“Move!” Roy yelled, almost pushing Gneico through the hole in the stone. Behind them, another javelin flew through the air, narrowly missing Drak who ducked and almost fell through the hole.

  “I can’t see anything!” Jackson shouted, backing away from his two men who were both clearly either dead or very close to them.

  Drak threw a ball of light in the direction of the javelins but whatever they were facing had some ability to absorb light as the ball simply vanished and they were no wiser to what they were facing. A faint pop could be heard meaning Drak had added some of his sound essence to it.

  “Damn, that didn’t work as I wanted it to,” he said, sounding disappointed.

  “Back up to the exit,” Roy told him. “We can’t do anything for them,” she added.

  Silt vanished down to the tunnel and Drak followed. Jake gave one last glance back at whatever was after them and was firmly pushed down the hole by Jackson as a javelin flew through the air where he had been standing.

  Seconds later, Roy then Jackson joined them. Jake had already pulled the remaining portions from his belt which would help. Or at least slow down whatever was following them. He threw the vials of backsap at the entrance, using his water essence to push it in the direction of the gap and force it into place.

  The backsap did what he was hoping and instantly filled the gap with a tough layer that hardened as they watched for a moment.

  “That should buy us some time,” Jake told the rest of the group.

  “That’s good but not our only problem,” Silt said from her position at the front of the group. “The Myphlers are back and they sound even angrier than before.”

  In the tunnel ahead, the noise of the small creatures began to be loud enough that the entire group could hear it. Clearly, they had been drawn by all the noise the group had made and sounded even more aggressive than before.

  “I still have some wyvern blood,” Jack said.

  “But we are in a straight tunnel so we would need a lot of it to move them back enough to get through,” Silt replied. Her expression was uncharacteristically concerned.

  Jake glanced at Roy but before she could react, a crunching sound could be heard and a javelin half appeared through the backsap barrier. Whatever was on the other side was making its way through.

  “Go for it,” Roy agreed. “We can’t stay here and wait for them to calm down.”

  The male prisoner suddenly seemed to panic and ran to the front of their group. He started to stride towards the Myphlers, his hands held out in front of him. Just before he reached them, he made a sharp gesture as if pushing away from himself and a blast of wind struck the first row of the creatures. They were pushed to the sides of the tunnel, a few of them clearly injured.

  He kept going, pushing ahead and making a path through the massing critters. Behind him, Silt followed with Drak then the rest of the group with Jackson bringing up the rear.

  Abruptly, the light in the tunnel changed subtly. It wasn’t so much a glow as simply something strongly green-coloured having been introduced into the area. A series of small but sharp stone-like blocks with a strange green colour to them flew through the tunnel and struck the man, knocking him to his knees.

  “Shit, I heard stories about this but I’ve never seen it myself,” Jackson said.

  “Myphlers have some kind of collective ability to make force constructs with density essence that lets them defend themselves as a group. Does anyone have any density abilities?” Silt asked.

  Roy stepped to the front. “Density is one of my abilities along with Earth.” She raised her hands and repelled a cluster of the constructs. Jake noticed they seemed to be getting bigger as the Myphlers got more agitated.

  Drak slid an arm under the fallen man and pulled him to his feet. The freed prisoner was groggy and bleeding from two nasty gashes on his head but otherwise not too bad.

  Ahead of them, the Myphlers were massing once more and now their retreat was cut off as the ones that had parted to let them through had moved back into the middle of the tunnel.

  Roy deflected another barrage of larger stone-like density constructs but the final largest one got through and struck her a solid blow on the arm, breaking her concentration for a moment.

  Silt stepped into her place and threw up an ice barrier on either side of the group. The distinctive sound of stone hitting ice filled the tunnel and the pure number of constructs started to make indentations.

  “Silt, be careful,” Jake called. The half-elf was putting enough into her ice essence that she suddenly looked like she had a fever. Clearly she wasn’t going to be able to hold it up for long.

  Before she could answer, a cylinder of green-tinted stone flew through the air and smashed straight through the barrier. Jake ducked and it impacted the tunnel wall just behind his head. “We need to get out of here!” he yelled.

  “Down it is,” Roy said breathlessly. She raised her hands and cast the same Tier 3 spell that she had used to open the entrance into the smithy basement by vibrating the stones apart. But this time, she directed it downwards to create an opening in the floor.

  Only this time, it didn’t go as smoothly as she had hoped and her tiredness meant the spell didn’t work as she’d desired. Rather than a single access point, a whole area of the floor simply collapsed and the group found themselves falling downwards.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Jake coughed the stone dust from his lungs and waved his hand in front of his face intending to see where they had landed. He immediately realised that while they were in a tunnel under the original one, the whole group wasn’t together.

  A quick check showed him Drak who was helping the male prisoner to his feet again and Silt, who still looked fevered and was leaning against the tunnel wall. Of the others, there was no sign.

  “Jake? Silt?” Jackson’s voice called out. “Are you guys okay?”

  “Yes, where are you?” Jake called back.

  “The tunnel split into two,” Jackson replied. “We fell to one side and you guys are on the other. I can’t see far to see if the tunnels come back together.”

  “Blueprints,” Silt said softly. “Roy has them.”

  “Roy has the blueprints,” Jake called to Jackson.

  There was a little mutter and some quiet conversation. While Jake waited for them to look at the blueprints, he glanced up at the tunnel above. To be greeted by the unsettling sight of hundreds of small glowing red eyes looking down at him. The Myphlers didn’t seem inclined to follow them down into the new tunnel but they weren’t going to let them back up into the original one.

  “These two tunnels stay separate for miles,” Jackson called out. “Yours is a dead end heading north, ours goes mostly south and branches off to the east.”

  “Follow the original route,” Silt said, sliding down a little to rest on the floor for a moment.

  Jake repeated her instructions. “I see it,” Jackson replied. “Our tunnel follows under the original one and there looks like an access point near where we came down.”

  “What about us?” Drak asked.

  “I know where to go roughly,” Silt said. “I just need to rest for a moment.”

  “Silt thinks she knows where to go,” Jake called. “We will meet back up at your camp.”

  “Okay, stay safe,” Jackson replied.

  “You too,” Jake answered. He could hear some movement and guessed that the others were moving out.

  “Can’t she just use some fire essence to burn off all that heat?” Drak asked, frowning at Silt.

  Jake shook his head. “You really didn’t listen in essence class, did you?” he said. “It doesn’t work like that. If she uses her fire essence, she will just feel hot and cold, not cool her down. So she’d just feel even worse.”

  Jake moved over and held out an arm to help the half-elf to her feet, grimacing at the heat in her slender hands. He went to help her further but she waved him away. “I’ll be okay, just need to not use any essences for a bit.”

  “So this way then?” the male prisoner said, gesturing to the north. “I’m Ell by the way.”

  “That’s the only option,” Drak said, gesturing to the solid wall just a short distance away.

  “Then let’s get moving,” Jake said, sounding calmer and more confident than he felt.

  The group of four made reasonable pace with Silt gradually returning to a normal temperature and able to keep up unaided. They had walked for a time with no noises to make them think there was anything ahead of them.

  The first sign that the walk might not be as easy as they hoped was a section of unlit tunnel. Ahead of them were sporadic working lights and a couple that flickered.

  Jake walked ahead of the others to the next area of light and looked around. He instantly noted there were some substantial gouges in the stone of the tunnel as if something strong had carved out a few chunks.

  The most worrying thing was that this wasn’t ankle height, the size of the Myphlers they had encountered. This was above his waist height, which meant whatever caused the marks were a lot bigger.

  “Silt, any ideas what made these?” Jake asked as the other three caught up with him.

  She studied the marks. “No idea but that’s a lot bigger than a Myphler.”

  “And strong,” Drak added, also looking at the marks. “Let’s avoid whatever made them if we can.”

  Jake glanced at his friend, hoping he hadn’t just jinxed things again.

  The group continued to walk from one section of lighting to another, the marks growing more frequent and some of them looking strong enough to have brought down small sections of the wall.

  “What’s that?” Drak asked, pointing to something lying in the tunnel ahead of them as they reached a crossroad.

  They approached the object and it was quickly obvious that it was a corpse of a particularly large beetle-like creature. The bug would have been easily waist-high when alive with four legs featuring powerful claws and a dark shell with multi-coloured spikes on it.

  It was also stone-cold dead and by the slightly sunken look of the flesh parts of the carcass, had been for a while.

  “Again, what’s that?” Drak asked again, looking slightly revolted.

  “No idea,” Jake admitted.

  “Prismatic Beetle,” Silt said, bending over the carcass. “But I don’t think it caused those marks in the walls. The legs don’t have the flexibility to reach up that high and I don’t think it could stand on the hind legs.”

  “Wow, I’ve heard of them but I haven’t seen one before! They are very useful for alchemy, there’s so many things I can use those spikes for…” Jake began, feeling excited.

  “But that also means there’s something out there big enough to kill it,” Ell interrupted paling. “That’s not a comforting thought.”

  “It might have died of natural causes,” Drak suggested optimistically.

  “Those spikes have different attunement primers and can really help boost your development, especially in the early years,” Jake continued, studying one of the spikes intently.

  “Is it worth a lot of gold?” Drak asked, suddenly much more interested in the creature.

  “They are certainly hard to hunt down,” Silt told them, crouching by the carcass. “They are one of the nastier predators you’ll run into down here just because they have a vicious temperament.”

  She pushed the shell of the beetle to one side, causing the whole carcass to rotate onto its back. This shows some massive gashes in the creature’s underside which had clearly caused its death.

  “Doesn’t look very much like a natural death to me,” Silt replied.

  Before anyone could say anything else, a lump of rock smashed into the wall of the tunnel, sending spikes of shrapnel in all directions. They all ducked and Silt grabbed the beetle carcass, ducking below it to use the shell as a shield. Jake threw himself to the floor beside her while Drak and Ell pushed backward to the other fork of the tunnel.

  A strange noise could be heard in the tunnel, something that sounded like the cracking and popping of bones. But the noises were random and didn’t sound like the noise of something walking or moving in any normal way.

  Another series of smaller rocks impacted the tunnel wall and the beetle shell, rocking it but it held. Jack risked a glance along the side of the shell to see what they were facing. The flickering light meant he couldn’t make out the details and the tunnel was half obscured with dust from the stone impacts.

  But what he could see was about the height of a man. And it was standing in the tunnel, blocking their way.