It was afternoon and the sun was no longer at its zenith. Skewed now in the sky, it sent a slanted shaft of thick, muddled light into the hive to pool off center on the floor of the cavern far below. Thus it was that, as Amric’s eyes adjusted to the darkness inside, he was able to pick out details of the room’s perimeter there first.
The place was huge and circular, and far from deserted.
Scores of large openings were cut into the wall at ground level along the outside arc of the room, and hulking black creatures vanished into or emerged from their depths, moving with industrious speed. Amric noted that the floor of the place was well below the wasteland’s ground level. His jaw clenched as he wondered how far that network of tunnels extended beneath the desert. Not terribly far, he decided, or the mass exodus they had witnessed earlier need not have taken place above ground.
The creatures were larger than the humanoid forms he had seen from these fiends thus far, perhaps half again the height of a tall man, with elongated heads pulled in tight to their chests. They were heavyset, at least twice as broad at the shoulders as a man, and they moved with ponderous strength. Their arms were overlong, ending in strange appendages that were not hands, and several thick, sinuous tentacles sprouted from either side of a ridge of spikes that ran down their hunched backs. Even so, there were some obvious similarities; many of the creatures trailed the same strips of tattered cloth, and their flesh was the same dull black as the others had been. It was evident that they shared a common nature.
All this he absorbed in the first few instants of observation, and then a cluster of activity at the heart of the chamber drew his eye. He focused upon the shadowy movement there. The uncertain light from above was not the only illumination, he realized with a chill. Murky pools of some green, viscous liquid shimmered in an array around the upraised center of the room, like sinister spokes radiating from the axle of some great wheel. The fluid gave off a spectral light that bathed the cavern from the underside in a subdued greenish hue. Unidentifiable objects were floating half submerged in those pools. The dark, hulking shapes moved tirelessly between the pools, using both their limbs and their tentacles to push the objects below the surface, or to roll them in the fluid over and over, as if they were basting meat on a spit.
The center of the chamber rose like a cone in a smaller scale imitation of the outer shell of the hive. Even dwarfed as it was by the rest of the hollow structure, it was still quite large, as Amric noted when he saw one of the black creatures scurry up the side of it. His eyes traveled to the peak of the cone, positioned directly below its larger counterpart above, and he squinted, trying to discern the movement he saw there.
Then the details of the grisly scene emerged from the gloom, and the blood congealed in his veins. A sharp, strained intake of breath at his side told him that Valkarr was seeing the same thing.
A towering creature jutted from the opening in the cone. Only its grotesque torso was visible above the stone, but that upper portion alone was twice the height of a man. It was the same obsidian hue as the other creatures, but it appeared to be covered by the overlapping plates of a thick carapace. It had an elongated, triangular head and a broad, protruding, under-slung jaw. Unlike the others, it had eyes that were not black within black, but instead glowed the same luminous green as the pools.
As Amric watched, one of the hulking creatures hurried up the cone with a squirming bundle enfolded tightly in its thick arms and tentacles. The monstrosity reached out with its four long, many-jointed limbs to accept the offering, and Amric saw in speechless horror that the prize was a half-naked man. The hapless fellow seemed barely conscious, but he thrashed and managed a thin scream as the huge thing raised him to its mouth. Amric tensed in futile rage, certain the man was to be consumed alive, but what followed proved far worse.
The monster’s huge jaws flared open and separated, revealing features beneath that were almost human in shape, if not in color. Full, curved lips that were uncomfortably female in appearance parted to reveal rows of gleaming fangs. The thing brought their faces together, but rather than tear into his flesh, it pressed its wicked mouth to his in a revolting parody of a kiss. The splayed appendages of its jaw closed upon the man’s head, wrapping around it to hold him fast. Its spine arched backward and its chest swelled, and Amric realized it was inhaling deeply, as if drawing the breath from the lungs of its victim. The struggling man stiffened and convulsed, his eyes bulging and fixed upon nothing. The color drained from his exposed flesh, and he grew paler and paler until he reached a ghostly white hue that was striking against the darkness. The creature’s glowing green eyes brightened, and an eerie purr of pleasure reverberated throughout the cavern.
Then, without breaking contact, the monster began to exhale. The man’s body shook and shuddered as his flesh darkened. Black tendrils writhed along the skin, spreading from his head down his arms and torso and to his lower limbs. Amric’s stomach turned. It was like watching a vessel being filled with dark, noxious liquid. The exhale lasted impossibly long, like a single slow pump of some massive bellows. When it ceased, the man had gone limp and his flesh was a deep, dull and uniform black from head to toe.
The monster severed its kiss, and began to spin the body. From somewhere in its gaping maw it produced a thick, sticky cord of some pale material, which it wound about the still form with each circuit. In seconds the body was wrapped so completely that not even a hint of black flesh showed through.
The jointed arms released the cocooned form to be caught in the waiting arms of the servant creature. The latter turned without hesitation and bore this new burden down the slope and away. It lumbered to one of the green pools and slid the stiff figure into the viscous liquid, pushing it carefully beneath the surface.
From its encasing throne at the center of the chamber, the huge monstrosity turned to look expectantly into the shadows. Amric followed its imperious gaze to see a handful of men huddled together in that direction, beyond the pools. One of the heavyset creatures approached, and its tentacles snaked out to grasp another victim. It lifted the thrashing fellow from the ground and caged him within its iron arms, and then wheeled back toward the center at a shambling run.
A white-hot fury rose in Amric, burning away the shreds of his paralyzing horror. He spread his hands to push himself to his feet, but his vision grew bright at the edges and a crippling dizziness washed over him. A sharp sense of vertigo struck him as he considered the fact that he was within mere inches of a plummet that would take him over a hundred feet to the unyielding floor of the cavern below. It was the same troubling spell of weakness that had plagued him within Stronghold, except there was no Essence Fount to blame here. He pushed it from his mind; it was a matter for another time. He pressed his cheek against the abrasive stone and sucked in a steadying breath through clenched teeth.
Valkarr’s head spun toward him, fixing him with a worried stare. Amric shook his head in frustration, the sweat beading on his forehead as he fought against the encroaching brilliant white light that threatened to steal his sight. The world around him shrank to a dull echo, enclosing him. With a guttural snarl and an effort of will, he hurled it back and surged to his feet. He stood there a moment, shaking and swaying as the blood roared in his ears. He glanced at the others, intending to make a reassuring gesture, and was surprised to see that they were all swaying as well. He blinked the sweat from his eyes as his vision and hearing returned, and he realized the dome was shuddering beneath their feet with a rumbling sound of thunder. As quickly as it had come, however, the ground tremor faded and was gone, leaving them all shaken.