With a sharp snap of her wrist, Rio flicked her magic outward. The light pulsed brighter, filling the cavern with its intensity, and the thing recoiled, shrinking back from the light's harshness. Its grin faltered, and for the first time, a flicker of something like fear passed through its empty eyes.
"Stay back!" sneered the young squire.
Rio doubted the creature understood her, but it complied all the same as it scrambled back from the burning light. She wasn't used to using light magic, but this thing seemed especially sensitive to it, after all it had evaded the natural cave lights for a reason.
"Rio, What's going on?" Said Colwyn, panic in his voice. "Is there a mana-beast?"
She glanced back at Colwyn briefly, just enough to see his weak form still slumped against the magical stretcher, eyes wide with confusion and fear. His words were ragged, his body broken, but his mind was still sharp enough to sense the danger.
The truth hit her hard. Whatever that thing was, it wasn't just a beast—it was something older, something that thrived in the darkness. She didn't know its name, but she recognized the instinctive fear it stirred in her. It had hunted them with the draft, drawing them into its lair with the promise of an escape that was never meant to be.
Sighing, Rio intensified the light as it blasted into the creature. She didn't enjoy being fooled like that, hunted like that. Watching the creature's skin start smoking under her light as it screeched was morbidly satisfying for her.
The creature gave up on watching and tried lunging at Rio, but she was ready. With a swipe of her free arm, she flipped it's gravity to the side. Tumbling, the creature hit the side of the wall with a crack.
With her left hand she kept it pinned to the wall with a torrent of gravitational force, with her right she melted it's pale grey skin with a stream of light.
Rio was a powerful mage, but she had been dragging Colwyn down this cave for thirty minutes and was low on stamina and mana. For a brief moment she thought she would run out of energy before the monster died.
But then, much to the two squires relief the cave dweller stopped screaming. it was dead.
"What is that?" Said Colwyn, who had at some point twisted around to look at the thing, "I've never see anything like it before."
Rio frowned, "it's feet look like shoes,".
Colwyn understood, the creatures feet matched the foot prints that were with the miners. "Do you think it kept them in it's lair?"
Rio shook her head. "I'm just hoping it's the same one, dealing with two intelligent beasts would be a nightmare."
Colwyn shivered at the thought before saying, "I've never seen anything like this before, it's probably a unique monster." Rio didn't point out that Colwyn sounded like he was just trying to convince himself.
Shaking her head, Rio dismissed the thought and begun dragging Colwyn down the way the creature had been trying to lead them.
Colwyn groaned weakly as the magical stretcher jolted over uneven ground. "Rio... are you sure this is the way? That thing was trying to lead us here. What if we're walking into another trap?"
Rio's jaw tightened. He wasn't wrong. But she couldn't afford to hesitate. "It's dead now, there's nothing left to trap us. Besides if we're lucky the miners might still be alive."
The tunnel narrowed, forcing Rio to crouch slightly as they moved forward. The walls seemed to close in, but then, without warning, the passage opened into a wide chamber. The light from her magic spilled into the space, revealing an unnatural tableau.
Piles of bones littered the floor, their shapes twisted and broken. Many were too large to be human, their origins unclear. Against one wall, a crude altar had been carved into the stone, its surface stained with something dark and dry.
The light revealed them all at once, leaving Rio momentarily stunned. Bodies—miners by their tattered uniforms—were scattered around the chamber, their forms grotesquely twisted. Some were slumped against the walls, others lay crumpled across the floor, as if abandoned in their final moments of agony. The air reeked of decay and something metallic, like rusted iron.
Colwyn's voice trembled as he whispered, "Are they…?"
Rio didn't answer immediately. She carefully stepped into the chamber, the soles of her boots crunching against brittle bones. She kept her light at full intensity, wary of any hidden dangers. It was too quiet now, the oppressive silence gnawing at her nerves.
She knelt beside the nearest body, a young man with the only face that hadn't been distorted in some grotesque way. The miner had an unmistakable resemblance to the town mayor who had hired them to rescue the men.
Rio leaned in to inspect the miner's face, her brows knitting together in a mix of pity and dread. The miner's expression was frozen in a state of horror, but there was something off—his skin was mottled with strange veins, bulging and dark, that seemed to spread from a puncture wound on his neck.
She didn't notice the writhing shape beneath the flesh of his forearm until it was too late.
A sharp pain seared through her arm. She recoiled with a gasp, clutching her wrist where something had burrowed into her flesh. A long, thin worm-like creature darted under her skin, its path marked by a dark trail of bulging veins. It moved fast, coiling up her arm toward her shoulder, sending a wave of nausea and panic through her.
"Rio! What's wrong?" Colwyn's tried standing, but quickly doubled over in pain.
Rio bit back a scream, pressing her glowing palm against her arm in an attempt to burn the creature out. The flame magic seared her own skin, but the worm merely burrowed deeper to avoid her.
"Step away from her!" A commanding voice echoed through the cavern, sharp and unyielding.