Mitch was entombed in death and organs given life.

  The flesh squeezed on all sides, a smothering cocoon of decay. Rot, bile, and muscle–alive and hating–tried to choke him. Viscous fluids seeped into every crevice and pooled inside his armor. His lungs caught, then seized, as the creature’s pulsating walls tightened like an over-bloated heart, crushing inward.

  A low growl rumbled through Mitch’s bond with Rex before he felt the shift. The Shadowshroud peeled its jaws away from his armor, the blackened hound splitting wide. Rex’s teeth sank deep into the surrounding flesh and ripped sideways.

  A vein burst. Vile, clotted pus sprayed across Mitch’s face, mingling with the stagnant blood and bile already coating him. He gagged a dry, heaving spasm. Thankfully, he had barely eaten. There was nothing to gag out.

  The cocoon shuddered, the fluid seeping and spraying in uneven rivulets.

  Galadrith hummed in his mind, the soul blade vibrating in his clenched hand. “Even carrion has its limits. This beast…it has none. We must dismantle it.”

  Mitch forced the blade to cut through sheer strength.

  In wild, desperate arcs, each cleave ripped through the monster’s insides. Sinew tore, and splattered gore sloshed in the coffin of the monster’s wet grasp. Chunks of rotting and live meat fell away, and Mitch sucked them all into the void of Abyssal Vault. The creature recoiled from Mitch’s efforts before squeezing harder in a desperate counterattack.

  Settlement Amount: 353 Souls, 335 Beast Souls, 0 Credits, 323(+39 Flesh).

  Mitch couldn’t speak, nor breathe. Galadrith’s lament returned, a somber, deliberate melody that echoed . “A butcher in a butcher’s world. Do you feel it, Mitchell? The inevitability of the destruction we must wrought?”

  He didn’t answer, not with his thoughts, and definitely not by opening his mouth. His lungs began to scream for lack of air. The upgrade to Agony’s embrace, Mantle of Defiance, which granted him temporary invulnerability, charged slightly, but not enough.

  Not enough pain.

  Another swing. He carved through a knot of fused muscle as it sprayed him with festering blood. Another siphon to lock the creature’s ill gotten gains into his own endless void.

  Settlement Amount: 353 Souls, 335 Beast Souls, 0 Credits, 357(+34 Flesh).

  His lungs burned. Every instinct screamed for air. He couldn’t stop. Rex howled, raw and feral in his mind, before biting down again. The pressure on his chest tightened, and the flesh around him constricted in spasms. Every ounce of strength felt like it was being drained from him.

  I’m still a breathing being, it seems. The thought struck him like a flame, an anchor amidst the chaos.

  He burned a soul.

  The energy hit like a fist. Power filled his veins, igniting every nerve. His muscles screamed with new life as he swung harder, faster, Galadrith peeling deep into the fleshed walls. The creature roared–or rather, trembled violently.

  “You wanted to eat me?” Mitch finally snarled as he carved around him.

  Settlement Amount: 353 Souls, 335 Beast Souls, 0 Credits, 446(+89 Flesh).

  More flesh fell away, the monster’s grip loosening. The cocoon slackened as the pull in his chest intensified. There was a beacon that drew him to the heart of the monster.

  Time to find it.

  The monster’s insides spasmed in retreat. Mitch felt the slack in its grip, a momentary reprieve from the crushing pressure. He didn’t wait for it to return.

  He hacked with Galadrith. Slashed. Ripped with his free hand.

  Galadrith’s edge cut through sinew and bone, peeling back the flesh in heaps. Mitch siphoned it all. Rex roared through their bond, clinging to him in wet plate, jaws tearing into the creature’s internal walls. Puss and blood filled and sloshed, flooding the small space Mitch had made for himself.

  “I’m not food,” he said coldly, carving another opening. The monster groaned–wet, tremulous, and beginning to break. Mitch sensed its death throes and hacked harder.

  Settlement Amount: 353 Souls, 335 Beast Souls, 0 Credits, 570(+124 Flesh).

  A final swing of Galadrith through a wall of meat, and he burst free, falling forward and landing into the cavern’s soupy muck.

  The air hit his face like a slap, sharp and filling his lungs in a giant gasp.

  He stumbled to his feet, soaked in filth, just as the abomination twitched and writhed behind him.

  “Thought ye’d gone and died in there!” Hathgar shouted, voice raw. He had beaten Mitch to the punch of escaping, and his extended Wrought Iron blonde cut through the beast’s flesh in sweeping arcs. “Bloody damned thing though it could eat me!”

  Mitch’s eyes locked onto a scrambling section just beneath the stretch marked skin of the monster. “Patty!” he roared.

  He leapt towards Patty’s thrashing, trapped form. With his bare hands, he punched through the taut skin. It burst in a sickeningly scented belch. He reached in, hand plunging into the folds of flesh.

  His fingers found purchase and gripped onto a leg. Mitch hoped it was Patty, and with a shout, he pulled with all his strength.

  Patty emerged, her form coated in the monster’s bile and blood. Gasping for air, Mitch caught her before she fell into the slop.

  Her eyes flared with anger, but she looked mostly unmarred. Patty hovered her hand over the vile flooded ground and rock flowed up.

  In a matter of seconds, her chest and arms were coated in a thin black rock armor. “I’m fine. Disgusting,” she spar, her tone as sharp as the spikes she tugged out of the ground with her Skills. “Let’s kill this fucking thing,”

  Sable’s voice yelled. “Focus on breaking parts off, Mitch will suck it up! Fracture incoming!” Her arm extended, and purple energy exploded next to Mitch’s head, showering him in more filth. He glared at her for a moment as he took the flesh into his core.

  Sable fired more Fractures, and Mitch hacked away alongside Patty and Hathgar.

  Chunks of flesh splattered into the festering muck, and Mitch siphoned them as well.

  Leonard, standing back, threw his arms wide. Vines erupted from the ground, wrapping around the creature’s limbs, and rotted the flesh where they touched. “That’s what you get for trying to eat Patty!”

  The creature flailed, its body collapsing inward as more flesh was torn away. Hathgar’s cleaving strikes, Sable’s precise wires and Fractures, Patty’s boulders, Leonard’s plants, Mitch’s slashes with Galadrith, each blow peeled away another layer of the leaking, rotten monster.

  Settlement Amount: 353 Souls, 335 Beast Souls, 0 Credits, 896(+326 Flesh).

  With that final siphon, Mitch drained the last of its dead flesh.

  What remained was worse than the abomination that housed it.

  Hate maggots.

  The maggot-like creature squelched against the sodden ground, the size of an arm. Its pallid, translucent skin stretched tight. Pustules bulged and popped along its exposed body, releasing yellow-green fluid that hissed as it hit the rotten water it lay in. Segmented flesh undulated in waves.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Rows of malformed teeth lined the top of it, flexing open and closed. It heaved in ragged breaths, releasing acidic, sour breath. Tiny twitching limbs jutted from its fattened body, useless, flailing in its own filth. A single bulbous eye emerged from its ass, rolling in its jellied socket.

  Encircling its body was a sharp, black coil, glowing faintly with purple light. It dug deep into the maggot’s flesh, slicing and binding as if it had grown within it. Dark liquid oozed from the wounds where the coil burrowed.

  The maggot let out a pitiful, high-pitched wheeze, protesting its own existence.

  Sable’s voice was quiet. “That’s…a Leeching Spine.”

  “What? What’s a Leeching Spine?” Mitch asked, curious.

  A relic. One with a known purpose.

  “A vile creation.” Galadrith warned, sensing Mitch’s desire for the relic.

  “What’s a Leeching Spine doing on that thing?” Hathgar’s voice was disgusted as he wiped ichor off his arms with a scrap of cloth.

  Leonard gagged, and took a step closer to inspect the creature. “Does it have the air of a deeply misunderstood poet? The kind that vomits bile and existential despair?”

  “My kind of poet.” Patty laughed, letting the rock armor that encased her flow off in chunks that splashed the gnome.

  Sable ignored them, her eyes locked onto the Leeching Spine that encased the maggot. “This…Leeching Spines are used at the Front. By warriors when they’re ready to die. They wrap themselves in them to take as many Abyssal creatures with them as they can. It drains life–fast, violently. No one can survive it.”

  Mitch crouched, staring at the creature. Galadrith’s tone was muted. “End this pitiful creature.”

  He nodded and swung, the blade slicing neatly through the maggot's segmented body. Its screech ended, leaving only the sound of its leaking fluids.

  Reaching out, Mitch grasped its soul with Abyssal Vault and felt it slot into his core. Green and black and whining, the corrupted soul vibrated like an off-tune string in his chest. He felt the recoil immediately. The other souls in his core seemed to shrink away, disgusted by the intruder.

  Settlement Amount: 353 Souls, 335(+1) Beast Souls, 0 Credits, 896 Flesh.

  Mitch left the flesh.

  Screw that. Not taking in that.

  “I will not consume that soul. No thank you,” Mitch felt Galadrith shudder in his mind.

  Rex growleddeep and guttural. The Shadowshroud surged with hunger, its intent palpable. Mitch blinked in surprise. Rex wanted the Leeching Spine.

  “If Rex eats this, what happens?” Mitch asked aloud to the group. He could feel the Shadowshroud practically frothing at the mouth in his mind.

  Sable stepped forward. “I don;t know,” she admitted. She studied the dark relic, its faint purple energy crackling. “Leeching Spines are devastating, and they consume life from the wearer as well.”

  Mitch stared at the relic coiled around the maggot’s body. Rex’s presence pressed harder against his mind, a deep thrumming hunger pulsing from the Shadowshroud. He trusted Rex’s instincts, even when he didn’t fully understand them.

  “Do it,” Mitch said quietly.

  Rex peeled away from Mitch’s body in a fluid, shadowy movement, leaving his scarred chest exposed. The hound’s black fur rippled like living smoke as he shifted into his beast form, his single glowing eye fixed on the Leeching Spine.

  With predatory strides, Rex approached the maggot’s corpse. In one powerful snap, he seized the spine and crushed it in his jaws.

  The moment Rex’s teeth sank into the relic, purple sparks erupted. Energy hissed and sizzled, but Rex ignored it. Three loud crunches echoed in the chamber as Rex consumed the relic. The maggot’s dead body flopped, only for Rex to tear into it further.

  Waves of purple energy crackled over Rex’s body, settling into his frame as the relic fused with him. The hound’s dripping tongue lolled out, as though he were savoring the raw power that now radiated from his form.

  His snarling teeth gleamed in a grotesque grin of satisfaction. Rex shook the maggot apart, tossing it into the muck.

  “The power in that spine…” Galadrith mused. “I wonder. If I too could consume such a thing. What heights we could reach together.”

  Mitch frowned. You’re not eating relics without my say so. Who knows what it could do to you. It could damage you.

  It was impossible to not think of the ring from the Warden that filled his pocket, however.

  I wonder…

  “Bloody disgoostin’!” Hathgar moaned, pretending to gag.

  “What a marvelous creature. The raw vigor in his loins!” Leonard clapped his malformed hands together with delight.

  “Is he Okay? Are you Ok?” Sable asked, looking at Mitch warily.

  He couldn’t tell. There didn’t seem to be any damage done to his body, nor Rex’s.

  I hope that works out…

  Rex wasn’t finished. Padding back to the maggot’s remains, Rex nudged the twisted corpse with his nose before clamping his jaws around it. With a violent shake of his head, a crumpled, bloodied piece of parchment tumbled free from the mess.

  The Shadowshroud carefully plucked the note in his teeth and brought it back to Mitch, dropping it at his feet before merging back into his armor with a satisfied growl.

  Rex felt heavier and satisfied. Fait trails of purple flickered like embers along the edges of the armor. Mitch wondered what the Leeching Spine would do to Rex. He could feel that Rex had changed in some way, but did not receive a notification.

  A trickle of power frum Rex tingled across his skill. Purple flickered around the edges of the armor, making his chest feel heavier with the weight of something hungry within Rex.

  Next time someone gives us trouble, show me, Rex.

  Rex grumbled and settled onto Mitch comfortably.

  “What is that?” Sable asked, coming over to stand beside Mitch.

  Mitch didn’t answer. Rex growled contentedly in his mind, satiated after his meager meal.

  He unfurled the note. The writing was even and expertly crafted in black ink,.

  “Feast well, for the Abyss hungers. There is no waste among us, only sustenance. Welcome to the table, glutton.”

  At the bottom of the note, the writers had signed their note: The Gluttonous Ones.

  Mitch’s stomach twisted as he read the words. A memory was there, and he reached for it. It was just outside his grasp, but he felt the weight of the name stir something primal in him. Anger.

  His body reacted violently, his muscles coiling as though ready for a fight.

  “The Gluttonous Ones,” he said heatedly, turning to the others. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Never heard of ‘em.” Hathgar answered. “Sounds like some Abyssal slop fer’ overeaters'.” Looking at Leonard and Patty, they both shook their heads.

  Sable’s face was contemplative. “I’ve… heard of them. Just rumors. Whispers of things that lurk deeper than the Abyss itself. We need to ask Mook about this. If anyone knows, it’ll be him.”

  Mitch felt the frustration bubbling over. “Galadrith,” he said sharply, his voice snapping in his mind. If you’ve got anything to add, now’s the time. Stop lurking in my head like some cryptic oracle.

  The blade’s voice hummed low, edged with bitterness.

  “The Gluttonous Ones... an Abyssal faction, ancient and ravenous. They thrive on excess—flesh, power, souls. I did not cross their path before I was brought to the Front... at least in this soul cycle. Details elude me, but their hunger is... endless. A reminder that in the Abyss, nothing is wasted. Not even us.”

  Mitch cursed under his breath, the cryptic nature of Galadrith’s response fueling his agitation. He turned sharply toward Leonard, who was muttering something under his breath about “horrifying gluttons.”

  “Enough, Leonard!” Mitch barked, the sudden force of his voice making everyone flinch. “We don’t need your commentary right now.”

  Leonard fell silent, his lopsided grin vanishing as he shrank back behind Patty, who gave Mitch a sharp look but said nothing.

  The tension thickened as Mitch took a steadying breath. TThe key burned across his chest, its pull sharp and unyielding. It didn’t feel like a choice–it was a gravity, dragging him towards something he couldn’t resist.

  “We can’t just stand here,” Mitch said, his voice grim but resolute. “We move. Now.”

  Sable stepped forward, placing a hand on his arm. “Mitch, wait—”

  “No,” he snapped, shaking her hand off. “We have to keep going. Whatever’s down there, we get to it.”

  Hathgar’s glare was sharp. “Yer bloody determined to drag us all to hell fer’ some key. I hope it’s worth it.”

  Mitch met his gaze but said nothing, turning away and pressing forward. The pull in his chest grew sharper, gnawing at him like a hunger that refused to be ignored.

  Mitch sent a mental call through his Abyssal Bind.

  Varak’s response was immediate, her brood’s chittering faint but eager in his mind.

  “We come. Bring Mook. Be…calm. Mook know thing.”

  Mitch felt himself clench his teeth at the word. Calm wasn’t possible. Not with the pull of the key pulling him forward. His gut churned as guilt brushed against his thoughts, but he buried it. Whatever the key offered, he wanted it.

  The group looked at eachother with unease as they followed him. The pull of the key was relentless.

  Why can’t I stop? The thought flickered before he shoved it aside. He couldn’t stop. Whatever lay ahead, it would make sense once he reached it. It had to.

  Behind him, the group followed hesitantly. Mitch could feel their doubt pressing against his back, but it didn’t matter.

  The corridor stretched ahead, and with every step, the key grew warmer.

  So close.