Deep under Athena Academy, a party of adventurers crept through a vast cave. There were four of them. The first was a strong man wearing plate armor. He held a poleaxe. His companions were a woman wearing priest robes, a dwarf with plate armor, a crossbow in his hand, an axe on his hip, and a man with a spear and a gambeson.
“How long have we been down here?” the last man asked.
“A few hours, Jacob,” the dwarf answered. “It probably seems longer than it was to you surface-folk, but this is normal for us dwarves.”
“Yes, yes, you lot are always crawling around underground.”
“Let’s stay focused. There could be goblins around any corner. If we don’t stop them, they’ll raid more villages,” the strong man said.
They kept crawling their way through the darkness. The strong man summoned magical lights and sent them through ahead of the group. It caused vast shadows to form from stalagmites. Looking up, the group couldn’t see the ceiling of the cave. Once more, the strong man summoned a vampire light. Stalactites were so far above them that they looked like toothpicks.
A faint dripping noise came to their ears. Drip drop, drip drop.
“There must be some water dripping from the ceiling,” the dwarf noted.
“Yes,” the strong man agreed. “We’re under an Academy, Fafnir, so it might be something from there.”
“The water’s probably making those stalagmites you see over there, Meridith.”
They kept moving through the darkness. The dripping noise seemed to follow them. Drip drop, drip drop. However, the adventurers thought it was just their imagination or some illusion created by how sound moved through the cave.
Meridith kept summoning more lights until they saw purple blood. The adventurers slowed their pace. They prepared for a fight. Nothing happened. Moving forward, the outline of a goblin village came into the edge of their vision.
The settlement came into full view. Numerous goblins lay dead on the ground, squashed flat. Others were impaled on stalagmites. Still more were suspended from the tallest of their buildings with nooses around their necks.
“An entire goblin village, destroyed…” Fafnir muttered. “That’s not an easy feat.”
“Maybe some other adventurers got to them before we did?” the priestess suggested.
“Yeah, that’s probably it, Lynette,” Jacob nodded.
The dripping sound came once again. Drip drop, drip drop. It sounded closer.
“It could have also been a war between goblins. They fight each other as much as they attack us,” Fafnir said.
Drip drop, drip drop.
“Yes. Though, if a party of adventurers did this, they must have been sadistic. The goblins on stalagmites weren’t just thrown there. They were placed deliberately so they would die in as much pain as possible,” Meridith said.
DRIP drop drip drop.
“Maybe they just wanted revenge after goblins destroyed their village,” Jacob suggested.
DRIP DROP, drip drop.
“Hold on a second!” Fafnir called out. “That dripping water. It’s getting closer.”
DRIP DROP, DRIP drop.
“How the hell can it do that?” Jacob asked.
DRIP DROP, DRIP DROP.
“I don’t know, but we’re about to find out,” Fafnir said.
The adventurers turned towards the dripping sound. For a moment, there was almost complete silence. No noise except…
DRIP DROP, DRIP DROP.
Then, there was nothing. The noise stopped. Still, the adventurers kept their weapons up. They had years of experience and knew many of the horrors that lurked in the dark corners of the world. Not a hint of fear was within them.
drip.
That sound was so silent it was almost inaudible.
A pale face peered out of the darkness. It was taller than Jacob and Meridith put together. The skin hung down as if it was only attached to the muscle by a few pins. Its eyes were beady, filled with incomparable malice.
The thing moved forward. Its body was fat like a whale with exposed ribs. But its 20 legs were so thin that they shouldn’t have even been able to support a human; however, they were so long that the creature was 10 feet above the ground.
It opened its mouth, revealing a gaping abyss inside. The creature made a gagging sound. Dozens of arms emerged from its jaw. They were as thin as the legs with claws at the end of their fingers. Gaggling turned to gurgling as the monster choked on its own arms.
The arms plunged down like spears. Seeing them, the adventurers dodged the attacks. When the arms hit the hard stone cave floor, they twisted unnaturally with a sickening crack. But they turned and kept going after the party.
Meridith swung his poleaxe as hard as he could on an arm. His weapon’s head shattered. Fafnir shot his crossbow at the monster. The bolt broke into pieces upon colliding with the creature.
Lynette held up her arms.
“Great Gaia, primordial earth, hear my prayer!” she called out.
Spikes emerged from the ground. They rammed into the monster, piercing its flesh. Black blood trickled down.
Meridith and Jacob saw their chance. The former called up a great gout of fire. His comrade summoned a lightning bolt. Their spells blasted into the creature, creating a massive cloud of dust.
When it cleared, the creature was still standing. Its face and body had light burn marks on them. The monster was still gagging on its arms. However, its eyes were fixed on the spikes that held it in place.
The adventurers cast more spells. They crashed into the creature. There were more burn marks, but they were still light. Lynette incanted another prayer, and the spikes went deeper into the monster. It turned its gaze from the stone to her.
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Its arms stretched out, all going for the priestess. She jumped back as the limbs pursued her. Her comrades blasted the arms with magic. They kept coming as if nothing happened. Lynette had run 70 feet away when the arms stopped.
A squelching noise echoed throughout the cavern. The monster’s fat fell off its body. It piled up in lumps on the ground. There was nothing under it but a rib cage and a spinal cord.
The monster moved forward. When its ribs collided with the earth spikes. The spikes snapped like twigs. Fear pulsed through the adventurers. They fled deeper into the cave with the monster in hot pursuit.
DRIP DROP, DRIP DROP, DRIP DROP, DRIP DROP, DRIP DROP!
Meridith looked behind him to see that the creature was gaining on them. He stopped, letting his comrades run, and summoned a lightning bolt. With a scream of pain, Meridith poured magical energy into his spell. The thunderbolt grew until it was the size of an elephant.
He threw it at the creature. There was an explosion as the lightning bolt collided with the monster’s face.
Their pursuer emerged from the attack with moderate burns on its face. It ignored Meridith as it ran forward. He was crushed under one of its legs. Rather than dying facing a monster in an epic fight, the adventurer was killed without his attacker even knowing he was dead.
The monster’s arms reached out for Lynette. Jacob grabbed her hand and pulled her forward. A sudden force almost made him crash to the cave floor. Lynette was clutched in the grasp of a dozen arms.
“Help me!” she begged.
“Dammit!” Jacob shouted.
He yanked on Lynette; however, the monster yanked harder. Lynette was pulled from his grasp and brought into the air. Jacob noticed that the priestess was carrying something as she was grabbed by every single hand the creature had.
Jacob turned to the arm that had grabbed Lynette. It was gone.
The monster crushed Lynette. Its hands muffled her screams. Blood leaked from the gaps in its countless fingers. Its eyes gazed upon a stalagmite. Then, the monster turned to Jacob and reached out. His death would be anything but painless.
Fafnir ran as fast as his little legs could carry him. His lungs burned with a flaming inferno. He didn’t dare look back, fearing that the monster was right behind him.
The walls changed as Fafnir ran. At first, they were still cave walls. They just had carvings on them. Then, the jagged rocks were replaced with smooth stone.
That was when Fafnir stopped. He lived most of his life in the holds of the Dwarven kings and could recognize meticulously carved stone. The dwarf walked up to a wall and pressed his hand against it.
“Very smooth. There’s barely any cracks in it. Someone’s been maintaining it,” Fafnir said.
Fafnir ran along the wall, moving his hand all the while. He felt a long line. The dwarf pressed his hands into it and tugged. A door opened in the wall. Acting fast, Fafnir jumped inside it.
He found himself in a long, narrow hallway. Fafnir reloaded his crossbow and kept it at his shoulder. The dwarf advanced with slow steps. Several stone doors were ahead of him, less hidden than the first.
“If I can get to one of those doors, I might be able to find somewhere I can hide,” Fafnir thought.
Then, the sound of faint footsteps came to Fafnir’s ears. They were coming closer fast. Panic flashed through the dwarf. He dived at the nearest door as fast as he could, swung it open, and slammed it shut hard.
Fafnir spun his head around. He was in a room with several shelves, a weapons rack, and a bed. The dwarf dived under the bed, going as deep under it as he could.
He steadied his breathing as the door opened. Fafnir pointed his crossbow right at it. Then, the door opened.
Two reptilian creatures entered the room. They were 5 feet tall with pale scales and red eyes. Their jaws dripped with venom. Both of those things stood on their hind legs. Short spears were in their hands, metal lamellar armor on their bodies, and short swords on their hips. A forked tongue flicked out of the mouth of one of the creatures.
“Blind,” Fafnir thought. “They’ll make up for it with their other senses. Chances are that they know I’m here already.”
The lizardmen approached the bed with deliberate steps. They pointed their spears forward. Then, they stopped. One of them made a strange noise. Fafnir took careful aim with his crossbow. He pointed it at the unarmored neck of one of the creatures.
Fafnir pulled the trigger. A crossbow bolt flew into the lizardman’s neck. It let out a scream of pain as it collapsed to the ground. The creature’s comrade was distracted by its death.
That’s when Fafnir struck. He rushed out of the bed as fast as he could. The dwarf slammed his axe into the standing lizardman’s knee. It fell, and Fafnir buried his weapon into its skull. Grabbing his crossbow, Fafnir reloaded it as fast as he could. His mind raced.
“I can go out into the cavern where that thing is, or I can go deeper into these tunnels and take my chances with these lizardmen,” Fafnir thought.
The choice wasn’t even worth considering. Fafnir burst out of the room and ran in the opposite direction of the cave entrance. A lizardman exited a door ahead of him. He responded by planting his axe right in its gut and dragging it all the way through the lizardman's body.
Fafnir heard the lizardman scream in agony as it writhed on the ground. He kept running. More of the creatures got out of doors. The dwarf cut a bloody path through them, leaving a wake of the dead and dying behind him.
He came to a larger chamber and turned around. Fafnir turned to see a horde of lizardmen coming at him with spears, swords, and an assortment of other weapons.
“They’re pretty mad. I can’t say I blame them. They were just minding their own business when I barged in and started killing them. Well, it wasn’t like I could just ask them if I could hide in here,” Fafnir thought.
Without a hint of remorse, the dwarf shot a crossbow bolt into the closest lizardman. Fafnir then ran as fast as he could down another hallway. He saw another creature in front of him. It was trying to block his path with a large shield.
Fafnir used the weight of his plate armor to crash into the shield and knock the lizardman holding it to the ground. He slammed his axe into its throat before continuing to run.
More lizardmen were gathering in various hallways around Fafnir. The dwarf looked around for any escape. He saw a large and elaborately decorated golden door. While he had no idea if this door would help him, the gold tempted Fafnir.
He lunged at the door. More lizardmen were guarding it than there were in any other direction. They thrust spears at Fafnir, but their weapons glanced off his armor. Fafnir chopped off one of their legs with a single blow from his axe. Then, he dropped his crossbow, grabbed the lizardman, and dragged it with him.
The other lizardmen charged Fafnir, but he placed his axe at their injured comrade’s throat. They stopped dead in their tracks. A grin crossed the dwarf’s face.
“You’re just as weak as all the others, valuing your comrade’s life. Pathetic,” Fafnir backed towards the golden door.
When the lizardmen tried to follow Fafnir, he pressed his axe closer to his hostage’s neck. That stopped them dead in their tracks. The dwarf made it to the door and opened it with one hand while keeping his other on his axe.
Fafnir opened the door enough to push his body through. Then, he slit the lizardman’s throat, rushed through the door, and slammed it shut. The dwarf turned to see what room he was in. His jaw dropped to the ground.
A sea of gold was in front of him. Most were shining coins with the image of some lizardman on them. But there were also golden staffs, jewelry, and cups. Numerous other precious metals and gems were in the room as well.
The dwarf laughed as he ran into the room.
“This place is massive! I can hide in here until I can find some way out of this mess. And I can take some of this treasure with me! Since my party’s dead, I don’t have to share it with everyone!” Fafnir said.
He hid behind the largest pile of gold he could find. Then, Fafnir held his axe in hand and waited. The dwarf listened as closely as he could. There was silence. Fafnir peered around his cover to see that the door was still closed.
“Why the hell aren’t the lizardmen coming in?” he wondered.
Fafnir approached the door with cautious footsteps. He looked around to see if any lizardmen snuck in without him hearing. As far as he could tell, no one was there. The dwarf walked right up to the door and pressed his ear to it.
A faint sound of reptilian laughter came through the door.
Fafnir pushed against the entrance. It didn’t open. He pressed as hard as he could, but the door wouldn’t budge. The dwarf grimaced but remained calm.
“You bastards think you can just lock me in here and let me starve, do you? You’d better not underestimate dwarven magic just because we don’t shoot fireballs or the like,” Fafnir said.
The dwarf’s eyes turned reptilian. A pair of wings started growing on his back. His body grew long as scales covered it.
“I wonder what you lizardmen taste like?”