Undermind

So if she understood Ruhildi correctly, Saskia wasn’t just a troll and a demon, but also an eldritch abomination.

The dwarf didn’t use those words, of course. And she seemed a lot less terrified by the prospect of being Cthulu’s pal than Saskia herself would have been in her place. Very little seemed to scare her friend. Maybe a blithe acceptance of all things weird and worrisome was part of being a necromancer—sorry, necrourgist. Raising walking corpses was not for the faint-hearted. Or perhaps her past trauma at the hands of her elven slavemaster had burned all traces of fear out of her. That wasn’t how PTSD normally worked, but Ruhildi wasn’t exactly human.

And nor, it seemed, was Saskia.

She wondered if she’d ever been human; if her old human form represented her true self any more than this troll body did. It was the body she’d been born with; she was pretty sure of that. Unlike Saskia the troll, Saskia Wendle of Earth had a bellybutton. Also, the nurses at the hospital would probably have had a thing or two to say if Alice Wendle had given birth to a writhing tentacle monster. But a body could be like the skin of a snake to a being like her: something to discard once she’d outgrown it.

Saskia didn’t need to wonder where she got her eldritch genes. It was all her father’s fault. Calbert Bitterbee, or Calburn the Arborcaede, or whatever he was really called. That donkhole! He never mentioned any of this!

She thought of what she’d seen in that same dream where she’d met the ghost of her father. In the dream, she’d relived a memory of her accident back on Earth, one that had been sealed away by the head injury that followed. That time, she’d briefly entered the strange underwater dreamspace, and then popped out in mid air, many metres away from the cliff she’d been climbing, minus her clothes—and climbing ropes. It hadn’t been negligence that had caused the accident. No, it had been something much stranger. That incident had been her awakening as…whatever it was she’d become.

Had it been the same back then as it was today? Ivan, her climbing partner that day, hadn’t made any mention of her turning into a nameless horror from the abyss between worlds. Come to think of it, Ivan had largely avoided her afterward, aside from a few brief visits to the hospital. She’d thought it had been guilt over what happened that drove him away, but maybe there had been more to it than that. If she ever made it back to Earth, she’d have to confront him about the incident. She hoped he wouldn’t run screaming into the night at the sight of her.

Or maybe she was thinking about this all wrong. Maybe the bizarre things Ruhildi had seen weren’t Saskia herself, but some other entity manipulating her somehow. Maybe she was a puppet dancing on someone else’s strings. She thought of the vine-tentacles and the winged leviathan. Was that her puppet master?

So many questions. But she wouldn’t be getting any answers today.

Setting off down the riverbank, Saskia took the rear, with Ruhildi in the lead, and their captive elf, Garrain, sandwiched between them, bound by the wrists and roped to her waist.

Watching the bound druid stepping through the undergrowth ahead of her, she wondered what he thought about all this. Surely he’d seen the same thing Ruhildi had seen. Had witnessing her eldritch side destroyed any hope she might have of convincing him she wasn’t a monster? The thing that she’d become—or was somehow connected to—had saved his life, according to Ruhildi. And then she’d healed his injury. But she wasn’t so naive as to believe those things would stop him from trying to stab her in the back at the first opportunity. She’d seen into his dreams; seen how much he hungered for revenge. And more than that, he saw it as his duty to rid the world of her. To him, she’d always been an other: an enemy to be destroyed.

“You know, Garrain, I wasn’t bluffing up there on the ledge,” she said. “If you’d just come to me and asked nicely, and promised not to bother me again, I’d have returned your precious staff. Ruhildi told me how you can’t do magic without it.”

Garrain glanced up at her, eyes narrowed, and asked, “Will you give it to me now, demon?”

“Your staff?” she said, caught off-guard by his unexpected reply. “No can do. We don’t have it any more. It washed away.”

“If you still had it, would you hand it over?” he persisted.

“That depends,” said Saskia.

Garrain gave a disdainful sniff. “Cease your pretence, demon. We both know you have nothing to gain by arming and setting loose your vanquished foe.”

“What I have to gain is having you off my back, without having to deal with you in other, more permanent ways. We can’t keep you captive forever, you know.” Inwardly, she winced as she said it. That sounded more threatening than she’d intended, so she added, “I’d much rather we come to an agreement. You may not have noticed or cared, but I’ve done everything I could to avoid harming you and your people, despite being hunted down and harassed at every turn.”

“Do you take me for a simpleton?” said the elf. “You’re a demon and a trow. My life means nothing to your kind—”

Saskia cut him off. “You can stop right there with your assumptions about my kind. You know nothing about me, and everything you think you know is wrong.”

This time Garrain didn’t respond, and she saw that he was frowning even more than usual. Good. Maybe her words were getting through his thick skull. After the silence had lingered for a time, she asked, “The alvar with the glowing sword and pale eyes—he’s what you call the Chosen, right?”

“His blade is the last thing you will ever see,” said Garrain.

“No, I think the last thing I ever see will be much weirder than that,” said Saskia. “The Chosen didn’t seem to hold your life in high regard. He would’ve cut the both of us in half, if I hadn’t moved.”

“He did what I should have had the spine to do, when first we battled one another.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that,” said Saskia, thinking of their first encounter, where she’d forced him to choose between bringing down his vine shield spell or letting his archer buddy be torn apart by it. He’d chosen the former. “I think what you did took more courage. It was low of me to exploit that, but I didn’t see any other option at the time. Did your companion…survive, after I…?”

He glared up at her. “He did not.”

Saskia felt sick. She’d had her suspicions, but this confirmed it. “I…I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hit him so hard.”

Ruhildi, walking ahead of them down the slope of the cave, was shooting her a glare that almost matched the druid’s. Saskia wondered what her problem was.

After they stopped briefly to take turns ducking behind a rock, she got her answer. Ruhildi spoke sharply into her ear in Dwarvish: “I can’t take much more of this, Sashki. You’re being too bollocking nice to the leaf-ears. He’s our enemy, and here you are trying to court the bastard!”

“I’m not…look, what I’m doing isn’t entirely altruistic, or—dogs forbid—trying to get into his pants. How would that even work? I’m like four times his size. I just want to try diplomacy, before we resort to…other options.”

Ruhildi gave her a stern look. “You’ve a good heart, Sashki. Too good for this world, methinks sometimes. You’re trying so hard to convince our enemy you’re not the evil creature their stories make you out to be. But this alvar has already tried to kill you twice. Mayhap he’s the evil one.”

“He may be our enemy, and he may stubbornly cling to his prejudices, but he’s not outright evil. I’ve seen through his eyes, remember? He’s good with animals. He has a wife or lover he adores.” Saskia felt her face grow hot at the memory. She could have done without witnessing the details of that part of his life.

“I still say you can’t reason with the likes of him,” insisted Ruhildi. “There’s another way, Sashki. You see, I larned a thing or two from the forge master. A few bells under the knife, and I’ll have him singing out answers to questions you haven’t even thought of.”

Saskia swallowed, seeing an unnerving gleam in her friend’s eyes. “No torture, please. But you can be the bad cop if you like.”

“I don’t ken what you mean.”

“I mean, when we question him, I’ll play nice, while you play…nasty. For now, keep it to words only, though. Nothing physical.”

Continuing onward, they following the river down the seemingly endless winding cave system. There were plenty of crevices and smaller side tunnels that led nowhere, but for the most part, it was just one huge tunnel that went on and on, without an end in sight.

These caves were unlike any she’d seen before. It was positively teeming with life. The bat analogues and oversized bugs were nothing new, but there were also fish and eels and coral in the river, little tailless rodents that scurried underfoot, and a featherless winged creature with enormous round eyes that screeched at her from atop a stalagmite. Phosphorescent growths abounded, most of it fungal, but there were plants too: red-leafed ferns and these odd little trees topped with dense tufts of lemon-coloured leaves.

Throughout the journey, the native fauna kept mostly away from them. The exceptions were a species of inquisitive centipede-like creatures called cave crawlers, the largest of which grew to about the length of a crocodile. Unlike many other giant bugs, these creatures were half-blind fungus-eaters and posed no threat to anyone. They did make tasty troll-snacks though, much to Garrain’s disgust.

Peeking out from beneath the rocks and dirt and undergrowth were patches of what she suspected might be the true substrate of the world tree: a russet material with pistachio-coloured veins running through it. Her oracle interface called the stuff argnum. Unlike ordinary rock, her claws barely left a mark when she scratched it.

There was no path down here, and no guarantee they wouldn’t eventually run into a dead end or some impassable obstacle. The floor veered sharply downward in places, resulting a chain of rapids and waterfalls. In other places, the terrain forced them to wade through deep, fast-moving water. Or she and Garrain waded, while Ruhildi perched on her shoulder. There were also a not-insignificant number of precipitous drops over water-slicked rocks.

Before her accident, Saskia the human had been quite an accomplished rock climber. As a troll, this ability had only improved, thanks to her claws. They allowed her to pull off some pretty impressive vertical manoeuvres—or they would, if it weren’t for her missing arm or the elf dangling from the rope around her waist. She certainly didn’t trust him enough to untie his hands.

Saskia’s further attempts to convince their captive that her intentions were good—and get a few answers out of him—were met with stony silence, incredulity and further probes as to her true motivations. When at last they stopped for a brief rest, Saskia was more than ready for Ruhildi to play the part of the bad cop.

“Tell me, Garri, the names of those you brought with you to murder us,” said Ruhildi.

The druid glowered at her. “My name is Garrain.”

“Your name is whatever I say it is, Garri,” she hissed. “Answer the question!”

“What does it matter, necrourgist?” said Garrain, spitting out that last word as if it were the vilest insult he could muster. “My companions are dead! You slaughtered almost all of them.”

The sound of Ruhildi’s slap echoed throughout the cave. Saskia groaned inwardly. What part of ‘nothing physical’ did the dwarf not understand?

“Answer me!” said Ruhildi.

Several more slaps later, the elf still hadn’t answered. It was then that the dwarf woman brought forth another ‘incentive’ for him to cooperate, in the form of two undead cave crawlers.

As the dead creatures began to scurry up his legs toward his crotch, the elf finally relented, hissing out several names that meant nothing to Saskia. Ruhildi, with a malevolent smile, made her pets skitter back down to the floor, where they waited at his feet, poised to return at the first sign of disobedience.

But Saskia barely noticed that, because when Garrain spoke, his body was briefly surrounded in an eerie red aura. She tensed. Had he just cast a…? No, that was no spell. That was her oracle interface at work. What was it trying to show her this time?

“The name of the Chosen: give it to me, Garri!” said Ruhildi.

There was a moment’s pause, before he answered, “Hascithe.” This time, the aura around him shone yellow, before vanishing.

Saskia had a theory about what this light show meant, so she decided to butt in and put it to the test. “Does Hascithe know we’re alive down here?” she asked.

“I very much doubt it.” The elf’s lips curled up for the briefest of moments as he spoke. Again, his words were accompanied by a yellow aura.

“But you think he’ll work it out, right?” pressed Saskia. “And he’ll come down here to finish us off?”

“Absolutely not,” he said. This was not the answer she’d expected. For the third time, his body was surrounded in yellow light.

“Earlier you said the last thing I’d see would be the Chosen’s blade. How’s that gonna happen if he thinks we’re already dead and doesn’t come down here? You really think we’re stupid enough to go to him?”

He held his tongue while her friend delivered two swift punches to his belly. “Ruhildi!” hissed Saskia in Dwarvish. “Lay off with the—”

Feeling suddenly nauseous, she stopped speaking. There was a quivering in the small of her back, rippling outward across her body in waves, growing more intense with each passing moment. She sagged to the ground, feeling the blood drain from her face.

Next thing she knew, she was somewhere else; someone else. She watched as a porcelain mask popped off the face of a bald elf, revealing his—no, her—milky white eyes staring sightlessly ahead, and the tip of a spear jutting from her open mouth. The elf—the Chosen—pitched face-first onto the ground.

A moment later, Saskia was back in her own body, spitting out a mouthful of dirt. She picked herself up off the ground where she’d toppled over. Garrain regarded her with a bemused expression, while Ruhildi’s face held a look of mild concern.

“I’m okay,” she assured her friend, swallowing hard. It had happened again. A vision, like the one she’d had of Ruhildi being tortured. Except this one had been someone else’s memory: Garrain’s.

Unlike the link to the druid she experienced when she touched his staff, both of these memory-visions had made her faint. The experience hadn’t been half as bad as the seizures her human body had suffered from, but it worried her nonetheless. What would happen if she had a random vision in the middle of a fight, or while bathing or relieving herself, or…

And just like that, the memories of what it had been like came flooding back. The constant tension; always checking her surroundings for a safe place to lie down, in case she felt another seizure coming on. The anxiety she’d felt whenever she went out alone in public, where she might be at the mercy of strangers. The ever-present fear of embarrassment. And worst of all, the niggling dread that the next one might be her last; that she might never wake up.

No, don’t go there, she warned herself. She was done with all that.

These visions were nothing like the seizures. They were rare. And they were useful.

She took a deep, calming breath, and turned to their captive. “Hascithe isn’t the Chosen we’re interested in. Tell me about the other Chosen. The one who’s still alive to threaten us. The one with the big glowy sword, who did this to me…” She looked at the stub of her newly-forming arm. “What’s his name?”

“How did you…?” Garrain gave her a penetrating look, before rolling his head about in what might have been the elven equivalent of a shrug. “It hardly matters. Knowing his name won’t save you, demon. Nothing will save you. His name is Thiachrin. May his visage haunt your nightmares, as yours has haunted mine.” Now the druid’s aura shone a clear green colour.

Okay, she was pretty sure she knew what the colours meant now. Just one final test. “Thank you, Garrain. Now tell me an obvious lie.”

Uncertainty flickered across his face. “Why?”

“Doesn’t matter why. Tell me something we both know to be false. Tell me…I don’t know…tell me you’re a virgin.”

He looked at her and with a perfectly straight face said, “You are a virgin.” Green again.

As for Saskia, she was turning bright red right now. “No! I mean, you say, ‘I’m a virgin.’”

“I will do no such thing, demon. I’ll not demean my lifemate by pretending we haven’t tasted the nectar of our union.”

Yeah, I’m well aware there was tasting going on, she thought. But what she said was: “Oh for the love of… Forget about your precious non-virginity then! Tell me some other harmless lie. It doesn’t matter what. Tell me you’re a dwarf, or you have pink hair, or this right here…” She held up a rock. “…is a female aardvark!”

The elf just stared up at her in bafflement.

Ruhildi murmured into her ear, “You were speaking trow again, Sashki.”

“These bindings are too tight,” said Garrain, wincing as he flexed his wrists against the coil of rope. “If you loosen them for me, I’ll be more inclined to cooperate.” As he spoke, his aura turned a deep red colour.

“Oh, nice one!” said Saskia. “That’s the kind of lie I was looking for.”

“That was no lie,” said Garrain, frowning. “They really are too tight.”

But Saskia could see on her medical overlay that there was plenty of circulation going to his hands. It was the last bit of evidence she needed to be confident in her theory. This new ability she’d just unlocked was a lie detector. A green aura meant true. Red meant false. Yellow, as best she could tell, meant kinda true but hiding something. And there were degrees of truthiness and hiddenness that yielded various shades in between.

The interrogation continued haltingly as they made their way deeper into the seemingly endless tunnel. Ruhildi, having been apprised about Saskia’s handy new ability to detect lies, did most of the questioning and…additional prompting, while Saskia steered the conversation whenever Garrain tried to deceive them. Sadly, they didn’t get much more out of him. He appeared to be telling the truth when he said he knew little about Thiachrin’s plans or motivations.

Even before he’d hacked her arm off, the Chosen had been one scary moffer. Through Garrain’s eyes, she’d watched him swing an oversized sword as if it were a rapier. This had been before he’d gotten his hands on that shining sword of doom. Now, the Chosen terrified her even more than did his patron. And that was saying something, because his patron was a god.

Blade heavy and light; scorch and spray.

The words came to her unbidden, tickling at her memory, but try as she might, she couldn’t recall where she’d heard them.

That night (actually morning according to her internal clock, but it hardly mattered down here), Saskia took the first watch while Ruhildi slept and Garrain closed his eyes in a rather weak attempt to feign sleep. Probably waiting for her to nod off so he could slip free of his bindings and make a run for it.

Sure enough, a short while later she noticed that he’d managed to work one of his hands free. Even though he had his back to her, she could see him tugging the rope off his other wrist. Her X-ray vision overlay was pretty handy at a time like this.

“Too tight, huh?” she said.

Garrain froze. Then in a burst of motion he yanked his arm free and leapt off the rock, heading straight for the churning river rapids.

He made it five steps before her hand clamped around his arm and lifted him into the air. She felt like she was holding a wild hyena one-handed as he thrashed about in her grip, trying to kick her in the elbow.

His struggles woke Ruhildi, and together they managed to tie him up again, even more securely than before. Seeing the coils of rope encircling his arms and torso, she smothered a laugh. He looked like a beehive.

After Ruhildi went back to sleep, Saskia and the elf just sat there, silently watching each other. Finally, Garrain gave a weary sigh and said, “The staff you took from me is near. I can sense it. I would…greatly appreciate it if you would retrieve it for me.”

Saskia lifted her eyebrows. “After the trick you just tried to pull?”

Garrain looked at the ground. “I don’t expect you to simply hand Ruinath over here and now, but perhaps in time we might come to an…understanding.” To her surprise, she saw that his aura was green as he said this. He was being sincere.

“Ruinath, you call it?” said Saskia. “Interesting name.”

“My ancestor, Undain the Eversmile, named it after the witherbark grove whence it came,” said Garrain. “Ruinath is…very precious to me.”

“I bet it is. So that’s why you were dashing for the river. You say you can sense where it is?”

“Not exactly. I know only that it is near. Within five hundred paces, perhaps.”

Saskia pulled up her map, and thought, Little help, oracle interface? Sure enough, a staff-shaped icon appeared on the minimap just a couple of hundred metres downstream.

“I implore you,” he said. “Recover Ruinath, before the river current steals it away from us.”

She sat there silently, watching him squirm in agitation. As the minutes ticked by, the staff didn’t move an inch on her map, but of course he didn’t know that. After half an hour of this, she decided she’d tortured him enough. Rising to her feet, she said, “Alright, lets do this.”

“You’ll fetch Ruinath for me?” he asked, his voice wavering a little.

Dogramit, now she felt a little guilty for toying with him. “You’ll have to come with me. I’m not gonna disturb Ruhildi’s sleep again so soon just to babysit you.”

“Very well,” he said, gazing hungrily downstream.

The two of them followed the river to where the staff lay wedged between a couple of rocks near the shore. Before he had a chance to snatch it up, she took hold of the staff—and cursed inwardly as her view abruptly shifted and grew darker. Now she was looking up at herself—from his eyes.

Wow, I am really dogram big, she thought. And stupid. Shoulda brought something to wrap this up in.

The reason it was so dark was that unlike her, Garrain didn’t have darksight. The only natural light in this place came from the glowing lichen that coated some of the riverside rocks, and the larger, more distant fungoids that grew across the walls and ceiling.

“Is there a problem?” asked Garrain, his hands clearly straining against the ropes and trying to reach for the staff. She didn’t think he was even doing it consciously. The guy was like an addict.

Holding the staff high in the air, out of his reach, she said, “Let’s head back. Stay close behind me.” Hearing her voice through her own ears, not his, made this even more disconcerting.

The short walk back to the campsite was one of the oddest experiences she’d ever had. She was essentially watching herself from a third-person perspective. Walking in this manner was much harder than it was in a video game, made worse by the fact that she was effectively blind whenever her ‘camera’ got too close or looked at the wrong thing.

Damn I have a big butt, she thought. Wait…why are his eyes lingering on my butt?

“Look at my feet, mister,” she growled.

“What are you—”

“Eyes down!”

Watching her stagger and lurch over the rough, lichen-covered stones of the riverbank, Garrain probably thought she was drunk, but she wasn’t about to tell him what was really going on. He’d take advantage of her disorientation and try to snatch back his staff.

Back at the camp, she wrapped the staff in furs, dispelling the vision, then tied Garrain to a rock. Soon, he fell into a deep sleep, and she settled in for the remainder of her watch.

It wasn’t long after he dropped off when a long, rolling tremor shook the tunnel walls. Saskia clutched a rock to steady herself, watching as everything around her swayed gently from side to side. Earthquake? Surely a giant tree didn’t have tectonic plates…

Feeling jittery, she kept a close eye on her minimap, in case some enormous earthquake-making monster stomped or slithered their way. Nothing did.

She let Ruhildi sleep for an hour longer than they’d prearranged, figuring her friend would need the extra time more than she did. Saskia had done more than her fair share of sleeping lately. Still, she did need some shut-eye, so when her friend finally awoke of her own accord, Saskia gratefully curled up by the fire and let herself slide into a deep and dreamless slumber.

It seemed she’d barely closed her eyes when Ruhildi was nudging her awake, and it was time to prepare for another long day’s descent.

When Ruhildi saw her untying Garrain’s ropes from the rock, she took her aside and muttered quietly into her ear, “I’ve changed my mind about hauling our leaf-eared problem along with us for another day, Sashki. Methinks we’ve gotten all we can out of him, and he nearly got away from us once already. We can’t risk having him break free and bring word of our whereabouts to his kin. It’s time we…” She made a cutting motion across her throat.

Saskia frowned. She understood Ruhildi’s reasoning. Their prisoner was definitely slowing them down, and every moment they kept him alive was another moment he might escape or stab them in the back.

Yet the notion of killing him just felt so wrong. Yeah, he’d tried to kill her, and may again, given the opportunity. But right now, he was helpless and alone. She’d never intentionally killed anyone before. Once she crossed that line, there’d be no going back.

More importantly, she was now more hopeful than ever that he might honestly be willing to come to some arrangement in exchange for his freedom and that silly little piece of wood he craved so much. Last night, his offer had been sincere. Her lie detector couldn’t predict future changes of heart, but something told her he wasn’t the kind of person who’d break his word easily.

“We can’t do that,” said Saskia. “There’s still useful information to be gleaned; I’m sure of it. I might have another vision. And now we have his staff as leverage, there’s a very real chance there might be a way to end this without killing. I say we give him another day or two; see what happens.”

“And if he tries to flee again or turn on us?”

“Then he takes a dirt nap,” said Saskia, silently praying it wouldn’t come to that. “Between the two of us, I don’t think we have much to fear from him.”

“I amn’t afraid of him,” said Ruhildi, a little indignantly. “I just want him gone!”

“One way or another, he’ll be gone soon, I promise,” said Saskia. “Just a little longer. Please?” She tried to give her best puppy dog eyes, which wasn’t easy when they were scarlet and slitted like a cat’s.

Ruhildi gave her a long stare. Then she let out a snort. “Alright. He’s your pet leaf-ears to feed and water and clean up after, from now until we’re rid of him. And if he tries to break free again, I’ll bind him with his own intestines!”

“Ew,” said Saskia, even as relief flooded into her. She wouldn’t put it past Ruhildi to ‘take care of the problem’ behind her back if the dwarf thought she was being a naive idiot, but for now, it seemed her friend had been mollified.

The hours slowly ticked by as they trekked ever deeper into the twisting, overgrown tunnel. How many kilometres beneath the surface were they now? Ten? Twenty? Surely no cave system on Earth went this deep—at least none visited by humans. Then again, there were no caves quite like this on Earth; none bursting with so many peculiar plants and fungal growths, and all the things that wriggled and scampered and swam and flew among them.

Saskia was getting heartily sick of it all. Sure, this underground jungle was far more of a feast for the senses than the bland rocks she’d expected to find down here, but it was even harder to traverse than the dense forests on the surface, because there was no way around the various living obstructions without hacking or digging.

Again she felt the ground shudder and sway beneath her feet.

“What is that?” she asked when the shaking ceased. “It happened last night as well.”

“I don’t ken,” said Ruhildi, her forehead creased in a frown. And that was more concerning than anything else she might have said.

The air grew hot and humid, and wisps of steam rose up from the hidden depths to meet them. It wasn’t long before the river tunnel opened out into an even bigger cavern.

Actually, the word cavern didn’t really do it justice. Saskia felt her eyes go big and round as she gazed out across a vast inner world, shrouded in steam, and brimming with enormous phosphorescent growths, tall trees, arches and spirals and twisting towers of vegetation that reached for the distant ceiling. Vapour wafted from murky, bubbling pools. Through the haze, she could make out an unbroken column of white-hot liquid pouring down from—

Hold on a minute. It wasn’t pouring down. It was pouring up, like in one of those weird reverse-time videos of people unpouring drinks.

She’d known something must be up with the physics on this world, because tree the size of planet. But this? This was just…

She couldn’t even…

As always, Saskia looked to her friend, already brimming with dozens of questions. But best to start with the most important one. “What is this place?” she asked. “Surely we can’t have reached the Underneath so soon.”

“Och no,” said Ruhildi, her expression wavering between relief and…concern. That in itself was concerning. “’Tisn’t the ’Neath. This is Wilbergond, one of the Outer Hollows.”

In that moment an awful sound emerged from the depths of the alien jungle, like a giant hoicking up a mountain of phlegm. Trees swayed, and a whirlwind of startled bats swarmed into the air, reaching for the safety of the distant ceiling.