Duskbound

When he'd been a child, Velik had learned some basic woodcraft from a transient woodsman who'd come through the frontier. His parents had quickly and loudly objected to their son spending time with a vagabond, no matter how good natured the man was. Velik had never seen him again.

The cobbler's wife had been a favorite of all the children in Deshir for years. Though she wasn't a classed chef, she'd been an avid baker and more than generous with the fruits of her labors. Velik had heard she'd been killed in an attack on the town five or six years ago, long after he'd been exiled.

Both their faces were in the cluster on the wall, along with a dozen others. All of them were distorted, like melted wax busts covered in a layer of skin, but he recognized those two. The rest might be locals, or just unfortunate travelers, or people from some other place he'd never heard of, for all he knew – all of them except one.

Chalin was in the center, still the seven-year-old boy from Velik's memories. His voice was lost in the noise, or perhaps so twisted that Velik couldn't recognize it. When the wall spoke, some of the words were clear, spoken in unison by all the faces, but most of the noise was just that: noise. It was like a dozen people talking to him at once, and only occasionally saying the same thing.

"Velik," they said in unison. "The Black Fang. You have returned to us."

Then the voices fell apart again, each one saying something different. He wanted to hear everything they were saying, needed to know the truth. Focusing on it was difficult; every time he thought he was following a particular voice, another one would overlap it and draw his attention away. By the time he realized he'd lost the thread, it was too late to get it back.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

He caught bits and pieces, some of it seemingly nonsense, but also scraps about a reforged link, crooning about how strong he was to defeat their champions, and, most alarmingly, promises to transform him into a bastion of power. That particular comment, coming from a wizened old face near the top of the wall and combined with the arms still actively kneading mounds of flesh like bread dough, disturbed Velik so much that he took a step back and brought his spear up.

"Do not resist," the faces said together. "This is how it was meant to be."

More arms grew out of the ceiling and reached for him. For just a second, Velik stared at them dumbly. Then something started burning against his chest and he snapped out of it. The amulet! Torwin was right. This thing is trying to get into my head.

It was a good thing the old monster hunter had insisted that Velik needed something to defend his mind, otherwise he might never have noticed the arms descending from the ceiling above him. But he did have the amulet, and while it didn't grant immunity to the hypnotic lull of the voices, it helped enough that he wasn't caught totally unaware.

Just before a hand big enough to wrap all the way around his skull touched him, he burst into motion. His spear came up between him and the hand as he backpedaled, slashing through tough, rubbery flesh and sending droplets of thick black blood through the air. Faces started screaming, seemingly at random, but Velik pushed the sound aside. It was already hard enough to focus without adding another layer of distractions.

"Stop!" the voices all screeched at him as he fended off another hand. The sound of so many voices shouting in unison sent spikes of pain into his mind, causing him to gasp and his vision to go blurry. Velik fought through it, but before he'd realized what was happening, a hand had caught him around one arm and pulled him forward.

[Apex Hunter] started sounding the alarms in his head, the skill warning him that he was in as much danger as he'd ever been in. Even being inside the mouth of the great wolf hadn't triggered a reaction this potent, and on the surface of things, that had seemed far more imminently fatal. Then again, the worst that could be said there was that Velik would have died. Here, his fate was far more uncertain.

One thing he knew for sure was that he didn't want to be one of those piles of quivering flesh being worked over. Sickening as it was, he was almost certain they were all somehow still alive. So when the giant hand dragged him forward into the waiting grasp of the monster, Velik did the only reasonable thing he could think of: he went absolutely berserk trying to escape.

His spear swept out, [Savage Rhythm] already starting to work on it, and stabbed into the many joints of the arm connected to the hand holding him. At the same time, his other hand drew his belt knife and slashed it across the fingers clamped onto his bicep. He didn't care if he dug too deep and cut his own flesh, just so long as the hand let go of him.

More hands descended on him, but Velik was free now and he completely put the voices out of his mind. The next few seconds were a blur, and when it was over, even he wasn't entirely sure what had happened, but he'd made it out of the range of the monster's reach. Black blood speckled the floor and his clothes, and the blade of his spear was completely coated with it, but he was free.

"You are ours! Return to us!" the monster bellowed from multiple throats, enraged at his resistance.

Or maybe they're not talking to me, he realized as he heard the sound of scrabbling in the darkness. It was no surprise to see monsters slithering into the cavern from various holes hidden in the fleshy folds that shrouded the stone.

"Bring us the champion! Let his form be remade into one more suitable for his status."

The centipedes were the first to reach him, but Velik knew how to fight those. These ones were no different than the hundreds he'd already killed, and he had a measure of the wall monster's range now. Its hands were fast and creepily flexible on those multi-jointed arms, but as long as Velik kept himself near the entrance, he was safe.

That was a dangerous thought. He'd seen new hands grow out of the ceiling, quickly descending on stalks of flesh, and so he wasn't terribly surprised when more of them came down from directly overhead. Unfortunately, he was too busy to guard against them, not when he was busy fending off four different giant centipedes at the same time.

Velik spun in place, his spear flashing through the air to drive a centipede back while he hopped over a set of pincers aimed at his calf. A hand enveloped his face and clenched around his skull, pulling him off his feet. He was eight feet in the air before he could grab hold of the wrist, only to find its strength was so immense that even his triple digit physical stat wasn't enough to free him.

He was considerably more leery about cutting through fingers grabbing onto his skull than his arm, especially when the palm of the hand was blinding him, but he didn't see much other choice. The arm was at least six inches thick, maybe more, and his spear wasn't the right kind of weapon to free him. Worse, he had multiple monsters scrabbling around below him, and could easily imagine them rearing up to snap pincers around his limbs.

No other choice. Hope I'm not about to ruin my dashing good looks.

Taking the spear in both hands and activating [Shape Shifting], he shrunk it down to something that was only three feet long with a wide, flat leaf blade. Then he jabbed it straight up into the heel of the palm pressed against his face, praying he had the blind accuracy to avoid slicing off his own nose.

The spear punctured the fleshy hand, parting a layer of flesh from meat, and he felt something scrape the tip of his nose as the monstrous hand tried to flex away from the weapon without releasing its hold on Velik. Unwilling to relinquish the advantage, he heaved upwards again. The blade twisted sideways this time, slicing a line across his scalp, but he could tell from the sudden slackness in the hand's grip that he'd severed at least one finger.

Jerking the spear back and forth, he quickly loosened the hand enough that he was able to drop free. The spear came with him, sliding loose and showering him with blood and chunks of meat. Velik dropped six feet, directly onto the back of one of the centipede monsters. It bucked wildly, trying to coil around on itself to get at him, and he nearly tumbled to the ground as he failed to keep his balance. At the last second, he caught himself and drove his spear down into a different monster that was coming around at him, pincers spread wide. Stay tuned for updates on empire

This isn't working. Too many attacks from every angle.

His hand snaked into his belt pouch and pulled out his fallback option, the haste potion. Without a second's hesitation, he ripped out the cork with his teeth and downed the liquid in a single pull. Instantly, the world seemed to slow down, so much so that he could leisurely examine the no less than four giant hands coming down to grab him and the three open sets of pincers poised to slice his legs open to the bone.

Much better, he thought as he watched the enemies' ponderous movements for what felt like a full minute. Then he stretched his spear back out to full length and reshaped the head into something good for hacking through monster flesh. Plenty of time to clean this mess up.