Blue trolls. Until someone tells me the name of these things and convince me they are not trolls, I'll call them that. Long limbs but one meter tall, slouched, cragged slimy skin, webbed feet, shark teeth, forty eyes, raking claws. Blue, hairy, disgusting. And gills. They have gills that are flaring right now. Two of them crawl out of the leaching hole I crawled out from. Their moist skin reeks of rotten eggs, courtesy of the sulfuric brine pool they live in.

I will have to fight. If these things with forty eyes get me, that's it. Bang. The end. No second chances. I jump to psych myself. Go, girl. I'm fighting for my life, no time to be queasy.

They smell me and growl. I check the ground below me and it is irregular enough to guarantee I'm screwed it I try to depend on mobility. Thankfully I know one thing creepy forty-eyed trolls that lurk in the dark depths dislike the most. The two trolls run to attack me, mouths open and claws ready. I summon my tool and ready it to strike.

I bet blue trolls hate having their picture taken. I snap my phone and take their photo, the flash on. My invulnerable eyes only register the sudden glare for the moment and I'm back to normal sight from the flashlight. While the trolls are stunned, I run forward, swapping the phone for the survival knife and try to slash their throats, Yuno Gasai style.

The first one falls on its back with an open carotid but the other one has time to react and blocks my slash with an arm. I cut his skin but it is just a flesh wound. I hope he's not as resilient as John Cleese.Ugh. My flank was burning. Was that claw poisoned? I bet one gold shekel.

The backlash comes right afterward. The troll slammed me with one of its long, strong arms and sunk its claws on my side, below the ribs. I raise the knife and slash at its eyes, popping three of them and causing a white jelly to pour out of them. It shrieks in pain and tries to bite me. Blinded and in pain, it misses. I slash and pop three other eyes. It grabs my jacket and pulls me sideways, making me trip and hit my head on the wall. Fortunatley I have a helmet.

The angry troll sniffs and jumps over me. I lift my leg and kick it, sending the ferocious but lightweight critter to the other side of the narrow tunnel. It gives me time to get back on my feet. We face off. Well I face it off. The troll is still blinded, oozing the jelly from its popped eyes and trembling. It seems the eyes are very sensitive. It sniffs the air and jumps.

I shouldn't have discarded the magnesium chloride . I bet that moist monster would love some acid burns. I speak with such cruelty because I am pretty sure these monsters aren't intelligent. I need more data points though to be certain.

It came from above with its claws ready. It had the strength of an adult man and the weight of a children. I freeze and hesitate. It comes down on me and upon ontact, starts to claw savagely. The bite comes and I headbutt its mouth. The teeth start to gnaw on my helmet and I remove it from my head. My left arm burns. I tried to protect the right side or else I'd have no way to defend myself. I stab its muscular belly several times. The survival knife was not meant to stab.

Fortunately, the titanium helmet was stuck inside its mouth, and he gave up on clawing me to remove the object. I was amazed at its jaw strength. The teeth were cutting into the titanium. Titanium has a Mohs hardness of 6 and that meant these teeth were harder than your average high school freshman during mixed P.E. classes.

Joking and wincing at my own bad puns took my mind away from part of the pain. But I was wasting time best spent murdering monsters.

Damn.

Don't want to. While I churned the inner turmoil of my modern views against the crude reality of a monster-infested world, it clawed my cheek. I kicked its shin and slashed a large gash on its belly. Blood poured from the open wound and I took the time to stab the knife inside its guts and twist.

The thing screamed its death throes and I kicked it away before it had the opportunity to puke over me again.

Damn.

It dies without vomiting. It's a win in these filthy depths. I bag two more corpses and check the helmet. It is bent, the blue troll was able to crush the metal. If there was a human head inside the helmet, it would be pretty much brained. And dead.

Not me.

Tired, I carved a seat out of silicon and rested. I needed time to regenerate my arm. I gave up on trying to keep tidy clothes. Welcome, filth my friend. Disgust is a bio-social reaction to avoid contamination and disease. I was highly resistant to the former and immune to the latter. I dozed off while I waited for my wounds to close.

Smart girl. Not.

I woke up startled by more grunts, growls, and gurgles. It seemed a lot of blue trolls were coming up from the drain tunnel, to check where their missing friends were. I focused on hearing their sounds, to see if it was any kind of language. If it were, I was supposed to be able to listen to it. Unless Tarhun really stiffed me. I couldn't make sense of their gurgling, growling, and grunting. Ok, not sentient. They didn't wear clothes or use tools anyway. Their paws were good for clawing but terrible for handing objects.

I felt weak, hungry. Thirsty too. I would probably have to go back down there to get water. Briny or not. I had a good survival filter and Decompose. I almost died to two, what could I do with a lot of them? Should I run down the tunnel? Would they give chase? Was there anything else down the tunnel? Should I have spent time mining instead of securing my location? Don't miss next week's chapter. If I survive.

One blue troll entered the tunnel, sniffing. Then another, and two more that were bickering. One of them had a popped eye, oozing the clear gel. I really hope it didn't eat its veggies. At least the eyes weren't blue. Just a deep pool of blackness, made to swallow all light.

I summoned the lantern and the knife. I'll hit you with all the grudge I can muster now but I won't walk slowly toward your doom. 9999 damage. They glare at the flashhight and hiss. The last two enter the room and I face off against five of them. I crank the dimmer of the lantern all the way and it shone with the power of a hundred bright LED. The monsters were confused and afraid.

I charged. They tried to cover as many eyes as they could and I noticed they didn't have eyelids. Just some nictating membrane. I drove myself into a frenzy and slashed as many eyes I could. They screamed and clawed around. I backed off. One troll clawed another and drew blood. They started to fight among themselves, shouting, gurgling, biting and clawing at each other in a way that I won't put into words.

I couldn't even look.

More gurgling. It sounded like they were calling for help and more blue trolls were anwering from the tunnel. Two larger and darker trolls came into the tunnel, shielding their eyes and looking at me. These seemed more inteligent. They slapped the others, gurgling something and they stopped infighting. Three were on the ground, badly hurt and probably bleeding to their deaths. The big ones growled menacingly at me. The others made way, hugging the wall to let the bosses through.

These creatures of the night and dark cried some sort of call.

The ruckus was big but I felt something I shouldn't. An air current coming from behind me. I turned around to see figures well beyond the reach of the light shuffling. A lot of them. I looked back at the blue trolls and they were running away. They didn't even bother to carry their wounded.

I turned around to look at what I was looking at.

Call me Lauren Cohan, because it seems the dead were walking in their masquerade.

Dozens of what I could only call zombies shuffling down the tunnel, slowly. I took back the crank flashlight and brought the big guns. A directional 12-LED one. I shoot the beam of light on them and unfortunately they didn't burn of flinch. Their skin was rotten and moldy, their eyes dead in the sockets. A bona fide undead horde. Jaws slacked, teeth crooked and warped but still filthy and deadly.

Zombies to the north, blue trolls to the south. It seems I would not escape the alien's jaws this time.

Like I would let that be the end of my life.

It seemed all of them were out to get me. Monsters closing in on every side.

And they would get me, unless I did something. So I ran and followed the living blue trolls. I reached the leaching hole and ducked to get inside. I moved one meter inside and touched the roof. Go, Decompose! I poured the most power I could to move silicon. Shift the rock and move the silicon to close the entrance. Dust from the other components of the rock that weren't silicon fell and covered me but I ignored it, closed my eyes, and focused. Move, block the gap. The blob of silicon moved like a very viscous fluid. The zombie horde was a few meters when I finally closed the gap with enough silicon I believed they wouldn't break through.

Now was the time to go back to the pool and cuddle with the amphibious trolls. Close together.