The inside of the ziggurat smelled worse than the stone graveyard of buildings and monsters outside.

  The outside smelled like stale blood and bile, but the air was, at least, fresh. The stale and dry air inside the ziggurat was like that of a tomb that hadn't been opened in centuries, and the iron tang that lingered in the air told Mau that there were likely more creatures to be found inside the cramped confines of the building.

  Mau's eyes quickly adjusted to the darker chamber, but she could already hear Suvdaa struggling to calm a distressed Dulguun.

  The little bear was curled in the fetal position at Suvdaa's feet, trembling wildly with terror. Suvdaa gently scooped the little fur ball into her arms and held him to her chest with an exhausted sigh.

  "It's okay, little one." She whispered, cradling the bear gently.

  "Man, Suvdaa, I feel like you love that bear more than you love me." Mau teased while catching her breath.

  It was nearly pitch black, but Mau could feel the raider glaring daggers at her through the gloom.

  Eventually, Dulguun calmed, and Mau realized she wasn't feeling threats from every direction while inside the new chamber where the party found themselves.

  "The bear has cuter ears." Suvdaa sniped back with a barb so pinpoint accurate that Mau felt the words stab her in the chest.

  "Ow." Mau huffed. "That hurt."

  "Can you two save the flirting for when we are not trapped underground in a maze and fighting for our lives?" Penne muttered, their golden eyes gleaming in the dark.

  "We are NOT flirting," Suvdaa said pettishly while Mau flashed a catty grin.

  "Anyway, someone cast a light spell or light a new torch; it's pitch black in here," Mau said.

  Andy, still recovering, picked up a pebble off the ground and groggily murmured a few words of prayer to his deity. The pebble radiated a warm golden light that flooded the chamber.

  The party took in their surroundings no sooner than Andy lit the room. Ancient glyphs and runes lined the walls, and Mau pursed her lips.

  "What do they say?" Suvdaa asked as she guided Andy to sit against the wall.

  "My dwarvish is a little rusty, and these runes are pretty old," Mau said. "But they're all about keeping something in here. A lot of it just repeats, 'Bury under a rock.' It's like the dwarven equivalent of 'Don't open, dead inside,' I guess."

  Once Andy was seated, Mau kneeled in front of him. Penne kept a wary eye on the lone doorway leading deeper into the ziggurat while Mau and Suvdaa broke out the medical supplies and tended to the acolyte's bloody head.

  Some disinfectant and a bandage wrapped around his head, and their work was done as best as it could be.

  "I'm okay now," Andy said, rubbing his head as Mau helped him back to his feet.

  "I hope so," Mau said. "We can't stop to rest, and I'm not leaving you behind." Suvdaa and Penne nodded in agreement.

  Once they had caught their breath, they steeled themselves to press on. Mau cautiously approached the archway leading into the next chamber, swords ready. Penne supported Andy with his arm over their shoulder and followed closely.

  "Wait." Suvdaa suddenly said, prompting them all to pause. Mau immediately saw what Suvdaa was seeing as she halted in her tracks.

  One of the floor tiles was markedly different than the others. It was decorated in multiple dwarven runes that formed a sentence.

  "Walk the path of Rock and Stone, and the way to you will be shown," Mau murmured aloud as she held the light-pebble aloft. The next room's floor tiles were each decorated with a single rune of the dwarven alphabet.

  "Oh, that's easy. We just follow the tiles that spell out Thuvros because that's the dwarf god's name." Mau realized.

  The others stared at her.

  "How did you figure that out so quickly?" Penne asked.

  "Indiana Jones," Mau said without explanation before she stepped onto the rune representing the letter T.

  In an instant, the floor gave out from under Mau's weight and crumbled apart to reveal an ancient pit of rusty spikes. Mau just barely lurched back in time to plop on her ass with a grunt of surprise.

  "Gah! Oh shit." She huffed, adrenaline racing through her veins. "The rune was 'Th' not 'T'. I feel like I should have seen that coming."

  Mau picked herself up and patted the dust off her butt before she warily put her foot on the tile marked TH. It held her weight.

  "Okay, one at a time." Mau motioned for the others to follow her as she moved to the next tile and the one after that, spelling out the dwarf god's name until they had all crossed the chamber into the next arched doorway.

  "Okay, if this Indiana Jones bullshit continues, then we're going to see some whirling saw blades right about... NOW! THE PENITANT MAN KNEELS!" Mau said as she took to a knee and ducked a whirling giant buzzsaw-blade that... Never came. She waited a few heartbeats longer and lifted her head with an owlish blink. The hall leading out of the first room seemed to be devoid of traps so far, but Mau proceeded cautiously regardless.

  "It looks like it's just a hallway." Penne pointed out dryly.

  "Yeah. Yeah, it is." Mau conceded. "But if we run into an old dwarf knight saying we have to drink out of the grail, remember, it's the wooden cup."

  Mau continued down the hall, heedless of the funny looks her friends were giving her back as they followed after her before her animal brain went haywire.

  The very instant she crossed into the next chamber, the scent of old blood and the feeling of an imminent threat from every direction hit her like the truck that started this whole adventure.

  Mau's fingers tightened around the blades in her hands, and she was instantly on the defensive. A jagged bone blade lunged at her out of the darkness, but she parried it with contemptuous ease. However, the sound of bone ringing against steel spurred her companions to push into the room after her.

  Andy's lips curled back as he snarled at the darkness. Mau held the light-imbued pebble aloft in her left hand as she parried another swing of the bone blade that would have cleaved Penne apart as they entered the chamber.

  "Maybe we shouldn't all rush headfirst into danger at the first sound of a fight?!" Mau snapped at her teammates, who quickly backed out of the door to give her space.

  As she deflected another swipe from the darkness, Mau hurled the light pebble into the center of the chamber so she could see what she was fighting and draw her short blade.

  The monstrosity in the room was a little shorter than Mau but stocky and widely built. Though she surmised it to be another mutated dwarf, it was so hideously altered by time and decay that it was less a defined humanoid figure and more of an abstract morass of limbs and sharp, bony protrusions.

  Mau was reasonably certain that her skill level vastly outstripped some randomly encountered monster's wild flailing. Still, she wanted to take no chances of risking injury to herself or her friends or, worse, possible infection with this The Thing bullshit as the creature aimed a swipe that would have taken her head off if she was any slower.

  But Mau was not slow by any means, as her sword flared to life, erupting with fire as she brought it down to not just parry the attack but cleave cleanly through the bone blade and bite her sword into the monster's fetid hide.

  With a spurt of congealed blood, the creature collapsed into a heap, dead from the massive and cauterized slash wound that hewed through its body.

  There was just a slight problem. Even though the monster was seemingly the only occupant of the room, with no sign of any others around, Mau still felt assailed by the sensation of an ever-present threat. It was as though some nameless, faceless malevolence just hung in the air ominously waiting to reach out at her from the darkness that cloyed gloomily around the sputtering light of her fiery sword and the divine shine of the light-pebble on the floor.

  "... Coast's clear," Mau said tentatively to her party, "It was just the one The Thing."

  Slowly and cautiously, Andy, Penne, and Suvdaa stepped in after Mau. Dulguun fought Suvdaa and growled the whole way while Andy gritted his teeth.

  Mau lightly patted both the dogboy and the bear on the head.

  "I know, guys, it's pretty scary in here, I don't blame you." She muttered, trying to calm her nerves as well as theirs.

  Sheathing her short blade, Mau plucked the light-pebble from the floor and the party proceeded to move on.

  The only path to follow was a cramped set of spiral stone stairs hewn into the rock from which the ziggurat had been carved, and they proceeded up in tired silence.

  The further up Mau went at the lead, the more she felt the claws of terror and anxiety digging into her soul. But she pushed on, clenching her fingers around the hilt of her longsword as she gritted her teeth.

  The climb felt like it took forever, but eventually, the stairs reached a landing, allowing the party to spread out. The large chamber reeked of death, and the walls were coated in the same blood-red slime and ooze from the buildings outside.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  In the center of the room was a single stone sarcophagus decorated with a carved relief of a dwarven king.

  Mau paused and took a quick look around.

  "Large open chamber... Horrific ambiance, a single interactable object in the center of everything... This is a boss room. We're going to fight a boss."

  "I'm not even going to question what you're on about now," Suvdaa said while Dulguun quivered in her arms.

  "What Mau means is, we're likely about to find the source of this corruption in the caves in a moment here and have to battle it," Penne said sagaciously.

  "Lovely..." Andy said, tail tucking between his legs as he gritted his teeth. The stench was unbearable, and he was doing his best not to panic from the extreme fear coursing through his nerves.

  "There's only one way through this," Mau said with a slow breath through her teeth. She motioned for the sarcophagus. "We kill what's inside that."

  "But what if it's already dead?" Andy asked, hopefully.

  "We re-kill it, then," Mau replied as she stepped forward.

  As soon as she took that step, a wave of terror washed over her, hitting her with all the force of Truck-kun.

  "Eugh..." Mau shuddered and gritted her teeth, pushing aside her animal brain's wild panic, and took another step.

  Every inch closer to the coffin was an exercise in willpower to not simply turn around and run back to the safety of her comrades.

  "The hell..." Mau grumbled as she realized the supernatural sense of magic washing over her. Whatever was in the coffin was actively doing its best to use every dirty magical trick it had to keep her from approaching.

  Mau clenched her jaw and shoved her feelings aside, storming the rest of the way towards the sarcophagus with a resolve that could only come with a hundred lifetimes of dealing with this kind of bullshit.

  "Ah... She really did it." Mau heard Andy whisper to the others as she lifted her foot and, with a powerful surge of adrenaline and fury, kicked the lid off the coffin in one heavy blow.

  Inside the sarcophagus was a skeletal dwarf clad in the rotted and tattered regalia of a king. His beard was thin and scraggly with time and rot, and his armor was rusted and tarnished with age.

  There was silence for a long beat as Mau could feel her heart hammering in her chest.

  "Is... That it?" Suvdaa muttered from the entrance, bow held at the ready.

  "Nah," Mau said, turning back to her party. "We're about to hit a cutscene where the boss wakes from the dead and attacks us. This is so typical it's not even funny."

  As if on cue, the dead dwarf's eyes snapped open. Those eyes locked right onto Mau, and the disembodied voice that spoke up as the dead dwarf rested his hand on the edge of the sarcophagus was about as menacing as was to be expected.

  "Who dares disturb the slumber of Osiris...?" The voice hissed. "I, ruler of the dead and damned, and of Vile Darque's Four Heavenly Kings, demand to know..."

  "Oh," Mau said with a blink. "That's like the third time I've heard that name. You're one of his generals? Cool, that means I'm killing two birds with one stone by doing this:"

  Mau immediately and without any preamble, nor waiting for a reply, rammed her mithril longsword into the dead dwarf's chest.

  "... You fool. That will not--" The undead king started to speak before Mau's sword erupted in a blaze, setting his ancient rotting flesh and bones ablaze in a violent and roaring conflagration.

  The dwarf king crackled and smoldered as his papery, shriveled flesh seared away.

  Mau, who was done casually going full throttle in trying to make world record time in killing off a Demon Lord General, pulled her sword out of the fire and cut the air once to douse the blade's magical flame off.

  "Annnnnd, that's how you speedrun a story boss," Mau said, sheathing her blade as she turned to her companions.

  Suvdaa, Andy, and Penne were eerily silent as they stared beyond Mau as she strode back towards them.

  "Problem's solved; let's go find the sword," Mau said, flashing a cheeky smile. She spread her arms to give Suvdaa a chest bump.

  Suvdaa barely grunted as Mau bounced clean off her from how firmly she stood, rooted in place.

  "What?" Mau huffed as none of her allies seemed as elated as she was.

  In unison, the trio and even the little bear pointed behind Mau.

  "Dumb, cocky cat! His head is escaping!" Suvdaa hissed as Mau whirled around.

  Like a scene right out of a horror movie, the dead king's head was still smoldering as it crawled away on several spindly legs that had sprouted from where his neck separated from his torso to escape the flames, beard still burning.

  "Oh shit," Mau said, balking, "get him before he starts phase two of the boss fight!"

  The others didn't even bother to ask Mau what she meant by that as they scrambled to destroy the scuttling skull.

  An arrow whipped through the air and missed the bearded head by a fraction of an inch as it lurched aside. It dodged holy and unholy fire, and even Dulguun chased hot on its heels, snapping his teeth. This was, up until the scuttling head reached the chamber wall. The red bloody slime coating everything suddenly melted apart and accepted the severed head into its gelatinous mass as it melded into the rotten and smelly sludge.

  "Shit..." Mau spat. For good reason, as the walls lurched, and the room started to shake.

  "What's happening?" Andy asked, tone small and strained.

  "Nothing good," Penne answered him.

  That was when the wall exploded in a shower of gore and bone, revealing Osiris' head once more but attached to a pillar of bone and muscle formed from the nasty organic matter that had been coating the chamber. And as Osiris added that mass to himself, more and more peeled away until the chamber walls were devoid of sludge, and it was all added to himself in a congealed mass of flailing tentacles tipped in razor barbs, armored bony plates, and keratinous horns.

  "Behold my true form and despair!" Osiris howled as the party looked on in revulsion and horror.

  Mau immediately took to the forefront of the group and parried a tentacle as it lashed out like a whip to impale Andy. She didn't even have time to make any witty quips or remarks as the tentacles whirled around the beast. Mau's reflexes were immediately tested as she slapped aside attack after attack. Her perception of time slowed to a crawl as she gritted her teeth and batted away what must have been thirty killing blows in under the span of a second.

  Congealed blood splattered the floor as her two swords neatly cut tentacles to ribbons. For each one she severed, another replaced it, and the gelatinous twitching appendages only crawled back to rejoin the monster king's central body mass again.

  "Where are your wits now, kitten?" Osiris sneered, "Your glib remarks? Where are your attempts to 'speedrun' me, now?" He demanded as an arrow embedded in his eye.

  "Shut up." Suvdaa snapped as Andy used the arrow as an anchor point for his next divine flame spell. It went up in a golden blaze, and Osiris snarled in pain as half his skull seared away in a golden conflagration.

  Mau's swords erupted in red-hot flames as she slowly backpedaled, searing away more wildly whipping appendages. Though the burned tentacles wriggled and squirmed, they eventually died off and stopped crawling toward Osiris.

  "Stick with fire; he doesn't seem to like it very much!" Andy called out. Penne nodded, and while Mau fended off the Demon Lord General's attacks to protect them and Suvdaa, the acolyte and hagling launched plumes of golden and black fire repeatedly at the bloody sludge and bone monster. But each time they unleashed another attack, Osiris wriggled away. He was incredibly fast despite his immense tentacular mass, and Mau was forced to play on the defensive while her companions did their best to injure the monster.

  The clash of blades and bone resounded, echoing in the chamber the more Mau parried each attack that came in. She was in the zone; though the offense was more her element, Mau's entire world became a flurry of clashing blows. She knew full well that if she failed to fend off even one hit, it would kill her or one of her friends.

  Another arrow cut through the air, trailing inky blackness as Penne's dark fire lit it up before it embedded in the The Thing's large bulk, causing a section of glistening bloody flesh to go up in grey-black flames.

  Osiris howled, rolling his mass onto the floor to extinguish the magical fire before the undead king rushed the party, the slimy snake-like body roiling across the floor towards them.

  "Scatter!" Suvdaa said, and the team went in separate directions, leaping and tumbling out of the way of the frenzied tackle.

  This presented a new problem as Mau picked herself up. She was in a terrible position to protect anyone.

  Osiris immediately pressed his assault, bone whips snapping out to kill...

  Penne quickly helped Andy to his feet, and the acolyte raised his staff at the last second possible.

  "Divine Protection!"

  With that clarion call, a glimmering barrier of golden light enveloped the dogboy and hagling. Sweat beaded on Andy's brow as he put all of his strength into maintaining the shield as bloody bone blades slammed it again and again. At the same time, Suvdaa flung herself aside from attack after attack, tumbling and rolling, leaping and vaulting through a series of swipes that would have torn her to shreds as Mau tried to carve a path toward her.

  Again, Mau's perception of time slowed to a crawl... One lucky tentacle snapped out.

  Suvdaa gasped, knowing she couldn't make it in time. She landed and did her utter best to get out of the way.

  "Shit! Suvdaa!" Mau spat without thinking. Andy and Penne watched almost helplessly from behind their barrier as...

  Dulguun launched himself with a snarl, teeth flashing as the little bear cub caught the bloody tendril in his teeth. Dulguun's flying momentum carried the attack off course, and the cub flailed his head, tearing the limb free of the Demon Lord General's body in a bloody spray.

  Suvdaa grunted as she landed inelegantly on her ass, looking at the bear dumbfounded.

  Andy and Penne heaved sighs of relief from behind their cover.

  But Mau...

  Mau growled.

  In that instant, driven almost utterly feral with fury, the catgirl's hand clenched white-knuckled around the hilt of her sword. Her ears pinned back as she hissed and spat, pupils contracting into thin slits as she flashed her fangs.

  In the next instant, her twin blades were wreathed in flame.

  Osiris turned to face her, the snake-like beast of bloody flesh rearing up as the dwarf skull affixed to the head snapped its teeth.

  "What's this? Oh, is she special to you? ... Did I almost hit a sore spot?" The Demon Lord General crooned, amused as--

  Mau cleaved his body in half horizontally at the middle in a single, swift strike.

  The amusement was gone from the undead king's tone as his upper half hit the floor with a bloody splat.

  "What in all the hells-?" He blurted, but Mau was upon him before he could wriggle his bulk away.

  Mau's face was shrouded in a dark shadow, and her blue eyes gleamed balefully from her cold, expressionless visage.

  "... I'm about to world record you." Was Mau's only reply as she lunged at the squirming monster faster than her friends could blink. She was upon Osiris in that instant, and he could do nothing.

  A flurry of fiery slashes hacked into Osiris, separating his flailing limbs from his body into a cauterized mess of bloody mulch and meat. Driven by cold fury, Mau dealt out blow after devastating blow, too fast for the Demon Lord General to put up an effective defense, his bloody bulk and mass diminishing with each furious and devastating slash as Mau whittled him apart like a stick.

  One of the undead king's remaining tentacles lashed out in a final gambit to try and fend off the catgirl's unstoppable assault. Still, Mau was too fast and too angry as she jinked aside before the blow had a chance to reach her before she neatly clipped the appendage from his body in a smooth cut.

  Osiris screeched, a keening sound of pain and disbelief as one final deadly and deep cut carved into his body. Everything seemed to halt as the Demon Lord General tensed, still and silent.

  "What... Are you...?" The undead king hissed, disbelieving as his mass started to melt beneath him from the blazing heat of Mau's twin swords, his scuttling skull plopping to the floor with a wet splat as he tried one last time to escape on spindly little neck-legs.

  His escape was cut short as Mau's boot planted on the top of his head.

  All it took was a shift of her weight. Wordlessly, she crushed the undead king's head under her boot with a soft crunch of bone and a sticky squelching sound.

  What was scary for the others at that moment was that Mau wasn't even sweating. She wasn't huffing or panting for breath, trying to recover and rally like they were; she just stood there, silent and fuming.

  Only the hagling's magic eyes could see the shadow clinging to the catgirl, a heavy and pressing silhouette of time and age, worn on Mau's shoulders like a specter—just a glimpse—of the eternity of strife that lingered upon her soul. And as soon as Penne blinked, it was gone.

  Mau cut the air one last time with her twin blades to clean them of charred bloody gunk before she sheathed them and let out a sigh.

  Briefly, memories flashed before Mau's eyes as she was again visited—haunted, even—by the faces of all the party mates she had lost or failed to save over her lives. Mau's breath hitched at a horrid thought. The last thing she wanted was to see Suvdaa, Andy, or Penne added to that list.

  But... It might be inevitable... The 100th Demon Lord is supposed to be the most significant challenge she's faced yet.

  A hand on her shoulder pulled Mau from her dark thoughts as she turned her head.

  It was Suvdaa, and her expression was very grave.

  "Mau." She said with an unusual gentleness. "Mau, are you alright?"

  Slowly, Mau's eyes shifted to Andy and Penne, no longer pinned behind Andy's protection spell. Andy stepped towards Mau, but Penne quietly gripped the dogboy's elbow to stop him, earning a quiet whine.

  Mau let out a breath through her teeth.

  "Yeah." Mau finally said. "Yeah, I'm fine. Are you alright?"

  The chamber was silent for a beat before Suvdaa nodded. "Yes. Between you and Dulguun, I think I will be okay."

  "Good," Mau said simply, resting her hand atop the one on her shoulder for a moment before clearing her throat.

  "Andy, Penne, you two good over there?" Mau called over, earning nods from the pair.

  "Good." she sighed again. "... I need a nap."