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[Arahim]

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Something slammed hard into Arahim's back as he crouched, sending his spikes and hammer scattering with a metallic, echoing clatter. The impact sprawling him onto his belly. The sudden forward momentum carrying whatever hit him over his head.

Pulling himself to all fours, he drove his torch down onto a spider the size of a dog, as it's eight spiny legs worked furiously to right itself. The forceful contact met with a shower of sparks, and a wet popping sizzle. Blackened body and legs shrivelled and curled up like some macabre flower.

The high walls around Arahim were alive with movement. A crawling carpet of arachnids vomitted forth from every forgotten crack and hole in the dark and pitted rock from floor to ceiling.

Legion.

Arahim fought down a sea of revulsion, backing away quickly to retrieve his axe. Scanning the ground for his fallen tools. Eyes wide and wary.

The skittering, chitinous mass surged forward. A maddening clicking of claw on stone, rapid and multitudinous. Their bulbous, misshapen bodies white and translucent. Horrible ululating squeals filled the cavern.

The first two to reach him met with his axe, swept viciously in a wide forward arc. The glinting steel sheared through the two foremost legs of one, before coming to rest in the head of the other. A thick, sickly white ichor coating the ice where they fell, creating a fetid smelling steam in the cold.

Still dancing backwards, Arahim paused to pick up two spikes, and shoved them into his belt.

Desperately he kept the hissing, squealing swarm at bay with axe and fire. A tactic he would be unable to sustain as more and more monstrosities poured forth from the wounds in the walls.

Burning a spider that had rushed for him, Arahim turned and ran towards the far end of the cave hoping for an exit. Praying the tide of black eyes and deadly mandibles at his back would not suddenly overtake him.

He clove through the thorax of one that had dropped from above as he reached the wall. Ropey viscera spattered wetly into his face as three more creatures fell upon him, and bore him to the ground. Their slashing legs tearing gouges through his leather armor. Arahim rolled and struggled blindly to his feet, unable to fully regain his balance under their weight.

Pain shot through his body like a jolt of icy water as black fangs found their way past his flailing defenses and into his left shoulder.

Finding focus for a moment, Arahim threw himself backwards into the unyielding stone, crushing his attacker with a sickening squelch. The warm, awful blood oozing down his back.

Still thrashing in a frenzied bid to dislodge the other two, he hit the wall again. The disjointed scrabbling of a thousand nightmares loomed closer, threatening to consume his sanity.

He cried out, and hit the wall again, knocking free another with a virulent hiss, just as a fourth leapt headlong into his chest sending him barrelling backwards.

This time, the wall gave way.

[Arahim]

---

In a cascade of falling rock and dust, Arahim plunged into nothing before landing awkwardly on his side and tumbling further still, down a narrow, slanting shaft.

His axe was lost in the fall.

His torch snuffed out.

A gnawing nausea coursed through his pain ruined body, clenching his stomach tightly. Roiling violently, he emptied the contents of his belly. A harsh, acidic taste left in his mouth as he struggled to catch a breath, crawling hands and knees feebly through his own sick.

All was darkness.

Darkness, and the clawing sounds of pursuit beyond.

"...Expor Flamus." he whispered, and embraced the flames to consume him.

[Arahim]

---

The sudden flare of power made white, popping stars of his vision. Tracing a sepulchral after-image of his ragged, huddled figure for what seemed a seething instant before the ancient shadows rallied, and crowded around once again. Teasing at his bruised and lacerated frame, swallowing up the blood he shed upon the age dusted stone. Claiming it completely.

His shoulder was numb, and ached him to move, but the poison was burnt away. The nausea expunged. What was left was a catalog of biting pains, and a tide of disorientation that Arahim swam against with a mounting sense of panic.

He had precious little time, and even less as far as resources on which to employ.

The shaft was barely the width of two men abreast, and high enough only to offer Arahim the luxury of rising to his hands and knees. Though he scuffed as quickly as he could on his elbows, his back kept low so as to keep his pack from scraping and snagging on the low ceiling.

A sound like uncountable picks striking bedrock echoed behind him. Rolling over him in reverberation that seemed to grow and multiply in intensity until the noise took on gigantic shape in his mind. Threatening a lonely death.

You'll never make it.

Planting his spike pointed boots into the side of the tunnel, Arahim twisted himself around, balling himself up tightly to allow himself room, until he faced the direction from whence he came, and the horrible chittering of his pursuers.

[Arahim]

---

Shrugging his shoulders in these tight confines, Arahim wriggled off his backpack, and set it in front of him. Digging through it's contents with both hands, he pulled out the strange sack Al'lyria had given him. It's thin texture seemed to be ever slick and sebaceous. Here in the primal, perfect dark it was a lurid, noxious thing to the touch.

Pushing aside such thoughts, he tucked the folded bag down the front of his leggings. Clammy skin cool upon his own.

Risking instinctual, furtive glances down the pitch corridor, as though he could actually see, he produced a smooth, wooden rune. It was one of four, but he dared not risk feeling its surface for the carving upon it. One would do as well as the next if it brought him back to the sun.

Scraping.

Clawing.

Closer now than before.

Chasing still.

Flipping over on his back, Arahim tore off both cloak and coat, dumping his flask from an inside pocket onto his chest. It was near half full.

Rolling over again, he doused his cloak in the potent liquor, and blanketed his pack with first his heavy coat, and then the whiskey soaked wool.

His hands shook with more than simply chills as he found his flint and struck tiny, white, stillborn suns between his fingers. Swallowed once...then twice, by the endless night shrouding him.

A piteous shriek tore through the tomb of unyielding rock when the third, and final strike blazed forth blue tinged flames bright and true. Filling the aperture with a hostile, blinding light.

A burnt stench Arahim had never experienced assaulted him cloyingly. Sticking to the inside of his mouth, sickening him.

Retreating from the sudden fire, he crawled with alacrity through the grotesque belly of the mountain heedless of pursuit. His last trick played. His last hopes heaped upon the sacrificial pyre so many yards behind him.

Time a blind guide.

Direction without choice.

Desperation lending strength.

Arahim's hands bled raw. His body soaked up the cold with ill-mannered greed until comfort became a thing that had never been real. Neither experienced, nor remembered.

...Until changed became the stagnant air. Cooler, but newer.

A cyclopeian space opened abruptly before him, and at once he was like a man who had disinterred himself from some sullen grave.

Standing, all was silver.