No dodging this head-on. My eyes darted frantically. A rusted, greenish pipe jutted from the channel wall just to my left, thick as my thigh. I lunged, scrambled, hauling myself onto its slick, corroded surface just as the filth wave slammed into the channel beneath me.

  The wave hit with the force of a battering ram, surging halfway up the curved walls. Filth splashed high, drenching me from the waist down in viscous, gag-inducing slime. The stench was overpowering; I choked, bile burning the back of my throat. Thumbs shrieked and buried his face against my neck, his small body rigid with terror. My grip on the slick, freezing pipe nearly gave way. The wave surged past, then began to recede, leaving the floor coated in an even deeper, more treacherous layer of muck.

  And through the receding filth, the Plague Bearer flowed, utterly unaffected, closer now. Close enough I could feel a palpable cold radiating from it, a chilling dampness that had nothing to do with the water – the cold of decay, of disease given monstrous form.

  My mana was a flickering ember. My quiver felt terrifyingly light. The weight of the Memory Core, the ghost of Jax in the alley rain, pressed down on me. Could this thing even be killed? Or was it just… a force of nature? A localized apocalypse of filth and teeth? Doubt, cold and sharp as the sewer water, clawed at my resolve. I needed a better angle, a different approach. My eyes scanned the crumbling brickwork above, the low, weeping ceiling. One section, directly ahead, maybe fifteen yards down the channel, looked worse than the rest – sagging, heavy with moisture, crisscrossed with deep cracks, held up by rusted iron brackets bolted into crumbling mortar.

  An idea sparked, born of desperation. Dangerous. Probably stupid. Maybe my only shot. Use the collapsing sewer itself.

  I had to lure it. Had to get it under that unstable section. There was no way I could kill it with my remaining supplies, loot be damned. I fired another arrow, deliberately wild this time, splashing into the sludge near its flank to get its attention. Then I took a deep breath, braced myself, and slid deliberately off the pipe, back into the knee-deep muck below. The splash echoed loudly. I started moving again, splashing noisily, retreating further down the channel, directly towards the sagging ceiling section.

  “Come on, you walking plague pit,” I muttered, voice tight, trying to project confidence I didn’t feel. “Dinner time.”

  The Plague Bearer, perhaps sensing easier prey now that I was back in the sludge, surged forward, its green eyes fixed on me. As it moved, getting closer to the target zone, I realized I needed to slow it, hold it there for the crucial moment. My eyes locked onto where one of the main corpse-legs joined the central body – not the solid pillar itself, but the churning, roiling vortex of fused bodies at its 'hip'. Instinct took over. I drew, aimed for that nexus of fused flesh and bone, and fired.

  The arrow hit dead center of the joint. It didn’t just sink in. It punched through rotting hides and struck something hard beneath – fused femurs? A twisted armature of bone holding the grotesque limb together?

  The entire leg buckled.

  A high-pitched shriek tore through the air, sharp and alien, completely unlike the trumpet blast. The Plague Bearer lurched violently sideways, its massive bulk slamming against the channel wall. A cascade of rats, dislodged by the shock, tumbled from the wound into the sludge. Its forward momentum faltered, its movement becoming instantly clumsier.

  That was it. Not the limbs. The joints connecting them to the unholy mass just like that first time I fought the skeleton. Was the dungeon recycling old tricks?

  But the hit didn't just wound it; it enraged it. The trumpet sound returned, no longer intermittent blasts, but a constant, deafening, sanity-shredding shriek. It seemed to forget the ceiling, forgot everything but the source of its pain. It surged forward again, faster now despite the damaged leg. A massive, continuous stream of rats erupted from its front, not launched projectiles anymore, but a spewing fountain of furry death aimed directly at me. Simultaneously, writhing tendrils formed from living rats lashed out from its main body, whipping through the air, trying to grapple me, entangle me, drag me into the churning maw.

  Overwhelmed. The air was thick with flying, squealing bodies. I tried to line up the shot at the ceiling bracket I’d spotted – a thick, rust-eaten iron anchor point – but just as I drew, a rat slammed hard into my bow arm. Pain flared. The shot went wide, skittering harmlessly off the brickwork far above. I stumbled back, feet tangling on something unseen in the opaque sludge – a loose brick, maybe a submerged corpse.

  I went down. Hard. Face splashing into the vile muck. My bow flew from my grasp, landing with a wet slap somewhere nearby in the darkness. Before I could react, the swarm was on me. Rats swarmed over my legs, my chest, their claws tearing at my gear, needle-sharp teeth sinking into exposed skin through gaps in my armor. Pain, sharp and hot, flared from a dozen points at once. Thumbs screamed bloody murder, clinging to my back, flailing uselessly at the tide. I was pinned, vulnerable, the shrieking, multi-eyed mass of the Plague Bearer surging closer, ready to flow over me, dissolve me, make me part of its horrific whole.

  Pure, primal terror ignited a surge of adrenaline that burned hotter than the bites. I roared, thrashing wildly, kicking, punching, throwing rats off me with savage force. Pain was irrelevant. Survival was everything. I saw my bow, half-submerged in the filth just out of reach. I lunged, fingers closing around the familiar curve of the grip just as a thick tendril made of living, squirming rats wrapped tight around my ankle, yanking me backward with incredible strength.

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  No time to aim properly. I twisted, fired the nocked arrow point-blank into the center of the rat-tendril. It exploded in a shower of squealing bodies and gore. I ripped my ankle free, scrambling backward on hands and knees through the muck, kicking away the lesser rats still clinging to my legs, gaining precious feet.

  No more subtlety. No more testing. Joints. That was the only way. I ignored the swarm nipping at my heels, ignored the filth blinding my eyes, focused entirely on the lurching, crippled monstrosity filling the channel before me. I brought the bow up, firing as fast as I could draw, pouring arrows into the damaged leg joint, then switching focus, hammering the corresponding joint on its other main support leg.

  Thwack. A spasm. Thwack. A screech. Thwack. Another lurch, shedding rats like grotesque confetti. Its forward momentum slowed drastically, becoming clumsy, erratic, its massive weight visibly stressing the damaged limbs.

  "LEG WOBBLE!" Thumbs shrieked, his voice raw but suddenly focused. "OTHER LEG WOBBLE TOO! HIT WOBBLE SPOTS, ROD! HIT HIT HIT!" For once, his panic was tactically sound.

  The pain, the crippling damage, finally seemed to override its rage. It stumbled, lurched, and finally came to a shuddering halt directly beneath the sagging, cracked section of the ceiling I’d targeted. It thrashed weakly, trying to regain stability, its bulk slamming against the channel walls, shaking loose dust and chunks of mortar that splashed into the sludge around it.

  This was it. The only chance.

  I dragged in a ragged breath that tasted like death and decay, planted my feet as firmly as the treacherous floor allowed, ignoring the rats still scrabbling at my boots. Drew the bowstring back until it kissed my cheek. Aimed for the main rusted iron bracket holding the crumbling masonry overhead. Compensated for the low light, the creature’s weak thrashing, the tremble in my own exhausted arms. Held it. Released.

  The arrow flew, a dark streak against the gloom. It struck the rusted bracket dead center with a sharp, metallic twang that cut through the cacophony.

  For one agonizing, stretched heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then, a deep groan echoed through the stone above. Not the creature, the sewer. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ceiling with terrifying speed. With a deafening roar that dwarfed any sound the monster had made, the entire section—tons of ancient brick, sodden mortar, and reinforcing iron—gave way.

  It collapsed downwards in a crushing avalanche of stone and debris.

  The Plague Bearer shrieked, a sound cut brutally short as the ceiling slammed onto its mass with unimaginable force. Sludge, gore, and thousands of rat bodies erupted outwards in a sickening wave. Dust and pulverized mortar filled the air, instantly blinding me, choking me. The ground beneath my feet trembled violently from the impact.

  I threw an arm over my face, coughing, lungs burning, eyes stinging fiercely from the acrid dust and the sheer vileness of the air. The roar of the collapse faded, replaced by the grinding, settling sounds of tons of debris and the high-pitched, frantic squeaking of countless rats dying beneath the rockfall. Slowly, agonizingly, silence began to reclaim the channel, broken only by the steady drip… drip… drip of water finding new paths through the wreckage, and my own ragged, gasping breaths.

  The oppressive weight, the feeling of being watched by a thousand hateful eyes, the chilling aura of disease… it was gone.

  As the thickest of the dust began to settle, I lowered my arm, cautiously edging forward, bow still half-drawn, scanning the gloom. The channel ahead was choked. A massive pile of rubble – stone slabs, shattered bricks, twisted iron – filled it almost wall to wall, reaching nearly to the low ceiling. Pinned beneath it, utterly still, was a vast, shapeless mound of crushed rats and debris. A few sickly green lights flickered weakly from deep within the pile, like dying embers in ash, then winked out, one by one. A final, wet, gurgling sigh bubbled up from the wreckage. Then, nothing.

  My legs started shaking uncontrollably. I lowered the bow, nearly dropping it, leaning heavily against the slimy brick wall for support. Every muscle screamed. I was covered head-to-toe in a hideous cocktail of sludge, gore, and rat filth. Dozens of bites burned like fire on my legs, arms, even my neck where Thumbs hadn’t provided cover. Bruises bloomed from the falls. Soaked, freezing, utterly drained. I quickly checked the bites – infection down here would be a death sentence faster than any monster. They needed cleaning. Soon.

  Thumbs slowly, hesitantly, uncurled his death grip from around my neck. He was trembling like a leaf in a hurricane, plastered in slime, his large eyes wide with lingering terror. "Big… big boom rock…" he whimpered, his voice barely a whisper. "Rat monster… flat now? Flat?" He peered fearfully over my shoulder at the silent mound of rubble.

  The cave-in had blocked the main channel, but looking closer, I saw the impact might have fractured the wall on the far side, maybe opening a new fissure? Or perhaps the passage continued, narrower, beyond the main collapse. The immediate threat was gone, crushed under literal tons of rock, but the sewer felt even more broken now, more unstable, like the whole place was threatening to come down around us.

  A wave of profound relief washed over me, so strong it almost buckled my knees again. But it was immediately chased by gut-churning revulsion and a weariness so deep it felt like it had settled into my bones. The sheer horror of the Plague Bearer, piled onto the raw, bleeding wound of the Memory Core flashback… I felt hollowed out. Contaminated. Not just by the filth, but by the violence, the desperation, the ghosts.

  Surviving wasn't winning. Not down here. Down here, surviving just meant you had to keep walking through the nightmare.

  I stared at the tomb of crushed rats and stone, then down at my own filthy, trembling hands. I needed to get out. Needed to clean these wounds. Needed to rest. But first… forward. Always forward.

  I reached back, gently nudging Thumbs. "Yeah, buddy," I said, my voice raspy with dust and exhaustion. "Let's see if we can find a way around this mess."