The tunnels tightened like a fist as Yuzuru and Gweyn ventured deeper into the unknown. Cold thickened the air and the walls dripped continually with that strange black goo. Yuzuru’s heartbeat thudded loudly in the silence, every pulse reminding him of his own fleshy mortality.

He reached out and tapped Gweyn on her shoulder. The good one. “Does it still hurt?”

“Yes,” Gweyn answered without looking back. “And it makes me want to punch someone. Very hard. In their face. Many times.”

Her right hand was still outstretched, strings of fire curling around her fingers. Her left was hidden under Yuzuru’s cloak, which she was wearing as a sort of single-shouldered cape, replacing her old one that was ruined in the river.

“Too bad the only person here is one you love dearly,” Yuzuru said.

Gweyn made him feel every passing second before replying, “Too bad indeed.”

Even though it was a winding tunnel, there were no forks or offshoots. The nothingness stretched on, broken only by an occasional iron gate. Gweyn melted through each one but Yuzuru noticed that each time seemed to take longer, and the intensity of her flames grew dimmer.

“Want me to take the lead?” he asked, but Gweyn shook her head.

A few hundred yards more let to another gate. It was different from the iron ones that came before. This one was fully encased in steel with only a tiny hatch near eye level.

Gweyn examined the door. “I’m going to need both hands for this. Stand back.” She lifted her left hand an inch but then dropped it with a cry of pain.

“I’ll do it,” Yuzuru said.

“No.” Gweyn shoved him away when he came close. “You can’t just use magic willy-nilly.”

“I argue this is the least willy-nilly way to use it.” Yuzuru moved Gweyn aside and took up position in front of the door. He placed both hands against the steel, concentrated, and said,

“Evaporate!”

His voice echoed through the tunnels as the steel door hissed, but nothing happened.

“Evaporate?” Gweyn asked.

Yuzuru smiled sheepishly at her. “I got too used to that spell.”

The hatch on the door slid open without warning, and Baron Loop’s face pressed in from the other side.

“You scoundrels! What do you think you’re doing in there? Get out immediately or face my wrath!”

“Well, well,” Yuzuru said with a dark chuckle. “The angry minion locks us in, then berates us for staying locked in.”

“That’s a reference I don’t know,” Gweyn said.

“It didn’t get popular until last year,” Yuzuru explained, feeling sad that he had to. “Honoka wouldn’t have known it.”

“You two are no longer welcome in my domain,” said Loops. “Leave this instant!”

The steel door clicked and swung open. Baron Loops stepped out of the way. Behind him was the mouth of the tunnel, a dark circle filled with stars, so close yet impossibly bright.

Yuzuru looked at Gweyn. He could see the same suspicion on her face.

Was this a trap?

If the doubt had crossed Yuzuru’s mind a second later, he wouldn’t have hesitated so long. But by the time he weighed the options and came to a calculated decision, it was already too late.

From behind them, a low groan reverberated through the tunnels, shaking fresh slime from the cracks in the walls. Waves of liquid charcoal washed down the stone, piling across the floor.

“What are you waiting for?” Gweyn demanded, stepping around Yuzuru. She made for the gate but it swung shut. She crashed against the steel, pounding on it with her fist.

Behind the steel latch, the Baron’s face was ashen.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “She’s marked you. There is no escape. I tried, but you were too late!”

“You minion!” cried Gweyn, the fire in her hand blossoming as she began burning the door. “You tricked us!”

The hatch slid shut. “I’m sorry,” Loops said again, his voice nearly lost in the noise made by Gweyn and far behind her, the groaning of whatever was in this tunnel with them. “You brought this on yourselves.”

Gweyn fell to her knees. Her flames dissipated. “I can’t do it,” she panted. “My chaos… it’s too high.”

Yuzuru pulled her back. He summoned his own Flame Touch. Within moments, the entire steel door turned orange, then red. Heat washed over him as Yuzuru concentrated and added more fire.

Wind blew from the tunnel. The groaning grew louder. Slime poured into a river that came crawling towards them.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Yuzuru broke from the wall with a gasp. “It’s not enough. I don’t have the right spell.” He wanted to try something else but his shoe landed on something soft. Looking down, he saw a tentacle of goo wrapped around his ankle, stretching for his calf.

He threw the slime off and ran for the tunnel wall, backing into Gweyn who was already there.

“Not again,” she said.

Yuzuru jumped back down. Slimes reached for him but he burned them away. Then, turning towards the sound of the groaning he shouted with all his might,

“No more. This tunnel is closed, today!”

The groaning undulated and crescendoed into a chorus of a hundred moaning voices.

“What does that even mean?” Gweyn shouted above the noise. She raised her hand, drawing light further down the tunnel to see just what they were dealing with.

The tunnels were at least thirty feet on either side, and the creature took up nearly all of it. Its body was the color and consistency of tar, and when it moved, the moaning followed.

There was no way around it. Unless they opened the door, they’d have to fight.

Yuzuru puffed out his chest and reached for Pekorin. Drawing out the light sword and shining its righteous glory in the damp darkness, he felt momentarily powerful.

That was all gone when, from the twilight, a hulking mass of wavering glop emerged. Swimming inside it were skeletons and half-decomposed bodies, with their mouths all wide open in an un-ending scream.

“Shit,” Yuzuru said.

Against the wall, Gweyn sat. "It's actually made of slime," she said. "But I can see how you can make the mistake."

The glop reared itself up. A single word gurgled up the length of its monstrous body and out its widening maw.

“Help.”

Yuzuru gripped his sword tighter as cold sweat broke all over his body. This was the voice he heard. These were the eyes he saw.

But the creature had more than a pair of eyeballs. It had hundreds, opening all along the folds of its torso. And when it lowered the top part of its head down, there were more eyes running all down its back.

Gweyn started to gag.

“Help,” the creature said once more, the word splashing wetly across the walls. “Help.” it spoke faster, the chorus of pleas echoing within its gelatinous form. “HELP. HELP. HELP.”

Yuzuru took a step back, wincing from the cacophony. The monster pressed on, crying out as it waved its multitude of arms, wrapping them around Yuzuru.

Gweyn blurred past. A flash of red. One of the creature’s arms fell.

The glop shrieked, causing the many mouths inside it to join in. The noise slammed into Yuzuru, forcing him back into the steel door, its heat burning through his clothes.

Gweyn landed sideways on the wall, sprang off it, and cut through another limb. But as she was on her way down, another arm shot out and caught her.

“No!” Yuzuru charged forward but Gweyn yelled at him to stop. She pulled an arm free, holding two glass tubes between her fingers.

“Close your eyes!” she told him, then threw the tubes at the glop’s head. The glasses shattered, their contents mixing in a fiery flash of white light. The explosion threw Yuzuru to the ground.

Dust rained from the ceiling as the tunnels shook. When it was over, Yuzuru got up and spat out a mouthful of slime, cringing as it wriggled back into the slop. “It tastes like salt mixed with more salt.”

Gweyn was back on the ground. The glop writhed before her, its oily body awash in green flames. The cries of a thousand dead clashed against the crackling of fire.

Gweyn turned and showed him her fangs. “How does Taiga say it again? Oh, yes. Barbecue Time.”

Yuzuru drew back his sword and threw it, missing the sweeping tentacle by inches. The massive limb swept across the ground, taking his legs from under him. He felt the impact as it carried on into the wall. Pulling himself up, he was just in time to see the limb withdrawing from the broken wall. Gweyn stepped in its way, slicing it apart.

The monster reared back and roared.

“You need to distract it.” Gweyn turned around and tossed her dagger at Yuzuru. “I’ll burn down the door.”

“What?” Yuzuru looked down at the tiny weapon. “Distract it with this?”

“Or use your razor-sharp wit or whatever!”

They both whipped around at the sound of a high-pitched keening. The monster had swelled to take up the entire space of the tunnel, blocking out the light so the only source of illumination was its own flaming body.

“I think you’ve just given it fire damage,” Yuzuru said.

The monster burst forth with a hundred tentacles. Gweyn yanked Yuzuru back and plunged a hand into the slime around their feet. Magic poured out of her in the form of light circles. From these, pillars of rock shot out, slamming into the oncoming tentacles.

The entire tunnel system seemed to shake. Above them, wicked cracks ran along the ceiling.

With a shuddering explosion, a tentacle pierced through one of Gweyn’s pillars and punched her off her feet, carrying her past Yuzuru. He slashed at the tentacle, but not fast enough. Gweyn hit the gate with a resounding crash. She fell face-first into the slime.

“Gweyn!” Yuzuru rushed over and scooped her out. The slime seemed to stick to her like it didn’t want to let go, but a little bit of fire convinced it otherwise.

Gweyn’s eyes fluttered. Opening them a crack, she looked at him and said, “You’re right. It’s salty as hell.”

Their brief exchange was cut short as more arms reached around Gweyn’s pillars, crushing them to dust. Digging its limbs into the walls, the monster pulled itself across.

Yuzuru dragged Gweyn as far back as he could. He felt his back pressing against the warm steel door.

The monster closed in. It was so close Yuzuru could see the faces lost inside its amorphous body. There were men and goblins, some in-between and many too decayed to tell apart.

Yuzuru braced Gweyn behind him and held out her dagger. “Not a step further!” he shouted to be heard above the glop’s moaning. “Or I swear to our lord and savior above, this tiny blade will be the end of you.”

The slime lunged. Its innumerable arms crashed into a wall of light a few feet in front of Yuzuru, bouncing back in a brilliant flash. The monster howled and retracted, curling in on itself.

Yuzuru heard the sound of steel sliding open. He thought it was the hatch but then the entire door opened.

“Quickly,” said Baron Loops. “She will not be kept back long.”

Yuzuru didn’t hesitate this time. He pushed Gweyn through the door and followed, Baron Loops slamming it shut behind them to cut off the tide of slime also trying to escape.

Keeping his arm around Gweyn, Yuzuru skidded to a halt on his knees as the slime carried on around them.

“Why did you save us?” he asked, grimacing back the pain.

Loops slid the bolt across the door and stood back. He was shaking, his crown of fruit nearly all gone. Only a ring of old bronze encircled his bald head. He turned around to address the adventurers, but it wasn’t him who spoke next, nor was it Gweyn or even Yuzuru.

“Her name is Nirvana,” said a voice from the shadows, barely audible above the frustrated howls from behind the door. “She is the mother of this village, the wife of the Baron, and the shackles that keep this tribe under the willow.”

Yuzuru peered into the shadows, reeling at what he saw. He knew the goblin whose voice this belonged to, only the words he heard her speak were no way near this complicated.

Still, even as he expected to see her, when the fur-wearing goblin-wife stepped out of the darkness for real, holding Yuzuru’s once-broken crossbow in her hands, Yuzuru’s jaw dropped open.

The goblin stopped a few feet away. Framed by the moonlight behind her, the surface of her skin glowed like wet stone. “As to why the Baron saved you?” she said, grinning as she raised her crossbow at Yuzuru’s chest. “It’s so I can kill you myself, evil man.”