I charged down the tunnel after Nadeen, and realized that I had a problem.

The path leading to the lobby area we’d used to set up camp had been a straight shot. It twisted and turned a bit, but there was no way to get lost - there were no branching paths to check. This was not the case for the tunnel Nadeen had run down. At the first fork in the path I nearly panicked, realizing my superior speed wouldn’t be enough to catch up if I couldn’t figure out which path they took, and highly aware that I could get lost if I wasn’t careful.

Glancing back I saw Thing Two pounding his way towards me, using his stupid durability to shoulder check walls and punch obstacles in order to maneuver, rather than simply slowing down to turn or avoid them. Annoyed, I stared at the ground, and was rewarded with the realization that - since basically no one had traveled through these caves in recent history - I could follow the path Nadeen had taken if I slowed down enough to examine the disturbed dust on the cave floor.

Thinking about it, I gestured towards Thing Two, having him jump onto my back. It was a bit heavy, but my thuggish brother wasn’t that much heavier than a large man would be, and I had a lot of extra strength while using my magic.

I still had to slap him into a comfortable position though. Then I reversed the sword on my ‘stinger’ and dragged it through the earth behind me, speeding back up to my previous pace. A jagged line of broken rocks showed the way back, and Thing Two even managed to be helpful, grabbing corners and lifting me slightly in order to help me corner better.

Every once in a while I would stop to look at the ground, then continue onward.

Not much more than fifteen minutes could have passed before we reached our first snag. It was just as we had come to another fork in the path. The tunnel had widened as I ran, providing more and more space to maneuver in, and as it did so, I began to notice large boulders covered in crystal. They weren’t that strange - it was a cave and they were rocks - but more and more of them were showing up. I had put them largely out of my mind when just out the corner of my eye I could swear I saw one move.

It was only when I felt Thing Two’s legs tighten around my back that I realized something was wrong, and managed to look up from my headlong forward charge. The boulder… was flying at us. Not ‘flying through the air’, as in thrown. Literally flying. It had uncurled itself into some kind of giant bug. It had six insanely thick legs that all ended in three grasping fingers of purple crystal. Said legs were attached to the middle of a three sectioned stone wasp. If I looked closely I could see where its rocky exterior gave way to more traditionally fleshy parts, but I wasn’t all that interested in the things biology - it’s buzzing purple wings were a flurry as it zipped towards me barring a huge crystalline stinger that twitched and throbbed in a much too organic way.

I was really tired of fucked up animals trying to kill me by this point, and unless this thing shot lasers from its ass I wasn’t too worried about it. My ‘stinger’ rose from the ground in one fluid motion, jabbing into the things body and impaling it. Then I stretched the struggling thing down in front of Thing Two, who proceeded to tear it apart.

Mission accomplished I snorted, sure that murderworld could only really have so many insanely dangerous things to throw at me before it had to go easy for a while.

Man do I love tempting fate.

Like a demented church choir, the buzzing of dozens of wings drew my attention.

Right. All the boulders were probably Rock Wasps.

“Fuck.” was all I could manage to utter, before they set upon me. Realizing I couldn’t possibly fight this many of the stupid things, it became a running battle. I beat feet, choosing the narrowest tunnel I could to prevent too many from running at me at once. Thing Two hurled the hunks of their dead brethren as they came, but it wasn’t enough to kill even a single one.

Two Rock Wasps hovered dangerously close, and when one tried to sting me I whipped my tail at it, neatly bisecting it but suffering a painful stabbing sensation on my opposite side where Thing Two was wrestling with its counterpart. I ignored the feeling, continuing to run forward even as it burned and spread.

I swerved around another Rock Wasp as it launched toward me, allowing whatever outside force controlled my limbs take up the task of slapping away my aggressors. It would figure that the second I become confident in my ability to handle a strong enemy, a bunch of weak ones would be the death of me. I was seriously going to die if this kept up. I had a limited pool of stamina to work with - even if I never had to sleep (mostly) I still got tired.

The clacking of dozens of stony forms bumping into each other and scraping along the walls echoed behind me and I decided to take a chance. I knew Thane’s sword - which was now my stinger - could do some impressive things when it was actively being charged with magic. The problem was, at this point in time, I had no idea how to do that.

‘AsK HiM.’ whispered an insidious voice in my head ripped at me.

This motherfucker. I was actually starting to get a good grasp on the Damned Thing personality wise and I had come to one conclusion. It was fucking lazy. It only ever intervened when it felt like it had to, or occasionally, for whatever it considered ‘fun’. Right now I considered its suggestion to be the former more than the latter, which meant I could probably trust it but…

‘How the fuck do I do that?’ I spat acidically at it. Thing Two had punch one of the wasps hard enough that his fist had embedded itself in his hapless victim, killing it instantly. More amazing than that was the fact that he had immediately turned to using the corpse as a shield. He swatted enemies away when they approached to closely to me, but it was still pretty touch and go.

And of course, having already been stung, I was starting to feel pretty fucking shitty.

‘AAASK Meee Creature.’ the Damned Things voice howled at me, its voice warping and quieting until the end of the sentence came out in a familiar voice. It was Thane. Good ol’ kill me for existing Thane.

‘How the fuck - no wait nevermind. Later. Sword. Magic. How?’ I demanded. The fact that their might be souls trapped in me instead of dead meant… what? Which was worse, oblivion or enslavement? Man. I was just starting to feel good about being a cannibalistic nightmare creature.

‘What is there to understand beast. Ignite the energy in the sword and swing it.’ Thane explained like he thought it was the simplest thing in the world.

‘Unless - you cannot move your spark… can you?’ there was the mental equivalent of a snort. It sounded distinctly satisfied.

‘Oh fuck you.’ I snapped, really hoping he was wrong. I was going to come back to this later. I was missing way too much common sense to ignore that I had three fully functioning adults sitting around inside of me somewhere who had to answer my questions.

Desperately, I tried to shove my… magic… spark… thing into the sword. Somewhere along the way Thing Two had acquired a second wasp shield and was doing a pretty good job of defending my rear. Unfortunately the tunnel only continued to widen as I ran, meaning more and more wasps could flood into my surroundings. If I couldn’t get this working we were screwed.

“Go! Fly! Abrakafuckingdabra! Gah!” I yelled as I ran, each exclamation accompanied by a flick of my stinger and nothing of note happening.

Okay. Reason this through. So far as you’ve seen, ‘monster’ magic is largely biological in nature. Your pretty much a Fleshwarping Meatmancer. You’ve never produced magic outside your body, and the most metaphysical thing you’ve ever done is eat souls which - again - happened inside your body.

An idea dawning on me, I poured on both speed and magic, the smell of something burning drowned out my every other sense, dulling the pain of my stings and reducing the strain of Thing Two jostling about on my back. Instead of willing flesh from my body, or healing, or anything of that nature, I focused inward, on the soul of Thane that I knew was somewhere in the black hole of my stomach.

At first nothing happened, but then, with sudden clarity, I felt a presence dwelling there. I felt three of them in fact. Even though I didn’t know anything about two of them, and I wasn’t really ‘looking’ at them, I could easily recognize Thane’s soul hovering in the sea of magical energy that fueled me. More importantly I could recognize the spark of power emanating from him. Prodding and poking at it, I dragged the entire formless presence up to the surface of my ‘body’ and shunted it into my stinger.

‘There! You fucking do it!’ I yelled mentally at him.

‘Very well.’ Thane said, and I could swear the fucker sounded defeated and unhappy. I mean, I literally ate him so I guess some resentment was reasonable but -

Wait not. Fuck this guy, he tried to kill me for no fucking reason.

Like my not giving a shit had become the trigger, my stinger began moving on its own. It was as though it had a mind of its own, and the blade began to glow that furious blue that had nearly been the last thing I ever saw. It twitched almost imperceptibly, and a gust of wind swept the cavern as the invisible force the blade projected tore down the tunnel behind us, neatly bisecting a frankly frightening number of my attackers.

“See thats what Im talking about!” I yelled in delight. I was never really the type of person to think of personal power - as in, fighting strength - was all that great. I never sought it out before waking up here, and I hadn’t gone much out of my way to obtain it since arriving. But there was something truly freeing about having enough power not to have to take shit from the universe. For the first time I felt like it might not be so bad just traveling the wilderness, slaying my enemies, eating my way to -

Hang on. That was one hundred percent not a normal thought for me.

My gait slowed and then stopped, as my stinger continued to lash out, each flick of my jury rigged tail gouging out the sides of the tunnel and eliminating more and more wasps. Thing Two leapt from my back to enter the fray, and I quickly re-took control of my tail from Thane lest he instigate friendly fire out of pure spite.

The cleanup was quick after that. With barely any of the annoying rock bugs left alive Thing Two and I cleaned up the much weaker enemies with little to no effort. My only concern was that the area of my shoulder blade where I had been stung was starting to turn to stone. Because of course it was.

Angry with myself for not noticing sooner - although to my credit it hurt like hell so ignoring it had felt like a good idea at the time - I sized up the injury using one of the eyes in my palm. It wasn’t too big… and I did heal so…

Gritting my sharklike rows of teeth, I took aim and then swung my stinger down, neatly shearing of that section of my flesh. It hurt. Oh wow did it hurt. It hurt so bad that I did nothing but flail and thrash on the ground for a few minutes afterward, while Thing Two picked across the area tearing stoney shells off of their gooey, edible undersides.

When I had finally found the force of will to focus on my magic, I had no idea how long had passed. Not very much time could have gone by because Thing Two, prolific eater that he was, hadn’t gone through much more than one or two corpses. But even as I regrew my battered flesh, I feared that too much time had passed. Hell, I had no idea where in these caves I even was. I’d taken so many random turns that I was well and truly lost in this shit hole.

And that meant I had no idea how to get back to Nadeens trail, or if it would still be there when I got back. How the hell had she managed to get past the Rock Wasps when they attacked me pretty much on sight?

The answer, of course, was obvious if I thought about it. Whatever that thing was that had been impersonating a human had to be smart. Smart enough to set a trap, and smart enough to separate a ‘Binder’ from its supposed ‘Summons’. I had no idea how the mechanics of this place worked, but if I assumed other monsters were about as in the know as I was then it seemed like a pretty solid plan.

And I really didn’t like the idea of a monster who was as smart as me, but had fewer scruples. Because I was pretty well aware of my own capacity for death at this point, and anything without my self control was probably a holy terror indeed.

Pissed, I stood, motioning for Thing Two to follow after me. He whined for a bit about all the meat we were leaving behind, which was when I remembered that I was getting a bit peckish myself. We compromised and tore off enough wasp flesh to snack on, and proceeded in a direction I thought looked familiar. We didn’t sprint ahead this time. No, I was well and truly on guard for fuckery, and make a special point of stabbing anything that looked abnormal before walking past it.

We made our way through the caves without much more of note happening, until we made it to a tunnel that was oddly bright at one end. Like it was an exit to the surface. Only it was pointed downward at an angle - not up.

Cautious, I angled my stinger forward and nosed my way forward, sticking an eye laden palm around the corner of the tunnel.

What I saw wasn’t nearly what I was expecting. A part of me had sort of figured I was about to walk into the den of a massive, terrible, volcanoe creature or something but low and behold, the cavern I saw was massive.

And it was populated.

A veritable sea of slapdash shanties flooded the area, which was at the bottom of a steep incline. It was festooned with railroads and mining carts at rest. I could vaguely make out the tiny forms of people moving about below. Tiny people wearing shitty potato sack clothing.

Out the corner of my eye I caught movement, and when I turned I saw two more insignificant figures racing across the ground towards the makeshift city.

I really hoped these people were open to negotiations. I doubted I could make myself kill a city for that dumb kid.

Assuming I even could.

‘we CoULd EAT thEm alL!’ exclaimed the Damned Thing joyously.

I thought about that for second before choosing to take it as reassurance that we’d be okay. Anything else would be exhausting.

I perked up at that thought.

Maybe they’d have beds.