It was Vellom.

‘Where is that confounded nuisance?!’

Vellom had torn the Gruesome Welting Tentulip to shreds while Dimrat watched in silence from inside the trunk. He would rather be caught by the monsters she massacred and eaten alive, than get caught sniveling like a coward inside a box by Vellom. The Fallen did not hide.

She placed a hand on her hip and tutted. Her temper had reached boiling point. About her feet the corpses of Dimrat’s enemies began to smoke and melt under the strain of her toxic aura. She flounced into the Burrow absolutely livid. At first she looked to her left - a tunnel that led downwards - that surely led to worse dangers.

Then her head snapped in the opposite direction up a tunnel that climbed higher no doubt towards safety - closer to the surface - where a low level head stood a better chance of survival. She strode up towards the right which provoked a twinge of annoyance in him. The last of her long tangles disappeared along the upper tunnel, then he gasped.

‘Unbelievable! The nerve! As if I would flee like a coward when the Hearth awaits me below’

For a time he waited and listened to the echoes of slaughter peter into quiet murmurs, before finally a slimy damaged eyestalk opened the lid and looked in at him.

‘An impressive Bulwark, brother’

Dimrat levitated from the chest and fell to the floor.

‘Honestly’ he said, rolling in the pitiable mess of his MP tincture, ‘I have spoken with that woman but once and already she hounds me’

[+3 MP gained]

‘Bah, a meagre pitance’ he spat glass, then pondered the gory aftermath. Six indestructible random chests lay strewn about the den. He floated to one and touched it, when they all popped open.

[Opening 6 Random Chests]:

[you’ve found Fadewalker Gloves (Heroic)]

[You’ve found Pale Gazing Candle]

[you’ve found EXP booster x3]

[You’ve found Atrocious Dagger (Rare)]

[You’ve found Petrified Whitebark x2]

[You’ve found shivering Soul x2]

[Inventory locked. Cannot claim items. Items discarded]

The random chests phased through the floor along with their contents, and nothing remained but a dim red glow cast against the hollows of his listless eyes.

‘System. Show me my transformation choices’

[Transformation prerequisite not met]:

Lvl: 15

Tutorial challenges: 1/10

Cursed Eyes: 4/10

‘It would seem I have laboured under false pretences. I jump through hoops like a circus monkey while danger waits for me around every corner. What is the purpose of this dastardly game? Why must I play along?’

The system did not respond.

‘No? Nothing?’ He sighed. ‘What are these tutorial challenges?’

[System tutorial]: tutorial challenges educate newspawns on basic system mechanics to better prepare them for survival.

‘Fine. Simple enough. Though my MP regeneration is the main priority. Crafting bone tea, was it?’

[Bone Tea]: A Bitterly delightful brew that accelerates mana regeneration and warms the bones.

Ingredients required: [Witherwort], [Arthritic Bone Meal]

‘That does not sound bad at all! Perhaps I should gather more than needed…’

He frowned at Shellbert. ‘This is goodbye, brother’

A moment of innocence held the snail, then Shellbert visibly deflated.

‘Ha! It’s not so bad. Why, we may even...even…’

A high pitched noise twinged in his skull. He winced, then said ‘this again, I…’ when the twinge turned tumultuous and frightful. A wave of confusion flooded his mind. The head shook and rattled to the ground. He was not prepared.

His vision throbbed and spun with an estranged, discombobulated affliction, that felt like many hands pulling him into the ground.

For a time he writhed on the floor. It strangled him - he gasped for breath - yet he had no lungs. He feared his heart had stopped dead, yet he was but a head, until eventually his consciousness faded.

Dimrat looked down at his feet. They were bare and varicose under cold water. In the reflection the rest of him could be seen…

‘I’m...back here?’

He exhaled a foggy breath into his hands then ran them over his face.

He had returned. This time the cobblestone floor shimmered under pale moonlight. Much could be seen now - perhaps a child’s stone throw in distance - including what appeared to be the murky torchlit gloom of a dungeon entrance set into the face of a stone wall. This place was much colder now. It was quiet. Without the hymn he had no motivating direction other than curiosity. He approached with arms tucked to stave off the cold shiver, then looked up in awe. It was no wall.

It was a great stone face that protruded from the ground. For a mouth, there was an uninviting entrance cut into the stone - the dungeon entrance - that depicted an ensemble of knightly forms that clambered over each other into the shape of an archway; more curious for something it lacked rather than had. It was strange. Where the knights should have held swords, shields, spears, banners and bows, there were only handbells. It was a mound of iron and flesh that came together above the arch to raise a single artefact on high. An upside down tree.

Something about it filled his heart with unease, then struck him with a stark realisation.

‘Where is it?!’

His eyes fell low where he clutched at his abdomen with trembling hands.

‘No!’

His fingers curled deep into his flesh. He tore open his stomach then pulled and ripped out his own guts.

‘No! Where is it?!’

More and more he pulled his insides out where it spilled to the floor, until he fell to his knees and wailed with misery.

Then the distinct sound of a hammer fell on an anvil and drew his attention towards the entrance depths. A low mist poured from the darkness within, where he squinted to make out more torches inside along the corridor walls. The hammer fell one more time and struck him awake, the echo of iron still ringing in his ears.

Shellbert was gone.

Cold lanterns wisped like incense, their green glow replaced by the natural luminous hues of the underworld. He coughed and scattered a swarm of glowflies that vacated his skull.

‘I have slept..?’

The Warrens had visited his den. There were subtle differences in the archeological clutter. Traces of comings and goings. Brittle crates had been pried open, and archaic clay statues and pots lay dusty and strewn. Even the mimic chest had been turned over. Other than a sticky white substance on his head, he had not been disturbed.

‘Curious’

His eyes wandered through the mess, until they found the grimy prints of boots. Then a deep clang of metal rang out in the depths that pulled his gaze from the mess. Anxiety lingered but it did him no good to dwell. He gazed out into the unknown with a weary reservation.

MP: 9

‘...I have one shot. If I’m waylaid, it’s over’

Then a pale-lit pile of rubbage disarmed him. It was the strangest thing. Slightly off to the left of the Den was a mound of oddities; a broken cane, rusted scrap parts, a polished door knob, an assortment of horse shoes, two buckets on long severed ropes, a broken chair, dead cats and dogs of varying stages - a great many other out of place bric-a-brac - but strangest of all were the carcasses of pigeons. Hundreds of them.

He furrowed his brows, when an old waterlogged boot clonked him on the head.

‘What manner of buffoonery is this now?!’

He stared at it like it owed him money, then he heard the other. He looked up just in time to swerve it. A pair of battered boots sat on the floor, while up above him a faint light shone from a hole that whistled and thrummed in deep tones. The hole swayed with hanging vines on a breeze and drizzled him as if it brought with it a rain.

‘Ridiculous’

Dimrat deliberated over his direction. He turned to the right, towards Vellom and an easier climb to safety, while the pathway behind him would be a perilous journey into the unknown.

[Through your curse, a lvl 9 Prisoner has been slain]

[Association experience awarded]

Then with a tense and irritated motion he spun towards the lower tunnels, towards the Hearth, and he never looked back.

He kept to the shadows - the nooks and crannies - low along crystalline streams that gusseted from the cracks of translucent mineral deposits and babbled over smooth rocks. He stealthed below the caps of many-eyed mushrooms that watched him. They were the only thing that did. A small head in a big world had its advantages, though he was loath to admit it. One by one he trolled through his tutorial challenges most of which was trivial system knowledge he either knew or suspected.

It was hard to get a grasp of the ecosystem. With careful observation and time he learned that there’s always a bigger fish, and almost all of them swam in a school. He begrudged everything. Nothing seemed to know its place beneath him.

From the many species of poisonous moth that swarmed the skull until he threw himself miserable into the stream - the ghostfish that chased him out the water and flopped up the banks to nibble at his patience and MP - to the sound of hungry guttered throats of monsters that investigated any disturbances he made. He hid and skulked while his pride languished.

Eventually he descended down a tunnel built like a furry colon, and stunk no better. There were barnacled tubes encrusted through the burrow’s entirety - from the walls and floor to the ceiling - that secreted a pong so putrid he felt he simply must bring a lady back here. From the tubes, large white feathery plumes retracted like a turtle’s head in response to movement. Then he felt an unease…

He stopped and watched. Nothing moved. Even the slightest twitch and these plantlike crustaceans would alert him. The unease turned tense. He swallowed, then hovered forward some more.

Eventually he heard a weeze. He brushed through the fern with a healthy dose of caution, towards the edge of an open space somewhere in the thick of it. A small white fuzzy creature lay broken and gasping. It resembled a children’s tebbybear, only something had plucked out its eyes.

[Cursed Rotblooded Strangething(II)] Lvl: 19

[Undead][Wounded]

It twitched and begged for mercy. His metaphorical heart skipped a beat. It appeared to be bait. His eyes bounced everywhere but pinned nothing. He skirted it post haste with a third eye at his back.

--

In time the tunnel widened into an expansive pocket of minerals that shimmered with untapped ores and mirror-like reflections, when from the corner of his eye he spotted a shadow.

He spun and fell low. Several of his own reflections gazed back at him, and he noted the fear in his own face with an awkward embarrassment. He exhaled with relief, then smirked at himself.

‘Dashing fellow’

When he looked past his own reflection. Behind him, in the feathers, he saw a face of eyes and fangs that peered right back at him. He spun and gasped with fright. But he saw nothing. Not a single plume had retracted. A quick glance into the crystal surfaces denied his paranoia. His pace quickened. He wanted out of there.

‘Such preposterous distances for a simple tutorial challenge!’

Eventually he found a rushing stream to follow, which led him to the top of a waterfall. It was hardly a danger to the Fallen, but still nothing to sneer at. From on high, the drop below looked more like a fungal forest that peaked above a misty veil - nothing but the tops of tree-sized mushrooms could be seen - and it all narrowed towards the other end into a craggy porous wall that poured with the same mist that filled the area. He heard something.

He spun once again, but this time noticed a white feather wobble.

Without a moment’s hesitation he threw himself off the edge. He did not fall straight down. He drifted along in a slow-fall through the air for quite some distance before he landed on top of a large mushroom. This was his advantage. He couldn’t be sure. If something followed him, then it would need to crawl down on foot and catch up the hard way.

[Genus of Mushtree]: Mistmaiden

Grows upon broken promises.

He slid down the Mushtree to the ground then paused to take it all in. The fog streamed around an unyielding swamp of charred bones and iron. Skeletons, spears and scrap metal piled high towards every corner, blanketed by their own mouldy leathers, and from it all sprouted the slender and curved stems of the Mistmaidens. The head trespassed upon an ancient graveyard.

Then the crack of bone behind him pinned open his eyes above tightened lips. The skittering of something’s breath warmed the back of his dome...