Duskbound

The first indication that he wasn't alone was a peculiar plopping sound that Velik had first heard a few days ago in the upper reaches of the flesh caves. His eyes snapped over to the entrance, but of course there was nothing to see. There hadn't been last time, either.

He'd only been destroying the corruption seeds for about ten minutes and had barely even started to clear off the first of the fleshy, melted-candle-shaped pillars, but he wasn't going to let himself get trapped in here. [Dread Lance] might work to blast through the wall; he hadn't tried it yet and he didn't want to until he had to. That meant he needed to get out now before the invisible membrane fully stretched itself across the exit.

For some reason, the monsters that made up the wall didn't seem to register to [Apex Hunter]. Maybe it was the fact that they were neither predator or prey, but something else that existed outside that cycle. Maybe it was just some skill the monster had to help them hide. Velik didn't know, but it was damn annoying either way.

He stumbled over an invisible slime, but he'd been expecting that. They always seemed to position themselves in his way, too frequently for him to believe it was anything but on purpose. Whatever senses they had to guide them obviously weren't hindered by the dark and gave them enough lead time to get into position.

His shins hit the invisible wall three steps later and he pitched forward into a one-handed hand spring. Something struck his leg and knocked him off balance, but Velik was agile enough to compensate and still ended up back on his feet at the end of the tumble. With his spear out in front of him making wide sweeps, he rushed up the tunnel.

Whew. That was close. I was hoping there wouldn't be any more of those things this far down, but I guess that was too much to ask for. I just can't figure out what the point is, though. They definitely could have trapped me in a dozen different places. It's like I'm being herded.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

That wall was different. It wasn't preventing him from going back. If he'd stood there and let it, it would have sealed him in. That might have been worth it, though. Now that he was out of danger and had a second to think about it, he could have taken his time destroying the rest of the seeds, then blasted his way out with [Dread Lance]. Then again, he hadn't proven the new skill would work, and experimenting when he didn't have another way out wasn't a great idea.

No, this way is better. I'll come back and finish up with those seeds once I break the dungeon core.

The truth was that he wasn't sure if he could break a dungeon core. The last champion he'd fought had nearly been too much, might even have overwhelmed him if not for merging two skills mid-battle. He hadn't used his haste potion, but that was only because he didn't see more attacks being the solution to that fight. More and more, his problem with punching up in levels had been penetrating the monsters' thick hides.

If the dungeon was going to throw an even tougher champion elite at him, that might just be the wall that finally stopped him. But he wouldn't know until he got there, and if he let himself be locked up in a room full of creepy parasitic seed monsters, he'd never find out.

Was that the plan? Leave me to die in there, then let one of the seeds take over my body? But if so, why not build the wall farther back from the mouth of the tunnel where I might not have noticed it, or at least they would have had more time to get the slimes stacked up?

Either he was misunderstanding what the dungeon was trying to do, or the dungeon just wasn't that smart. He snorted at the thought. Smart enough to trap your dumb ass down here, isn't it?

The only other thing he could think was that killing monsters was fine, but destroying the seeds wasn't for some reason. It didn't make sense to him why they'd be any different, but what did he know about how a dungeon worked, anyway? Whatever the reason, the rules were different for that room.

Velik returned to exploring what he thought of as the lower tunnels of the flesh caves, most of which were anywhere from three to eight feet wide, though he did find a few spots tighter than that. None of those weird wall mouths were lurking there, though. He knew because he thoroughly stabbed the wall ahead of him on both sides each time he had to squeeze through.

He also shanked every little eye-speck he could find, but he had a suspicion that he missed far more than he found, and that even if he did hunt down all of them, the dungeon could just grow new ones whenever it wanted.

"Velik," something hissed softly from ahead.

He froze, his eyes scouring the darkness. A monster that could talk was a new one, but from what he understood, those corrupted seeds could do it back in town, so there wasn't any reason one of them couldn't do it here. On the other hand, one that could talk and knew his name was a bit creepier.

"Velik," the voice called out again, so soft that he could barely hear it.

Okay, so this is obviously a trap. But… do I have any other choice? The dungeon can block off the way back whenever it wants. It only needs a minute, so it doesn't need voices in the dark to bait me into position. It knows my name, somehow. And I'm here because of Chalin. Connection?

There was only one way to find out.

"Who's there?" he called out, his voice echoing weirdly in the flesh-coated tunnel.

"We've been looking for you," the voice said back. "Come to us. The way is open."

"What way? Who is 'we?' And why can't you come to me?"

But the voice was silent. It had said everything it meant to, apparently. It was up to Velik whether or not to walk forward. You're being an idiot. The smart thing to do here is focus on getting out. Get somebody like Torwin to come back with you. Or even better, a whole dungeon clearing team. You're in over your head. Use [Dread Lance] to break the slime walls and leave.

Another part of him argued, It's been ten years of fighting, of looking for answers, of being alone. Don't you want it to be over with? Aren't you tired of wondering what happened?

And he was. He'd come here for answers, and now they were within reach. He wasn't going to let a fear of the unknown stop him now.

Squaring his shoulders, spear in hand, Velik followed the voice into the darkness.

* * *

At first, he thought it was another scar in the wall, twisted and puckered like all the rest. It was only when it split open to reveal crooked, brown teeth that Velik realized it was a mouth, fully a foot wide. "Yes, approach. We are waiting," it said as he got close.

Another mouth opened farther down the tunnel right in front of his eyes. One moment, the wall was a bare patch of flesh. The next, it was swelling into a pair of cracked, dirty lips that parted to reveal a black tongue. "This way," it called out.

"Are you Chalin?" he asked. He'd asked the same question four times already. The mouths hadn't answered before, and they didn't this time either.

I swear to Morgus, I'm going to stab this monster so fucking hard when I finally get to the part with the brain, just for being so cryptic and annoying.

The tunnel opened up into the kind of giant cavern he'd found the last champion in, only this time there was obviously something already there. It grew out of the wall, a collection of mismatched parts. Eyes opened and closed all across the wall, some of them pinpricks, others bigger than his head. One in the center was more than four feet wide. Noses grew between them, all shapes and sizes, and mouths floated around the outside of the eye-and-nose cluster. Enjoy more content from empire

Long arms descended from the ceiling in front of it, dozens of them. Most of them had four or five joints that let them bend at strange angles. All were long enough to reach the floor with room to spare. They worked in twos and threes, massaging piles of quivering, living flesh that Velik vaguely recognized as being animals.

Is that thing… making monsters? Is this how dungeons do it? I thought they formed them whole from mana, not… whatever this is. What about those sacs with the incubating monsters in them?

"You're finally here," the thing in the wall said, its voice coming from a dozen mouths in unison.

New eyes opened across the ceiling and the walls around him, all of them locked on Velik. They peered at him from every direction while he stood uneasily at the mouth of the tunnel. For all his earlier bravado, he was starting to think he had indeed made a mistake in coming here. None of this was what he'd expected to find.

"Who are you?" Velik demanded, trying to appear confident as he strode forward. He stopped well short of the reach of those arms and glared at the wall of eyes.

Flesh bubbled and faces started popping out, filling the empty space between eyes and noses. They were distorted, hideous caricatures of human beings, made all the worse by the thin, ropey strands of flesh dangling from their scalps where hair should have been. Despite that, so many of them were recognizable to him.

"Don't you remember us? We remember you," the mouths said as one.