There were small scenes as we prepared for the delve. The archer, Quedya, paused with her husband. Stoneskins didn't share kisses - but they rested themselves in each other's arms, comfortably entwined. In the end she had to step away, their hands trailing apart.

Shine-Catch very purposefully didn't look at the boy, Bug-Eater. The effort of not looking burned on her cheeks like a rash.

Kahlin was watching his people, so still he almost seemed to have lost the life animating his body and become a statue again. I wondered if, given a body, I'd look that way as I watched over my creations.

It was Tusk-Mouth who broke the mood. He had no wives to say goodbye too, only a few women who clearly held no love for him, nor saw in any return. Pushing forward into the scene he snarled for us to hurry up and led the way down.

We'd refused to use any knockers - the polite term for a barbaric practice, sending old and infirm goblins to tap the ground with staffs ahead of the scouting party and draw the ire of lurking predators.

I slid into the mind of the panther-chimera. The gazelles would stay above, their only offense too deadly to our own side in the cramped caverns, but I was confident the panther's claws and sting would serve us well. Even if the salamander was unapproachable, there would be other beasts. And besides everything else - I needed to be there. This first skirmish beyond my territory demanded my presence.

We sank into the caves, the cold gleam of luminous fungi lighting our way.

The first caverns were clear of life beyond a few scuttling lizards. The goblins had laid traps to try and keep things from crawling up from below; snares had burned to nothing and weighted logs studded with spikes had dissolved into ash before they could swing down from the ceiling.

It had completely broken through.

The first fork split the caves into two paths. One went on a spiraling downward path to somewhere called the Glass Pits, while the other continued slowly, gradually, until it struck a labyrinth they named Stone Trees. The creature’s trail led down the latter route.

We followed, moving as quickly as Tusk-Mouth would let us. The fear this place had bred in goblin hearts was clear. Even bearing her spear of lightning, Shine-Catch was hunched, walking alongside her gazelle and jumping at every wrong sound.

Soon the floor leveled out, and we reached a huge chamber. Giant pillars of stone held the roof high, grooved with tracks from dripping water as if a thousand snails had carved their twisting paths down the sides. Small pools collected at the pillars bases, and earth was slick with a furry black lichen. With my eyes I could see things moving at our peripheries, grazing bats too large to ever take flight knuckle-walking the floor to chew on stalks of mushroom.

An enormous centipede waited in the dark. Instead of legs it had long, whip-thin cillia that lashed wildly about as it moved, creating a disturbing spiral gait that made it seem to fly along the ground. Luminous glowspots on its back blurred through the dark as it rushed past us and we hunkered down.

Step by step. Cave by cave. We followed cryptic goblin-sign on the walls as we descended. For a moment Tusk-Mouth stopped, stomping on an outcropping of lantern mushrooms with an angry scowl. There was a territory of Mushroom-Folk nearby. The mention of more sentient peoples interested me, but-

By the sounds of it they were closer to former people. Infected by a crawling rot that seized control of their brains and made them tend to their colonies of mother-fungus obsessively.

There was a whole world beneath the earth. Only the creatures rampaging trail let us follow it as the paths split, again and again, a honeycomb of dark caverns presenting themselves. Veins of warped metal ran through the walls, crystalline and strange. The deformed Mana of the world above was affecting the formation of new minerals in the earth’s core - which was disturbing and fascinating and something I simply didn’t have time to study.

Dark doorways, the chambers growing cramped, forcing us down single file. The smell of ash billowing from the air ahead.

We had slipped into a comfortable rhythm when the fat, slimy mouth of a snail dropped from above and tore the gazelle’s head away in a single bite. I turned at the horrified inwards gasp from Shine-Catch, the smallest sound - but one that signaled death more perfectly than a scream.

By the time we turned the second beast had already killed our archer. Her body hung from its mouth for an instant, frozen in confusion, the crack of her neck breaking making her limbs twitch and fall limp.

Shine-Catch fell back as the beasts on the ceiling dropped. A half-ton of snail meat slamming into the floor doesn’t make a pretty sound. It made a sticky, oozing sound, a horrible wet slap of flesh that echoed and echoed over Tusk-Mouth’s scream - “Retreat!”

And that sound too, echoed and echoed.

A wave of heat billowed from the passageway ahead, and the sound of the salamander’s body thrashing towards us in the dark rushed towards us.

I saw Shine-Catch’s face melt from horror to fury, heard her scream as she put her full strength into a swing that slammed into a snail’s greasy bulk, the lightning burning the caverns in a violet-white flash. The thing let out a pathetic squeal as it sizzled and burned, its outer coating of slime hissing into a cascade of molten bubbles. Even then it didn’t die.

These weren’t even the full-grown specimens. Just hunting juveniles - the size of wagons.

Thunder rippled out in the blow’s aftermath.

The snails had split us into two. There was Shine-Catch and the majority of the stoneskin on one side with Tusk-Mouth, their only way out the way we’d come in. Then there was me, a few caravan guards, and Kahlin all pinned between the giant snails and the oncoming salamander. The moment felt suddenly frozen-still. Adrenaline was pushing up through the panther’s veins, making everything flow slower and slower as the heartbeat in our chest thundered.

I’d more or less put the beast’s consciousness to sleep to steer us through the caverns, and now it woke, vying against my mind for control. The push between us threatened to paralyze our body, and so I gave a final order before surrendering control.

Seize the arrows.

The panther scooped the quiver of crystal arrows into its jaws before retreating back, vaulting down a side passage. Kahlin was hot behind us, his men’s armor making a metallic thunder as they ran.

The heat was growing.

As the salamander burst into view, head waving wildly about like a puppet on clumsy strings, I turned and pushed at the panther’s mind, shoving down its instinct for retreat. We faltered on our footing, almost fell. Interfering mid-battle was dangerous simply for the moment of confusion as control of our muscles slipped between the two minds.

Kahlin and his men slipped past us.

I called out, and flared the luminous markings of the panther’s flank. It stood like a golden idol of the hunt, illuminated in the mouth of the tunnel, calling the salamander’s attention away from Shine-Catch and the rest.

Its head turned, mouth opening.

Flames began to spiral on its tongue.

The lance of fire slammed into the stony walls as we fled, leading it away.