[Locked Out]

I was not impressed with the Domain.

The black fleshy wall that had closed up resisted every attempt to pierce it. Big Guy Cliff threw a boulder at it with enough force to shatter against the black wall. We had to duck to avoid the shower of shrapnel as it's burst pieces flew back at us.

Whatever was going on in there, it wanted privacy.

This left Cliff and I alone together out in the tunnel. His huge mass made the small space feel claustrophobic. I wasn't going to be waiting out the domain trapped in here. The big guy didn't seem too thrilled about it either. It was strange to see a hulk fidget.

"Hunt," I said.

The big guy perked right up at the sound of that. I didn't know if we spoke the same language before we died, or if the Adamite Language was universal. Either way we seemed to reach an understanding.

The macabre warning at the tunnel entrance caught both of us by surprise. The boars had left a message.

The disemboweled cliff hugger lay still, mouth frozen in the agony of its death.. Its organs and skin had pulled apart into a five pointed star. The dead pigman surrounding it had their bellies masticated by wide flat teeth. Ground up into a pink paste.. The torn chasm floor gouged by heavy cloven feet. This was a message.

I took the time to collect the cliff hugger, count its collar bones. It wasn't Dagger.

The intent behind the positioning disturbed me. They'd come right up to the tunnel entrance. Knew we were here. When had they followed us? It didn't matter now. I looked out to the foliage, the trees, the chasm. Quiet, motionless. The larger boars could overcome the domain. So why hadn't they?

They were starving us out.

How much further would we have to go to hunt? It looked like the boar's had cleared out everything they could. We could last for now, but we would have to eat and eat well to stave off the slow drip of heath caused by starvation. With the domain closed injuries were especially dangerous.

I looked up at Cliff. He looked over at the dead bodies.

Neither of us could bring ourselves to eat them. It might be a matter of pride, but something about the bodies behind cold, long dead and chewed soft... It was the first meat that made me sick to think about.

Cliff dragged the pigman into the undergrowth. It was a good plan. Even if we wouldn't eat them, they might draw prey out of the tunnels. It was difficult to walk on three's instead of all four limbs, but I dragged the cliff hugger deep into the tunnel.

It felt like the right thing to do.

I was able to get all the way to the entrance Mariel had carved out for us so many days ago. With the rolling mists and soft light it looked ethereal and beautiful. I left it there. The Silent Maw would appreciate the meal. A small part of me hoped that Mariel would come down to claim her own. One last funeral.

I don't know why this death affected me. I'd hunted my own kind before. Some of their souls were still caught within me, a tainted currency of power. This wasn't about survival. It must have been the intent. Intelligence made a dangerous enemy. Sentience.

I could not let this stand. We were too weak to take on the boar king, or his dragon but we would grow stronger. We needed a way to draw out the time.

I came back to find Cliff renovating the tunnel. Most of the narrows opened up now and he was moving towards the cliff entrance. If the boars gave us trouble it would be good to have a quick way out. Without major changes, Cliff was not passing some of the passages that fit our original forms.

Checking to see why he had stopped, I found Cliff staring into the mushroom cave. The deep purples were more vibrant than I remembered, and Cliff seemed entranced by the color. I tried not to wince when he drove a fist through the stone wall to open into it. The bleeding was almost continuous, but it never seemed to bother him.

Entering the cavern, my lungs closed off again instinctively. Poison? There was no real way to warn Cliff.

Following after, the first thing I noticed was the cavern was much bigger than it appeared. Now that we were no longer limited to a pinhole vantage point, I could make out other tunnel entrances. This could be very good. We'd be able to connect to other entrances!

It would make it harder for the boars to track their coming and going.

The mushrooms themselves reacted to our presence. As Cliff drew close, they released dense spore clouds up into the upper ceiling. I was still holding my breath, but Cliff must have been getting lungfuls of the stuff. It didn't seem to bother him, and I worried less as we continued out.

I noticed the air was damp.

The spores and something else stuck to my skin, bringing it up to an oily shine. Was there water nearby? I hadn't felt the need to drink since coming here. Other than hunger, basic functions seemed managed by the power of the demon stomach. What would it feel like to have access to water again? To feel something crisp and refreshing enter my stomach instead of rot and gore.

The mushrooms dripped thick mucus. Black, reds, and purple. They made wet lace along their fat caps. It pooled onto the floor in slow rivers, draining into open tears in the stone floor. I wanted, in a fit of madness, to know its taste. Common sense stepped in well before that thought turned into action. poisonous or not there was no benefit in finding out with the domain closed.

The tears in the floors dripped into a black sea, hundreds of feet below. The drop unimpeded by stone or land. A hole into a lower abyss. As Cliff lumbered about I became very conscious of the thin floor. I had no plans to bring it to his attention. I remembered the sounds as he shouted out into the drop below the cliff. Better, I thought, that Cliff found out later.

I was sure the gig was up when Cliff started bouncing, excited. I hissed in warning , and that made the ape start shrieking. in heavy breaths. What on earth?

He was laughing.

The big brute had tried one of the mushrooms.

Worried he was going to crash through the stone floor, I tried to drag him out of the cavern and back to the hall. I didn't know if it would help but it couldn't hurt. Every time one of his fists came down I could hear small chunks of stone dropping away.

Wrestling the bear back to the safety of the tunnels was a challenge. I'd been breathing so hard I was getting giddy too. No announcements of poison resistance popped up to provide a countdown. For me, at least, it seemed that the mushroom worked on the mind and not the body.

And this was starting to get weird.

I was relaxing at first. Wouldn't it be funny if the boar's came now? A cliff wraith half in the bag trying to get the largest cliff hugger hell had ever seen off his back and sitting. What else would come to see something like that. We could charge tickets.

What did you think of that?

What did you think of that Jane? It'd be a good way to raise a little bit of money for the baby shower. We'd have a 50/50 draw. Everyone would have a little fun.

I'd almost had the crib finished by then, and the walnut we'd lost a few years ago was finally maturing. A couple bowls would be fun to make. I'd got pretty good at the lathe making the dowels.

I asked Cliff what he thought would be a good idea and he laughed, black puss from the mushrooms dripping down. His body looked like melted candle wax, carved into muscle and then gouged with teeth. Have you seen anything that looked like that Jane?

First we had to plan for a gender reveal at the party Jane. I was thinking we could take the blue ferns and purple mushrooms and lay them out for the guests. We'd have enough for everyone, and then one more, for her. You would have to have that one Jane. I couldn't eat more dessert than what I took and you were eating for two.

The white figure moved up in front of me, arms raised. Had they seen Jane? It was so hard to keep track of her at parties like this. Looking at Cliff he'd had too much dessert and was falling to sleep.

I was about to ask the white figure when she stabbed the sword though my shoulder joint pinning me to the ground. I screamed.

Jane had died, and I was here.