I am bruised, battered, and I am not sure all the warm liquids staining and running over the parts of my body that my sight cannot reach are just water and sweat. I crawled through thin cracks in the stone, tried to flatten myself like a stingray, holding my breath to pass through the narrowest of corridors. And now I have reached a small, untouched room. It’s full of spiders and their webs, I killed a snake, ate its entrails, it tasted horrible, I prefer human flesh. My God.

There’s a dead rat chilling here. Maybe it was poisoned by a snake or spider, or just died of old age or illness. I better not touch it.

Overall, this is a cozy, if rustic, dragonproof hole. There is a thread of running water that goes down the fork ahead. It’s fresh and delicious, and does wonders for cleaning the scabs off my arms. This hole could be mine, appropriate phrasing be damned. It’s lulling, it’s peaceful, it’s… safe. Maybe the snakes or the spiders aren’t, but I am positive those are threats I can get rid of.

Not too far on the path to my right, the one in the fork ahead, the one that goes upwards, I can see a ray of dusk intruding. The reddish light permeates the air and reveals the floating particles of dust in it. How beautiful, how real. The way up is rugged, probably a result of the entrance rocks collapsing into it.

Its upwards for me today, but before that, I will pray I don’t run away like the little bitch I am.

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I will die smelling like rancid, liquid scat. I came out of the hole thinking it was too good to be true, to be able to sit there and appreciate the sun settle one last time, but I had to find a necromantic abomination waiting for me when I turned to look at whatever was casting shadow upon me. I lost count of how many ribcages had been sewed in serial fashion to make it, or how many hands of different skin hues and bone length and girt it had. Just torsos and arms, with a bunch of intestines acting as tentacles and coming out of the frontward severed neck and, every several… metameres, let’s call each ribcage and scapular waist a metamer, and so intestines came out in random, asymmetrical holes at the unions of such constitutive units. To put it simply, it was a myriapod with arms for legs and that from the intestines and wounds it bled and spat the foulest, darkest diarrhea on top of blood.

My first reaction to that terrible sight against the evening sky was a brief paralyzing shock, the second indignation, the third drawing Jillsenbane. I ducked to hide back in the hole as it jumped on me. I scribbled a sigil of healing on my arm preemptively, if only to blunt the pain form any hits sustained. I jumped out of the entrance and prepared to face it on the open terrain of the hills.

The tall grasses gave the thing an advantage, but it had already lost the element of surprise in those seconds of hesitation, where it probably decided whether I was an invader, a zombie or a whelp.

He came upon me fast, with his hands full of dirt and mysterious slime. Trusting my instincts as a swordsman, I sidestepped to my right and swung Jillsenbane in a high arc, severing a triad of left hands. The thing spat the foul mixture of shit and phlegm upon me, and the chewed snake I had eaten earlier knew freedom once more.

I wanted to cut my nose out, to vomit my innards and be done with that smell as I hurried to sweep it out my crying eyes.

The thing had hidden again in the grasses, so I thought retreating towards the hole was the safest course of action. I didn’t lower my guard a single second, and that was, ironically, a grave mistake: I stepped on one of the severed, slimy hands and slipped, falling forward, trying to plunge Jillsenbane into the ground in a desperate attempt to regain stability.

I didn’t manage, and met the hill face first. Frantically I pushed to get up, but I soon felt a hand clasping around my right ankle. I looked back and let out a scream when I saw the mass of ribcages and arms coming upon me.

After failing to grab Jillsenbane, I kicked and flailed wildly, only to be restrained by the sea of hands as it lifted me, head down.

Immobilized, neutered by the strength of several men and women, I looked up, and saw three of the tentacles slowly descend in a spiral fashion, getting tangled around each other. Peristalsis began on the basis of the intestines, and I could see balls of something getting closer and closer under the muscular walls. I wanted to close my eyes, but two of the hands were forcing them open as another pair held my head in place. My first thought was to inhale deep and prepare not to drown in shit. But it wasn’t waste what came out of the intestines.

First erupted a set of noses, attached still by what seemed to be bloody epithelium to the interior of the intestines. They were ordered in such a way that their tips touched each other, fitting like the teeth of a shark mouth.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

And like the teeth of a mouth they parted, each of the three sets revealing a reddened eyeball. One green and two brown. Eyes, all seemingly human, none blue. The blue ones weren’t for the monsters.

Hanging as they were, the eyes inspected me, coming closer and closer to my own. I felt my body was about to explode in fear, to tremble so much each part would fly off in a different direction.

And it’s in those moments of absolute panic head-down that the brain short-circuits, and, as one drools all over his own face and tries to lure away the nightmare, to wake up from a dream that is not, that I thought this horrible thing would make for a terrific boss in a soulslike rpg. It was a silly thought, a split-second of weirdness, but I would have immediately hated myself for it, were it not for the fact the eyes began retreating and the intestines fastened about the parts of my legs still free from the grasp of hands. I was raised above the monster as much as it could manage without letting my extremities struggle free. I couldn’t scream anymore. My throat was knotted, I struggled to breathe, and, even if my eyelids were not forced open anymore, it was impossible to look away from the irregular red line that was opening right through where the sternum of the first two segments should have been.

It would be an understatement to say that the thing smiled with all its ribs. Finally, I let out a scream as it slowly made my restrained body descend into the tunnel of flesh and bone that had opened right below me. But I rectified myself fast enough to realize I had to hold my breath once again, because inside a necromantic abomination oxygen was likely to be a scarce resource.

Darkness, humidity, and walls of ribs and cartilages engulfed me as I closed my eyes shut. Soon, I felt the pressure of little hard mounds kneading into me. Gastrolites? No, they were fixed in place. That’s when I realized that the size, shape and… pointiness of the things was consistent with one and only one body part: teeth. Molars and premolars, I think they were: not sharp enough for fangs or incisors.

I couldn’t scream for help now. I struggled, but each movement made me dig the teeth in my exposed flesh and wasted valuable energy. I needed to calm down, think of a plan. Maybe I could draw heating sigils to make the thing throw up, but I was unable to unglue my hands from my body due to the walls of flesh that oppressed me. Soon, I felt fluid beginning to drip atop my head. It smelled unbelievably acrid and had the consistency of a baby’s first stool, or of the thing the monster had covered me in earlier, if you prefer to think of it that way.

So this was my end. I’d die drowned in the crap of an undead abomination, one more man added to the victims necessary to make it, as this guardian seemed to have no orders to spare my life. My own body heat was suffocating me, and my feet were slowly sinking into the foul liquid, meaning the movement I felt was the creature scampering downhill.

I thought about Abeline, of how I had failed her, how I had failed myself. I thought of the Lady, of how she would panic at my stupid death and lament never thinking about me finding that thing out in the wild. I thought about Jillsenbane, and how she would need to curse a new disgraced one that would be regarded as the next great dragon slayer and, one day, face Scarreladai. I thought of Jillsenbane, and how she was still my sword. I smiled mischievously. Downhill was away from Jillsenbane, and the thing was descending fast. If Jillsenbane has one good thing, is that she absolutely despises me wandering off past a certain tether range. To be left behind. If Jillsenbane, be her parasite or mutualist, has one good thing, is that she never leaves me alone for long.

I heard screams outside; not human, but the desperate squeals of some unfortunate animal. I felt the shifting of my body weight, the center of gravity changing, and all the liquid falling back over my face, submerging my head into the shit.

After what felt like an eternity that made me lose what little hope I had and almost open my mouthto gasp for air that wasn’t there, my white knight arrived. Jillsenbane, searching for my hand like a dog needed of caresses, cut through the monster as if it were made of butter, spinning, splitting the first segment in two right down the middle, and the second askew, burning flesh and crap and bone. Setting the whole creature ablaze in a white flame. The digestive tract soon emptied due to the loss of integrity, and, to avoid being cooked to death, I struggled free with the last remnants of my strength, crawling away, savior sword in hand.

I breathed in the fresh air despite the smell and the smoke. I breathed and it burnt my nostrils and lungs and it felt great. To breathe, reader, how to tell you that I thought I would never breathe again.

“Jilly I love you, I love you so fucking much, you dumb sword, I love you and I want to kiss you,” were the first words I said as soon as I recovered my breath. After a minute ofr so of enjoying the last rays of the sun of the day, lying beside the burning and still twitching abomination, I gave a lovely hug to Jillsenbane and stashed her in her scabbard. Jillsenbane left particular cauterized wounds on undead things and dragons, and once Scarreladai came to inspect what had killed her creation dead… well, more dead than it was supposed to be, she would notice the charred flesh, if any were to be left, and, given fire mages are common —Here or in Earth amateur arsonists are a dime a dozen— but most would shit their pants while battling such a thing, I’d be the prime suspect.

I drew several sigils of minor healing all over my chest, legs and arms, two at a time, one with each hand, and, when I felt like I could hobble the two hundred or so meters back to the rocks that concealed the small cave entrance, I hurried in despite my whole body protesting. I recovered my wrapped diary, made it to the fork and took the path below until I found a place where the water pooled. I washed my hands and face, and whatever else I could of my body, as fast as I could, but the smell still follows me like a haunting spirit. Gods curse you, My Dear Lady clad in scarlet scales, you could make less disturbing guardians once in a while.