A few weeks ago orcs were seen near the sarcastically-named Beautiful Caves by the inhabitants of the metropolis Ilona. They attacked the orcs, who slew all who came after them... except one, who managed to flee and warn the city of Ilona of what was undoubtedly an incoming invasion. The townsfolk of Ilona braced themselves for an assault, possibly a siege; panic was in the air as supplies were laid, troops mustered, and everyone thought their days were numbered.
The invasion never came. the orcs camped outside the inhuman and twisting structures that marked the entrance to the Beautiful Caves; the orcs didn't move one inch towards Ilona. The Lord Mayor of Ilona, moved by the outcries to drive the orcs away, but not willing to send his own men to attack a group of orcs who had made no further aggressive moves against his populace, issued a substantial bounty to whomever could either clear the caves or report back what the orcs were planning, as well as if the force actually required the town militia.
Galina, the reluctant Celestial Knight of the star Ilona, the rogue mage Ember, the thief Aria, and Wizktiyc the minotaur decided that bounty was worth their while. They had never met before (well, Ember and Wiztiyc had met and been on a job before), only having met at an inn, looking over the same proclamation of the Lord Mayor. They made a plan to scout for alternative entrances to the Beautiful Caves, so as to catch the orcs by surprise and pick them off, one by one. Wiztiyc in particular had developed a taste for orc meat, something he was very vocal about. "It tastes just like chicken. I want more."
That may have been enough reason for Aria and Galina to offer to scout ahead, leaving the not as stealthy Ember holding the bag that was the awful conversation Wiztiyc wanted to have about how to cook orc flesh. Aria and Galina chuckled as they made their way along the ridge before the Beautiful Caves. Aria's foot landed on a section of ground that was definitely hollow. With Galina's help They pulled up a section of the earth that had grown over a section of wood. They pulled that up to reveal darkness, which fled away from the light fifteen feet, abandoning unworked stone. Securing a rope with the help of Galina, Aria repelled down down into the hole.
The instant her feet sunk into it Aria was almost overwhelmed by the smell of feces. Gagging, she called up "Galina! - HACK - careful about the smell! The walls are - UGH - covered in shit!"
Galina didn't smell it until her feet sunk into it. "Oh, oh!" She gagged, remembered the money, and found a way to not throw up. She stumbled over to Aria, who had lit a torch. The darkness continued its retreat, this time into a passageway at the far end of the shit-covered opening they were in. Something glinted in Galina's periphery; a silvery response to Aria's torchlight. Galina grimaced as she wiped the caked droppings off the wall. It wasn't silver Galina had found: it was a vein of mithril. Galina touched the vein in silent awe.
Another hand placed itself upon hers. A familiar hand. A hand from a dead man. Galina turned to her right, to see Corin, her husband, looking at the mithril with her. Corin had been dead awhile now, since before Galina had met Ilona. "That is so beautiful," declared the dead man. And then he was gone.
Aria, for her part, had found something round in a deeper section of poop: a goblin skull. Aria hated goblins. No one had talked about them when the bounty was announced, just orcs. Aria heard Galina gasp; she was pale in the torchlight. And she had her hand in the smelly wall. "Something happen?" Aria asked, concerned.
"Uh... um... mithril!" Galina said a touch too hastily. "Mithril, mithril right here!" Aria walked over, wincing at every footstep as it sank into the muck. They didn't need to stay another minute, and so therefore they didn't.
When they got out of the cave there was not one bit of feces on them. When they looked back down they couldn't see even a trace of the foulness that was in the cave.
Wiztiyc and Ember were having a conversation about eating orcs, a bit farther down the Beautiful Mountain. Well, Wiztiyc was trying to, with Ember trying to redirect the conversation to something, anything, else, and failing. So he was excited when Aria and Galina came back with a sure way forward. Wiztiyc, however, was disappointed when he heard that the route didn't include orcs he could chew on the bones of.
"Wiztiyc sank much lower into the horrific muck than the others, and his sensitive nose made the experience a whole order of magnitude worse. Ember, however, didn't notice the filth at all. The whole complex was roiling with the most awful eldritch energy he'd ever seen, surrounding him, hugging the walls, forcing its way into his nostrils, into his lungs, his heart...
Goblins. Way, deep, deep down.
Spells. Living, sparking, beautiful spells.
A gigantic. Rotting. Rotting to eternity but never running out of a thing to rot corpse.
Eyes. Burning through eyelids that never would fully go away. Staring out. Staring at him. Beckoning.
Deeper.
Deeper.
Deeper.
While he was gagging on the stench Wiztiyc noticed that Ember wasn't in the cave with them. Footprints led down the adjacent hall. The minotaur barreled ahead of the torch Aria was holding to find Ember standing at the edge of an abyss. His eyes were glazed and he teetered, mouth forming words that made no sound. Wiztiyc grabbed Ember, whose eyes cleared; the tunnel reverberated with Ember's scream. As Wiztiyc pulled Ember back to Aria, who had come running with the torch, Ember somehow regained his composure. "There's a lot of really evil energy around us. And there's something... I think it's a god of rot. Or it was. This is not what we signed up for."
Galina had not followed Wiztiyc and Aria to help with Ember. She had been looking at the vein of mithril, wistfully. Corin had come back. He had loved it. She couldn't leave it behind. She took a hammer and began to chisel out some of the mithril, just to keep. For Corin. Forever for Corin. Galina was tired. So tired. She just wanted all this to be over. And it soon would be. She'd settle down, with this one piece of mithril, and forget about the rest.
Corin grabbed Galina and shook her. "Get rid of that and get away! This place is evil!" Galina's scream joined with Ember's, just down the hall. Nobody knew they were the same cry.
When Wiztiyc, Ember, and Aria to Galina a moment later they grabbed a swig of wine from their skins. When they'd taken a moment in the pregnant filthy darkness they all walked back to the abyss that Ember had almost fallen into. Turns out that abyss was about thirty feet deep, easily reachable with the ropes everyone had brought. They repelled down the thirty feet, to discover another hallway that went further down. The giggling of goblins echoed down the shit-covered walls. Galina, using the aura reading powers Ilona had granted her, counted seven goblins. Aria made out their voices. "They're saying they'll find us when the sun goes down and cut us open. They're about to start gathering their friends to get ready for it." They all shuddered and began to think of what to do next.
Snarls and the yells of orcs interrupted their internal reverie. The echoes of steel and death followed. Wiztiyc desired to go and see what was going on, but Galina and Aria insisted on going. Galina's astral blade, received from Ilona, glowed lightly. It would be enough to see without attracting too much attention. So they snuck down the smelly passageway.
The orcs were having the fight of their lives. They were fighting the oddest goblins Aria had ever seen. Dark brown green and markedly bigger than normal goblins, they moved with a manner that Aria found deeply disgusting. She wanted to grind them beneath her foot, to feel them squirm in the shit, to suffocate in it. She wanted them to vanish.
I can make that happen whispered something old. Rotting. Powerful. It frightened Aria, but only because she longed for it with every fiber of her being. That power... she could have prevented Tonya's death with that power. Yes, you could have It whispered in heart, in her mind, in the most secret recesses that not even Aria could have known were there until It talked to them. Oh, how sad, this vow you made. Never again. It cooed. You're right, my dear. Never again. Aria knew something about this was wrong, tried to pry it away from the raw and screaming part of her heart that had sworn that stupid vow up and down and demanded Aria fix the impossible, morality and rationality be damned. Don't worry, my dear, I'll fix it. I'll fix it all.
There may have been one last scream of Aria's conscience.
She didn't care. Not anymore. Because she could see, perfectly clearly, where there had been darkness, both in her heart and in this shit-filled cavern. There they were: those fucking goblins. All the anger and fear were gone. In its place was confidence as she looked down the twenty foot drop, at the top of the head of a goblin as it slurped down the throat tendon of an orc. That's it, she felt her deep in her body. That's it.
HUNT, MY BEAUTY.
Galina looked over and almost dropped her sword. Aria was now a dark green-brown, her eyes emitted a fuligin glow that drank in the light from Galina's blade like a desert in a monsoon. Aria's smile was now a hellish skull-mask of a grin, with her cheeks beginning to sink visibly before Galina's gaze like quicksand. "Don't worry," said Aria. The voice was the same. And then Aria jumped the twenty feet, laughing at the thrill of the fall, landing on the goblin below with a sickening KRUNCH. The orcs and goblins stopped and looked up, but the thing that was Aria and the god had already charged them all. Galina's jaw went slack as Aria's touched turned goblin after goblin, orc after orc, into dust. Stumbling as she got up, Galina ran back to Wiztiyc and Ember.
Ember recoiled in horror when he saw Aria. Eldritch strings, crackling purple things of energy that buried themselves into Aria's soul like fishhooks. The strings went back and back, through the floor, down back to...
It could see him.
It hated him.
Blood popped out of Ember's eyes, nose, ears, and fingers and he fell over. He practically drowned in the overflow of red coming from his mouth, which was open so the scream could come escape the blinding pain he was in.
Wiztiyck almost didn't hear the scream. He was staring at the piles around the massacre at the bottom. There was that telltale glint. Wiztiyck hurriedly tied a rope, ignoring the screams of his friend as he got down to the bottom to fill his pockets and knapsack with the loose gold coins he had seen instead of the death and carnage. Aria disintegrated the last orc and looked around. She saw Wiztiyck, who was busy throwing gold into backpack. Him too, It hissed. Aria pushed back as hard as she could. It was not amused. All must go eventually, It told her. He is ours. Aria pushed and pushed, but she couldn't get It to let go. Wiztiyc looked up and saw the fuligin eyed Aria advancing on him, eyes drinking in the torchlight that Wiztiyc offered. He looked up and saw the darkness backing into a shaft high above them, as well as a chute behind whatever the hell Aria was now.
Ember forced himself to his feet, Galina helping him not to lean against the feces encrusted wall. Ember began to weave a music of great beauty, something that spoke of friendships remembered but long since cracked open to the dust of time. Aria convulsed for a moment as It forced Itself to stay in that wound in her heart. But there had been a moment of weakness and Aria knew it. Galina, sensing the opening, began to push on Aria's aura. Aria, we are here. This isn't you.
I know.
Even a god must flee those two words.
They went back to the entrance, carrying the wounded Ember. As they climbed all the shit vanished as soon as the light hit it. They were greeted by a white flag and fifteen orcs.
"At least let me have a fingernail to nibble on, before they kill us," whinged Wiztiyc.
But Ember could see their auras, as could Galina; they were utterly sincere. One of the orcs advanced. Ember took of his glove and offered it to the orc. They shook. "We have come to kill... monster," said the orc. A beautiful sword hilt was buried in an equally beautiful sheath at his hip. "Lost many already. Want to.. how you say... ally. At least make camp. Together."
The last part was agreed upon. And it was just as well: rats got into camp's rations, so Aria had to preserve what they had left. Ember drew a map of what he'd seen while they were in the Beautiful Caves, but that hadn't included the shaft and chute in the room of gold, so the others helped him draft it again.
The night was busy, but ultimately quiet.
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