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And then the dizziness came back again, and she reached out to pull herself across the floor as best as she could, letting a small groan escape her lips as the buzzing in her ears reached a fever pitch.

Zurine was getting tired and a large pulse of fear knocked her flat to the ground until she was staring at the red symbols again. She was starting to really dislike those symbols.

Malodore had just been idly exploring, knowing its time on this Isle was drawing to a close, wanting to fix everything into its mind that it possibly could. The plague doctor had already paced by the trees it had climbed, the 'greenhouse' areas, and now the open cavern - but the newly opened door had attracted its attention, and it had followed. Surely it would not be open if they weren't meant to go down?

Down, down, down... the ground under its feet shifted to stone, its hooves clopping on the rock as the temperature subtly cooled. It felt the prickle of FEAR around it, strange and unfamiliar, like electricity - and yet, somehow, it couldn't turn back, and it couldn't quite place its finger on why. It should have turned back, it knew, but... curiosity and... something else urged it onwards.

Down, down.

The carvings on the wall - maybe that was why it had to continue, had to run the tips of its claws over the gouges in the stone, the images of Horsemen running wild and feral. Destroying. For a moment the scenes made its heart wickedly glad, as it imagined white coats on the human figures, but... no, they weren't limiting this rampage just to those Hunters, were they?

Down...

A wild pulse of FEAR jolted through it suddenly, as it approached a seemingly empty alcove. The plague doctor stopped in its tracks, rocking forward slightly from aborted momentum, its eyes widening behind the lenses. This FEAR was like nothing it had ever felt - it was sharp, painful, foreign, burning, and Malodore could feel its own self softening before the repeated blows. It shouldn't have come, shoudln't-

-it tried to turn, and could not.

The sound was overwhelming - a sharp buzzing that seemed to rise and fall, like a hundred thousand insects goaded into simultaneous rage. Ghost images floated past its staring gaze, members of the Famine Clan moving past in stuttering movements, carrying- what? Wave after wave of FEAR smashed into it, pulling a little of itself back with every ebb, like the tides of the sea. The symbol below - yes, that was the source of it, shining and furious and glorious, braced by bright glyphs, its power unmistakable.

Its pull... undeniable.

The plague doctor made a soft keening sound, unaware of the noise escaping its own bandaged throat. All it could hear was the buzzing; all it could see was, increasingly, the bright symbol. There was something beyond the buzzing, too, a sort of bubbling that it couldn't place or decipher as wave after wave beat against it.

It had to move. It had to move - part of its brain kept repeating that over and over, desperately. It had to move. It had to move or it was going to die here.

MOVE!!

The lifting of one hoof was an intense effort, bone scraping against stone; that sound alone was oddly dissonant, slicing through the humming and buzzing. Famine cared about sound, sound was important; this sound meant... it meant movement. Freedom. Muscle response. With excruciating slowness, the plague doctor managed to turn itself, falling slightly forward to cling to the wall, claws digging into the etchings and marring them slightly. The long-ago carved face of a proud Clan member fell under the awkward scrape of bloodmetal.

Move...

And then it was stumbling upwards, nearly bent double, wings swept forward around itself, tail curled as it staggered, tripping on every step. It went down, palms scraping on the steps, but it dared not stop to rest. It crawled, scrambling one step forward, then another until it could rise to its feet once more. Its hooves crashed into first stone, then soil, and at last the wild pulsing waves lessened. Faded.

Stopped entirely.

Malodore collapsed into the open cavern, nearly cracking its beak into the floor as it allowed itself to fall to the floor. It was trembling in every limb, its feathers making dissonant sounds as they rasped against each other. That had been... why... what...

What had that been?

Its throat was dry; it felt incredibly weak, as if it had just engaged in strenuous physical activity for a prolonged length of time. It could barely remember ever having been this exhausted. With a shudder, it wrapped its own arms around itself. It had been so close to being gone, somehow...

It had to trust that the door had not been meant to be opened. Surely not. Surely their good hosts hadn't brought them here just to be fodder for whatever that was? It was a sobering thought - the Hunters wanted to use them as weapons. Did the Clans want to use them as...

here, protect us, join us

... shields?

"Non voglio essere utilizzato da chiunque," Malodore grated, clenching its beak together tightly and leaning against the wall. This was... a troubling development. To say the least.

But it meant what it said: it would not be used. Not by the Hunters, not by the Clans. Not by anyone.

Adventure tended to have Aymet's name on it. Like a graffiti tag, or a crude carving that was followed by 'was here'. He'd noticed a cavern he'd never explored yet, left completely unattended. So of course, he had to take a look. Not that he was assuming there would be much on the other side but plants or weird water or something like all the other caves. But it had a strange feeling to it, a different kind of FEAR. He had to take a look, just a quick peek --

A ways down the stairs, when the place went from carved out dirt to solid stone, he began to have the suspicion this was not just a regular cavern. The walls were covered in carvings. Humans (hunters, his mind had easily subbed into the pictures) were dying in various ways at the hands of horsemen. There was a surprising amount of blood and guts. And decapitation. The artists of Famine certainly didn't hold back.

The FEAR ebbed suddenly, bringing Aymet out of his curiosity for a moment, and then surged powerfully. And again. And again. Like a pulse. Like it was alive.

He hesitated before he took the next few steps.

What seemed like only minutes later he was perched above an alcove far below. The waves of FEAR became powerful waves, and the dracolich was suddenly trapped, unable to move. This FEAR made him sick, it made his form dissipate. The bones of his fingers had gone translucent and began to fade. He was frozen with his eyes transfixed on a massive glyph down below, one that was drawing any of his weakening FEAR toward it. If he dissipated he would be sucked in, it was a trap --

The air was buzzing, louder and louder, he couldn't stand it. It was making him dizzy and disoriented, and an entire clawed hand began to tear apart and vanish.

He didn't have a chance to even think about what had happened. The FEAR hit him again and severed him from his bones, from all the pain and sorrow of existing, separate, alone, useless, incomplete. It promised him purpose. It wanted him, it needed him. For the barrier. For the clans. For Famine. It all made sense in his mind. He would watch over them all. He was ready. To his numbed bones the painful pull of the rune was nothing more than a light tug, one step at a time toward the edge. Toward where he belonged. It would all be over soon.

The pull snapped and he was left reeling near the edge, falling to his knees under the weight of the energy in the area and the weakness of returning.

There was no time in this place, just the impossibly slow crawling as he dragged himself away from the glyph. He thought he saw flickers of movement. Members of the Four Clans were stacking boxes, unaware of his presence. They seemed to appear and disappear at random. Maybe the FEAR here was completely shutting him down at points. His extremities had already begun to dissipate at what felt like an alarming rate.

The air was buzzing again and bubbling and he wondered if it wasn't the glyphs but his own FEAR being boiled away.