The opening Daphne had run through in the left wall of the Eydis Way was not a cave. It was a full tunnel in its own right, with its own set of crossroads and connecting tunnels branching off on either side at irregular intervals. It also dove steeply downwards, always taking the traveler deeper and deeper below the rock — far deeper than the level of the Lorist Way.

Not that Daphne noticed any of this, of course. She wasn’t thinking about the Lorist Way or the Eydis Way, or about the quest for the Under Library. She wasn’t thinking about Runar, or Bjarni, or about any griffin. She wasn’t really thinking at all.

Mark was somewhere up ahead. He needed her. He kept calling, his voice fainter and further away with every step.

“Daphne!”

Daphne put on another burst of speed, following the voice down a tunnel to the right, then another that branched off to the left.

She wasn’t going to let him down. Not this time, or ever again.

“Daphne!”

Her satchel bounced painfully against her hip. The four bottle-pendants around her neck kept knocking into each other and thudding against her chest, their silvery blue light casting crazy shadows on the rocky walls. The stone floor was hard and unforgiving beneath her pounding feet.

“Daphne!”

Another turn to the left.

One to the right.

“I’m coming!” she called, the effort searing her already aching lungs. “Hang on, Mark! I’m —”

Suddenly, instead of pounding over hard stone, her foot sank into something soft and gritty. It snapped her out of the trance she was in. She staggered back until she was standing on solid rock and lifted one of her bottle-pendants to get a better look.

She had run into a dead end. The tunnel opened out into a small circular room, roughly three times the size of the sleeping alcoves in a dalamelle. The ceiling was far above Daphne’s head, lost in shadow. The entire floor was covered in a thick layer of loose dirt. Otherwise, the room was completely empty.

There was no sign of Mark.

Daphne kicked at the dirt, breathing hard after her mad dash.

“Mark?” Daphne hoped.

Her voice didn’t echo. It sounded muffled, almost like it was sinking into the dirt floor.

She took another step back. Silvery blue light bounced around the walls as her hand holding the bottle-pendant started shaking.

“Mark?” Daphne asked, slightly louder this time.

The corner of her eye caught something at the far end of the room. Was it a trace of movement? Had the dirt shifted? Maybe it was just a trick of the bouncing light…

Daphne blinked hard. She took a deep breath, willing her hand and the light it held to be steady. Then she looked again, peering at a square section of dirt by the opposite wall.

The dirt moved.

There was no mistaking it this time. The dirt was rising, looking for a moment like a soil-blanket being shed by a monster in the act of waking. But no monster emerged. It was just the dirt, rising higher and higher until it had formed a small hill, seven feet high and sloping to the edges of the room.

A hole opened in the side of the hill, about halfway up. A hole that looked disturbingly like a mouth…

“Daphne!” cried the hill.

Except it didn’t sound like a hill. It sounded like Mark.

“Daphne!”

Oh, HELL no.

Daphne stared at the hill-with-a-mouth. Surely, she was imagining it. Surely, that pile of dirt hadn’t just called her name. Surely, it hadn’t done so using her boyfriend’s voice. Surely…

“Daphne!”

Daphne sat down. She didn’t mean to, but her legs had apparently caught the quitting bug from her brain. They just gave out, throwing her on the hard stone floor with a THUD.

The bad news was that she now had a very sore tailbone. The good news was that the impact seemed to kick something loose in her brain, sending it into high gear analysis mode.

First question, she needed to figure out if the hill just using Mark’s voice? Or was Mark actually here, trapped inside the dirt and calling for help?

A quick scan of the room settled that question. The dirt had been level when she arrived. She was sure of it. And when she had first stumbled across the threshold, her foot had only sunk a few inches down. A few inches of dirt wasn’t enough to hide a human being, alive and whole and capable of speech.

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Mark wasn’t in this room. The dirt had just used his voice to get Daphne here.

Which meant Daphne was its target.

Something deep inside her cracked open, sending a flood of fresh grief and longing. Daphne shook her head sharply. This wasn’t the time. She’d have to deal with all that renewed pain later.

And perhaps more importantly, her super-active, absolutely not-quitting-NOW brain prompted, in the interests of there being a later…

Right. Second question. Where the hell did this thing come from? And how, in the name of all the muses and every god, was she supposed to beat it?

Daphne had a bad habit of overanalyzing things. It was one of the few points of contention between her and Mark. He always said overthinking was bad for her long-term health. Today, it was going to be the key to her short-term survival.

It’s like with the Pinchers, she thought after a few moments of high-speed pondering. This is still my world. The deeper you go, the further you get into my worst fears. My recurring praying mantis nightmare showed up in the other tunnel. So what part of Things-Daphne-Hates are we dealing with here?

She studied the mound of talking dirt with all the cool detachment of an amateur psychologist.

Being buried alive, she decided, with a strange sense of satisfaction. Understanding the horrible thing was a small win, but it was still a win. She kept the analysis at turbo speed. And it lured me down here using the voice of someone I love. It led me away from my friends. So now I’m alone, and I can’t help my loved one, AND I’ll probably get buried alive. Checks all the worst-fear boxes. At least, if that thing wants to eat me. I’m assuming it’s hostile…

As if in answer to her unspoken thought, the hill stretched to ten feet high, roared, and surged towards her.

Yup. Definitely hostile.

Daphne scrambled backwards, trying to get to her feet, but the dirt-monster was terrifyingly fast. A long tentacle of soil lashed out and wrapped around her leg, tripping her before she could stand. She fell on her back, kicking frantically with her free foot to ward off another dirt-tentacle as the monster began pulling her back towards the room by her one trapped leg.

“Get! Off! Me!” she shrieked.

“Daphne!” cried the dirt-monster, still using Mark’s voice — which she thought was incredibly rude.

Anger spiked through her and sent a jolt of clarity to her already supercharged brain.

She hadn’t gotten to the second part of the second question. She still had no clue how, in the name of all the muses and every god, to beat the thing. And there was no time to analyze her way to an answer. That meant she’d just have to skip directly to the research-and-development phase.

And, since she was now pissed as hell, she would start with the big guns.

First, Daphne managed to grab onto a boulder jutting out of the wall. The dirt-monster kept pulling. Her leg felt like it was about to pop out of her hip, but she clung grimly onto the boulder with one hand while the other rummaged frantically in her satchel.

Bjarni had collected the fiery word-chains from the Rabid Daydream fight. The day before, he had given one to Runar and one to Daphne, so they would each have some way to contribute to a joint battle.

Or some way to fight off a dirt-monster solo because you ran off from your friends like a total noob…

Daphne’s searching hand closed around the letter-string. With a wild cry, she pulled it out and cracked it like a whip at the tentacle wrapped around her leg.

“I was made to soar on words —”

That was as far as she got. The word-chain passed harmlessly through the dirt, passing along the full force of the blow to Daphne’s own leg. She screamed and dropped the fiery letter-string with a curse.

It makes sense, her still-incredibly-active brain observed. We’re dealing with your deepest, most irrational fears. Words don’t work.

Of course. Eydis had said the word-chains would do nothing against the Pinchers. If giant insects were immune to word power, then this blob of terror-soil most certainly was.

Daphne cursed again.

Time for round two.

Her grip on the boulder was slipping. She dug her free foot into the rocky ground, struggling for leverage as her hand went for another rummage in her satchel. This time, she pulled out a special parting gift from Eydis’s doomsday bunker supplies: a basher.

The dirt-monster was sending out more tentacles. Apparently, the bulk of its mass had to stay in the room. That explained the creature’s desire to get all of Daphne’s mass inside the room. It also increased Daphne’s motivation to stay out of the room as long as possible. Forever, ideally.

Forcing herself up on her one free foot, Daphne swung the basher wildly at a soil-limb inching forward.

She didn’t hit herself this time. That was good.

She was also still, somehow, keeping her grip on the boulder. That was also good.

Less good was the fact that her swing threw her off balance. She fell back, tensing her neck to keep her head from smacking against the stone floor.

Her free foot kicked out wildly and was caught by one of the roving dirt-tentacles. That was also very less good.

Even more less-good was the basher’s minimal impact on the dirt-monster. The club made a dent in the soil-limb, but the dent was instantly filled in by more loose dirt. It was like trying to cut through a pile of sand with a golf club.

How the hell am I supposed to beat this thing?

Daphne’s brain was inching past hyper-analysis and spiraling into full panic-mode. She had approximately four seconds before she lost her grip on both the boulder and her ability for coherent rational thought.

She had a rapid thought of Lore-light and even more rapidly dismissed it. There were no carvings here, and no word-power to pull from them. She was in the basement of her mind, fighting the most irrational parts of her own twisted psyche.

If I ever get back to the real world, she thought grimly, I am changing therapists. Clearly there’s a lot I’m not dealing with appropriately.

Shutting out the agony of both her legs being stretched like taffy, she grabbed for the one resource she hadn’t yet tried against the monster.

Oh please, she thought desperately as her sweaty fingers fumbled with the stopper on the bottle-pendant. Oh, all the muses, please.

Daphne summoned her remaining breath and yelled, “Hope you’re thirsty, dirt-face!”

Then she threw the open bottle into the room.

The bottle landed in the center of the dirt mound, just past the open mouth. Eloquent Water spilled out, flowing down the sides of the hill like melted butter on a pile of mashed potatoes. The giant dirt-mouth closed.

Daphne held her breath.

The mouth opened.

“Daphne!” cried Mark’s voice.

The tentacles wrapped around her legs tightened and pulled sharply. Daphne’s hand was wrenched free of its grip on the boulder. She flailed and wriggled and screamed swear words she hadn’t realized she knew, but it was no use.

Inch by inch, the dirt-monster kept pulling, drawing Daphne slowly into its earthy home.

“I swear to every god, I will give you the worst indigestion!” she screamed.

Then a dirt-tentacle whacked her across the head, and the world went black.