“Move!” Fluffbear bellowed, as much as her squeaky little voice could bellow. “Get in there!”

It was a good suggestion.

It was a bit too late, though.

The braziers dropped from the ropes, clunking on the floor as they squirmed, questing blindly downward like worms searching for rotting meat.

The table folded over itself, manifesting teeth from its edges as the entire thing made a massive maw, snapping in the direction that the brazier had been bumped.

And the support beams up above trembled, and began to descend, each one ten feet across and picking up speed as they bent in the middle and speared downward, curling like collapsing ribs.

“Go!” Fluffbear yelled, wheeling Mopsy around to flee.

This was where RAGs training saved their lives.

All of them had been through basic guild tactics.

All of them had been taught that it was good to be heroic, but being heroic in the wrong place and time could be bad.

So instead of wasting time yelling at each other to go, they'd hold the rear, or preparing to fight and hold the line in a heroic sacrifice, not realizing that everyone else was doing the same, they followed the protocol that had been drummed into their heads from Adventuring One-oh-one onward.

The closest to the designated exit fled, the next closest followed after them, and the group folded into a fast-moving line that ran like hell, with Threadbare bringing up the rear. As the last one, it was his call whether or not to stay and fight, but the fact that the thing hadn't struck until it was touched hadn't escaped his notice.

A distraction seemed more apt, here. And so when he passed one of the metal braziers, he grabbed it up, hopped up into the air to get some room to swing it, and hurled it at the most distant wiggling rope-tendril.

In retrospect, he probably should have gone for a bigger target. Or remembered that he had never actually spent any time developing his Throwing skill and chosen a different tactic.

As it was, the brazier went wide, and he felt something brush against his ear mid-jump.

“Threadbare!” Glub yelled.

One of the tendrils caught me, he realized, and grabbed ahold of it to tear himself free.

He managed to tug his ear free, with a rip of fur, but then found he couldn't open his hand.

It's sticky! He realized too late, and the tendril whipped backward, snapping him down in between the wooden jaws of the table.

They were sticky too, and Threadbare struggled, his strength unable to overcome the surprising adhesion.

Sticky and smoking, as his fur started to sizzle, and on his back as he was, he saw red '42's and '45's start to rise up.

Acid, he thought to himself. This is bad.

The thought crossed his mind that he might die here, and he was thankful he had a soulstone tucked away in his belly stuffing. Perhaps the acid wouldn't destroy it. But he had a bad feeling that the jaws he was in would probably crush the little crystal if the acid didn't melt it.

Still, the others had got away, and as the jaws creaked and began to close, he took some comfort in that, even as he wracked his brain to try and figure out a tactic to use to save himself.

“Catch!” Glub yelled, and fortunately Glub HAD been practicing throwing, as he tossed a tiny glittering orb right past the table-maw's teeth, and right into the single unrestrained paw that Threadbare had left.

It was a waystone. And Threadbare knew how to use that. “Activate!” he said, squeezing it tightly.

And then he was free, and stumbling in a dirty and dusty room, staring at the backs of the groups as they fought to keep bits of the monster away from the closing wall. Rope tendrils gouged inward, and Apollyon hacked them away with his flaming sword as Dracosnack sniped larger parts with Wizardly force bolts, and the others pulled on the wires of the mechanism to haul the wall closed faster.

He could see they wouldn't get it closed before the table, now cheated of its prey, charged in.

And fortunately, there was something he could do about that. He ran over and slapped a paw against the wall. “Animus. Command Animus, shut!”

Your Animus skill is now level 61!

Your Command Animus skill is now level 43!

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

The rest of the group went stumbling backward as it did just that, sealing with a clunk, then shuddering in its metal frame as the creature beat on it from the other side.

Then it stopped beating, and they heard slithering sliding, the sound of something, some great tongue licking and rasping along the stone... and heading away.

“That could have gone worse,” he said, checking himself over. “Mend Golem. Clean and—”

“Wait,” Dracosnack whispered, moving to him and touching his fur where it was matted and tacky, covered in dust and grime from the floor he'd waystoned against.

“Wait?” Threadbare asked him.

Dracosnack tried to pull his claw back, and it didn't budge. “Sticky. A strong adhesive. Very strong.”

“Oh shit,” Apollyon breathed. “Ah, sorry, sorry.”

A sudden rasp, and the shuddering of the frame made them fall still for a second. But the creature passed on.

“It's a mimic,” Dracosnack concluded. “Please, mmmm... clean yourself so I can release your fur.”

“A mimic? Those are basic monsters, rarely man-sized.” Apollyon said. “Nothing like... did you see those support beams? Those were huge!”

“A mimic with roots that let it feed on things miles away,” Threadbare said, considering the implications. “A mimic that's been left alone for a very, very long time, to grow here without anyone to stop it.”

“Aren't they usually dungeon monsters?” Buttons asked.

“Probably why we only see the man-sized ones,” Glub said, rubbing his chin. “If they're stuck in dungeon columns they ain't gonna change. Ain't gonna grow.

“And they do, hm, have a basic skill which helps them conceal their status against, mmmm.... several types of detection skills. Sticky flesh, combined with acidic fluids for digestion.... yes, this is simply an enormous mimic.”

“Then why aren't there any eyes?” Buttons asked. “You always hear about them making eyes. I didn't see any back there.”

“I don't think it needs them, normally,” Fluffbear said, dismounted and petting Mopsy, doing her best to keep her mount calm. “There's a lot of wood around here, and the wood is all it. All it needs to do is wait until something touches the wood, then SNAP.”

Threadbare turned and looked around the room as the others talked it over. It wasn't large; perhaps fifteen feet long, thirty wide, and with a low ceiling. Shafts led up into the ceiling and down into the floor, and through the grime he thought he could make out the rungs of ladders. “We've made it into the secret passages,” he said. “Should we keep going?”

“We don't have a choice,” Glub said. “Can't go back that way without fighting through. And I had to set my Waymark to this room to save you.”

“Thank you for that, and sorry,” Threadbare tipped his hat.

“No problem, dude. Nobody expected that thing.”

“It's got every advantage in that room if we fight it there,” Fluffbear said. “Everyone heal up or prepare, then we're going to go exploring.”

“On the hmm... plus side, now we know there are likely to be at least soulstones we can recover, since Mimics only digest organic things.” Dracosnack said. “We may fulfill this quest, hmm.... after all.”

“Oooh, this explains the ones that show as still alive in the guild roster,” Buttons said, happily. “They're stuck in this castle somewhere like we are, and can't get out.”

“Except not all of them are golems or doll haunters,” Dracosnack reminded her. “What would the breathing ones be eating?”

“Uh... is mimic edible?”

“Let's hope we never have to find out,” Apollyon said, still keeping a wary eye on the secret door. “We should probably move before it finds a crack to come through or something like that.”

“Agreed. Time to move.” Fluffbear looked at the ladders, looked to Mopsy, and sighed. “This isn't going to be pleasant.”

Cats and ladders didn't mix, and after a few attempts that made too much noise, they decided that Fluffbear and Mopsy would remain behind, while the rest of the group went up to have a look around.

They weren't gone long. And they weren't smiling when they returned.

“No luck?” Fluffbear asked.

“The passages wind up to the second floor, but rubble blocks them from going any higher,” Apollyon reported. “I could do something about that but it would be noisy, and if there's any holes in the shaft then the mimic could ooze in through them.”

“It's up there too,” Threadbare said. “Only not as much, and it's not bothering to disguise itself very well. It's like a big puddle of wood filling most of the central part of the keep.”

“There's worse news,” Buttons said. “I found a peephole and wormed out and got to a window. It's out in the courtyard now too, like brown pool around the fallen rubble.”

“It doesn't know where we went,” Fluffbear said, thinking out loud. “It thinks we might have escaped, so it's searching for us.”

“Not quite,” Threadbare said, after pondering for a moment. “It's sealing off the ways that we might use to escape. I think it's at least aware enough to know that we're around here somewhere.”

Fluffbear nodded. Then she looked down at the descending shafts. “There's only one way out of this, then. And that means going deeper into this thing...”

At approximately the same time, a few miles distant, Pulsivar was running through the woods.

And the THING was on his back.

Pulsivar didn't know what the THING was.

He only knew that he'd tried to kill it, and failed. Failed so badly, that when it had clambered onto his back and told him “Mush!” he had run for his life without shame or hesitation.

Not that he normally had much use for shame, anyway. Cats didn't DO guilt.

As he ran, tendrils whipped out of the dirt and slashed at him. He barely needed to dodge, as most swung wide. This was just part of Pulsivar's normal life now. He didn't even realize that it was his Misplacer Beast defenses that caused people to miss him so badly, he just assumed that everyone sucked now and that he was unstoppable.

The tendrils didn't give up though, massing ahead of him and flailing towards Pulsivar in a loose cloud of writhing, slashing doom...

...and the thing on Pulsivar's back said “Bodyguard, bitches!”

A tendril snapped down, and the thing zipped over to it, as if pulled by invisible wires. With a meaty CRACK, the tendril dealt the thing '0' points of damage.

“Woohoo! Skill up losers! Who's your daddy!” The thing hopped back to Pulsivar's shoulders.

Another tendril out of the next dozen managed to stay on target...

…and another zip, as the thing intercepted and another red 0 rose skyward.

“Who's your mommy! Hahahahha!”

Aggravated, more tendrils burst from the ground.

SNAP!

“Who's your cousin!”

CRACKLE!

“Who's your uncle!”

POP!

“Who's your... oh wossname... aunt! Who's your auntie!”

Then they were through that cloud, and Pulsivar's ears laid flat as the thing chortled. “Oh good, good skillups, yeah! Get it get it uh-huh! Get it get it uh-huh! Fuck around and find out! Woooo!”

The keep loomed on the horizon, and the ground in front of it bulged, as the monster in the earth prepared to go all-out against this infuriating pest.

“Well shit,” the thing said as tendrils burst out in a continuous storm, and Pulsivar growled, pushing himself faster. “At this rate I'mma run out of family...”