The cave was much easier to navigate than I had originally been expecting. I had a certain expectation as to the dangers of spelunking caused by years of shitty television, and that expectation just wasn’t being met.

For one thing, I could see perfectly fine. Part of that was probably the fact that I wasn’t human. Part of that was probably because some daylight was still spilling into the cavern from outside. But mostly? It was all the giant glowing crystals. The flickered and flared as we passed, as though reacting to our presence. I wish I could unequivocally write that off as ‘some magic bullshit’ but the chance that any given inanimate object could be intelligent and therefore hostile was not, in fact, zero. The result was that as I traveled, I would haphazardly bash any glow crystal of sufficient size that stressed me out. Which was most of them.

“Why do you keep doing that?” Nadeen asked me at one point, to which I could only reply;

“Assuming something isn’t a threat isn’t good for your health in the...uh Devilwood.” I looked at the stump where her hand should be to make my point. Not that she’d notice. I had too many eyes to keep track of all of them.

Satisfied that I had shut Nadeen up for a moment, and pleased I had managed to slip a ‘you came to the wrong hood’ joke into my statement - even if only for my own pleasure - I continued on.

It wasn’t long before we eventually came to a fork in the tunnel. Well, I say ‘fork’ but it was more like a lobby. We came upon a fairly wide cave area, inside of which there were a number of tunnels leading off the main chamber. Not every tunnel entrance was level with the ground, as a number of them were set in the ceiling or high up on certain walls. The protruding crystals were more than enough for me to be able to climb around and check them all out, but that was really only true of me. Thing Two could leap high enough to reach some of the ones on the walls, but the tunnels going straight up - I guess they’d technically be shafts at that point - were too difficult for anyone without eight arms and eight legs to reasonably traverse.

After crawling about the room for a bit, I came back to the center of the lobby area, where Nadeen and Thing Two had been waiting for me to complete my inspection.

“Which way?” I asked, hoping Nadeen had a better idea of how to navigate to somewhere ideal than I did.

“I have no idea. What’s wrong with right here?” She said, gesturing around us. She looked at me for all the world like I had asked the dumbest question possible, and I knew she must still be annoyed at me for reminding her about her arm.

“I don’t - it’s not - Hm.” I thought about it for a second. Nowhere was really ‘safe’ in this shithole. Pretty much anywhere was fine as a basecamp as long as it had an exit we could reach easily. Still, I was leery of this place. I’d played more than enough games to realize that camping somewhere you haven’t scouted is borderline suicidal. So even though I figured this was okay - I still didn’t undo my transformation.

“...Fine. Here’s good.” I said eventually, and Nadeen gave me that smug grin children get when they realize they’ve outdone their betters. I chose to let it go for the moment, and instead started having Thing Two unpack all our stuff. I glanced at him, snapped my jaw once, and gestured vaguely at the giant stack of bags we’d strapped to him.

I had never setup a real camp before. Since coming here I’d slept basically twice, and they were both fairly traumatic experiences - so I wasn’t overly interested in doing it again. But even if I didn’t sleep, the idea of having a safe, stable place to lay down my head and be worried about the future appealed to me.

I considered what we’d managed to steal from the camp as we left. Some bedrolls, torches, miscellaneous bits of leather armor -

“How do you do that?” Nadeen suddenly asked breaking me out of my train of thought.

“Do what?” I asked, absently directing Thing Two on where to start putting shit. I wondered if we could dig some crystals out for me to experiment with and Thing Two obediently paused what he was doing to hammer away at the base of a fist sized crystal with those gorilla fists of his.

“That!” Nadeen yelled, and the sound echoed around the chamber, drawing every eye present towards her. When I didn’t say anything, she continued.

“Your ordering him to do things, but your not actually saying anything!” she complained.

Oh. That.

“Its a Thing thing.” I said, hoping that would explain it. Apparently it didn’t.

“That’s not even a proper sentence.” she grumbled.

“Also I’m a Thing now too! I have pointy teeth! I eat people! I -”

“You. Are not. A Monster.” I said with a touch more vehemence than I intended.

“You ate one guy who was trying to take advantage of you. Your not a bad person.” I clarified.

I chose to ignore that eating someone and killing them are two entirely different magnitudes of fucked up.

“No offence Thing One, but I can feel myself starting to getting sick again. I can either die human, or live a monster.” she pointed out. She had a point, and once again, I chose to ignore it by latching on to something else she had said that bothered me.

“Thing… One?” I asked, kind of annoyed because I could already see where this was going.

“Yeah. Thing One, Two, and Three.” She said, pointing at me, then Thing Two, then herself.

“Wrong. Thing Two, Nadeen, uh…” Oh. Oh I kind of got it now. What the fuck was my name? It wasn’t all that relevant when my only conversation partners were a kid and a mute, but not having a name suddenly bothered me alot.

“Sooooo…” Nadeen said in a sing song voice I recognized in women of all ages when they’d scored a point and wanted to force you to admit it.

“Howard!” I said, screeching the first name that came to mind in three separate voices. Nadeen winced at the noise - which was easily three times louder than her outburst for obvious reasons.

“...Howard.” Nadeen said, clearly unimpressed.

“Yeah! It’s a normal freaking name. What’s wrong with Howard!” other than the fact that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my actual name. And the fact that I distinctly remember beating up a kid named Howard in primary school.

“It’s just… your smart. And clearly strong. I thought you’d have a more of a … legendary sounding name?” she said tentatively, like she was trying to avoid hurting my feelings.

“Oh come on! I don’t wanna be named Shub-Niggurath, Black Goat of the Woods. Or Stormageddon. Or Sauron.” I complained, listing off generic bad guy names from old video games and books just to prove my point about how stupid and lengthy they could be.

It was sort of a lie though. I would be totally okay with Stormageddon if I A. could throw lightning and B. could tolerate how embarrassing being called that would be.

‘Stormageddon, grab me the ketchup please?’ I snorted, just thinking about it.

Nadeen perked up after I said that.

“I like it.” she said beaming at me. I didn’t like that smile. I had seen it far too many times, on far too many women too think I had come out of that exchange the winner. But before I could think to question her on it, Thing Two ambled up to me swinging a big meaty palm down so I could look at what was in it without having to push my torso upright. My head was pretty low to the ground after all.

In his hand, was a malformed purple gemstone. Or maybe the gemstone was clear, and the glow emanating from it was merely purple. There was really no way to tell without making the glow stop.

My entire being vibrated when I used a free hand to pluck the crystal from Thing Two’s palm. It was like I was holding a tiny nuclear reactor. I’ve I had anything approximating sex traits I’d have probably made a mess of myself just touching it.

I glanced suspiciously at Thing Two, who seemed completely unaffected by the thing.

‘iT is The kEY TO eVen gReAter cONsumPtiOn.’ the Damned Thing hissed into my mind. I had grown increasingly accustomed to its intrusions, and now I could even hear it talk without having a junior seizure. Progress!

‘Shut up you. I’m not going eat anymore human souls. If this place has gods, there’s no way I can get away with that.’ I mentally retorted, glancing around to make sure no one was watching me stare at a shiny rock while doing - seemingly - nothing else. Nadeen had wandered over to where Thing Two had set up the bedrolls, and was pointedly taking pillows from the other rolls to beef hers up. Thing Two was just kind of… standing next to me.

Realizing he was going to do absolutely nothing if I didn’t tell him too, I willed him to start pulling as many crystals from the caves walls as he could without making a huge mess. I didn’t plan on turning into a soul eating abomination or anything using them, but holding this fist sized chunk of one felt so good I could only imagine sleeping in a pile of them.

And I could really use some of the finer things in life right about now.

‘buT we MUsT EaT To -’

‘No. Hard pass.’ I interrupted.

‘Do yOu nOT wAnt yOUr GEnitALs BacK?’ it crowed at me. And I could swear, despite the alienness of it, despite the clearly genderless, monstrous, voice - that those were the most seductive words I had ever heard the Damned Thing say.

I stared blankly at the crystal, not willing to admit that I had a hard time deciding if my ability to get laid was worth more to me than human life. Was this fucking thing learning? So far I had dealt with it mostly by telling it to shut the fuck up. It was ‘intelligent’ in that it could talk and had its own interests, but it was so single minded that it only barely qualified as sentient.

This was the first attempt it had ever really made to bargain with me - albeit clumsily - and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

“Um. Hello?” a feminine voice called out from the far side of the cave, and I froze.

It hadn’t been Nadeen’s voice.

I quickly flicked one of the hands that had an eye on it open and turned it towards the sound of the voice. Standing in the entrance to the cavern was a human looking woman. She had fine, lean proportions, like a professional runner, and her mane of shaggy brown hair made her look more attractive - not less. She was wearing what I can only really describe as a potato sack with holes for her arms legs and head, that was cinched at the waist with a rotting rope. She was staring hopefully towards Nadeen, completely ignoring me and Thing Two.

“Tiber!” Nadeen called immediately, and leapt to her feet in a show of predatory grace that completely erased my mental image of the sickly weak girl I had been forced to drag halfway across the murder forests of fuck world.

The woman screeched, and darted back up the tunnel she had come from, clearly afraid of the sudden aggression. Nadeen was hot on her trail, darting forward and out of my sight before I could think to say or do anything. Thing Two trailed after her, albeit much more slowly. In an open area he was undoubtedly the fastest of us - using his ridiculous muscles to half run half jump between two points faster than I could travel. But in an enclosed cave system, he didn’t have enough space or accuracy to maneuver without ramming into walls and probably breaking his neck.

It didn’t help that Thing Two definitely smelled the same thing I did when that woman like thing had caught our attention.

Rotting, decayed matter. Not dead flesh - which would have sent my hunger skyrocketing - but just decaying matter. Like a compost bin. It stunk, and did absolutely nothing for the side of me that I had started to consider my inner monster. More importantly, it ‘stunk’ in that it felt like a trap. We hadn’t exactly been quiet - and there was no reason for her to purposely get our attention before running off.

Which meant it must have been on purpose.

Swearing to myself, I clutched the gem to my chest in one hand, and began sprinting after Nadeen, pouring on speed in a way only a creature with multiple legs can reasonably manage.

There was a bright side to all of this though. For once I felt confident I could kill the shit out of whatever was fucking with me. Which was good - cus I could really use one in the win column.