"Cling tight together!" Archie shouted above the din of battle. Ahead of them, the wards had gone down. The godslaved minions were going wild, but they could not gain traction against the immense bulk of Beef's Multipede. That and its speed were the only thing going for the Risen, at least at the moment—its hide was tough enough, but a few of the minions had landed passing blows that cracked its exoskeleton in more than a few places. In the few seconds they had, Beef considered forming armor around the Multipede, but weight was a concern for their plan. The lighter the better.

“The wall’s coming up fast!” Beef shouted.

“Just stay close!” Archie repeated. “I can’t do shit if you don’t do that!”

The Multipede thundered forward at Hallow’s command, the fog swirling around them, keeping them hidden from the walls. Even still, Skills and ballista bolts fired down at them in near-solid waves.

Vess met the waves atop her Companion. Together, Drake and Dragoon smashed the projectiles from the sky, her Spears spinning in wild defensive formations.

"Now!" Archie cried.

Vess dropped, Yin vanishing in a flash of light as she landed on the back of the Multipede's head next to Beef and Archie.

"Forward," Hallow urged, the blackened green light of necromancy flowering within her crystalline form. The Multipede dove toward the base of the shining walls, and Beef braced for impact.

"Primeval Drift!"

The world shuddered, as if Beef’s eyes were being shaken out of his skull. Everything blurred, and his bones jabbed at him as if trying to press through his muscles. Pained and desperate, he tried to suck in a lungful of air but it was like trying to breathe through a stone.

The Mulitpede hit the city walls, and everything went dark.

He’d been warned that traveling through the earth was chaos and pressure, but Beef had not anticipated the silence. It crushed against some unknown part of his brain, driving a panic into his Mind that he couldn’t shake. His Will was scattered, his Intent more than unfocused—it was untethered to reason or reality. For a long, terrifying moment, Beef nearly convinced himself that the endless, silent dark was all there was… then they were through. The Multipede pushed into a wide stone tunnel, partially filled with rainwater. The vibrations stopped.

Beef sucked in a desperate, gasping breath, and the others were similarly upset. Vess’ shoulders shook slightly, though her hands were firm around her glaive. Hallow looked rattled. Archie, for his part, wasn't even sweating.

"Yeah, it's terrible the first few times. I couldn't breathe.”

“I told you about that. Did you take a big breath before you went in?”

“No.”

“I warned you. Big breath before you go in, it'll help trick your head into thinking things are going to be okay.”

“Bleh. That was awful. Did we make it?" Beef asked, looking around.

The tunnel was unremarkable, with no sign of anyone having been down there in years. "No, this was just a breather," Archie said. "Is everyone okay to keep going?"

"It doesn't matter if we are ready. We must." Vess paused, listening. "I sense nothing but the rush of water and countless echoes. Do you know the direction we must go, Archie?"

The guy closed his eyes, as if listening, before they snapped open. "Yeah, I got a direction. Everyone, big breaths."

Beef took in a lungful before everything vibrated into shadow.

They stopped twice more. Each time, they found more traces of people's passage through the elaborate sewer systems beneath Amaranth: discarded trash, scrapings along the walls from innumerable boots, and the inescapable growth of fungus along the damp shelf in each tunnel. They avoided those.

On the last stop, they found the unmistakable markings of battle. The corpses of Plaguerats were split open, filling the wide intersection of six different tunnels. The white enameled armor and red cloaks of the Pathless Inquisitors lay on the ground as well, their bodies broken until the sour ichor and their blood mingled in the shallow runoff that spread slowly through the tunnels.

Above them, there was evidence of a collapse. A few more tunnels that had fed into the place were now filled with rubble. The ceilings had fallen apart.

"How far is the surface from here?" Vess asked.

Archie concentrated. "We're near street level here. Whatever collapsed these tunnels must have affected the roads, too."

Beef felt a tingling along his senses, catching the edge of his Perception. "I feel like we need to get through there," he said, pointing at one of the collapsed tunnels.

Archie nodded. "Yeah, there's more noise through there. It sounds like fighting.”

“Move carefully," Vess said. "Archie, get us past that wall."

One breathless jaunt later, they and the Multipede slipped through the hundred feet or so of collapsed rubble and came across a wide chamber filled with platforms built into the walls, hanging from the ceiling and extending downward for hundreds of feet. Water poured from several pipes, thundering down below into a cataract before it was swept off to parts unknown.

Beef spied Plaguerats and Inquisitors again—and the two factions were fighting each other. Beef frowned. His Affinity was the greatest, but their Spirits sounded strange. Bent, as if they'd been folded askew.

"Does anyone else hear that?" he asked. "Something's wrong."

Archie shuddered. "Someone's turned them against each other. I have a Skill that is suggestive but this is more like a command, like someone’s taken control of them. Whatever's doing it is really strong."

"There's at least thirty Inquisitors, and half as many Yyero spawn," Beef pointed out. “That’s a lot of creatures to control at once.”

“A lot to fight at once too,” Archie said.

"We can't discount more spores in the dirt either," Hallow added. "Those fungals are hard to kill and the Plaguerats are carriers for other abominations."

Beef shuddered as he watched the pestilent forms of Yyero's creatures fight against the orderly but dwindling ranks of the Inquisitors. Golden flames assaulted the beasts, burning away the brown ichor that dripped from their wounds and sizzling at the pus that fouled their matted fur and tumorous flesh. Yyero's minions were disgusting, and that was coming from a necromancer.

Beef took a step closer, hiding his bulk behind the rubble. The moment he drew close, however, he felt a sudden heat and pressure across his Mind. A manic glee filtered up from his chest, forcing its way through his blood, burning at his muscles as if they were trying to force him forward. His breath quickened, and for a moment there was nothing Beef wanted more than to rend and kill the creatures that filled the space below.

"No," Hallow said. "Be gone."

A flush of necromantic power flooded through Beef before it radiated outward, centered around the Multipede that clung in the tunnel behind them. Beef pulled back with a start, his awareness returning. Around him, the others looked just as disoriented and flushed.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Beef put a hand to his chest beneath his chitinous armor. His heart was racing but that manic glee was fading, along with the fading sound of buzzing atonal chords. "Was that Dissonance?"

"Perhaps. It was definitely a Skill as Archie suggested," Vess confirmed.

Hallow leaned forward, the Graven Aegis glowing where bits of light formed beneath her heavy crystalline brows. She regarded the fighting rats and soldiers still hurling their individual powers at each other down below.

"Do you wish me to try and banish it from them as well?"

Vess held out a hand. "There is no reason to waste your power on them, and there's no reason to save them either. They are all a threat, and if we wish to find the final Unbound, then they must be eliminated."

"That's enough for me," Archie said, pulling a helmet down over his face. Beef had noticed it resting on the top of his head while they'd been traveling, but he'd never seen the design before. It was made of arcanite, clearly the work of Harn, but the helmet was angular and blank without any eye holes at all, leaving only a few slits at the bottom for air. It joined with the arcanite pieces that Beef now realized Archie was wearing beneath his cloak.

The Delven was clad in a set of halfplate mingled with chain and leather that was strapped down to him, accentuated only by the large daggers that stuck up from his belt.

"I've got the redcloaks," he said, before he dropped into the ground as if he'd stepped into deep water. He vanished.

"We move once Archie makes the first strike," Vess said. "Get into position."

Beef hunkered down behind the rubble, watching below as the enormous Plaguerats clumped together on the bridges that criss-crossed the chamber. The smallest of them was the size of a grizzly bear and the largest was close to an elephant in size. Despite their manic aggression, the Inquisitors had a discipline that was absent in the godslaved minions—shields were raised to block mauling claws and their swords lit with golden fire sliced and diced Yyero's creatures every time they grew close. Ultimately, though, there were too many. The Inquisitors would fail eventually.

C’mon Archie. Let’s turn “eventually” into “right now.”

Archie swept out from the wall faster than Beef could track. The thing about Primeval Drift was that when it was turned off, it didn't just stick you in the object you were passing through. It forcibly shot you outward toward the nearest pocket of emptiness. This was how Archie had traversed the sewers and all the rubble. He'd enveloped them in his Skill, giving them enough momentum in the direction they needed before he would cancel it, forcing them forward toward the nearest surface. It took an incredible amount of talent—something Archie had in spades.

Beef couldn't help but grin when he watched his friend get to work.

Molten blades swept from Archie's hips, slicing upward as he shot out of the chamber wall twenty feet below. The daggers bit through an Inquisitor's leg, the heated edge slicing through their enameled armor and Adept Tier defenses. The Inquisitor fell screaming, clutching at his Achilles tendons before Archie swept onward, vanishing into a platform before re-emerging from a new angle. His blades stabbed through feet and thighs and hands that reached for him while passing harmlessly through the burning blades that swept for his head. Archie rocketed around into a wall or platform before re-emerging from a new, slightly changed angle.

Beef had no doubt that Primeval Drift thrummed around the man and his eyeless helmet, his Blindsense keeping track of the foes and shifting field as the Inquisitors scrambled. Chaos had overcome the redcloaks, their discipline and organized tactics falling into immediate disarray as he attacked from within—a chaos that the Plaguerats took advantage of immediately. The rotting beasts squealed in bloodlust as they rushed the distracted Inquisitors, knocking over several before golden flame and shields of light arrested their momentum.

“No you don’t! Relentless Charge!”

Beef ripped through the Plaguerats from behind, tearing into them with his orichalcum-clad horns. Hallow was right behind him, her Graven Aegis as tanky as Beef's own hide and her crystalline darts preternaturally sharp, punching through the godslaved minions as easily as a blade through snow. The creatures fell and Beef slammed into the Inquisitors, knocking a handful down on their butts before Archie's molten blades sank into gorgets and groins with savage precision.

“Entropic Paradigm!”

A swell of chitin rushed up from the platforms, building into two expanding pillars that crushed several of the Plaguerats together, leaving only a smear of foul brown ichor upon the wall. Others lunged for him, and he added more pillars, morphing their edges into walls that pinned the creatures against each other as they thrashed, their claws doing more damage to each other than his constructs. Hallow fired off her Razorhail, tearing through their vitals.

"Don't mangle them too much, Hallow!" Beef shouted.

"They're not making it easy!"

Perhaps hoping to catch him off guard, two Inquisitors thrust burning swords for Beef’s neck and chest. He immediately dropped his chitin work and caught their blades in his hands. They sparked off of the chitin guantlets he’d summoned, before the sigaldry on them flared with earth Mana. The power sank into their swords, turning them aside without a scratch on his chitin and allowing him to disarm the confused Inquisitors. A simple seizing of their heads and bashing them together put both Inquisitors down for the count.

A screech tore from one of the tunnels and a massive Plaguerat rumbled out, racing towards Beef. Quick as thought, he formed a blade of chitin and dropped it from the tunnel's roof, slicing through the creature's neck in a single swift motion. The chitin snapped, breaking apart down the center, but the damage was already done. The Plaguerat fell, skidding to a wet stop on the platform.

A rumbling crash seized Beast's attention. To his left, a piece of a collapsed tunnel shifted, releasing a stream of small rubble. Another Plaguerat slipped free, but it was mangled beyond redemption, oozing pus and ichor everywhere from wounds still filled with the recognizable swords of Inquisitors that stuck up from it like thorns. The rat was huge, but it was hunched and trembling. It took no more than three steps before it collapsed, its flesh sagging and splitting apart, dropping the still-burning Inquisitor blades onto the stone pathway. The Plaguerats were dead.

"Beef,” Hallow warned. "Something's happening."

Before the creature finished deflating, the Plaguerat corpses around it dissolved. Their gooey flesh flowed like streams toward the monstrosity. Others, mortally wounded but clinging to life, climbed atop its sagging corpse before they too dissolved into one another. Bone, muscle, and worse flowed into the fallen Plaguerat. Even the creature Beef had beheaded stumbled forward, its head barely connected by tendons before it dissolved into smoke and loose flesh.

"Life is worthless," said a voice.

A Paladin stepped out of the rubble behind the twitching corpses. He wore a set of bronze armor that shone with a sickening light and carried a halberd made of gristle and bone.

"The Light has faded. Life has failed. All that remains is rot."

The Paladin stepped around the corpse, which, as they watched, shuddered and stitched itself into a greater whole. Its size was far larger than an elephant now.

"There is no point in resisting, heathens. The chains will be broken today." The Paladin lifted his chin, his fully armored head wreathed in that rotten bronze light. "Yyero will return all of you to the ooze from which life first congealed."

"No chains will be sundered this day," Vess declared as she dropped from above, Spears manifesting around her in a wave. "But I shall see to it you return to your god. Immediately."

With a flash of light, a Dawn Drake erupted from her chest. Vess hopped on his back as Yin roared—they charged forward, together.

The Paladin moved faster than Beef could track. It leaped atop its enormous Plaguerat, and the creature, easily twice the size of Yin, lunged for the Drake's throat. Crystalline claws grappled with it, slamming the rotten creature to the side.

The Paladin struck out with its halberd made of bone and gristle. It sliced across Vess's armor, drawing sparks from the arcanite and leaving a deep gouge across her gorget.

Beef lowered himself, readying a Relentless Charge, but before he could activate the Skill, Vess had already grabbed the halberd, holding it fast. The Paladin yanked back frantically but could not best her Strength. She stabbed at him, her glaive severing the bronze knight's armor at the shoulder. The Paladin screamed in guttural pain.

Yin twisted, coiling his long body around the Plaguerat Champion as crystalline claws dug into its flesh. They raked downward, splitting the rat open and forcing a screech from its strained throat. The wounds healed quickly, filling with gilled mushroom caps where the flesh parted, only to be split again as more bone halberds were summoned from within the Plaguerat.

“Corrupted Armory!”

The Paladin thrust a hand forward toward Vess. She leapt away off of Yin's back, contorting through the bones with a fluid grace and bringing her foot down. The Paladin blocked her armored heel—but not the Spears that dropped from behind. He barely flinched before he was run through.

“Final Glory!”

Her Spears exploded, the Paladin's chest bursting open and falling back—split wide. Beef recoiled at the gruesome sight. When the Plaguerat began to consume the Paladin to heal its wounds, dissolving the man into itself, he nearly threw up.

"Vile horror," Yin cried.

The Drake stabbed his claws into the healing cavity and wrenched it open once again before exhaling Dawnbreath into the monster's rotten wounds. Its flesh burned, bubbling and seizing before it too exploded in a rush of sunrise.

You Have Killed The Champion Of Yyero!

XP Earned!

Vess landed, twisting her glaive and wicking ichor onto the tunnel floor. "Are they all dead?”

"Yeah," Archie stretched, lifting his helmet. "They didn't stand a chance."

"Keep moving, then. Follow the bodies and we'll find our target."

Beef stepped closer to the Champion’s oozing corpse, wiping his lips where he'd thrown up. "Get on the Multipede. If we're close, then I'm stocking up first. Hallow Rise!"