It’d taken him a while. A long while. Maybe an hour with minimal breaks in between. Somewhere along the way he’d stopped grinding and just committed his all to finding it, and eventually he did.

  An exit.

  Or at least, he assumed it was an exit. It was the largest door he’d seen thus far, twice the height and width of every other. That seemed pretty exit-like. It also wasn’t a dead-end either. Not as far as his Illusionary Self had walked.

  It could still be a trap, but then again so was most of the rest of the cavern, and at least this maybe-trap had some potential.

  “You ready, buddy?” he asked

  Cheek nodded eagerly. It looked just as eager to get out of this hellscape as he was.

  Flynn rubbed at its arm before he glanced back. It was quiet. There was no sight of the shitling horde. The monsters hadn’t chased him here yet, even though he was sure that they knew where he was. He could almost feel them. The range of his Monster Sense had shrunk to just thirty meters from fifty because of Hide and Seek Professional, but it was still spread far enough to pick up on them lingering within the gloom. Staring but not approaching.

  He didn’t like it. It felt too strange, like another set-up. Like another plunge down into the unknown. He’d tried ignoring the door. Sought another exit, but there’d been nothing else. Just this one and a lot of dead-ends. So, he’d eventually been forced to trudge inside.

  It grew quieter once he’d walked a few meters inside, the chatter of the cavern’s ambient noise muted until all he could hear was the squick of his own footsteps.

  Peering ahead, he saw nothing but more corridor extending into the darkness.

  So, Flynn created another Illusionary Self to make sure it remained that way. The false image stalked into the dark, meeting no resistance until it faded away. No trouble. Smooth sailing ahead. Flynn frowned. It felt like a half hour had passed before he finally saw the corridor start to open up into another room.

  It was another corridor, but this one was different. There was no flesh here, and it felt like it’d been years since he’d last seen a surface not covered in squicky red. Instead, a lustreless black stone covered every inch of the tall ceiling and wide interior. He recognized it instantly. He’d seen its like scattered around in a rare few patches here and there as he'd traversed the Rearlands, peeking through the flesh like black bits of bone.

  But here it did not peek. It ruled, alone and in all its glory, drinking in the cold light of his Spectacle Arrow like a parched man would water.

  He took a cautious step onto the tiled floor and released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding when nothing untoward happened. Maybe he’d watched Indiana Jones one too many times, but he’d half expected the tile to dip and trigger a massive boulder to start rolling down the corridor behind him. Fortunately, there was no dip or boulder in any of the steps followed.

  There was a moment of quiet exultation as Flynn marvelled at how odd it felt to step onto a surface and not have it yield under his weight. It felt good. Normal, even.

  He grew strangely calm as he sedately strode deeper into the corridor, drinking in the designs on the walls to his either side. Scenes depicting what were undoubtedly shitlings were carved into the stone with great detail. He wasn’t sure what the story was trying to say because the carvings were oddly disjointed, bits and pieces missing from the greater whole. There was no damage though. The wall were in good condition, if not a little worn by age.

  The disjointedness was a part of its making for reasons beyond his understanding. Still, he could make out something of the story. The carvings seemed to show the little monsters living their lives in a bountiful land. Alien structures rose all around them, almost cradling them as they stepped forth from their caves.

  Their home, maybe?

  If so, then they certainly had better manners at home than they did here. He saw no depiction of destruction, or death, or hunting in any of the carvings. Instead, it showed them creating things. Small structures at first. Monuments, houses, statues, but larger and larger in scope as he walked down the corridor. Eventually, the hands started to rise – no different to what he’d seen in the cavern. Small at first, but larger and larger until they loomed like towers over the shitling masses.

  They looked like a good, prosperous species, which was a hard image to join with his own experiences with their ilk. And that was when the story changed. Something happened. The carvings were bare about what, but the creatures left their towers and cities and the carvings directed his gaze into the distance.

  Towards a door that loomed at the corridor’s end. It was a massive thing, like something plucked out of a castle or cathedral. Its surface was carved many things in relief, but one image stood out amongst all the rest. It was a shitling, but writ large. Dozens of times larger than its peers, it loomed like a goliath amongst the masses, its face full of vicious anger. Thousands of its lesser kin skittled about its legs like ants, and around it... the image showed their city and all its hands... burning.

  Because of it.

  A destroyer. A catastrophe.

  He saw their towers standing proud amongst flame and ruin, and though some had crumbled into ruin, others stood strong still. But even at a glance, it was clear that the sculptors had held little hope for their survival. The flames beneath the creatures and their home had been carved with great, painstaking detail. Every little indent, every cut of the chisel was purposeful as he followed its curves and ends. Delicate. Even a layman to the arts like him could see that.

  The flames would win, the sculptor said. The monsters would lose.

  And he could feel the sorrow in that message. The fear of the little creatures as they fought against a hopeless, far greater foe. It wasn’t meant to be a threatening, or grand or inspiring tale, he realized. It was a simpler thing than that. One repeated across human history across thousands of scrolls, tomes, books, paintings and song. A tale of grief.

  Of loss.

  Of hate.

  Flynn frowned. He almost felt pity for the little things in the image.

  Almost.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The door was a beautiful work of art, he would readily admit, but it was also suspicious.

  Flynn shook his head as if to ward off the unwanted emotions its imagery had filled him with. Stepping back, he studied the door with a more critical eye, and then the rest of the corridor.

  His gamer-senses tingled.

  He’d walked down these halls. Not the exact same halls, but in a thousand different games as a thousand different characters. He knew this set-up.

  It felt like the prelude to some grand encounter.

  The peaceable moment before... a boss fight.

  Flynn swallowed thickly. Yes. He was sure of it.

  He didn’t doubt that if he could somehow manage to breach an ear through the fourth wall, he’d probably hear an orchestral choir building up to a crescendo. And if it was in German, then he’d know that something extremely dangerous was about to go down.

  As it was, he only heard his own footsteps echoing around him as he approached closer. Flynn stopped a few inches from the door and sucked in a deep breath. A smile wormed its way across his face. Expectation built in him, like water before a dam, rising and surging, as did his mana.

  An arrow at the ready, he slowly, cautiously, placed a palm against the door and pushed.

  Both doors swung open immediately, as if they’d been eagerly awaiting his touch, and the world twisted as they did. In the blink of an eye, he was no longer in the corridor, but in a new, alien landscape. Flynn winced. It was bright, or at least, brighter than the murky gloom of the cavern and tunnel.

  It didn’t take long for his vision to adjust.

  He glanced behind him. The corridor was gone entirely, and in its place stretched a world of bleak grey skies and black stone floors for as far as the eye could see, their dominion of the landscape broken only by the familiar figures of a countless multitude of twenty storey tall, towering spires of black stone.

  Studying the nearest one, he found that their surfaces were littered with just as much imagery as the corridor walls had been, curving upwards until it terminated in ruin. Many of the spires loomed the same, he noted, with some in such a state of destruction that he wondered how they were still standing. Only a few still stood whole, their peaks unravelling into a massive, clawed hand spread open, the palm facing upwards.

  It was like he'd been whisked into the world of the carvings, save for the lack of any shitlings in sight, or any flames and destruction.

  Yet.

  Was that the game, here? Was he reliving the story told in those carvings, or had they been intended for something else? A message? Was he supposed to stop the massive shitling? Flynn frowned. He’d never been a big fan of puzzles, and less so in real-life, and even less so when his life hung in the balance.

  But life lately hadn’t cared much for what he thought, so he steeled himself for whatever mind games were to come. His eyes trawled up one of the intact spires and he idly wondered if they functioned like the ones in the cavern had. The thought sent a bolt of wariness shooting down his spine. The regular shitlings had been bad enough. He didn’t even want to imagine what could be birthed by hands of such size.

  Maybe the enormous monster he’d seen carved onto the door, but then why would it destroy its own home?

  Speaking of monsters, where were the little buggers. Glancing about, he figured that there’d be something som-

  Oh.

  He swallowed.

  There it was.

  The destroyer of civilizations, if the story was to be believed.

  Stood several dozen feet away, far enough that it almost looked small, was the enormous shitling from the carving, unmoving and alone. It was exactly as the image on the door had depicted, save that it wasn’t as tall as the hand-spires. It was instead a far more reasonable nine or teen feet tall.

  A goliath compared to him and its tiny kin, true, but not overwhelmingly so.

  And unlike the others, it was bipedal where they’d skittered around on their many legs. Three arms hung limp on its either side, each terminating in a vicious, clawed hand that he could easily image pulping his head with ease.

  Flynn shivered at the thought. He was as uneasy as he was excited.

  Cheek was just uneasy. The little fellow radiated trepidation as it eyed the creature from behind his shoulder. Flynn consoled it with as much calm as he had to offer before he slowly started to tread away from the monster.

  The big guy was still unmoving, like a statue. He didn’t know what its deal was. Maybe it hadn’t noticed him, though he was stood in the open within eyeshot. Maybe it was asleep?

  Annihilating cities was probably real hard work. Whatever the truth, he figured that he might as well explore whatever else the space had to offer whilst it was still acting shy. Sight-seeing would be much harder with a massive thing chasing after him.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else to see, even after a half hour spent looking for anything else of interest. There were the spires, the giant shitling and nothing else. Period.

  The message was obvious. If he wanted out of there, then he’d have to go towards the creature. Flynn steeled himself.

  He’d expected it, but it was still hard going as he set a pace towards it. He didn’t fancy his chances.

  Humans weren’t hardwired to head towards large creatures alone. Evolution had ingrained the instinct to run from the bear, the tiger, the mammoth, and every other large predator that we once shared territory with. It was a conscious effort of will that kept him moving until he was stood a respectable distance away.

  Unnervingly enough, his Monster Sense didn’t pick up on the thing at all even as he stepped well within its range.

  He didn’t have the nerve to spare to question why.

  Up close, the creature’s potent stench was a powerful weapon all its own. His eyes watered like it hadn’t since his first moment in the Rearlands, and he could only imagine how much worse it might’ve been without his lead-nose trait. Smell aside, it boasted an assortment of other weapons that the carvings hadn’t made obvious. Thick leathery plates like a rhino’s hide but condensed thrice-fold covered its vital areas, leaving only a sliver of gap between them. Its claws shone in the light, and he’d already imagined the many ways it could kill him with those.

  Its maw was more like its kin, wide and filled with shark-like teeth. Parts of its hide-armour protruded into sharpened bone-like stakes around its joints, which made for another source of worries if he had to fight the thing.

  And that was only the obvious weaponry. Who knew what else it kept hidden away in that meaty body. Mind control? Lazer eyes? Acid? A witty sense of humour?

  Flynn swallowed thickly. This would’ve been much less tense if only he knew just how strong it was. Unfortunately, without a kill, his Study Monster had nothing to offer him.

  “Say, you wouldn’t mind just showing me the way outta here, would you?” he asked after a moment’s silence. He didn’t know why he was addressing it so casually.

  It was just a whim, but one informed by his conversation with the globulous monster. That one had been intelligent and meant him no harm. Maybe this creature was too?

  It was a small hope, but worth a try.

  For a moment, it looked as if it hadn’t heard him. He was prepared to try again when its eyes slowly yet pointedly turned towards him just as a counter came into being above it. Flynn blinked.

  It displayed numbers in deep black figures. No, not numbers. Time. Sixty minutes blinked upon the counter before it started to count down.

  A jolt of uneasiness filled his body. What was it counting down to?

  What was going to happen?

  The youth's body filled with a spring-loaded energy at the strange turn; his every muscle ready to erupt into motion at the slightest hint of hostility from the monster. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, it still hadn’t moved even as the seconds turned to minutes, and he started to wonder if it ever planned to.

  If it was even capable of moving.

  For all that it was looking at him, its gaze seemed oddly... non-hostile. That was good. Better than he hoped. He wasn't sure why it was so calm, but it gave him the strength to push to see if it might be amenable to a conversation.

  Diplomacy always was the better option to conflict, right?

  “Do you understand me, big fella?”

  It gave no response. No indication that it’d even understood him. Flynn hmm’d thoughtfully and prepared to ask it another question when it finally moved for the first time since he’d entered the space. One girthy arm rose upwards, and its hand enclosed into a fist.

  Flynn laughed nervously. “Now that wouldn’t be for a fist-bump, would it?”

  It brought the arm down, and he only barely dodged it by throwing his body to the side. The fist crashed into the floor with enough force to leave a crater of rubble around it. Flynn paled. Nope. No fist-bumps here! Conflict it was, then.

  Flynn’s arrow soared towards its face, only to bounce harmlessly off its thick hide without a scratch to mark its impact. He cursed and took off in a run. Behind him, the monster had started its pursuit.