Underkeeper

The lizards were dragging the corpses off of the cart and into a room when Jori caught up. The adult lizard yipped and yapped loudly for a moment before it walked off and left the youngsters to their task.

The little purple-scaled lizard she’d seen before was struggling to move a single corpse, while the others dragged them in one by one until none were left. Then they pulled the cart in, depositing it behind the entrance. This left the little runt huffing, still trying with no success to drag its one corpse in as the others watched. The bigger spawnlings giggled and yipped at the runt until one stepped forward and gave it a sudden vicious kick so hard that it dropped its burden and landed on its tail.

Jori bared her fangs and hissed. Bad spawnling!

Another stepped forward, and the whole group started beating the hapless creature. Jori had seen enough. She launched herself forward along the ceiling with a few quiet strides and then pushed off with both legs to tackle that first lizard.

The bully buckled under the impact. She bit down hard on its shoulder, but was disappointed to find that she couldn’t bite through its tough scales. She wrenched her head side to side, held on with both hands, and scratched at its body with her legs as it yowled.

Something hit her in the face, and she lost her grip, tumbling away. Quickly she hopped back up and raised her claws. She was surrounded.

Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.

Then she heard the little runt whimpering, still on the ground, and long-repressed indignation and anger bloomed in her heart.

Jori hissed viciously at the pack of spawnlings and they flinched back. A couple yipped in fear and ran while the one she had bitten backed away cautiously.

She turned to face each one as they yapped and yipped and backed away until they were all gone, and then it was just the little purple lizard curled on the ground next to her, looking at her cautiously with wide eyes. Good enough. This one wouldn’t stop her, she’d saved it. That made it hers, or something.

She marched into the food chamber. There were so many! Thirty, maybe forty dead lizards were piled into the room. Jori felt her eyes heat up in anticipation. She hopped up onto a pile of them, focused on the one in front of her, and inhaled sharply through her nose. What was hiding inside responded to her intent, coming slowly at first, and then breaking free. Within a second, the ghostly white mist was drawn from its mouth and flowed into her mouth and nose.

Oooooh! She shuddered. That felt incredible. It was like having the best rat jerky after a long hungry day of working, or waking up on a hot summer day in the sun. The room seemed brighter, sounds clearer, and her mind sharper. Jori moved to the next one, but hesitated and looked up.

The little purple runt was staring from the entrance with its mouth open, fascinated and only a little fearful. Jori hopped down off the pile and behind it, where she wouldn’t be seen by a random passerby, and resumed her feast.

By the tenth body, she realized something strange was happening to her. A faint glow under her skin was tracing a complex network of organic-looking lines. She had never seen inside her own body before. How interesting.

Jori pricked her forearm over a glowing line experimentally, and when she withdrew her claw, it welled with glowing blood. Exposed to air, it quickly ignited and burned, cleaning off her claw, sealing the little wound, and filling the chamber with a strangely metallic burnt sulfur smell.

She cocked her head, examining the burnt dot on her skin. That hadn’t ever happened before.

For a moment, she wondered if all this was something she should be doing. Then she shrugged. She was still thirsty for more.

Clambering behind another pile of bodies, she drew out more of the incredible essence. She drained four more bodies before she started to feel a strange pressure pushing against her from the inside. After that, taking in the essence was harder, but she didn’t want to stop. She managed two more after that, but by then the glow under her skin was starting to light up the room around her.

That… wasn’t right. She looked down at herself, feeling a little annoyed. This wouldn’t be very sneaky on the way back. Her little purple friend sat in the corner with her and marveled at her light, but was otherwise quiet.

She could see the shadow of her bones within her illuminated hand. More strangely, there were shadows traced within the network of glowing blood vessels that curled and looped in unnatural patterns, each one branching off of one of the glowing lines. They looked oddly familiar, a little like the drawings in Bernt’s books, but without any straight lines—they were more organic.

Jori lifted a clawed foot and held it up to her face, squinting at it curiously. As far as she could see, it was the same all over her body. That pressure was at each of those lit-up points where her blood vessels connected to the shadowy patterns.

She still wanted more, but she was also getting scared of the pressure.

Then again, she couldn’t stop now and go into the tunnels like this. None of the demons in the place before had walked around glowing like this, she was sure, so maybe the light would go away soon. And it couldn’t really be bad for her. It was too tasty!

Decision made, she went to the third and largest pile and picked another one. She sensed the misty, glowing power clearly now, and tried to pull it into herself. It quivered, but she couldn’t quite tear it free. Maybe she was too tired?

But she couldn’t wait around. There wasn’t time. Someone would be here again soon, she was sure.

She tried again, more urgently this time, and felt it as the essence moved. It crept upward and out of the kobold’s mouth, but still didn’t quite want to come all the way up to her. Impatiently, she leaned down and snatched it up with her mouth. As her teeth clicked together, agony tore through her.

The pressure felt like it was tearing through her insides. Her muscles spasmed painfully and she fell to her knees. Lowering herself to the ground, she concentrated on relaxing her twitching muscles, releasing the pressure in her veins.

She normally had great control of her body, but it was much harder now. It took almost a minute lying down, enduring the pain and relaxing each muscle one at a time, to finally relieve the tearing sensation. Slowly, she worked to regain control over her body until the pain was only coming from those glowing lines. Then she tried to relax those as well, and to her great surprise, succeeded. With all of them, all at once.

Glowing blood rushed into dormant channels, lighting up the previously dark spellforms with reddish light. Then every drop of blood in those linked spellforms ignited and melted her flesh in a torrent of incandescent hellfire.

Jori tried to scream but had no lungs or throat to do so. Her vision, hearing, sense of touch, and smell and taste all disappeared entirely alongside the pain, and for a very long moment she thought she had entered an eternity of absolute nothingness, drifting in an endless void. Then, just as suddenly, pain returned, and with it all the other senses—first hearing, then sight, smell, taste, and finally touch.

As soon as she could draw breath to whimper, the pain disappeared. She felt… cheated somehow. Such horrific agony should be expressed. Now she could, but it didn’t hurt anymore, so the time for that drama had passed. Jori sat up. The purple runt flinched away. He was standing very close. His eyes were huge and round and he was shaking just a little.

Wait, did the runt shrink?

Jori looked down at herself. She was taller! Her skin had become a darker shade of red, and her claws were a bit longer and darker as well. She also wasn’t glowing anymore, which was a relief. With a shiver, she spread her leathery wings, stretching them out to their full, now much broader wingspan.

But now she was thirsty all over again. Even more so, if anything. Absently, she inhaled, yanking at the power that lingered in the nearest body. To her shock, the misty essence tore free of all twelve of the remaining corpses.

It felt like barely a taste. How disappointing! Had they gone bad?

She shook her head. This wasn’t the time. She didn’t want to go through that again anytime soon anyway. Just imagining that horrifying melting sensation made her want to claw her own brain out and stomp the memory to death. She could not do that again.

Looking down at herself again, Jori did a double take. There was no illumination from her flesh or anything around her, but she clearly saw the network of veins in her body now, even deep inside. It was completely different now, and it held quite a lot of that essence.

It ran all through her body, except in her left hand. She could feel it there in her wrist, dammed up against one of those connection points, blocked out of another one of those shadowy patterns.

Before she could change her mind, Jori focused on relaxing first her muscles and then the obstruction in her vein. The blood flowed in and it ignited painfully, the pattern in her body complete, but it didn’t melt her hand down this time.

She held a handful of unnatural reddish flame. It dripped out like a liquid and smelled like iron and sulfur—like the place before.

With a start, Jori realized: this stuff was hot! She shook her hand in panic, trying to get the rest off. The liquid hellfire flew off of her hand easily, striking one of the piles of corpses… and going right through it. A smoldering hole of char gave a view of her weirdly liquid fire merrily burning on a growing puddle of melted rock.

A whimper brought her back to reality, and Jori turned to the little runt in the corner, who was pressing himself against the wall, away from her. At the same time, her newly improved ears twitched at the sound of dozens of distant footsteps. She sprang forward, seized the little runt, and yanked him out of the chamber into the tunnel. With no real idea of where to take him, she just dragged him around the next corner and patted his head in what she hoped might be encouragement.

Then she scrambled her way up the wall and along the ceiling. It felt awkward with her new proportions, but she could still do it. A feeling of triumph filled her. She had FEASTED, and she had become… more. A feral grin spread across her face.

That expression promptly froze as she felt a very odd sensation in her bond. Bernt was trying to summon her. He was afraid, panicked. He was trying to see through her eyes, but she was too far away. Her heart sped up as she felt a looming sense of impending disaster. She needed to get back, and quickly!