What felt like freezing cold water washed over Alex’s body. It prickled against his skin and, for an instant, seemed to fill his lungs. Then it was gone. The darkness vanished, replaced by angry crimson light and a hot, sticky warmth like the breath of a dog.

He squinted through the slits in his mask as the intense smell of rotting flesh drove into him all at once. All around him was a sea of sickly, bulbous red. Mounds of throbbing flesh stretched out in rolling hills. They bulged like pustules about to burst, hairy strands sprouting from them like cancerous growths, and undulated to the beat of some buried heart.

Huge trees of bone rose all around the pox-ridden landscape, leaves of browning flesh scraps swaying in a faint breeze and vines of entrails looped from their branches like laurels. They grew between the bulging masses littering the landscape to loom far into the sky above, but their branches cast no shade.

Angry crimson light slipped through their branches to bear down on the land below. There was no apparent source — no moon nor sun from which the light could have come. The sky was just… red.

Alex barely even questioned it. He was a little too busy trying to keep himself from throwing up. The awful smell was so intense, so thick, that it almost felt like it had coated his tongue in the few moments he’d been present.

Claire let out something between a gag and a retch as her hand shot up to pinch her nose shut.

It was a fruitless exercise. The smell permeated every single square inch of the world around them, clinging to everything it touched with no plans of ever letting go. There was no escaping it.

Alex took a step back, disgust welling within him, and felt something burst beneath his heel. His eyes were pulled unbidden to the ground. Rancid black liquid dribbled from a burst mound that he’d mistakenly tread on.

Alex pulled his foot away before any of the black sludge could get on him. He didn’t know what it would do if it came in contact with his skin, and he didn’t want to find out. The System had shown him a lot of awful things since it had arrived, but nothing had ever been this uniquely revolting.

“What the fu—”

A scream cut through the air.

Alex’s eyes snapped up just in time to see a man hurtling up into the air, clawing at his neck.

A tree creaked above him, the entrails above it looped the man’s neck like a noose. His eyes went wide with panic and his feet kicked fruitlessly at the air to no avail as he clawed at the bloody organ tightening around his throat.

Another man thrust his hand forward, sending a shimmering blade of blue light slicing through the air. It carved through the noose, severing it and dropping the Gentle Shadow warrior back to the ground.

A large bulb of rot burst beneath the man as he landed, sending black pus splattering across both him and the person who had saved him.

“Idiot,” the other man said, looking down at his armor in disgust as the vile fluid dripped back to the ground, leaving black trails in its wake. “Get up, and keep your eyes on the damn tree—”

A red tentacle exploded up from the ground around him. It wound around the first man’s chest in an instant, wrapping around him and blocking him out from view in an instant. Then the tentacle tightened.

There was a sound like a tin can being crushed in a trash compactor. Sheets of blood sprayed out from the thin gaps between the layers of the tentacle, splattering across everyone that had been standing next to him.

Before anyone could react, the tendril unraveled and shot back beneath the ground. All that remained where the man had been standing was a warped corpse, body indistinguishable from the crumpled armor fused with its viscera-splattered flesh.

The corpse pitched forward and fell to the ground with a thud. Almost instantly, the sickening ground parted and oozed away. It absorbed the man’s body, letting it sink beneath the filth before flowing back over him. Thick bubbles formed above where he had fallen. They swelled up, lurching and shuddering as they formed into cancerous pustules just like the ones covering the ground in every direction.

All around them, the trees shuddered. And, within the sheets of flesh and bloodied viscera that hung from their limbs, he spotted something else suspended up above.

A body.

“Arms!” someone screamed. “We’re under—”

The rest of the warning ended in a terrified scream as a red vine lashed down from one of the trees above, looping around the man’s neck and yanking him into the sky before anyone could even try and act.

A loud crack echoed out.

The scream stopped.

And the trees all came to life. The entrails hanging from their branches swung, lashing out for anyone within range as tentacles exploded up from beneath the ground to grasp at the Gentle Shadow’s warriors. Screams and magic rose into the air as everyone scrambled to defend themselves.

Claire’s wings exploded out from her back. Alex grabbed her arm, yanking her out of the way as a tentacle exploded up where she’d been standing. She spun, black flowing down her veins as her fingers formed into claws.

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A huge brush sliced down through the air, painting a streak of blue. It shot outward, slicing through the tentacle and sending its upper half splattering to the ground amidst the red boils. The bottom half of the tentacle thrashed, then jerked underground before more damage could be done to it.

Mirrors sliced out from Alex’s hand to form into a glistening blade. He’d already dealt with killing his monsters within the tent shortly before they’d entered the Ancestry, but now he was starting to wish he hadn’t.

Another man was dragged screaming into the sky as the tentacles claimed more victims all around them. Even though Gentle Shadow had mustered and were fighting back, nearly a dozen people had already been killed.

It wasn’t looking like there would be many survivors left to report anything that transpired within the Ancestry. Alex caught a glimpse of red flashing toward him out of the corner of his eye.

He turned, but Claire was faster. Her hand sliced down through the air and a segment of an intestine flew past his face to splat against the ground. Alex drove the sword straight down into the ground where the bloody vine had fallen.

Something thrashed, snapping his mirror blade as it pulled away before it even got a chance to rise up above the surface.

He stepped back, a new blade forming along his hand.

“Where’s the monster?” Alyssa screamed over the chaos. Her brush flicked as she painted steps into the air, racing up them and making a platform for herself. “I can’t tell what we’re up against!”

Alex and Claire both leapt up onto the platform along with Alyssa as tentacles exploded up from beneath them. The writhing appendages drove up into the bottom of the translucent magic, squelching but failing to penetrate it.

Alyssa hurriedly drew a grid of lines around them. The magic solidified a moment before a vine from the trees slapped into her creation harmlessly. It slid away, continuing on to another member of the Gentle Shadow’s men.

“No damn idea,” Alex said, his heart pounding so loud in his chest that he almost couldn’t hear the screams still ringing through the air.

Almost.

Then his eyes caught on something.

Not everyone was fighting.

Several groups — almost half of the combatants that Gentle Shadow had brought — were racing away in different directions. Some of them flew, carrying their allies in their arms and on their backs, while others raced across the ground and dodged past the murderous tentacles trying to pulp them.

All of them seemed to be heading for the edges of the horizon, where dark dots spotted the red. Alex squinted, trying to make out what they were.

Then his eyes went wide.

“Doors,” Claire said, realizing the same thing that he had. “Ways out of this hellscape.”

“We need to get to them,” Alyssa said, her words running into one another. She flinched as a tentacle slammed against the walls of the cage she’d painted around them, sending tremors through her magic. “Fast.”

“Can you move this thing?” Claire asked.

“No,” Alyssa said.

The tentacle reared back and slammed against the walls again. It squeezed itself against the hole between the bars, trying to force its way through. Alex drove his mirrored sword into it. The tentacle flinched and raced back under the ground — but more of them were rising up everywhere.

He felt heat searing into his pant leg from the coin that Maurice had given them. It was reacting to all the other Gentle Shadow warriors falling, but it wasn’t like he could get any closer to the fight. He was already here.

All the people that hadn’t already made a run for it were being overwhelmed. It was hard to tell how many people had already died versus fled, but something told Alex the numbers weren’t looking good.

“Can you fly us?” Alex yelled over the din.

“If you keep the trees off me, I should be able to,” Claire said.

“Do it,” Alex said. “Alyssa, drop the walls.”

The painter sent him a panicked glance. Then her jaw clenched and she gave them a sharp nod. Claire grabbed each of them by the waist and backed up to the edge of the cage, her grip tightening until it was almost painful.

Another tentacle smashed against the side of Alyssa’s defenses. They trembled.

“Now!” Claire yelled.

The magic fell.

She lurched forward, her feet pounding twice against the shimmering platform Alyssa had created before launching all three of them into the air in a blurred streak.

Air whipped past Alex’s eyes as people flashed by beneath them. Even though the room was huge, Claire moved at such a speed that the distance between themselves and the nearest exit closed rapidly.

They were almost —

The ground before them bubbled.

This wasn’t just a small patch or a single tentacle. The patch of roiling, bulging earth stretched at least thirty feet in diameter. There was something beneath the ground. Something huge.

Alex’s mouth opened as he went to call out a warning. Claire had already tried to angle away from it, but the size of the patch was too large to avoid.

A geyser of sickly, rancid black fluid exploded up from the ground as a warbling screech cut through the air. The shadow of a huge, shambling monster emerged within the spray of liquid.

Claire’s wings snapped down and they shot to the side to avoid the monster. The movement wasted a large amount of the speed they’d gathered. Entrail vines reached down from the trees toward them, trying to catch their prey before it could escape.

Alex thrust his sword of mirror fragments out, slicing through several of the vile flesh appendages before they could reach him. The ground grew closer as they hurtled toward the exit, the enormous monster behind them letting out another scream.

Alyssa managed to maneuver within Claire’s grasp, flicking her brush through the air as they neared the ground, where the red boils had already started to bubble. Even as they burst, letting more tentacles free, she painted a long, glowing platform into being beneath them.

The tentacles splattered against its translucent bottom and the three of them hit it in a tumbling roll.

Alex and Claire jerked back to their feet, dragging Alyssa up along with them and barely even missing a step. The darkness of the exit was only a short ways away — and so were the growths rising up all around from the red mass of flesh covering the ground.

Alyssa was little more than a flag in the wind flapping behind them. They were both so much faster than she was that there wasn’t much else she could do. She let out a yell and a curse as a bloody vine grabbed her ankle.

But Alex and Claire didn’t even slow. They were running at full speed, the platform Alyssa had formed giving them ground with which to run.

The vine went taut. Then it snapped.

All three of them flew forward, tumbling into the darkness in a ball of limbs. Alex felt something lurch in his stomach as a portal activated.

Then the sounds of the room behind them vanished as the Ancestry pulled them deeper into its depths.