The darkness wasn't just absence of light. It was presence.
Thick, smothering, absolute. The kind of black that pressed against your eyeballs and made your ears ring with the sound of your own blood pumping.
One heartbeat passed. Two.
Then the scraping started again, closer this time. A dry, chitinous sound, like giant fingernails dragging across stone, echoing from ahead.
Then another scrape, unnervingly distinct, from the left flank.
And a third, soft but definite, seeming to come from behind them.
Bobby gripped the crude license plate sword tighter, the jagged edges biting into his palm even through his worn work gloves. He shifted his weight, his injured thigh sending a hot throb up his leg as a reminder of his earlier encounter with Goremaw.
Beside him, he heard Rigg fumble with something – a sharp clink of metal on flint, followed by a desperate hiss.
Flicker.
A weak, almost apologetic light sputtered to life. Rigg held the rune lantern aloft again, but the glow wasn't the faint yellow from before. Now it cast a sickly, greenish pallor, like light filtered through pond scum.
The shadows it threw were distorted, stretching in directions that geometry shouldn't allow, twisting back on themselves as if trying to swallow the meager light whole.
"Stay sharp," Rigg whispered, his voice tight as a banjo string. His eyes, wide and reflecting the diseased green light, darted nervously into the oppressive gloom surrounding their small island of visibility.
"Feels like the dark's breathin'," Bobby muttered, his own gaze scanning the shifting shadows. "Ain't a fan." He could almost feel the blackness pulsing, receding slightly from the lantern's glow only to press in again from the edges.
They moved forward, deeper into the suffocating embrace of the undershaft. The path Rigg followed was barely discernible, marked only by faint scratches on the tunnel floor. The ground beneath their boots grew softer, spongier, giving way slightly with each step. It wasn't mud, exactly; it felt more like packed ash mixed with something yielding, something that remembered being alive.
Dust motes, thick and greasy, swirled sluggishly in the lantern light, seeming less disturbed by their passage and more like they were trying to cling to Bobby's jeans, hitching a ride out of this forsaken place.
The low, sub-audible pulse Bobby had felt earlier seemed stronger here, a bass note thrumming not just through the ground but through the very air, resonating deep in his chest cavity. It felt like walking down the throat of some colossal beast that hadn't quite woken up yet.
Betsy's voice hummed directly in his mind, a low thrum beneath the surface noise, tinged with something like distaste.
"Place is giving me the creeps, sugar. The Echo Layer's getting fuzzy around the edges, like this Fracture is trying to smudge the feed. Interfering with my ambient sensors too. Feels… sticky."
Her presence was a constant warmth against his back, a low vibration in his bones – the core of his Anchor, always there, even if her full truck form couldn't manifest down here [cite: 391-393, 161-162]. No signal to lose, just the world itself trying to jam the connection.
"Roger that, sweetheart," Bobby grunted, keeping his voice low. "Place feels like it's havin' a slow-motion panic attack."
He ran a hand along the wall again, same as before, but the texture was shifting even as they walked. One section felt unnervingly smooth and warm, like polished hide. He tapped it with the pommel of his sword; the sound was dull, fleshy.
A few feet further, the wall felt cold enough to fog his breath, slick with a condensation that smelled faintly metallic. He tapped again. Ting. Like hitting solid steel.
The tunnel itself wasn't behaving. Walls bowed outward unexpectedly, then squeezed in so tight he had to turn sideways, dragging his injured leg. Patches of the ceiling simply… ended, shearing off into flat non-space above them, as if reality had been clumsily erased.
"This place feels like it got built by someone makin' it up as they went," he muttered, glancing at Rigg.
The kid didn't answer, his attention fixed on the tunnel ahead. He pointed with his rebar spear. "Look."
Bobby followed the line of the spear. Etched into a section of the fleshy-feeling wall were markings. Not the clear guide marks Rigg had been following, but thin, spidery scratches that seemed to… writhe. They squirmed faintly in the lantern light, like worms trapped beneath a layer of skin.
Bobby squinted, leaning closer despite the protesting throb in his leg.
"You ever seen a scratch that wants to crawl out the wall?"
Rigg swallowed hard, the sound loud in the tense quiet. "That's usually the part where we turn around."
"Too late for that, big guy," Betsy confirmed, her mental voice grim. "My internal chronometer feels… off. And the spatial geometry readings? They're garbage. The tunnel behind you isn't stable. Whatever path we took to get here, it's already rewriting itself. We're past the point of easy return. You're in the belly now."
A cold knot formed in Bobby's gut, tighter than the one the EarthCo soda can had tied there earlier. He didn't like traps. And this whole tunnel felt like one big, poorly designed digestive tract getting ready to clamp down.
Then the scraping returned. Louder. From ahead.
Scrrraaaape... scrape...
And a low, guttural chuffing sound joined it, echoing wetly.
Rigg spun, lantern light dancing wildly. "That sound's bad," he breathed, knuckles white on his spear shaft. "That sound's real bad."
From the oppressive darkness just beyond the lantern's throw, shapes began to resolve.
Four of them.
Loping forward with an unnatural gait.
At first glance, Bobby's brain tried to categorize them as dogs, maybe large wolves. But the details screamed wrong. Their limbs were too long, bending at joints that shouldn't exist. Their fur wasn't hair but resembled clumps of rusted, twisted wire, slick with something that dripped onto the spongy ground.
Their eyes glowed with the same sickly green as the lantern light, but flat, devoid of life or intelligence – just hungry sensors. And their movement… it was too smooth, too fluid, like puppets pulled by wet strings, punctuated by sudden, jerky bursts of speed.
"Hell no," Bobby muttered, planting his good leg and raising the Door Shield strapped to his left forearm. "Them ain't wolves. That's something playin' dress-up."
[THREAT DETECTED: ECHO-FLAYED CANIDS (x4)] [WARNING: UNPREDICTABLE MOVEMENT PATTERNS]
The system prompt flashed almost calmly across his vision, a stark contrast to the scene unfolding.
Viewer01: Doggo?? PogOhWaitNo
Viewer02: Oh great, zombie wolves. Just what the run needed.
Viewer03: GET EM BOBBY! USE THE DOOR!
The closest Not-Wolf lunged, a silent blur of wire fur and too many teeth.
Bobby met the charge head-on, planting his feet and bracing the heavy Door Shield. Metal screamed against unnatural bone as the creature slammed into the repurposed truck door. The impact jarred him, sending shivers up his arm, but the shield held. He grunted, shoved forward with his shoulder, staggering the creature back, then brought his right foot up in a heavy kick to its chest.
It stumbled, and Bobby didn't waste the opening.
He brought the License Plate Sword down in a vicious, two-handed chop aimed at its neck. The jagged steel bit deep. There was no spray of blood, not like a normal animal. Instead, a thick, greenish-black substance, almost like sap, oozed out, sizzling and steaming where it hit the ground. The creature convulsed once, twice, then lay still, the green light fading from its eyes.
[TARGET NEUTRALIZED: +15 STREAM ENERGY] [USER COMMENT: Viewer01: brutal. i love it.]
Before Bobby could catch his breath, another Not-Wolf shot past him, ignoring him completely, heading straight for Rigg.
"Kid!" Bobby yelled, pivoting hard on his good leg. He couldn't reach it with the sword in time. Instinct took over.
He lunged forward, intercepting the creature mid-stride, and punched out with the edge of the Door Shield, catching the Not-Wolf square on the side of its head. There was a sickening crack as its jaw seemed to dislocate sideways, hanging at an impossible angle. It yelped – a thin, reedy sound totally wrong for its size – and stumbled away, disoriented.
The remaining two creatures circled, their movements synchronized, green eyes fixed on Bobby. They stayed just outside his sword's reach, testing, waiting.
"They're feeling you out, sugar," Betsy advised, her tone hardening. "Probing for weakness. This place is messing with their basic functions, but the predator instinct is still kicking. One more push and they'll swarm."
"Then let's give 'em somethin' to choke on," Bobby growled through gritted teeth. He wasn't fast, not with the bad leg, but he still had weight and stubbornness.
He dropped into a lower crouch, shield held high, the mangled license plate blade held ready. He feinted left, then swept the sword low toward the creature on his right. It leaped back, right into the path he wanted.
With a roar, Bobby surged forward, slamming the flat of the Door Shield into its flank, driving it hard against the yielding tunnel wall. He pinned it there, the creature snarling and snapping uselessly against the heavy steel slab.
The last Not-Wolf hesitated for a split second. Then, it did something utterly unnatural.
It turned and scrambled up the tunnel wall, claws finding impossible purchase on the slick, shifting surface, moving like some grotesque, overgrown spider.
"Oh, hell no you don't!" Bobby snarled.
No time to swing the sword. He ripped the heavy Door Shield off his forearm with a grunt, ignoring the flare of pain in his leg from the sudden movement. He hefted the slab of reinforced steel – still faintly smelling of diesel and something he vaguely remembered as ghost bacon – and hurled it like a discus, like a giant, deadly frisbee made of truck parts.
The shield spun through the air, catching the wall-crawling creature square in the back.
CRUNCH.
The sound echoed horribly in the confined space. The Not-Wolf peeled off the wall, tumbling bonelessly to the spongy floor with a final, wet rattle. It didn't move again.
Silence descended, broken only by Bobby's harsh breathing and the faint, steady sizzle from the first creature's wound.
He limped over and retrieved the Door Shield, strapping it back onto his forearm, the familiar weight reassuring. He nudged the pinned creature with his boot; it was limp. He finished it quickly with a thrust of the plate sword.
[ALL HOSTILES NEUTRALIZED]
[COMBAT EFFICIENCY: ADEQUATE (CONSIDERING USER LIMITATIONS)]
[STREAM ENERGY: +60]
[CURRENT ENERGY: 410]
Bobby staggered back, leaning heavily against the cold section of the wall, chest heaving. Sweat dripped into his eyes, stinging. His leg throbbed like a sonofabitch.
"Tell me that's all," he gasped, looking over at Rigg.
The kid was pale, leaning on his spear, eyes wide but steady now. He nodded shakily.
"That's all," Rigg confirmed, his voice still raspy. "For now."
Bobby didn't like the sound of that. "For now" usually meant "get ready for round two, dumbass."
He pushed himself off the wall, scanning their surroundings in the sickly green lantern light. The tunnel ahead seemed different. Wider. The oppressive feeling lessened slightly.
He took a step forward, favoring his leg, sword held ready.
And stopped dead.
Rigg came up beside him, holding the lantern higher.
The tunnel floor here wasn't spongy or covered in clinging dust. It was smooth. Impossibly smooth, like polished obsidian, cool beneath his boots.
The walls curved gently, perfectly, reflecting the green light with a clean sheen. There were no scratch marks, no stains, no patches of warm flesh or cold metal. No wiggling sigils.
The air felt… still. Not stale, like trapped underground air should be, but utterly neutral. Almost sterile.
It was like stepping from a rotting alleyway directly into a brand-new, sterile operating room.
The transition was jarring. Absolute.
This part of the tunnel felt new. Untouched. Unaged.
Rigg let out a slow breath, his voice barely a whisper. "Nobody's ever seen this part." He instinctively took a half-step back towards the corrupted tunnel they'd just fought through. "The paths… they never came this far. This… shouldn't be here."
Bobby squinted, running his gaze over the unnervingly pristine surfaces. He reached out and tapped the wall with the tip of his license plate sword. It rang, sharp and cold, the sound clear and pure in the unnatural stillness.
No hollow thud or fleshy give. Just solid, perfectly formed stone.
"Yeah," Bobby muttered, a new kind of unease settling over him, colder than the fear of the Not-Wolves. "Feels like it just grew here. Or decided to be here."
It felt installed.