Interlude – “Sadly, Her Adventure Ended Here”
It happened without a sound, without any sense of anything coming or going. There was only the empty howling of the wind.
Until an instant earlier, Half-Elf Ranger had been there, peppering them with complaints: “It’s so damp in here!” “It reeks!”
“Once we take care of these Blobs, we’ll go right home,” the adventurer assured her, and she had smiled and replied, “Let’s give it our all, then.”
And then, suddenly, she was gone. Right before their eyes. But to where?
Then one of her boots came down with a thump. Was it from above? Was there something…above them?
There she was.
They could only see her lower body dangling in the hazy dimness.
She was struggling desperately, totally ignoring the fact that one of her boots had fallen off and that her clothes had been hitched up so her underwear was visible.
Her legs, kicking at the air, spasmed each time the party heard the crunch, like a chewing sound, until she stopped moving.
Dead? Was she—could she be—dead?
The noises above them continued. There was a clatter, and her bow dropped to the ground in front of them.
She was sucked in, chewed and crushed as she went. Gradually, bit by bit, her legs moved upward and disappeared.
Beside the adventurer, Dwarf Warrior held his battle-ax across his shoulders and cried out.
The monk, a follower of the God of Knowledge, shouted the monster’s name.
Plop, plop, plop. Blood, or some other bodily fluid of hers, came spattering down.
It landed on the adventurer’s face, something thick and viscous.
There was a creaking crash, as of great teeth gnashing.
It came from a set of giant jaws that belonged to a massive insect, now lowering its head, so large as to fill the whole of their vision.
And from the mouth of the centipede-like beast: blood. Her blood.
“Eee—”
His throat contracted, his tongue nearly stuck; when his voice emerged, it scratched and strained.
“Eeeyaaaaaaagggghhhhhhh!”
He remembered shouting, running, drawing his sword, and even leaping at the thing.
How he survived—that, he couldn’t remember.
The next thing he knew, he was crawling out of there under a twilight sky.
His three—no, two—companions were covered in mud.
The monk had his hand very pointedly on the dwarf’s shoulder.
And what about her? He muttered the question in a broken voice, but there was no answer. We’ve gotta help…her… But again, there was no answer.
The monk grabbed him and sent him flying with a punch. He’d had no idea their man of the cloth possessed such strength.
A Rock Eater.
The overzealous mining had chased it out of its habitat. That was why the Blobs had been coming to the surface.
But it wasn’t until much later that they would learn any of that.
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