Wonderful Insane World

At dawn, their bodies were sore, but their minds remained as sharp as blades. None of them had truly slept, yet each had rehearsed their role over and over in their head until it became a mechanism of survival.

The camp looked like an improvised forge. Armin and Rony tied strips of oil-soaked cloth around stakes and branches to make torches. Élisa, her face blackened with soot, shaped compact pouches of powder that she slipped into small cloth bags, ready to be hurled against stone to weaken the vaults. The lead pellets clicked between her fingers like promises of thunder.

Inès was sharpening her bolts one by one with almost manic precision. Each signaling arrow was checked, readjusted, caressed as though it were an extension of her own hand. She muttered to herself, prayers or insults—none could tell.

Maggie watched in silence, arms crossed, the war hammer resting against her shoulder. She said nothing: she kept watch, like a mother of war letting her children prepare for a world intent on devouring them.

As for Zirel, he carved marks in the dirt with the tip of his knife. Simple diagrams: a circle for the group, a cross for the creature, arrows for directions. He repeated the plan aloud, like a litany, so that every detail would imprint itself in everyone's memory.

"We go in with two torches at the front," he reminded them, planting a stick in the ground. "Armin, Rony—you lead with the noise. Drums, metal, everything you have. Inès, you fire the first phosphor arrow as soon as we reach the great gallery. Maggie and I hold the rear in case it comes at us. Élisa… you know what to do if it goes wrong."

Élisa nodded, her hard eyes fixed on the sacks of powder. She needed no words.

The sun had risen, but none of them felt its warmth. The morning light seemed cold, raw, almost unreal. It didn't banish the shadow of the tunnel—it exalted it. The gaping entrance ahead looked even darker beneath the day.

"It's time," said Maggie.

They put out the fire. The last ember burned out with a faint sigh, as if it refused to witness what was to come.

Then, armed with artificial light, with noise and rage, they set out.

The tunnel awaited them.

⸻

The torchlight danced upon the oozing walls, enlarging their shadows into staggering giants. The racket was deafening: Rony beat his shield with the flat of his axe, Armin pounded on an improvised drum of stretched hide and wooden hoops, their rough voices joining the orchestrated chaos. That was the plan: make enough noise to drive out the lesser prey and, they hoped, to irritate the Reaper's senses, to lure her into a trap.

The Rock Mites, grotesque and blind, writhed at their approach, fleeing the harsh light and the pounding vibrations that battered their senses. They hurled themselves into fissures, slammed themselves against the walls in panic. A few Rift Fangs, more aggressive, launched ambushes from the ceiling, but they were swiftly felled by Inès's bolts or crushed by Rony's axe and Maggie's hammer.

The first hours passed like this, in a methodical carnage that felt almost too easy. The taut adrenaline that had strung them like a bowstring began to loosen, replaced by a dull fatigue and a growing unease.

Where was she?

The question circled in every mind, but no one dared voice it. They pressed on, deeper, following the network of galleries that Zirel marked with chalk.

The main tunnel sloped gently into the bowels of the earth. The air grew heavier, thicker, filled with the smell of rot and salt that hadn't been there before. The psychic pressure that had nearly crushed them earlier was gone. Only a silence remained—deeper and deeper—broken only by their own racket, which now seemed increasingly futile, almost absurd.

"She's mocking us," Rony grumbled after smashing a straggling Rock Mite. His gaze wandered into the darkness that swallowed the torchlight whole, giving nothing back. "All this racket for nothing. Maybe she's not even here anymore."

"She is," murmured Maggie, not turning her head. Her eyes swept the shadows, not with sight but with that inner sense that felt the currents of the world. "She's watching. She's letting us sink further in."

That was worse. The thought of being watched, stalked by a sinister intelligence, froze their blood. Their strategy of provocation now felt childishly naive. They were like children stomping their feet to scare a predator that had already set them on its menu.

They stopped in a wider chamber, a natural pocket where stalactites hung like teeth. The air there was still, cold. Armin lit a second torch and jammed it into a crack in the ground. Its flickering glow revealed smooth walls, strangely polished, and devoid of the usual Rock Mite slime.

"It's… too quiet," whispered Élisa. Her lead beads rolled slowly between her fingers, sluggish, as though lulled to sleep by the absence of threat.

Inès ran a finger along the wall. "Smooth. Worn down." She lifted her finger to her nose and shuddered. "Smells like wind and old bone."

Zirel stepped closer, drawing a new symbol on his crude map. His face was hollowed by fatigue and tension. "She's leading us. Clearing the path for us. Driving her own brood away so we won't be disturbed." He raised his eyes toward the narrowing tunnel plunging deeper into the dark. "She wants us to reach her lair. To make sure there's no way out."

A shiver ran through the group. They were not hunters. They were cattle, herded for slaughter.

Maggie felt the fear creeping into them, that cold, paralyzing fear that comes before the inevitable. She slammed her hammer into her palm. The sharp sound made everyone jump.

"Then let's not disappoint her," she said in a low voice that carried through the silence. "If she wants a feast, we'll give her an indigestion."

Her words carried no hope, only defiance. That was all they had left.

They resumed their march, but the noise had lost its conviction. Each step carried them deeper, a silent assent to the thing's invitation. They walked into the wolf's maw, and the wolf, somewhere in the darkness, was smiling.