The darkness beyond the well shifted with every breath Stronric drew.

He sat in silence, hand resting lightly on his axe, listening. The others slept in uneven clusters, exhaustion dragging them into uneasy slumber. Only Armand stirred now and then, standing watch with a knight's discipline, but even he could not catch every shadow.

When the others finally began to wake, it was gradual. Bauru grunted as he stretched, joints popping in protest. Lirian muttered something about sleeping on rocks and cracked his neck. Rugiel stirred beside Stronric, the holy rabbit still curled against her boot, its nose twitching faintly.

Stronric pushed himself to his feet with a grunt. Pain flared in his ribs, but it was a clean pain now, healing. He looked to Rugiel, who rubbed her eyes and smiled faintly at him.

"Come on, beardlings," he rumbled. "We've got ground to cover."

The group gathered their things in silence. They moved with the cautious rhythm of those who had seen battle and knew more was coming. Packs were slung and weapons were checked. Kara lingered near the well a moment longer, her fingers trailing the edge, before following the others without a word.

They set off into the tunnels, leaving the sanctified well behind.

The path sloped gently downward at first, the stone underfoot slick with moisture. The air grew warmer, damper, carrying the faint, earthy scent of growing things. Stronric led the way, his hand never straying far from his axe.

As they moved, the walls began to change. Where once there had been cracked, dry stone, now tendrils of moss crept along the floor. Small ferns unfurled from crevices. Water trickled down the walls in thin streams, feeding patches of vibrant green. Strange flowers bloomed in the cracks, their petals too bright, too large, trembling as if breathing.

"Feels wrong," Bauru muttered, his lone eye narrowing.

"Looks right," Dane said under his breath. "Compared to what we saw before."

"Too right," Lirian added. "Like a play put on by children."

Stronric grunted in agreement. The mountain had been a tomb of rot and bone; now it was trying to wear the skin of life again. But it was not natural. The life here grew too fast, too wild. Vines snaked across the floor as if placed overnight. Trees, thin and pale, pushed up from cracks that shouldn't have supported their weight.

Rugiel walked with the rabbit tucked carefully in a sling made from a torn cloak, the creature nestled against her armor. She frowned as she watched the vines twitch along the walls.

The tunnel widened ahead, opening into a vast chamber. Shafts of light pierced the ceiling from unseen cracks far above, illuminating patches of greenery in pools of gold. Trees grew here, tall but strange, their bark pale and their branches drooping. Roots sprawled across the floor, knotted and twisted, some thicker than a man's waist.

"Spread out," Stronric said quietly. "Eyes sharp."

The party fanned out cautiously. Stronric moved toward the center, eyes scanning the uneven floor. Here and there, large stones jutted up from the ground like broken teeth. Each stone was ringed with moss and thin vines.

Then the ground shifted.

It was subtle at first. A slight tremble underfoot. The faintest sound of cracking stone.

Stronric tensed.

"Hold!"

The warning came a heartbeat too late. With a roar of tearing earth, the stones around them split open. Trapdoors, massive slabs of rock held up by thick roots — flipped upward. From beneath them, colossal vines erupted, covered in thorns as long as daggers. The vines whipped toward the party, aiming not to kill but to capture.

Chaos exploded.

Bauru dove sideways, Predator raised, loosing a bolt that buried itself in a vine's pulpy flesh. Lirian rolled under a snapping tendril, blades flashing as he sliced at it. Dane smashed at the roots with his gauntlet, severing one that nearly snared Serene. The others in the party jumped to defend the others.

A vine arced straight toward Rugiel.

Stronric saw it coming.

Without thinking, he hurled himself at her, shoulder first, knocking her clear. The rabbit's sling tumbled from her shoulder but remained intact as Rugiel hit the ground, the rabbit rolled to a crouch with a snarl.

Stronric felt the vines slam into him a moment later.

They wrapped around his arms, his chest, his legs, squeezing with bone-cracking force. Stronric roared in anger, struggling, but more tendrils shot up, binding him tighter. The ground beneath him cracked and buckled.

"STRONRIC!" Rugiel screamed, scrambling to her feet.

"Stay back!" he bellowed, voice straining.

The stone under him gave way.

With a violent jerk, the vines yanked him downward. The earth swallowed him whole, leaving only torn stone and clawing roots behind.

"NO!" Rugiel shouted, charging toward the hole.

Bauru grabbed her by the shoulder, hauling her back just as another vine lashed the ground where she had been. "He's gone!" he snapped. "Ye'll get yerself taken too!"

Serene rushed to the edge of the hole, staff glowing, but the tunnel below had already closed, roots knitting over the gap like flesh over a wound.

The others clustered around, weapons drawn, breath heaving, hearts pounding.

Rugiel stood shaking, fists clenched tight against her sides. Her gaze dropped and there, beside her rabbit, lay Stronric's waraxe, half-buried in dust and cracked stone.

The rabbit sat atop the weapon, thumping its little foot anxiously against the haft.

"We have to find him," Rugiel said, as her hands wrapped around the haft of Stronric's axe. Her voice trembling not with fear, but with a fury barely kept in check.

Bauru nodded grimly. "Aye. He'll be fightin'. We need to worry about ourselves first or none of us'll make it to help him."

More vines slithered out of the ground, twisting like snakes about to strike.

Beneath their feet, Stronric was dragged down a twisting, winding tunnel, plummeting deeper and deeper down into the maw of the unknown. The world blurred past Stronric in a chaos of root and rock and pain.

The vines dragged him through the tunnels at breakneck speed, careening him off jagged walls slick with sap and moss. The roots pulsed with sickly life around him, walls closing in and flexing like the gullet of some titanic beast. The air grew humid and rank, thick with the reek of rotting wood and something worse, the sour stench of decaying flesh.

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Stronric twisted, struggling against the vines, but they held him fast. Every tug scraped his armor, every jolt hammered bruises deeper into his ribs. His hands strained against the cords of living wood, but their grip was iron-strong, wet with some viscous secretion that made his palms slip. The tunnel narrowed, then plunged downward.

Stronric felt the change a heartbeat before it happened, the way the air shifted, the way the pull of gravity seemed to double. Then the ground simply vanished beneath him.

He fell.

Dragged by the vines, he plummeted down a gaping shaft carved into the roots of the mountain itself. The fall ended in violence. He slammed into something semi-solid, not stone, but not quite flesh either. A wet, sucking noise filled the chamber as he struck the ground and bounced, rolling onto his side with a grunt of pain. The vines released him all at once, slithering away into the darkness above like serpents retreating to their den.

Stronric lay still for a moment, staring up at the faint, pulsing ceiling far overhead. His ribs ached. His arms burned where the thorns had raked across his skin. His axe was gone, somewhere along the way it had been torn from his grasp.

Groaning, he pushed himself upright. The ground beneath him squelched unpleasantly. It gave under his weight, soft and damp, oozing sticky sap around his boots. He was in a vast hollow, a great natural pit lined with wet, fibrous walls that glistened in the dim, reddish light. Thick roots crisscrossed the chamber's walls like ribs inside a monstrous chest. In the center, a fluorescent green pool of dark, viscous fluid bubbled slowly, sending up tendrils of sickly-sweet steam. He stood on a short rim that lined that pool, not solid but not liquid.

Around the edges of the pool were the dead. Stronric's stomach twisted as he took it in.

Corpses lay half-sunken in the green liquid, gnolls, men, and beasts of strange shapes, all in various stages of decay. All in various stages of decay. Some skeletons still wore rusted armor. Others were little more than bones wrapped in scraps of cloth and hide. A gnoll corpse nearby twitched, its limbs dissolving slowly into the sludge, flesh peeling away like wet bark.

Closer to him, a demon's body sagged against a root, still partially intact. One hand was still wrapped in a death grip around a small root on the wall, its horned head lolled sideways, and thick, greenish fluid oozed from the open sores on its body left laying upon the rim. The rest of its twisted body slowly melted into the ground and the acidic. The acid hissed softly as it worked, an awful, steady noise that filled the pit like breathing.

Organic matter, Stronric realized grimly. Anything living or once living, is food for this thing.

Stronric noticed he had slid closer to the pool by inches. The soft ground he stood on was inclined down and the gelatinous like sap slid him ever so slowly towards the pool before him. He realized by luck alone that he landed on the rim which acted like the lining of a great stomach, protecting the roots themselves from the digestive acid.

He shifted, his boot striking something solid. Looking down, he spotted a jagged shard of stone wedged into the muck untouched, uncorroded. Nearby, pieces of shattered armor, broken swords, and splintered bones floated atop the sludge. Stone. Metal. Things not born of flesh. The tree didn't want those. It only digested the living.

Stronric squinted up toward the ceiling, no sign of escape. Just knotted roots and pulsing bark, dripping with sap.

He knelt, ignoring the pain lancing through his ribs, and picked up a chunk of fallen stone. It was heavy and rough, the edges worn where the acid had lapped at it without effect. Scattered around him were dozens of such rocks. A noise caught Stronric's attention. Vines slithered through the ceiling above, dragging in another unfortunate soul, a gnoll, limp and broken, along with a tangled load of stones. The gnoll hit the acid with a wet slap, screaming and thrashing as the caustic fluid devoured it. Flesh peeled away in strips. Bones cracked and melted like rotten wood. Within moments, the creature sputtered, twitched once, and died.

As the body dissolved, the vines combed through the fresh pile of rocks, selecting two jagged stones. Without hesitation, the tendrils wrapped around their prizes and disappeared into the upper tunnels, leaving the rest to sink and rot. Stronric watched grimly.

It wasn't just feeding. It was building. His mind worked quickly, piecing it together. The rocks… They weren't digested. They were used. The tree was building with them. Plugging its trapdoors. Camouflaging its hunting grounds. Stronric scowled, scanning the fleshy walls again. The stomach of the tree was a living thing, but it wasn't mindless. It was clever. Purposeful. It knew how to bait, how to trap, how to close its wounds with stone and vine.

He spat into the muck, the saliva sizzling slightly where it landed. Escape first. Kill later, if ever. He tightened his fists. His axe was gone, but he was not helpless. He never was. Planting his boots firmly, Stronric scanned the chamber for anything useful, anything solid enough to climb, wedge, or break his way free.

But the longer he looked, the heavier the truth pressed against him. There were no easy ways out. Only the walls, slick with sap. Only the roots, thick and shifting. Only the acid, eating away at the dead, and the faint, rhythmic pulse of the great tree's heartbeat vibrating through the floor. The Feasting Tree had caught him. Now it intended to make a meal of him, but Stronric Wraith-Thane had no intention of becoming mulch. Not today. He gritted his teeth and moved toward a cluster of solid roots jutting from the far wall, the beginnings of a plan forming in his mind.

Stronric watched the vines vanish with the stolen stones, his jaw tight. His instincts roared the answer in his blood. Climb. Now. Before the tree sent them back for him. He wiped his hand across his face, smearing grime and blood. Every breath burned in his chest. His pauldrons were slick with sap, and his tunic clung to him like wet hide, heavy with grime and sweat. His boots were caked with muck that sucked at every step. But his mind, sharpened by battle and stone, remained clear.

Stronric scanned the chamber once more. There, along the far wall, a cluster of thick roots crisscrossed one another, weaving a treacherous ladder toward the sagging ceiling. Above that, the tunnel's mouth pulsed faintly, flexing like a living wound trying to close. It was the only way. He planted a boot on a knotted root, testing it. It sagged under his weight but held. With a grunt, he hauled himself upward. The climb was agony.

The roots were sticky with sap, clinging to his palms and boots. Every move pulled at his joints, making each shift a battle. Thorned vines hung loose from the walls, twitching, brushing against him like sleeping snakes ready to strike. Below, the acid pit churned, sending up clouds of noxious steam that stung his eyes and throat. Stronric climbed anyway. One root at a time. One breath at a time. His muscles screamed. His ribs flared with every movement. His hands bled from the coarse bark and hidden barbs. But he climbed.

A thorn snagged his back, tearing a line through the padding of his tunic. He grunted and ripped himself free. Another vine stirred near his leg, coiling sluggishly, but he kicked it loose, sending it flailing back into the pit. Higher. Just a little higher. The roots thinned as he climbed, growing narrower and weaker. His weight strained them dangerously. Sap oozed from cracks and wounds in the bark, sticking to his arms and face, but the roots stayed strong enough to hold him.

Above, one of the many tunnels gaped open, a ragged maw of pulsing roots and stone. He reached for a thicker branch jutting from the edge. The root he stood on shuddered and snapped. Stronric dropped, caught himself with one hand, boots swinging wildly over the acid pit. The sap dragged at him, weighing down his arms. The acid below hissed eagerly, splashing against broken corpses floating in the muck. With a roar torn from the depths of his chest, Stronric swung his legs upward, hooked a spur of root with his boot, and dragged himself higher. Every muscle burned. His body felt like it was being torn apart.

But dwarves were not made to fall. They were made to endure. Hand over hand, foot over foot, he clawed toward the tunnel mouth. The walls pulsed faster now, the tree sensing him, reacting. Roots trembled. Vines stirred in the mist. Stronric snarled under his breath, teeth bared in furious defiance. Almost there. One final lunge.

He slammed his shoulder into the tunnel lip and hauled himself up, scraping his side bloody against the rough bark. His chest hit solid ground, half stone and half living root. He rolled onto it, gasping, every muscle trembling. He had escaped the belly. But he wasn't safe yet. The tunnel sloped upward, the walls here tighter and the roots denser. The air smelled fresher, cooler. Somewhere ahead, he caught a faint glimmer of light. Pushing himself to his feet with a grunt, Stronric stumbled forward.

He ran a hand along the wall for support, feeling the sticky fibers pulse weakly beneath his palm. The Feasting Tree had missed its meal today. The passage narrowed sharply. Stronric followed it, boots dragging, lungs heaving. Then, a break in the roots. A burst of light. Fresh, cold air. Stronric shielded his eyes and staggered through the breach. He stumbled out into a new world.

A massive cavern stretched before him, so wide and tall it felt like the inside of a cathedral. Giant trees towered overhead, their trunks ancient and gnarled. Greenery carpeted the ground, ferns and moss and flowers in colors that shimmered faintly in the dim light. Water trickled somewhere nearby. Strange birds flitted through the branches, their songs unfamiliar and sweet.

It was a forest. A forest hidden inside the mountain. A living, breathing place, untouched by the corruption of the gnolls, untouched even by the Feasting Tree. Stronric dropped to one knee, exhausted, heart hammering. He rested a hand on the damp earth, feeling its life pulse beneath his calloused fingers. For the first time in what felt like days, he drew a full, clean breath. He was alive. But he was alone. The forest around him whispered with unseen voices.

He rose slowly, wiping the dried sap and blood from his arms. His tunic stuck to him in patches, heavy with grime. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. No weapon. No allies. Only stone, will, and stubborn dwarven grit. Stronric Wraith-Thane squared his shoulders and moved into the trees. The mountain had not broken him yet. It would have to try harder.

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