"Hold the line!" Kraken rasped, voice raw from his relentless screaming. Nearly half his party lay strewn like broken dolls across the jagged stone of the cavern. Emena's enchanted pendant lay broken near the mess of her shattered throat. Tobe's axe jutted from a severed limb, his body lost in the blood-soaked melee that ensued under the dying light cast by impaled Obirin's staff.
Kraken, named Undefeated by men who mistook survival for divinity, had never known fear like this. Not in any war, not in any nightmare. The spider-like monstrosity loomed over them, its obsidian chitin glinting in the dim green glow of the cavern. Seven of eight molten eyes searing into the souls of the frazzled adventurers. Sorenna had carved out a huge gash where the missing eye had been.
The small victory meant nothing now.
In a moment's breath, Kraken turned—six of his party members remained. Ivana, his lover, was among them. The thunderous steps of the beast's scythe-like legs brought Kraken's attention back to it, panic running through the seasoned warrior as the huge spider-demon closed in on them, sending stalactites crashing about it as it raced forward.
Sorenna surged past Kraken, breaking their ragged line and ignoring his teammates' call back. Leaping from a rock, he hurled himself skyward with a savage cry, twin blades flashing. His charge was cut short as a swipe of the monster's legs crunched bone, skewering his torso mid air.
"Fuck!" Kraken cried—Sorenna had been his oldest friend. Six of his party members remained now, Bragand the shield bearer and himself being the last member of their vanguard. Sorenna's screams echoed in the hollow of the cavern, his broken body displaced on a rocky edge as he coughed up more blood and phlegm.
Lolia wept now, bloodied hand clutching her broken bow. Hope leaked from her eyes, like the light of a setting sun. "It won't fucking die," she whispered, not to Kraken, but to whichever of the gods might pity her.
None answered.
The monster retreated into the shadows beyond Obirin's flickering light. Kraken, still scared out of his mind, backed towards his party, his gaze fixed on the darkness the beast vanished into.
Kraken staggered now. The poison coursing through him had dulled his senses. His wounds were taking longer to heal—too long. He had been the first person the beast struck when they entered into the cavern. Even the green flame cast by Obirin's staff didn't reveal it until it was too late. It had struck Ominus next, after Kraken had been incapacitated. He only drew breath now because of Bragand's shield. The beast had gone after the healer, and the one person that could heal himself. That wasn't random. There was an intention to this beast. A strategy. The thought curdled his stomach.
"Ominus!" He barked, "You're supposed to be a healer—why the hell isn't Obirin breathing?"
Ominus's answer was fear. The healer—like Lolia—was broken too. "too much–too much blood," he stammered, "too fast…" as if that explained anything in a world so red. Obirin could barely speak a few words of incantation before those monstrous legs descended on his shoulders barely missing his heart.
Kraken let out a groan of frustration.
"There's no time for this." Kraken straightened as he turned to face the team., "Bragand, we hold the line. Lolia, Ivana, help him carry Obirin and Jide out. Get help. Fast." He saw Ivana open her mouth—probably to voice a retort—he wasn't having it. "Don't question me! GO!"
Bragand moved to his side now, shield raised as they gazed into the gaping abyss. Two swords against the night. The abyss gazed back. Kraken knew it then. This was where the fable ended. The Undefeated was no hero. He was a fluke—a man cursed with a gift to bury others first.
A scream tore through the dark behind him. Lolia.
He spun, racing toward the sound. Somehow, the monster had gotten past them. Somehow it had cornered the fleeing group.
He rounded the bend just in time to see it wrapping a thrashing figure in a glowing semisolid web. "Ivana!" He would know that figure anywhere.
Kraken charged. The beast shot a glowing gooey projectile at him. He ducked, rolled and rebounded off the stone wall, narrowly missing a slicing limb. Anger grappled with fear inside him. He pushed off the rocky wall, dodging another swipe of the monster's front limb—it had dropped Ivana's cocoon.
Sword drawn, he skidded beneath the beast, swinging upwards and true. Metal kissed its belly and screamed. His hands numbed from the blow. Even the underside was rock hard.
And then, he saw it.
Eight eyes. Again.
The missing one, restored. No wound, no scar, no sign Sorenna ever landed a blow.
Did it heal?
His question was answered in short notice.
The cavern quaked as Kraken's back was smacked into the cave wall. He could hear his ribs shatter as his lungs collapsed—the impact had knocked the wind out of him. Blood pounded in his ears, bubbled in his mouth. His hands lay limp on both sides of his broken body. The light had almost gone out in this cave of despair. He could hear muffled sounds amidst the high pitched ringing in his ear. Panic filled him. Why wasn't he healing? How strong was this monster's venom?
Then he saw it. What had hit him wasn't the spider. The hulking mass of the new monstrosity closing in on him came into focus. This one had more legs, and looked… It had the pincers of a crab, and a scorpion's telson. This new Herald of death chartered with mirth. Behind it, he could hear Bragand and the others—whatever was left of them—struggling with the beasts behind the new 'scorpion' monstrosity.
The 'scorpio' made a sound like grinding stone and shrill screaming—it was laughing. The laughter tore through Kraken's skull promising defeat.
"I have tasted your stories in the men you inspire, undefeated," He could hear it in his head. Beyond the blood pounding in his enmeshed brain, beyond the screams of his allies, beyond the crash and boom of the monsters rampaging. The monster could speak! It looked over him now, eight eyes staring into his shadowed eyes. "You are not as impressive as they imagine."
Kraken was right. These beasts had a strategy. They could think and act in tandem with one another, unlike all the beasts he had faced before now. He could see now—clearer than ever—how much of a joke his nickname was. Undefeated. His hubris had cost him his party.
Straining under the scrutiny of the beast, Kraken reached out, feeling the cold rocky ground for his sword. Its metallic glint had caught his eye. The monster laughed again, watching him struggle in futility, but he kept reaching, muscles burning, legs numb.
He had felt this cold before—a long time ago. The slow, creeping chill of death. He would not let it deter him. If he would die in this cave, he would die a warrior, sword in hand—or so he thought.
His hand caught on the hilt, just as the beast's legs drove down. Bone snapped, his clavicle shattered. He screamed as his feeble hands abandoned their grip on his sword beating helplessly at the chitinous limb that pinned him.
The bloody telson of the monster descended. The stinger pierced him clean, adding his blood to that of his friends. The world dimmed, green glow fading to black, as his defiance crumbled under the beast's damning weight.
***
Kraken screamed himself awake. His chest was slick with sweat, the goat fur blanket tangled at his waist. The flame cast by the torch on the wall supplanted the cavern's dying glow. His home quarters snapped into focus: Clay-earthen walls. Incense. Ash.
His eyes swept across the wall on his right even as his hands felt the fur clad bed, searching for his sword. There it was, propped up by the room door. Only then did he relax, letting out a sign of relief. The beasts were gone, but the echo of their grating laughter burned in his mind.
Kraken the undefeated exhaled, his chest tight as a war drum. No dungeon had claimed him yet.
***
Kraken staggered out of his hut, to the central compound. Orange light from the bonfire filled the compound with its hue, flickering against dark silhouettes and twinkling jewelry. Bodies moving with joy and rhythm to the ringing of the ogene. Hips twisting to the thrum of the udu, waistbeads rattling like ichaka.
His party members were all there. Ivana danced with Emena, their laughter filling the air around them. Emena's hair was wrapped into a small bun in the traditional way of the Idogu people, her necklace swung prettily around her unmarked neck.
Obirin leaned on his carved staff, laughing at one of Sorenna's jokes made at Bragand's expense, judging from his somber demeanour. The giant held a gourd with a wounded look on his face.
Across the fire, Tobé argued with Lolia as Jide braided his hair—probably about something they would forget about in the morning.
The rest of the crew surrounded Ominus intermingled with a group of the villagers and fellow adventurers as they contested in a drinking game. His drinking game already laid waste to a trio of villagers. It was a losing game for anybody who went against Ominus and his sobriety ogwu—the effects of intoxication would wear out in seconds.
This was the Undefeated's circle. This was home.
Some children had stopped running, staring spellbound at the legend made flesh. Their starry eyes filled with pure wonder—a warm contrast to the darkness inside him.
Kraken grinned despite himself, and the children, chuckling, scattered into the night tripping over each other in joyful chaos.
Laughing came at a cost. His head throbbed with pain, and there was a chemical sting in his tongue. His vision blurred, and he wobbled.
"I told you not to eat those berries. You never listen." Her voice curved around him before her body did.
Ivana. Her tone carried the same warm scolding she reserved only for him. He turned, and his eyes met her—no longer a silhouette by the fire. Her dark skin, polished by firelight. Her waist wrapped in scanty patterned silk and an array of colourful beads. Her brown eyes raised to his, filled with both amusement and concern.
"Iva…" He would pull her to himself and kiss her, if they weren't out in the open as they were. Children still darted around the square, shouting and chasing sparks borne out of Emena's magic.
"Are you feeling better, chief?" Kraken looked sideways to see Ominus wobbling towards him, face unreadable. "You should be resting," Ominus slurred, "The poison in those berries is enough to kill an elephant." He was intoxicated, even with his ogwu. He must've drunk a whole keg.
"Just a headache, I'm fine." Kraken smiled weakly, still feeling his head throbbing. "You started my party without me?" He made a gesture feigning mock annoyance.
"Party? We just started carving your memorial stone!" Bragand bellowed as he joined the throng that had started to form around Kraken.
Sorenna was not far behind, "He didn't start cheating death today na. I've told you before, unless the gods themselves crack the sky, this man will keep walking!"
Cheers erupted, as someone clasped Kraken's shoulders, aggravating the throbbing in his head.
Ivana took his hand. "Come."
Bragand handed him a horn of pami as they slipped past the throng. "Chief, here."
Ivana snatched it out of his hands before he even held out his arm, gulping its contents ruthlessly. "Chief has work to do," she said, eyes gleaming as she tugged Kraken away from the pandemonium.
"Don't break his back o!" Emena shouted after them, and laughter erupted again. Kraken couldn't help but laugh too. Work indeed.
***
In his hut again, the door closed with a hush, muffling the outside world.
"You never ask nicely." Kraken said, blinking against the heat of the torch.
"You don't want me to." Ivana slurred, leaning against the door as she let her silk wrap fall to the floor like an unspoken language.
"You know I have a headache, baa?" Kraken smiled despite himself, as desire thickened the air.
"Is that a no?" Ivana taunted, easing him into the fur draped bed.
"Come here." Kraken growled.
She melted into his command.
***
"Undefeated indeed," Ivana murmured, her breath warm against Kraken's skin as she lay across his chest, "I just beat you." teasing laced beneath the satisfaction in her voice.
Kraken chuckled. The thrumming in his head was still there but the echoes of pleasure dulled its sting. "You did?" He grinned, "I remember it differently."
"You may have blown my back out, but you still yielded." Ivana's laughter was music, raw and sincere. "I've defeated the undefeated."
"I didn't choose the name," he muttered, voice drowsy. "The people gave it to me. The party."
Ivana raised herself slightly, dragging lax fingers across his chest in idle loops. "How did you become… like this?"
"I'm not immortal."
"I don't know, chief. You say that, then you do these impossible things." She was looking up at him now, drawing patterns on his chest with her fingers as she spoke, "I saw that ujabi gut you. You stood up minutes after and killed it—you pretty much walked it off! All your battle wounds… disappear"
"Not all of them," Kraken replied softly.
"All of them," Ivana retorted, fingers trailing downward beneath the goat fur blanket until they found a scar on his thigh. "Except this one."
Even in his mesh-brained delirium, Ivana intoxicated him, and it had started to show. She giggled and pulled her hand back.
"You missed your target." Kraken jested, inviting her flirting.
"I didn't." she said, propping herself up on her elbow. She gazed at him, mischief softened by intimacy. She was beautiful. Her disheveled braids framed her round face, wild and clever. Her lips, always a temptation. Her eyes, her beautiful green eyes—
Green eyes?
Ivana's eyes were brown.
A jolt of pain flashed white behind Kraken's eyes.
"Argh!" Kraken cursed as he sat up from the bed. The blinding pain retreated almost immediately, returning to the usual dull thrumming. The memory of it lingered.
"Kraken?" Her voice was soft with concern, her eyes were brown again.
"Iva… I'm okay. I just–" felt a boulder crash into my head? He felt the back of his head with his right hand. No blood. The effects of that elephant-berry-poison must've been devastating. Stupid Tobe and his challenges.
"It's fine if you don't want to talk about it," Ivana said, brushing hair away from her face. She still looked worried. He thought she was upset.
"I want to, Iva. I just–" he held her gaze, and let out a sigh, "I don't think you'll see me the same if you knew."
"Knew what?"
"What I am. What I did. What I do."
"Stop speaking in codes. I've seen you fall off a cliff, break your neck, get stabbed, burned and still manage to live past it. There's not much else you can say that would scare me, so what is it?"
"You don't know that."
"Try me."
"Iva, I was cursed." Her expression faltered slightly. Her lips tightened and her eyes betrayed a little fear. Just get it over with. You can't keep this to yourself forever, he thought, steeling his resolve. "I'm living out other people's lives. Children. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them."
"That's awfully dramatic, chief." Ivana said, her voice hesitant. "You didn't kill any children."
"No, but I participated in the ritual that used them."
"You said you were cursed," Ivana's voice pulled him out of his silent soliloquy. "but you also said you participated. I don't understand."
A heavy silence hung in the air, the night held its breath.
"At the end of the Dobiu civil war," he began, "my platoon was sent to wipe out escaping shamas hiding out in the Ngam forests after the battle of Byodu. We spread out through the forest ferreting out the shamas—and executing them.
"Eventually, we found a cavern at the edge of the forest that led up to the mountains. The cavern was deep. We followed the sound of chanting and the smell of rot until we found a light source. There was an atrium in the cavern. The source of the bad smell was human remains and detritus piled in heaps at the edges of the room. The floor had glowing inscriptions that spiralled outward in a circle."
Ivana said nothing.
"The shamas were performing a ritual. In a panic, we started hacking them down as they came at us with their spears and hexed talisman. One of them… the woman in the middle of the glowing circle. She stabbed me, licked my blood off the blade, and became me."
Ivana's eyes betrayed a glimmer of something. Awe? Fear? Both? Kraken couldn't tell. His voice cracked slightly.
"All her companions had died, lying on the glowing floor with missing limbs and broken bodies. Those who lived among my platoon members panicked and tried to kill me. They wouldn't take a chance on myself or the impostor—"
"That's stupid" Ivana interjected. "couldn't they have asked questions only the real you would know the answer to?"
"What makes you so sure she wouldn't know the answers? She talked like me, begged for her life like me, ran like me. Besides, they were scared. shamas are really creepy." Kraken let out a sigh. "Anyway, an arrow found my back and I fell. The woman was hacked down too. Then they started screaming, my comrades. Blood oozed out of their eyes and they fell on their knees. I wasn't screaming, nothing was happening to me. The light on the floor shined brighter around me, and fizzled out just like that." He snapped his fingers. "Almost immediately, I remembered lives that weren't mine. Skills. Memories. Lovers. Parents. Friends. Languages. Incantations. Emotions that didn't belong to me. Mothers I never met. Children I never held. Deaths I never died."
He paused now, watching Ivana take it all in.
"At first I thought I had only inherited the memories of my platoon members and the cultists we had just hacked down, and I did. But the corpses in the pockets of that cave were the real sacrifice. The children of all the shamas were killed to create this…spell. Their souls compressed to serve the selfish devices of their wards. Their parents. Me. I still hear their cries."
"Oh gods…" Ivana's voice was a whisper.
"After the war, I sought out help, but I was almost prosecuted for even talking about what had happened to me. I had to leave the Principality. I wandered in search of a remedy, relying on the many memories of the shamas in my head for a few landmarks and places where I could ask for help. Many nights, I would dream dreams that weren't mine—or nightmares. Sometimes, I dreamed that one of the shamas held a knife to my throat and chanted incantations before gutting me. Other times, I would see myself holding the very same knife, holding a struggling child in my hands, crying and begging before I killed them."
"Oh gods…" Ivana muttered again. Her eyes betrayed fear again—but there was something else. Worry?
Kraken stopped talking about the dreams, but continued, "The eradication of the shamas made it more difficult but eventually I found an old shama far from the Principality. She told me I carried life. Power. That I could burn through the souls when struck—trade a death for my survival. One soul per wound. Not immortality. Just… deferrals. Every battle, every time I should've died—I didn't. They did."
Ivana pulled the goat fur blankets tighter, as if the tale's horror chilled her skin. Her eyes glimmering faintly in the waning torchlight. "And the dreams?"
"They changed. I stopped dreaming of the children. I started dreaming my own death. A thousand ways. Some slow, some kind. Some were cruel. The dreams always ended the same: I woke up."
Silence again. Uneasy. Disquiet.
"Drinking didn't help much. I still woke up, and had to live with it. I confess, there are times when I relished the power; times I used it towards selfish ends. I thought about killing myself, but guilt—for the souls I would expend in a futile attempt—stayed my hand. So, I chased wars, hoping their clamour would mute my self-loathing—and when there was no war to be fought, I sought out adventure."
Ivana didn't stir.
"Iva, you asked if I couldn't die," he said, finally turning to face her. "It's not that I can't. I just haven't died enough."
Her face betrayed no emotions now.
Then, out of nowhere, Ivana purred, "Sorenna tells better stories than you, okwa ima?" Her smirk was shaky, but it was there.
Kraken couldn't help but laugh. Her mischief was a balm. It soothed his anxiety. "Good liars tell good stories." He said mid-laugh.
"Brooding charm and shadowed secrets. You really are my type." she added to his mirth, as she pulled him from the shoulder onto the bed so he lay on his back. "You're going to tell me a better story,"
"I don't have a better story," he lied, still basking in his relief.
"You better make one up, chief," she whispered, straddling him as she leaned down, her breath a hush against his mouth, "or I'll spill your little secret."
She moved her hips now, slow and deliberate. He groaned, hands tightening around her waist. She bent to kiss him—wet, warm, hungry.
She rose slowly still astride him, hips swaying with languid heat against his pulsing desire. Her fingers wove through her tousled hair taming it.
Then the world bent.
The blinding pain returned, searing through Kraken's skull.
Ivana's smile cracked like old paint. The room's warmth faded, it's hue shifting from yellow to green. The air lost the scent of incense and desire. The walls breathed—moved. The fur-draped bed calcified.
Ivana wouldn't move as he tried to sit up. His body was bound by an unseen cord. The room had gotten dimmer.
The door flickered.
Door. Rock. Door. Rock. Rock. Rock…
His fingers touched stone.
He was still in the cave.
***
He could hear Ivana's muffled voice in the distance. His body blazed with pain. Not just in his head now; his muscles ached, his torso burned. Each breath dragged a stitch of fire across his still healing ribs. He tried to move his hands, but found them bound, tethered to whatever platform held him in place. His vision refocused. He could see the glowy webbing that snared him to that slab of stone.
A nightmare?
The cozy hut, the warm lights, the drinking and dancing—all gone. Erased, like chalk in the rain. Replaced by the deep and dreadful cavern. The sounds of festivity, supplanted by the horrible grating of thundering beasts stalking the dark.
His memories came flooding back. The pre-expedition feast, the call to duty. The Guild had offered this mission to him. People had been going missing in the Akan mountain ranges—adventurers and townsmen alike. The mines had been deserted, but the workers never came home. He remembered the battle. No, the ambush. His party had walked into it. The monsters had been waiting—they'd known.
The first creature struck him down first, crippling him with its venom. Then, Ominus was struck next, saved by a hair's breadth by Bragand's desperate shield work. Sorenna had managed a cut, but it wasn't enough. Their formation had been splintered, and their morale depleted. Their champion lay on the rock floor, nursing wounds that wouldn't heal.
"The Undefeated wakes from his slumber." There it was. That terrible voice grating in his mind again.
There was a pale, seemingly sourceless light in the cavern now. Obirin's flame had died. In that unholy light, horror unfolded. The monster had started to change. It shrunk, as its body convulsed. Limbs bent the wrong way, it's let out a hoarse inhuman cry amidst bone snapping and twisting, mucus dripping and blood spilling. It was a grotesque metamorphosis. What it became was a blood-caked naked man with a slit nose and a red spiral tattoo spinning outward from his left eye. A shape shifter. A shama.
"You stole the soul circle, Undefeated…" the man—thing—said, its voice slick with hatred. "...used it to write your legend, on the very lands upon which you hunted and slaughtered the powers that made you." The other monsters gathered round him now, making sharp grating noises as their mandibles crunched bone. Kraken tried not to think of his friends. "The thief that became legend." the shama spat.
"I did not choose this. I was cursed." Kraken's voice was a hoarse whisper. His parched throat ached from all the commands he screamed earlier. He was in so much pain. Turning his head, and there, above the altar, he saw a neat row of cocoons woven from the same glowing web silk that binded him now. Lined up like offerings to some dead god. They probably were.
"Cursed?" The shama spat, sneer peeling across its inhuman face. "We defile ourselves for a fraction of the power you possess by accident and you call it a curse?!" It spat on the rocky floor, rancor shaping its facial features. Kraken could see its teeth move in its jaw. Some of the shamas cut away the flesh on their cheeks for ritual purposes, or unprovoked, deliberate self mutilation. Kraken couldn't tell.
"No matter," the shama sneered, brushing Kraken's riposte aside. "You will give up that power in time. It is good that you are hard to break. We have uses for you."
"Where are my friends?" Kraken breathlessly queried. He had counted the cocoons while the shama prattled on. There were seven of them. They had entered this cavern as more than seven.
"They will feed our offspring, as you will… eventually." As it spoke, it began to twist again—flesh ripping to exposed growing bones re-snapping into the monstrous scorpion that decimated his party. Kraken's hope withered into horror. "Worry about your own fate, undefeated. Your unearned power will soon be ours."
But his body had mostly healed now. Soon, he would be strong enough to break out of bondage and make a run for it…
…or so he thought.
Panic stricken, Kraken struggled to get up. The poison still lingered but he could move now. He hoped his friends weren't dead in those cocoons. "Please, please," he muttered to himself, willing strength into his aching muscles. Snip! A little of the webbing around his right hand came undone. Hope. But there were still some layers left.
He repeated the same upwards motion with his left hand. Another snip. Slowly, painfully, he dragged fingers down to his sides, tearing at the silk wrapped around his upper thighs. His elbows bent. His arms were almost—
SLAM!
The entire stone platform split in half under the sheer force of the shama's scorpion tail. The strike smashed into him, driving air from his lungs. The trapped hero coughed up blood, thick and hot, choking on it as he gurgled. His recently healed ribs had shattered again. There was a gaping hole where his guts should be.
Blood met tears as they dribbled down from his eyes and mouth, converging at his ears as they dripped onto the rock. A thick slurry of agony. Kraken—the so-called Undefeated—lay mangled and weeping in a nameless pit.
"It is good you cannot die," the beast croaked. "Your enduring life will give my offspring lasting sustenance."
Then hell came. The other monsters. Crawling closer. Ripping into his open stomach. Feeding. Gnawing at offal consisting of his intestines, their maws slick with gore. His body convulsed as pain overtook him, nerves alight with hellish fire. He prayed, then, to the gods of death. Prayed for their gift's reprieve, but it would not come.
He tried to scream, but only blood poured from his lips. It drowned him… It was thick and strange. It had a bitter metallic tang, yes—but there was something else in it. Something sour. His throat tingled.
In all that pain, he mustered enough courage to look down. Among the carnage visited upon his midsection by these vile monstrosities, were green droplets—oily and unmixed. His body had hidden his salvation all along, but it had started taking effect. Too slowly. His eyes closed. Anything was better than this pain, even death. His mind faded into oblivion, and he welcomed the dark.
***
Kraken screamed as he woke up, bolting upright. His chest was slick with sweat, the goat fur blanket tangled at his waist. For a brief moment, he saw cavern walls and slavering mandibles, but then came the soft, familiar hush of home—a warmth no cavern could replicate. The flame in the wall torch replaced the cavern's dimming glow as his home quarters came crashing into focus. Clay earth, incense, ash. His nightmare had felt so real, the memory of the pain lingered. He'd had dreams like this before—remnants of lives he might've lived. But not since meeting that old shama at the edge of Dobiu's eastern borders.
"Kraken!" Ivana's voice, bright and tipsy, snapped him out of the spiral. She stumbled in, holding an almost empty gourd of pami. She was more scantily clad than usual. "You're awake! I told you not to eat those berries, now you missed the whole party."
Party? What party? Somewhere behind those eyes, the memory clawed, just beyond reach. He tried to recall, but every attempt brought a sharp throbbing headache that felt oddly familiar.
Still, Ivana was here. Real, warm, laughing.
So Kraken pushed the dread back down. He'd deal with all the craziness later. Ivana was more than crazy enough for one night.
For now, her arms wrapped around him, and her lips unmade the delusion. All was right again…
…or was it?