[4-12] The Mines

[Karl Jak]

Their minds seemed resolved to face whatever lay just beneath the base of the mine shaft.

Marcus lead the way with a torch he’d created from some torn clothes and a lighter from one of the lockboxes.  Just a few paces behind him, Fiara had her Phoenix blasters primed and ready for the next obstacle.  Behind the terminator and the woman, the plague marine followed.  He had no need of a torch with all the light from the others, so Okor kept his weapons ready and his senses sharp as they gradually descended the platforms that lined the sides of the mineshaft.

After a fifteen minute march further into the bowels of the island, the trio stepped down from the metal platforms onto a jagged rock floor marred with countless wounds from pickaxes.  The base of the shaft wasn’t any wider than twenty square yards, so it didn’t take long for Fiara to find what seemed to be a piece of metal hastily anchored into the stone.

Okor strode over to the strip of metal and tapped on it with his boot.  “This is what we want,” he remarked as he stepped back, dropped into a squat, and dug into the ground at the edge of the metal.  Without waiting to be asked, Marcus joined the plague marine, and the two uprooted the metal plate.

Almost immediately, Fiara let out a surprising yelp and stumbled away from her two partners.  Okor tilted his helmet as Marcus took a few steps toward the woman.  “What?”  The terminator inquired, trying to dial up the compassion before Fiara shook him away.

“It’s… it’s nothing,” she mumbled.  “Something down there just smells awful.  More awful than anything I’ve ever encountered.”  Marcus took a moment to furrow his brow and shoot a glance back at Okor.

“If your resolve has faltered, you may remain here.”  The plague marine stepped forward and dropped down into the hole.

“Just stay.”  Marcus spoke as he joined Okor.

The terminator, torch held above his head, landed in a crouch next Okor, who had his sidearm at the ready. “It is here.”

Somewhere out in the darkness, Marcus heard a wet popping sound followed by the wet slithering of inhuman appendages against something other than rock.  Underneath the machine, the ground seemed to shift and churn, and a quick glimpse showed that the floor of the cave looked more like raw sinew than stone.  Sweating red and pink biological matter writhed beneath his boots, and it was then that he noticed the roof of the cave was dripping viscous ooze down onto the two stalwart primes.

“All around us.” Okor spoke softer as unnatural, amorphous shapes continued to shift in the darkness just outside Marcus’s torchlight.

A disembodied voice that sounded like the melding of a hundred souls spoke all around the pair of primes.

“Join the Ascended.  Forsake the bonds of the False God.”

End of Round 7

Fiara has been eliminated from final prize contention.

You stand before/inside the Ascended.  Or, as I referred to it in my head ‘the Flesh.’  A living cavern the size of a football field created by nearly a hundred ‘souls’.  The Flesh will attack you by twisted constructions that it wills from the cavern walls.  Mangled, near-human forms that will call for you blood.  Eldrich abominations that writhe and weeze and spew toxic ichor.  The fucking stuff of nightmares.  Go balls to the wall wild with it.  I look forward to it.  Plus, you have Okor, so I’m sure you can think of other pleasant words to describe the things.  

Some may be mobile, others might be permanent fixtures, as if they are some fleshy gargoyle.  The concept is somewhat inspired by ‘The Flesh’, a boss from the game Darkest Dungeon, if you want to google that.

Fight or flee.