Inside the mountain, the darkness was thick and viscous, swallowing them whole.
A pale green pinpoint of light flared to life, casting jagged shadows across slick rock walls coated in rotting moss. The hanging stalactites jutted downward like the broken teeth of a dead leviathan. Kaspar held the magelight stone high, his face bathed in the eerie glow.
The mercenary had shed his mocking grin. His eyes were deadly serious, scanning the cavern with the paranoid, razor-sharp focus of a veteran tracker.
Daniel Keller walked close behind him. The knight's steel-gauntleted hand hadn't moved a millimeter from the hilt of his Oathblade. His breathing was a heavy, ragged rasp in the quiet cave. He stared a hole through the mercenary's back, fighting a violently losing war inside his own skull—torn between his sacred duty to his Lady and a savage, corrosive jealousy that was seconds from detonating.
They were trespassing near the true heart of the Blackthorn Forest.
Kaspar knew they were walking a razor's edge where the territories of two Beast Kings overlapped. One loud echo, one spilled drop of blood, and they would be nothing but wet meat for the rulers of this cursed wood.
This cavern looked like a viable camp.
According to Kaspar, it was the hollowed-out nest of a Blackthorn Spider. The high-ranking aberration had been slaughtered three years ago, but the lingering, putrid death-stench and the ghost of its aura were usually enough to keep lesser predators at bay.
"Clean."
Kaspar muttered. He rubbed the damp, gritty grime between his thumb and forefinger.
"No fresh webbing. No warm shit trails."
He turned, lowering the magelight, preparing to signal Daniel to bring Helene and Rurik inside.
Thud.
Daniel lunged like an unchained beast.
Kaspar was ripped clean off his feet and slammed backward into the jagged rock wall. The magelight slipped from his grip, clattering to the cavern floor and sending wild, swinging shadows across the ceiling.
Daniel's armored forearm crushed Kaspar's throat against the stone. The pressure was murderous, threatening to snap the mercenary's windpipe. Kaspar's mouth flew open in a dry, wheezing gasp, his boots kicking uselessly in the air.
The knight's eyes were bloodshot, veins pulsing wildly at his temples. The rage he had choked down for days had finally shattered the dam.
"You really think I'm blind, you bastard?"
Daniel hissed through violently ground teeth.
"That filthy paw of yours… you actually dared to touch my Lady. Where the fuck do you get the nerve to soil her pure skin!"
Kaspar's airflow was completely cut off. His face darkened to an ugly, mottled purple. But instead of thrashing in panic, the street dog suddenly went dead still. He stared straight into Daniel's wild, bloodshot eyes. The fear vanished, replaced by a slow, mocking sneer that curled the corner of his lips.
"So what?"
Kaspar rasped hoarsely. The words were choked, but they dripped like corrosive acid straight into Daniel's ears.
"You gonna kill me now, Sir Knight? Here? In the dark?"
"I'll hack that filthy hand of yours into pieces."
Daniel snarled, pressing his forearm harder.
"Go ahead."
Kaspar laughed—a broken, twisted sound dripping with absolute contempt.
"Chop it off. Then let's see who drags you soft little shits through the acid swamps. Let's see who carries your precious noble Lady out of this godforsaken forest alive."
Daniel froze.
The cold, naked reality hit him like an anvil. They needed this scum. Helene needed Kaspar's worthless life to survive.
Seeing the exact second of hesitation flash in the knight's eyes, Kaspar drove the blade deeper. He thrust his chin forward, closing the distance to Daniel's face, and whispered the filthiest, most violating words he could muster.
"And did you even get a proper look, Daniel? The noble Lady… she didn't push me away. Her skin… fuck… so soft… so fucking boiling hot… and she stayed perfectly still like a good little girl while I touched her."
He clicked his tongue, a lewd, wet sound echoing in the dark.
"Even… when I slid my fingers higher. All the way up, almost to those white thighs. She spread her legs just a tiny bit extra for me. You know… maybe our fine widow's been living way too long without a proper fuck. Maybe she's just waiting for a real cock to finally hammer into her tight little cunt…"
"SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!"
Daniel roared, the sound ripping from his chest like a madman.
His right steel-gauntleted fist pulled back, coiling into a weapon of pure, unrestrained violence. He was ready to cave the grinning bastard's skull into a bloody pulp.
But Kaspar didn't flinch. He forced his eyes wide open, staring straight into Daniel's dilated pupils.
"Be honest with yourself, you repressed knight."
Kaspar's voice dropped, shedding the mockery for a sly, bone-deep cruelty.
"You're not losing your shit just because a street dog like me dared to touch her."
Kaspar bared his yellowed teeth in an all-knowing, devilish grin.
"You're snapping because you're burning with raw jealousy. Because it wasn't you who got to stroke that bare skin."
Daniel's entire body locked rigid, as if he had been plunged into freezing water.
"I saw that hungry look in your eyes, Daniel."
Kaspar's whisper became a filleting knife, brutally carving the knight's darkest secrets into the open.
"I saw how you secretly stare at that arse when it sways under the slit skirt. I saw how you hold your breath when the Lady moans while she works her magic."
He leaned his head forward, lips brushing inches from Daniel's ear, and delivered the executioner's blow.
"Isn't it you… who's so fucking horny for your own Lady that you're about to lose your mind? Deep in that sick, noble head of yours, you want to pin her down in the mud, rip that aristocratic mask to shreds, and ram your hard cock balls-deep into her dripping slit. Don't you?"
Daniel's steel-clad fist hung frozen in mid-air. It trembled violently, like a heavy branch caught in a gale.
Kaspar's depraved whisper had mercilessly stripped away the iron armor of honor Daniel had worn his entire life. It dragged the forbidden, carnal lust into the light—the exact lust the knight had chained in the deepest, darkest dungeon of his soul.
Burning shame and self-hatred fused into a suffocating knot in his throat.
And then, Daniel's fist flew.
It shot forward like a steel spear, driven by a catastrophic wave of rage and scorching humiliation.
CRASH.
The deafening sound of solid steel obliterating hard stone thundered through the cavern like a lightning strike. Sharp rock shards exploded outward like shrapnel, slicing a shallow, bloody line across Kaspar's cheek.
Daniel's fist was buried wrist-deep in the massive rock wall—barely a millimeter from Kaspar's temple.
Fine stone dust rained down over them like gray snow.
Kaspar hadn't blinked. He simply leaned against the wall, utterly relaxed. The arrogant, victorious grin on his face only widened.
He had won completely. Beneath that pious, knightly facade was nothing but a cock-driven stud drowning in his own suppressed lust.
Daniel gasped, broken. His heavy breastplate heaved as he fought for air. He stared at that victorious grin for one long, agonizing second, ground his teeth, and violently yanked his shaking hand out of the crater.
Fresh blood trickled from his dented, torn knuckles. But the physical damage was laughable compared to the gaping wound Kaspar's words had just ripped open in his mind.
"Pray to your gods."
Daniel hissed. His voice was raw, utterly shattered, and devoid of warmth.
"Pray that your godless dog mouth doesn't drag us all into the grave ahead of schedule."
He spun on his heel and stormed toward the cave entrance. The frantic clank of his armor sounded less like a retreat, and more like a man fleeing blind from his own reflection.
Kaspar stayed leaning casually against the wall. He lifted his thumb, wiped the trail of blood from his cheek, licked the copper taste from his skin, and sauntered after the knight at a leisurely pace.
But the sheer kinetic impact of a Master Knight had not only shattered the surface of the stone. The physical shockwave drove deep into the hollow, rotten structure of the cavern walls, spreading like a waking tremor.
Deep, deep below. In a hidden abyss where the magelight could never reach.
Scraaaatch… tick…
A faint, bone-dry sound echoed in the black. It sounded like thousands of hard, pointed legs scuttling across bare stone all at once.
In the ink-black belly of the cave.
A cluster of many-jointed, wetly gleaming eyes opened slowly.
Then another cluster. And another. One after another, hundreds of putrid, flesh-colored pinpoints flared to life in the dark.
The dead silence of the cave suddenly began to writhe hungrily, crawling upward on thousands of legs.