The red fountain was flowing when I crossed the western market square.

The sun had barely deadlifted itself over the horizon, casting reddish gold rays all over the place, but apparently that wasn’t red enough for some dignitary, so a group of shirtless convicts were lined up on stage, ready to appease their superior’s desire for warmer (~98 degree) hues. Shit, some of the prisoners barely looked older than me.

As I worked my way through the onlookers, I caught bits and pieces about what they’d done. Not that I wanted to hear. I just wanted to get clear of the slaughterhouse and never look back.

People can never keep to their damn selves. They always need to broadcast themselves to as many people as they can. There was this one asshole personal trainer in my gym that would never shut the hell up - within a few weeks of going there, I already knew his one rep maxes, body weight, and his annual salary (that’s after taxes, bro). All that without ever having a conversation with him once. If I already know that kind of information about you, and I’ve never even spoken to you, then I automatically hate you. Come to think of it, it really doesn’t take much to get me to hate somebody. I saw this one fat guy ordering a burrito bowl with double sour cream and almost gagged.

If you want extra sour cream, then milk it from your own flabby bitch tits.

When I passed through the city gate, I saw that the cart was hitched up and ready to depart for the forward base. A few adventurers sat in the back, but none of them were adulterous blue-haired fiends, so I hung back to wait.

My shiny new squad-mates still hadn’t shown up when the cart left, so I grabbed a seat on a nearby hay bale and waited, envisioning everything that could possibly go wrong today. It was a long list.

The sun wasn’t fully up yet, but it looked like it was going to be a beautiful summer day. Not a cloud to be seen, and not even that many contrails. The birds were chirping, the appropriately-sized bees were buzzing, and the whole countryside was alive and green.

“...blood everywhere! Dude, that was crazy! Oh, there he is! Hey, Bradley!”

Ugh.

“Morning gentlemen.” I answered curtly with a quick wave.

“This is for you, mule.” Burt said, handing me a large knapsack bursting with supplies. I slung it across my back, and graciously accepted a few bows and spears from Clayton. If all they wanted me to do was lug their shit around and cheer them on while they hunted a dragon, I wasn’t gonna complain at all.

Hand me some fucking pom-poms while you’re at it.

Burt and Clayton were equipped with light leather armor, visorless leather helmets, shortswords and shields. It seemed a bit minimalist to me, but these guys had taken down some pretty nasty shit together, so I wasn’t gonna question them. But god damn… they weren’t even wearing proper boots, just strappy leather sandals.

“No metal?” I asked.

“Too heavy. We need to move.” Clayton answered.

Stella had boots at least. Her armor was a bit heavier than theirs, but not by much. Just a few extra metal pieces around the torso and shoulders. When I looked at her, she looked away.

“Didn’t see you at the square, shrimp. You’re not afraid of blood, are you?” Burt asked.

“You said to meet here.”

I wasn’t afraid of blood, but my damn pulse went up anyway.

“Yeah, but anybody would stop to watch an execution! You don’t see that many people get it very often.”

“You got me. I’m afraid of blood.” I admitted, shrugging.

“Good thing I know you’re not.” Burt said, wagging a finger at me. “If we need you to step in, you can’t hesitate. Not that we’ll need you too.”

“I gotcha. Sit back and watch.”

“I mean it. If you steal the killing blow on this thing, I’ll fucking murder you myself.” Burt warned, his wagging finger poking me in the chest to assert dominance.

“He always like this in the morning?” I asked Clayton with a yawn.

“Just do it, mule.”

----------------------------------------

A couple hours later, everything was still going according to plan. The douchebros spent most of the ride going on about the execution, how they made sure to do the initial kill on everyone in the group before starting the final kill, and a whole bunch of other morbid details that I could’ve lived without. But eventually they calmed down and Burt discussed the plan at length with Stella - the various strategies they were going to use to subvert the monster, whether or not they would lead with spears, yadda yadda. We’d arrived at the forward base and set off along the same path that their group always used, and before long arrived at the same cave that they were familiar with. This was the same place they’d stumbled across the Primantipede lair, and they knew that the cave system went way deeper down.

We paused at the cave entrance for a quick meal and downed some of the field rations and water from my bag. As I rummaged through it, I could see that they were well prepared - they’d brought torches, rope, and plenty of bandages to make up for their lack of an elf bitch. There was even a little map with an X on it labelled “this is where we’ll bury the body”. Okay, I’m lying.

I looked into the cave long enough to confirm that there were no glowing eggs. Nope, just empty gaping nothingness.

Great, I feel better already.

When we were all fed and watered, Burt and Clayton lit a couple of the torches, and we were on our way. I could tell that the cave system went deep as soon as we walked in the entrance. The summer days in Castella had been hot, but the cave was cool - even close to the entrance. Meaning, there was a huge reservoir of cold air waiting for us in the depths.

The first stretch of the tunnel sloped downward, but it quickly leveled off and widened. Every once in a few hundred paces a smaller tunnel would branch off the main one, and I didn’t see any glowing shit in those either. Nothing stirred in the shadows… for now. The air was surprisingly clean down here, but there was always a slight tinge of something… that scent that hits you when you bike past a piece of flattened roadkill. The rock walls were deeply crevassed, and marbled with reddish splashes of iron. I’d never seen anything like it before, because if you’ll recall, I was a software manager back on Earth, not a god damn coal miner.

Come to think of it, shouldn’t one of us have a canary or something? I forget what the expression was…

As we progressed, the air became more and more damp. There were noticeable patches of moisture on some of the faces of the rocks, and even a few stalactites and stalagmites here and there. The kind that take centuries to form. A few of them had their tips lopped off - random acts of violence against nature by intrepid douchebags. Though on second thought…

Picture, if you will: A squadron of young adventurers who dove in a little past their depth. They fought valiantly against some titanic multi-armed behemoth, but three of them quickly perished, while the fourth retreated in haste, so that their families could at least learn their fate. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, but another, multi-legged behemoth quickly closed the distance, until the runner slipped on a banana peel and fell, organs first, onto a razor-sharp stalagmite. Then the behemoth catches up, takes one of the dying adventurer’s shoes (which is all it was really after), and disappears from whence it came.

As we walked, the torches cast eerie shadows on the cavern walls, animating the scene I described in the same reddish-gold light of the sunrise.

I need to stop fucking thinking is what I need to do…

Finally, after a few more ups, mostly downs, and a sprinkling of zigs and zags, the tunnel opened up wide and I could faintly catch a distant roaring noise. The absolutely gigantic cavern that our minuscule tributary led into was like one of those steep canyons carved out by a river - except entirely underground. That would explain the constant roaring that came from the void below us, though there was absolutely no light filtering in from above to confirm.

“Whoa, it’s huge!” Clayton exhaled.

Burt gestured with his torchlight, illuminating a slick, narrow ledge along the face of the underground cliff that marched down, down, and further down out of sight.

“This has gotta be it!” Burt grinned, his torch playing unnecessarily evil shapes across his face.

“I told you we shoulda kept going last time, we almost got here!” Clayton responded.

“And what, drag that dead beast along with us?” Burt answered with an elbow.

How those two managed to look so relaxed was completely beyond me. Stella had been pretty quiet though - this definitely wasn’t her cup of tea either. She’d taken one of my spears and was using it as a walking stick as we went, though Burt and Clayton were still rocking their swords.

We crept slowly down the ledge, which was wide enough to walk comfortably, but not wide enough to reliably catch you if you stumbled. At one point, the ledge formed a proper platform, and somebody had strung up a large rope bridge leading across the chasm. We decided to stay on this side of the cliff and continued to follow our ledge downwards.

I can’t tell you how long it took, but we eventually reached… the floor of the chasm??

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

I puzzled for a moment over the lack of river, but Burt and Clayton quickly strode across the cavern floor until they reached… another cliff! The familiar roaring, now a good deal louder, came from beyond that ledge.

So this wasn’t the true floor - it was just a giant big-ass platform.

In fact, this ledge was so big that it even had decorations: skeletal remains scattered here and there along the floor. I couldn’t tell in the dimness if they were human or not. I didn’t really want to know.

The floor extended off into the distance, so we followed it for a bit longer.

Then, Burt shouted out.

At first, I figured that he was just checking for echoes. Then, I saw it.

Far ahead and below us, it seemed like part of the cave wall had crumbled away, exposing… stone blocks. Cut into bricks and fitted together into a pattern, and lined with pillars.

“It’s them!” Burt said urgently. “The ruined passages!”

He looked back, and I could see that the ease and confidence in his demeanor was gone: his eyes now contained only fear.

Stella shrank back.

Clayton, however, didn’t seem quite as bothered. He took point, peering at the path forward for some time.

“There, look!” he said finally.

Some distance before our ledge ran into the passage, another small tunnel diverged from the main cavern. And a faint, flickering light emanated from it.

“That’s it!” Burt said.

“We shouldn’t… it’s too close.” Stella spoke up, touching Burt on the arm.

We all stared for a moment at the dilapidated masonry, waiting for something forbidden and deadly to spring out at us. But no matter how intently we looked, only the cold, dead stones revealed themselves - whatever intelligent life had built these was long since departed.

Meanwhile, the small tunnel seemed to be emitting a slight haze, like heat waves on a highway, and we could hear muted scuffling noises coming from within.

The others nodded to each other. This is what we came here for.

“Vanguards first.” Clayton suggested.

I almost expected them to turn and look at me, but Burt nodded in assent and crept forward, holding his torch up high. He went into the tunnel entrance first, followed by Clayton and Stella. I paused for a second to drop our equipment at the entrance, fretting for a moment over whether to arm myself with a sword or a spear, before eventually just grabbing both.

The first thing to hit me was the smell - it reeked like a gas station in there! There was a definite haze wherever I looked, and our torches seemed to burn brighter in here, illuminating a dead-end cavern the size of Dunkan’s church. The light that we’d seen from the outside came from a bunch of burning branches arranged around the edges of the room.

But it was the branches that weren’t burning that caught my attention. They were arranged in a massive nest at the far end of the chamber, and

Gulp

A massive, dark hulk shifted.

Burt inched forward, his sandals tapping the floor of the chamber.

As he went, a low diesel-engine rumbling revved up, and the hulk thrashed about in its nest, finally turning to face the intruders.

For once, we’d actually found what we were looking for in the killing field - a ground dragon. It looked just like the sketches on the flier from the Adventurer’s Guild, underneath ten black skulls signifying maximum danger.

Ten fucking Skulls.

Its mouth was shaped like a rocket nozzle, and it gaped open at us in a perfect circle, flashing endless rows of razor-sharp shark teeth. Stick an arm in this thing, and you might as well say goodbye to it.

Its dark, scaled body was built like a komodo dragon had a baby with a tank. A long, powerful tail waved around behind it, and its four legs were tipped with long, scythe-like claws. A pair of short, leathery wings were tucked tightly against its back.

I couldn’t see its beady, black eyes against its scales, but I knew they were somewhere.

Stella and Clayton crept forward as well, to either side of Burt. To have any hope of slaying this monster, they’d all have to attack together.

Like a good little mule, I hugged the back wall, daring to go no further.

Burt and Clayton dropped their torches and drew their swords. The beast did not like this. It let out a roaring screech that I could feel in my bones and flicked a forked tongue around in its already-salivating mouth.

A forked tongue tipped with…

Is that… flint?!?

On cue, sparks started to fly in the dragon’s mouth.

I saw what was coming just in time.

“Get down!” I bellowed, hitting the deck.

The group immediately dropped and rolled, just in time to avoid the incendiary column of fire that erupted from the creature’s mouth, temporarily making the shadowy cavern as light as day.

When I got up, I saw that my squad had already pounced. Burt was shoving his shield into the monster’s face, keeping its attention while Stella danced in and out with her spear, testing its reflexes with light jabs. Clayton circled around to the back, looking for an opening.

It didn’t take long. The monster lunged out of its nest at Burt, knocking him back and pinning him to the floor. By some miracle of clutchness, Burt wedged his shield perfectly into the dragon’s wide, gaping mouth, narrowly preventing himself from being barbequed and devoured at the same time. Clayton jumped on the monster’s back, while Stella stabbed at its neck.

But the dragon explosively spread its wings, knocking both of them back, and focused its attention on Burt. It reared its head back, and the shield glowed red.

Burt stabbed his sword forward at the creature’s neck, but he didn’t get a good angle, so his blade bounced off of the hardened scales uselessly. Then the dragon rammed its head forward into Burt’s face, and the Ace of Apis went out like a light.

I decided that loss of consciousness qualified as a request for help, so I lowered my spear and charged, adrenaline surging.

Clayton and Stella were back on their feet, and the monster whipped around to address them. Its tail swung smartly around and caught Clayton across the head, and he dropped like a sack of dirt.

Then the dragon charged Stella, who managed to stab the monster in its chest as it approached. Unfortunately, this only pissed it off, and it bowled her over just like Burt, scrabbling at her with its deadly forelimbs. She screamed, emitting a burst of energy loud enough to get Burt to stir in his stupor.

But, just as it was about to turn her cowering body into strips of gory fettuccine, I arrived and struck true, my spear plunging all the way through the beast’s neck. It snapped around, wrenching the spear out of my grasp and throwing me off balance. Then it charged me and I got my name added to the list of “people that got steamrolled”. I landed heavily on my back, but luckily I was wearing a solid metal helmet, so when my head bashed against the cavern floor I didn’t conk out forever. Unluckily, now I was staring up at the face of death.

The diesel engine revved again and the shield glowed red, bowing slightly with stain, a few puny jets of flame blowing out the sides.

It’s not gonna last. I realized in horror.

The shield gave one last heroic whine and buckled, but before the monster could get a killing blast off, I held out my hand and fired my own icy projectile right into its gullet. If there was any justice in this fucking world, that would’ve ended the fight, but the dragon just coughed up a cloud of sparks and erased my pathetic little snowball from existence.

It plunged its head towards me, intent on grinding me to a pulp, but before it could butcher me, angry weapons tore into it from all sides. Clayton had successfully mounted the monster’s back, and stabbed repeatedly at anything that looked like a soft spot. Stella had picked up her spear and attacked from the left, while Burt roared and dove in on the right.

Hot, sticky blood poured all over me as I fumbled to draw my own blade.

I rolled over, and my leg fell across the red-hot shield that had dropped from the dragon’s mouth.

I screamed, and with the massive jolt from the pain, I sprang up and plunged my sword directly into the dragon’s mouth. My strike was true, piercing right through its skull with little resistance and right out the back of its head.

The monster jerked one last time, and a final, pathetic burst of flame immersed my arm in searing agony.

I flinched back with the instant reflexes of a kid with his hand on a hot stove, barely escaping the KFC-chicken experience. As I went, my toasted arm tore across the dragon’s teeth, leaving deep lacerations.

It was done.

The others continued hacking away to ensure that the spawn from hell was actually deceased, while I slowly got up, clutching my wounded arm. I took a step, and daggers went up my right elbow. I hadn’t even noticed, but I must have bashed it pretty hard against the ground when I fell.

By some miracle both of my legs worked, so I staggered out of the chamber, breathing in the clean(er) air of the chasm. A roar of triumph echoed from within the tunnel, and I couldn’t help but crack a grin. All of a sudden, the darkness didn’t seem so dark. Even the mysterious ruined passage didn’t seem quite so ominous. Because now, I knew for certain that this squad of ours wasn’t just prey down here - we were the predators too!

I retrieved the bag with the bandages and returned to the scene of the crime. As the support, it was my job to dress up any of their injuries - if I could manage it.

I got the bag halfway across the chamber, but quickly gave up. My pulse was pounding and my arms were killing me. I couldn’t. I was done.

Then, as if answering my silent prayer, a set of hands opened the bag for me and started unwrapping the bandages. It was Stella.

She’s got this, then.

I turned back to get a good look at the monster, while some of the fires from our battle were still burning bright enough to see it.

I was greeted by Burt, who had started back to join Stella. He’d taken his helmet off, exposing a bloody mess on his skull.

“Good work Bradley.” he said, swaying on the spot. “Good work, buddy.”

“He’s delirious.” I said to Stella, pointing at him with my thumb. She nodded and set to work.

Clayton was still sawing away at the creature with his sidearm, a long knife, and as I approached the heaping platter of death, he cut a strip of meat out and ate it raw.

Hungry? At a time like this?

“Try some, it’s delicious.” he said, flashing me a bloody grin. Then, he too went to join the others, and I stood there alone, surveying the carnage.

We’d really done a number on this thing in such a short time. And no doubt, we were going to be the heroes of the city for another day.

That is, if we can lug this thing out of here to prove it. How the hell are we going to-

Then, the loudest scream I’ve ever heard crashed into me, knocking me to my knees.

Stella? why’d she-

As I retook my feet and turned, the cold blade of a knife plunged into my chest.

Clayton stood before me, his eyes wide open, flashes of yellow unable to conceal themselves any longer.

Oh no. No, no no.

I crumpled to the ground, and Clayton fell with me, twisting his knife as he went. I convulsed in shock, paralyzed by sheer surprise.

Without hesitation, Clayton withdrew his blade and slid his hand into the open incision. I felt him grapple his way around my innards, working his way to my heart. He twisted around mercilessly, but as he went, the evil grin fell from his face.

“Wha-” he grunted. “Where is it?”

“WHERE IS IT!!!! WHERE IS IT!!!!” he shouted in my face, his inhuman eyes filled with violence, but also a bizarre touch of fear.

I tried to laugh, but just hacked up a ruined lung’s worth of air.

“I’m sorry sweetie.” I said in a low growl. “But if you want to break my heart, you’re going to have to look somewhere else.”

Hundreds of miles away, hidden underneath an enchanted hillside in the middle of a forest named ‘Certain Death’, a heart beat on the wall of a cave. Cheerfully. Unaffected by anything else that was happening in the world.

“I’ll do my best.” Clayton snarled, and went to work on me just as he’d gone to work on the dragon. I lost count of the stabs after ten. As my vision faded to black, I caught sight of one of Clayton’s feet, cocked out to one side behind him. I could see his toes under the sandal, and on one of them gleamed an innocent, golden ring

Well played.

I bled out helplessly on the cavern floor in the depths of hell, surrounded by my enemies. Then, in one final act of kindness, the agony left my body.

I died.