Hearn brought a walking staff with him, so we use it for carrying the rune. The stone is unpleasantly hot, even if it doesn't keep getting hotter after a certain point.

"Yeah, looks real dumb. Just like I thought," Finna says.

It really does. The ropes go around and around the shard of stone, the glowing rune peeking through the layers. Hearn walks in the middle, carrying the staff and the rune. Finna leads us forward, still following her vision.

"We're getting pretty close," she says, hand pressed on the corridor wall. "At least to something."

"How can we be close already?" I ask. "Weren't we down to the last rune before we were there?"

"How the hell should I know?"

I don't really have an answer to that, so I don't say anything. The rune sizzles quietly. I wonder what the rune on the stone is. Warm light? The less we know of it, the better, I guess.

"Look," Finna continues. "I didn't get any damn map or instructions. I explained this to you. I feel we're close, and that's it."

"Fine, fine," I say.

I guess I can relate to that. When tracking an animal, it's always obvious when I'm getting close. It's hard to put into words or try to describe what changes. Maybe the tracks look a bit fresher or the wind carries smells or sounds that aren't as far anymore, but mainly it's just the feeling that the deer or boar is around the next few trees.

The cold air of the corridor carries a smell. A hint of something unpleasant. "Wait," I say.

Finna stops. Rworg walks behind me, and he stops as well, moving his hand to the hilt of his sword, his other hand grabbing the sledgehammer.

I sniff the air. The smell gnaws at my mind, almost unnoticeable, yet at the same time something is there, differing from the sterile air of the black corridors.

"What is it?" Hearn asks.

I wave him quiet and creep ahead, taking out my bow. The smell is pungent, making me wrinkle my nose, even if I can't place it yet. I take a few more steps and reach an intersection, the corridor ending to continue both left and right. As I step out from behind the corner, a slight breeze wafts from the right. My throat clamps up, and I flinch back as the smell hits me.

Rancid grease mixed with ozone, a carcass half-eaten and left in the sun. The smell is like a blow. I wave my hand to clear the air, stumbling back.

Rworg grabs his sword with both hands and jumps past me, ready to face whatever awaits behind the corner. Or so he must have thought. He grimaces and steps back to lean his back on the corridor, his dark face pale.

The daggers appear into Finna's hands. She has her knees bent, posture low. "What is going on?" she hisses.

"Damn you, Lictor," I say, taking a deep breath of the clear air. The breeze must be driving the smell along the other corridor, keeping the air in this one mostly clear.

"I can feel it on my eyes," Rworg says, blinking.

"What. Is. It?" Finna says.

I breathe in again, running my tongue across my lip. "There are few things that smell that bad. And Lictor warned us there might be t--"

Finna howls, making Hearn startle and flinch away from her. She hisses, pressing air out through her clenches teeth.

"It's not my fault," I say. "Which way are we going?"

"Right," she says.

"Um, what is it?" Hearn asks.

"A teratome," I say. "Judging by the smell, a big one."

"You said a big one," Hearn says. "Isn't that massive?"

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"Yeah," I say.

"And we would need to get to the door on the other side?" Hearn asks.

"Yeah," Finna says.

The room is large, but the teratome is larger. Larger than any I've seen, taller and longer than a merchant's wagon, including the oxen pulling it. It's a true teratome, an undifferentiated mass of flesh and chitin mixed in together, squirming and changing every second. Tendrils and gooey stalks push out of its flesh to grab at the floor, dragging and sliding it across the room.

The room is an empty cube, equally tall and wide. There are four doors at the exact middle of each wall. Blue wisps of mana hangs in the air of the room, pulled in through stone grills at each corner of the room. Most of the mana rises to the ceiling, to flow out through a big grill in the middle of the room. Yet, some of the mana is sucked in by circular mouths opening directly into the teratome's flesh, yawning wide to pull in the vapors surrounding it.

Hearn reaches into the room with his staff, pushing the rune into the wisps. The wisps swirl and knot around the rune, making it flare. It grows brighter and brighter, and I smell wood burning through the cloth I have wrapped around my face.

Hearn yanks the staff back out of the room and slaps the end into the floor as smoke rises from it. The rune cracks and the previously black stone crumples into brittle grey pieces.

"Nice, you broke it," Finna says.

Hearn brushes off the embers from his staff, his palm unaffected by the heat. "It was almost spent already," he says. "We better take out a new one."

Finna nods at me. "Good idea. You heard the old. And quickly, before Rworg runs in to fight that thing."

Rworg chuckles, but I can already feel my mind starting to fog, the combined miasma of ozone and rot making it hard to breathe and to think. The box is slender and small enough to fit into my pocket, which is handy, though I would hate to fall and land my hip on it. The bruise it would leave would be horrible. Rworg twitches and Finna grabs on to his arm, holding him back, her small hand pale against his thick, dark arm. I focus on opening the box before I start to make observations about the condition of her nails, even if they… I open the box and pull out a new rune, slamming the lid closed as all the runes light up.

The teratome continues dragging itself slowly to the other side of the room. It looks completely mindless, and why wouldn't it. There's no thinking needed to swim through the mana and grow.

The wisps of mana flow into the rune, making it hot immediately. I drop it into Hearn's palm, before it burns my fingers. It helps with the mana, but not with the stench.

"Let us move away, we cannot linger here," Rworg says, face serious and brow furrowed.

"Dang, those things really do work fast," Finna says.

I take a big gulp of the fresh air. It's amazing how sharply the stench cuts off the moment I round the corner.

Finna pulls off the cloth from her face and slumps to sit on the floor. "So, what now?"

"Can we kill it?" Rworg asks. "It looked slow and soft, an easy prey for my sword."

I shake my head, sitting down on the opposite side of Finna. "No. With that much magic around, it would heal and change faster than you could cut. Teratomes are hard to kill always, but that must be doubly true now."

"I've read as much," Hearn says. "One book in our library describes a fight with a teratome that grew to be as large as a mountain."

Finna snorts. "Was that a storybook?"

Hearn chuckles. "Yes, for children. Still, those often carry grains of truth. They burned it and froze it and flung boulders at it, but it healed through it all, glutting itself on the bountiful mana of the beautiful kingdom."

"This really does sound like a children's story," Finna says.

Too much mana. Could we take the mana away from it? Could that be the solution? We could cut it up, and it couldn't heal.

"Could we go around it?" Finna asks. "We just need to get to the other side of the room. I can feel it. We're going to the door on the opposite side of the room. And it's too big to chase us."

I scratch my head with both hands, the feeling of grease from the stench sticking on my scalp. "Maybe. You can't be too careful with teratomes. It has all the mana it needs, so I'm not sure if it will be interested in us, but normally teratomes never stop hunting or eating."

"It stands in our way, but I accept fighting it would be a fool's errand," Rworg says. "So we must go around."

Finna ties the cloth back over how her face. "Just make sure not to break any more runes. That place is going to crack my head in two otherwise."

"Now!" I say.

The teratome is on the left side of the room, so our route is as clear as it will ever be. I sprint into the room, followed by Finna. Hearn comes in next, and Rworg stays with him, making sure the old man can keep up. He holds the rune in his hands, the tough jonungaard palms letting him ignore the heat. The light shines through his white fingers, making them look pale red.

The currents of mana in the room immediately start to pull toward us, toward his hands. The glow gets brighter as the air gets clearer. This place must burn through the rune in minutes if we stay.

The teratome rears up. Its body is a fleshy sack, like thick stew, held together by a wet membrane. The membrane peels away at places, revealing dozens of toothless mouths smacking at the air. It sounds like a mob is gasping, out of breath. Dozens of stalks shoot out of the flesh, slapping wetly on the floor and sticking to it.

The teratome wrenches itself toward us, covering half of the room in a single, squelching leap.

"Run!" I shout.

We were already running, but I grit my teeth and run even harder, pushing through the stench and the mana. Finna is faster, many steps ahead of me, but she stumbles, falling hard on her knees and hands.

"What are you…" I realize before I finish the sentence, as I pull ahead of Hearn and his rune, and the smell of ozone gets overpowering.

Finna whimpers quietly. The teratome shoots out more stalks, preparing for a new wrench across the room. It's aiming directly at Hearn.

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