Thousand Year Sword: Part 9.04: Crypt of Madness

    A tall skinny frail, practically skeletal man, adorned in green robes embroidered with gold, sits on a massive throne that looks to swallow is pale skinny frame, his pointy crown giving the impression it is the only thing keeping the gaping red maw that is his throne from biting down. Before him is an otherworldly sight, a circular device displaying the entire kingdom of Montosh. A black dot at the northern end blinks and goes out. He clutches the arm of his throne with his bony hand.

 

   Before he can say a word a booming voice echoes from the shadows, “All things must fade away, nothing save my ilk lasts forever. The seals could not remain for all eternity, in time such ancient ones would find a way to break through and stop you from drinking their power; albeit no more to them in all this time than a mosquito would be to you in a few seconds.”

 

   There is a brief pause before it continues, “Although the seals should have lasted another few centuries, perhaps that something else you detected slipping in is responsible, it doesn’t really matter however. The project is near completion is it not? Your army nearly ready is it not? It will not be long now before all of Midgarda feels the power of the kingdom of Montosh..nay…the Empire of Montosh.”

 

    “Yes,” says the king with a raspy voice, “one piece remains and the Chaos Walker will burn those primitive fools and return this world to its proper glory.”

 

    He waves his hand over a panel and the image of the kingdom switches to a hologram of a gorgeous teenage blond girl in royal garb sitting on a bed brushing her hair in a mirror.”

 

   “The blood, mind, body, and spirit of a Hexas maiden just come into womanhood.”

 

    ******

 

    “Where to next?” asks Lukatara.

 

   “Well,” says the fairy, “the western temple’s monster is second in power only to whatever is inside the central temple, and if the pattern holds up you could see boosts to your power and armory as you go. So I’d recommend traveling to the Eastern temple next and going clockwise,”

 

    “What’s clockwise?” asks Lukatara.

 

   *sigh* goes the fairy, “Go to the east, then south, then west, along the edge of the land as much as possible. Fiends and such get stronger as you head inwards right? So keep to the edge as much as possible and go to each temple.”

 

    “So the eastern temple…do we need something for the center door.”

 

   “Here,” says the fairy pointing a violet laser pointer like light on the map at a graveyard just to the north west of the eastern temple, “there is a key, just one key, hidden in a secret vault beneath this graveyard. One of the grave markers covers a secret passage going deep down into it.”

   

    ******

 

    A desolate little town with houses that can barely be regarded as shacks. Lukatara had never before seen such guarded homes with sharpened spikes, barbed wire, and various inventive and very dangerous protections around the homes. It seems to Lukatara that these people may actually be trying to protect themselves beyond the law of going in at night; however something about it still reminds him of a chicken coop. Behind this town is the graveyard, a place of barren earth where barely a tuft of grass dares to grow. During the day there is a grave keeper, a man armed to the teeth and patrolling the area. He seems more focused on the graves than the armored gate in there, Lukatara will have to wait for night.

 

   In the darkness of night the graveyard is far worse, a strange mist floats over the graves low to the ground, a silent whispering sound can be heard as though eavesdropping on a conversation in a crowded room. With Lohln’s web it is a fairly easy matter to ascend the wall; however the grave keeper’s cottage houses a search light, and a guard that Lukatara saw come in at dusk. As he has no intention of fighting people he sneaks about, timing the oddly repetitive search light, staying out of the illuminated areas as he makes his way to the back where the special grave is. The fairy leads him to the white marble monument and directs him on where to press on it to activate the door. It slides open with a stone scraping sound that he knows somehow had to hear. As the light heads in his direction he descends the steps. Much to his alarm the monument closes above him on its own, however strange orb lights on the wall illuminate the stone passages below.

 

     There are things down there that do not belong; they are not the undead he was expecting, nor are they regular fiends that vanish in a puff of blue flames. What resides in this tomb of a labyrinth are unspeakable atrocities against nature, things with bits and pieces of living forms encased in unnatural shapes with appendages of questionable purpose. When slain these freaks ripple and vanish as though they were mere reflections in a pond being brushed away from sight. There is something more that troubles Lukatara as he goes deeper, a crawling sensation, a scraping sound, and the brief glimpses of something lurking just beyond his range of vision, and behind the wall, the floor, and the ceiling. He felt something similar before with Lohln, however that time it was something stalking him, something that the fairy was able to show him the location of. Not this time, no advice, no extensive help from the fairy, she merely floats about and alerts him when something is about to appear. Her own otherworldliness the only advantage, if it can even be called an advantage to tell him that something is appearing a mere second before it does.

 

   In the depths of the tomb, whose labyrinth is surprisingly more linear than expected, so many passages caved in, as though something wrapped around them from outside and crushed them in its embrace creating only one true direction. The path as indicated in the map projected into his mind lead to the inner chamber, where the guardian of the key to the eastern temple resides. He opens the door, inside is a familiar circular room, only bleak and nearly completely dark. The only illumination coming from a blue key with a dragon head floating above the stone remains of a skeletal golem, and bleach dry bones about the room in heaps, crushed, the remains of skeletal guards.

 

    Entering the room three blue lanterns light up around the room and the door slams behind him. The fairy flickers a moment and is gone.

 

   “Who dares enter my domain,” comes a raspy voice from the darkness.

 

   A creature crawls forward, its head lopping about as if it were the head of a doll being shaken by a child’s hand. It could be guessed to have been a woman at one point, its thin although not skeletal, it’s not in a state of decay like zombie, but its flesh is far from that of a healthy human. Grey and flaky, like the skin of a lizard while shedding, a crustacean trying to remove its shell, or the bark of some trees. Her fingers are long and end in meat hook claws, her eyes are black with a dot of burning red that flickers in fiery colors, no eyelids, not human ones at least. The young man, merely a boy really, shudders as blood red eyelids blink sideways over the ebony spheres. She crawls forward on all fours coming further into the light. Her hair is matted, long, and more like sickly blue vines than strands of human hair, her legs bend in an unnatural fashion bringing her feet impossibly forward revealing her sub-human feet. A human foot with only four evenly sized toes with metal claws for nail and split down the center of the foot like two smaller feet with two toes apiece. What he had mistaken for a shield or cape upon its back spread out, wings of a sort, with flat long metal blades, nothing he could ever imagine could be used for flight. As it lulls its head around a long blue and molted tongue snakes from its mouth and flicks about.

 

   It pulls the tongue back in and shudders, a motion that reveals that some of the grey flakiness he thought was a shell or large piece of skin hanging loose is in fact old clothes dusty and decayed with the passage of time and lack of cleaning.  

 

   It sniffs the air and says in its feminine and somehow familiar voice, “A living man, a human, touched by magic, gifted by gods, what an odd thing to come into my lair.”

 

   She stands on two feet, her feet fusing back together, although still lacking the correct number of toes, her clothes are more clearly clothes now as she stands in this familiar human fashion. Any sense of humanity is quickly faded as the wings brush out quickly and she smiles, not the smile of a human, her lips split and stretch, from ear too ear with teeth that grow and form to accommodate and jaw breaks and mends and reshapes in this inhuman fashion. As easily as it changed it changes back.

 

 

   She rolls her head around on her shoulder as if trying to screw it back on and stares at him with her head lopsided on her neck, “you are not the necromancer’s pet,” she says in a voice now no longer raspy, it as if the dust of ages sitting still and alone has been cleared from this once woman’s throat.

 

    Lukatara realizes his legs are shaking, with all he has seen in his life the thing before him is the first since witnessing his mother’s death to hit a cord in his psyche. That face, that body, twisting as it moves, defying shape, defying purpose, not dead, yet not alive, something about it, something uncanny he cannot place in his mind terrifies him to his core. The darkness behind it moves as if alive, shadows clinging to it, creating thoughts of puppet strings controlling the thing before him, a mass of shadows defying the light darker than any shadow, darker than any hole, an abyss at the feet and back of the terror before him.

 

   “afraid of me,” she says in a voice turning softer, somehow kinder, “boy touched by magic.”  

 

   He steps forward, sword at the read, shield before him and blinks, and screams. The thing is in front of him, between him and his shield, between his arms away from his sword. Its arms wrapped around him, the image of those meat hook claws ready at his back feeds his surprised scream staring into the eyes of this womanly thing. His screams are muffled, but continue, as it locks its dry yet slimy lips around his and forces that long tongue down his throat making him gag, it feels as though it is reaching down his esophagus, a pain in left side. The creature’s wings take advantage of the surprise and throw his sword and shield aside with the simple act of flicking open, and then off its body lodging themselves in the walls before melting into silver fluid that flies into the air and morphs into shadow vanishing. It is not a sight Lukatara sees as his eyes are transfixed at the still open, staring right back into his own.

 

   He does not know how but he pushes with all his might shoving the creature back. Her tongue flies free of his throat and mouth with a grotesque pop that he feels and hears in his own body. She leans over like a puppet limp on its strings and smiles her toothy smile while her tongue, easily two feet long hands down covered in recognizable disgusting bits of half digested food. As Lukatara vomits and holds his side from the pain it is clear that she shoved her tongue clear down into his stomach.

 

   He looks over glaring, despite his fear, despite the violating pain, as the womanly creature of this crypt smiles, her face halfway in the key’s light, a mad smile. He is forced back by sheer horror as with one sickening chomp she bites her own tongue off. It falls to the floor and wiggles about like a worm in pain before dissolving as if bathed in acid. Before his eyes a new tongue grows back.

 

    “gone too far I did?” says the woman in a raspy voice,

 

   “too forward perhaps?” in a softer voice,

 

   “just fuck the brat and be done with it!” comes a booming woman’s voice from all around,

 

   “fuck him?” she says raspy,

 

   “oh my, should we really,” in a soft voice, her expression somehow cute and concerned.

 

   “oh yes, sounds fun,” she says in a new voice somehow combining the two in a terrifying way.

 

   Lukatara leaps for his sword, but is stunned back by the whip crack of a black bony tail that wasn’t there before smashing the stone of the floor next to the sword where he was about to reach.

 

   A smack in his side sends him flying, reaching he feels blood dripping and four tears in his clothes made from the silk of a spider goddess, clothes that have survived easily so many dangers thus far, so easily ripped.

 

   “Sorry,” says the creature taking him by surprise, her voice changing once again, sounding like a softer version of the booming voice.

 

   “So used to undead, so used to freaks and beasts, and cattle to feed upon,”

 

   There that is again, turning him pale, those words so like the spider goddess.

 

   He looks over, regretting it immediately, as the creature is holding her head and pushing it back and forward, “oh my, oh my, not good, no good, not good at all, no, no, noooooo….no.”

 

   Silver drips from her mouth, drool of some fashion as she looks over at him and smiles a long toothy smile, tongue snakes out, speaking in a raspy voice again, “soft, soft creature, stronger than cattle, softer than ussss….me…ne.. ne…ni….no! Me…I…am….ME!”

 

   Her voice booms and echoes like thunder. She shakes her head, and then vibrates it a moment. She raises her hands and the meat hooks change, they melt and turn to silver nails, albeit still quite long.

 

   Before he can blink again long black tendrils shoot from her back where the wings had been, one smacking him in his injured side sending him crashing against his shield.

 

   His side stings as he reaches for his shield.

 

   “No need for protection,” says the creature in an oddly seductive tone as it grabs up the shield in its tendrils and tosses it aside.

 

   He stands, ready to fight, remembering his pouch, he need only get some distance, and be ready to draw the bow. Something distracts him, his wound is healed, as is his tunic somehow.

 

   “Am I not beautiful?” says the creature in an oddly familiar feminine voice. She has shifted, her skin is no longer flaky, her hands fairly normal despite the long nails, the hair is still a mess, and over all the same.

 

   She reaches and rips off her clothes. He closes his eyes afraid to look.

 

   “Open your eyes or I’ll bite off your dick and shove it in your eye socket!”

 

  The screaming demand forces his eyes open. She is not decayed, or rotted, or showing tentacles or anything odd. Although a bit thin her body is lovely, grey with white nipples though it be.

 

   “That’s what I want!” she yells out, her arm extending across the room and yanking his pants down throwing him down on his ass.

 

   She pulls him across the floor past the keys towards her dark corner with a semi-normal, although still a bit wide of a smile. In a mere moment she is practically sitting on him. He goes semi-soft though as he looks in her eyes.

 

   She cups her hand over his eyes and shrieks, “stop looking at me with those eyes!”

 

   He tries to reach for the pouch, however he is suddenly accosted by numerous tendrils that rip through his clothes, untying strings and unfastening buttons. The warmth and wetness of her exposed intimate parts excites his own despite his mental protests.

 

   She impales herself on his flesh, her vaginal muscles tightening a deathgrip on his dick, he is thankful in that moment for the gift Lohln gave him, if only to please herself as this one seems to have no indication of doing the same.

 

   “Your body accepts me,” says the creature, “so why not your mind?”

 

   Keeping her hand over his eyes she uses her tendrils to make him sit up, she wraps her legs around him, making him support her. Although she is light, there is a heaviness he can’t explain. She starts to rise and fall on his member, the sounds she makes however are not moans, or words of excitement, more like the clicking of beetles, and gurgling purr. She really starts to work on him, at last making huffing sounds as she pounds onto his crotch, forcing his meat deeper into her body.

 

   “Accept me,” she says, “give me everything,”

 

   She forces her tit before his mouth, something he is familiar with. He tries to suck and tease her tit as he did with the spider goddess as this creature pleasures herself with his body, but her body tastes like dust. Her starts to choke. She stops, but does not let go. Instead like a ring she tightens around the base of his cock. She slides her hand off his face, slicing in his flesh with her long nails. The look on her face is one both hurt, and angry. Her tongue shoots out, wrapping around his throat. Her mouth, no her very head opens up wide and engulfs his entire head. He does not know how, likely her body elongating she starts to pull more of him in, as her mouth goes over his shoulders, her can feel her lower body starting to pump on his penis again. She is trying to milk his dick while eating him alive, whole.

 

   She stops suddenly and loosens her grip on his throat. Much to his relief as he thought his long adventures over she pulls back. She shoves him, making his head smack the floor, he sees stars for a moment and almost blacks out, certain his head cracked the stone. Once more thankful for his altered body. With a sneer on her face she makes one then a second forced hump on his cock. And with a *fine* her long tongue snakes out and wraps around her tit, then her whole boob licking around the underside. Then over to the other one.

 

   She smacks her lips and says, “dusty…need a bath.”

 

   She humps once, then starts to rise, just as his head is exiting her warmness she sneers and lowers back down, as if in defiance of some order.

 

   “Need…a…bath,” she says and forces herself off of him.

 

  “Get up,” she says pulling Lukatara to his feet.

 

   He now stands naked, fully erect before the womanly creature whose name he doesn’t even know. Without a single indication of shame she grabs his erect member and says, “mine…follow me, we clean ourselves…then fuck…and fuck…then fuck….clean and fuck, then fuck some more.”

 

    She turns, twisting his penis painfully before adjusting her hand and guides him along by his dick right through the darkness that apparently was a hole; except he isn’t sure he even feels a floor beneath him and the air grows warmer. He only briefly notices that the tail she had vanished at some point, although he can’t be certain of what he saw before as things start to become hazy. The sound of rushing water pulls him from the dreamlike daze; he can’t be certain how long he had been walking, but at some point he had started to cum on her hand.

 

   This is a huge room, before them is a massive pool with a ring of grave marker like tablets around it save for the steps descending into the pool. In the middle of the pool is a statue, of what he can’t be certain, some huge tentacle covered thing surrounded by women whose orifices are being penetrated by the mass of tentacles. At the base of the statue are water spouts in the shape of strange horrific beasts spewing out water. Holding him still by the prick she guides him down the steps, he’d rather not but he dares not protest.

 

   She released him at the bottom of the steps, the water barely waist high, and says, “wait here, I clean…become cleansed.”

 

   A curious sort of wording, but she hasn’t exactly been clear up to this point in her intentions or meanings. As she walks towards the statue the water becomes deeper, coming up her shoulders. Her grey skin become saggy, grotesquely so. Her hair however looks as if it is drinking the water, growing thicker and moving about on its own, truly tendrils and not hair. With a ripping sound that makes his whole body shudder in horror the womanly creature rips her skin off, in pieces and long streaks, leaving it floating on the surface as she reaches underwater and pulls it off. She emerges not as some skinless freak, but with skin as white as milk, the only grey left on her face, now hanging like a bad mask around her neck. She reaches up and yanks on it, it resists at the corners of her eyes.

 

   She goes over to a water spout and stares straight up into one, Lukatara can see a black fluid oozing down the sides of her face, and with her back turned pulls the grey flesh free of her face. When she turns towards him his hear skips a beat and she blinks, yes blinks with normal eyelids. Her eyes are white like his, however with a red iris and violet pupils. Her lips are blue like her hair. He finds himself entranced and almost takes a step forward if not for something else in the water. Something, a streamlined darkness moves quickly and silently beneath the surface, rising and engulfing the floating flesh, it moves through the woman somehow, not even phasing her, she actually giggles as it does so as if tickled by it. As quickly as it appears it vanished.

 

   “Much better,” she says in a lovely voice, “the things of this world had polluted me so badly. This poor new body, I had nearly forgotten about the pool of cleansing, thank you for reminding me, I may have needed a new body, what a shame I’ve wasted so many over the years.”

 

   Lukatara is confused and can only utter, “I didn’t do anything special ma’am,”

 

   She looks at him seductively and bites her lip, “now don’t call me ma’am….lover, or have you forgotten why you’re here?”

 

   He thinks back, he came here for a key, she assaulted him.

 

   She swims over to the side of the pool and says, “now, let’s revive the Jellarn race brave hero. It is your duty if you really wish to restore this land to its ancient form.”

 

   “Uh,” says Lukatara, who shuts up as he notices long white thin strands coming through the water silently towards him from her back as she floats, lounging on the side.

 

   They retreat as he walks over and stands before her. She spread her legs inviting him in.

 

   “Won’t the stone hurt your back?” asks Lukatara, surprising himself with a concerned question for now the now gorgeous alien creature.

 

   “I am the goddess of the Jellarn,” she says, “the shape shifters of the deep pools killed off by the polluted land made by the Necromancer, leaving only me the mother of them all behind, one who cannot die, a formless insan..”

 

    She looks at him with a concerned look and then smiles as her foot fondles his balls, quickly bringing him back to full erection as her unusual feet like odd hands massage him.

 

  He *sighs* and resigns himself, not sure what to really do, but as she wraps her legs around him guides him in. He enters her womanhood, warmer than even this warm pool around them. He pumps in and out of her, slow at first, then speeds up as she huffs, before setting into a rythem. It isn’t too long before he splooges deep inside her.

 

   He isn’t sure how she is doing it, but he isn’t allowed to go soft. She swishes her hips about on him as her legs hold him tight. She has this look about her, like someone tasting something for the first time, and making a decision on if they like it or not. Her legs start to come apart, not parting from no, rather apart as in turning into white octopus like tentacles. Their suction cups holding onto him. She smiles playfully at him and pushes off the side and twists down into the water, dragging him painfully down before letting go of him at the last moment and swimming off. He jumps to the surface and heads towards the stairs. He sees her swimming about, as she rolls around he notices that her vagina seems to have vanished from its place, her whole lower body now tentacles.

 

   As he comes to the steps she rises behind him and wraps her arms around him in an affectionate hug.  Despite her lower body he can’t help but stand still as she presses her breasts into his back. She kisses him on the neck, the shoulders, working her way down his back, caressing his ass cheeks as she kisses them, and something he’s never felt before she pries his cheeks apart and kisses his submerged ass hole. He spreads his legs at the new yet not wholly unpleasant sensation as she tickles his asshole, feeling something slimy despite the water and leaps in surprise as she forces her tongue up his anus. She holds his legs like a vice as her tongue wiggles deeper into his bowels. He is suddenly reminded that despite her completely different appearance, including a different shaped face; something that just dawned on him, this is the same creature that had forced its tongue into his stomach earlier.

 

   He starts to struggle, trying to go up the steps when he feels something sting his side and sees a long white strand pull back to her body merging back into her flesh. He is paralyzed and falls backwards into the water. As he sinks he sees her caress his chest and face. She isn’t worried, and he knows why, she knew he was “touched by magic” perhaps feeling the magic from the water breathing amulet he had absorbed from the water temple allowing him to breath now. Or at least he hopes that is the case as he is flipped over facing the bottom of the pool.

 

  He feels her mouth on his toes, sucking on them, then over them, sucking his whole feet in, then calves, her tongue snaking out and licking as she brings both his legs together. He as best he can manages to look back and from the knees down his legs have vanished into her throat, yet her body looks the same, no stretching or extending like earlier. There is a darkness in her mouth, a swirling abyss that makes his heart sink. Her mouth unlike her neck is extending to take him in. She works her way up, her tongue wraps around his somehow erect member. With his body halfway down her throat she stops and jerks him off with her tongue, forcing him to cum again into the water, there is a slight suction swallowing that up and his waist down her throat. He is ashamed to admit to himself that it tickles as she goes over his belly, he swears despite his body down her throat that she smiles. She works her way up over his chest, and as his head sinks into the darkness looking out her closing mouth he hears her say, “see you soon,”

 

    A warm glow, a redness, Lukatara is in a red glowing area filled with fluid. He is cramped up in here. He tries to move but it is unyielding beyond a slight nudge. Something stings in his rectum, moving slightly he realizes that whatever he is in has attached to it some tube that has been inserted and inflated in his rectum. He guesses where ever this is his capture doesn’t want him making a mess in here. Looking down he sees another tube connected like a sock over his erect penis. In a way it reminds him of the one that came out of Lohln. He shakes his head in anger and tries to thrash about, hoping to break out of this bubble prison. He feels hands, two hands moving over the outside of it, but not in a natural posture, more like the hands belonged to whatever he is inside.

 

   From the outside one would see the womanly creature floating about, her abdomen grossly extended as she rubs the side of it in a content manner with a goofy grin on her face.

 

    ******

 

   Lukatara does not know how long he was a prisoner, but one day the tube in his rectum deflated and pulled out, shrinking away like it was nothing, while here he was only ever fed paste from a tube that would appear and practically seal its self into his mouth until he was bloated. The one on his dick was next; this thing had been milking him almost every hour of every day. If not for the steady supply of fluid here he’d no doubt of been dehydrated long ago, and no doubt that paste was designed to insure he had a strong semen production. The entire prison moves, shaking and bobbing about forcing him to do a summersault. An opening appears and the fluid is drained out nearly into what he can barely make out as a stone floor in a pool, freedom. He reaches for it and feels the prison close in on him and push him out. He squeezes through the opening into a shallow pool. He rises quickly, if a bit wobbly to his feet. Looking around he is in a waist high small pool in a small black stone walled room. He stands shocked as a giant white tentacle with no suction cups pulls from the room.

   Lukatara steps out of the room to see the pool he saw from before, except now there are many small rooms around it on the sides that must have been closed before, each with little pools and what appear to be frog eggs floating on their surfaces. Of course all this is secondary to the fact that the central pool is now milky white and full of tentacles of varying sizes, tentacles coming out of the suction cups of tentacles and branching off in every direction like this. With them pulling into and extending out of each other all over the place.

 

   “Welcome back,” comes a booming woman’s voice.

 

   Lukatara takes a step back, up against the wall in shock. The womanly creature, is gigantic. She has herself wrapped around the giant statue, her lower body tentacles tight together going down into the pool, lost among what must be extensions from her tentacles.

 

   “Sorry to hold you for so long,” she says, “but I needed every drop of your semen, every seed I could get, enough to begin a new race.”

 

   “The Jellarn?” asks Lukatara remembering what she said before.

 

  “Forget them,” says the creature, “they were weak, killed off by magic poisoning them. Born from a weak man…no you, you will be the father of the Lukarn. They will be mighty and strong, magical and brave. I will make so many of them, so much diversity right in the first batch. A new race in a single generation, my children, our children will be strong.”

 

   She closes her eyes and *sighs* as her tentacles reach into the doors, the many doors of this apparently far more massive room than he thought and lays eggs.

 

   *retreat you fool* comes a voice in his head, another woman’s voice *while Echidara is distracted, retreat, or she will use you when she shrinks down for casual sex and special spawn made under special conditions. This is just the general ones. Do as I say, back away slowly now into the shadows. I will carry you home.*

 

   Lukatara shrugs deciding not to question this can backs away into the darkness. He trips over something on the floor. He chokes on his own spit and runs backwards. That face, those hands, flaky gray skin, meat hook fingers, and metal plate wings. The monster he saw originally is dead on the floor, unmoving, its black eyes just staring ahead.

 

   He turns towards the key and a brilliant flash of violet light nearly blinds him.

 

   “Holy shit you made it out! Wonderful!” yells out the fairy followed by a whisper, “thought for a moment you were a dead end,”

 

   “Well what are you waiting for,” says the fairy, “grab that key and get the hell out of there. That monster was a trick, I looked it u….I mean I found out what it was,”

   “Yeah,” says Lukatara grabbing the key, his clothes, and gear, “you told me, her name is Echidara, and told me to get out there.”

 

   “What?” says the fairy, “any who, you have the key now let’s get out of here before she decides she wants to have some more babies.”

 

    ******

 

   Back on the surface, and away from the town Lukatara is troubled, “How long was I gone?”

 

   “In your time,” says the fairy, “to this world only about one night, but in the realm of the Jellarn it was about one year.”

 

    “I don’t understand what happened down there,” says Lukatara, “she was a zombie…which come to think of it kind of looked like my mom…creepy, but then she turned into a different beautiful woman, and then washed herself changing completely. Nothing she said made sense, I…and the body…”

 

   “Will never get it,” says the fairy, “She, if that word really applies here, is called Echidara, a child of Albiorenesh the overlord of the white sea…it’s….don’t worry about it, doesn’t apply here, but Echidara was worshipped in this area. Long ago, ancient to your ancient ancestors by the Jellarn, a race of shape shifters, whose true form was said to be a small blue blob but took on human form. They worshipped her in a temple held in a pocket dimension in one of their underground temples that it seems was used as a basis for your Soul King’s labyrinth.”

 

   “So he was the one that killed them off?” asks Lukatara, “she said something…”

 

   “maybe,” says the fairy, “they died off it seems during the war when that guy trapped this area under his power. Guess the Jellarn that lived here were polluted by his dark magic, they are sensitive to it, and died off. That temple you found…yeah let’s just go with found here, was said to be where their goddess Echidara created their race; and is said they would offer human women as sexual partners for her to gain her favor.”

 

   “Wait,” says the Lukatara, “did you just imply these Jellarn are still alive…outside of Montosh?”

 

   “sure,” says the fairy, “here and there, this world has a few different races in it besides humans. It’s just humans are the only ones that turn into zombies from this particular magic filling this land, most others just get sick and die from it.”

 

   “Lukarn,” says Lukatara.

 

   “Best not to think about it,” says the fairy, “that woman isn’t a being you can understand,”

 

    “Sure,” says Lukatara confused, he hadn’t really prompted the fairy who seemed just as bewildered as he was about what happened down there. His mind wanders to that night when his mother died and she and the zombies attacking her were dragged off into the shadows by some unknown force; then back to the puppet as the fairy called it…he shakes his head and forces it out of his mind for fear that he really will go insane if he thinks about it for too long.”

 

   The fairy whispers, in a way that sounds like she is far away, and Lukatara swears he hears a second voice inside her, “Echidara the tentacles of Insanity…mother of horrors…lust….yeah…incest…undead….mind fucks….that was her.”