There are many legends and tall tales about delving into ancient ruins or caves and the like. Some are true, undoubtedly, but I am always irritated by the portrayal of monsters and animals in the deepest part of the pit. Why should a bear go any further than necessary from the entrance? The air would grow stale as they hibernate.

While many strange creatures can be found in dark caves, they are hardly dangerous. Blind cave fish might have maws with more needles than a seamstress workshop, but they can hardly bite a man’s leg off. The issue is one of ecosystem. For large, dangerous animals to exist, able to contend with humans, an enormous wealth of smaller life must exist for them to predate on, which in turn require even more plant life to sustain them. It is often impossible to find such circumstances.

The roots of the underworld filled the bottommost niche within the desert ruins however. Ants nibbled away at the plant life, which in turn fed spiders, beetles, and other vermin. The presence of mice allowed the snakes to live there, and they had enough meat–as well as the ability to travel in and out of the dungeon–to sustain lion worms.

My pupil was in too much of an injured haze at the time to consciously make note of this. He stumbled on, out of sight from his captor, and dropped the attitude of a conqueror. The first snake he spotted, he bashed its head flat. Emboldened by the knowledge that venom was uncommon, he devoured it raw. The blood fouled his mouth, but without water, he had no other fluid to drink.

At his fourth or fifth snake, like tossing logs to a dying fire, he encountered his first lion worm. With his knees to the cold sand, his hands still trembling with weakness, he had to look up at the speckled-eyed monster. For a moment, neither moved. Then, the coloration of the creature rippled and it vanished.

He had seen it bare for a moment, some twelve feet of wrinkled flesh with a beard of tentacles draped over a short beak. The head had stood nearly to chest height and it must have weighed over a hundred pounds, but it vanished nearly without a trace.

Had he been a northman, or an Aillesterran, or even a Giordanan, Lucius would have died. But he was of Vassish blood, born and raised. Even without my guidance, no son of the sea would be shocked by the conniving of an ambush octopus. The only hesitation was from his surprise to see such a creature on land, in a sand cave no less.

He understood how perfectly a predator could turn itself to stone. The flesh had changed, but the beak could not. As soon as the face tendrils parted for its attack, he saw the hooked ivory.

Lucius had not been idle in his hunting, not merely sated himself. While hunting the snakes and vermin he had sought out the sturdiest, straightest shaft of wood he could find; a better weapon than a mere rock. He dove back from the monster, scrambling to his feet and hoping to force his body into life, energy, healing. All he got for his efforts was vertigo, but he snatched up the stick and swatted it across the worm’s neck.

The blow was soft, weak. The stick had no cutting edge, no heft to hammer with, and he struck nothing but meat. Bone could have been broken. Metal could have been dented. Hide and muscle merely recoiled. Swelling wouldn’t even begin for minutes more–minutes that he didn’t have.

Had he been able to redouble, to strike and trounce and beat it into the sand, perhaps it wouldn’t have been an issue. He lacked such finesse, and no sooner had he struck the beast than the blur of camouflage adjusted. The hook of ivory vanished and he had only the spurt of sand to judge by.

With a roar, he stepped in and swung again, clipping one of the tendrils, no more than a passing pressure. When he cut back, the thing ducked and his blow hit naught but air. Training saved him as he thrust his off hand forward and grab hold of it by the face. The beak incised on his hand, ripping through tendons and cracking through bone. Rather than a war cry, he bellowed in pain but through that pain he understood where its head was.

The far end of the stick had been snapped off, a crude spear if ever there was one, but sharp enough he could ram it through the lion worm’s neck. Blood squirted free and the camouflage pattern faltered. It rippled through colors, shades, shadows, hues, and luster. He twisted the haft of wood and wrenched it free of his hand, then slammed it against the wall. Stunned, it was easy prey for him to cave in its fleshy skull with his heel.

The spasm of death passed through the lion worm, rippling and building from kneck to tail until the mass of its body was thrashing and slapping against the sand and stone. It beat upon the earth and in doing so it told all the other lion worms that it had just died.

It declared that its territory was free game.

Lucius was still panting and trying to re-align his broken hand when he heard the first hissing. The clacking of beaks. He heard the other predators screeching at one another and declaring the tunnels to be theirs.

He laughed morbidly and focused his mind on the change from before and after the fight. He no longer had his stick, but he was not without options. Before any of the other lion worms arrived, he lifted up the corpse and stuffed his hands into the drooling beak. Heedless of any venom, he hooked his remaining good fingers in one side, and his dominant hand in the other then snapped the beak free.

Thus armed, the fighting began.

Trained by Leomund Tolzi, he was well versed in the berserker style. More than just the various stigmata, the battle frenzy haze is something any human can achieve given enough stress, enough panic and rage. It is the overflowing of instinct and vitality that overrides the natural inclination of flight.

He put such a defense mechanism to good use, hacking through the hides of lion worms and ripping them free of his regenerating body. They bit through his flesh and broken his bones, but not faster than his power stitched him back together.

Soon, he was the one stalking them through the half-lit tunnels. He trampled over vermin and snakes, stabbing the predators and ripping through their entrails.

Hours passed before he had purged the nest. Half the flesh from his face had been ripped free. Scar tissue covered his skull and quickly receded to new flesh. For all the bites and cuts, the missing fingers and severed tendons, he still stood on two feet. He staggered more than he walked, dragging the biggest of the lion worms to a destination he hardly understood, but he walked. The smell of smoke, a hint of warmth and human existence drew him in like a cabin in a storm.

Looking every bit the bloody monster, he arrived back at Lupa’s pit where she had harvested enough of the roots to set a fire. The gnarled and hooked kindling burned clean, no sap to foul the smoke, but it treated the stone like a furnace. It broiled the two of them as Lucius ripped strips of muscle out of the lion worm’s body and tossed them upon the embers.

She tried to speak with him, but for all of my research, all of his memory, that has been lost entirely. He could barely be considered sane at the time and only regained his senses after gnawing through nearly thirty pounds of desert meat. His stigmata devoured every scrap of food he offered it, dissolving the creature’s flesh faster than it could be digested, transmogrifying the meat into his own body to restore his injuries.

As though coming out of a dream, he found himself chewing upon a strip of gristle. Sand covered his feet, shielding them from the dying blaze. Overhead was not the glimmer of night, but more sunless grey, and yet his body knew that it was night. The half-eaten carcass of the lion worm sat beside him, more a graveyard waiting to rot than a recognizable animal. He had shredded it with finger and beak, no elegance of butchering at all.

And across from him, with her head nodded to one side, her hands interlaced over her knees, slept Lupa. Her chest rose and fell in gentle rhythm, her pale skin glistening with sweat that pooled into the hems of her clothing. She was his captor, and still had the ropes to bind him with, but she too had no way out of the pit; something she had negotiated to restore his health at her own risk.

The pit could hardly be said to be quiet, it whispered and moaned with gusts of wind through cricks and tunnels. The wastelander camp was a screaming riot in the distance, their incoherent chanting and arguing a demonic echo upon the winds. But the two of them were close enough he could still hear the sigh of her breathing across the fire.

A greed bloomed inside him as he looked at her. Irrational perhaps, and likely to bring more danger than it was worth, but no rational man has ever ascended high in the world. The spirit of conquest must be indulged, risks must be taken and desires stoked. That manly spirit is the lever which can move the world. It is the very same greed that would later lead him charging headlong through gaps in the enemy line, only with his honor guard at his side into an army thousands strong because he saw a path to the enemy commander’s throat.

Lucius had the will to grab the thread of fate and that night he realized he wanted to make a turncoat of her.

Leaving her with a freshened blaze to keep the vermin away, Lucius delved back into the dungeon. He burned with vitality, his stigmata fully restored and his mind clear of the venom. Such armed, navigating the old ruins became trivial. He later told me that he found a half dozen attempts to tunnel back to the surface. Horrid sights of stone scratched by tooth and nail, the bones of the criminals still strewn about their failed escape. As far as he could tell, there was no other way to the surface that a man could fit through. The hope was a lie and the tunnels only went deeper. Perhaps there was a way out of the world, back the way the lion worms had come from, but he did not venture so far.

When Lupa awoke, she found Lucius dozing in all his might. The soft nobleman of the north she had captured was no more, for not an ounce of fat remained across his body. The lean muscles of the lion worms had not been rich enough, so his stigmata rendered his body into that of a heroic statue that still glowed with life.

She woke him inadvertently, calling for a bucket of water and a change of clothes for him. As he stood, she asked, “You look better, but you’ll have to find the relic soon or we’ll be left down here.”

“That won’t be a problem,” he said as a spare thobe was tossed to him. Once dressed, he held up the clockwork relic and a ladder was soon sent down.

Lupa let out her breath and laughed. “And to think I was worried! Now we may resume our journey,” she said as she picked up the rope bindings.

Lucius shook his head and took the relic in both hands, bending the wrist backward until the metal strained and all could see. “No. I will be riding free, or else.”