Three purple-black humanoid creatures skittered across the ceiling toward us. They had webbed hands and feet that ended in black claws, enabling them to cling to the stone and crawl with disgusting speed. When the lead creature noticed me noticing them, it turned its head upside down relative to its body. A long, yellow forked tongue slithered from its skull-like mouth, and it hissed at me.

“Monsters!” I cried just as the lead monster dropped to the floor ten feet in front of me. It hissed at me again and then leaped with clawed hands splayed wide. It gave off an acrid stench, like the formaldehyde where you store dead things. My eyes began watering, the hairs stood on my neck, and I wanted to gag up whatever my last meal had been.

I sidestepped the monster’s left hand, but the claws from its right hand raked across my leather chest armor, spinning me in the opposite direction. While the armor took the brunt of the damage, I couldn’t bring my sword up in time for an opportunity attack as the monster’s momentum carried it past me.

I wanted to turn and meet the monster’s next attack, but a second monster dropped to the floor and swung at me with both clawed hands. Mace’s Precision Strike skill noted a gap in the creature’s defenses. I ducked beneath its swings and then stood up straight. As I brought my sword around toward the monster’s head, I screamed, “Ancestral Smite!”

That warm rush of energy burst from my chest and into my sword. It glowed with blue light as it connected with the creature’s neck and sliced through it with a wet crunch like a hatchet through a head of lettuce. The monster’s head flew off to the right, and the neck spewed black blood that stunk even worse of formaldehyde. I sidestepped the body, which stumbled toward me on momentum alone and slid to the stone floor.

My forearm itched again, but I ignored it. I searched for the monster that had skidded past me and found Sonja already battling it. She swung her ax in huge arcs that forced the monster back toward the tunnel worm’s carcass. She had that battle well in hand, so I turned to the third monster.

It skittered toward Stephen on all fours, its dripping yellow tongue whipping around its head in excitement. Stephen had his daggers out and stared at the monster with wide eyes. I briefly wondered why he wasn’t prepping his magical fire, but I didn’t dwell on it. My friend Alec was in trouble, so I attacked.

I swung my sword down toward the monster’s back but missed its torso and struck one of its legs. The creature must’ve had natural armor, for the strike bounced off its calf like I’d hit a turtle shell. I’d nicked it, but that was about it.

My attack got its attention, though, which was all I wanted. The monster turned, its clawed hands splayed wide. It opened its mouth unnaturally wide, and its tongue shot toward me like a frog’s and wrapped its slimy self around my sword arm.

It tried pulling me toward it, so I planted my feet and pulled back. It became a sick tug-o-war for a few seconds. I dropped the eternal torch from my left hand and tossed my sword from my right hand to my left. Even as Mace, I was right-handed, but I was skilled enough to flick my left wrist and sever the creature’s tongue. The monster fell backward with a shriek. I also stumbled back but regained my balance faster than the tongueless monster and charged toward it before it could rise. My new Precision Strike skill helped me note the soft skin around the creature’s upper chest and neck. As the monster tried standing, I thrust my sword down into the monster’s throat. The sword point came out its back and struck the stone floor with a clang. I pulled my sword out of its neck, and the monster slumped to the floor. The smell of formaldehyde was so overpowering now that I could barely see through the tears streaming down my face.

“Thanks, pal,” Stephen said and then coughed. “I didn’t have enough Magic Points left to fight that thing.”

My forearm itched, but my teary eyes only saw my arm and Stephen as a blur in the darkened room. I ignored my potential reward, wiped my eyes, and headed toward where I heard Sonja still fighting near the tunnel worm. Just before I got to her, she gave a feral scream and decapitated the purple-black monster. The creature’s neck spewed foul black fluids everywhere.

Even in a large room like this one, the stench of the monster’s blood made me feel like I was bathing in ammonia without a hazmat suit. My eyes were swollen, and I couldn’t breathe without wanting to gag.

“We have to get out of here,” I gasped.

“Agreed,” she said as though holding back vomit. We both rushed back to the large goblin head doorway.

“Stephen, any magical traps?” Sonja asked as she and I stumbled toward the door. I felt my throat beginning to constrict, and it was getting hard to breathe even without the stench making me not want to.

Stephen was also coughing and choking when we got there. “No,” he managed between coughs, “but—”

“Then go,” she said and charged through the open goblin mouth. I was right on her heels. We lurched down a tight stone corridor for about thirty feet, and I prayed the whole way that nothing waited for us in the next room. In our condition, anything with a semi-pointy stick would slaughter us.

We exited the corridor into another large room that I couldn’t see much of through my tears. All I could do was hear the echoes of our footfalls and our coughing. But most importantly, the ammonia stench was virtually gone. I could even begin to smell the usual musty odors I’d come to associate with the dungeon.

Sonja and I came to a stop at the same time. We both put our hands on our knees and coughed and choked on the last of the stench. We’d gotten some of the monster blood on us during the battle, and it continued to give off that horrible smell. But it was nowhere near as bad as it had been in the other room with the fresh monster corpses.

Stephen came over to us, still coughing and sneezing. “I tried to tell you”—cough—“Constantine”—gag—“gone…”

I looked up at Stephen sharply, then back toward the entrance. Constantine wasn’t behind Stephen. I waved my torch around the rest of the room but didn’t see him.

“Constantine!” I yelled down the corridor.

Sonja also yelled for him and waved her torch around the room. The room wasn’t as big as the one we just left. It was octagonal with dark niches that weren’t big enough to hide even a dwarf.

When it became apparent that he wasn’t with us, I began heading back down the corridor. “We need to find—”

As soon as I said that, I stepped on a stone that clicked and dropped about an inch into the floor. A heavy rumble came from the corridor through which we’d fled, followed by a horrible crashing sound that made the floor tremble. I thought the whole dungeon was collapsing on us and that I had just triggered the trap that would result in one of my greatest nightmares of being buried alive.

But the crashing stopped as soon as it began, giving way to the sound of rolling pebbles. I wiped my eyes with my bare forearm and peered into the corridor. Clouds of dust rolled out of it.

“Constantine!” I managed to get out before another coughing fit.

Both Sonja and I ran down the hall, each coughing from the dust billowing out.

I didn’t need to say anything else, for our torches did a good job illuminating the huge boulders now blocking our way.

If Constantine was in the other room, there was no way we could get to him.