The deeper we went, the more apparent it became that there was something down there alright. Something foul. The walls were covered with a kind of slimy, fungus growth, and the stench that hit us as we reached the bottom floor was brutal. I quickly tied a large cloth around my face, in an effort to block out the smell, and Lillianne quickly did the same.

It didn’t help much, but it helped a little.

Holding up the lanterns, which I did a little awkwardly since I was still holding my rifle, we slowly worked our way forward. The underground vault room wasn’t much; a large empty foyer with a big metal door and a large, seemingly massive, walk in vault. With our little lanterns, we shed some light onto the room, revealing what had happened to the place.

It had become, twisted, for lack of a better word.

Disgusting growths like fungus, mushrooms, and things much more flesh then plant covered much of the walls and ceiling. Several thick tendrils, about the size of the snatch-worms came from within the the partially open vault door, and went right into the walls. The smell reminded me of a mixture of manure, and rotting flesh, with the smell that also comes from insect nests when they are ripped open mixed in.

I had to focus to not puke from the stench. It was worse then the battlefield stench of hundreds of dead men! I grunted, taking a moment to focus through the smell, and back onto the twisted horror that had become the underground bank vault.

Maybe I should just toss the sticks inside the vault and run. I was seriously considering that thought. The vault door was partially open, to let out several of the thick snatch-worm tentacles, but the door was closed enough that we couldn’t see inside.

Opening the door was going to be easy. Seeing what was waiting inside of it? Not so much.

Looking at the long, thick tentacles, I decided I wasn’t really that curious about whatever was inside the vault. I stopped, put my rifle into the leather back strap I had for it, then set down the saddle bags we’d stuffed full of dynamite. I pulled out several rolled together sticks of the stuff, and considered my options.

With the vault door propped open by the tendril things, we wouldn’t be able to close the door on the blast. And considering what waited inside, I wasn’t confident we could even if it wasn’t blocked. We could toss it an run. A tactic which became more appealing with every second in here, but the timing would be hard; since we would have to make it up the stairs and generally out of the building to be safe from the blast.

If the thing inside messed with the fuse, even by accident, we would have to come back down to try again.

No. Thank. You.

That meant a correct amount of dynamite, applied at the correct location, with enough time to get the hell out of this room. That, in turn, meant we had to be ready to leave as soon as we lit. I quietly turned to look at Lillianne and gestured for her to come close and bend down.

“Shed whatever gear you don’t need. No saddle bags. If anything is weighing you down too much, drop it.” I whispered to her, moving my own saddlebags and the lantern carefully out the way. “When we light this, we toss them where we want them, and then run. Timing will be tight, and if you fall down, trip, or are just too slow, you die. We run up the stairs and out of this building. The further away we can get, the better.”

“You’re not going to try and shoot it?” She asked quietly, looking perplexed, but otherwise taking my advice and removing the saddlebags and extra gear she had on. She kept her coppersmith gear though.

“I would, but,” I replied in a whisper as I looked around the twisted, half flesh, half fungus nature of everything in this room. “Something tells me bullets won’t be all that effective.”

“Alright, are we just tossing the bombs then?” She asked, looking around the room in fearful disgust as well.

“No.” I answered reluctantly. “We need to know what we’re dealing with, or it could just shut our bombs down. So, we open the door, look, decide where to toss, light, toss, and run.”

“So simple.” She muttered, trying not to shiver as she looked around.

“Not like a dime store novel, now is it?” I replied, actually grinning as I stood back up.

She glared at me, to which I just grinned more at I got out my book of matches, and got several ready. She rolled her eyes, and stood up as well, her own bomb in hand. I looked at her pistol, and frowned in thought.

“Got any other magic bullets for that thing?” I asked. “Something better at dealing with flesh then lead?”

“I have a few loaded, yeah.” She nodded, raising a dark eyebrow. “Why?”

“Have your gun at the ready.” I told her, looking at the roll of dynamite sticks I had in my hand, and another I had in my dusters pocket. “It’s best if one us can shoot back, if we need to.”

She nodded, and set her dynamite back down carefully, before pulling out her pistol and shifting to a proper stance, ready to fire.

“Here we go.” I told her, and turned and carefully walked over to the huge metal vault door. Gripping the metal spin handle, I sighed, then carefully began to pull it open, until at last it swung open on its own, with no resistance.

At last, we were finally able to get a look at what was inside.

Disgusting and twisted were the only words that really came too mind. It was like a large fleshy body in a heap, with a large tube of a neck that rose out of the center, with a multi-chitinous beak for a mouth. Tendrils of flesh, and long ropes of horrific and strangely glowing fungus wrapped around it.

It was like a giant, deadly worm of some kind, mixed together with some kind of monstrous mushroom tendrils. All of it glowing an eerie light pale blue glow.

The worst of it though, was when the vault door bumped the wall slightly, and caused a minor thump of sound. That sound caused dozens of eyes on the fleshy tendrils to suddenly open, and stare at us.

I was shocked and terrified. Horrified. But above all else, utterly disgusted.

Shooting out from the main body, into and through the walls of the vault, were the long, thick tube bodies of the snatch-worms. They fanned out in a fairly wide ring, minus the area with the door. This was likely the full body. Which meant, there was only one actual snatch-worm, and all the others were it’s hands.

The eyes blinked at me, stared for another moment, then went back to ignoring me. I breathed again, and quickly looked around the room. My eyes caught on the bodies of some men in the corner of the room, next to the door. They looked like they’d been half mangled, half covered in fungus, but not fully eaten, for some reason.

Something about them made me stare.

Where those robes? I wondered. Looking at the wall where the bodies laid, there were words scrawled in blood, though none made any sense. Hail the coming of Carcosa! Glory to the King wrapped in Yellow! Praise the Faceless Pharaoh!

The hell? I stared, transfixed by what looked like lunacy written in blood. It looked like something had gone badly wrong here, long before this giant snatch-worm had ever showed up. Sadly, I dallied too long, and suddenly several small, fleshy tendrils, each with a random glowing eye upon it, shot out from the main body and grabbed me!

“Blast it!” I yelled at Lillianne, the tendrils snapping me out of my silence. I held onto the dynamite and matched through sheer luck as several of the tendrils produced mouths, latched onto me and yanked me up towards the beak mouth of the worm head that began to open wide. I kicked and fought them, but there were several, and they were strong.

“On it!” She yelled, and another strange shot rang out, and slammed into the base where several of those tendrils were coming from.

The creature squealed from the impact, but then it started to actually scream! I watched in fascination, ice began to grow out from the wound, tearing at the flesh and freezing it solid as grew outward for several inches in every direction!

Some of the tendrils holding me snapped at the frozen area, and I was able to kick them off.

Struggling, I put the matches in my mouth, pulled my knife, and started stabbing and cutting where I could. The creature screamed, and then yanked me up to its mouth, which was gaping wide!

“No!” Lillianne screamed, and there was another shot. The creature dangled me over its mouth now, with my feet scraping the roof of the vault, when it screamed in pain as another part of its body seemed to half melt, half burst into flames!

It’s mouth opened wide, whether in pain or hunger I couldn’t tell, but I glanced down its maw, and saw what lay deep inside it. Impossible but real, and right in front of me.

Through its wide open throat full of twisting tethers of flesh, teeth, and more glowing eyes, at the center of the deep gullet down its throat, I saw a light.

I stared for a moment; past the beak, the teeth, the eyes, down the wide open throat, wide enough to swallow me whole, into the belly of the beast. I stared, and saw not darkness, but a spinning vortex of stars!

It was like the night sky with no moon, no clouds, no earthly lights; utterly brilliant, bright, and swirling.

It should have been beautiful, with its faint orange glow, but all I felt was a deep seated malevolence. It was as if many great and terrible predators in the deep dark had suddenly glanced at me, and smiled with sharp teeth. Those stars are not friendly. I could suddenly feel things, like countless eyes looking back at me, and through me down to my very soul, shadowy entities staring deep into me with unknown desires.

I was suddenly so very small and afraid, gazing into eternity, and somehow knowing the great predators of it were gazing back. So I offered up a prayer to God, for there was nothing else I could do. “Please Lord God, grip my hand and my soul tightly, for I fear I will soon be coming home. Amen.”

Suddenly all the eyes, both inside and out of the creature, flared with light and began whirling inside their sockets in a seeming panic! The creature shrieked again, and then it half threw me, half dropped me!

Thanks to its shaking and shrieking, I missed the gaping mouth and belly of evil stars.

Barely.

My knife was nocked loose though, and fell into its gullet.

I however, fell into a heap on its disgusting, slimy mass, and began rolling down it in a another heap, even as it shuddered and shook in its odd, sudden panic. It shuddered so hard it actually threw me from its bulk the last few feet from the floor, and I landed, yet again, in a heap at Lilliannes feet.

“Get up!” She shouted desperately, firing another of her strange bullets at the snatch-worm, which was still writhing around in a panic.

I groaned as I quickly struggled to my feet, and grabbed for my matchbox; the fall having knocked them all out of my mouth. I snatched several as I looked up and saw the creature writhing from seeming electric shocks popping up all over its body. That might have been where the writhing came from that got me loose.

Either way, I was loose, and was desperate to make use of that fact.

With the matches ready, I knew I still needed to do this right. I couldn’t just light and chuck. I had to put it somewhere to hurt it. I needed a hole in the thing.

If I tossed it down its mouth, I wasn’t sure what would happen with the dynamite ad the swirling stars. But I knew I wasn’t interested in finding out. Fortunately, I didn’t need its to mouth. I hoped.

“Got anything with a lot of kick in that gun of yours?” I asked as I got back up to my feet, ready to move. The panic of the creature, and its writhing from the pain of our attacks, hadn’t fully subsided, yet. But I knew it was only a matter of time.

Once it got its wits back about it, we were dead.

“I need a hole in its side I can shove this into. Then we run!”

“I’ve got you!” She replied, quickly grabbing her pistol, and spinning the huge front cartridge around to a certain spot. “I can blow a small hole in its side. Ready?”

“Ready!” I shouted back, simply taking her word for it. We had no time for long explanations. The seizures were wearing off, and I was concerned by the odd, vibrating movements of the long tendrils of its snatching arms.

I had the distinct feeling that this room was about to have a great many mouths and teeth in it, very quickly.

“Firing!” She shouted over the roars of the still largely immobile creature. She pulled the trigger, and her odd gun spit out another strange bullet that buried itself deep in the side of the creature at just shoulder height for me.

For a moment, there was nothing, then suddenly an explosion erupted from the spot!

I blinked in shock, then shook my head and sprinted forward!

Striking my match off the dynamite itself, I lit the fuse, and shoved it into the double fist sized hole she’d blown into its side. With its bulk and seeming, unnatural origins, I suspected the thing would survive that blow, but I doubted it survive half a dozen sticks of dynamite going off in its side.

Job done, I turned and sprinted away!

“Run!” I shouted as a I ran past her. She whirled and sprinted after me. The whole room was starting to shake from all the wildly vibrating tendrils of the snatch-worms that were rushing back. We reached the stairs and sprinted up them, two or three at a time!

We burst back into the banks main floor just as several hook toothed worm heads burst through the walls where we had been, their long teeth unsheathing and snapping at where we had been.

“Outside!” I half shouted, half gasped.

Running full tilt up the stairs, with a rag over your face, wasn’t easy. I snatched the face covering away and kept sprinting without looking back. I heard Lilliannes boots behind me, and knew she was keeping up. We made it out of the bank and onto the front deck of the building.

I decided to risk the dirt road, so we kept running across it for a few more seconds before the bank behind us erupted into a massive blast!

Both Lillianne and I were thrown to the ground by explosion, and a major hole was torn through the bank building itself.

For a moment, all I could do was gasp for air, and struggle to make the world stop spinning and ringing.

After a moment, I slowly sat up, and carefully looked around.

The bank had a horse sized hole blown through its opening, and I suspected the blast had been funneled, like a cannon shot, through the vault, the stairs, and the first floor of the building. Luckily for us, there was no cannon ball. Looking around, I actually saw a few nearby snatch-worm heads, all looking wilted and lifeless.

Looks like we killed the thing then. I thought with a groan, feeling very sore, and very tired. Good riddance. Maybe now we can get out of this dump of a town.

“I’m really beginning to hate this town.” Lillianne groaned next to me, as she slowly pulled herself up to a sitting position. “And you’re right, adventures are fun, but terrible.”

“I don’t recall saying it like that, exactly, but I’ll take you agreeing with me as a win.” I half quipped, half groaned, before I laid back down for a moment. “I really hate this town.”

“I don’t blame you in the slightest.” Lillianne chuckle as she slid over next to me, and laid back down as well. “The sooner we leave here, the better.”

“Can’t wait.” I muttered, groaning and breathing.

“Well now, am I interrupting a tender moment?” An amused voice called out to us. I didn’t bother to turn my head as I heard the clomp of hooves slowly head our way, and for those hooves to come to a rest near my head.

“Halona.” I muttered in greeting with a halfhearted wave. It still was too much effort to get up and fight the spinning of the world.

“Master Ranger.” She chuckled, looking down at us from on high. “I gather from the explosion, and the various dead looking snatch-worms that you took care of the problem?”

“Seems so.” I agreed, not really paying attention.

“Good. I’ll let the conductors and crew know that this town is now safe.” Since the sun has largely set, and they have to make some minor repairs to the track, we’ll likely be here for the night.”

“Oh, yay.” I muttered darkly.

“Agreed.” Lillianne muttered darkly. “I’ve no desire to sleep in this monster infested town.”

“Well, I’m afraid since the monsters broke some of the track, that we’ll have no choice.” Halona said with a shrug. “But, since I was able to comfortably walk all the way over here without fear, I’m somehow willing to bet that the problem has been resolved.”

“So long as I can get a proper bath, I suppose I can live with it.” Lillianne muttered darkly.

“A good meal would be nice,” I conceded. “And a comfortable bed.”

“Well, we seem to have our pick of fine hotels and stables.” Halona chuckled. “I’ll go and speak with the crew and passengers. And have them send some of the armed men down into the bank to ensure the monster is dead. You two just continue to, sleep together, and regain your strength.”

I rolled my eyes made a rude gesture to the smart-ass horse woman as she turned and clomped off, laughing at us.

“That woman delights in causing me grief.” I muttered darkly.

“Like I said, she’s a remarkable woman.” Lillianne giggled next to me. I couldn’t help it and started laughing as well.

We were alive, and whole. The monster was dead, the town made safe, and my journey could continue after some well earned rest.

Not a bad days work.

Though the memory of what was inside that creature was certainly unsettling.