The initial few minutes were the most nerve wracking for Jose.

Every screech of metal or the chittering sounds he’d catch just outside of his periphery had him on edge. When there was a lull to the anxiety, he focused on the rhythmic tapping of his group's feet on the water soaked floor, the film of murky black-green water growing in inches as they walked along their path.

Their marching would be broken up by his inspection of the walls or any other element of interest; a series of pipes on the walls with inscrutable letters or a doorway to a maintenance closet left slightly ajar. It confirmed, at least, that they were inside a maintenance tunnel, but that only foretold more long and narrow passageways with twists and turns only workers familiar with its network could navigate through.

They were built like mazes for a reason.

“What do you think the rest of the groups are dealing with?” Joanna asked the rest of the group, an undercurrent of nervousness invading the inflections of her words.

“Depends on how the world’s formed.” Matteo responded. Lysa and Joanna looked at Jose with confusion.

“What my brother means is that this place isn’t like what we’ve experienced but if it functions on similar rules, this’ll either be a large shared experience or a sliver of our personalized experience.” Carmina expanded with but even her details provided more questions than answers.

“You seem to know an awful lot about this stuff. Any reason why?” Joanna asked pointedly, clearly to the discomfort of her teammates.

“Hey, maybe we should just trust our friends here and not pry, right?” Jose looked to Joanna. “Right?” He burrowed his eyes into Lysa before she could make her own nosy requests. “If the info becomes important, I trust them to tell us when they’re ready. No need to open old wounds until then.”

“My sister was right about you.” Matteo looked at Jose and the tension around their body dissipated.

“We’ve hit it.” Carmina pointed to the hallway with her pipe light and showed the rest of the group the hallway and how it became subsumed by a murky black water about waist deep. She pressed her hand on the side of the wall and closed her eyes. “There’s a large room at the other end of this. Flooring from here’s gone and it's hard to make out the presence of monsters with the ambient energy around.”

Jose took a deep breath and braced himself for a swim. Following Carmina’s lead, one by one the group took their steps and avoided falling head first into the water's surface once the flooring gave way beneath them. His skin squirmed and tensed with each brush on moss or other detritus left behind in the water. He wasn’t sure if his body was playing tricks on him or what but he could feel several things stirring deep beneath the water and he hoped the light treading he was doing wouldn’t catch their attention.

“We’re halfway there.” Carmina whispered to the group through clenched teeth. Their approach was halted in the final stretch, the hallway now fully submerged in the black liquid.

“Take these. Carmina, pass the rope down. Everyone wrap your hand tight around the rope and use it to guide your way through the depths.” Jose instructed the rest of the crew as he pulled out his Sapper supplies. He handed each one of them a disk with a bite guard attached to its center. He bit down on the bite guard and opened the gate between himself and the device, trickles of his soul being siphoned to, at the moment, give him an influx of stale air on top of the humid air he was breathing through his nostrils.

Once everyone had their devices in place, Carmina dove into the water first, followed along by Matteo, Lysa, and himself. He felt the slight shift of water from behind him as Joanna submerged behind him. The crew strapped their pipe light onto their vestments and carefully swam with their backs pressed against the ceiling of the hallway.

Jose’s eyes stung with every blink, his gaze unavoidably drawn below into that inky darkness.

Lights and images flickered down there. The strobing red flash of an operating alarm trying desperately to pierce into the surface and alert mechanics long since gone. Other lights had indeterminable sources, the only discernible quality being their size and the speeds at which they moved through the water. His chest tightened with every turbulent force beneath him, muscles tensing to brace for any sign of conflict on creatures he still hadn’t seen with his eyes.

Jose turned his attention towards the rope in front of him and behind, finding comfort in the silhouette of his compatriots scuttling their way to a surface out of this underwater nightmare.

At once, their heads broke through the surface of the water and their eyes adjusted to the dazzling orange hues of a distant light.

“Ah!” Lysa yelped before choking and coughing on the mouthpiece held in her mouth. The group scrambled out of the water the moment they found purchase on the hallways flooring, the childish fear of a creature grabbing one's leg and plunging them into darkness a vision Jose avoided dwelling on.

Everyone removed their discs and took a collective moment to breathe in relief. Jose could feel the fatigue settling around his head and body from their excursion. Was it the anxiety causing him to over exert himself or was he genuinely that out of shape?

“Hey… Lysa, Jose, do either of you know what we’re looking at here?” Carmina pointed to the orange globe in the distance hanging above the massive atrium. The room was at a permanent angle but Jose couldn’t mistake its purpose or design as anything short of a welcoming hall.

“Defer to Jose on this one. He’s the one with the hard on for vessels.” Lysa said as she stretched her arms and legs. He walked a few paces ahead of the group and quieted his mind of those nagging insecurities. They needed him in tip top shape and he’d not let them down. He opened his eyes and took in the room piece by piece.

The striking feature was how the room was held together by a section of mangrove bark, the orange globe providing them this orange glow and faint heat attached to the side of the trunk like a growth. The welcoming banners and navigation panels around the room were in the same gibberish lettering that felt more the result of the limitations of the simulation than an honest recreation of the language spoken by the former colonists of the vessel. There were large stairs that led up and out to a massive arched walkway.

His face paled when he turned his attention to the center of the room. What might have been an abstract statue dedicated to the lives lost in the formation of these vessels with millions of arms outstretched towards a brighter tomorrow had been cut and torn to resemble thorns on a rose stem. These jutting spikes held the corpses of many different creatures. An alligator here, a manatee there, large swamp snakes roped in between in a macabre decorative manner, along with several other large swamp creatures. Scores of flesh were torn into with skin sloughing at the wounds.

“Dead gods below…” Joanna muttered, taking in the surroundings with Jose now. This wasn’t even half of it. There were fresh corpses hung on these spikes, still fresh and twitching to break free from their entrapment with pieces of their flesh bitten into in an absentminded fashion.

Creatures he was certain weren’t anything he’d ever seen roaming the swamps, with his own eyes or the books he’d poured through as a kid when he fancied living his days in the swamps with the adventurers.

“Jose, I don’t like the way you’re looking at that thing. Could we get an explanation before you go pale and freak the rest of us out?” Lysa chuckled in between her sentences to add levity to the situation and separate the fear bubbling up to the surface around the group. That she could joke at a time like this was something he envied of her

“In order: the only exit I can see is the one up above those stairs. The big blob of orange light in this room looks like a naturally formed amber soaked core. It’s massive and highly unlikely to naturally occur in the swamps because piercing into the bark of a matured mangrove would require the strength of a vessel to do. Its presence though means it's a prized spot to nest around and we might have stepped into the den of whichever creature fashioned the skewering operation in the center of the room.” Jose explained in full.

“How big of a creature are we talking about, Jose?” Carmina asked.

“Big enough to comfortably skewer those giant animals. If it were a native of the swamp, I could attempt to predict its behavior and skirt danger but those fresh corpses over there mean we’re dealing with something else…”

Lysa groaned, “No. No fuck. No, they couldn’t. They wouldn’t. They couldn't, can they?” It seemed Lysa and Jose were on similar wavelengths then.

“What’s she talking about? Would either of you two finish your thoughts?” Joanna raised her voice as she frantically looked around the room for signs of threats.

“The Infected.” Matteo announced matter of factly. Seemed he was familiar with their kind too.

“Yeah. We’re dealing with an Infected. Something corrupted enough that it isn’t playing ball with its other hivemates.” Jose replied with information regurgitated from the myriad of journals he’d stolen from his mothers library as a kid. From the looks on their faces, they had some understanding of what dangers the Infected possessed, even if Jose suspected only Lysa was familiar with the true extent of their danger.

“We’re not dealing with a swarm, are we?” Lysa said as she walked closer to the pillar of corpses in the center of the room.

“Luckily or unluckily, no. It looks like it’s a solitary predator.” Jose answered.

“What’ll that mean for us? We still have to find that forge before the rest of them.” Joanna asked.

“Well depending on how the monster’s evolved, we could go with a couple of different options. If it’s small enough, we can fight it head on and then explore the surrounding areas with this as our base. If it’s too big, we either run away fast enough that it won’t catch us or throw one of us to it to keep it distracted.” The options Jose presented were viable but were all contingent on the creature and its composition as well as all of the unknowns in the surrounding areas. Just because a solitary monster had formed its nest in the area didn’t mean there weren’t any other monsters around, the corpses of other Infected skewered on the pillar in the room's center proving that much to him.

Carmina clapped her hands together, “Alright. I’ve got a plan we can act on.” Everyone else turned their attention to Carmina and waited for her explanation. “This place is a double-sided hook; we might get fucked by the monster that lives here but we’re also guaranteed safety from any other monsters in the area. The room looks pretty open and bare but we could find a hiding spot and make it our base within a base. I’ll scout ahead and recon back here while you all do whatever you can to piece out where the forge is.”

“And what if we don’t find a hiding spot?” Joanna asked skeptically.

“Then we weigh up whether fighting the thing or toughing it out is worth it. Just like how Jose suggested.” Carmina threw Jose a thumbs up and he acknowledged it with one of his own.

“Before you split off upstairs though, I think we should split up across the room and look for objects of interest. Anything we could use for a hiding spot or clues as to the creature's composition.” Jose looked at Carmina and received his own confirmation from her.

With no apparent dissent from the rest of the group, they split off into corners of the expansive atrium and scanned the rubble and crumbled infrastructure for any semblance of a hiding spot.

Jose veered his investigations towards the end of the room where the mangrove tree cut through the wall. Standing underneath the brilliant orange ball of amber was warming his heart and body and yet it felt spiritually oppressive. Even without his soul sense, he could feel the density of the core entombed in the sticky sap of the tree.

It made him wonder just how artificial the simulation was that it was capable of replicating the existence of souls themselves.

His gawking of the point of interest was juxtaposed with a decidedly less fruitful surveyance for hideouts. There wasn’t anything amounting to a proper alcove or hidden room. At best he’d be able to hide behind a pillar, and only just, but depending on the creature's senses, the hiding spot wouldn't even offer that much more help.

“There’s nothing on my end.” Jose called out.

“Just a bunch of rusted metal and stone over here.” Lysa added, kicking a loose stone to the side.

“Nothing here.” Matteo said.

Joanna sighed, “Nothing here either. Carmina?”

“Sorry lass, but there’s nothing here either.” Carmina said. Looks like they’d be acting on plan B.

Carmina’s head bolted upright, her face instantly alert. She placed a finger on her lips and pointed at her eyes and ears. Wordlessly, the group opened their Sight and sent out an initial pulse with their Sense.

Jose’s skin grew clammy as the extent of his senses caught the twisted amalgam of souls in a massive creature on the second floor of the room. Its footsteps were weighty, the rasping of claws on stone acting as an auditory clue to the physical carnage it could wreak havoc with.

Its movement slowed as it approached.

It knew they were there.

A large wet thud echoed through the hallway as the whole group held their breath in anticipation.

The looming shadow of the creature was massive. Something extended out from the shadow as it approached the end of the balcony from the second floor overlooking the first.

Their faces scrunched up and noses recoiled as the acrid stench of swamp water and putrefaction assaulted their sense of smell. The smell became visible as its vague headshape extended to overlook the balcony. A thick pus colored miasma roiled out of its open maw, the metal railings visibly decaying with the acidity of the toxic cloud.

Its head became visible as it closed its beak and retracted its forked tongue.

The creature's face was bird-like with a large protruding beak like a spear’s point layered with the jagged teeth of a number of other swamp predators. The neck was serpentine and long, with malleable tar flesh that sloughed and bubbled but never quite fell off the sinew and bone of the monstrosity. Its eyes were mismatched in size and orientation, haphazardly slapped all over its head with a dull yellow glow infecting each pupil.

Each eye spasmed frantically as the creature scanned the atrium, locking its gaze with each member of the group.

It didn't speak. It didn't shriek or yell at the group. It just watched; It watched and waited for their next move.

Lysa was the first to break free from its gaze. She pulled out a small rod from her bag and extended it into a pointed javelin, shooting it out towards the creature with unerring accuracy. One of the creature’s eyes locked its attention to the javelin and the monster curved its neck away from the weapon's trajectory. Its neck continued to twist like a spring before it retaliated with a peck.

Lysa rolled out of the way, the ground splitting open underneath where she once stood.

"Go!" Matteo growled at the rest of the group as he positioned himself to face the creature head on.

The terror ripped free from their eyes and legs and the unit sprung into action. Joanna and Carmina ran up the stairs, the hesitation in their sprint growing more apparent the further up they went, taking in larger and larger glances at the creatures full form.

Jose pulled out his book and muttered the incantation for his Fog of Fools spell, adjusting the sentence to dismiss Lysa and Matteo. A thick fog of brine erupted from his hands and the first floor was enveloped.

The effect was immediate.

The creature pulled its head from the floor but the confusion had settled in, its neck and head slamming into the flooring of the second floor on its ascent. Some of its eyes had lost the luster and keen awareness it once had while other eyes struggled to stay awake.

Jose also struggled to move, the fatigue of altering the sentence structure as forcefully and quickly as he did with enough power to affect the monstrosity leaving him nauseous and tired.

“Jose, come on!” Lysa shouted at him before looking at his ragged breathing and hunched over body. She swung his arm around her neck and lifted him slightly off the ground as she doubled back to the stairs that Carmina and Joanna had since ascended the top of. Jose turned his attention to Matteo, the towering giant wielding a seaweed covered club with coral shaped branches jutting out around the length of the weapon. He didn’t recall seeing Matteo carry anything like that on the boat. “Could you pick up the pace, Jose?” Lysa called him back with intense alarm in her voice.

He shifted his gaze to peer over the second floor and at once understood the extent of alarm Lysa was exhibiting. The monster's full body was a bloated amalgam of liquefying ooze. It was sludge and tar and flesh all drooping off its body but never quite capable of peeling away from its bone. In terror, Jose noted the emaciated animals stuck to the carapace of the monster, the lights in their eyes dulled and resigned to their fates of being subsumed by this conscious muck.

“Where’s Matteo!” Carmina shouted at both of them. She was standing with Joanna under one of the large archways that lead to another section of the vessel.

“He’s,” Jose paused to look down and saw Matteo making his slow ascent up the stairs while the creature's head nipped at his heels, “He’s coming up right now but we need to give him a hand!”

“Are you good enough to walk to them on your own?” Lysa asked Jose.

He gave her a nod, “Kick its ass, Lysa.” She smiled and swung his arm off her neck, rushing the creature with a brandished spear.

Jose gave the creature a wide berth as he ran towards the rest of his team. He could hear the crunching of stone and the scraping of claws behind him as well as the grunts and cries from Lysa and Matteo.

“Matteo!” Carmina cried out. Jose turned back to see the raised claw of the creature slam down on Matteo. The ground beneath the man sunk but, using his weapon as a buffer between himself and the creature, he held firm in his position.

“Take this you lump of sludge!” Lysa swung her spear overhead before angling the bladed side to cleave into the monster's wrist. It sunk into the sloughing flesh like butter but gave an immense level of resistance once the bladed end became obscured by the blackened muck.

Jose turned to Joanna, “Do you have any alchemical potions in your belt? Something that can freeze water over?” Joanna contemplated his question before searching her bag. She pulled out a cool cerulean vial the size of a hand ball.

“This is all I’ve got but I don't think-” Joanna didn’t finish her sentence. Jose yanked the vial from her hand and ran towards his frontline friends as well as he could.

“Lysa, get your next swing ready! Matteo, hold on!” Jose yelled at both of them as he angled his throwing arm. Lysa pulled away from the creature and brandished another spear from her bag of weapons. She charged forward with the pointed end directed at the monster’s wrist.

Jose swung with all of his might, reinforcing his arm as best he could to give it enough of an oomph to shatter the vial on impact. The glass container hit its target but was gently cradled by the sloughing skin.

“Fuck!” Jose cried out.

“It’s not over yet!” Lysa twisted her momentum in the forward charge to once again swing the spear overhead. She cleaved into the creature with all of her might and felt the satisfying crunch of blade onto glass.

It wouldn’t be enough to freeze the whole monster over but it was enough to crystalize the wrist pressing down on Matteo. Feeling the slack of weight pressing down on him, Matteo tightened his muscles and pushed upwards. Spiderweb cracks spread through the crystalline structure before Lysa gave it the final blow with the persistence of her second swing to shatter and cleave the claw of the creature.

The monster shuddered as the drooping skin began to writhe and travel towards the missing limb. The neck and head, now retracted, stared at the group in silent anguish as it sat there on the second balcony mending its wound. It was a momentary injury, an inconvenience at best, but it was enough for Jose and the rest of the group to disappear into the darkness with a sense of satisfaction to their encounter.

“Let’s keep up the pace.” Carmina asked the rest of the group. They pushed themselves as best they could through the massive hallway until they found a service room in a dark corner of the wall.

A momentary relief, one that none of the members dared to shatter with talks of the very real potential it might come back for their heads.