The scream tore through the chamber like the cry of a dying god, long, raw, and wrong. The mist churned. The wellspring pulsed, and from the red fog crawled the first wave. Demonic gnolls surged from the haze, their bodies twisted mockeries of what they'd once been. Bones jutted from joints and teeth jangled loose in too-wide maws. Their eyes glowed with a crimson madness, their limbs twitching with unnatural speed. Stronric didn't wait. "Hold yer ground!" he roared, and the steel of his axe flared to life. He met the charge head-on, carving through the first beast with a brutal overhead swing that split it from crown to sternum. The creature didn't scream, it simply died, its body twitching and folding like wet paper. Another came from the side. Stronric pivoted, slammed the butt of his axe into its jaw, and crushed its skull against the floor. Behind him, Rugiel raised her hammer, blue flame licking its edges. "On your left, brother!" Bauru's dagger like machetes darted in first, slicing across a gnoll's knee joint. The beast staggered, just long enough for Rugiel to swing. Her hammer landed with a thunderclap, cratering the gnoll into the stone floor. The ground cracked. Flesh pulped. It didn't rise again. Dane moved next, shield raised, his gauntleted fist glowing faintly with coiled energy. Serene stayed just behind him, her staff radiating a warm golden light. "Right flank, Dane," Serene called. A gnoll lunged, mouth stretched unnaturally wide. Dane caught it with his shield, forced it off-balance, then slammed his gauntlet into its chest. The impact cracked bone. A flash of force rippled through the air and the gnoll flew backward, limbs flailing, before hitting a wall hard enough to shatter. "They keep healing," Serene warned, eyes darting to one gnoll already rising on twisted limbs. She pointed her staff at the mangled beast. "Light, bind." Radiance erupted from the staff's tip, branding the creature with a burning glyph. It screamed, and Dane rushed in, fist raised. The blow crushed its throat, the light searing as the glyph burned through its flesh. "Don't let 'em breathe," Dane growled, dropping back to Serene's side. "Hit hard, finish fast." "On it," she nodded, already conjuring again. Lirian flowed through the chaos like shadow turned to flesh. His enchanted dagger flickered in his hand, trailing black sparks. A gnoll turned toward him, snarling, and in a blink, Lirian vanished. He reappeared behind the creature, dagger already buried in its spine. The gnoll turned, even with the blade still in its back. "Persistent bastard," Lirian muttered. He ducked under its swing, tossed a throwing knife upward—it buried itself in the beast's eye. As it staggered, he retrieved his dagger and slit its throat with one fluid motion. "You're welcome," he called to no one in particular. Bauru fought beside him now, his blades singing. He was a blur of motion, dashing, ducking, slashing at elbows, knees, ribs. Every strike crippled or disarmed. He didn't kill but every gnoll he left limping was crushed moments later by Rugiel or gored by Stronric. Their training showed. They moved as one. When Serene cast a light ward on Dane, he surged forward without hesitation, taking blows that should've crushed bone and still punched through ribcages. When Lirian flicked a dagger into a gnoll's throat, Rugiel crushed its spine before it hit the ground. Bauru marked targets with quick, brutal cuts, and the others followed his rhythm like a war song. It was not clean, but it was efficient and the gnolls began to fall. Then the walls screamed. Rotted vines tore from the stone, dragging with them new horrors corrupted beasts, half-flesh, half-rot. A stag missing half its face charged from the mist, ribs flaring outward like jagged wings. A bear crawled from the pool sideways, like a crab, fused with something reptilian. The unnatural creature's front claws melded into one massive talon. Behind them, bloated river wolves stalked low, their jaws lined with too many teeth. "Second wave, to me!" Armand called. "Giles, now!" Giles had been hesitating, sword drawn but still. Kara was beside him, her gaze locked on the corrupted beasts. Her lips didn't move. Her eyes shimmered briefly, like a heat haze over dark water. Giles blinked and charged forward, a snarl on his lips. "I will prove myself!" Giles struck out at the river wolves, his blade glowing faintly. His strikes were skilled, but rushed, wild his form broken by anger, not discipline. A wolf lunged at his side, and only Armand's shield saved him. "Mind your flank, Giles," Armand barked. "Do not lose yourself." "I know what I'm doing!" "Non, you do not," Armand snapped. Kara followed after, conjuring spears of ice. The spears hissed through the air, impaling limbs and freezing fur on contact. Her power was clear, but her control lacked precision. The wolves dodged too quickly. Her steps faltered and her timing missed. She cast with strength, but without rhythm. She cast to kill. The others fought to protect. The corrupted beasts endlessly crashed into them again and again. The stag's charge broke through the line first, antlers sweeping low. Dane stepped forward to intercept, but Serene shouted, "Wait!" Too late. The beast twisted mid-leap, far more agile than its ruined form should allow. Dane's shield caught the edge of the antlers, but the force flung him sideways. The stag landed and wheeled, its ribs flaring rapidly as it prepared for it next attack. A second later, Lirian's blade severed one of its back legs. The beast stumbled, but did not fall. "Bauru!" "Aye." One of Bauru's machetes flashed forward, slicing deep into the beast's haunch, just above the joint of its hind leg. The creature reeled, and Rugiel finished it. Her hammer fell with a mountain's weight, crushing spine and rib in a single swing. The body didn't twitch again. More beasts followed. River wolves burst from the fog in snarling packs, moving low and fast. One leapt at Serene. She braced, raising her staff, but the impact never came. Dane was there, battered but unbowed, catching the beast in midair and driving it into the ground with a punch that cracked stone. "Thanks," she breathed. "Just don't get fancy," he grunted. "Light me up again." Serene cast, glyphs dancing around her fingers, and golden light flared across Dane's shoulders. Dane wounds began to slowly close, and his breathing slowed as her rejuvenation magic washed over him. Bauru moved like smoke, his eye scanning for fractures or vulnerabilities in the tidal wave of foes. A bear charged Rugiel. Before it reached her, Bauru slashed at its ankle and shoulder in a blur of motion, drawing it off balance. "Strike now, Rugiel." She did. Her hammer shattered its knee, then crushed its skull before it could rise. "Good call," she said. "I see 'em before they see me," he replied, giving his sister a wink and a smile before vanishing into mist again. Near the rear of the party, Lirian danced through three wolves at once. One clawed his side, scoring flesh, but he spun, kicked off the beast's snout, and drove a dagger into its spine. Another wolf lunged. He ducked, tossing two knives back over his shoulder without looking back. The first dagger stuck the beasts hit eye, the other its throat. "Still got it," Lirian said with grin. Stronric, in the center of the battlefield, was war incarnate. His axe moved in great arcs, every strike a death sentence. A bloated bear lunged. He caught its paw mid-swing with the flat of his axe, twisted, and severed the limb with the axe's reverse edge. Blood sprayed. Another demonic creature came from behind Stronric with a fiendish hunger in its eye. Without turning, Stronric pressed his axe up and over his head, driving the spike that rose between the axe blades upwards through the beast's hungry maw as it tried to bite his head off. With a satisfying crunch the spike protruded from the top of the creature's head. The head spiked to the dwarf's axe, stayed suspended for just a moment as clear as any warning of death to come. "Push forward!" Stronric barked. "Don't give 'em room." The team moved as a wall, brutal and relentless, driving back the waves of enemies. Except for Giles and Kara. Giles fought with too much fury and too little focus. His blade bit true, but every dodge came too late, every parry was too shallow. He bled from his temple. His shoulder hung wrong. "Giles," Armand barked, shielding him again. "Stop reacting and zink. You cannot outfight zis with rage." "I must. I…" A massive, corrupted deer surged from the mist. The deer's skill was partially exposed, long unnaturally sharp teeth protruded from gleaming grey bone of its muzzle. The demon's black soulless eyes locked onto Giles and barreled towards him. Giles raised his blade, too slow. "Kara, do something!" Armand shouted. The deer was nearly on him. Kara stood still. Too still. Her breath formed mist and then the ground exploded in frost. Ice burst upward in a spiral from beneath her boots. Vines of blue-white crystal raced toward the charging deer. A solid wave of ice burst up from the vines like a wave crashing on stone. The stage hit the wall headfirst. Ice raced oved its antlers, head and trailed down its neck then out over the rest of the stag. Where a moment before stood life, now only the a frozen stature remained. Kara laughed as the ice then tightened. The sound of compressing glass and maybe the last scream of the beast lifting into a crescendo before the entire thing exploded. Silence. The wolves near her stopped mid-step, suddenly hesitant. One growled and lunged. Kara's next spell caught it midair. Not a bolt. A storm. A swirling cone of frost and razor-edged hail slammed into the creature, freezing it solid in less than a breath. When it hit the ground, its body broke apart like brittle bone. Kara wasn't done yet though. The shift in the battle drew the attention of the other party members. Even Stronric paused mid-swing. Kara stood alone, frost spreading in spiderweb cracks from where she'd planted her feet. Around her snow started to fall, then swirl. The soft flakes colliding, elongating, and sharpening as the storm expanded. Her eyes glowed faintly, her breath slow and measured. "What in the hells…" Lirian whispered. "She… she wasn't that strong before," Serene murmured. Giles stared at her with awe and something darker. "You saved me." Kara didn't look at him. Her gaze was still locked on the mist ahead. More corrupted creatures lurked beyond the edge of the light, pacing now instead of charging. They had felt the shift. Kara's storm rose high and darkened like the clouds of a storm. The winter fury expanded again as she lifted her arms wide. With a smile that promised death, her arms drop and with it the dagger of ice. Icicles rained down from the sky but instead on impaling them all under, they twisted and dove towards the demons. Stronric watched as an icicle impaled the beast before him. The ice slid into the space between the bear's neck and shoulder. A heartbeat later, ice expanded outward like the burst of a star, cutting though the creature's chest and up into the brain. No one moved as the last of the beasts heaved its last breath and the air swirling around Kara still. Stronric narrowed his eyes, watching Kara carefully. "Power like that doesn't come free," Stronric rumbled cautiously. "No," Rugiel said softly, her hammer still resting at her side. "It never does." Before the party could react, the mist parted again, not with a scream but a silence so deep it crushed thought. It peeled away in slow, spiraling coils, sucked backward like breath before a roar. Then, through the haze, a figure stepped forward. Tall. Lean. Gnoll. But not like the others. This one wore no armor, no rusted blade, no bone trinkets. His fur was slick with blood, his chest bare and painted in red spirals, but he was not twisted, not mutated. He bore no bloated limbs or snarled jaw. Instead, his form was almost pristine. His horns curled elegantly from his skull, polished like ivory, gleaming in the half-light. And he wore a robe, sewn from flesh. Tanned human skin, stitched with sinew, hung from his shoulders like some mad priest's vestment. Faces stretched across it. Hands. Patches of fur. A dozen kinds of skin, all knotted together. In one hand he held a crooked staff of bone and tendon, its top crowned with a mummified skull. In the other, a thick tome bound in something pale and veined. A book of skin. The ink within shimmered, dark and wet. He raised the staff and slammed it down. The floor cracked. The mist split. The air reeked of copper and death. "You enter sacred ground," the gnoll rasped. His voice was smooth, quiet, but it echoed as if spoken from many throats. "This place was gifted to me. You, small things, are meat for the altar."

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. He swung his staff in a wide arc, pointing it toward the group. "Witness the truth of your folly." From the pools of rot and the torn soil at the edge of the basin, shapes stirred. Massive ones. Two mounds of flesh rose, twitching and moaning, sloughing off gore as they took form. They were not beasts. Not gnolls. They were human Or had been. Each stood nearly three times the height of a man, built of dozens of bodies melted into one another. Limbs jutted at wrong angles. Faces screamed from shoulders, bellies, thighs. One bore half a horse's torso for a leg. The other had a stag's head fused into its spine, the antlers flaring up through a human ribcage. Skin hung in folds. Arms ended in claws, hooves, and broken fingers. And from every human face came cries. "Help us." "Kill me." "Why?" "Mother, please…" Serene staggered back, hand covering her mouth. Dane shocked whispered, "The missing villagers." Giles turned away, bile rising. Lirian didn't move. Armand murmured a prayer. But the dwarves burned. Bauru's breath hitched. His teeth clenched. And then, dark forest green lines began to etch themselves into his face. They first dripped from his tear ducts, curling around his eyes. They swept down in gentle arcs from the corners, mirrored beneath his nose, then along his jaw. They rose again in antler-like curves, spreading across his cheeks. Bauru sucked in a deep breath, his hands trembling not with fear, but fury. Rugiel's runes ignited next. The color of Morgal's forge-fire, they dropped from her eyes in parallel tracks, one from the tear duct, one from the outer corner. They descended to her cheek, then crossed the bridge of her nose. The lower marks slid into her hairline, glowing faintly against her freshly shaved scalp. Her hammer hummed. Stronric felt the runes blaze across his skin, ancient and sacred. His breath came in thunder. His eyes locked on the necromancer, and all else vanished. "A perversion," Stronric whispered. "This place was meant for life. For healing. You turned it into a tomb." The necromancer grinned. "Then die in it." Stronric reached out his hand. A silver relic shimmered into his grasp, weightless in his hand. Matching gold cornucopias curled along each side, delicate and regal. Gold lined both the mouthpiece and the wide-bell opening, polished bright as sunlight on steel. A sling of unknown hide, soft, strong, and iridescent, looped from top to bottom, the leather unlike anything he'd ever touched. It felt celestial. Alive. Crafted by something older, nobler, than anything forged by dwarven hands. Stronric raised it to his lips and blew. The sound shook the chamber. It wasn't a blast. It was a call. A clarion thunder that echoed through every soul present. The mist trembled. The golems howled. Light burst from the horn, washing over the companions. The dwarves straightened. Rugiel's grip tightened. Bauru's stance sharpened. Dane felt the weight lift from his arms, strength filling his limbs. Serene's magic blazed more clearly. Lirian moved like the wind itself. Giles blinked, steadying. Even Kara's expression changed, her brow furrowed in surprise at the sensation rolling over her. Armand exhaled, his voice quiet. "A true relic of the dwarves." And the horn's power settled over them. Stronric lowered it. Then bared his teeth. "Let's end this." He charged the necromancer. Bauru and Rugiel moved as one toward the flesh golems, their ancestral runes glowing. The golems came like thunder, arms swinging wide, howling in a dozen voices. Bauru ducked beneath the first blow, slashing low at a tendon thick as rope. "Left flank!" he shouted. Rugiel responded instantly. Her hammer struck the wounded joint, shattering the fused bones. The golem staggered sideways, its balance broken. "Keep it limping!" Bauru called again, already moving to the next weak point. "Then I shall see it fall," Rugiel said, and swung with the wrath of Morgal. Armand let out a battle cry, raising his sword, calling the humans to action. Serene lifted a hand and Dane began to glow. Dane charged forward shield raised, intersecting the second golem as it tried to flank Rugiel from behind. Giles rushed forward, his mind seemingly clearer and more focused after the horns blow. He ran forward matching Dane on the opposite side of the Golem. The golem swung a meaty arm out at Dane, as if to swat fly. Dane roared as he took the punch to his shield, leaving an opening for Giles to strike. Giles lashed out slicing the exposed flank wide. As the creature turned, shrieking, Armand stuck. The human warriors continued their coordinated attacks while Serene kept her attention split between them and the dwarves. The golems were mighty, but slow. They were meat and magic, stitched with hate, but not precision. Bauru's strikes guided their fall, carving open the points where flesh joined wrong. Rugiel delivered the killing blows, her hammer turning corrupted muscle to ruin. The ground shook with every hit. Rugiel met Armand's eye and within a breath they understood they needed to part the golems for Stronric to have a path. They lead their perspective groups apart forcing the Golems apart. Stronric dashed through and took the center path, alone. Trusting his friends and campions to deal with the golems and gave his whole attention to the Gnoll before him. But it was Stronric who took the center path, alone. The necromancer waited atop a twisted dais of stone and bone. His horns were backlit by the sick red glow of the corrupted wellspring. His eyes followed Stronric's approach with interest, not fear. Stronric charged. His axe flashed forward, a two-handed cleave meant to take the gnoll's head from his shoulders. It missed. The necromancer moved with impossible speed, leaning back just enough for the blade to pass in front of his nose. Then he retaliated, swinging his staff like a polearm. Stronric caught it on the haft of his axe, sparks bursting from the impact. A second strike came before Stronric could counter. The staff cracked against Stronric's ribs. Even with his iron-tough skin, the force sent him skidding back. Snarling, Stronric surged forward again but the air around the necromancer pulsed, thick and wet like a heartbeat. The ground screamed. From the blood-slick stone, skeletal hands erupted, clawing free with frantic hunger. Skeletal hands and other seemingly soaked in rot, still wrapped in strands of muscle and skin broke through the ground reaching out at Stronric. Some wore the tattered remains of jewelry. Others bore the broken nails of villagers. They reached for Stronric's legs, not to restrain, but to drag, fingers locking tight, pulling with the weight of the grave. A dozen voices whispered from the ground at once. "Down." "Stay." "Join us." "Bastard!" Stronric growled, and cleaved downward. His axe howled through the grave-grip, severing wrists and fingers, hacking bone and rot apart. The hands flailed, dismembered but still twitching. Stronric drove forward through the gore. The necromancer's laughter echoed as he raised his hand once more. The corpses nearby jerked upright—not walking, but yanked to their feet like puppets. Flesh unraveled midair, pulled and stitched by invisible threads. Bones snapped into place, ribs rejoining ribs. Bodies fused shoulder to shoulder, face to face, until a grotesque barricade stood between them. It pulsed, twitching. Mouths gaped silently. Eyes rolled without direction. A wall of suffering, lashed together by death and dark magic. A shield of the damned. Stronric stared for half a breath, then shifted his grip. "Ye'll need more than corpses to stop me." Stronric howled and drove his axe in. The weapon struck a wall that hadn't been there a second ago, a magical construct that groaned under the force. The blow cracked it, sent shockwaves through the floor, but it held. The necromancer stepped behind the barrier, staff glowing. "You carry fire, yes?" the gnoll said, voice silken and cruel. "You are proud. Strong. Forged. But I am perfection. Every stitch, every bone, every scar, crafted. You cannot break what was built with purpose." Stronric charged again, swinging with all his weight. The barrier splintered. He pressed forward, but the necromancer ducked low and swept Stronric's legs, then brought the staff down in a brutal overhead strike. It landed. A crack split the chamber like thunder. Stronric's feet left the ground as the blow slammed into his chest. He crashed into the stone floor hard enough to crater it, blood erupting from his mouth as the breath fled his lungs. His axe skidded across the ground. He lay still, ribs screaming, vision swimming. The necromancer approached, twirling his staff, eyes gleaming. "You're finished, little forge-thing," he said. "You are iron, yes? But I am flawless. You cannot harm what was sculpted to conquer." Stronric coughed once, blood bubbling past his lips. And then something shifted inside him. His skin burned. Then cooled. Red light shimmered along his arms, his chest, his throat. Morgal's blessing ignited, more powerful than before. His veins glowed like tempered steel. Morgal's Ironhide — Level up. Pain became fuel. His breath steadied. He rose slowly, muscles trembling, skin now plated in hardened iron. The necromancer stopped mid-step. "No," Stronric said, eyes blazing. "Now I'm ready." The necromancer raised his staff and sent a wave of bone-javelins flying. Stronric rolled low, his ironhide deflecting the worst of the impact. He came up into a charge, running headlong towards the Gnoll. Hands burst from the floor again, grabbing at him but this time, they couldn't pierce his skin. He smashed through them, his axe singing. The necromancer conjured another barrier, a shimmering barrier between him and Stronric. Stronric's sucked in power from all those fallen around him, reforging it effortlessly in his mental forge and transferring it into his strength empowering his next swing. His axe broke through the barrier, cutting through like a hot knife through butter. The gnoll vaulted back, surprised, but too slow. Stronric summoned a throwing axe from his pouch and threw the axe. It spun once, twice, and struck the necromancer's thigh, cleaving deep. The gnoll howled and staggered back, surprise obviously shown on his face. Stronric closed the gap between them, "For the Hearth!" he growled. Stronric's axe swung through the air, gleaming red reflecting the corrupted pool around them. And this time, the necromancer couldn't dodge in time. Stronric's axe slammed into the necromancer's chest, biting deep between ribs, lodging itself to center of the axe blade. The gnoll staggered back, eyes wide, blood pouring down his torn robe of skin. Stronric didn't wait. He planted his foot against the necromancer's gut and kicked. The body ripped free from the axe with a wet crack, flinging backward across the dais. The necromancer skidded across the stone, trailing blood. He lay there, gasping. Then he laughed. It was a gurgling sound, wet and ragged and wrong. "Forged well," The mangled Gnoll rasped. "But not... finished." The Gnoll's hand twitched and Stronric took a step forward, axe raised. Then the necromancer drove his clawed finger into his own chest. Blood spurted, thick and black. The wound spread, pulsing, warping. The necromancer's back arched and his body convulsed and grew. Muscle ripped outward, cords of flesh unraveling and then knotting again, doubling, tripling in thickness. Bones cracked and lengthened. His robe of skin split apart, revealing a raw, sinewed form beneath, almost flayed but impossibly alive. His arms grew as thick as tree trunks, wrapped in coiling veins and bulging muscle. His legs reshaped into bestial limbs, talons sprouting from feet that scraped gouges into the stone. His face twisted last. The horns remained, curling wider now, framing a jaw stretched too far, filled with human and animal teeth. What rose was no longer gnoll. No longer necromancer. It was wrath made flesh. A towering brute of pulsing, exposed muscle, ten feet tall, veins glowing with infernal light. His eyes burned like coals sunk deep in raw sockets. He lifted his staff, now fused into his arm, twisted bone and sinew growing around it like a second spine. "Now," the demon growled in a voice like grinding tombstones, "let us see what iron does... when it breaks."

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