Fr3 was using some kind of glowing rock to light his way - tied around his wrist like a friendship bracelet and dangling down below his white knuckled sword arm.

Me, it took me all of about three seconds to switch over to nightvision. The glow from the stone seemed painfully bright to my eyes, but it was worth the occasional blinding flash, if it gave me a better understanding of our landscape.

The walls were marked with lines, as though burrowed through by claws and teeth, and I was more than hesitant to meet whatever creature it was that did it. Whatever was capable of burrowing a hole through rock with a five and a half foot radius wasn't a thing that I was excited to meet. There where smaller holes that disappeared off to the sides of our little cave, some small enough for a mouse, and some that could easily fit a large dog with few issues. This left avenues for attack and escape open on every side of us and, had I been constrained to seeing by Fr3's tiny light, it would have been a nightmare and a death trap that encroached upon us from every side.

As it was, I supposed, it was only a rather advanced deathtrap, into which we were burrowing deeper and deeper with every passing second. I considered turning around at times - but the idea of wandering those halls without the solid wall of beef and steel that clanked and banged around in front of me, it struck me as being an even stupider idea than following him.

It was 200, maybe 300 feet in, that felt like a mile but wouldn't have taken us a minute to escape at a sprint, when the first creature hit us. It was... huge. With teeth the size of my forearm and red, glowing eyes.

The teeth seemed to sink through Fr3's reinforced boots in a second, as though they were made of butter. The thing bit off an entire portion of his leg before we even knew that it was there. He screamed and lashed out with his sword, dispatching it just as quickly as it had ruined his footwear.

I spared him a healing spell as we inspected our attacker. I was feeling more than naked as I counted off the thirty seconds for it to renew. Every single moment stretched by, and I was beyond certain we were going to be attacked before my next breath. But we were not, and it gave us more than enough time to inspect the fallen creature.

Dire rat

Level: 1

Race: Beast

Wow, ya. I had been just as guilty as anyone at making fun of the books that just took a random animal, stuck the word 'dire' in front of its name, and called it a day for monstermaking. Having seen one of the things, I had to say, I was now a believer. More, if Gary Jackson was down here with me, I swore to myself that I would find him someday and apologize for all the things I said. 

That thing was frigging hideous. Moreso, as I pulled out my razor (yes, my favorite one) and began peeling back the skin of its chest. Fr3 was barely inclined to wait for me, hovering over me protectively and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, but I tried not to let it bother me as I started pulling the parts one by one.

Rat Heart

Used for cooking.

Skill increased! Anatomy +1

Ya, right. Not going to happen.

Rat liver

Used for potions of poison resistance

Skill increased! Scavenging +1

Made sense, I guessed. But not going to cut it.

Rat tail

Used in Witchcraft. 

Spell Recipe: Poison Mist 

1/3 ingredients discovered

Skill increased! Scavenging +1

And now we were talking. If I found the other two ingredients, I wondered, would I learn the other spell automatically? And how exactly does one cast a spell with multiple material components anyway? Did they expect me to throw them in the air and blow on them?

My wandering mind was swiftly brought back to the present by Fr3. He looked panicked, glancing around him as though he was about to be attacked from every direction at once. It would have been kind of cute, in fact, if not for the fact that I felt a vague notion, deep in my gut, that we were about to die.

"Do you hear that?" He whispered softly.

I shook my head, about to tell him 'no', when I realized that I did, in fact, hear something echoing faintly in the distance. It sounded, a bit, like the sound of my own padded feet trotting along the ground, but with faint clacking and hissing echoing too with every step. Claws, perhaps.

I turned to him, standing slowly, and placed my palm on his shoulder. "We've got company."

Just like that there was five different sets of jaws nipping at us. They had used the holes on the walls, at the ceiling, and thumped unceremoniously upon the dirt in front of us, whirlwinds of tails and teeth.

I saw Fr3 impale the first of them on his sword in the moments after it fell. A rushing rat-body thumping in from the ceiling and spinning around for its feet. But, even as his sword bit into its side, three others jumped at him from the shadows, from the darkness shrouding his sight.

I didn't have time to watch, however, as the fifth and last rat stuck its head just barely out of a tunnel next to my foot and latched unceremoniously upon my ankle. The teeth peeled through muscle and tendon like tissue paper, and I heard as much as felt it when its teeth clanked mercilessly around the bone of my leg, worrying at it. 

Before my forarm had even fully morphed into my long, foot-long claw, I could hear the snapping sound of the bone giving way, and I fell upon the dirt of the tunnel with nothing left to support my weight. Prostrate and confused, I hesitated. I would bleed out in seconds if I did not heal - yet if I did I would have nothing left for Fr3, who even now I could hear screaming and slashing in the distance.

The dire rat, however, ended up making my choice for me. Not satisfied with it's meal, it had climbed around to a second hole, and was even now scurrying on its belly toward my unprotected abdomen. Seemingly confident, it was, in the dark and my own lack of sight.

Well, that wasn't happening. Without hesitating I stole a breath to heal my leg, screaming and holding back the watering of my eyes as my body seemed to rip. The bone and flesh of my ankle was extending out to replace my lost digit and, it felt like, a billion raw nerves that were convinced they were bathed in fire.

The rat, as I had expected, had used that moment of my distraction to pounce. My arm was ready and, even as my body rocked with the waves of liquid agony, my claw somehow fell into position, protecting my juicy organs.

Increased skill! Wicked +1

With a sickening thump, the rat impaled itself on the claw of my forearm, sinking the width of it deep into it's rotting guts. Dying, I knew, even as its teeth continued to open and snap at me menacingly. Deterred not by it's grievous injuries, only seconds away from the end, still its only thoughts bent toward its lust for the taste of my meat.

I rolled onto my stomach, half limping and half crawling toward Fr3. Three of the rats lay dead at his feet, but the fourth... well the fourth was chomping, savaging at the bones of his hips, determined to chew him up, bottom half first.

My Freeze spell hit it dead in the side, frost crusting over the dirty fir and blanketing the creature in whiteness. He was too distracted to see it coming and, as I knew, the beast was so consumed with its meal that he had no chance to dodge the oncoming breath of chill.

Skill increased! Insight +1

I smoothly delivered a piercing stab of my own to its mid-section, followed by another to the side of it's head. Just to be sure, you know. 

Skill increased! Interrogate +1

Wasting not a breath, I bent down and chanted for all that I was worth. I waited for the spell to again ignite, to heal the battered body of my companion, as I chanted over and over again.

But my spell, it did not catch. Not before Fr3's eyes fluttered one last time. And not before a last, hissing breath escaped from out his lips.

I still tried to Heal. I waited for a good minute, casting it over and over into the stiffening limbs of his corpse. The spell, however, did nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. Apparently, you cannot heal something that isn't actually alive.

I closed my eyes and counted back, trying to remember whether it had been one day or two since I had ripped Arrol's soul from the land of tormented dead. For the life of me though, I had no idea. What I did know was that I could not carry Fr3's corpse and all his equipment out of the burrowed cave. And I knew that if I tried to make a run for it regardless, I would be almost certain to join him in his fate.

The blood dripped down from my left arm. I didn't even stop to shift my shape or pull my well-known razor. I simply shoved my extended claw as deeply as I could into my own flesh and held it out to Fr3's mouth.

Skill increased: Toughness +1

Please. Please. Please. I prayed. Not to God, not any more - but not yet to Belial either. Rather, I just closed my eyes and prayed and hoped for all that I was worth... to no one in particular.

Skill increased: Witchcraft +1

Yes. Apparently, it was good enough. And before the blood had ceased to flow, Fr3's hand was on my shoulder. Pulling me in and holding me to his cold breastplate.

I didn't resist. I, rather, collapsed against him - letting the sobs of relief and fear escape. He was here. We were fine. And we were going to escape this pit.