Chapter 12: The Slug's Challenge
The heat and the exhausting descent finally won. Even Brutehilde’s relentless drive succumbed to the clammy embrace of the spongy cavern. They made a rough camp in the soft-walled alcove, the moss-light dimmed to a faint glow. One by one, they drifted off to the sounds of Dravion’s pen scratching furiously in his journal and the distant, watery echoes of the frog pond.
He wrote by the dying light, his face a mask of profound tragedy. The words flowed in a torrent of self-pitying ink.
"O, shriveled root where once a tree did stand,
A barren staff in this most fertile land.
The chorus croaks, the pixie sings her tune,
While I, a ghost, beneath a spectral moon...
My sword is sheathed in scabbards of despair,
A hollow knight, a vacant, silent lair.
Where is the stirring? Where the rampant pride?
A limp flag on a castle fortified...
Against the nothing. O, the cruelest jest!
To see the feast and feel but cold unrest..."
He wrote until his hand cramped, until the emotional purge left him hollowed out and numb. Finally, he slept, the journal splayed open on his chest like a dead thing.
---
A low, grinding moan woke Brutehilde. It wasn’t a sound from one of her companions. It was deep, tectonic, a vibration felt in the bones before it was heard in the ears. The moss-light had gone out. The absolute, suffocating black was a physical weight on her eyes.
“Up,” she barked, her voice startlingly loud in the dead air. “Lights. Now.”
Tulip muttered an elvish syllable. The soft green glow returned, illuminating a scene of confusion. They were all there, sprawled on the yielding floor. But the tunnel ahead, their path of descent, and the way they had come were gone. In both directions, the passage terminated in smooth, seamless walls of pale, mucous-streaked flesh.
“What in the seven shit-filled shires…” Polly began, scrambling to her feet. The air tasted stale, used. Each breath felt inadequate, like sipping soup through a pinprick.
“The air is getting thin,” Ulrika stated calmly, though her nostrils flared as she tested it. “We are sealed in.”
Panic, cold and quick, flickered through the group. Tanna drew her sword, but there was nothing to strike. The fleshy walls pulsed gently, rhythmically, about once every ten seconds. A soft, wet squish-thump.
“It’s breathing,” Tulip whispered, pressing a golden hand against the warm surface. “This isn’t rock. It never was.”
Polly stalked to the nearest seal, the one that had been their way forward. It was a perfect circle of darker, puckered tissue, ringed with concentric ridges of muscle. A bead of clear, viscous slime welled at its very center and dripped slowly downwards.
“It’s an arsehole,” Polly said, her voice flat with disbelief. “A giant fucking arsehole.”
Before anyone could stop her, driven by a punk’s instinct to poke the things that scared her, she jabbed the tip of her combat boot hard into the center of the puckered muscle.
The effect was immediate.
The ring of muscle convulsed, then dilated with a wet, rubbery schlorp. The opening expanded to the size of a wagon wheel, revealing not a tunnel, but a contracting, slime-coated channel. A colossal, pent-up pressure was released.
The fart was not a sharp report. It was a deep, tuba-like blast, a sustained, window-rattling BRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMPPPPP that shook the very flesh around them. It was moist, warm, and carried the overwhelming scent of digested fungus and geological flatulence.
The force of the expulsion was catastrophic. It hit them like a physical wall of compressed air and foul odour. They were lifted, tumbling, a tangled, screaming mass of limbs and equipment, and shot out of the opening into a wider cavern.
They landed in a heap on a shore of coarse, gritty silt, soaked in warm, sticky slug slime. The giant sphincter behind them snapped shut with a final, petulant pop.
Gasping, retching, they untangled themselves. Before them, the tunnel was indeed occupied. It was the slug. Its pale, gargantuan body filled the bore completely, a living plug of pulsating flesh a hundred feet long. At the front, where a head should be, a cavernous mouth yawned open, ringed with wet, grasping papillae. Above the mouth, two stalked eyes, each the size of a barrel, swiveled to focus on them. The air vibrated again, not with a moan, but with a voice—a deep, resonant, surprisingly melodious basso profundo that emanated from its entire quivering bulk.
“YOU HAVE DISTURBED THE DIGESTIVE REPOSE OF GLORTHAX THE SUBTERRANEAN,” the slug intoned. Its mouth didn’t move; the sound simply was. “YOU HAVE PROBED MY TERMINAL SPHINCTER WITH VIOLENT INTENT. THE PENALTY IS DISSOLUTION. PREPARE TO BE ASSIMILATED.”
The great mouth began to lower, a dripping cave descending towards them. The smell was of sweet, cloying decay.
“Wait!” Tulip shouted, stepping forward, her green hair bright against the monochrome flesh. “You are Glorthax? The Singing Slug of the Deep-Ways?”
The mouth paused, hovering. The eye stalks bent. “I AM. MY SONGS PACIFY THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE WORLD. MY BALLADS CALM THE TECTONIC PLATES. YOU KNOW OF ME?”
“We are travelers,” Tulip said, casting a desperate look at her companions. “We seek passage. We did not mean to… to lodge within you.”
“PASSAGE IS EARNED,” Glorthax thrummed. “ALL LIFE IS VIBRATION. PROVE YOUR RESONANCE IS WORTHY, NOT MERELY DIGESTIBLE. YOU PROBED MY LOWER REGISTER. NOW YOU MUST HARMONIZE WITH MY UPPER.”
Brutehilde wiped slime from her face. “What’s it want?”
“A duet,” Tulip translated quietly. “It wants a musical performance.”
“A DUET,” Glorthax confirmed. “ONE OF YOUR NUMBER MUST JOIN VOICE WITH THE ETERNAL SONG OF GLORTHAX. A TEST OF PITCH, OF TIMBRE, OF SOUL. SUCCEED, AND YOU MAY PASS UNMOLESTED. FAIL, AND YOU WILL BECOME A SUSTAINING NOTE IN MY BODILY SYMPHONY. CHOOSE YOUR CHAMPION.”
A stunned silence fell, broken only by the steady drip-drip of slug mucus from their clothes. They looked at each other. Brutehilde couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Minnie only knew drinking songs. Ulrika’s voice was suited for commands, not cantatas. Tanna looked utterly baffled. Polly’s musical repertoire consisted of gutter-chants and the rhythm of fist on face.
Honeymuff, buzzing excitedly, flew up. “Ooh! I have a lovely voice! I sing to my eggs all the time!”
“You’re six inches tall,” Polly muttered. “Your duet would sound like a duet for kazoo and continent.”
Dravion, who had been silently wringing slime from his sleeves, suddenly stood straighter. A light—theatrical, tragic, but a light nonetheless—returned to his eyes. Here was a challenge his current… condition did not preclude. Here was drama, pathos, a stage.
“The lament,” he breathed. He stepped forward, striking a pose amidst the filth. “Great Glorthax! I have within me a song newly composed, a cry of the spirit! A melody of profound loss and existential barrenness! Allow me to give it voice with you!”
The slug considered. Its stalk eyes regarded the weeping, bedraggled elf. “THE THEME IS APT. THE UNDERWORLD IS BUILT ON LAMENT. APPROACH. STAND AT THE PORTAL OF SONG.”
The “portal of song” was apparently the space directly before its gaping maw. Dravion strode forward, clutching his journal. He cleared his throat.
Glorthax began. It was a sound unlike any they had ever heard. It started as a low hum, a subsonic vibration that made the grit on the floor dance. It rose, weaving in complex, polyphonic strands—a cello’s depth, a brass section’s warmth, the eerie whistle of wind through deep chimneys. It was beautiful, ancient, and profoundly sad.
Dravion opened his mouth. He sang his poem.
His voice was a reedy, nasal tenor. He wobbled on the first note, over-emoted on the second, and completely missed the third. He was utterly, catastrophically tone-deaf. His lament clashed with Glorthax’s majestic melody like a screaming cat in a cathedral.
“O, SHRIVELED ROOOOOOOOT!” he wailed, ignoring the slug’s harmonious shift into a minor key.
Glorthax flinched. The great body shuddered. One of its eye-stalks twitched. It tried to adapt, to envelop Dravion’s horrific keening within its own music, to make it a purposeful dissonance. But Dravion was a force of anti-music. He barreled through the delicate melodic structure like a drunk through a stained-glass window.
“A BARREN STAAAAAAAAAFF!”
A visible ripple of distress passed through Glorthax’s gelatinous form. The beautiful song began to fray at the edges, becoming discordant, pained.
“CEASE,” the slug’s voice boomed, now edged with something like physical agony. “YOU ARE NOT SINGING. YOU ARE ASSAULTING SOUND ITSELF. YOU HAVE THE AUDIAL SIGNATURE OF A DWARVEN FORGE COLLAPSING INTO A BOG. DESIST.”
Dravion stopped, mid-wail, looking crestfallen. “But the tragedy! The soul!”
“YOUR SOUL IS OFF-KEY. STAND ASIDE.” The slug’s massive head turned, its gaze sweeping over the others. “ANOTHER. NOW. OR DIGESTION COMMENCES.”
They were out of options. Polly cracked her knuckles. “Fuck it. I’ll fight it.”
“It’s a slug the size of a train, Polly,” Tulip said, her hand on her lover’s arm. Then she looked at Polly, really looked. Not at the mohawk, the scowl, the brass knuckles. She looked at the woman who, in the throes of passion, could whisper filth in a rhythm that was almost poetic. Who moved with a gutter-grace that was its own kind of music.
“No,” Tulip said softly. A small, determined smile touched her lips. “But you will sing.”
Polly stared at her. “Have you lost your leafy little mind? I don’t sing.”
“You do,” Tulip insisted, pulling her forward. “You just don’t know it. You’re all rhythm and growl. That’s what it needs. Not pretty. Real. Glorthax wants resonance. You’re the most resonant thing I know.”
Before Polly could protest further, Tulip pushed her towards the singing maw. She turned to the slug. “Great Glorthax! Try this one! A song of the streets! Of fight and fuck and survival!”
Glorthax, still recovering from Dravion’s assault, gave a dubious pulse. “PROCEED.”
The deep, beautiful melody began again, softer this time, wary.
Polly Panzerfaust stood before the living instrument of the deep earth. She felt like an idiot. She wiped slug snot from her cheek, took a deep breath of the thin, foul air, and thought not of music, but of the pounding of her own heart in a back-alley brawl. Of the percussive slap of flesh on flesh. Of the ragged, filthy curses that were her prayers.
She opened her mouth.
What came out wasn’t singing. It was a rhythmic, harsh, spoken growl. A chant.
"Cobblestone heart and a gutter-tongue,
Knuckle-dust melody, started young.
You want a song? Here’s my fucking song.
It’s brass and blood and doing it wrong.
The beat is a kick to a downed man’s head,
The chorus is what the fuck just got said.
The verse is the price, the bridge is the knife,
This is the soundtrack to my fucking life."
She didn’t try to match Glorthax’s tune. She laid her words over it like jagged scrap metal over velvet. She stomped her combat boot in time, a stark, powerful beat. Thump. Thump. Thump-thump-thump.
And something miraculous happened.
Glorthax listened. The great slug’s melody shifted. The lush strings faded; a deeper, more percussive element emerged. A throbbing, bassline vibration from its very core that matched Polly’s stomping boot. The wind-whistle became the shriek of a rusty hinge, the cry of a night bird in a polluted city. It began to accompany her. It wrapped its ancient, adaptable music around her modern, savage rhythm, creating something entirely new—a symphony of the deep earth and the concrete jungle.
Polly, sensing the change, got bolder. Her chant grew louder, more graphic.
"The cunt is a fist, the cock is a lie,
The come is just salt in a willing eye.
You chew what you can, you swallow the pain,
And do the same fucking thing again.
The melody’s broken, the chord is a scar,
You scream it out loud in a smokey bar!
This ain’t no lament, this ain’t no sad tune,
This is the noise that howls at the moon!"
She was shouting now, spittle flying, her green mohawk trembling. Glorthax was throbbing in time, its colors shifting slightly to darker, more vibrant hues. The music filled the cavern, no longer just beautiful, but powerful, raw, and compelling.
It built to a crescendo. Polly raised a fist, her voice cracking with the strain.
"SO SING, YOU SLUG, AND I’LL SING TOO!
THIS DIRTY, BEAUTIFUL, FUCKING DUET—
FOR ME—
AND FOR YOU!"
The last word was a roar. Glorthax unleashed a final, triumphant chord that shook the walls and made stalactites quiver far above. Then, silence.
The great slug studied Polly. Its maw closed slowly.
“RESONANCE,” it intoned, the single word thick with approval. “FILTHY, TRUE, AND VIBRANT. YOU HAVE THE SOUL OF A DRUM BEATEN WITH A BROKEN BOTTLE. PASSAGE IS GRANTED.”
A section of its massive side, just behind the head, puckered and opened, forming a temporary, slime-lined archway leading past its colossal body.
They stood in stunned silence. Polly was panting, sweat mingling with the slime on her brow. She looked at Tulip, who was beaming at her with proud, shining eyes.
“Told you,” Tulip whispered.
Brutehilde clapped a massive hand on Polly’s shoulder, nearly knocking her over. “Never doubted you for a second. Now, let’s get the fuck out of this hall before it changes its mind and wants an encore.”
They gathered their slimy gear, Minnie wheeling her trolley through the arch of living flesh with a cheerful, “Lovely performance, dear! Very… vigorous!”
As they filed through, Dravion lingered, staring at Polly with a new, complex jealousy. She had triumphed where he had failed, not with grace, but with grit. He had sung of impotence. She had bellowed power.
Honeymuff zipped past his ear. “She was magnificent, wasn’t she? All that raw energy! It makes my little wings quiver!” She giggled and flew after the others.
Dravion stood alone for a moment in the vast, silent cavern, the giant slug now humming contentedly to itself, a low, pleasant vibration. He looked down at his journal, at the pathetic lament. Then he crumpled the page in his fist, letting it fall to the slimy floor. He had no song left. Just a hollow, echoing quiet where his pride had been. He turned and trudged after the others, leaving the balled-up poetry to be slowly absorbed into Glorthax the Subterranean’s next, likely dissonant, movement.
Moving on, the air began to flow a little more freely again after Glorthax's tunnel blockage. But with the renewed air movement came an odour which increased as they drew nearer to its source, a pungent smell.
The smell clarified into woodsmoke, rotten meat, and the acidic tang of goblin bodies. The tunnel walls began to show crude scratch marks, then handprints in coloured mud. A faint, flickering orange glow appeared ahead, painting the cavern ceiling in wavering shadows. The grumble of many rough voices echoed towards them, a chaotic chatter pierced by occasional sharp barks of laughter.
Ulrika held up a fist. They halted. “Goblin outpost. A toll station. They control this stretch of the descent. They will demand payment.”
“We’ve got no coin,” Brutehilde stated. “We came for a night out, not a spending spree.”
“They don’t want coin,” Ulrika said, her lip curling. “They want entertainment. Stories. Jokes. The more outlandish, the better. If you bore them, they’ll take your clothes. Or your skin.”
From the pocket, Honeymuff’s tiny voice piped up. “I know stories! The one about the horny satyr and the beehive is a riot!”
“Maybe something less likely to end with us being stung,” Tulip suggested dryly.
They rounded a final bend. The cavern opened into a vast, dome-shaped space. A makeshift barrier of sharpened bones and woven fungus blocked the path. Behind it, a squalid village of hide tents and mud huts clung to the cavern walls. Dozens of goblins, green-skinned and wiry, with oversized ears and bright, malicious eyes, milled about. A particularly large one, wearing a dented iron pot as a helmet, stood at the barrier. He leaned on a spear crusted with unknown substances.
He jabbed the spear towards them. “Toll!” he screeched. “Toll for passage! Make us laugh or make us a feast!”
The goblins nearby cackled, gathering closer. Their teeth were yellow and sharp. They obviously favoured the feast option.
Brutehilde stepped forward, her size immediately drawing their attention. “We seek passage, not trouble. We have a story.”
“Tell! Tell!” the pot-helmeted goblin demanded, bouncing on his toes.
Before Brutehilde could speak, a surprisingly familiar, booming voice cut through the din from deeper within the village. “Hold on! Hold your rancid horses! I know these magnificent bastards!”
Through the crowd of goblins waddled a colossal, green-skinned figure. He stood eight feet tall, his body a mountain of dense, smelly muscle. He wore absolutely nothing but a pair of gigantic, floppy clown shoes, a bright red rubber nose, and a straining leather posing pouch that did little to contain the sheer, alarming bulk beneath it. It was Scoffer, erstwhile Grand Ranter of the Lurkan temple, later travelling tent show evangelist, last seen falling into a bottomless pit, presumed dead.
“Scoffer!” Brutehilde bellowed, a genuine grin splitting her face.
“The one and only, you beautiful milkmaid nightmare!” Scoffer roared, sweeping several goblins aside as he clomped forward. The clown shoes made a whomp-whomp sound with each step. He spread his massive arms. “Been awhile! Last I saw you, you were knee-deep in demon offal and Minnie was brewing a restorative cuppa in its skull!”
“Aye, that was a Tuesday,” Minnie nodded cheerfully.
Scoffer turned to the pot-helmet goblin, who now looked unsure. “These are my people, Gnawgristle! VIPs! Their stories are the real deal. None of your ‘my-cave-is-bigger-than-yours’ pissing contests.” He bent down, his smell—a powerful cocktail of sweat, leather, and primordial orc pheromones—washing over the group. “So, what brings you to this fragrant armpit of the underworld? And who’s the weepy one?” He jabbed a thick thumb towards Dravion, who was attempting to look tragically dignified amidst the squalor.
“Long story,” Polly said. “We need through. And he’s our… poetic liability.”
“A liability, eh?” Scoffer’s eyes, small and shrewd in his broad face, gleamed. He winked at Polly. “Good to see you again, you used to be my very favourite temple dancer. I guess you mey get to sample this big green todger yet! First things first, though.”
He straightened up, addressing the entire goblin crowd. “You want a story? A true story? I’ll tell you about the time I became a god by accident. It involves a drunken bet, a missing chicken, and a very confused volcano.”
The goblins shrieked with anticipatory delight, circling around him. Scoffer cleared his throat with a sound like grinding rocks.
“So there I was,” he began, his voice taking on a rhythmic, storytelling cadence. “Three sheets to the wind on mushroom grog, and my mate Blort says ‘I bet you can’t convince the Stone-Tooth tribe you’re their returned deity, the Great Cluck-Cluck.’ Now, their god was a giant, fire-breathing rooster, right? So I strap two torches to my head for a comb, I dye my arse feathers red—don’t ask how—and I march into their camp wearing nothing but a stolen grain sack.”
He acted it out, prancing on his giant clown shoes, making absurd clucking noises. The goblins were already clutching their sides, their laughter high and jagged.
“'I demand tribute!' I say, in my best divine voice, ‘Bring me your finest… corn!’ And the chief, he’s terrified. He brings me this pitiful handful of mouldy kernels. So I eat it. I eat the mouldy corn. And I look him dead in the eye and I say, ‘The prophecy is fulfilled! The Great Cluck-Cluck is pleased! Now, to show my pleasure, I shall lay an egg of divine blessing!’”
Scoffer paused, letting the suspense build. The goblins were breathless, their eyes wide. Dravion watched in horrified fascination, his literary sensibilities profoundly offended.
“I squat down,” Scoffer whispered. He mimed the act with shocking realism. “I grunt. I strain. My face goes purple. And out it comes…” He reached behind himself, miming pulling something large and round from his leather pouch. “Not an egg. But a fully cooked, steaming… roast chicken. The very one Blort had stolen for our bet!”
The absurdity of the image, the sheer physical impossibility sold with complete orcish sincerity, was too much. The goblins exploded. They didn’t just laugh. They howled. They staggered, grabbing their bellies. One particularly small goblin let out a wet, ripping shriek of mirth, and then his beady eyes went wide with shock. A dark stain spread across his ragged tunic. He looked down.
A slit had opened in his green side, just above his hip. Not a cut. A tear. The skin and muscle, strained beyond capacity by the convulsive laughter, had literally split apart. A loop of glistening, pinkish-grey intestine bulged from the opening, like a strange, fleshy worm peeking out.
The goblin stared at his own insides, then let out another giggle, which turned into a wet gurgle as more intestine slipped out. He sank to his knees, still grinning stupidly, as his companions pointed and shrieked with renewed, manic hysteria at the sight.
“Side-splitter!” Gnawgristle wheezed, wiping tears from his eyes. “A true side-splitting tale! Passage! Passage granted for you and your funny, funny friends!” He was laughing so hard he couldn’t stand, rolling on the filthy ground as the injured goblin quietly curled around his spilled guts.
Scoffer bowed, his red nose bouncing. “Just doing my duty as a humble purveyor of mirth.” He turned back to the group, his cheerful expression not wavering as he stepped over the giggling, disembowelled goblin. “Right. That’s that sorted. You lot look like you could use a guide who knows which fungi won’t melt your face off. And I owe Brutehilde for that time with the troll and the keg of brandy. Mind if I tag along?”
Brutehilde clapped him on his enormous, smelly shoulder. “Better you than him.” She jerked a thumb at Dravion.
They moved through the goblin village quickly, the sounds of hysterical laughter and the coppery smell of blood fading behind them. Scoffer led them to a narrower, less-travelled tunnel branching off from the main cavern. “Main descent’s that way,” he said, pointing a thick finger. “But it’s watched. This is a smugglers’ cut. Tighter, but quieter.”