V S M A New Venture in a Frozen World

[Ahana Varma]

They glared at her with undisguised envy as she sipped her glass of iced tea with a slice of lemon, in which floated several ice cubes. The others in the theoretically well-insulated pub were all bundled up against the cold—dressed in layers of thick, furred pelts from some of the local fauna—and drinking hot coffee mixed liberally with whiskey. Even in the little fortress village that these hardy folks had made their mining outpost, the cold seeped in despite all their best efforts at keeping it at bay.

For her part, Ahana wore only a lightweight sari, intended for the arid landscapes of Mesa Roja by the tribe of bandits she had been born into. She found it endlessly entertaining that these lesser people had no choice but to suffer in the neverending cold as they lived their monotonous little lives, while she was free to stroll through snowdrifts and blizzards barefoot if she so desired.

She smirked back at anyone who looked her way. She wasn’t exactly making any friends with her condescending attitude and lack of empathy, but that was hardly something she cared about. These people may not like her, but they would pay her all the same. This was a small place, and even if they hadn’t seen her abilities in person, everyone knew what she could do, and would surely appreciate her presence on their expeditions, no matter how much they disliked her personally.

When the door slammed open, letting in a gust of frigid air, a dozen heads snapped round to inspect the newcomers suspiciously, and a few people swore or snapped at them to hurry up and close the damned door. Ahana, for her part, found the breeze quite refreshing.

Stone-faced and unresponsive, the seven grim individuals filed inside and slammed the door behind them. They arrayed themselves around Ahana’s table, at which she sat alone. The rest of the room was silent now, looking on as they waited to see what would happen.

The woman put down her drink and allowed her right hand to fall to the hilt of the immense sword which leant against the table’s edge.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” she asked, leaning back in her chair and raising an eyebrow. When three of them glared at her caustically, she realised that only half the group was male… this world bred hardy, rough folks, but even by their standards, these were an ugly bunch.

An ugly bunch that she didn’t recognise. With less than threescore people living in the village, she knew that anyone she wasn't immediately familiar with must be a stranger from out of town… and these were clearly no tourists.

“We heard you was magic or summat.” it may not really have been an answer to her question, but she now knew what the speaker—an older, bearded man—and his friends were after. She smirked, and hauled up the Cursed Sword of b’Akphiyr. Despite its size, the weapon was deceptively light, and she felt a slight tug on her arm as it tried to casually open up the throat of one of the group’s female members.

All seven of them hurriedly backed up a pace, glaring at her with undisguised mistrust. Ignoring them, she slammed one corner of the blade’s ‘tip’ into the table in what she figured was probably a suitably dramatic fashion. The bartender somewhat spoiled the effect.

“You’re paying for that.”

She paused. Glanced over at him. Like the others, he was wrapped up tight. Unlike the others, he was almost eight feet tall and built like an ox. After a few moments she sighed, “Can’t you just add it to my tab?”

“You don’t have a tab. No tabs for foreigners.” his voice was like gravel. He didn’t so much as glance her way, just continued drying a mug which he’d finished washing.

“Alright, okay, I’ll pay for the damage. Just let me do my bit first, will you?”

He didn’t respond, so she went ahead and turned back to the newcomers. Even though they’d almost all already seen this, she noticed in her peripheral vision that pretty much everyone was still looking her way. Eager to see some bloodshed, she imagined. Especially if she was likely to be the one doing the shedding.

“Well, would any of you like to volunteer to help me demonstrate my miraculous powers?” she glanced at the seven before her, and grinned broadly when they all took another step backwards.

“Just get on wit’ it.” snarled the bearded bloke. An impatient lot, these people… and with a strange ferocity in their eyes.

Long-timers, their sort were known as in this particular village. Those who’d lived and worked on Ioun’s moon for years, perhaps even decades, and frequently down in the deeper caverns and tunnels, where the gods only knew what horrors lurked. An unbalanced sort, who could easily snap at the drop of a hat. So, naturally, they were the most fun to irritate.

“Alright, alright.” she tugged the blade free of the wood and placed her left hand palm-up on the table. A quick slice along her palm, she thought, should suffice to prove to them all that her healing ability was legitimate. Of course, b’Akphiyr had other ideas.

In the moment she was about to gently lower the edge to touch her flesh, the demon-blade jerked wildly to one side and slammed down hard into the wood... without concern for her index and middle fingers, which had been between it and the table. Hunched over and with teeth gritted against the pain as she struggled to keep from screaming, Ahana focused on taking deep breaths whilst the locals burst into uproarious fits of laughter.

The seven didn’t so much as twitch, though. She could feel their stares on her. By the time she straightened up, flames of golden light had already poured forth from her bloodied knuckles and taken on the forms of a pair of burning fingers. She flexed them and smiled. Gradually, the flames receded up towards her fingertips, and then were gone entirely.

She licked the remaining blood from her hand, and it was as if she’d never even been hurt at all… other than for the little, sanguine pool and the pair of disembodied digits which still lay on the table, of course.

“Well, what do you think? Impressive, huh? You think you’d like to hire me, then?”

“Good. Yeah. Yeah.” the bearded man responded, and it took the bunny-eared woman a moment to realise that he was actually responding to each of her questions in turn.

“Well then, pay up and we can be on our way, ladies and gents.”

“Payment after.” it seemed as though none of the other six could even speak for themselves, as once again it was only the old guy doing the talking. What a dour bunch they were, even by the standards of Inverxe.

“Oh no,” Ahana retorted, “I don’t think so. I’ve been down this road before. You bring me along and if no one gets hurt it’s all ‘but there was nothing for you to even do, why should you be paid?’... but that’s not how this works. You’re paying for my time, so you’ll pay me up front, in hard Coin, for however long you need my help, and I’ll graciously agree to go along with you wherever you’re headed.”

“We don’t have Coin.” the speaker told her bluntly, and she sneered.

“Then get out of my sight and stop wasting my-”

“We’re payin’ with these.” he tossed a small, brown, cloth bag down onto the table, tied with string. Ahana turned her disdainful expression on the proffered payment, but decided she had nothing to lose by humouring him for a few moments longer and opening it. What she saw inside took her breath away, and left her mouth bone dry.

After staring into it for several seconds, she at last looked up, “This isn’t going to be a quick expedition, is it?”

“No.” his voice was monotone, giving nothing away. She didn’t need to ask if it was going to be dangerous. With the unstable geography of the moon, even regular mining operations near to the surface, well outside the territory held by the various subterranean factions which vied for supremacy in the depths of Inverxe, and far from any of the areas known to be frequented by the local wildlife, were risky endeavours… and for pay like this, these people were clearly intent of something much more ambitious.

“Hmm… I’ll need to stock up on supplies first. I won’t have enough food to last down there for very long.”

The leader reached over and removed one tiny crystal from the pouch. It was under half a centimetre wide. It would be more than enough to cover the costs of any food she might need, “We’ve plenty of rations. You can share.”

She frowned, “When are you wanting to head out?”

“Now.”

She hesitated, then reached for the little bag and stood up. She’d not been intending on working today, but it wasn’t like she had much else to do around here.

The bartender coughed, and looked her way pointedly. She had been about to leave without paying. Again. She was pretty sure he wasn’t too fond of her tendency to just walk out when she was finished. Having been raised by a bunch of superstitious bandits who thought of her as a chosen one had left the young woman with little experience of having to ever pay for anything… even the concept of working was still something she thought of as only really applying to other people.

Smirking at him, she sauntered over to the bar, took out a couple tiny gemstones and slapped them down on the counter. He glanced down, then frowned and leaned forwards for a better look. The bunnygirl forced herself not to laugh. He looked back at her suspiciously, as if wary of some trick.

“Keep the change.” she told him in the most saccharine sweet tone she could muster, before turning on her heel and leaving. Her new companions had headed straight for the exit, and she followed them out, taking a deep breath of the fresh, frigid air.

The last thing she heard before the door closed, cutting them off from the comparatively balmy interior of the building, was the barman saying, “They’re successful.”

He made it sound like a curse. It was no secret that all those who dared to colonise Inverxe hungered for the vast bounties of mineral wealth which lay beneath its surface, so she couldn't say that it came as a shock to find that the denizens of this miserable, little town were jealous of those who’d had better luck than them.

She did find it quite funny, though.

 

[Ahana Varma]

“So it's true then.” the old, bearded guy stated after they'd been walking for a while. By this point, the group had left the village behind and were headed down the slope of the dormant volcano upon which the settlement was perched. Ahana had no clue where they were going, but frankly, she didn't much care. As far as she was concerned, it wasn't her job to pay attention to minor details such as that. She was here to keep these people safe and well, not to think about things.

“What's true then?” she asked, feigning cluelessness, though she knew that he must be referring to some rumour he had heard about her. She had passed through a few towns and villages before settling in that nameless outpost a couple months ago. She hadn't always hung around long enough to take on any jobs where she'd stopped, often she'd just been passing through… but it seemed that there'd always been some folks who took note of her presence and started telling stories even so.

It had surprised her to have strangers showing up out of nowhere looking for her… but she supposed that is shouldn't have. These… Inverxians? Inverxese? Inverxesh?… these people were a dull lot, no more magically or technologically gifted than her own tribe had been (prior to their brutal slaughter) so of course they would notice the presence of such a gifted individual as herself, and find a person like that worthy of discussing with their colleagues.

She should really find out at some point what the proper term was for those who lived on Inverxe, the bunnygirl decided, if she was actually planning on staying here for any length of time.

“You don't get cold.” once again, it was a statement, not a question.

“Right you are, buddy.” she answered him anyway, accompanying the words with a condescending smirk which the group leader seemed not to notice, “What gave it away?”

He actually hesitated for a few seconds before replying—though they all kept moving; Ahana at the front, walking backwards to keep looking at them all, her sword leaning on one shoulder—as if struggling to marshal his thoughts.

“You don't wear much clothes.” he said at last, and a few of the others actually nodded, as if they thought she might need second opinions in order to be convinced of the accuracy of his words. She laughed at them, and they glowered back.

“Yeah. You're not wrong there.” the barefoot, lightly dressed woman admitted, continuing her leisurely stroll through the snow.

***

They kept on going for the rest of the day—or, at least, for the several hours they had remaining before the odd twilight which passed for night at this time of year—and during that time Ahana was generous enough to give the clients a rundown on how exactly her abilities worked.

They didn't seem too pleased to hear that her healing aura was an automatic and indiscriminate form of magic, over which she had absolutely no control. She didn't question them on the subject, but she got the impression that they'd been hoping she would be able to heal them if they got caught in a fight. Still, they never made a big deal out of it, so she wasn't about to say anything which might encourage them to do so.

She also informed them as to what exactly her sword was, and how it generally acted. They all took care to stay out of arm’s reach after hearing about that, and when they stopped to camp out on the snow and set up a few tents, one of them wordlessly tossed down a bedroll on the snow for her. No mention was made of her sharing a tent with anyone.

They gave her some rations, though; a tin of meat and gristle which tasted foul, but was more or less edible, and then retired for the night without lighting a fire. The light would attract predators, the old guy told her when she mentioned it offhand—wondering if the gunk she was eating would taste any better hot—so no, there would be no fires. This was likely also the reason, she surmised, that their tents (and her bedroll) were all white; to better conceal them from the local fauna.

It was hardly the best bed she’d ever lain on, but given that she'd been raised by a nomadic bandit tribe, it also wasn't the worst. She fell asleep pretty quickly and easily.

***

Nothing bothered them that night, and they set off again early the next morning. By midday they had reached a pit dug into the snow-crusted ground, around which some crude equipment had been set up to lower people down. Ahana volunteered to go first, partly because it made sense for her to be at the front, since the others would need healing if they fell and her powers would be useless to them all the way up on the surface...

But mostly just because she was curious about this strange mine entrance which had been dug out here in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason, and entirely too confident in her ability to survive no matter what danger lurked below.

They tied a rope around her waist and used some sort of pulley system to slowly lower her down. It took a long time for her to get to the bottom. A really long time. They also hadn’t given her a torch, so she had no light to see by. She considered cutting herself to produce a flame, when her healing magic activated, but then realised that she was suspended by only a single rope over a drop gods-only-knew how deep, and that if her blade so much as twitched too fiercely, she could potentially send herself tumbling to her death.

After that, she just put up with the darkness and held her weapon as tightly and securely as possible.

Upon reaching the bottom, the bunnygirl untied herself and tugged the rope twice, as per their prearranged signal, and the rest of them began pulling it back up to lower the next person, whilst she plopped down onto the snow-covered ground to sit and wait...

When he—one of the three men who weren’t the bearded guy and who had yet to ever actually speak to her—arrived, he was carrying a lantern which he had lit, and the light exposed the tunnel around them for what it was. Whilst the the floor directly beneath the hole was layered with snow, beyond that was simple stone. It was as bland as most mined areas with nothing left to harvest… whatever gemstones and crystals may have once bedecked these walls were now long gone.

Only one tunnel led away from the bottom of the shaft, but the light didn’t penetrate far into its gloom, and the lamp-holder just stood dully in place, unwilling to help her sate her curiosity. So she waited, complaining loudly about being bored, as the rest of the team were slowly and tediously lowered down, one by one.

There was another pulley mechanism at the bottom which allowed the group to lower their leader, who had waited until last before descending.

Once they were all together, the old man snapped at Ahana to, “Shut up an’ quit whinin’!”

And then led them off, deeper into the interconnecting system of mines and tunnels which wove beneath Inverxe’s surface.

She wasn’t quite sure, but as strange as her companions had seemed on the way here, something about them all was even more off now. Perhaps it was just the lamplight reflecting strangely in the narrow, rocky, subterranean passageways they traversed, but there now seemed to be an unusual gleam in the eyes of her clients. A ferocity. A hunger. An eagerness and enthusiasm that seemed totally at odds with what she had seen of their personalities so far.

They had even ceased keeping a healthy distance from her, seeming to forget all about the danger that the Cursed Sword posed in their desire to get ever further into the mines…

It could just be greed, she supposed… a desire to reap more of Inverxe’s crystal wealth… but she doubted it. Giving a small amount of the gems to a healer in order to increase the likelihood of their survival whilst they harvested more was a logical move, but these people didn’t seem logical. The look in their eyes was… fanatical. Deranged.

If what they coveted more than anything was material wealth then she was sure they'd never have even considered paying someone to aid them... there had to be something else here which they were after.

She dismissed such thoughts, though. Even after a few months on this frigid moon, she had yet to really investigate Inverxe’s mysterious depths in any meaningful way, and if this band of gemstone miners were going to be the ones to give her the opportunity to sate her curiosity then she wasn’t about to turn around and leave just because they happened to look a slight, tiny, little bit insane.

 

[Ahana Varma]

They walked. And walked. And walked… and walked some more.

The tunnels always headed downwards at at least a slight angle, though often they were steeper. In some cases they actually had to slow down in order to carefully climb down cliff-like walls. In others, when the drop wasn’t so far, they ordered Ahana to jump down, and then leapt after her.

Then, after waiting a minute or so for her aura to heal all their broken limbs, they’d get up and keep walking. She noticed while doing this that none of the seven let out more than a grunt or moan, no matter how badly injured they were in a fall.

If she’d been more sensible and less cocksure, she might’ve started to worry about how strange her companions all were. As it was, however, she was just pissed off that they could barely react like that, whilst she couldn’t help but cry out whenever both her legs were broken, or even resist letting out a steady stream of vitriol and cursing as she endured the agonising moments of waiting for them to realign and repair themselves.

If it wasn’t for her absolute certainty that her superhuman abilities made her just objectively better than other people, their ability to handle excruciating pain with no more than a whimper might actually have made her feel slightly inadequate.

***

The locations they passed through were unremarkable. Just empty, bland stone tunnels. Not even any support pillars or tracks or mine carts or tools or anything. Just empty passages. In fact, the further they went, the less sure she because that this was even a mine… or at least, that it had begun as a mine.

Nearer the entrance, they had occasionally come across spots where the path split, and she had thought nothing of it when the clients took one of them without hesitation; it wouldn’t exactly be strange for miners to know their way around a mine. As they went on, though, the tunnel system became ever more confusing and labyrinthine, with paths seemingly splitting off in almost every possible direction at every opportunity, causing her to suspect that most of the passages were dead ends or simply designed to lead explorers in circles… and yet at every turn, the miners seemed to know exactly where they were headed.

Like everything else suspicious about them, though, she didn’t bother to question it. Absolutely assured of her intrinsic superiority, she wasn’t intimidated in the slightest by these fools, despite their overwhelming numerical advantage and the fact that her own healing magic would likely work against her if they were to turn on her.

They stopped to rest and eat at one point, and actually built a fire this time. It didn’t really seem necessary to her, as the air down here was much warmer than up above… it was hard for her to tell, given that she could barely feel temperature variations at all, but she imagined that it might even be above 0°C, yet even so, the mere humans wanted their warm fire, despite the fact that they were underground and presumably had no idea how much fresh air was actually available in these tunnels, so they may well end up suffocating themselves when the flames ate up all their oxygen.

She didn’t object, though. She still wanted to see if cooking these vile rations made them any less repulsive, which she figured was probably worth the risk of potentially dying. Truthfully, ever since she had survived the hail of machine gun bullets which had decimated the entire rest of her tribe back on Mesa Roja, Ahana had been even more assured of her own superiority than before, and though even she realised how stupid it would sound to actually say this aloud, and so would never admit it, in her heart of hearts she believed that death was really something which only applied to other people. She just couldn’t imagine a universe without herself in it.

With bedrolls laid out and the fire burning, they took out more ration packs from the rucksacks they each wore, and one was passed wordlessly along to the bunnygirl. She held it out over the fire and got an odd look from the leader. Something in between incredulity, disgust, hatred and exasperation. She ignored him and the others ignored her. The thin, rectangular metal box in which the food was stored heated up quickly, though it didn’t bother her.

After discovering her immunity to cold, Ahana had experimented with heat as well, and discovered that she was just as resistant to that temperature extreme, so holding a metal object over a fire with her bare hands was no more of a hindrance to her than holding their hands in warm water would be for a regular person.

Once she was confident that it had been heated thoroughly, she removed her meal from the flames, grabbed her fork and dug in… and immediately realised that this had been a terrible mistake. The mystery meat and gristle had degraded into some sort of slimy, mulch-like gunk. And somehow, the taste had gotten even worse. She shovelled it down her throat as quickly as possible, in a futile effort at keeping from tasting it, then—a shade paler than normal—fought to keep from retching it back up again. When she asked for something to drink, she was handed a canteen filled with water, which she gulped down greedily.

It didn’t do a whole lot to remove the repulsive flavour of what she figured could have been anything from low-quality pet food at best, to a minor bioweapon at the worst, but it helped a little. She made a mental note to never let clients offer to share their rations with her again. In the town she’d settled in, all the packaged food which the miners ate while away from home was more or less the same; a bland but filling fare imported from The Hub… but the stuff which these ones scarfed down without complaint tasted as if it had been cooked by someone who actively hated those they were feeding.

They then slept, though down here in the dark she had no idea how long she was out for. She awoke to find one of the male clients shaking her roughly by the shoulder. Her right hand instantly shot out to the grip of her sword, but fortunately she realised that all he was trying to do was awaken her before she’d had time to lift the blade and gut the bastard… or possibly herself. It was hard to tell what b’Ackphiyr would decide to do at any given moment.

They’d already lit their lamps and packed up their bedrolls, and the fire had died down at some point during the night. So the rest of the group just stood around impatiently as she packed. Before long they had set off again, and shortly after that they took a passage which led into a vast cavern, a single ‘room’ so huge that their lanterns couldn’t even illuminate it fully. Pillars held up the ceiling at odd intervals, though they looked oddly natural, rather than man made.

There were also the occasional bones scattered about the floor. A wiser woman might have realised at this point that this was a really unhealthy place to be wandering around, and that she had made a terrible mistake by agreeing to come here. Ahana was merely curious. Even more so when she heard the soft shuffling and thumping of some great, misshapen beast lumbering around in the shadows, just outside the range of their lamps.

The miners gazed straight ahead and strode purposefully through the cavern, but Ahana lingered at the back of the group, gazing around, following the noises as best she could in hopes of catching a glimpse of whatever was out there.

She didn’t manage to, but there was one other thing of note about the room, which was its exit, which was clearly different from the rest of the tunnel system so far. There were a pair of huge, wide and thick stone doors lying open, which were covered in angular runes that she’d never seen the like of before, and which were set in an intricately carved, arched doorway, lined with human skulls.

She reached out to touch the doors, tracing a couple of runes with a finger, as if that could somehow allow her to identify them. Before she could ponder them further, though, the old man barked at her to get a move on, and she reluctantly dragged herself away.

After that, the tunnels were much more obviously man made, with the walls, ceilings and floors consisting of large, perfectly smooth, cuboid blocks of stone. These tunnels were all of an exactly identical height and width, and at each point at which they branched off—which were markedly less common than in the more natural area—there was another arch bedecked with real human skulls, though these ones lacked the intricate, glyph-coated doors, and were also much smaller than the main entrance.

By this point, she had noticed that her companions were breathing more heavily, and would occasionally smile slightly or even lick their lips when they thought she wasn’t paying attention. They were clearly anticipating something which had them very excited, and she knew that must meant that they were closing in on their destination at last.

Good. She still had no idea what it could be down here that had so enthralled these men and women… they didn’t exactly strike her as archeologists, so she doubted it was all this wonderful architecture. There had to be something more that had drawn them down into the planet’s depths, and she was eager to find out what it could possibly be.

 

[Ahana Varma]

The moment she saw the light at the end of the tunnel, she knew that this must be it. Their destination.

As they got closer, her entourage doused their lamps, and she recognised the style of the immense archway before her. Just as with the one that entered into that other great cavern, this arch held a pair of rune-coated doors. It was what lay beyond them that took her breath away, however.

The first thing she noticed upon walking through the doors was that the light was incredibly bright in here. The second thing she noticed was why the light was so bright. This cavern was vast, and closely resembled the first they’d travelled through, but whilst that one had been dark, the pillars that stretched up to the ceiling here were very generously bedecked in scores of lanterns, and in addition to those, much of the light in here was reflected, for the walls of the room were coated with millions upon millions of tiny gems, which dozens of people were slowly mining out… if this could even be called mining.

Rather than working with large pickaxes, the men and women here went about their work with tiny chisels and knives, apparently attempting to free the little crystals without so much as scratching them. They were being overseen by three shadowy figures, each dressed in a ragged mix of dark brown, dark grey and black fabrics, crudely sewn together to form layers of hooded robes and capes, in addition to which they all wore gloves, shoes and strips of cloth wrapped around their faces. Not a millimetre of skin was visible on any of them.

Two stood in the centre of the cavern, whispering to each other, whilst the third sat off near the back at a desk piled high with gems. In addition to the shoddy clothes of the other pair, this one wore a strange device on its face similar to a pair of glasses, but with a multitude of adjustable lenses. Ahana guessed—judging by what the figure seemed to be doing—that the contraption was designed to help it spot flaws in the crystals it was holding up and peering at.

Her group led her up to the two in the middle. She imagined that the reason for their layers of clothing must be secrecy—or perhaps just a weird sense of fashion—rather than for warmth, as the temperature had been rising the further they descended, and this room in particular felt almost hot... to such an extent that several of the workers had actually removed their tops.

The pair finished their conversation when the clients stopped before them, and one took a step forwards.

“This is her, then? The rumoured healer?” the voice that came from his mouth was a harsh rasp, and undoubtedly male.

“Yes, master, yes, we brought her just as you asked.” there was a pleading note in the bearded man’s voice, and he nodded frantically.

“Excellent. Well done, well done indeed. Come with us, and bring her too. It is time for your reward and her… induction.”

No sooner had the first speaker finished than his partner spoke up. They may have looked all but indistinguishable beneath their layers of clothing, but this man’s voice was slightly deeper, though no less hoarse, “Attention, loyal workers! Today, seven of your compatriots have returned from a difficult and dangerous quest, and as such have been judged worthy! They shall now receive the rewards due them for their unshakeable devotion! Continue your duties in our absence, and your own diligence will not go unnoticed! You all will receive your rewards in due time!”

The workers briefly paused to listen to the man’s words, then returned to their labours without comment. Apparently, they were about as talkative as the ones who had led her here. The third of the robed people also stood when the second man spoke, though rather than coming towards them, that one headed through another exit. An exit which seemed to be another of the natural tunnels, rather than the man-made variety. There were actually a few of those connected to this cavern, Ahana noticed, and only the one large set of doors through which she had come.

Without another word, the two remaining ‘masters’ turned and headed for the same exit through which their friend had gone, and her seven guides all simultaneously gestured for her to follow them, apparently not keen on letting her hang back anymore, in case she should run off or something.

She shrugged and did as she was bid. It was clear that the hooded figures were the ones who wanted her down here, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Generally she would work in unstable mines, where there was a significant risk of cave-ins which might necessitate the use of her powers… this place certainly didn’t seem like it was in any danger of falling apart, though.

After reaching the end of the cavern they took several turns through the confusingly laid-out, natural-seeming passages beyond, before stopping in a fairly large, roughly circular room with two exits at the opposite side, in which the person with the odd spectacles waited, along with a fourth robed figure.

Aside from the glasses they wore, the third one seemed all but identical to the first two, but the last had a slightly different style to their outfit, with a rag covering the lower portion of their face like a veil, rather than just more of the same strips of cloth which concealed the rest of their head, as the others had. As well as that, this one also had a bundle of cloth wrapped around their neck and shoulders as a shawl might be, in place of the capes worn by the other three.

She couldn’t be sure, but Ahana supposed that the different clothing could mean that this one might be the overall leader… or perhaps the fourth master was simply female, and that was how women dressed in these people’s culture. It was hard to tell, as all of their builds seemed identical to the bunnygirl’s eyes. Though that may have been largely due to the layers of clothing they covered themselves up with.

In addition to the two masters waiting on them, there were also four wooden constructs in the room, which looked an awful lot like torture racks, right down to the metal cuffs at each corner, to keep someone locked in place. For some reason, her seven companions didn’t really seem to notice these things… or at least, didn’t find them worthy of paying attention to. They were all too busy staring excitedly at their masters, desperate for whatever amazing reward it was that they were apparently due.

“So this is her?” the veiled master asked in a higher, softer voice than the other two. Ahana couldn’t really be sure, since the rasping tone was still present, but she figured that this one was probably female, so started thinking of them as a ‘her’.

“Yes.” responded the one who had first spoken to the group upon their arrival.

“Well then, let us begin.” snapped the third master impatiently, in a whiny, reedy voice, just as hoarse as those of the other masters, whilst fiddling around with their visor-device. The healer decided that this one was probably male.

“I’m sure this is all very interesting, and who doesn’t love rewards, but before we do anything else, anyone mind filling me in as to why exactly I’m here? ” Ahana demanded, making no attempt at keeping her tone polite.

The seven workers looked at her with horrified expressions. Aghast at the audacity she was displaying by interrupting the masters’ conversation, she imagined, and the thought made her smirk. The robed figures themselves simply stared for a few moments, before three of them very slowly turned to the first one.

“... Sorry.” he eventually hissed in a tone of barely contained rage, fists clenched at his side. It was clear that he’d failed in some way, and couldn’t stand having to admit it to his peers. Though she hadn’t the slightest clue what he was apologising for, his discomfort made her smirk grow into a cruel grin.

He took a deep breath, then spoke in a much smoother, more sibilant voice than before… though it remained somewhat hoarse, “Workers. Your rewards will now be forthcoming. Their truths are secret from those who have yet to prove themselves worthy, though, so you cannot let any hear us, you must be silent... do you understand?”

The seven nodded in unison.

The first master nodded back, then turned to look the bunnygirl in her eyes, “We have much that we can give you, healer, so do your part in this endeavour and you too shall be rewarded: stand still, be silent and obey our instructions… do you understand?”

The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea of doing as she was told. Rewards were nice, and there had been a lot of gems out there. Perhaps there were even better things that the masters could offer her. Yes, she was sure it would be a good idea to play along…

Although… a part of her railed against the idea of simply obeying without question. It wasn’t doing what they wanted that was the problem, it was the idea of being treated as just a normal person, just another unexceptional part of their ever-loyal workforce.

She felt compelled to nod to signify her agreement, as the others had done, but decided to shrug her shoulders a little as well. Even without speaking, and even with the promise of unimaginable rewards, she wasn’t about to just roll over like those lesser people.

The first master hesitated just a moment before nodding back.

“Was that a nod?” asked the second doubtfully, “It looked more like a-”

“It was!” snapped the first, his tone caustic. Ahana had nodded, and her grin was gone now, but even so, she found it just a little entertaining to see the first’s friends doubting his… persuasiveness, she supposed. Perhaps he was supposed to be the diplomat of the group, and rarely came across people as stubborn as the bunnygirl.

That made sense. She was just objectively superior to ordinary humans, after all, so of course the masters would have an easier time seducing the common folk to their cause… whatever that actually was.

The first master cleared his throat, “Alright. You four, secure... him, to this rack.”

Gesturing, he indicated four of the workers, then a fifth worker, then one of the racks. Without question, they did as they were commanded, and the man being locked there put up no resistance. In fact, his expression even seemed a little smug. Ahana supposed that this must be part of their mysterious reward, whatever it was.

The first then looked over at the fourth master, the female one, who stepped forwards, pulling a small, slender, saw-like tool from the folds of her robes as the four who had locked the cuffs backed off. She approached the man, pressed his head back against the wood with her left hand, holding it steady, then began to carefully saw through the front of his skull.

 

[Ahana Varma]

The other workers looked on blankly and indifferently, while the man being… operated on seemed to be in tremendous pain, his mouth open wide as if screaming, though no sound came out.

The robed figure wasn’t too happy either. Almost the moment she began cutting at his cranium, golden flames flared into life and quickly mended the damage. Yanking the miniature saw free, she whirled to face Ahana and snarled, “You will cease that!”

Ahana smirked for a moment, knowing she couldn’t, no matter what the fourth master instructed… but then, for some reason, she found herself compelled to try anyway, which she did, her smile fading.

Of course, it didn’t work. She’d never been able to control her aura, so she had no reason to expect she would be able to manage now. She didn’t even know why she’d bothered trying.

The desire to do as she was told didn’t vanish, though. Instead it only grew stronger.

She clenched her jaws and fists, and blinked rapidly, feeling suddenly light-headed and nauseous. Then... it was as if some tremendous pressure began building inside her head.

She stumbled, and the pressure became pain. She fell to her knees, eyes screwed shut, hands clutching at her face, nails digging into her skin, and like the man on the rack, her mouth opened as if screaming, but no sound came forth.

She had thought that it made sense to be quiet when they’d told her to, but now, in her ever-increasing agony, the bunnygirl was far past caring about the desires of the shadowy, robed masters… and yet, she still couldn’t bring herself to make the slightest noise, for some reason. First this shocked her, then, it horrified her, when she realised that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t bring herself to so much as squeak, never mind scream.

In fact, though it was hard to tell, she thought that attempting to speak might actually be further increasing the pain she was going through as a result of being unable to obey the fourth’s command.

Curled up in a foetal position on the ground, she trembled in agony, gasping and choking as she tried to force words out, tears flowing involuntarily down her cheeks. She had no idea how much time was passing. At one point, she thought she heard a hissed conversation, then a few shouts, though she couldn’t make out any words. It might have been hours, minutes, or only seconds, but she felt as if eternities were passing by as she suffered mutely.

“I can’t…” she’d been trying to scream, but when the words finally came, they were the softest of whispers. That didn’t last long, though. She’d been in agony after not obeying one command. After forcefully disregarding another, the pain in her mind increased exponentially. She may have blacked out at that point, but she couldn’t be sure. Whatever had happened, the pain hadn’t stopped, and she hadn’t had any trouble screaming after that.

Then it did stop, suddenly and without warning.

She was aware of a gloved hand on her shoulder. Something about it felt immensely comforting, though she couldn’t put her finger on why, exactly.

“Breathe. Slow, deep breaths.” instructed the voice of the first master, “Just sit still and stay calm.”

She did as she was told. She opened her eyes and saw golden fire. She looked down at her hands and saw more on her fingertips. When the fires faded, the healer realised that her hands were bloodied. She was also drenched in sweat and breathing in short, sharp gasps. She had never felt so vulnerable in all her life, not even after being gunned down and left to die in a pool of her own blood back on Mesa Roja.

And that should have made her angry. In fact, it ought to have made her practically insensate with rage, she was sure. But she had been told to stay calm, and although she was now fully aware that the masters must be messing with her thoughts in some way, she still had no clue how to resist their orders. And so, calm she remained.

She sat there and listened as the first master told her that she had been in such pain that she’d actually tried to claw her own face off, and that the reason the second master wasn’t currently here was that her screaming had been so very, very loud, that he had needed to go and reassure the workers that everything was alright. At this point, she glanced over at the seven workers in this room, and found them all staring straight forwards, features slack, eyes dull and glazed. She had no idea what the masters had done to them during her breakdown, but it wasn’t anything that anyone sane could truthfully call ‘reassuring’, of that she was certain.

He then asked her about her ability, and she answered his questions in a calm monotone. The remaining masters didn’t seem especially pleased to find that she couldn’t deactivate her aura, but she was past caring, and when the second returned not long after, he seemed equally irritable.

They had a short, whispered conversation, which the healer didn't even try to pay attention to, then the fourth bustled off down a corridor, whilst the rest waited. After about thirty seconds they began grumbling and muttering under their breaths. Clearly, patience was not one of the masters’ virtues.

When she returned, the fourth was carrying a much larger bone saw than the almost delicate surgical tool she had first attempted to use to slice through her victim’s skull. Ahana wasn't sure what difference the four of them expected it to make, but figured she'd wait and see rather than telling them their plan was dumb. They might not take that too well. Normally she'd likely just have made an insulting comment about their intelligence and to hell with the consequences... but being completely and utterly at their mercy had left her feeling a little less inclined towards dickish behaviour than usual.

The female master began cutting at the man’s skull once again, and this time he gave no indication of being in pain, only stared straight ahead emptily, as if he'd been lobotomised. Whatever the second had been doing to the workers, the bunnygirl doubted it would be particularly good for their long-term mental health.

The gold flames appeared almost immediately, but this time there was little the restorative aura could do, as the wide, metal blade was still lodged firmly in the bone. When it was moved away, though, to cut open another part of the skull, the damage would heal in a moment. Ahana knew that this wasn't going to work, and was confused as to why they would expect it to.

Gradually, however, it dawned on her that the master wasn't removing the saw. In her first attempt, the fourth had sought to cut around the skull, so that it could simply be lifted off and the brain scooped out… or at least, that's how Ahana imagined it working… she was hardly an expert in the field of biology. In this case, though, the woman was simply cutting through bone and brain alike.

Of course, as was bound to happen, the golden flames soon flickered and vanished. Oddly, the masters seemed confused by this, and after a moment of staring at the corpse with the bone saw halfway through its cranium, they whirled around and began questioning her.

In the same monotone as before, her mouth answered their questions on automatic, not allowing her any freedom to so much as choose the words that left her lips. It was sickening, and words could not describe the level of hatred she held in her heart for these manipulative bastards. Bad enough using such perverse and invasive mind games on a regular human being, but on her, on Ahana herself—the single greatest, most impressive individual on any of the worlds of the Crossroads—wasn't just a crime, it was a blasphemy.

For all her loathing of them, though, their sick magics kept her calm and composed as she explained that of course that man had died; people tended to do that when you stuck huge pieces of metal into their brains. The masters argued that it was possible to heal any injury, no matter how grievous, and that there were even those out there who could restore the dead to life.

She would've burst out laughing had someone told her something so ridiculous in other circumstances. The very idea that there might be other healers out there somewhere that were more powerful than she was was bad enough, but resurrection? Even fairy tales were more realistic. As it was though, she wasn’t in the mood to see the funny side. Although she did manage to spare a moment to feel immensely proud of her subconsciousness when she found herself telling the four masters—still in a flat monotone, still speaking on automatic—that they were wrong, and also idiots for believing that such a thing was possible.

The second master was so pissed off that he literally shook with rage. His hands were curled into fists and he seemed as if he might lunge at her at any moment. She actually hoped he would. There might be a chance, she guessed, that a few blows to the head could knock some sense into her and free her of this damned paralysis. Unfortunately, before her theory could be put to the test, a few cutting remarks from his fellows about his similarity to the barbaric ‘lesser races’ who employed such unsophisticated tactics as melee combat had him quickly straightening his posture, backing off a couple paces, and breathing deeply in an effort at keeping from losing his temper.

He then pronounced that she was utterly useless to them, and insisted that she be disposed of immediately, just like ‘the others‘... by which she assumed he meant other healers whom they’d tricked down here in the past. She didn’t really know how common the gift of healing was, as she’d never met anyone else with that sort of power, but if they were hoping to keep this up until they found someone able to break the immutable law of death itself, they’d be at it a while.

The masters argued. The Third was uninterested and mostly stayed out of it, but the first was certain that he could turn her into one of their mindless automata and put her to work in their mining operation, even if she wasn’t able to serve her primary purpose, whilst the fourth master made a suggestion of using her ‘for parts’. Ahana didn’t really know what this might entail exactly, but she got the distinct impression that she wouldn’t survive it.

She knew she didn’t have long left now. They were bound to come to an agreement soon, and then it’d be over for her… she’d either be magically lobotomised or just killed outright. If she was to have any chance at breaking free, it would have to be now.

She flexed her mental muscles, struggling with all the brainpower she could muster to throw off the oppressive force that kept her contained, turning her own body into a prison.

She failed.

She wasn’t exactly super-keen to admit it, even to herself, but intelligence had never really been one of the bunnygirl’s strong suits.

Still, it clearly wasn't working, whether she'd believe the reason why or not, so next she attempted to burst free through anger alone. For several seconds, nothing happened, but she refused to let herself become disheartened, certain that that would doom her. Instead, she raged inside the confines of her own mind at the presumptuous bastards who had dared to treat her like a slave, who were even now arguing over her as if she were no more than livestock.

For someone who had been raised from birth to believe that she was holy, that she was the next best thing to an actual god, their actions were beyond merely infuriating… she was made apoplectic by what they had done to her. Merely trying to kill her was nothing; she could shrug off all but the most severe injuries with ease, thanks to her powers, but bending and manipulating her thoughts, turning her own mind against her, making her weak and helpless and vulnerable… she loathed them all with every fibre of her being.

It began with a twitch. Just a tiny movement of the little finger of her right hand, which was still wrapped around the hilt of the demonblade.

That miniscule motion was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the crack that burst the dam, the pebble that started the landslide… before even a second had passed from that tiny twitch of her finger, Ahana was on her feet, roaring in rage and agony—for the mental backlash of forcing her way through the telepathic locks placed on her was tremendous—and brandishing the Cursed Sword of b’Akphiyr with wild abandon.

She could barely tell what was going on. She was seeing red—which may have been due to her incandescent fury, or perhaps simply a result of all the blood flying about—and her vision was edged in black. Dimly, she realised that she was almost to the point of losing consciousness. It wasn’t just the blacklash, either; the masters were hitting her with some sort of mind-magic in a futile effort at holding her at bay.

She hacked at them, at everything. The healer was far past the point of trying to direct her weapon, she was merely focused on screaming and swearing as loudly as possible, and putting as much force as her muscles could muster behind each and every swing. Letting out all her anger in an explosion of brutality.

She cut the masters, she cut their dead-eyed workers, and she cut herself. She paid little attention, allowing b’Akphiyr his freedom for once. There were golden flames everywhere as her divine aura attempted to restore the stricken, but she and her demon were having none of it. As great as her magic was, it could not outpace the sheer force of their rampage.

***

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been at it for when she finally came to her senses. It was abundantly clear that she was the only one left in this room alive, though. The floor was covered in chunks of worker and master, all stained red by blood. She was swaying slightly on the spot, utterly spent, and her limbs felt like lead… except for her left foot, which burned.

Looking down, she saw that the entire front half of it had been hacked off. Golden flames flickered as the disembodied body part reattached itself, and then vanished, leaving her whole once more, the last of her self-inflicted mutilations reversed.

She fell to her knees—hearing one crack loudly as it struck the stone floor, but barely feeling the pain—and slumped over. Her face had landed on something soft, slimy, stinking, and very wet.

It was disgusting, and there were likely few places worse to go to sleep than on top of someone's spilt guts… but it’d do, she thought as she drifted off, her body at last giving in to exhaustion.

 

[Ahana Varma]

“Ugh…” with a groan, she opened her eyes. A moment later, she heard someone moving closer.
was on her back, lying on some furs, and staring straight up. High above her she could see lanterns hanging from pillars, and on the ceiling gemstones glittered. She was back in the mining chamber, it seemed.

“How are you feeling?” a young woman’s face entered her field of vision. Ahana could hear other conversations in the background, and there was a lot of moving about.

“Like I could sleep for another decade. Who are you, and what's going on here?”

The woman smiled. She had a pretty, pale face, chin-length blonde hair and blue eyes, “My name is Sarah Kovac, I was one of the miners here… you saved us. When you killed the monsters, their hold over us was broken, more or less. It wasn't instant, it took most of us a few hours to recover from what they'd done… and some still haven't gotten back to the way they were... they may never, for all we know... oh, and there are a few more who've fallen comatose. And there's that group that you killed. Most of us have recovered, though.”

Her smile had faded as she spoke, but now she made a spirited attempt at brightening up again, “Once the majority of us were better we discussed what to do next and went to see if we could find whoever it was that had killed the monsters. That's when-”

“Alright, alright, hold up. That’s the second time you’ve mentioned these monsters... what are they, exactly?” Ahana interrupted, not remembering seeing anything other than people down here.

“Oh. Uh, we used to call them ‘the masters’ before, but after being freed none of us really felt like continuing to use that term, and after what we discovered… well, ‘monsters’ seemed appropriate.”

“What you discovered?” the bunnygirl raised an eyebrow.

“Yes. As I said, we went to find our saviour.” she beamed down at the healer. It seemed that these people had decided she was some sort of noble hero. Rather than dissuading them of that ridiculous notion, Ahana decided to play along for the time being. They might prove useful, she figured, “We found you, asleep amid the remains of some workers and the monsters… and we saw their faces for the first time.”

The girl held something up. A slimy, purplish, little tendril, covered partly in congealed blood.

“And what's that supposed to be then?”

“It's a tentacle. The masters had them on their faces. At least, they did before you hacked them to pieces… we’d had no idea, all these years… but they were illithids this entire time. We were told that those who had proven themselves were being rewarded… but all along, they must just have been harvesting their brains.”

“Their brains? Why?”

“Hm? Do you know what illithids are, miss...?”

“Haven’t a clue. And it’s Ahana. Ahana Varma.”

“Nice to meet you, Ahana. What about the name ‘Mind Flayers’? You may have heard them called that.”

“Nope.”

“Huh. Are you... not from Inverxe, then?”

“Nah. Mesa Roja.”

“I see.” she nodded, “That makes sense; they don't really tend to leave this moon. Illithids look roughly humanoid, but are genderless, purple-skinned, and have octopus heads.”

“Wait. What?” the miner had stated that all in such a matter of fact manner that Ahana wasn’t actually sure she’d heard her correctly. It sounded as if she’d just said there was a species on Inverxe which had sea creatures for heads, and—judging by her tone—that this was regarded as a totally unexceptional thing by the moon’s other denizens.

“Yeah. Octopus heads… well, maybe I should say 'tetra'pus heads, I suppose, since they only have four tentacles, rather than eight.”

“.. Right. Well, okay then- Look, can you get that thing out of my face?” Sarah was still holding the little tentacle just inches from Ahana's face, held between one forefinger and thumb, and was shaking it slightly—for some reason—causing it to wiggle around as if it was still alive.

“Oh, sorry.” she tossed it away. Someone a few paces behind her cried out in revulsion as it struck him. Both women ignored the man.

“Okay. So, why do these tentacle-people want brains?”

“They eat them. Illithids are such powerful psychics that regular food isn’t enough for them; their bodies require a constant supply of psychic energy in order to survive, and they can only get that from devouring the brains of sentient beings.”

“Huh. Weird… and do you think there might be more of them around here somewhere?” she tried to pass the question off as casual, and thought she managed a fairly good job of keeping the trepidation from her voice. In truth, though, she wasn’t at all keen on fighting those things again. Just because she’d eventually managed to break free of their control once didn’t necessarily mean that she could do so next time.

Thankfully, though, the blonde woman shook her head, “No. In all the time that we’ve been down here, none of us have ever seen more than those four. They didn’t share their secrets with us, but there must have been some reason that they were working apart from the main Combine… uh, that is, the rest of the illithids, I mean.”

“Right.” the bunnygirl nodded, working to keep the relief from her voice. Then, for the first time since waking, she actually looked around, now paying attention to more than just her immediate surroundings, “And what’ll you all do now then?”

Miners were bustling about the cavern, removing lanterns from the support pillars and packing other things into crates and backpacks. More than a few, though, were slacking in their work, constantly casting sidelong glances her way. Interested in their rescuer, it seemed.

Sarah smiled again, “We’ve been preparing to leave. We’re going to get back above ground, find the nearest town we can, and start making new lives for ourselves. With all these crystals, it shouldn’t be hard for us. You’re more than willing to come along if you’d like… if you don’t have some adventure or mission you’re working on.”

The bunnygirl considered how to respond to that for a moment, then her eyes widened as she realised something: she had no idea how to get back to the village she’d been staying in, even after they reached the surface. Hell, she didn't even know the name of the place, so she could hardly ask directions. And she’d left all her belongings there, including the gems she’d been paid for taking on this job. She swore.

The miner woman was a little alarmed by the healer’s reaction, and asked what was wrong. When Ahana told her, Sarah burst out laughing. They had no shortage of crystals, she said, and they would, of course, share them with their saviour.

Being one of these hero-types had its perks, it seemed.

That concern put to rest for now, the healer asked if they had some sort of bathing area around here… or even just some spare water. She was still covered in dried blood and gods-only-knew what other bodily fluids, and didn’t really fancy remaining that way for any longer than she absolutely had to. The young woman told her that there was indeed somewhere nearby, and offered to take her there.

When Ahana sat up, though—causing the fur blanket which had been lain over her to slip down—the blonde screamed and threw an arm over the bunnygirl’s chest.

After a moment of surprised hesitation, Ahana turned to the other woman and grinned, “Wow, how forward of you. Not even going to take me out to dinner first?”

Sarah’s face turned beet-red, and she stammered out an awkward apology, before explaining her actions by pointing out that the bunnygirl’s clothing had been really badly torn in the fight with the monsters, and at this point didn’t really cover much of anything.

Ahana—without the slightest concern for all of the onlookers—peeled away Sarah’s arm to check for herself. No sooner had she done so than the blonde’s head whipped around and she began shrieking at all the ‘damned perverts’ to look away.

Ahana found the prudish attitude mildly irritating, but the miner made up for it by immediately going on to threaten to use a rusted spoon to gouge out the eyeballs of anyone she caught sneaking a peek. The healer couldn’t help but grin at that.

Still, there was no doubt that Sarah was correct, especially after she’d lifted the blanket some more to check the state of her skirt. She’d either need some new clothes, or she’d most likely be arrested for indecent exposure the moment they reached a village. Thankfully, one man—who was making a point of keeping his back to them—spoke up to assure her that they had plenty of spare clothing, so it would be easy enough to find her something to wear.

After the blonde woman had elicited a promise that someone female would bring Ahana’s new outfit to her in the bathing room, the bunnygirl wrapped herself in the blanket and allowed Sarah to lead her off.

What she was shown to, after taking several turns down a few of the ‘natural’ passages that connected to the cavern, was an enormous hot spring. It could surely have fitted almost a hundred people comfortably.

When Ahana mentioned to her guide that all of the miners at once could easily have made use of the huge pool, Sarah immediately went red again. Smirking, the healer asked a few pointed questions, until the young woman gave in and stopped trying to avoid the subject.

She said that whilst under the control of the monsters, the miners had cared for nothing apart from receiving their rewards, and so things like modesty had never even crossed their minds. In fact, cleanliness never would have crossed their minds either, had it not been for the illithids’ complaints about their smell. So they had bathed and washed their clothes on command.

Not once had any of them thought of sex, or thought to be ashamed. They’d been allowed to focus on nothing but the reward. Now, though, no longer controlled but still with all of their memories intact, the blonde was horribly embarrassed to even think of it. Which Ahana found hilarious.

Sarah wasn’t too pleased at being laughed at, and glared at the bunnygirl, actually pouting a little… which only caused Ahana to laugh harder. She suggested that the blonde lighten up a bit as she dropped the blanket and stripped off the ragged remnants of her clothes, then climbed into the spring.

She invited Sarah to join her, but was pretty vehemently rejected. The miner sat, leaning against a wall, arms folded and legs crossed, steadfastly vigilant in her efforts at keeping on the lookout for anyone thinking to take a glance at their not-so-noble rescuer in the buff. Not that Ahana was really going out of her way to make the young woman’s self-imposed role as chastity guardian (or whatever the hell it was she thought she was achieving) any easier for her...

When a muscular woman whom Ahana guessed might be in her mid-forties showed up carrying a bundle of furs, the bunnygirl was standing up in the water—which came to just above her knees—lathering soap into her hair and ears, facing directly towards the blonde, and by extension the room’s entrance, which she was sat right beside.

The new miner drew up short just a couple paces into the room, her gaze locking hungrily on the healer’s body. Ahana grinned. Here was someone who might be more susceptible to an invitation, she thought.

But then Sarah was behind the older, stronger, taller woman, hissing into her ear in a voice like ice, “Do you think my fucking warning was only for the guys, Ingrid? Get the fuck out of my sight before I tear out your windpipe and garrote you with it.”

The threat may not really have made a whole lot of sense, but it had the bunnygirl grinning nonetheless. And she broke out into laughter once more when she saw the bigger miner go pale, drop the clothes and rush off with a mumbled apology.

“Wow, that was impressive. You must have quite the reputation around here to freak someone out like that… you ever actually carried out one of those threats?”

Sarah glared at her, “Well, given that I was just a kid before the monsters took us, and I’ve now been free of their control for about a day… no. I have not… now, are you going to finish up in there any time this century, or would you rather we leave without you?”

“Ouch. So cold, Sarah.”

“You might warm up a bit if you put on some clothes… or at least sat down in the water.”

“You know,” Ahana said, smiling slyly, “I’m sure I’d be done much faster if some grateful rescuee was willing to come over and help me wash all this blood out of my hair.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

The healer laughed. She’d not thought too highly of Sarah’s adoring and helpful attitude when she’d first woken up, but now that she’d gotten to see a little of the young woman’s true personality, she was growing more fond of her.

***

When she was finally done and had dressed in the thick, furred clothing she’d been left, Sarah led her back to the cavern, where the others were finally finished packing, and had even produced some makeshift stretchers to carry those who were unconscious.

There were more than a few people who came up and thanked her for freeing them from the clutches of the evil illithids, which Ahana took in her stride, accepting their praise but not bragging or anything; acting like it was just all in a day’s work. She figured that this was how heroes were supposed to behave.

Once she got back to a town she could give up the charade of being some selfless adventurer (or whatever it was that these people actually believed her to be) and go back to acting like an ass to absolutely everyone. Until then, however—and especially until they got out above ground, as she stood no chance whatsoever of navigating this labyrinth by herself—she’d just have to put up with the adoration.

 

[Ahana Varma]

The miners had no one leader, but rather a few of the older men and women had formed a little council of sorts, and were now running the show. Sarah introduced Ahana to them all, and she did her best to act like she was a good and decent person, then they all headed off.

They had crates packed full of supplies, such as their mining equipment, those disgusting rations, canteens of fresh water, and, of course, plenty of gemstones. The bunnygirl wasn’t quite sure how they planned to get all of those out of here, given that she remembered there being quite a few vertical cliff-faces on her way down, but she didn’t mention it; these people surely knew the area better than her, so she’d just assume that they knew what they were doing until proven otherwise.

True enough, she soon realised that they were following a different route, with less steep inclines, so as to avoid those issues. It had still taken them out through the main doors of the mining cavern, into the built-up area in which each junction included at least one archway bedecked with human skulls.

The people looked around warily as they walked, and Ahana was reminded of the shuffling, thumping thing she’d heard patrolling the vacant cavern on her way down here. Knowing what she now did about the shadowy masters who’d run the crystal-(and-brain)-harvesting operation, she supposed that the creature, whatever it was, had likely only let them pass by unmolested due to the mind-altering powers of the mine’s illithid overseers.

With them now gone, it seemed like any such guardbeasts patrolling the tunnels would have gone feral, and could therefore be safely assumed to be hostile.

They encountered nothing on the first day of travelling. Though they were still generally heading uphill as they walked, there was no question that with this way having a much less steep incline than the path down that she’d taken would have, it'd take them significantly longer to reach the surface than it had for her to get down here. Luckily, they had far more supplies, so in theory at least, that shouldn't be an issue.

On the other hand, they also decided to post sentries in shifts to keep watch as the others slept, so presumably there was some danger in these passages, which indicated that staying down here for extended periods of time may not be the safest of options. Ahana asked Sarah about it, as the other woman had mostly remained near her for the journey thus far, however she didn't get much of an answer, and didn’t want to press the issue, lest she look like a wimpy, little bitch, afraid of some dumb animals. If she was gonna wake up to find some alien monstrosity gnawing on her face then so be it. It’d be nothing she couldn’t survive.

Probably.

They ate their vile rations, and unlike previously, when the mind-slaved miners had seemed not to notice the putrid taste of these things, it was blatantly apparent to her now that, free of any mental constraints, these people were having just as much trouble keeping this gunk down as she was.

Dinner done with, she insisted upon being one of those on first watch. Some of the others tried to insist that she’d done more than enough for them and didn’t need to help out with this. Both the leadership group and Sarah kept themselves out of the discussion, though, and the bunnygirl was soon able to convince them to let her help. In truth, though, it wasn’t really a case of her wanting to do her part; she just didn’t trust these people to manage sentry duty properly.

She may have been the most pampered girl in her tribe during her youth, but she’d still been born and brought-up in one of Mesa Roja’s bandit gangs; Ahana was no stranger to danger, and had performed her fair share of night watches in the past. She doubted the same could be said for these men and women, who had been living as puppets of the illithids for years.

She would have volunteered to stay up all night, every night (though calling them ‘nights’ was rather misleading, as down here in the moon’s depths, with no sky and no reliable method of tracking time, these periods of rest were simply arranged whenever the group decided that they couldn’t go on any further), had it not been for the fact that her body did still require sleep, just like anyone else’s, magic aura or not.

On that first watch, Sarah sat with her, and told the healer that she knew why she’d really wanted to join in. For someone who’d initially seemed so fawning and grateful, the blonde was apparently amongst the most observant of the miners. Ahana admitted that she wasn’t all that confident in the others’ perceptive skills, and after being unable to convince the bunnygirl that they could manage this, Sarah agreed to take separate shifts from Ahana from then on, so that someone whom she considered competent could be on the lookout for at least most of the night.

On the second day, nothing more interesting happened, other than the group being forced to take a detour when they came to an area in which the floor had been split by a narrow chasm. They could likely all have easily leapt across, but probably not whilst carrying the injured, and definitely not with their supply crates in tow.

On the third day, they had still to even exit the built-up area, never mind making it back to the surface. It was becoming very clear to Ahana that this journey was going to last a while. That night she took one look at her rations and rations and had to struggle not to gag despite her hunger. Even before tasting them, she felt sick. She refused to eat. She wasn’t the only one.

On the fourth day, they finally left the creepily-decorated tunnels and headed back out into the natural-seeming section. For all their watches, they had come across no hint of danger in that section. It was this one, though, that she suspected they’d find more opposition in. After all, it was in one of these caverns that she’d heard that large beast moving about before.

She was actually looking forward to it a little. As time passed, she was growing more frustrated. Having to act like some kindly, noble hero was pissing her off, but she didn’t want to risk getting left behind down here, so she was forcing herself to play nice. She could really use some release for all her violent impulses. It didn’t help that there were some—those people the blonde had previously described as not having fully recovered—who’d seemed to be practically on the point of mental breakdowns since entering the natural area… even more so than previously, that was.

They shivered and shook, even though they were all wrapped up warm, and still deep under the surface of Inverxe. And a couple had taken to muttering to themselves constantly. They were so annoying.

Worst of all, though, was the backtracking.

The miners seemed a lot less sure of where they were going in this maze of passages than the group had that had brought her down here. Perhaps it was due to the route they were taking, or perhaps it was in some way related to the strange magics of the illithid. Ahana didn’t know if it would have been possible for them to somehow mentally guide their mind-slaves around their lair, but she didn’t know they couldn’t, so it wouldn’t have surprised her.

Every time the group stopped to discuss a turn for a while, then went back and took another, she lost a little faith in them.

That night, she refused to eat again. Several others turned down the 'food' as well, though a couple of those who hadn’t eaten the day before gave in to their hunger and choked down the repugnant muck.

One of the unstable miners, a middle-aged, lean, black man with dreadlocks was allowed to sit up and join the watch that night—though they hadn’t previously wanted the help of those loons—simply because no one could get him to sleep without giving him a knock to the head, which they weren’t willing to do. He didn’t exactly contribute much, as he did nothing but sit, rocking back and forth, staring at a wall and weeping, whilst mumbling and muttering about ‘voices coming closer’.

Ahana managed to drone him out. She did not, however, manage to ignore the comatose woman who’d been left near where she was sitting for the duration of her watch, as she stared off down a corridor. Despite being clearly unconscious, about halfway though the bunnygirl’s shift, the woman began moaning softly, speaking in her sleep. It was almost all just single words, but they all shared the theme of food, eating & hunger.

This did not make Ahana feel any better, given that she was already fucking starving. Eventually, she knew she couldn’t put it off any longer. And that was why, when Sarah woke up and came across to take over for her, at the same time as the few other sentries on duty were switching over, she found the bunnygirl chewing absentmindedly on something as she stared into the darkness.

“Ugh. What is that smell, Ahana?”

The healer looked across at her questioningly, forgetting for a moment about what she was gnawing on.

“Gods.” Sarah moaned, taking a step back, her face visibly paler than usual even in the dim lamplight. Her expression a mix of horror and betrayal. As low as her opinion of Ahana had gotten after getting to know her over the course of, well, the first hour or so after the bunnygirl had woken up in her presence, it was clear that she’d had higher expectations than this. Much higher expectations, “What the hell have you done?”

She sounded as if she was about to cry.

“Ah.” the healer responded awkwardly, as she tried to come up with a good response to that question. She removed the cooked, human finger from her mouth.

 

[Ahana Varma]

Those others who were awake had all heard Sarah’s question, and come over to see what was going on. They were now staring at her with expressions similar to the blonde’s.

Except for the crazy dreadlock guy, who was completely ignoring her, and was urgently shaking another of the watchers—who paid him absolutely no attention—by the shoulder, while still muttering about the voices in his head.

The miners didn’t exactly have much in the way of weapons. Their gear was designed to harvest the delicate crystals from those large caverns, so what picks they had were little, one-handed things, and others carried thin knives, which may have been intended to pry the stones free of the rock around them. They all held something, though, and didn’t appear too pleased with her.

Ahana carefully picked up her cursed greatsword in her right hand. They tensed, preparing to leap at her the moment she made a threatening move.

When she loudly slapped her left hand on the ground, palm-down, a few of them flinched back, perhaps expecting some sort of magic trick. They had thought she was an adventurer, after all, so it wouldn’t exactly have been surprising if she could have had the power to make the ground disappear from under them or impale people on spikes or somesuch. Even the commonest of commoners in the Crossroads knew that magic existed, though they may not necessarily have seen it with their own two eyes.

When nothing happened, they hesitated, and into their silence, Ahana spoke, “Here, watch this.”

And then, before anyone could react, she lifted her immense cleaver and brought it down with all the strength she could muster. It jerked to the side just before reaching her fingers, instead embedding itself in the back of her palm, just behind her knuckles. She swore through her teeth at the pain, then raised the blade slightly. After bringing it down twice more, she had finally succeeded in hacking off most of her left hand.

Though by that point she'd already been grabbed by a couple of roaring miners, who were struggling to haul her to her feet and tear the blade away from her before she could maim herself further. Now that she'd done more or less what she'd intended, she stopped resisting, letting one of them yank the sword from her hand and toss it to the ground. Many others were shouting or screaming. Everyone not comatose was well and truly awake.

They all saw the golden flames when they formed around the bleeding stump of her hand. The entire group quietened down—even the crazy people—and watched as the fire gradually reshaped itself to take on the form of her missing hand. She wiggled her blazing, golden fingers at them. Then the flames slowly withdrew, leaving pristine skin in their place, as her flesh and bone rebuilt themselves.

She turned to Sarah, “It was mine. No crimes were committed. What the hell I did was cut off my own finger, use my lamp to cook it… then start eating it. Also... this may not have been the first time tonight that I’ve done that. I was really hungry.”

She paused. She two men who dragged her to her feet had released her and were now standing, staring slack-jawed at her, like many of the others. She raised her hands in a placating manner, “Okay, now I realise that… uh… eating yourself may not really seem like the smartest of ideas, but with my healing aura working the way it does, there’s not really any drawback… other than the pain, I guess.”

“Wait.” the voice came from some random guy in the crowd. No one she’d spoken to before. Pretty tall, muscular, a goatee, brown hair, “Healing aura?”

“Yeeesss.” she said, grinning as she drew the word out, “I’m glad someone caught that.”

Not breaking eye contact, the man lifted the slender knife he was wielding—which looked pitifully fragile in his meaty hand—and pricked the thumb of his other hand with it. A tiny flicker of golden light, the size of a candle flame, lit up briefly before vanishing to reveal clear skin.

“Amazing,” he said reverently, turning his gaze down upon his thumb for a moment, before looking up once more, “who are you?”

The healer grinned wider and sketched a quick bow, “Ahana Varma, former High Priestess of the Proffered Heart Tribe of South-Eastern Mesa Roja, and Custodian of the Divine Conflagration… at your service.”

“Hmph. Those are some fancy-sounding titles, Miss Custodian, but why not mention this amazing power of yours before now? We’ve been eating that crap for days.” demanded one of the leaders, a grey haired man with a short beard, who was even taller and stronger than the miner who’d just cut himself. He was also more handsome. Kinda just like an upgraded version of that first guy. She wondered if they might be related.

Ahana smiled lopsidedly and shrugged, “Well... honestly, it never occurred to me to actually use the aura this way until tonight… as you might imagine would be the case for someone with this kind of power, I've never really had to struggle to make ends meet, so eating my own body parts to survive hasn’t exactly been a necessity up to now.”

There was a brief chorus of understanding comments from many of the onlookers, before one voice rose up above the rest, “It isn’t a fucking necessity now!”

Sarah was glaring at the bunnygirl, tears in the corners of her eyes, her expression having morphed from horror to revulsion. The hint of betrayal remained. In fact, as she turned to glance around at the others, Ahana could see that it had grown. It wasn’t just about her any more, the young woman was appalled that that everyone else seemed able to just shrug this whole thing off like it was nothing.

“We have plenty of rations! So what if they taste awful!? We’re talking about godsdamned cannibalism here!” she looked at the leader-guy who’d spoken, “How can you even consider this!? Just because we have to eat some food that doesn’t exactly taste nice, what kind of a monster would even contemplate–!?”

The rest of her words were drowned out by the shouts of others. Some screamed their agreement, sticking nobly to their principles, whilst others roared objections, not seeing the problem with taking advantage of the unlimited source of meat which they now found available to them. Meat which didn’t taste so bad that they had to struggle to keep from puking the instant it came into contact with their taste buds.

One of the other leaders, a black guy with a long beard, moved to stand beside Sarah, placing a hand supportively on her shoulder, whilst the other two—both women, both well-muscled, but one tall and with a sour, lined face, the other short and still attractive despite her age—stood by the one who’d spoke up in favour of Operation: Cannibalism.

The shouting went on a while, before at last calming when the leaders all held up their hands for silence. When it finally came, the man by Sarah’s side was the one to speak up first, “You can’t force us to engage in this barbarity. We refuse to-”

“Relax. No one’s forcing anyone. If you high and mighty types want to eat that vomit-flavoured crap then you’re more than welcome to the whole lot. Go wild, stuff your faces, we don’t care. We’ve been calling them rations, but don’t feel the need to ration them out at all. Have three meals a day. Hell, have a dozen a day for all we care. Right?” the big, grey-haired guy asked the crowd, grinning. Most of the people had sided with him… only about a third of the miners had gone to stand by Sarah. There was a chorus of assenting voices, along with more than a few laughs. Ahana smirked. The blonde woman and those with her did not.

They didn’t speak up, though, and so the big guy continued, “But just as we’re not going to try and force anything on you, we expect the same courtesy in return. No whining about how evil and sinful we all are, alright? We literally hate the taste of that muck so much that we’re actually willing to maim ourselves—temporarily, anyway—in order to avoid having to taste it. Surely that’s enough of a sacrifice without having to listen to some religious crap about all our souls being doomed, ey?”

More assent, more laughter. The opposition remained stone-faced, for the most part, though Sarah’s tears had spilled down her cheeks now. She stumbled up to the man unsteadily, clearly hurt by his decision to stand by the bunnygirl’s plan far more so than by anything Ahana herself had chosen to do or say. She looked at him as if he’d just brutally slaughtered every childhood pet she’d ever owned right in front of her eyes.

Both sides had quietened down now. The only one still speaking was that crazy dreadlock guy, who’d raised his voice quite a bit. As he was still just going on about hearing things, though, they all tuned him out. There would be time to try and calm down the mentally unstable dude once this confrontation had been dealt with.

She shook her head in confused disbelief, “How? How could you go along with this!?”

The grey-haired man’s expression turned solemn and he reached out to touch her shoulder, as that other leader had done. Before he could, he suddenly made a choking noise.

Then there was a small spurt of blood, as Sarah pulled free the dagger she’d just stuck in his gut. Before anyone had really taken in what she’d done, she’d had time to stab him twice more. And then, for a few seconds, all hell broke loose.

Everyone was suddenly screaming and cursing, and each group laid into the other savagely, whilst Ahana watched, smirking slightly. Two men dragged Sarah back from the boss-guy. She struggled, but they had her in a firm grip and were both larger than she was. One of them punched her in the mouth, bursting her lip and causing her to drop the knife. He then punched her again, and this time she spat out a tooth, along with a mouthful of blood.

The brief conflict came to an end when the man who’d been stabbed in the gut three times roared, “Enough!”

His injuries were already healed. In the presence of Ahana, a tiny little knife like that which Sarah had carried had never really posed a threat to him. He glared at the two who had dragged her off him, expression wrathful, and growled at them to let her go in a tone of such barely contained rage that Ahana thought he might leap at them and tear out their throats with his teeth should they refuse.

Unsurprisingly, they did not.

The moment they released her, Sarah sank to her knees and began sobbing. Ahana doubted it was from the pain; aside from the fact that her magic was already in the process of mending the minor injury—as well as all the other cuts and bruises accumulated by any miners within twenty feet of her—the blonde hadn’t stuck her as the sort of person who’d be so weak as to be rendered useless by something as simple as a right hook to the jaw.

The black man with the beard knelt by her side and she turned to bury her face in his chest, as if she were no more than a little kid. He hugged her, while glaring daggers up at the big guy.

“She stabbed me, Arnie. Three times. Come on, I didn’t really deserve that, did I?” the kneeling man made no reply.

“Uh… what… just… happened?” Ahana asked, utterly perplexed. The boss-man turned to face her, took a deep breath, and managed to force a small smile.

“I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced, Miss Varma. My name is Karl Kovac.”

“Oh. Ooooh. You two are...” good-looking as he might have been, this guy was clearly decades older than Sarah, so though it wasn’t impossible, she doubted they’d be a couple, “related?”

“I’m Sarah’s father.”

“Aha.” the bunnygirl grinned, and nodded, “That explains why she didn’t take it too well when you spat in the face of her ethical values.”

He gave her an odd look, and Ahana realised she was supposed to still be pretending to not be an asshole, she cleared her throat and put on her best fake-sadness expression, “Uh, I mean, I’m sorry to have caused a rift in your family… and in your entire group… maybe we should just forget that dumb idea of mine and stick to eating rations?”

The sudden and tremendously loud chorus of refusals she got from the miners who’d sided with Karl was hilarious. She really struggled not to laugh, and despite her best efforts wasn’t able to keep a small smile off her face.

They gradually quietened down, though, as more and more of them started to notice that the dreadlock guy was screaming now. Figuring that they should probably at last get around to trying to placate their buddy, a couple miners headed over to where he stood, clutching at his head and shaking.

As they closed in, though, he looked up, shoved past them, and dashed straight for the tall leader-woman near Karl. Why her specifically, Ahana hadn’t the slightest clue. Perhaps because they’d known each other in some way before they were taken by the illithids, or perhaps because the man was actually cognizant enough to realise who the four leaders were, and she was just the nearest of them to where he’d been standing.

She struggled to tear him off as he babbled and shrieked about hearing things… but then the man let out a long, keening wail, that somehow chilled them all to the bone. Every single person in that tunnel froze, and into the dead silence, he sobbed softly, “The voices are here.”

That sounded real foreboding, but it was already much too late to do anything about it. Before a single person could so much as open their mouth to voice an opinion or suggestion, their attackers were upon them, converging on their location from both ends of the tunnel.

Alas, as the healer had been on sentry duty prior to being completely distracted by that whole argument about cannibalism, she was standing right at the edge of the group, with her back towards the darkness of the tunnel.

The first she knew of the attack was when something heavy slammed into her back, causing her to stagger. She coughed, and a thin trail of blood ran down her chin. She looked down, “Oh.”

A metre-long, blood-soaked, and slightly curved spike of bone was protruding from the centre of her chest, having pierced straight through her heart.

Dimly, she was aware of screaming all around her, but it seemed muffled, far away.

Was this it? Could this really be the end of her short life?

She could heal grievous wounds, yes, but there were some things that were beyond her ability. Being impaled like this was a clearly fatal injury… she would be dead long before she had time recover.

Something shoved her from behind, and she slowly toppled forwards, off the scythe-like spine. Limply, she slammed into the ground. Lying there, the bunnygirl coughed again, softly, and a little more blood left her mouth, spattering on the ground. That was somewhat akin to raindrops in a tsunami, though, next to the deluge which poured from the gaping cavity in her torso.

 

[Ahana Varma]

Ahana could feel the life leaving her body. She caught a glimpse of the creature as it stepped over her—her vision was unfocused, so she couldn’t be sure, but it seemed more or less human; red-skinned, though—but never paid it much heed. Why should she? She was dying. What did she care for these people? She’d only accompanied them to use them as a means of escaping this subterranean hellhole. It didn’t matter in the slightest to her if they all died.

She lay there, barely registering the screaming and shouting all around, until she realised that the pain had vanished.

I must be dead, she thought, and the moment I move, I’ll leave this rotting corpse behind, to move on to the next life.

She hoped that the quality of a person’s existence in the afterlife wasn’t really determined by how kind they’d been to others whilst on the mortal plane, as many of the nicer sorts of religions preached… she’d be totally fucked if that were the case.

Though she also kinda hoped that it wasn’t up to her own people’s gods how her soul would be treated. She hadn’t torn out the still-beating heart of a sacrificial human and offered it up to them since the slaughter of her tribe… months ago now. They’d probably not be too pleased with her for having abandoned the religion of her youth.

When she sat up, though, the bunnygirl was surprised to find that her body moved with her, rather than laying still as her spirit soared off into the great beyond. She looked down at her chest and saw that the fur coat she’d been given by the miners still had a huge hole in it, and the fur all around it was drenched in her blood. There was no doubt that she had been stabbed... but somehow, she’d lived through it; the skin visible through the gap in her clothing was completely unscathed.

That ought not to have happened. She wasn’t about to complain, of course, but she hadn’t forgotten the brain-harvesting experiment of the illithid ‘masters’, or her own subsequent murder of them. If her aura could make her capable of surviving fatal wounds—contrary to her previous beliefs—then why had it not done so for them?

Hell, why had it not done so for her tribe when they’d been gunned down by rival bandits back on Mesa Roja? It just didn’t make any sense.

She grabbed the hilt of her sword, which lay not far from where she’d fallen, and rose unsteadily to her feet, shaking her head confusedly. Could it be that being fatally wounded like that had triggered some sort of sudden burst of growth in her power; a subconscious reaction from her body to keep her alive despite the horrific wound she’d suffered?

Or perhaps her gain in strength had somehow come about as a result of laying waste to the mind flayers? She knew that the primary reason many adventurers went out to face the evils of the worlds was that defeating powerful foes was said to allow one to grow one’s own power significantly. Perhaps she had simply been underestimating the effect that real world experience could actually have on the growth of magic power all this time.

Never mind rival bandits and merchant caravans; if she’d realised that slaying powerful creatures could have such a drastic effect on the growth rate of her aura, she’d likely have left home to become a monster hunter before even reaching her teens.

On her feet now, she could clearly see the man who had all but killed her, savagely laying into nearby miners. He was presumably human… or had been at one stage, at least. Naked and with his skin partially flayed off, the man’s hands had been replaced with a pair of jutting, scythe-like protrusions of bone, and he had somehow grown a second, smaller set of arms (which did bear real hands) from his abdomen.

B’Akphiyr was feeling cooperative for once, it seemed, as with a single swing of her arm the cursed sword chopped right through the mutant’s neck, exactly as she’d hoped it would. She grinned as his head toppled from his shoulders.

Then her face fell.

Golden flames flowed up from the stump of his neck, the fire quickly forming an approximation of a human face. Belatedly, she realised that with her aura now having increased in potency to a far greater level than she had ever anticipated, she was no longer actually capable of killing anyone within range of her magic.

She stared dumbly at the mutant as his head rebuilt itself, not having the slightest clue what to do now. The moment his eyes had re-appeared, they fixed on her, and the balde-armed man lunged forwards.

Ahana was by no means an able combatant. She was fairly strong for a normal woman, but nothing special, and not remotely skilled. And her reaction speed was abysmal. Nevertheless, despite an inadequacy born of a great, natural resilience, and the shock of realising she was caught in a fight which she couldn’t possibly win, the bunnygirl made an attempt at raising her blade into a guard position.

The Cursed Sword of b’Akphiyr had other ideas, though, and lopped off her left hand at the wrist. She screamed in pain and surprise, then was borne down to the ground by the rotting mutant, who impaled her on both his weapon-limbs this time, and grappled her with the miniature, atrophied arms in his abdomen.

She dropped her blade and tried her best to shove him off. One-handed at first, and then with both, after her left had reformed. It did her little good. The man continued repeatedly stabbing at her torso with his blade-arms, whilst clinging on with the others.

It hurt like hell, and she knew that she must be suffering tremendous blood loss… but her aura was still, somehow, keeping her alive. She had no idea if it was even possible for her assailant to kill her… but she certainly wouldn’t be winning this fight.

She hadn’t counted on the miners being competent, though, and after no more than a minute of rolling around on the floor, scuffling with (and being gored again and again by) the mutant, several of them fell upon it, using their weight of numbers to overpower the man. With their little knives, a couple of them managed to hack off his abdominal arms, and the group had hauled him away from her before those could regenerate.

She could barely sit up, and was drenched in her own blood yet again, but already her wounds were healing, so the bunnygirl grabbed the cursed sword and struggled (futilely) to get to her feet. She didn’t know what the miners were planning on doing with their captive, but her blade was surely much more efficient than their little slivers of steel, even with the spirit of b’Akphiyr possessing it.

“Don’t move. We have this under control.” came Karl’s voice from right beside her. She looked up at him, not even having noticed him arriving.

“B-” she interrupted herself by breaking out into a fit of coughing, which involved considerable spewing of blood, “But… they’ll-”

“Just watch.” the grey-haired miner sounded so confident that she gave in and did as he asked, allowing herself to slump against one of the tunnel’s walls as she observed the group.

For all that his mutations—which seemed to include unnatural strength—gave him an edge in combat, the rotting man was still just one man. There were no less than seven miners ganging up on him, each of which alone likely had just as much muscle mass as he himself did. They were easily able to keep him pinned. He let out wild, animalistic shrieks as he struggled vainly to free himself, but to no avail.

Every so often, as they dragged him off into the darkness of the tunnel, one of the miners stabbed the man, though Ahana had no idea why, as of course, the Divine Conflagration repaired the damage almost as soon as the little blade or pick was removed from his flesh.

And then, it didn’t.

She blinked dumbly. They’d stabbed him, yet the fire had not appeared. They took another few steps, then fell upon the mutant, hacking and stabbing at him with brutal abandon, for far longer than she imagined could possibly be necessary, until his body was thoroughly dismembered. It did eventually occur to Ahana that what had happened was that they had simply dragged the man out of range of her aura.

She got to her feet—fully healed by this point—and looked over at Karl, “Who was he? What was he? And why did he...”

She remembered hearing screams from the other end of the tunnel as well, and turned back to look, but couldn’t make out anything through the crowd.

“Why did they attack us?”

“It was what we’d call a Slasher. And it’s two friends,” Karl jerked a thumb over at the other end of the passage, “were a Leaper and a Lurker. They’re not human and they don’t have genders, regardless of how they may look. They’re called necromorphs, and are a type of parasite native to Inverxe. Rather than breeding like regular animals, they infect, mutate and reanimate corpses in order to spread their kind.”

“They’re undead?” the healer had heard of zombies, ghosts and the like, but had never expected to actually encounter any.

“Well… not exactly… as I said, they’re parasites. But, well, they aren’t that much different, I suppose.” he shrugged, “The main danger they pose lies in their tendency to favour surprise attacks… though with you here we suffered few losses, despite being taken unawares.”

“Few losses?” she asked, “So some people did die?”

He nodded sadly, “Yes. Three. Not everyone in the group was in range of your healing, and though we tried to have the wounded pulled back from the front lines as fast as possible, there were a few cases when we weren’t quick enough to save someone.”

She remained respectfully silent for a few moments, as it seemed the ‘nice person’ thing to do. The group that had slain the slasher was returning now, and a few bright, golden flames licked their skin as they re-entered the range of Ahana’s magic and whatever little cuts that thing had managed to inflict before perishing vanished.

“So what do we do with them now? Do we have to… cut them up, to stop them from coming back?”

“No. It doesn’t matter.” Karl grinned, surprisingly, “In fact, given that we have no plans to ever return here, if anyone does come by, it’ll probably be some illithids looking for their friends that you killed. And I for one wouldn’t complain if the next mind flayer to pass through here happened to get jumped by a few fresh necromorphs.”

***

They went with his plan. The miners weren’t comfortable just waiting around here, surrounded by death, so they moved on a bit further before setting up camp once more.

In the end, it took them almost two more weeks to escape the underground—far longer than anticipated—but they did eventually make it… though not until after running out of food entirely.

As it turned out, Karl’s pronouncement that the non-cannibals could eat as much as they wanted proved to be overly optimistic. While none of them had actually wanted to eat any more of that filth than absolutely necessary, the negative consequences of having only a single, small meal each day very quickly made themselves known, and so they ended up going through the rations much faster than anticipated.

In hindsight, it may have been better to bring along more than just a few crates of them. The miners hadn’t thought it would take them nearly this long to escape, though, and hadn’t wanted to slow themselves down further by bringing more.

It wasn’t the best call they’d ever made.

Though some of them were happier about it than others. With no choices other than cannibalism or starvation, even without the mind-altering effects of Inverxe’s radioactive core to contend with, and a nearby group of cannibals egging them on, it would have been a tough call to make for the more morally upstanding miners.

As it was, they didn’t stand a chance.

***

The group encountered necromorphs thrice more during the remainder of their time below ground. Apparently, those things were fairly common down here.

On one occasion they had reached a vacant cavern, already mined of resources, which they hastily retreated from after being charged by an enormous, bellowing necromorph, which Sarah—who had proven much more willing to interact with Ahana since her reluctant abandonment of her ideals—identified as a Brute.

In the other two instances they fought smaller groups which attacked whilst they slept, similar to that first encounter. One of these bands consisted of four Stalkers, which were much stronger than the Slasher and had clawed hands in place of scythe-arms… but, ultimately, died in the exact same way.

The last attack came from three Leapers (basically normal zombies, but with snake-like tails in place of legs) and one Puker (a necromorph with highly corrosive vomit). The Puker wasn’t too fun to deal with, as its acid took a while to heal, and quickly ate through flesh when outside the range of Ahana’s magic. It never managed to kill anyone, though.

In fact, only one more miner was lost during the entire journey. After the first battle they had decided to position Ahana as near as possible to the centre of the group at all times, which made it much easier to keep people within range of her aura.

In addition, they were never actually surprised by any of the attacks after that first one, as it seemed that the dreadlock guy—whose name turned out to be Kevin—had some sort of precognitive ability which had lain dormant for his entire life, until the illithids (or, more specifically, that one illithid whom Ahana had been thinking of as ‘the second master’) had fucked around with his brain enough to drive him insane.

Kev was somehow able to tell when the necromorphs were approaching… which was weird as all hell, but certainly came in useful. Whenever he stopped whispering and started speaking loudly—or worse, screaming—the sentries on duty woke up anyone asleep and they all prepared for a fight.

This system worked well, and the necromorph incursions were dealt with quickly and effectively.

They were optimistic about their chances, though still a little concerned as they went on, since their supplies of water were also running low, despite much more strict rationing of the precious liquid… still, if they could only make it to the surface soon, they’d be able to sustain themselves by melting snow and ice to drink.

... And then, of course, they’d still need to somehow find a civilised outpost out in the wilderness before they all froze to death.

Though as it turned out, that last part didn’t take nearly as long as anticipated…