“Not that I’m complaining, but doesn’t it feel odd to you two to be cuddling in a place we have confirmed has dangerous threats in it?”
I hadn’t wanted to ruin the affectionate moment that the girls and I had been sharing. But, as the minutes dragged by and neither girl really wanted to separate from me, it was something that needed to be said.
“Nope.” Kassandra’s response was as short as she was. She went back to rubbing her face into my abdomen while her serpentine tail continued the gentle squeezing that trapped Rieka and I together. The serpentine woman had decided to just wrap herself around both of us to get maximum snuggles.
“Feels good like this, so I can’t fault her.” Rieka’s voice was more subdued, and a bit muffled, too.
While she’d started out with her chin on my chest, she’d shifted around now so her face was tucked into the crook of my shoulder. Her fuzzy ears would twitch on occasion, their pointed tips tickling my throat, but she seemed no more willing to stop than Kassandra was.
“Feels safe,” Kassandra added to her friend’s statement, and I felt Rieka nod slowly.
I considered that for a moment.
That eerie pressure that had been with us ever since we came down into the tunnels was still present. I had gotten used to it somewhat, to where it was just the way the pressure affected sound that bothered me. It was hard to tell if that oppressive weight that hung in the air was just the fact we were deep underground, in a place that had been lost to time for millennia, or had something far more nefarious to it. I also couldn’t decide whether it was more or less creepy that the millennia seemed so selective in what it taxed in here, though. Regardless, it had been bothering my girls, and this was comforting to them. So I would wait until they were ready to move.
Kassandra was the first to relax her grip, I think because she realized that she had to be the first, given her position squeezing us together. My position might have been more awkward, with the two attractive women cuddling into me, but I was able to maintain my decency when surrounded by the scents and soft sensations of the girls. And while she was being considerate, Kassandra did not miss the opportunity to be a pest and used her grip around us to squeeze Rieka tightly to me. Though I did curse my armor in my head for stealing some of the enjoyment of feeling them pressed to me.
For her part, the wolf-eared princess did not protest. She simply burrowed into the cuddles and enjoyed them. When Kassandra began to unwrap us, though, she took the cue and stepped back as well.
“Either of you have any idea how long we’ve been down here?” Rieka asked, rubbing at her eyes with one hand before squaring her shoulders determinedly.
“No idea. Without the sun, it’s far harder to tell time,” Kassandra sighed.
“I don’t have a watch or my phone right now, since that’s something from my home and the System still refuses to give me the transport ability to bring stuff with me.” I closed my eyes to glare at the System interface. The extra-dimensional supercomputer was apparently unfazed, as it did not react.
“How are you two feeling? I don’t know if it’s the tension or what, but I am starting to feel rather tired right now. We’ve been down here for almost a full day, I’m pretty sure.”
Rieka’s frank statement made me blink in surprise. When I glanced at Kassandra, she looked startled as well.
“I hadn’t thought of that, but I believe you are right,” I agreed after a moment. I could feel a yawn bubbling up in my throat, but I ruthlessly squashed it. I refused to let the tiredness that had suddenly surged up show in front of the girls.
“Uh, I could use a break? But I’m also burning with curiosity as to what might be down here still.” Kassandra swayed slightly on her tail as she spoke, conveying her indecision in the movement.
“Why don’t we go have a peek at the upper floor hallway that we have yet to check? If the complex has a lot more to it, then we can decide if we need to take a break. If it isn’t more than a room or two, or the rest of this place is collapsed, then we can rest easier,” I suggested.
The girls shared a look before Kassandra nodded and Rieka shrugged.
“Sounds good to me. We don’t have to pick through this place with a fine-tooth comb, but I do want to check it over for anything important that we can secure. Let’s get going!” Kassandra managed to dredge up more of her excited energy and urged us to head back to the main room.
This time, I did not let myself become complacent and grow to ignore the pressure in the air. It had the oppressive feel of being watched, so I redoubled my vigilance over the girls.
Once we made it back to the main lobby, the girls and I inspected the room once more.
We checked under the stairs to find the collapsed section of stone was blocking several other hallways that lead deeper into the complex. While I could use my Manipulate Element power to meld and alter the stone, there were open sections of tunnels that we could delve into first that held priority.
Navigating the stairs to the second floor, we found that most of that level had fallen in on the first floor. It looked like this was due to some kind of acid or fire-scarring, likely from whatever battle had taken place in antiquity that wiped out the ancient humans. I found two more of the undead that were partially pinned between stones, ending them quickly and without hesitation.
Once I was sure there weren’t any threats lurking amongst the tumbled stones, I led the girls on a roundabout path over the collapsed mezzanine. While we walked, I was running my Manipulate Element power to reinforce the stone ahead of us, so it didn’t collapse. I wasn’t sure how much of an effect I was having for stability, but it smoothed broken edges of stone and sealed up most of the cracks.
“More golems,” Rieka murmured when we were part way around the collapsed section of the mezzanine.
Turning to my wolf-eared companion, I noticed her gesturing towards the collapsed area and turned to look. With the scattered lighting on the upper floor due to torn down lights we had seen earlier, I hadn’t noticed it at first, but amongst the rubble in the collapse appeared to be several more of the six-legged, canine golems. They’d been shattered into pieces and, thankfully, none of them stirred at our passage.
“Whatever destroyed them probably caused the collapse,” Kassandra whispered, edging closer to the lip of broken stone that marked the edge and peering downwards.
“Probably. Just gotta hope that whatever did this damage is either dead or has taken off,” I added in a low tone.
The girls shared a look, but didn’t comment. I knew the chance that whatever had caused the damage had escaped or left was small, given the intact status of the doors, but I had no idea if this complex had another exit or something we’d missed. Honestly, I was hoping that it’d been killed, and the complex was just abandoned.
Even if it wasn’t, there’s no chance it survived this long. It would have starved, right?
The thought sauntered through my mind and I did my best not to shudder, as it felt like I was just asking for fate to screw me over.
To help assuage the nerves that I felt now, I began flowing my right arm through the different shifts that I’d worked out for it. The armored scorpion’s tail shifted and thickened with armor, then thinned again and gained dexterity. The head went from a pointed spike to a hooked head similar to a pickaxe. Then the base of the pickaxe swelled to give me a venom gland and I could feel my body start working to fill said gland, but I shifted it away as I didn’t want to waste the components there. Nothing we had run into so far was vulnerable to venom, after all.
The girls didn’t mention my working of the Shape-Shifting ability, though it seemed to reassure Kassandra as she watched me cycle through different things. She stuck close to me on my left, and I felt her soft hand gently take my left one, being careful of the claws I still bore on that side. Rieka didn’t comment, but I could tell she was also comforted with my readiness to defend them both.
It took several minutes to work our way around to the last set of doors we could easily access. As with the others, I had the girls stand back while I checked the doorway. This time it felt like it was a far more important step to take since these doors were obviously damaged.
Before, the doors had looked like a more archaic version of the heavy, metallic security doors that I was used to seeing in many buildings back home, though more crudely shaped. Previous doors had latched with a turning lever to open them or even just a handle to push on. These doors were missing that handle entirely. The center of the doors where they met over a latch were dented outwards and stress fractures marked the metal throughout. I was able to hook the pointed tip of my right tail/arm into one of those cracks and use it to pull the door open.
The change in pressure caused a slight wash of air to flow outwards, and I felt a chill run down my spine at what I saw in the hallway on the other side.
Blood had long ago painted the walls and floor in the corridor that lay beyond. Blood that had long since soaked into the stone and dried away, but left behind its ghost as odd, pooling stains that I was getting more and more familiar with.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
The hallway continued deeper into the complex in a straight shot, with three different doors opening off of it, two to the left and one to the right. At the far end of the long hallway, easily longer than the two massive rooms we had already checked, was a place for another set of iron doors. However, one had been torn entirely off its hinges and lay in a twisted mass in the middle of the hallway about a hundred feet from the far end. The lights that illuminated the corridor were mixed, with some showing through an ancient, brown stain left by dried blood and the others still giving off clean light.
I was about to turn back to the girls to get their opinion when I saw movement flicker around the edge of the nearest of the doorways.
Movement that had a distinct skittering nature to it.
Then something was launched out of the doorway and it smashed into the light fixture that was nearest to it, sending that section of the hallway falling into pitch darkness.
“Get ready, girls.” I called, while stepping up into the hallway.
If more of the creatures came at us, I wanted to meet them in the narrowed portion where the girls’ spells could do the most damage. Rieka slid in and took up position on my right while Kassandra wriggled into a spot on my left.
I could hear the scrabbling of talons on stone from the darkness and was debating dropping my claws in favor of altering my eyes to see better in that dim light when Rieka acted first.
With a flick of her spell rod and a gesture, Rieka snarled out her preferred opening spell.
“Bolt Chain!”
The flickering chain of lightning lashed out and arced down the hallway like a perfectly cast fishing line. As it reached the darkened section of hall, it broke through the shadows before latching onto something horrifying in the darkness with a crack of discharged electricity and a scream of pain from the creature that it hit.
In the light of Rieka’s spell, we got a good view of the creature that had been hiding in the darkness and it made the mind reel for a moment.
The shadow-beasts we had encountered in the tunnels earlier had been moderately scary before, but were ultimately no bigger than a small dog. It had been their numbers that were terrifying. This thing was so much more.
It stood as tall at the shoulder as a horse, but four spindly legs on the front half of its body ended in long, three-fingered hands tipped in sharp claws. A pair of heavy, bent back legs supported the bottom half and propelled it forward in a loping gait like a bounding rabbit as the creature lunged out of the shadows. At the center of the quintet of arms hung a large torso. Saliva spewed from a gnashing mouth like someone had decided to give an asshole teeth and then dilate it up to be large enough to swallow the family dog.
I swore. Kassandra screamed. And Rieka snarled something that was likely halfway between profanity and a curse as the creature lunged into the tainted light of one of the stained panels.
Smoke erupted from its skin as the light hit it. The creature continued to thrash forward, intent on following the leash of ravening lightning to whatever was hurting it.
Rieka remained in control of herself, though, and she made a whipping gesture with her spell rod. I was reminded exactly why she had told me Bolt Chain was her favorite combat spell.
The chain, which had been as thick as two fingers and reminded me of a normal length of chain like one might use to support a porch swing, followed the flicking motion in a wave. As it did so, it swelled in size. With a rolling of thunder that would have made any god of storms proud, Rieka pumped far more mana into the spell than she had ever before. The chain tripled in thickness as the wave continued down the length of the chain before it reached the impact site where the head of the chain remained stuck in the creature’s body, just behind the rightmost set of arms.
With an almighty zot noise, like someone had just blown a power transformer, the spell discharged its current and blew the right half of the spindly legged creature’s body off.
Black blood splattered into the hallway and immediately began steaming away like dry ice left in the sun. The blast was so heavy it actually blew off those two legs and tossed the creature bodily into the wall.
A bit of the current must have rippled back up the line. The chain failed before Rieka could break her connection and my wolfish companion yelped in pain when the echo of the current hit her. I spun to catch Rieka in the curling wrap of my right arm, but Kassandra was there to take her from me.
“Make sure it’s dead, Liam. I’ll see to Rieka,” my redheaded lover ordered. I nodded, relinquishing Rieka to her care.
The monster was still thrashing in the hallway, trying to force itself backwards into the shadows despite its wounds. Whatever anger or hunger it might have had before was now gone, but I was not about to let it get away to threaten us again.
Charging down the hallway, I coiled my right arm back over my head as I built up momentum before sliding to a stop just outside its range and torquing my body to whip my right arm around and over my head in a short arc like I was driving a nail with my fist. In this case, with the spike on the end of my arm.
The creature hissed and tried to lunge at me, but that just put it slightly out of position for when the strike hit it from above. Rieka’s spell had already weakened the chitinous shell from the side where it had blown off the legs and the residual electricity was still causing it to spasm quite a bit. So when my blow struck just behind where its maw ended, the shell crunched like a smashed egg.
Flailing wildly for several seconds, the creature half-scrambled backwards and half-lunged at me, as if it couldn’t decide if escape or trying to take me with it was a priority. When I wrenched my arm back and yanked the talon free of its ‘head’ with a sucking noise, though, the creature gave a full body shudder and collapsed, smoke still rising from its body as it had not made it back to the safety of the darkness.
“Fucker,” I spat at the creature, driving my right talon into it one more time to ensure it was dead, but the creature did not twitch again.
<><><>
“Rieka’s fine. She’s just a little jittery from the spell backlash,” Kassandra explained when I made it back to the girls. I kept watch on the monster until the smoking effect had eaten away at the shell enough to expose the raw insides. With its death confirmed beyond a doubt, I hurried back to the girls while Kassandra was finishing up a restorative spell on her friend.
“Good work there, hon,” I said with a smile when Rieka caught my eye. Her ears had been pinned back in shame, but they perked right up at that.
“I could have done better. I should have known that I was pushing too much mana into it. The coins were drained before I could break the connection,” Rieka explained in a rush, a light tinge of red on her cheeks.
“You were too focused on putting a new asshole in that thing, since it had decided to try to eat people with the first one it’d been given,” Kassandra encouraged crassly. The profanity got a giggle out of Rieka and the wolf-eared woman relaxed some. “Did better than me. I panicked at the sheer size of the thing.”
“I panicked too, if we are being honest,” Rieka mumbled, her ears wilting to either side now.
Not wanting to let my princess remain depressed, I shook my left hand like I was getting feeling back into it and pushed my Shape-Shifting to remove the claws. When my left hand was back to normal, I set it gently on top of Rieka’s head and buried my fingers in her soft hair, stroking the base of her canine ears. Rieka let out a quiet groan of surprise before twisting her head to press up into my fingers with a radiant smile on her face.
“Slick, Liam,” Kassandra commended me with a grin.
“What? She did good, so she deserves a reward.”
“I can think of a reward she might enjoy a bit mooore,” Kassandra drew out the ‘o’ teasingly and Rieka blushed just a bit, but she also nodded silently without looking at me.
Huh, I thought to myself. Good to know. Maybe we can explore that when we aren’t in a dangerous and ancient dungeon full of monsters. All we would need is a dragon to— I cut the thought off abruptly with a shake of my head. Nope, not going to tempt fate!
It took Rieka a bit to be ready to get up and move again, but that might have also been because of her not wanting to give up her ear-scratches and head-pats. After a few minutes, I helped her to her feet, and the girls took the time to change out the spent iron coins in their spell rods so that they were ready for more trouble.
By the time we made it back to the shadow monster, the bright lights of the hallway had already eroded it to where the corpse was half the size it had been before.
Peeking into the room that it had been occupying revealed it was an entirely empty room. No tables, shelves, or anything else. Just an empty room with the walls covered in deep gouges from the creature’s claws. Even the lights had been dug out of their recesses in the ceiling and were missing. I searched around a bit in the darkness and found what the creature had used to smash the light panel in the hallway. It had dug a chunk of rock out of the wall and then lobbed it out the door.
Heading further down the hall, we found the lone doorway that opened to the right next and checked inside.
The room was completely trashed. Based on the blocks of stone and the partially carved bodies, as well as the scattered remains of chisels and other tools, this had been a workshop to create statues at one point. Strewn about the room were the shattered remains of several golems. From the number of heads in comparison to the arms and legs, only a few of these had been completed and actually destroyed in a fight. The others had likely been in the process of assembly and were destroyed during the conflict.
Kassandra was excited to claim several of the tools while we cleared the room and ensured nothing was lurking in the corners. As the lights had not been destroyed, I didn’t expect that one of the shadow monsters had denned inside this place. We were still short of well over a hundred bodies if the barracks had been an accurate count of the occupancy of this place.
Once the room was confirmed clear, we headed down the tunnel to check the last room on the left before the doors at the end of the row. The crumpled and broken door lay only a dozen feet further down the hall now.
Peering inside, I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was real. I felt one of the girls nudge against my side to see past me. Glancing down, I recognized it as Rieka from the platinum-blonde hair as she peered into the room too.
“What in the world is this?” Rieka mumbled in confusion, which got Kassandra to poke her head in as well.
The room in front of me was tiled like all the others had been, but this room had tiles on the walls and ceiling as well. Several bright light-spheres were set into the ceiling and illuminated the entire room in sharp relief, which honestly only added to the disturbed feeling twisting in my guts.
The room was divided into two, with a barrier of metal set with a thick glass window that looked into the other half. A large door sat to one side of the observation window. On the far side of that window was a large room with open space in the center surrounding a table and another door set in the furthest wall.
It was the table that disturbed me the most, though. Flat and angled slightly towards the window, there were channels cut into the metal table that I recognized from a few too many sleepless nights watching crime dramas and old horror movies on my one streaming service I could afford.
The obvious restraints worked into the metal table made its purpose disturbingly clear as we looked into what I recognized as a dissection lab, with the faint stains of long dried blood still marking those restraints and the drain channels of the table.