“I can feel it. The pull. Like you’re saying, Mitch,” Sable began, her mismatched eyes stayed firmly forward as they followed the path at the back of the cavern. “The Abyssal Bind…it’s stronger now. Like it’s digging. It’s unsettling”

  Mitch led the way towards the beacon he felt, Rex covering his body in his blackened armor form. The key around his neck from Mathilda’s pulled him in the direction as well. It didn’t necessarily feel dangerous, just different. It called him out. Something waited in the dark for him to find. “Unsettling? You don’t think making Leonard a Follower is unsettling? Mook as a minion, too.”

  Minions: Abyssal Fodder: 4, Abyssal Bugs: 2089(+1749), Mook

  Followers: Sable (First Follower), Leonardo XI

  Guardians of Will: Varak

  “I told you, it all makes sense. This is how we fight against the Abyss. It’s how you fight it, it’s how I find my soul. By using Its powers against it. I’ve already gotten Fracture, who knows–I think from the Bind…who knows what else will come?” Sable added, sending a chunk of wall splintering with her Skill.

  Leonard, who had been keeping pace just behind Sable, clapped his hands together loudly and dramatically, interrupting the discussion. He did not carry the soul jar any longer. Neither did Patty. “Loyalty! I’ve always been quite noble in my allegiances. Steadfast, even, ready to aid all those who require it,” he glanced at Patty, “Especially stoic elves–”

  “Finish that sentence and I’ll turn you into a footstool, Lenny,” Patty growled, her tone dangerous.

  Leonard held his hands up in mock surrender, his crooked arm bending unnervingly. “Ah! Perish the thought. That sounds horrible.”

  “Bloody hell, can ye’ shut up, Leonard? Fer a moment. Stars. We’re walking through the Abyss, going towards a strange ping Mitch feels in his bloody balls, in a broken prison, and Patty is more concerned with how she can hide yer body without us noticing. Shut it. Lest Mitch sends ye back te’ feed the Abyssal Monsters bugs with Varak and the other minions,” Hathgar bemoaned, bringing up the rear.

  As the cavern grew more damp and stuffy with the scent of rot, Mitch felt the echoes of Abyssal Bind. Varak’s and Mook’s presence ticked in his mind. He could feel her sending Abyssal Bugs to their deaths as she fed the Abyssal prisoners still locked in their cages, and distantly hear Mook arguing with her every step of the way. “Maybe…not all Monster. Master need…army! Try this…first before Bind,” she had said, scurrying off with her brood and the other minions, carrying the Warden’s soul jar like a prized possession. Mitch couldn’t deny Varak’s effectiveness thus far.

  Then there was Leonard. Mitch glanced at the gnome, who was animatedly rambling on about gnomish traditions to a visibly unimpressed Patty. Mitch felt the lingering pull left behind by the gnome. After he had placed his and Patty’s souls back in their bodies, he had made Leonard a Follower, at the gnome’s request. The gnome had in return tried to sever it immediately after, for “experimentation purposes,”.

  It hadn’t worked.

  The Abyssal Bind was absolute on Leonard’s end. But for Mitch, he now knew his rules were different. The threads were strings that only he could sever. It would be his decision if Leonard or any of the others walked free of theirs. It left him feeling both unsettled and responsible for his squad.

  Who am I to decide for them?

  “Accept the mantle, Mitchell. You cannot fight the Abyss alone. Nor with half measures.” Galadrith murmured to him. Since the sword had learned Mitch’s past, he had become more sombre and direct, as if mulling things over.

  Hathgar groaned, breaking the tension of the growing stench. “Bloody hells. Smell’s like an ogre’s backside. If whatever’s down here doesn’t kill us, that stench will.” He pulled his tattered shirt over his nose, squinting into the gloom.

  The tunnel opened into a vast chamber, its walls glistening with dark ooze. The scent hit them full force–festering meat, bile, and rusted metal. As they stepped into the new cavern, their feet and boots squelched into the muck.

  At the center of the chamber, It writhed.

  An abomination loomed like a house-sized tumor of rotting, festering flesh. Its mass swelled and pulsated as its skin stretched in pits to contain itself. Countless faces and dismembered parts fused into one rancid visage. Eyes of every shape, size, and species blinked erratically, some bloodshot and bulging, others rolling aimlessly in half-remaining sockets. Mouths gaped, frozen mid-scream or gnashing broken teeth in soundless screams. The air filled with their decayed breath.

  Veins thick as roots pumped beneath its rotting skin, bursting periodically to spray jets of black ichor, mixing with the oozing pus, piss, and shit pooling onto the cavern floor in a bubbling, rancid stew. Flesh sloughed off its form in gelatinous chunks, each splattering wetly and adding to the pile beneath it. The stench was suffocating–sour, rot, metal, curdled dairy. Limbs jutted out at unnatural angles, clawing blindly before sinking into the mass with squelches.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  A single, enormous eye, blood-red and webbed with throbbing veins, glared out from the center of its mass, its cracked eyelid struggling to contain its maddened stare. The creature twitched and heaved itself forward in wet, splattering jerks, the cavern walls dripping with recycled moisture. It moved like a nightmare given flesh towards them.

  Hathgar’s voice broke the silence, laced with horror. “What in the hell is that!?” His hand reached for a weapon, but he had none. “It looks like a damned stew pot come alive.”

  “How is it alive?” Sable asked, her eyes locked onto the mass. Her voice was steady, but he felt her unease through their bond. “Is it? Not fully?”

  The creature’s single, enormous eye swiveled towards them, fixing its maddened gaze on Mitch. The split eyelid twitched as it widened, a low, guttural sound vibrating the rock.

  “Right then!” Leonard let out a nervous chuckle. “I’ll take not it for the first charge. I’ve seen dwarvish toilets cleaner than that, and those could wake the dead.”

  “How are we even supposed to kill this thing? What is it?” Patty asked as she levitated a giant rock that hovered next to her, slowly spinning, waiting for her command.

  The pull he had felt internally had led Mitch here–straight to this abomination. “This thing…it’s what the Butcher left behind. A failed experiment, I believe.”

  “Failed?” Hathgar spat, extending his arm to a large lance.

  The pull in Mitch’s chest grew almost unbearable, an invisible thread tethering him to the center of the creature. Whatever pulsed, it came from the creature’s center mass. The key lead him further past the monster.

  The group fell into formation behind him. The abomination dragged itself forward through the muck with its many limb.

  It howled–or tried to. The many mouths on its mass gaped and shuddered. Rex sent panic his way a moment too late.

  It struck first.

  One limb lashed out like a whip, crashing into Patty and sending her sprawling to the ground. Before she could recover, the mass roiled, and tendrils of flesh cured around her. Mitch saw Sable flick a Fracture towards the creature, but she moved too slow. Faster than Mitch could think, it dragged her into its bloated body. Her scream cut off as she disappeared into the quivering flesh.

  “Patty!” Leonard’s voice cracked with anguish. The gnome darted forward without hesitation, his crooked arm flailing as he shouted. “You bastard! You won’t take her!”

  Hathgar barely had time to react before another hand shot out, thicker than the last, wrapping around his waist. “Bloody hells!” he roared, trying to slice through the limb with his Wrought Iron Skin turning to a cleaver. The creature yanked him off his feet, and pulled him toward its center. His shout echoed once before he vanished inside the routine mass.

  Leonard roared in defiance. “I’ll kill you! You hear me, you stinking bag of shit? I’ll kill you!” The gnome thrust his broken arm forward, and vines erupted from the ground, twisting and coiling toward the creature. Purple flowers bloomed along their length, vibrant and dripping. Where the vines struck the creature’s flesh, it hissed and blackened, rotting away in chunks.

  Sable moved next. Her wires sang through the air, and cut through the creature’s skin like a hot knife through butter. Each wire sent chunks of flesh splashing into the puddled filth. “Get it, Mitch!” she called out.

  Mitch opened his mouth, and a haunting, bone-chilling howl erupted from his throat. Deathhowl. The blast struck the creature’s side, ripping chunks away. He followed up with another, and another, sending meat flying through the air.

  It wasn’t enough.

  The creature lashed out again, this time for him. He slashed, and Galadrith cut through the limb in one sweep. A grasping hand splashed to the floor, and began to finger crawl its way towards him.

  Mitch sprinted, and burned a soul with Soul Sacrifice. He didn’t wait for one to press itself forward, he merely grasped one within his core and vanquished it. Turning its potential and energy into a surge of energy for himself. The raw rush hit and he took off.

  His boots splashed through the stew. Galadrith burned red with anger, and Rex howled in his mind as he leapt.

  He slashed at the creature’s flesh. The blade cleaved a wicked wound open, and guts and muscle dropped to the floor. It was an arm span long, but that mattered little against a creature the size of a house.

  Part of the creature is dead. The thought struck him.

  Some of the mass was darker, decomposing, while others flexed with false life. Instinctively, Mitch reached out with Abyssal Vault.

  The monster recoiled, its flesh rippling as he siphoned the dead parts away in a giant chunk. It funneled into Mitch’s core in a fetid tendril, the press of organs spewing out.

  Settlement Amount: 353(-1) Souls, 335(-3) Beast Souls, 0 Credits, 284(+31 Flesh).

  He saw Hathgar—alive but struggling—fighting within the creature, spikes of black Abyssal Wrought Iron bursting out from the pitted skin. Stabbing into the abomination from the inside out.

  “Keep going!” Sable shouted, firing another Fracture that tore through the creature’s eye. It’s limbs thrashed in every direction.

  Leonard, still furious, summoned another wave of vines. This time, thorny plants pierced the creature, digging deep before exploding into a tangle of toxic blooms. The flesh melted away in globs. “Give her back, you bastard!” he screamed.

  The abomination lashed out again, and this time, its grasp found Mitch.

  Tendrils of flesh wrapped around him. He felt Rex growl through their bond, the hound’s protective instincts flaring as the creature squeezed tight. But Mitch didn’t fight back. Instead, he let the creature pull him closer, his mind racing.

  If I’m inside, I can end this.

  The mass engulfed him, dragging him into its stinking, suffocating mess. Darkness swallowed him whole. The pull in his chest felt like a roaring inferno. He could feel the creature’s life flesh all around him—corrupt, festering, and pulsing with hate.

  Mitch grinned as Rex howled, his hound’s mouth peeling away from the armor and taking a rip out of the wet that surrounded them.

  Time to take It apart from the inside.

  “Yes, Mitchell. We must become knives in a world that believes it’s made only of meat.” Galadrith hummed.