Bulz was seething, the kind of rage that didn’t just burn... it clawed. His son lay dead, the tallic scent of blood still clinging to the air, and now the slaves were slipping through his fingers. His cane trembled in his grip, not from fear, but from the weight of pure hatred.
"You don’t want this, bitch," he growled, each word sharp enough to cut. "Trust , it won’t give you a good ending."
Miasha’s lips curved into a cold smirk. "Oh ho, trust , fatty, I very much want this. And you? You can’t stop . You think you’re a man? Deep down, you’re just a pitiful little shithead wrapped in too much flesh."
Veins bulged on Bulz’s forehead, each pulse a drumbeat of fury. "You... you..." The words failed him, swallowed by rage. With a sudden burst, he lunged, cane whistling through the air. Miasha twisted aside in a graceful backflip, her movents a dancer’s mockery of his bulk, then launched forward, driving her knee into his face.
"Aaagh!" His cry was wet with blood, splattering in crimson arcs across the floor.
"Beast summon.... Blue Venom Frog!" Bulz roared, and his mouth split wider than it should have. From the darkness within, a tide of frogs poured out, too many to count. They were the color of poisoned skies, patterned with diseased polka-dots, and each had eyes like pulsing rubies.
They began to hop in frantic unison, a crawling, squelching tide.
Miasha’s lip curled. "Ewww, Disgusting spell."
"Attack!" Bulz scread, voice cracking with frenzy.
The frogs’ eyes shifted, glowing a deep, drowning blue. They swelled grotesquely, skin stretching as they hissed, and then
pshhht!
streams of thick, blood-colored liquid burst from their skulls, arcing toward Miasha.
"Tch." She slipped between the sprays, her movents razor-sharp. "Acid-type venom," she muttered, almost to herself.
They ca from every direction, relentless. Miasha crouched, palm pressed to the cold floor. "Destroy them!"
The floor erupted. Jagged spears of rock burst upward, skewering the entire swarm in a single, brutal heartbeat. Their bodies twitched and split, oozing foul fluids that hissed on the ground.
She barely had ti to stand before Bulz was there, a looming shadow in her vision. Her eyes widened.
"What the—"
His kick caught her face, sending her rolling, cheek scraping against the cold corpse of a guard she’d killed earlier.
"Fuck," she spat, blood threading from her lip.
Bulz wrenched a sword from a rack, lunging for her head with all the weight of his fury. She rolled aside, the blade bit into the floor with a screech of steel. Seizing the mont, she coiled her legs around his thick neck and yanked him down, the sudden shift breaking his stance.
From her inventory, she pulled a long blue dagger, its edge breathing cold wind. "Enchantnt... Wind Support!"
The blade kissed his throat and tore. Blood sprayed in hot bursts, spattering her jacket, but she didn’t stop. Even after his body slackened, she kept hacking until steel rang on bone. Bulz remained upright for a mont a grotesque marionette before toppling, lifeless.
Miasha rose, her smirk razor-thin.
"Business is finished here. Ti to fetch those little puppies."
Blood clung to her clothes like a second skin. In that mont, she looked less like a woman and more like a demoness carved from war.
She stepped into the corridor beyond, unaware that Veythor, Shimi, and Raika were inching forward sowhere ahead. Their steps were careful, each one placed as though the ground itself might bite. The air here was wrong.... heavy with the stink of rot and sothing sweeter, more rotten still.
Then ca the sound. A scream, guttural and wet, like a thing torn between hunger and agony.
Shimi and Raika froze, their spines shivering under an unseen hand. Veythor’s jaw tightened. Even he, unafraid of most things, felt the pressure coil in his gut. They were powerless here. If that sound belonged to what he thought, then death wasn’t a possibility it was the only outco.
"Tch," he breathed, then turned to them. "Shimi, Raika. From here on, no sound. That scream? It belongs to sothing we can’t afford to et."
They nodded, wide-eyed.
Step by step, they crept closer. The sounds shifted the wet crack of chewing, and beneath it, a chuckle. Not a human one. This was a gurgling, devilish amusent, like bones being eaten by sothing that enjoyed the texture.
Shimi tugged at his shirt... a shirt already painted with blood.
"If it can sll..." she whispered. "It’ll know."
Veythor stripped the shirt halfway off before pausing, an idea striking him. Without a word, he knelt, pressing his palm to the blackened floor. It ca away slick with dark dust. He lifted it to his nose.
"Yes... different scent."
"What are you—" Shimi began.
"Later." He sared the dust over his face, masking the copper tang of blood with sothing older, fouler.
Ahead lood a gate, cold and unwelcoming. A warning was carved deep into the steel: No entry without permission. The drawing on it was crude, but the eyes of the monster etched there seed to follow them.
Below, more words: Once the question is asked, you cannot leave. Fail three tis, and you will be lost forever in another dinsion.
Veythor touched the tal door; the words started forming on its surface:
Invisible threads I silently spin,
Binding the many to where they’ve been.
No hand can grasp, no eye can see,
Yet all are tangled irrevocably.
I am the whisper before the storm,
The silent script that shapes the form.
Neither cruel nor kind in deed,
I plant the root, then watch it seed.
Kings and paupers dance in my hold,
Their paths pre-writ, their stories told.
What am I?
A golden aura lingered over the words. The three of them stared at the inscription, searching for the answer.
But can they solve it or will they be trapped forever in another dinsion? What will our mastermind Veythor do? That remains a question only ti will answer.
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