It had been such a nice morning.

There had been biscuits, and bacon, and eggs.

Now, there was only enraged, screeching, ambulatory fungus and thick clouds of choking spores.

In the few weeks Maggie had been absent from the tunnel and her cavernous home beneath the mountain, a colony of ‘Devilfinger Dikaryans’ had colonized the intersection. The creatures were six to nine feet tall, with thick stumpy legs like elephants and long, trunk-like arms. The flesh of the legs, upper arms, and the torso were a ghastly, wrinkled corpse-white speckled with a pattern of veiny tissue, almost like the skin of a particularly pale, melted cantaloupe. However, the strange sloughed flesh wasn’t the most notable thing about the monsters.

In place of a head and hands, both the creature’s arms and the obtuse shoulders each sprouted a quartet of viscous red tentacles, spattered with a jelly-like black mucous that clung to the Chosen’s skin when the dozen flailing crimson limbs slapped or grappled with them.

Maggie assured them that the black jelly wasn’t dangerous in itself, but instead was a vehicle for the creature’s spores to infest the corpses of its victims, growing more of the large alien eggs scattered around the chamber.

Even the monstrous red tentacles speckled with black goop weren’t the true show-stopper.

It was the smell.

The jelly reeked. It was the foulest scent, by far, any of the Chosen had ever experienced in their lives. It smelled worse than a week-old corpse left in the sun.

The rearguard had already lost their lunch, and though Jack didn’t have anything to bring back up, his superhuman sense of smell wasn’t doing him any favors. He was completely sure that if it weren’t for his Fortitude skill, he’d have spent a considerable portion of the fight dry-heaving. Even Erin and her monstrous Fortitude were having issues with the stench.

Maggie, on the other hand, was busy smashing every Dikaryan within a twenty stride radius, leaping ten yards at a clip and bringing the heavy warhammer she’d gotten back in Moryven down on the tentacle clusters of one stink-monster after another. As Rory wiped his mouth clean of another round of up-chuck, Maggie turned and slammed her shield into one of the creatures, blasting it away as though it had been shot from a cannon.

“She’s doing all this without any powers?” he grunted.

“She’s twice our level, what do you want?” Layla responded, then turned to a cluster of smaller fungoids that had been attempting to flank them.

“Lesser Dragon’s Breath,” she invoked, and an inferno of hellflame poured from her mouth in a massive wave of annihilation.

She watched her mana tick down as the flames continued to gush forth like a stream of napalm. Once the experience messages started to roll in, she cut the flamethrower off and backed away from the conflagration.

“Boston, put me out!” she yelled behind her.

Rory looked to his right and executed a quick thrust of his open palm, “Hindering Squall.”

A wall of wind blasted forward, blowing out a considerable portion of the raging flame. He repeated the action, quenching the rest of the burning fungus and pushing the smoke generated by Layla’s inferno off into the caverns.

Behind him, an ominous thump was punctuated by Jack’s Shadow Hydra, the forest of black limbs tearing into the Dikaryan that had approached Rory’s back. The concerted strike blasted a spray of spongy chunks out of the creature. Another of the fungal monsters grabbed Jack with a cluster of tentacles.

The Dikaryan didn’t live long enough to regret its decision.

“Baptised in Darkness.”

The writhing storm of shadow tentacles rippled and doubled in both size and number. Jack narrowed his focus down to himself, the legion of shadow limbs, and the fungus struggling to pull him closer and strangle the unlife from him.

The swarm of black limbs shimmered and sprouted paired rows of razored fangs, then ripped the Dikaryan to shreds. Jack’s tentacles then reached out and gripped another of the fungal monsters and tore its “head” off.

“Holy SHIT, Jackson!” Layla stood still, watching the nightbringer’s form radiate darkness.

“Focus, Layla,” he replied.

Jack checked his mana and released his connection to the primal dark. His shadow limbs abruptly faded and he fell to one knee.

“You good?” Erin called over her shoulder, then backhanded one of the mushroom creatures away, slamming into the walls with a horrible splorch.

“Hey, what level are these things?” Layla called.

Rory appeared next to her and unleashed an augmented Backstab empowered by Wind Reaver. The result was an explosive evacuation of the creature’s entire torso in a swirling burst of air.

“I’m seeing a lot of high twenties,” he replied, then faded away again.

“How many more of these are there?” Erin called from across the intersection.

“Nae more than half a dozen, me thinks,” Maggie called as she hammered another Dikaryan into oblivion.

Layla threw a quick glance around, then called out to the others.

“Erin, push those two to your left. Maggie grab that one and chuck him over Erin’s head. Jack, grab those three and shove them this way. Put em in front of the east tunnel!” she shouted.

Erin rammed into the two creatures Layla had indicated with no hesitation, slamming the first into the second and driving both to the ground exactly in front of the access tunnel entrance.

Maggie looked around at the layout of their enemies and recognition bloomed on her face. She hammered one of the creatures across the ground, then moved with supernatural swiftness, dropping her hammer and snatching up another two Dikaryans, slinging them on top of Erin’s pair with a heaving grunt.

Jack pushed himself up with a shadow limb and snatched up the three creatures Layla had directed him toward, black tentacles gripping the rough cavern floor and ceiling to pull the massive creatures along as he worked his way into position. Finally, he issued a strained shout and whipped the creatures off their feet into the tunnel.

“CLEAR!” he shouted and leapt out of Layla’s line of fire.

The succubus sucked in a massive breath and shouted.

“Mana Overcharge! LESSER DRAGON’S BREATH!”

As the invocation left her mouth, the exhalation changed to a titanic torrent of flame, thicker and hotter than anything they’d seen from the succubus thus far.

As the talent took over, Layla poured out half her remaining mana on the single spell, boosting the storm of flame’s power and cost to well-beyond that of a third-tier spell. The color of the inferno shifted from the rolling gout of orange and yellow to which the Chosen were accustomed into a concentrated stream of yellow flame with an incandescent core of bluish-white that caused even Maggie to take a step back.

When the kill notifications popped, Layla spit out a last gasp of curling flame and coughed up a belch of smoke.

“Damn, girl!” Erin cheered.

“Good shot-calling, El,” Jack had dropped back to one knee.

“Succubi, so hot right now,” Rory quipped.

Layla laughed as Erin and Jack booed the salesman.

Behind them, Maggie slammed her shield into the last Dikaryan, splitting the torso in half with the titanic force of her blow.

“Now we just haff ta nae die a breathin’ all this smoke afore the fire goes out,” she laughed.