Elion and Keyla sat in darkness, listening. The sound of water dripping reverberated faintly in the distance. As Elion’s ears adjusted, he began picking out more more sounds.

  A distant rumbling echoed down the tunnel. Occasionally a wet, slapping sound reached his ears, like something splashing in water. Small creatures flapped overhead, screeching in the darkness.

  As they sat, Elion’s vision played tricks on him. He held his hand in front of his face, and thought he saw a bloodied fist, clenched tightly even when he wriggled his fingers. The hand was his own, splattered with blood from the people he’d killed.

  In the darkness Elion felt a rush of vertigo. The ground seemed to fold up around him, swallowing him whole. He reached out and found Keyla, still seated beside him. She took his hand in hers.

  “We need to move at some point,” Elion said, though the idea made his weary legs ache.

  “Quiet,” Keyla whispered. “Do you hear that? It’s coming closer.”

  “What is it? It doesn’t sound like an arachnatronic.”

  Slap, slap, slap. The noise grew louder in the darkness. Elion reached around him with his free hand, searching for Snickers. The cat had disappeared.

  “Snickers,” Elion hissed into the inky blackness.

  “Hush,” Keyla chided, squeezing his hand.

  Slap, slap, slap. The sound drew closer still.

  “It’s coming from deeper in the tunnel,” Keyla noted. “On the other side of the bars.”

  “What is it?” Elion asked, trying to peer through the darkness. A kaleidoscope of phantom colors twisted in his vision, as his brain tried to produce an image without any light to guide it. A rancid smell percolated through the air, like rotting flesh and burning hair.

  “It sounds like a Sludge,” Keyla guessed.

  “A what?”

  “They’re toxic, amoeba-like creatures. About the size of your cat. They shoot out appendages that stick to things, and they use those to eat or to pull themselves around.”

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “Yes. They’re aggressive hunters. They aren’t too fast though, and a few shots from a rifle usually kills them. But those bars won’t stop it,” Keyla said. “They’re acidic, and they can absorb and dissolve metals.”

  “Let me guess; we have to keep the light off because they can see,” Elion groaned.

  “And hear too,” Keyla said. “So be quiet.”

  They listened, and the slapping grew louder, closer, until Elion felt certain the creature was right on top of them.

  “You said they can dissolve metals?” Elion whispered. “What if we lure it to us to dissolve through the grate, then we could keep going that way.”

  “It’s risky,” Keyla said.

  “It sounds so close,” Elion said. “It could be right here and we wouldn’t even realize it.”

  “We’d know,” Keyla said. “We should probably just wait and go back the way we came.”

  “At least it’s not Venya. Turn on the light,” he hissed, tired of his mind playing tricks on him. “You have your rifle ready? I’m ready to get out of this darkness.”

  “Fine. We can try to lure it down here. But be quiet. We only want to attract one.”

  Keyla clicked on the penlight, and the darkness retreated. The reality of the tunnel settled over Elion, vision providing comfort. Snickers had vanished in the darkness. The bars still blocked their path forward.

  Elion hoped the cat hadn’t wandered off and been eaten by a Sludge.

  Something shone at the edge of the light down the tunnel. A squelch followed by a series of thwacks ricocheted off the walls. A wave of scummy water rolled past their feet.

  Elion peered down the tunnel. Against the darkness, shifting wet ropey strands flashed, filling the entire pipe and rolling toward them. It looked a lot bigger than a cat.

  “Zelian’s Halls,” Keyla swore, dropping her rifle to hang from it’s swing and hurriedly repacking her bag. “That one’s huge!”

  “You said Sludges were small!”

  “Usually!” Keyla said, shouldering the backpack. “That one is way bigger than any I’ve ever seen before.”

  A loud sucking sound, followed by a pop, then the sludge clicked loudly several times in a row. The slapping sped up, and the sludge thundered toward them.

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  “Will the bars stop it?” Elion asked as the shifting mass bore down on them.

  “No!” Keyla cried, tearing Elion away from the monstrous view. They ran down the tunnel, away from the oncoming creature. A loud hiss behind them made Elion glance over his shoulder. The grate steamed as the sludge poured through it, every hole dripping with black ooze as the sludge pushed through the bars, reforming on the other side.

  Keyla stopped, and Elion slipped past her on the wet floor. “We can’t out run it,” she said, shouldering her rifle. Globules of Sludge pressed through the grate, dropping down and reforming. The creature was nearly half-way through already. “We’ll have to take it out while it’s slowed by that grate!”

  Elion brought his laserarm around as well, and they fired into the oncoming oozing mass.

  Each flash of a laser burned away large chunks of the sludge, but it just kept flowing between the bars. Acid from the sludge ate through the metal, widening the gaps and allowing more to pour through. A bitter smoke filled the tunnel, stinging Elion’s eyes.

  The metal grate came away from the wall entirely, and the sludge surged forward, enveloping it. The creature filled the tunnel competently with it’s bulk, rushing forward like a flash flood.

  “It’s too big!” Keyla gasped. She turned to run and slipped on muck at the bottom of the tunnel. Her feet flew over her head and she threw her hands out to try to catch herself.

  With a sickening crack, her left arm struck the ground underneath her. She screamed.

  Elion ran to her side, helping her roll over. Her wrist bent at an unnatural angle, a large bulge protruding from her arm where the bone had broken.

  Keyla screamed again, gasping for breath. The sludge bore down on them.

  “Come on!” Elion exclaimed, dragging Keyla to her feet. “We have to get—”

  Keyla inhaled sharply, her eyes bursting with teal light. Energy crackled between her finger tips. She stood unsteadily, leaning on Elion clutching her broken arm to her chest.

  Wet ropey tentacles whipped out of the sludge, slapping against walls and anchoring there as the creature hauled itself forward.

  Keyla bent and placed her hand in the water. Teal power crackled on its surface, flickering like electricity. She released a scream, part war cry, part gasp of pain, and lightning surged through the water.

  The attack stunned the sludge, and its appendages fell from the walls, crackling against the darkness. The whole grey mass shuddered, shivered, and then collapsed. Like someone had popped a water balloon, it sloshed down the tunnel.

  An acrid smell filled the air, like rotten eggs. The metal grate continued to hiss and steam as sludge slime boiled around it.

  Light faded from Keyla as she powered down. Elion helped her stagger up out of the path of the sludge’s toxic, slimy remains. They balanced on a narrow ledge in the darkness.

  “I can help with this,” Elion said. “I can help with this, just come a little further. Keyla sobbed softly, tears dripping down her cheeks as she clutched her injured arm. Elion took the penlight from her hand. They returned to the slightly wider area where they had eaten, just before the place where the metal grate had once stopped their progress.

  “Here, here,” he said, soothingly, helping her sit down and lean against the wall. Keyla gritted her teeth, glaring down the tunnel.

  “That was so stupid,” she said. “I can’t believe I just slipped.”

  Elion wiped mud from her face. “The good news is it didn’t puncture through your skin.” He examined the dark bruising on her arm, around the lump of the bone.”

  “We have to splint it,” Keyla gasped, averting her eyes.

  Elion helped her take the backpack off, wincing as he eased the strap around her broken arm. Keyla didn’t flinch, though a cold sweat beaded on her forehead.

  “I’m going to use Save a Friend,” Elion said, placing his hands on her shoulders. “I think it will knock you out.”

  Keyla nodded grimly.

  Elion used the ability, pushing his already stretched reservoir of strength. His body groaned in protest. He needed to rest soon. He was pushing things too far.

  > << Save a Friend >>

  Golden light illuminated the area around them, reflecting off the stone walls and the dead sludge. Weaving around Keyla, the light sunk into her skin. Her eyes drooped closed, and her face smoothed, pain washed from it.

  Elion sighed with relief, resting for a moment as he watched her unconscious form. A pounding headache needled at the base of his skull.

  He pulled thin metal bars from Keyla’s backpack, part of the internal structure of the bag. He also found a bandana in the bag, which he tore in half and used to tie the metal bars to her arm at the elbow. Then he tried pushing the broken bone back into place.

  The bone ground against itself, like nails on a chalkboard, sending a shudder down Elion’s spine. He couldn’t tell if he was helping matters. He bound the bars to her arm at the wrist here as well, using the other half of the bandana.

  He then carefully untied the bandana from Keyla’s upper arm, and used it to make a sling, tying it around her neck and looping it under her broken arm. ‘Save a Friend’ would prevent things from getting worse for a time, but they’d need to find something more permanent to help her heal.

  Shouldering the backpack, Elion swept the area with the penlight, looking for any sign of his cat. A black void high in the wall of the tunnel caught his eye. Investigating it, he found a pipe leading deeper into the earth, too small for a human. In the silt collected at the bottom of the pipe, he found paw prints.

  “Snickers!” he yelled into the void. The cat did not reply.

  “I’ll just have to come back for you,” Elion muttered. He had to get them to a place where they could rest. The path back the way they came had seemed to meander for miles, with nowhere to sit that wasn’t in murky, sludgy, probably acidic water.

  Elion picked stooped to lift Keyla up in his arms. It took him a few tries. She was either heavier than he expected, or he was more exhausted than he realized. But he had no other choice; they couldn’t just stay here.

  Holding her close to him, he shuffled forward, pressing into the darkness.

  Most of the central channel of the tunnel filled with the black, pungent remains of the sludge. To avoid it, Elion had to walk along the narrow ledge which ran against the wall.

  To save on battery, he clicked the penlight off with his thumb, but he almost immediately became disoriented.

  So he switched the light back on and continued onward, even as the light grew dimmer and dimmer. The tunnel extended unchanging into the darkness for eternity. Elion’s only measures of the passage of time were the growing ache in his arms and legs, and the fading glow of the penlight.

  As the light became so dim that he could barely make out his own feet against the ground, he felt a change in the air. The wall beside him drifted away into the darkness, and the noise of his footsteps echoed distantly, as in a large cavern.

  Aching, exhausted, and relieved to find a dry, flat space to rest, Elion stopped, laying Keyla down. He dropped the pack, which seemed full of lead. He shone the penlight around in all directions, but it could not penetrate the darkness.

  Elion knelt, checking over Keyla. She breathed, soft and slow. Elion’s ability wearing off, the pain of her broken bone would be returning. Kneeling on the ground beside her, Elion cast Save a Friend again.

  The rush of strength flowing out of him exhausted his reserves. He collapsed, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.