The darkness inside the cave was absolute.
Not the kind that eyes adjusted to given enough time. The kind that had texture, that pressed against your skin and settled into your lungs with every breath. Marcus stopped two steps past the entrance and waited. Nothing resolved. Nothing came into focus.
Then Liz drew her sword.
The rune Poco had carved into the blade responded to the cave the way a flame responded to wind, not by dying but by intensifying. Light poured out of it in all directions, cold and steady, bouncing off the cave walls and multiplying until the entire corridor was lit in pale silver. The walls themselves seemed to lean into it, small veins of mineral running through the rock catching the light and throwing it back like the cave had been waiting for exactly this.
"Interesting," Marcus said, eyes moving across the illuminated walls. "This place has a few surprises ready for us."
We proceeded deeper.
The corridor was wide enough for three people across and the ceiling sat high above, lost in shadow even with the sword's light. The floor was uneven but navigable and on both sides the walls showed the same burn markings from the entrance, sharper here, more recent.
Then the smell hit. Old and dry and familiar from the entrance but stronger now. They found the source twenty steps further in.
More bodies. But different from the skeletons at the entrance. These were adventurers in proper gear, enchanted armor, quality weapons still in hand, insignias on their pauldrons denoting ranks and guild affiliation .
Something horrible lies ahead, he thought.
He could sense it the way you sensed a change in weather before the clouds arrived.
Then the shrieking started.
It came from the dark ahead, high and layered, multiple voices hitting the same note at different pitches and the sound bounced off the cave walls until it seemed to come from everywhere simultaneously. They followed it because there was no other direction and the corridor only went one way.
Six shapes resolved out of the darkness ahead.
The system window flickered above each one.
CAVE CRAWLERS
The size of large dogs but wrong in the way only things that lived their entire lives underground could be wrong. Six legs each, jointed at angles that made no mechanical sense until they moved and then made horrible sense. No eyes anywhere on their flat pale heads. Just wide lipless mouths filled with teeth that overlapped each other going back further than any mouth needed to go. Their skin was the color of old bone and they moved with the low fluid certainty of things that had never needed to be afraid of anything in this corridor.
They stopped when they saw the light from Liz's sword. Heads tilting. Processing.
Then they grouped together in a tight pack and the sound they made dropped from shrieking to something low and rhythmic, like a collective decision being reached.
"Stand down," Liz said assuming they could understand english, shifting her weight forward and bringing the sword up. "I'll handle them. Save your mana."
Marcus looked at the six creatures, then at her, then back.
"Thanks for the consideration," "But I won't be man enough to take that offer." He raised one hand. "Let's see what I'm actually capable of."
He opened his mouth to call the name.
CLANG.
The impact came from his left, the sound of teeth hitting steel with enough force to send sparks off the cave wall. A figure had appeared between Marcus and the crawler that had lunged for him, six feet of armored presence that hadn't been there a half second before. The crawler's jaws were locked around a blade it couldn't bite through and its six legs scrambled uselessly against the cave floor as it was held completely still by one arm.
"Malachar".
Crimson at the edges of his armor. A visor that revealed nothing. A sword arm that hadn't moved an inch under the pressure of the bite. He looked down at the creature attached to his blade with the patience of something that found the whole situation mildly beneath its attention.
"You lowly pest," he said, his voice filling the corridor like a stone dropped in still water. "Interrupting my summoning ceremony is the last interesting decision you will ever make."
He flicked his wrist.
The crawler hit the cave wall and didn't get back up.
The remaining five scattered into formation, circling outward, trying to split the targets. Liz was already moving, breaking left to cut off the two angling around behind them. Malachar turned to face the three coming straight ahead and something in how he turned, the absolute economy of it, made the crawlers hesitate for a fraction of a second.
That fraction was all he needed.
He moved through all three in a single motion that was less like fighting and more like a decision being carried out. His sword came through the arc clean and the crawlers dropped as a unit, one after another in the same breath. He stood on the other side of them and pulled his blade level, the pale light from Liz's sword catching the edge of his armor.
"Weak," he said flatly. "Not even worthy of being called a thing."
He yanked a smear of dark fluid from his sword using the back of his gauntlet with the mild displeasure of someone cleaning something unpleasant off their boot.
From behind them both came the sound of Liz finishing her two. Quick and clean, two strikes, done.
Then the corridor ahead filled with sound again.
Not shrieking this time. Something lower. A collective movement, dozens of legs on stone, and from the darkness beyond Malachar's reach shapes began resolving. More crawlers, pouring from cracks in the cave wall and from a branching passage to the right, not in packs this time but in a coordinated stream, filling the corridor width from wall to wall.
Thirty at least. Moving together like something was conducting them.
Malachar looked at the incoming mass and his voice carried something that might have been satisfaction if satisfaction could sound like an approaching storm.
"It has been a long time since I've yearned for battle," he said. "But these weak vermin are not worthy of the word." He raised his sword to the level of his shoulder. "You think numbers change fate? Come then and let me educate you."
Marcus watched the crawlers coming and watched Malachar's stance and made a decision. He brought his hand up and gave a single flat gesture.
Stop.
Malachar went still immediately.
Marcus turned to Liz. "They're yours."
She looked at him.
"I want to see your swordwork," he said. No flattery in it. Just honest assessment. "Show me you're not dead weight."
Liz looked at the thirty crawlers filling the corridor and the corner of her mouth moved.
"These aren't even suitable as a warm up," mocking me?.
She charged.
The rune on her blade ignited the moment she hit the first rank, blazing white against the pale silver, and the crawlers at the front recoiled from the light which gave her exactly the half second of hesitation she needed. Her first strike took two at once through the neck joint where the head met the body. Her second redirected off the cave wall at an angle that opened up the flank of a third before it processed what had happened to its companions.
She didn't stop moving.
That was the thing Marcus noticed. She was never still, never in the same position long enough to become a target, using the cave walls and the uneven floor like they were part of her technique rather than obstacles to work around. Her eyes had shifted, that faint luminescence appearing at the edges of her irises, and her blade found the gaps in each creature's approach before the creature had finished deciding on it.
What fine swordsmanship, would've been platinum tier atleast on my world.
Crawlers came at her six and seven at a time and she cut through the groupings like she was solving something, reading the pattern of each cluster and dismantling it from the inside out. A spin that opened four simultaneously. A low sweep that took out the legs of two more before her blade came back up through the third in the same motion. Twenty seconds of continuous motion without a single wasted strike.
The last crawler tried to run.
She covered the distance in three steps and finished it against the cave wall with a single clean thrust.
Silence reclaimed the corridor.
Liz stood in the middle of thirty dead crawlers and rolled her neck once and looked back at Marcus.
Her breathing had barely changed.
Seems you'll be worth more than a companion
Marcus looked at her for a moment. Then he looked at the passage he felt a strong dark emanating feeling from within .