he studied the two relative strangers. “You are very strange, but we will not say no to aid in our efforts.”

“Yeah I’ve always been a bit weird.” Cormac said with a cheer as Ixia helped him to his feet and he leaned on her as his legs remembered how to not fold in on themselves. “Now, let’s go grab that monster head and talk more when we’re not um…”

He looked around while gesturing with a free hand at all of the alien desert before picking up the duffel bag of loot. “Here wherever we are.”

No one objected as they collected themselves and made for the threshold back into the house.