They had made a mistake. They had assumed that since it hadn't displayed any sensory organs upstairs, that it had none. Threadbare and his crew had overlooked the possibility that it could, in fact, manifest these things elsewhere.

But Threadbare did know that two things, for certain.

The first was that he was dealing with a predator who was fairly cunning, but not really SMART. Its tactics and actions upstairs, complete with the fact that it hadn't discovered the secret passages despite who knows how many years of expansion throughout the fortress, testified to that.

The second thing Threadbare knew was that he wasn't the creature's typical prey. So he stood still in only the way that a golem could. Patient and unmoving, yea even unto oblivion.

And it worked.

CHA+1

Your Stealth skill is now level 36!

The thing's eye shifted from the peephole, and Threadbare, moving as slowly as he could, made the RAGS-taught hand motions that indicated everybody needed to be silent. Though he couldn't be certain that it was Buttons' noise that had set it off or the vibrations of her climbing along the wall, he thought that ears were probably easier to create than eyes. If he were this kind of creature he'd definitely have a few lying around for occasions like this.

But he wasn't. He was a toy golem, and his friend was in danger. He watched as they eye directed its gaze around the chamber, and the piles of flesh that infested the place pulsed, slowly extruding tendrils and beginning to tap around, feeling in the areas where the flesh didn't cover.

They still steered clear of the runes, though, and that gave him an idea.

Threadbare moved slowly, slow as a glacier in winter, until his muzzle was below the edge of the peephole.

“Dracosnack,” he whispered, and paused. But the eye didn't change its track, steadily shifting back and forth on its hunt.

“Yes?” the dragon toy whispered back.

“Activate your magic fingers spell, take this cloth mouse, and when I say 'now,' take my place in the peephole and throw the mouse right in the middle of the red sparky rune.”

There was a pause, then he felt Dracosnack squeeze his shoulder in silent acknowledgment.

And then, because he was a wise bear, he let Buttons in on the plan with a wind's whisper. “We're arranging a distraction. When the red rune blows up, get back in here please. We'll find another way.”

There were a lot of things to try. There were many ways to approach this problem. This was a terrible and dangerous foe, and the trick would be finding a way to manage the risk and find a safe way out after their quest was over. Because fighting the creature head on was a sure-fire way to die.

So Threadbare waited until the creature's eye was past him and starting its sweep in the far corner, and then he told Dracosnack “Now!”

He ducked away, Dracosnack muttered “Magic Fingers,” pushed the mouse through...

…and just as it touched the red rune, a strange yell came from up the southern staircase.

“Fucking yeah baby yeah! Get it get it uh-huh!”

A yell shortly followed by the sound of claws madly scrabbling on stone. Followed by a cat growling its head off.

“Pulsivar!” Threadbare said, forgetting himself.

Followed by a very, very large explosion that shook the room.

Followed by a sound that though he had never heard it before, he knew at once what it could be.

This was the mimic screaming, as for the first time in a very long while, something had hurt it.

Threadbare shook his head as one of his mouse-eye views vanished from his gaze. But the other one was moving, tumbling, and in the split-seconds where everything happened at once.

Buttons was not trying to get back to safety, he realized.

Buttons was leaping from the wall, to one of the pillars, to right in the middle of the yellow rune that did nothing to her.

In the background he caught a glimpse of Pulsivar scrabbling madly down the stairs, leaping through the flames that puffed out around the southwestern quarter of the room, madly trying to find footing where the mimic wasn't. There was more now, because the mimic was burning and trying to pull its bulk into itself, smothering the flames...

...and then Threadbare's view whirled and shifted again.

She's throwing the mouse, he realized.

Over and up. Up past a tidal wave of flesh, and he had a view of her standing proud and still and saluting as the Mimic came crashing down on her. And then the mouse was tumbling down the stairwell in the center, right past the eye, right past the whipping tendrils that snapped down at it... snapped down and sizzled, as some unseen magic flared to life and drove it back.

That's why it didn't occupy the stairwell, Threadbare thought to himself.

Behind him he could hear Fluffbear squeaking “Open the door! Open the door and get her in, quickly! Godspell Mend! Godspell Mend!”

Shaking his head, knowing the mouse was where he needed it, and that his skills were better used to help his friends, Threadbare let the dollseye slip back into inactive state, and ran to join Fluffbear as she tugged at the secret door. It was stuck, but the two of them were strong, and the two of them tugged it open to let in a roaring wave of flame and smoke and charred mimic meat that the others hacked at and kicked away. They were trying to clear a path.

“No!” yelled Apollyon. He surged forward...

“Mopsy! Pounce!” Fluffbear commanded her mount, and Apollyon went ass over teakettle as the big cat knocked him over. There was a smell of burnt fur and Mopsy howled.

The howl was answered by a yowl from within the room. Pulsivar charged through the open secret door, just as Dracosnack shouted “she's dead!”

A moment of silence, as the mimic's groaning wail filled the smoky air. And the sound of its thrashing contractions smothered the flames.”

“Close the door,” Fluffbear decided. “She's gone.”

Apollyon sobbed. Glub sighed. And Threadbare, with that old feeling in his heart, the one he hated with a passion, threw his strength into swinging the secret door closed once more.

They almost made it.

Then the door shuddered.

It started opening again.

“It's trying to come through!” Dracosnack yelled. “Orders, please?”

Fluffbear growled, low in her throat, and the anger in it surprised Threadbare. She had come a long way, since those early years under the foundation of Caradon's house. A long way since they had been innocent.

But he wasn't surprised, when she said simply, “We fight. Hold it here!”

The team snapped into action.

And something on Pulsivar's back, something the size of his head stirred its six legs and looked up at him. “Oh hey! You're my job!”

“Your job?” he said, popping out his claws and moving into place next to Pulsivar.

“Yeah! Garon sent me! I'm your secret weapon! Gotta waystone home for you if it gets too deadly boss!”

And then there was no more time for talking.

The upside to fighting the mimic down here was that after the explosion, it was coated with a thin layer of ash. It wasn't sticky at all, and they could hack into it without fear of getting stuck.

The bad news is that it was still enormous. And even though it was burned, it was clear that it had quite a long way to go before it was out of HP.

With the angle that they were at, it couldn't get a clean angle for a strong hit, but that was changing, Threadbare noticed. He was slashing for all he was worth, and his brawling, dodge, and claw swipes skills were going up steadily, but after every sixth or seventh strike he had to take a step back as the mimic's oozy flesh crept closer and closer.

There was simply too much of it.

Next to him the tiny creature, which upon closer examination was some sort of golem, was digging into the mimic with its forelegs and shouting “Who's your sixth cousin twice removed!” Across from him, Apollyon tanked hits on his shield, swiping with his flaming blade whenever he got a second to swing without sacrificing his defense. A shell of stone surrounded him, cracked in a few places where a tendril had gotten through here or there.

Dracosnack sat in back, directing a wall of fire up and down the mimic's flesh, searing it at a safe distance from his colleagues. Glub occasionally threw water into the fire, making bursts of steam that sizzled and seared the mimic, while he sang a war chant to boost the team's strength. And Fluffbear held the line with Mopsy right next to Apollyon, defending his knees and slashing away as they could.

And about this time, Fluffbear came to the same conclusion as her brother. “Threadbare!” she squeaked. “We'll hold it here! Do what you can to complete the quest, or look for another solution!”

“And here, take this so it doesn't get smashed!” said the little thing, tossing a waystone his way as Threadbare fell back from the line.

Once he was safe and Pulsivar was licking his face, Threadbare called up the dollseye on his sole remaining mouse, and sent it skittering down the stairs.

It wasn't a far trip. The corridor below dead-ended quickly. There were no other doors or archways leading out from it. It was a simple stone room, with a stone pedestal in the center, the remnants of campfires around it, and what looked like graffiti on the walls. Something like a jar with dragon's heads poking from it sat in a bowl on the pedestal, and as he watched, one of the dragon's heads spat out a marble-sized crystal. Threadbare scanned the graffiti and frowned, a human expression he'd picked up from Celia over time. He chanted “Evaluate,” just to be sure, as he stared at the jar. Then he shook his head.

“I found out what happened to the survivors,” he called out to the others. “They're not here! There's an item in there called a Vessel of the Horizon Walker. It makes lesser waystones. From the writings left behind, everyone who survived the mimic made it down here, was trapped, and used the waystones to leave.”

“Should we do the same?” Glub asked during a pause in his chant.

“No!” Fluffbear said. “We've no idea how far away we'll be! And it has to be pretty far, if they haven't come back home yet! We'd just be leaving the problem to the next group, and they might die!”

“And I don't think we'd survive getting through this thing!” Apollyon called out through the breathing hole in his stone mask. “It's... angry!”

Angry and getting more worked up, Threadbare saw. Now that he'd stepped back from the line it seemed to be taking his absence as a sign of weakness. It was pushing forward through the flames, forcing more of itself through. The ceiling and walls, the entire level was shaking, and he knew that it was pulling in more of its mass to try and destroy the things that had dared to hurt it. It was almost like an earthquake, and a small miracle the ceiling hadn't fallen on them. He had a feeling that the only thing holding the ruin together was the builder's decision to make a skeleton of iron rods throughout the entire structure.

And that's when the idea struck him. The beautiful and horrible idea.

INT+1

“Apollyon, I'm going to be on your back. Don't overreact!”

“What?” the human's voice was three steps from panic.

Threadbare ignored it, hopped up and caught ahold of his armor, and scooped up Apollyon's biggest belt pouch. He reached in, withdrew the box of magical crystals and reagents, and ran back to the far side of the chamber as he examined its contents. Just enough, he thought. He was glad that his friend was generous, even if Garon hadn't expected them to be used this way.

LUCK+1

Then he signaled at Pulsivar until his friend got the idea and picked him up. Threadbare clambered to the feline beast's back.. “Do your best to clear it away from the southern stairwell!” he called to the others. “I have a plan!” Without another word he nudged his friend's flanks, and Pulsivar fled down the secret passage to the north.

They hit each tower one by one, and at the center of each, Threadbare drew the circles with reagents, and laid a crystal down. The towers were the easy part, even though they had to move under the eastern tendrils and crouch low to do so. The mimic was busy with the intruders to its west, after all. Very distracted, and whatever ears and eyes it might have weren't watching the east.

Then it was back to the central secret room and up the ladder. Checking through the peephole to the main room, Threadbare found that there was still too much of the mimic in there, too much to risk his friend. This part of the creature was out of the fire, after all. It was still sticky.

He'd have to gamble here. Fortunately, he'd just boosted his luck.

Midway up the ladder to the second floor, Glub whispered to him. “Whatever you're doing, do it quick dude! Mopsy's caught, she's getting dragged in!”

Threadbare nudged Pulsivar to go faster. They sped to the second floor and here at least the mimic had withdrawn. Threadbare found and opened a secret door and led Pulsivar over to a window, looking down at the courtyard below. It was empty. The mimic had directed its mass down, to deal with the interlopers. Then he checked his mental memory of the last sight of Glub's map, and nodded.

The entire castle was shaking now, as the struggles below grew fiercer. Mopsy's life was on the line... and more, because he knew, he knew what was going on and in his mind's eye he saw the Mimic forcing its way into the chokepoint that they were holding, like a snail pushing its foot into a closed oyster to force it open for a grisly feast. The more he hesitated, the more of his friends would die. And soulstones were a gamble, not a sure thing. There was always that chance they'd be smashed...

Pushing it from his mind he signaled at Pulsivar for pickup, crawled back into his riding spot, and nudged his steed forward.

Through the window. Down to the courtyard below.

Tendrils burst up from the ground as he did so, some random patch of flesh left behind or a final trap he didn't know and he didn't care. Clinging to Pulsivar's fur with one hand he swiped at the few that got near the Misplacer Beast and urged him around to the south, around the building to the staircase that had to be there.

Then down, down into the central chamber and the smoke and the roaring of the mimic and Fluffbear's squeaky voice shouting “No! Let her go! AAAAAHHHH,” and past it to the center of the room where they had cleared a path, where by some miracle there was bare stone and he hopped off and drew a circle with the reagents, laying the last crystal into place before he took a breath, looked up at the tendrils about to descend upon him, and breathed four words.

“Armor Golem. Golem Animus.”

Your Armor Golem skill is now level 8!

Your Golem Animus skill is now level 71!

The tendrils crashed down.

If he was living there would be pain, he knew. But he wasn't, and so he curled around the waystone and felt them batter him, felt his stuffing and stitches tear, felt himself being torn apart as they seized his head and legs and slowly, inexorably, began to pull...

And then they paused.

The keep shook harder.

The mimic stopped moving.

The keep didn't.

The keep.

Stood.

Up.

There were distant cries and the sounds of falling rock and crashing metal, and Threadbare took the opportunity to heal himself, even though he was low on sanity.

Creating golems took it out of one, after all.

But he made sure to keep a last little bit, just one last little bit for the skill he needed.

“Command Golem, join my party,” he told his new armor golem.

And the keep did.

Your Command Golem skill is now level 34!

Then sharp paws were around him, and Pulsivar was dragging him back out of the Mimic's charred flesh, snapping him up in his mouth and fleeing.

Pulsivar was out, yo. Pulsivar was DONE. He raced down the now-nearly-vertical floor and out the staircase he'd come in, and took a flying leap down past the tower that was now one of the golem's legs, to join the rest of the party that was falling from the belly of the armor golem.

It was, quite frankly, ugly. It was asymmetrical and bulging, a work of rough stone barely supported by its interlaced iron skeleton. It could not stand on two legs for long, especially not as uneven and broken as they were. Instead it tottered over, tilting until the keep part of it was upside down before it brought its 'arms' down to act as forelegs. It stood there, four-footed, as parts of its stonework and structure sloughed off, and the toys and their human friend ran for their lives.

All save Threadbare. He hopped up Pulsivar a short distance away and glared at his creation. Glared at the struggling, squealing mass in the middle, the bulging tumorous hunk of flesh that sprouted huge eyes and hundreds of shrieking mouths, the thing that flailed tendrils in all directions, bleeding and torn tendrils as it had been ripped out of its rootlike network, and thousands of red and bloody '1's rose steadily from each of its leaking wounds. Threadbare lifted one paw up in the air, and the ground shuddered as the keep copied his motion, lifting its largest, spikiest tower to its side.

And then Threadbare plunged his claws into his own belly.

The keep followed suit.

The mimic screamed as stone and metal flew.

And a great red '1028' rose skyward.

Threadbare nodded in satisfaction, and did it again. And again. And again.

It took some time.

It took several mending spells from Fluffbear to keep the golem standing until it was done, as the mimic tried to fight back.

It took flames from Dracosnack to cook the tendrils that it tried to send down the keep's legs to escape and tug itself free.

It took Apollyon hurling boulders at it to drop its guard against the golem's siegebreaker of a fist.

But at the end of it, the mimic was dead, the ruin was rubble, and when Threadbare sunk to the ground on his backside, his latest and greatest creation did so as well.

And oh, did the levels roll in.

You are now a level 31 Golemist!

INT+5

WILL+5

You are now a level 20 Animator!

DEX+3

INT+3

WILL+3

You have learned the Animus Bow skill!

Your Animus Bow skill is now level 1!

You have learned the Dollsbody skill!

Your Dollsbody skill is now level 1!

You are now a level 15 Cave Bear

CON+10

WIS+10

Armor +5

Endurance +5

Mental Fortitude +5

You have learned the Find Lair skill!

You are now a level 19 Enchanter!

DEX+3

INT+3

WILL+3

As the last of the words went away, and his vision was clear, Threadbare looked to his friends. And a glance at Fluffbear's form told him that he had been too late. He hugged his sister to him as she mourned, and took solace in the fact that they had only lost two to this beast, and perhaps not even that many, not forever.

For now, they would mourn. But only for a little while. Then they would go searching for soulstones, and checking with the dead, and see what remained.