Thomas stumbled backwards, chest sprouting another shallow cut, but was caught by a steadying hand from behind; an arrow flashed past him, embedding itself into a compound eye. There was a horrendous shriek, and the spindly creature thrashed wildly.

Anne was engaged with another of the creatures, the thump of steel on chitin beating out the rhythm of her motion as she stepped forward and backwards. Thomas couldn't spare much glance to see how her fight was going – well, as best as he could figure – before the oversized stickbug in front of him swung a bladed arm at his face. He caught the blade on his own bare arm, blood splashing backwards into his eyes, and lunged forward into the creature, body-checking it into the wall behind, even as he triggered Inhuman Size. There was an unpleasant crunching noise, and then another of the creatures hit him from the side; he let the impact spin him around instead of resisting it.

Glowing, translucent liquid sprayed from nowhere across the abdomen of another of the bugs with a hiss, followed by an alien screech of pain; Thomas couldn't see Norris, but he must be somewhere in the area. Arias' bow was slung, and her rapier was out, fending off two more. Thomas added momentum to the spin the collision had put him in, and came back around, clamping his hands together to hammer the offending insect in the head, now waist-high. The head exploded.

A mild pain lashed across his thighs, and he kicked his way through the cat-sized beetles which covered the floor, reaching down to snatch one off of his leg and hurl it at one of the bugs Arias was facing. Anne took another, Thomas' gaze flicking to the … quite impressive pile of insect … corpses? Bodies? Pieces. They were certainly pieces, now. He found himself staring at the beige ichor splattered on the wall, puddling on the floor. Nothing that came out of a living thing should be that color. Splattered on the horrible pale red – he still couldn't decide if it qualified as pink – wall created a stomach-turning smear of horrible colors. He pulled up his status screen, and looked at his health. He'd lost seven health. Exactly the minimum amount necessary to actually harm him. Only one attack had actually managed to damage him, and it had barely scraped by.

Thomas looked back at the beige goo on the wall, and down at the goo covering his hands, where he'd smashed an insect head just a few seconds prior. They continued to bite at him, but now that he paid attention, the pain was more like a mild pinch than anything else. These things basically couldn't hurt him. And they couldn't actually touch any of the others; looking around, now that he wasn't stressed and anxious, a careful search discovered the man, who had somehow managed to climb on top of the door, which had swung in, and was entirely out of reach as he rained spells down on them. Nothing flashy like the acid he'd opened with; tiny flickers of light now flew one at a time from him, systematically eliminating the bugs.

Arias was collecting beetles on the end of her rapier, two or three at a time, before flicking them off of the blade. Anne stood beside her, and was now using her torch to beat the bugs to death, her sword held off to the side.

He found he had to force himself to continue smashing the bugs continuing to crawl out of a hole in the floor. He moved to the edge and just started kicking them back down; it was less … horrible, that way. After a few more seconds, the others joined him in surrounding the hole, without a word. The sudden realization that the insects weren't remotely a threat to any of them turned the task of fighting them from an adrenaline-fueled rampage, into just … grisly, disgusting work. Anne set her torch next to the pit, and pulled two strips of cloth from a bag. One went to Arias, and both women proceeded to start cleaning the viscous beige insect fluids off of their weapons. Thomas got a sympathetic look.

He glanced down at himself. He was covered in blood, goop, and he'd ruined another belt by failing to unbuckle it prior to using Inhuman Size. He sighed and pulled it off, tossing the ruined garment into the pit, and took one of his equipment tokens out; a new belt formed from it in his hands, and he slipped it on as he shifted back to his regular, “human” size.

That had been Anne's idea, after he'd signed up. Get clothes sized for him when he was big. It made his clothing oversized, otherwise, but a tailor had fashioned four sets of the clothes; a kilt, with belt loops on both the top and the bottom. It was twice too long in his human form, but, slipping the belt through the loops and doubling it up, it was instead merely very, very baggy. After he threw much of his shirt over his shoulder, it formed something like a cape. It wasn't the height of fashion, but it was practical and decent.

And he'd probably just ruined one of the sets, and clothing was insanely expensive relative to expectations his memories couldn't quite justify, largely because he couldn't remember much of anything prior to his life here. He had memories of memories, now; he remembered remembering that he owed his roommate money. Thomas' kicks became increasingly despondent. What had he expected dungeon delving to be like? It was slow, tedious, and the terror and excitement had lasted only a few seconds before turning once again into a new kind of terrible.

Madelaine found herself laughing wildly under her breath, feeling a giddy sort of energy that had absolutely nothing to do with finding the situation humorous. Two animal skeletons, bones not remotely a pleasant and cartoony white, still sporting … bits … and … pieces, clawed relentlessly at the screaming man. Elijah knelt, pinning a woman's arms with his knees while he strangled her.

He'd stopped shouting. The process was taking far longer than … stories … stories? Far longer than Madelaine somehow thought it should. The woman's face was changing colors, and her eyes were bulging. She was exhausted before she manages to stop laughing, her chest and stomach aching. And the two were still alive, for at least a few moments more. The man's screams turned to gurgles, and then finally ceased, not long before the woman went limp. Elijah slumped off of her onto the ground, beginning to sob. Madelaine considered, and then moved to the woman and slit her throat for good measure. The man was definitely dead.

Madelaine then moved to the fifth body in the clearing, checking for a pulse. There wasn't much point. The boy, not much older than her, had a good dozen arrows in him, tied naked to a pole. She didn't want to know whether he'd been alive. She guessed so; he was tied too thoroughly, and most of the arrows looked to her admittedly inexpert eye to have been deliberately non-lethal.

She looked around, feeling … she wasn't sure. Elijah was still curled up in a ball, sobbing. She watched him. Shouldn't she be feeling … that? She just felt … tired, now. Her attention drifted to the skeletons. An alligator – not nearly as large as the one which had chased them from the bridge. And a little deer, except with scary-looking teeth and tusks. Elijah had managed to sneak them up on the deer as it ate the alligator's corpse; she'd laid in hiding while it ate, and resurrected one; it had killed the other, and then she had two. It had been terrifying. The ritual to resurrect the alligator had taken minutes, not seconds, hiding, whispering. And then walking out to touch the body, while the scary cute little blood-drenched deer ripped away at flesh while it watched her.

It had started growling when she'd touched the body. Started moving. But that was the end of the ritual, and the sudden surge of the skeleton, walking right out of a body that ripped apart around it, seemed to take it by surprise. It had sure taken her by surprise.

She still had at least two hours remaining before the skeletons fell apart. The ritual spell lasted four hours. They had been making their way back to look for survivors – Elijah thought he remembered the direction. Judging by what they'd found, they probably had headed in the right direction. Just a little late to find one survivor.

She gave Elijah another few minutes, then walked over, and kicked him.

“Hey. Get up, keep moving. Don't let a little girl do better than you.” He looked up, shock, then chagrin, then something like humor crossing his face. He wiped his face on his sleeves, pushing himself up. They started walking. He hadn't stopped crying, but he was walking again, at least.

They found the building they had appeared in that morning. It was bad inside.

“Is that what a dungeon is?” Thomas washed himself from a bucket he'd carefully filled from a river, using a washcloth to try to get his clothes as clean as possible without actually removing them. Anne shrugged, or at least as much as she could, leaning against a rock as she sat in the grass. Arias sat above her on top of the rock, and flashed Thomas a grin he was fairly certain was mocking.

“If you mean dirty, small, and foul, filled with empty rooms and traps? That's pretty normal for a new dungeon, yes. They feed on death, however, and as they mature they turn into something more tempting.” Norris didn't look up from his book to respond.

They sat at the entrance to the dungeon – or what had been the entrance. The shack had crumbled to dust as they departed with the heart, a pinkish lump of what looked like quartz. Norris turned the page, and after a few more seconds, lowered the book to glance at the yet-unboiling stewpot, before responding further.

“They become a dangerous public nuisance as they mature, attracting young people who don't know any better and think they can just wander in and find something valuable. There are more than enough for the fools who make a living diving them in the places that cater to that kind of thing. We wipe them out when we find them here; most places do. Enough dangers in the world without baited traps.” A pause. “But yes, they're usually somewhat more exciting and dangerous and less … that.”

Thomas considered that, and shrugged, returning to cleaning his clothes. The dungeon hadn't gotten any worse, danger-wise. But the next wave of attacking creatures looked like … mammalian centipedes. Flesh tubes that moved by wiggling fleshy protuberances. They weren't any more dangerous than the bugs, but even more viscerally disturbing to kill.

The dungeon boss had been a massive slug. A massive, flammable slug, as Anne noted upon spotting and identifying it. Which had taken a nerve-wracking amount of time to burn to death, all while making a horrible squealing keening noise. It was a paycheck, but … it wasn't what he had expected, at all.

The others looked tired, and maybe a little put-out, but nothing like the soul-rending exhaustion Thomas felt. This was … this was a job. This was pest control. They were pest control in a fantasy universe. And it was not a good job. A terrible, horrible job. Which paid better than anything else Thomas could be doing, a skill-less immigrant to a land of abominations.