“Krait’s fire!” Stephen yelled from behind me.

Two fireballs the size of grapefruits flew past my head and exploded in a burst of orange and yellow flames upon the creatures hidden in that darkness. Angry shrieks followed the explosions. I caught a glimpse of our enemy in that instant when the orange and yellow light flashed, and it almost made me throw up.

I had thought several monsters were attacking the door. Instead, I saw one oozing, bubbling mound of glistening flesh about seven feet tall and five feet wide. It had long, taloned arms of different lengths and colors sprouting from all sides. Some arms held spears, some held rusty short swords, and some pulled the monster along the floor as it spilled through the broken door.

But the worst was all the mouths and eyes covering the thing. They were different shapes and colors, as if some insane alchemist had melted a dozen other creatures and poured them into this aberration. Each eyeball was wide and mad, while the mouths laughed, sobbed, or screamed spittle-laced curses. This monster was the worst thing I’d ever seen in my life.

At least until that point.

The creature’s talons scratched the stone walls on either side. Now that it was almost inside the room, I could see the scorch marks left by Stephen’s fireballs. The blackened wounds looked nasty but didn’t appear to have slowed the thing down.

Several pairs of eyes fixated on me. One pair looked as if it were pleading with me, another looked murderously angry, and another pair—I’m not kidding—twirled around in their sockets like some cartoon character knocked senseless. The mouths nearest the eyes opened, and whispers flitted around my ears like mosquitos.

“Give us a hug, Mace,” they said in halting breaths. “Join our party. We have pie, Mace.”

Gibbering laughter floated around my head, like a pack of hyenas with their insanity turned up to eleven.

That’s when my righteous anger fled, and that initial fear and confusion came roaring back into my brain and body. I’m pretty sure I wet myself. I’d been in some hairy situations during my police officer days and had rarely flinched. But those were human criminals. This thing was the nightmare of a nightmare.

I dropped my sword and turned to flee behind Stephen and Constantine.

“Mace,” Sonja cried next to me, “what are you—?”

I didn’t hear her finish, for something latched onto my leg with greasy fingers, and its talons dug into the flesh of my calf. The pain was indescribable. I had no time to scream because I was yanked off my feet and pulled backward toward the gibbering monster.

My panic was mindless. All those claws are going to rip me to pieces! All those mouths will eat me! Oh God, what if I merge with it?

The creature’s voice babbled in my ear, “Come try our pie, Mace!” Its laughter careened through my mind.

I dug my fingernails into the floor as the monster’s claws dragged me toward it, but I only succeeded in ripping my nails off and leaving bloody streaks along the stone floor.

“Hold on!” Sonja yelled and then charged toward the creature with a feral scream.

Sonja charging the monster was the last thing I saw before it lifted me in the air with super-monster strength and threw me into one of the columns about twenty feet away. I hit the marble column on my left side and felt my ribs snap. I bit half my tongue off, and it flew out of my mouth. My body slid to the floor, and I lay there more in shock than pain. The pain would come later.

As I lay on the ground with a starry haze clouding my vision, I noticed the stat tattoos on my forearm pulsating. I shifted my eyes to focus on the numbers through my shock and growing agony. The “Hit Points” stat blinked red and then started going down from “12” until it finally stopped:

Hit Points: 3/12

I also saw my Intelligence stat had dropped, and there was a note next to it:

Intelligence: 0 (-1 due to Babbling Madness curse)

Through my pain and terror-addled mind, I confirmed that, yes, I had no intelligence at the moment. I had trouble making sense of where I was just a few minutes ago, but holding the longsword had given me the clarity I’m sure I needed to help my friends kill this monster. Then the monster had…spoken to me, and my courage had melted. If this was real, and my friends and I were in Barney’s game, the “Babbling Madness” must have been one of the monster’s special abilities. But was it a permanent reduction or temporary?

Sonja screamed. I turned to her and was relieved that she wasn’t screaming in pain. Instead, her screams were the most enraged I’d ever heard from another person in my life. She swung her ax Mourner at the monster with reckless abandon, chunks of flesh and orange blood flying off the aberration in sprays of gore that splattered the walls, floor, and Sonja herself.

“Krait’s fire!” Stephen screamed behind her, and more fireballs shot into the monster from his oily, misty hands. The creature shrieked with each impact from Sonja’s ax and Stephen’s fireballs, but it also dished out its own damage. Sonja spent most of her ax swings chopping through taloned limbs that flailed at her. She got most of them, but some got through her swings and raked her body with deep, bloody gashes. Blood coated her right arm, and a wound on her left thigh leaked blood. Her wounds were taking their toll; her swings grew slower and didn’t seem to do as much damage. Even her battle screams turned hoarse and less feral.

Constantine ran up behind her. With his hand on his medallion, he touched her back, uttered some words, and then a golden haze surrounded Sonja for a second. Her bleeding thigh wound closed enough so that blood wasn’t gushing anymore, though her numerous other wounds still oozed. Sonja’s swings and screams strengthened, and she vigorously renewed her attacks on the creature.

But a taloned limb shot past Sonja’s swings and struck Constantine in the face. He flew backward as if a heavyweight boxer had landed an uppercut, fell flat on his back, and didn’t move.

Stephen took a microsecond to glance at Constantine. And that was all the creature needed to grab his head with a taloned hand and slam him down face-first into the stone floor. Stephen lay unmoving on the floor, blood slowly spreading from the impact site.

Sonja’s battle screams turned to agony as two limbs dug their claws into her wounded thigh. Another arm stole Mourner and flung it across the room. The limbs pulled her toward the creature’s numerous mouths, all of them lined with fangs and disturbingly human molars. She screamed again, leaped up, and planted her feet on the monster as it pulled her closer to one of its more enormous mouths. She strained to keep from getting eaten, all the veins in her neck and legs bulging. But she was slowly losing the battle, and it would devour her inch by inch.

This all happened during the seconds I lay on the floor in a daze. A civil war raged within my mind. One side said this was a nightmare and that I should just close my eyes and I’d wake up. The other said this was happening and that I needed to do something right now or my friends would die horribly.

I noticed the fear and confusion that I’d felt just a moment ago seemed less than it had been, and I no longer heard the monster’s gibbering voice in my head. I glanced at my forearm:

Intelligence: 1

The “Babbling Madness” had been a temporary effect. That realization alone was enough to clear my thinking a bit. Constantine and Stephen were either dead or unconscious. Sonja was still fighting but about to get eaten feet first. When that happened, the monster would come after me.

It seemed I was the only chance we had.

I didn’t want Melony to die. I didn’t want Alec or Tom to die. I wanted to see my son again and, God help me, even Debra. I still loved her on some level. I didn’t want to die in some fantasy world dungeon at the hands of the most horrible thing I’d ever seen.

I clenched my teeth. If this turned out to be a dream, then I would make it the most kick-ass dream I’d ever had.

I crawled toward my longsword about five feet away. White-hot agony erupted in my left chest where my ribs had broken, and I probably would’ve bitten my tongue in half if I hadn’t done it already. But I kept crawling, tears flowing down my face, my teeth clenched against the blazing knives stabbing my chest, and hot salty blood pouring down my throat from my injured tongue. I didn’t want to look down at my chest or feel around under my leather armor because I suspected ragged bones were poking out. Then I knew I’d throw up.

I pulled myself along the floor with my nailless hands and then my elbows. The sword hilt was only a foot away. I lunged for it at the same moment that I heard Sonja’s agonized shriek and the crunching of bone as the monster bit down on one of Sonja’s feet.