Chapter 76: DD3 Chapter 022 – The Dungeon’s End

The bottom floor of the dungeon felt alive in a way that was fundamentally different to the rest of Creation. The mana that suffused the air was palpable, thick like it had been in Rhelea before the Monster had spawned, yet vibrant and flowing, unlike the old city which had felt smothered beneath a blanket of stagnant power. Watching the swirling flows of mana run through the corridor was like watching the dungeon breathe and in those fleeting moments that he lost himself, he was acutely aware that he was walking through a living, breathing thing.

It was probably telling that his first reaction was to wonder what would happen if he killed and reanimated it.

His minion’s movements were smoother down here, their steady degradation had slowed to the point that it had started to reverse and his fine control over their actions was aided by the massive amounts of power that saturated the air. Every breath he took felt easy despite the persistent weakness in his chest, and his spells—limited in scope though they may have been—were noticeably empowered by the dungeon’s influence. If this was what living inside a dungeon was like, then he understood why magical beasts throughout Creation congregated in places like this. 

Tamlin couldn’t wait to experience how potent the mana was inside a dungeon more appropriate for his level. He fully intended to drag his feet in clearing the next one, especially if he was still saddled with a party desperate to return to the surface for a ‘much-needed break’. The incessant whining of his teammates was finally getting to him and at this point, he was willing to give in to their demands even if there was only one thing waiting for him up above. It was frustrating as he knew that if he could just spend a few more weeks in a mana rich area like this one, then he’d finally be able to master Typh’s lessons and become a true mage rather than just a puppeteer of the dead. 

Thinking about the dragon caused an unexpected ache to throb in his chest—a confusing mixture of longing and resentment. When she’d sent him down here with a party to drag along, he hadn’t expected to miss her, much less her frustratingly tedious lessons. Yet walking alone while the rest of his teammates walked together, he was keenly aware of how much he wished she was by his side. Typh was the only person he wanted to see and his only real reason to return to the surface. Her kind words, gentle touch, and companionable spirit were about the only source of comfort he’d received in as long as he cared to remember.

A part of him knew that he needed to burn out this weakness. Leaving the dragon to her suicidal plans was by far the safest route for him in the long run. If he abandoned her pointless rules he knew that he could raise a horde of undead and sweep his way through any dungeon in a matter of days. He’d sprint to 200 and beyond without ever stepping foot in daylight. It would be easy and yet some human weakness stayed his hand.

He didn’t want to let her down. Why her approval mattered—he didn’t know, but he could think of no surer way of disappointing the dragon than by leaving his party to die for the sake of his own impatience.

Leaning on his ivory staff, Tamlin brought up the rear of their loose formation. He painfully hobbled forwards in the shadow of his beasts, intent on stretching his aching muscles while his multi-limbed terrors lumbered along. 

His latest creations were composed of so many different corpses spliced together that the System had long since given up on calling them shades. Tamlin’s abominations, the five that he was allowed to keep, skittered forwards on mismatched limbs that ended in bone blades as frequently as they did claws or feet.

Almira emerged from the shadows without fanfare. She simply stepped out from a thin patch of darkness and into the wide torchlit hall. The rogue then fell in step beside Drue, while Ilvane ranged a few feet ahead with his bow at the ready.

“This is it. The end,” the rogue announced, flashing them all an excited smile that revealed her rapidly lengthening canines.

The diabolist ignored the woman’s apparent bloodlust and pulled her into a quick embrace. The two exchanged some hushed words which left Almira giggling and Drue with an obnoxious grin. When they finally released one another, Tamlin was angry—not jealous, Drue was far too inept to evoke that kind of emotion—but the necromancer’s frown was likely misinterpreted by Ilvane, who chose that moment to turn to him with a smile that seemed to come naturally to his elfin features.

“No need to look so glum, Tamlin. There will be dungeons after this one. The chain goes all the way to 200 remember,” the ranger said.

“I’m not glum,” the necromancer lied, dragging his gaze past the happy couple and towards the wide rune-etched doors growing larger as they approached the end of the corridor.

Tamlin had seen enough of them to recognise it as the boundary to a guardian room, but unless the dungeon had grown dramatically since Typh’s scouts had made their reports then this was to be the last one.

It was already anticlimactic. Whatever beast was on the other side of those large double doors was highly unlikely to pose a challenge to Tamlin. His party would certainly suffer—they’d suffered their way through every room of the dungeon that he’d dragged them through—but he still imagined they’d be grateful for it at the end. They’d certainly benefited from his guidance, and their levels all sat comfortably within the 44-47 region, more than double what they’d been at when he’d first met them. 

Tamlin longed for that kind of growth. He had gained exactly one, solitary level for his weeks of effort. It wasn’t all a waste as he’d learned a lot about himself and his class, but it was hardly the explosive growth that he was used to. He wanted to say that he was proud of them for all that they’d achieved, but that would be a lie. 

Instead, all he felt was resentment. 

Thanks to his hard work, his party had almost caught up to his level even if there was still a cavernous gulf between them in terms of power. Tamlin couldn’t help but resent how easy they’d had it. He’d practically handed the experience over to them whereas he had struggled for each and every one of his levels by himself. It had been an agonising experience and his body still bore the scars from it, and while they were marked too, it was with lines so faint that you could hardly see them. 

He told himself that the next dungeon would be better, that once his level started to rise again, he’d leave his anger behind, but he knew that was a lie too. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever get used to working with a living team and with the exception of Typh, he wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to.

“Is everyone ready?” Tamlin asked and as usual, he received a series of stoic nods from his party. 

Not seeing any reason to delay, the necromancer sent the mental command and all five of his abominations rushed forwards. Giant bladed limbs and heavy hooves cracked the stone tiles of the hall as they passed. Irregular ribcages and hunched shoulders barreled to the front of the adventurers, moments before two went even further and slammed into the double doors whilst the remaining three stood guard.

An array of scythes, claws, horns and fangs, along with the odd scavenged weapon was bared and braced while the large doors crept open to the rumbling sound of grating stone. Dead muscles strained against the heavy weight of the doors in unliving silence, while the runes he’d carved into their very flesh pulsed with mana. Tamlin could feel the rising bloodlust from the tortured amalgamation of souls that animated his creations, but he held their wills tight in his grip and so they were forced to labour in total silence. 

As it was slowly revealed, the chamber beyond appeared sufficiently cavernous that Tamlin doubted it would stay up without magic reinforcing its domed ceiling. The walls of the room were covered in an intricate mural displaying monstrous snakes of various forms preying on the multi-toned masses of humanity. With the warded doors half-open, potent mana flowed in from the hall and the fresco lit up with unnatural light. The characters began to move and Tamlin couldn’t help but lose a few moments as he watched monsters made from pigment pounce upon and messily devour their two-dimensional prey.

The room itself formed a large, perfect circle with a smaller recessed one in the centre where the beginnings of a spiral staircase leading down began, but would never finish. In that sunken centre, upon a stone pedestal inlaid with platinum and gold was a large hunk of glowing crystal the size of a small child.

And towering above that was its guardian.

From the hints scattered throughout the dungeon, Tamlin had been expecting another lamia or some other form of a monstrous snake. His five abominations were each built around the reclaimed corpses of a floor guardian and then suitably augmented by whatever else he found to be sufficiently interesting. They were not graceful works of art—each one was a crude and brutish tool that only worked because the dead didn’t need things like organs or blood supplies to support the functionality of additional limbs.

Still, Tamlin had taken great care to make each one as streamlined and lethal as he could, cutting away unnecessary bone and flesh so that he could replace it with something more fitting for his needs. He viewed each one of his abominations as practice for working on the dungeon’s final guardian, one of the few creatures that he anticipated being worth the time to take with him on the long journey back to the surface.

As the creature reared its many heads before him, Tamlin certainly felt that it would be worth his time, although on reflection, he was going to have some difficulty fitting it through some of the narrower passageways. 

The beast hissed and the necromancer almost felt a mote of fear.

Almost.

[Hydra Level 49].

Superficially it had a lot in common with a dragon. Covered in thick reflective scales he could already tell that it had a resilience skill to go along with its natural armour. The long claws at the end of its four powerful limbs were on par with the bone scythes he’d fused to three of his abominations. The hydra occupied a full quarter of the cavernous chamber, easily spanning forty feet in length and was quick to interpose itself between the open doorway and the dungeon core.

Where a dragon was sleek and agile, the hydra was blunt and squat. Its body was broader by far, allowing for a coiling nest of serpentine necks to sprout out from a single large trunk where they swept forwards, each one ending in a large reptilian head.

The beast growled with a chorus of ravenous mouths and the threat of being devoured was made all the greater for its repetition. Tamlin immediately found himself lost in twelve sets of sapphire eyes, their gaze pulling him in while he felt something predatory plough its way through his mental walls.

Staring into those reflective pools of brilliant azure, the necromancer was struck by how very small and weak he looked in comparison to his allies. In those eyes he saw the truth that he wanted to deny, stare back at him, plain as day. 

He was nothing but a crippled little boy pretending to be a man. 

In that moment Tamlin missed his mother more than anything—he missed Typh—either of them would know what to do when all he could think about was how he was going to die. Gods help him, as the youth looked up into those cold unblinking eyes, he knew that he’d happily suffer through Arilla’s grating company if it meant that she’d kill the hydra for him. 

His tongue was suddenly far too large for his mouth and when he tried to swallow the weakness in his chest had been replaced by a sudden constricting tightness. Sweat poured from his brow and he realised that if he didn’t take a breath soon he’d actually die. He tried to inhale and failed. His ailing lungs were frozen with intoxicating fear. His thoughts spiralled into a pit of despair. The walls began to close in and despite the size of the hall and the chamber, he felt cornered, like a little mouse standing before a snake.

Tamlin was about to fall over from fright when he recognised it for what it was—a skill. 

The hydra had a damned fear aura or something similar. Recognising it for what it was seemed to help a little, but it didn’t let him shake it off, much less breathe. He heard a quiet thump and was dimly aware through his minion’s eyes that Almira had collapsed and Ilvane was wavering. Tamlin would have laughed if he was capable, but from the burning ache in his knees and the pressure building in his lungs, he knew that he’d collapse long before the ranger.

Tamlin regretted not investing more stat points into charisma as five of the hydra’s heads approached the party through the open doorway, while the remaining seven hung back with their mesmerising eyes locked firmly on the party. 

He knew that the fear wasn’t real, but that certainty didn’t help him draw a breath. It didn’t help him take a step back as the creature’s serpentine necks languorously entered the hall. It didn’t help him send a command to stop them as they brushed past his immobile minions. He was far too scared to even think about anything other than his all-consuming fear. 

The growing ache in his knees released and Creation slipped. The world grew dim around the edges as Tamlin’s face swiftly impacted against the stone tiles that used to be under his feet. It was a small impact with an accompanying small burst of pain, but the necromancer had other things to worry about. 

From his vantage on the floor, he saw the hydra’s heads slowly approach. Jaws outstretched, their tongues darted forwards to taste the air and eventually him. Beyond those long fangs, he could see sapphire eyes burning bright and staring into them, all Tamlin could feel was fear… 

And the slight throb of pain from where he’d hit his face. 

Before it could escape or fade further, he latched onto the sensation of his bruised flesh. His split lip, where his teeth had cut the inside of his cheek and the feeling of hard grit abrading his soft skin. Tamlin focused on those little pains, burying himself in anything other than his fear.

Pain had been his longest, closest companion. It had been there every step of the way as he walked the path of a necromancer. From his first steps when he’d clutched the broken pieces of his heart and tried to bring back his mother, to his later stumbles when bruised and battered he’d make rats walk in his father’s basement. Pain had always been there, and after Rhelea, it always would be.

There was a cleansing clarity in pain, and it was almost fitting that as he buried himself in remembered agonies and heartbreaks, he felt the effects of the hydra’s skill recede.

A forked tongue brushed against his neck.

The necromancer licked his split lip and tasted blood. He spared a moment to fantasise about what he could do with a hydra corpse before he sent his first command.

Kill it.

The hydra had ignored the threat posed by Tamlin’s undead because for all of their fearsomeness they were motionless corpses, and for all of its heads, the hydra had scarcely more intelligence than a conventional snake.

With the necromancer’s command, his five minions exploded into motion. Five abominations for five serpentine necks.

Cold steel and sharpened bone tore into scales and in an instant the hydra was wounded. Its necks reeled back as a torrent of blood and shorn keratin scattered across the ground. The abominations moved forwards, hacking into the hydra’s flesh with mechanical efficiency. Any thoughts of self-preservation or hesitancy were discarded. The dead craved the flesh of the living and with their master’s will guiding them, they pursued the injured beast with utter abandon.

The skill snapped and the fear suddenly vanished. Tamlin could move again—not that he had the strength to. More importantly, his party took ragged gulps of air and clambered to their feet while the necromancer remained prone. His eyes glazed over while he looked through the burning sockets of his necromantic creations. He felt hot, acidic blood splash against his scythes, tasted it in his mouths and felt layers of the hydra’s tough muscle part beneath his claws. 

The guardian pulled back from the entrance, trying to save what it could as Tamlin savaged it again and again. He coated the hallway in arcs of gore and painted his bodies in more of the same. With space to breathe his human party began to act, Ilvane fired arrows, Almira disappeared, and Drue transformed into his inane demonic form.

One after the other, severed heads fell to the ground attached to long lengths of scaly neck that thrashed violently on the floor. Unrestrained, the hydra retreated fully into its chamber and Tamlin’s abominations moved to pursue. Fresh necks sprouted from its ragged stumps and the twelve headed monster which had briefly dropped down to eight quickly rocketed all the way up to possessing sixteen fanged maws.

If it was weakened at all by this transformation it didn't show it. The hydra, still backpedalling as Tamlin's undead raced out of the hall, opened its mouths in unison and thin streams of blue fire poured out from each one. The entrance to the chamber was blanketed in azure flames and the necromancer’s minions bore the brunt of it. The fires seared away their flesh as they ran. Further down the hall, Tamlin could feel the heat burn the humidity out of the air, but instead of recalling them he only spurred them on.

Necromantic abominations charged into the chamber trailing blue flames and ash. Without a skill to empower its fiery breath, his undead were able to simply ignore the attack—the temperatures falling far short of melting through attribute-enhanced bone. Drue followed close behind in their wake, using their large bodies as a shield. Ilvane managed to escape the fires entirely. He sprinted into the room and around the multi-headed beast in a wide arc, sensibly keeping as much distance as he could from the hydra while he fired an unrelenting hail of glowing arrows at the creature. Drue swung his stupid sword repetitively and elsewhere Almira periodically reappeared to strike at a vital spot, only to disappear when her knives proved to be less than effective.

Tamlin continued to control his creations from the dungeon’s floor, deciding to brave the act of standing later when he was suitably recovered. Rather than struggle with his frailty, he relished the intoxicating sensation of power behind his minions' skill-enhanced strikes. It was so different from the persistent weakness that he was accustomed to that he couldn’t help but laugh, the sound coming out ragged and haunting from his many skeletal mouths. 

He attacked the hydra with far more limbs than he could really comprehend, operating on instincts that came unbidden from his class as he puppeteered the five abominations to fight in harmony with one another. It was a dizzying experience for him, to not only split his mind into five but to do so with something so foreign to his human form. On and on he fought, using each body to the best of his ability to strike against the beast. It had sixteen independently attacking heads, maybe more now, and while they technically outnumbered the solitary hydra, it used its many heads to great effect.

He watched through five sets of eyes as Drue was nearly bitten in half and a spurt of demonic fire leapt from his wound to ignite the hydra’s head that had attempted to eat him. Almira appeared atop another reptilian brow as it reared back to blanket the diabolist in blue flames. She plunged a dagger and then the rest of her arm into an eye socket and after a moment’s thrashing, she leapt off of it only to disappear in mid-air while the entire neck crashed limply to the ground. Three separate heads trailed after Ilvane, streams of fire forcing the ranger to jump up and off the walls of the room as he contorted his body to avoid their deadly flames. Still, he somehow managed to shower the creature in pinpoint accurate arrows that each managed to draw blood and elicit hisses of pain.  

And while this was happening, Tamlin tore into the hydra with his five minions. Like snakes the hydra’s heads reared back and then struck one after another, each one exposing a weakness for another to capitalise on. Fragments of bone fell from his abominations without complaint as they were struck again and again. Bone blades snapped and dulled. Claws and fangs chipped and everything was splattered in blood. 

Five abominations became four, and then three and then suddenly there were only two left attacking the beast. Ilvane had taken serious burns and Drew was almost entirely covered in moss and newly regenerated skin—Almira was predictably nowhere to be seen. 

Serious wounds dealt to the hydra only lasted for seconds. Gashes were covered up by new flesh and the heads they destroyed only resulted in the entire neck hanging limply while two new ones sprouted out from its back. Now his party was faltering and while the hydra was weighed down by a literal forest of snapping heads, it was still able to move enough to be a threat. It was winning. The quantity of fangs that it could bring to bear vastly outweighed their individual weakness or its growing lack of mobility.

Blood was everywhere, the stench of it and death permeated everything and then Tamlin had an idea.

He didn’t know if it would work. He’d never attempted to raise anything without a class before, but he knew it should be possible. Humans didn't have classes and could certainly be raised so why not a hydra’s head? 

The necromancer fed a trickle of mana through [Dread Caller’s Arcana] and felt dozens of waiting vessels appear in his senses. Smiling he extended his mana into them and felt them drink deep. Instinctively he activated each one of his skills in turn, focusing on the bite strength of each head he animated. In a matter of seconds, his mana reserves were down by a third and well over a dozen formerly limp heads now obeyed his commands.

The change was instantaneous. The heads turned on each other, blue eyes against those that burned green. Attached at the base there was nowhere for them to run and Tamlin’s heads were both stronger and more resilient than their living contemporaries. They felt no pain and didn’t need trifling things like a blood supply or supporting organs to keep them functioning. While outnumbered to start, they handily won the day, crushing skulls and biting throats only for Tamlin to reanimate them and add them to his ranks. Eventually, the forest of serpentine necks reached its upper limit—or maybe the hydra’s mana had just run dry—and the undead heads completely replaced the living before turning on the main body.

When it died, it did so in silence and with everyone watching. Only Tamlin remained in the hall, and it wasn’t until after they’d received the notification that Almira appeared to help him back to his feet. 

“That wasn’t so hard,” Drue said, panting heavily as the last of Arbor’s healing moss fell away from his torso revealing pale orange flesh.

“I think you may have lost more blood than we thought if you thought that was easy,” Ilvane smirked.

“So, we’re done here right?” Almira asked as she walked into the room with Tamlin limping beside her. 

“Not quite,” the necromancer said, approaching the hydra’s corpse.

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He placed a hand against the body and after carefully guiding the individual heads down to the ground pulled his mana back out of them. With the corpse inert, he took the time to reanimate the entire thing as a singular shade, arguably less effective, but far less hassle than a literal forest of snapping necks and a single lumbering body. 

“I’ll need a few minutes,” Tamlin said.

The others shrugged and checked their gear. They were all used to Tamlin taking his time tweaking his newly acquired minions, and seeing as it was all that he had left, he intended to be thorough. 

While Drue and Almira conspired by the door—no doubt planning their next scouting trip—Ilvane wandered over to the dungeon’s core in the centre of the room and had a peek. What the ranger was looking for, Tamlin had no idea, but before Ilvane could begin his search in earnest he was roughly tossed to the side by Arbor.

The woodling had been helpful throughout their delve, but like Tamlin, it wasn’t really a part of their team. It was Typh’s minder and that uncomfortable fact was always made clear when the rest of them fought and it hung back. It was remarkably competent in preventing serious injuries from claiming any lives, but it never interfered beyond that. Arbor never spoke, nor did it attempt to respond to their efforts to communicate with it, which is why it was so concerning to see it so vigorously throw Ilvane across the room like he weighed nothing at all.

Weapons were drawn while the woodling raised an open hand out towards the core, unaware or uncaring of the human’s reaction. Verdant vines of new growth extended from its palm to touch the glowing crystal and the creature stiffened. It spun around to face them with a look of what passed for worry on its inhuman face. A billow of mana extended from the Arbor and letters quickly appeared on the floor in dark moss.

IT COMES.

“What’s wrong with you Arbor?” Ilvane asked, but the woodling only gestured to the writing on the ground. The ranger read the writing out loud and the others—Tamlin included—shared a look of confusion.

IT COMES.

“Maybe it’s broken?” Drue asked. “Doesn’t like all the blood seeping up into its roots?”

“This is hardly the first time Arbor has been covered in gore,” Almira answered.

“What comes? Is something coming?” Tamlin asked.

The woodling only repeated the message, the words appearing again in another spot.

IT COMES.

IT COMES.

“Okay, now I’m starting to get a little nervous,” Almira admitted.

“Don’t worry. We killed the guardian and every other beast worth mentioning in this dungeon. We’re safe,” Drue declared.

“Seriously, Drue. There’s practically a whole class in the academy about how you should never say that out loud,” Ilvane sniped.

“Don’t be superstitious, the luck stat isn’t real,” the diabolist said.

Tamlin ignored his team's bickering and instead hobbled over to the woodling, making sure to command his new hydra to follow close behind. 

“Arbor, can you be more specific? What is coming?” Tamlin asked.

IT COMES.

IT COMES.

IT COMES.

The necromancer frowned, looking past the woodling and towards the core. He saw it pulse erratically with mana and noted how those pulses of light travelled up the vines connecting Arbor to the dungeon.

Experimentally, Tamlin reached out to touch them. 

A massive amount of magical feedback hit him. He felt an entity ancient and tortured push against his mind, he felt the edges of its incoherent panic brush against him as it reached for something within him and found nothing but a hole. The wave of power receded and when he came too he was being roughly dragged out of the room by Arbor who was ignoring the angry shouts of the humans in their party.

The sound of keratin hammering against stone emanated from the hall, and the woodling froze. Tamlin looked ahead and scuttling into the chamber on eight massive legs was some kind of monstrous crab. Larger than a horse and with the limp form of half a goblin lolling to one side it looked more bizarre than dangerous.

[Tainted Spawn level 6].

“What the actual fuck is that?” Ilvane asked.

“Is that a goblin?” Almira said.

“Whatever it is, it's dead,” Drue boasted.

“Oh no…” Tamlin trailed off.

The tainted spawn lurched towards them, locking onto Arbor who roughly threw Tamlin to the side moments before it was tackled by the beast. The woodling struggled to get free and splinters of wood broke away while the rest of Tamlin’s party hurried to respond. 

Ilvane’s arrows found the beast, each one sending spidering cracks through its shell. Drue’s flickering sword intercepted its leg's bladed strikes, but every checked blow sent him reeling and when he parried one massive leg, he was more often than not struck by another. Almira’s knives utterly failed to pierce through its natural armour and her attempts to behead the limp form of the goblin above seemed to do little more to the creature beyond thoroughly pissing it off.

Tamlin slowly peeled himself off the floor and onto his knees. Then with the aid of his staff, he finally made it back to his feet. When he looked over to see the others still fighting a level six monster, he could only sigh. A mental command sent the hydra into the fray and in a matter of seconds, its many ravenous heads had torn the creature to shreds.

*Congratulations on defeating a level 6 Tainted Spawn, experience is awarded.*

*Congratulations on defeating an end-stage tainted creature. For your service to the System, additional experience is awarded.*

“Shit,” Tamlin muttered.

The System message was bad news and the all-too-familiar ichor dripping from his hydra’s jaws was worse. Tamlin didn’t particularly want to dwell on his memories of Rhelea, but the notification all but confirmed a Monster’s involvement somewhere around Helion, and two questions immediately came to mind.

What would a Monster want with a dungeon? And why would it send a creature so weak to take something it wanted?

He could only guess the answer to the first, but the second filled him with dread. His head snapped towards Arbor who was already back on its feet and looking towards the door.

“It comes…” Tamlin trailed off.

A spasm of pain stabbed its way through the necromancer’s stomach. He knew then that he’d overexerted himself. An episode was coming and the timing was spectacularly bad. Tamlin really didn’t want to be stuck in a dungeon with his current party and only one minion to defend himself. Something bad was coming and he was ill-prepared to deal with it. He would feel a lot better if he could rely on his body to run, but right now he knew he’d be lucky to cling to consciousness while it passed. 

Arbor’s words drawn in moss wouldn’t leave his memory.

IT COMES.

“You okay, Tamlin?” Almira asked, a look of concern present on her pretty face.

Tamlin bent over and vomited.

“I’m fine,” Tamlin lied. “We need to go.”

“Gods, is he okay?” Ilvane asked, ignoring the necromancer’s words.

“Probably not,” Drue answered. “Hey, Arbor, are you done? It came already, help Tamlin out.”

The woodling didn’t respond, which again wasn’t that surprising as it never did. Tamlin sank to the floor and retched again.

He had a very bad feeling about this.

“We need to go.” Is what he tried to say for the second time, but instead all that escaped his mouth was more bile and evocations of pain.

His stomach screamed and he joined it, adding his voice to his agony until it broke. Tamlin’s world narrowed down to his tortured stomach as it contorted and spasmed, sending waves of torment through his body. It was hardly the first time this had happened since he’d earned his [Mana Scarred] trait. It wasn’t even the first time his teammates had witnessed it, but by far this was the worst timed episode of his life.

Rather than stay and experience the pain, he fled into his hydra. Through its many eyes, Tamlin watched as his human body spasmed against the hard floor, his small hands gripped tight around his staff which he held close to his chest. Almira rushed over to Arbor and pleaded with the woodling to help, while Drue and Ilvane held his thrashing body down.

The sound of carapace pounding against stone rose above Tamlin’s spasms. The doors leading into the chamber burst open and a tainted spawn that made the one from before look like a child stormed in. On a multitude of legs it resembled a heavily armoured centipede mashed together with a crab, an octopus, and maybe a sword. 

[Tainted Spawn Level ???].

It went straight for the core. Unfortunately, both Arbor and Almira were standing in the way. With a raised hand, the woodling unleashed the spell it had been building. A thick forest of glowing thorns erupted from the ground to entomb the tainted creature. It was momentarily lifted up off the ground by the piercing brambles before its own momentum carried it forwards, the sharp wood fracturing around it.

The creature responded to the woodling’s aggression by unleashing a wave of ghostly blades that raced ahead of it in a cone. Like an avalanche of force, each ghostly, green blade appeared suspended in the air, only to hammer down with a loud crash, splintering the stone and sending fragments of rock shooting past. The wave tore through the remnants of Arbor’s barrier and carried on to catch both the woodling and the rogue. 

The creature’s skill quickly proved that meat and wood were far less sturdy than dungeon stone.

Through his hydra’s eyes, the necromancer watched as the two people exploded into chunks of red, green and brown. He saw Ilvane toss Tamlin’s body over his shoulder and run to the side of the chamber while an open-mouthed Drue roared in anguish.

As his human form was carried away by the ranger and the tainted spawn closed in on the dungeon core, the necromancer sent his hydra against the monster. For all of its ferocity and strength, it lasted all of two seconds before a second wave of thundering green rendered it down into its component parts.

With the last of his minions gone, Tamlin’s perspective shifted and he was forced back into his body. The pain from his stomach hit him again and this time he allowed himself to shrink away from it. 

He was dimly aware of Ilvane’s strong hands holding him still as they fled to the sound of the creature’s triumphant howls echoing through the dungeon’s halls.

Creation blurred around the edges and this time Tamlin allowed it to take him.

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