At first, there was only wet darkness. The inside of the squid was soft and fleshy, and the scales of his armor scraped against the soft throat. The sounds of the battle faded away, replaced by the dull hum of the creature around him. Something sticky oozed from the skin around him, coating his body — it began to sting, like it was eating away at his flesh.

Then the teeth came.

Theo could feel them pressing through the esophagus of the creature, digging into his skin. They pressed against the scales of his armor, finding the small gaps between each, then plunging into his flesh. The stomach acid of the squid seeped into the wounds, and he could feel his blood hissing as the acid reacted with it.

Theo summoned mana to his hands. A glowing green light appeared, and thorns coalesced in the swirling ball of mana. He screamed as he fired thorns ahead of him, point blank against the wall of flesh.

The thorns tore into the stomach lining, sending a spray of green blood over Theo. He put as much mana as he could muster into the spell, sending a constant barrage of thorns into the flesh that trapped him. They struck like machine gun bullets, tearing a chunk out of the stomach lining — but it wasn’t enough. Blood filled the wound, but he was no closer to the outside.

He slipped lower. Shark-like teeth raked him, threatening to cut his face, bleed him dry. The teeth dug deeper between his scales, leaving long cuts in his abdomen and legs.

He closed his eyes as the teeth sunk deeper, as the acid bit more harshly into his flesh. And, gathering as much mana as he could into his body, he screamed.

-

Blake summoned another ball of flame to his hands. He felt the energy crackling there, condensed fire that begged to be let loose. He loved the feeling of it. The power.

He released it, packing the fireball with as much mana as he could spare. He could feel his stores dwindling, feel the exhaustion settle in as he dodged tentacle after tentacle. Tiberius was next to him, wrestling with a huge black arm of the squid, taking bites out of it as he could. The fireball flashed past the dire wolf, shooting towards the squid that had just eaten Theo.

Theo. His best friend.

Their relationship had always been complicated. On the surface, Blake did everything better than Theo. He was better looking to most women, got better grades in high school and college, was more athletic. Hell, even in the game, Blake fucked up less than Theo did. Despite Wisdom being Theo’s best stat, he seemed to constantly make mistakes. Theo suggested they split the party, which led to Ron and Leyah getting killed; Theo got captured by the bandits; Theo triggered the waterfall trap; Theo got eaten by the giant squid. Blake’s intelligence found all these missteps ridiculous. What was Wisdom anyway, if it meant getting into trouble all the time?

But then again, there was something Theo had that Blake didn’t. Theo understood things that Blake had no concept of. Blake never really cared for love or empathy. He didn’t really care about most people, either, unless they could offer him something. He certainly didn’t care about nature or animals or any of that. People and animals seemed drawn to Theo in a way that was… natural. Blake had to work hard to be personable. He had to calculate the right thing to say at the right time. Theo didn’t seem to think at all before saying or doing something. He had intuition. And people loved him for it. They listened to him. Cared about him.

Blake loathed that about his friend. Even his own parents had doted on Theo growing up, while they’d only ever seen Blake as a disappointment. They’d seen how calculating Blake was. How mechanical.

Blake shook the thought away. Theo was in danger. Theo might be dead. If he could kill the squid and cut it open, maybe they could save him.

The fireball collided with the side of the squid, leaping a black star of ash on its rubbery skin. The squid screamed again, making Blake cover his ears. The water of the pool shook with the vibration of the squid’s scream, making the stone at his feet shiver.

Next to him, Tiberius clawed the last sinew of the tentacle in two, snapping off the grasping limp. He thrashed at it with his teeth, throwing it into the water, where it floated in a pool of green blood. Th surface of the pool was littered with dead and severed tentacles, but for every one they killed, two more seemed to rise.

Tiberius squared his shoulders to the squid, then lowered his head. Blake saw malice in the beast’s eyes as it crouched, taking in a deep breath.

Tiberius opened his mouth, and howl escaped from his lips. It was no ordinary howl; Blake could see it, making the air around him shake; with his magical sense, he could feel the mana charged in the howl, see it swirling with multicolored light between the sonic waves. The howl erupted from the dire wolf, projecting a cone-shaped attack across the black pool, then colliding with the squid.

The squid screamed back, but for a moment froze. The howl subdued it, pushing it back against the far wall. Its tentacles stopped moving long enough to Alice to draw her knives, charge them with a flame spell, and send them flying into the creature’s single huge eye. Blake followed it with another fireball, which entered the pupil of the squid, breaking through the cornea with a sickening squelch. The squid’s eye was a mess of blackened and burnt ooze, and it began to scream even louder, wildly whipping its tentacles.

Blake dodged a tentacle as it struck the wall next to him. He pulled his sword and sliced it clean off, then moved to attack again…

But the squid had paused. It looked…bloated?

Yeah — the squid’s torso looked malformed, like it was coming apart from the inside.

Then the squid exploded.

A mountain of black sludge collided with Blake, throwing him backwards. He slammed against the stone wall in a sticky mess, sliding to the floor in a puddle of viscera. He gagged at the smell, fishy and salty and rotten. The black chunks coated his face and threaded to slip into his mouth, and he found himself gagging, furiously wiping the mess from his face.

He looked to where the squid once was, only to see its floating, eviscerated corpse. The tentacles had all fallen, with some still twitching on the stone next to him.

Did my fireball do that? he thought, fucking awesome.

But then, from the floating corpse of the squid, something brown appeared. It shuffled, teasing movement. Was the squid still alive? There was no way…

He summoned flames to his hand, illuminating the room, then wiped the black squid-sludge from his eyes. From the dead corpse of the squid, a huge form rose: short snout, massive head, beady black eyes.

The Kodiak bear stood and roared, shaking off black ichor and green blood from its coat. It raised its forepaws and swept at the already-maimed corpse of the squid, tearing it to pieces. When the squid began to sink below the pool, the Kodiak leapt into the water, paddling confidently towards the shore. It clambered out of the water and onto the ledge near the exit, then shook off its fur. Clumps of green blood still matted it, making it look wild and haggard. Then, slowly, it shrunk down, growing smaller, then less shaggy, until finally it vanished. Theodore Cross stood in its place, shaking, naked, and covered in cold water and green slime.

Tiberius sprinted towards his friend, licking Theo’s hands. Blake followed, meeting Alice in the middle.

“What the hell was that?” Blake asked.

“Went bear mode,” Theo said, teeth chattering, “and the squid couldn’t stomach it.”

“You exploded the squid by shapeshifting into a bear,” Blake said, “life just keeps getting weirder and weirder, doesn’t it?”

Blake summoned mana to his hands. He could use his Minor Magic cantrip to dry objects, so he cast it a few times on Theo, until his friend wasn’t shivering anymore. When Theo had re-summoned his fish-scale armor and cloak, Blake wrapped him in a hug.

“I’m glad you’re okay, buddy,” he said. And it was true. Despite the unspoken competition between them, Blake did care about his friend. He was the only person who saw something more in Blake; not just a calculating social climber, but a person like anybody else. It made Theo priceless to him.

Which made Blake’s quest all the more difficult.