Darkness and Hellfire

Chapter 32 Remind Me To Look Up.

Isaac froze. He heard something but he couldn’t place what it was. He held up a hand and Lenna stopped as well. The two listened for a moment before they heard anything. A sound like creaking wood before a pop. Followed by what sounded like something trying to eat a chair and succeeding.

Isaac backed up a few steps before turning around the jog the last twenty feet to meet up with Lenna. “Could you hear that?” He asked.

“No.” Lenna replied. She would have asked him what he heard but she knew that was unnecessary. Isaac was many things but a man of few words wasn’t one of them.

“It sounded like an ogre eating a chair.” Isaac explained as best he could which, granted, wasn’t very well. Lenna just stared at him for a second while trying to think what manner of creature would make a sound like that but wasn’t actually just an ogre eating a chair.

She eventually gave up and took a step forward. Isaac stopped her with a raised finger. “What?” She asked. Did he not want her to fight whatever it was?

“Let me go see what it is at least before we go charging in there.” Isaac replied and then promptly disappeared without giving her the opportunity to reply.

‘How am I supposed to protect someone who I can’t even track when they are right in front of me?!’ Lenna’s thought was accompanied by an audible huff and a shake of her head. She crossed her arms and waited. She listened as carefully as she could hoping to hear what monster was up ahead. She was also hoping to not hear Isaac screaming.

Isaac ran ahead of Lenna about seventy feet down the tunnel and then stopped at a hole in the wall. The hole was about eight feet across and looked as though an ogre had shoulder checked the wall and the wall lost. There were stone chunks, pebbles, and stone dust sprayed out in front of him.

Past the debris was a huge cavern. The cavern was at least four hundred feet across and was teardrop shaped. He was on one of the sides. The bottom of the teardrop was about two hundred feet away and the top looked to be maybe five hundred feet from him.

“What made all these caverns down here? Now that I think about it, why are all these tunnels down here too?” Isaac said to himself. Luckily for Isaac his big mouth was silenced by his cloak of shadows that also made him invisible. A hundred feet away were three monsters he hadn’t seen yet.

The monsters were between nine and twelve feet tall and had long arms that almost reached the ground. They had white fur and gray cataract eyes. Their fingers were more claws than dextris devices of motor function. One of them was sprawled out on the ground breathing deeply with its eyes closed. Another was looking around to make sure nothing was trying to sneak up on them. The third was pulling mushroom caps off of their stems and eating them.

Speaking of mushrooms, the entire cavern was full of them. These mushrooms were special. They gave off a soft blue light that bathed the cavern in an eerie glow. There were a few stalagmites and stalactites spread out throughout the cavern that stuck out through the ankle high mushroom forest but little other stone was visible.

As Isaac was watching the mushroom eater, some movement caught his eye. One of the stalactites moved a few inches along the ceiling. The ceiling of the cavern was also sloped with the teardrop shape but not as pronounced. Where that particular stalactite was, the distance from floor to ceiling was about eighty feet.

Isaac just watched for a moment and soon enough it moved another few inches. He heard something to his side and quickly turned to see what had made the noise. It was Lenna creeping closer to the hole in the wall that Isaac was currently standing in the middle of. He took a few steps towards her so he would be out of sight from the cavern and cut the power to his invisibility. He reappeared and Lenna stopped.

Lenna was now only about twenty feet from the cavern’s entrance. “Shhh.” Isaac whispered with a finger to his mouth. He took a few silent steps towards her until he was sure that they would be able to whisper back and forth without anything hearing them.

“You were taking too long.” Lenna told him. She had given him two minutes and he hadn’t returned so she went to look for him.

“It wasn’t that long… I did get distracted by this moving stalactite though…” Isaac admitted.

“Falling shadows.” Lenna replied, answering his question before he could ask it.

“The stalactite?” Isaac asked in clarification. Lenna nodded in affirmation. “I take it they drop on people violently. But why shadows?”

“As they fall they gather dark mana around themselves. Right before impact they invert and catch you. When they do, they create an orb of shadows around them. It is impossible to see through without special equipment.” Lenna explained to him quietly.

“I might be able to see through it… Anyway it looked like it was trying to position itself over these hairy, giant, two legged things. One of them was eating some of the glowing mushrooms that cover the place.” Isaac theorized.

Lenna broke eye contact and gazed toward the cavern’s entrance. “Pecurke” She whispered.

“Pecurke?” Isaac asked and followed her gaze.

“It means mushroom eater. Those creatures you saw.” She continued and took a quiet step forwards.

“What can you tell me about them?” Isaac asked and joined her.

“Big, strong, dumb. Good sense of smell but poor eyesight. Many are captured and bred as drow war beasts.” Lenna replied. Lenna and Isaac reached the hole in the wall and Lenna peaked around the corner to see the pecurke. Isaac disappeared again so he could stand out farther and see them clearly without fearing them spotting him.

The pair’s eyes drifted up to the ceiling where they watched a stalactite move a few more inches. One of the pecurke took another bite of mushroom. The stalactite fell. Isaac saw six stony tendrils trail behind the creature. Eyelids opened up revealing orange eyes with a black slit down the center that seemed to dart around the room and take everything in at once.

The tendrils twisted and spun as the creature guided its descent. Shadows poured out from it in all directions obscuring it from everyone and everything’s sight. Isaac had trouble seeing through it but he could still see the glowing eyes. The eyes blinked out for a moment and then were visible to him again right before impact.

The falling shadow landed right on top of the lookout pecurke. It almost completely engulfed the monster’s body with its own and the tendrils wrapped around what the Shadow’s body hadn’t. The pecurke toppled and its friend, who was still chewing a mushroom, let out a gargled howl while jumping back.

The falling shadow’s field of darkness reached at least ten feet in all directions. The mushroom eating pecurke stumbled out of the curtain of blindness and tripped on the formerly sleeping one’s foot. He faceplanted hard.

Isaac turned off his invisibility when he was sure the falling shadow had fully arrested the attention of the pack of pecurke. His mana was getting low but due to the rate that it refilled he’d be fully charged in only a few minutes. Lenna glanced at him when he appeared and then stepped out to join him.

“Wanna kill whoever wins?” Isaac asked her. Lenna nodded but otherwise remained silent. What Isaac saw next was unpleasant at best. An arm pierced through the side of the falling shadow. It was steaming and dripping with some kind of fluid. All the hair on the arm was gone and some of the flesh looked like it was actively melting away.

Tendrils reached up and wrapped around the arm struggling to hold it in place as whatever it was attached to was being dissolved. The pecurke thrashed and clawed as the falling shadow tried to restrain it. The two by standing pecurke couldn’t try to help because unlike Isaac they couldn’t see what was going on inside the black void.

A full minute of thrashing later and the shadow field dissolved. The bystanding pecurke rushed in and ripped the falling shadow’s body apart to get their companion out. What they retrieved looked almost nothing like what had been taken.

The victim’s skin was melted over its entire body. All traces of fur were gone. There was a yellow liquid still covering its body and that liquid was continuing to melt flesh. Isaac could smell the rot and death from where he was standing and he unconsciously scrunched his nose. He could see hundreds of small puncture wounds all over its body and one of its eyes was deflated like a dehydrated tomato.

The two uninjured pecurke set the injured one down and began conversing in a few gestures, grunts, and growls. “They’ll eat it once the acid has lost its potency.” Lenna said quietly.

“Can they even eat that? It looks like leathery stone.” Isaac replied equally as quietly.

“No. The other one.” She said gravely.

Isaac turned his head and looked at her. “The other pecurke?” She nodded at him. He looked back at the carnage and observed them converse for a moment. “Remind me to look up.”

Lenna nodded again. “Yeah… unpleasant way to die.” A moment later she reached for her sword.

“Wait.” Isaac interrupted her. “I’m finally feeling good enough for a fight. I don’t want to waste an opportunity to get some more combat experience. Especially with you right here in case something goes wrong.”

Lenna moved her hand back to her side. “Very well.” She had partially agreed because he was right but mostly she just wanted to see how he could handle himself. There were only two of them and they weren’t incredibly tough monsters. Also he would have the drop on them so that would give him another advantage.

Isaac nodded back around the corner. “You should hide.” He took a step forward and started covering his body in shadows much slower than he usually did. He had an exit to make after all. “Unless you want them to think you are cutting them from across the cavern anyway.” He finished the last word a second before he disappeared.