The expedition split into two teams. One stayed behind to guard the carriages, while the other followed the Pallbearers from a distance.
Tobias led the way since his path skills had trained his nose to become something closer to a hound's over the years, so sharp that he could pick out a single trail of scent across a whole plain of rot.
He walked with his eyes half closed, turning his head now and then like a dog catching the wind.
"They go north," he murmured. "All of them. The Pallbearers' trail is the freshest, and it doesn't wander."
Gideon walked at the rear and kept them hidden. Wherever he passed, the air seemed to fold in on itself.
The sound of their footsteps grew muffled and distant, their scent thinned to nothing, and when Ashen glanced back over his shoulder, the expedition seemed to blur at the edges, like a painting smudged by a thumb. The Rotborn found their prey by smell and by the warmth of life, and Gideon seemed to be swallowing both.
The carriages that were hidden in a gully with half the brothers got smaller and smaller until they completely disappeared.
The trail led them into a valley a few hours later. Its walls were steep and dark, and the stench rising from it was strong enough that Ashen's eyes watered even through the corruption filter.
Adam raised his fist, and they stopped at the lip of the valley.
Silas lay down on his stomach and closed his eyes. A moment later, something small and pale slipped out from between his fingers. It was an eye. A single eyeball, no bigger than a marble, floating in the air on a thread of mana. It drifted down into the valley, low to the ground, bobbing gently.
"Disgusting," Ashen whispered admiringly.
"Thank you," Silas whispered back without opening his eyes.
The others crowded around him as he described what the eye saw.
"There's a cave at the bottom," Silas said slowly. "About forty paces wide at the mouth. The walls are… red… and wet. They're moving." He paused. "Up and down, slowly, like a chest when someone's sleeping."
Someone shifted uncomfortably.
"The walls are flesh," Silas went on. "The entrance has folds around it. Thick ones. Like lips." He swallowed. "Going inside now."
The eye drifted lower. Silas was quiet for a moment.
"There are mouths in the walls."
"..."
Nobody said anything, though it was clear that everyone was focused on his report.
"On the ceiling, too. And the floor. Rows of them, packed tight, in every size. Some as small as a fist, some big enough to fit a man." His breath caught slightly. "They all have jagged teeth. And they're… chewing. All of them, all the time, even with nothing inside. It sounds like a millstone grinding."
Ashen became aware that his own jaw was clenched in disgust just from imagining the sight.
"Pallbearers are coming in," Silas said. His voice had grown thinner. "One after another. They're carrying bodies of Narkals and beasts… some of them are still moving…"
"The Pallbearers walk up to the walls and hold them out, and the mouths…"
He stopped. His throat worked.
"The mouths are taking them. The teeth grab hold, pull and chew, and the bodies come apart,"
"And the walls…" His voice wavered, then steadied, then wavered again. "The walls throb every time. I think it's a swallowing motion?"
"Wait… the whole cave is getting bigger. It's minute, but I'm sure of it."
He opened his eyes for a moment and stared at the dirt in front of his face. He looked pale.
"Ughh… It's eating," Silas's voice was tight. "The whole cave is alive and eating."
"Keep going," Adam ordered.
The eye drifted deeper.
At the very back of the cave, where the flesh was darkest, sat one more mouth. It was larger than the others, and it had no teeth at all. Its wide lips looked soft and wet.
When they parted slowly, a gray slick body slid out.
The newborn looked like a Narkal. It lay on the floor of the cave for a moment, twitching. Then it rose, shook itself, and walked toward the entrance with its milky eyes empty, falling in line with the others.
The toothless mouth opened again. Another body slid out… then another.
Nobody said anything for a long time.
"So that's where they come from," Bram finally muttered.
"This is probably just one of them," Adam said. "If there's one, there are more somewhere. But this one is a day's walk from home."
Ashen looked at his father. He knew that tone by now.
'And we're killing it.'
◉
The team had to plan it carefully.
Contact was death, so nobody would set foot inside the cave.
The flesh walls would need fire, a lot of it. The toothless mouth at the back was the heart of the thing. And the Rotborn going in and out would have to be dealt with before they could warn the rest, especially the Heralds.
Gideon's concealment held as the expedition crept down the slopes and spread out along the valley floor. Silas kept his eye inside the cave, calling out the movement of every Pallbearer. Tobias sniffed out the Heralds' positions one by one.
Then Adam gave the signal.
The Heralds died first, before any of them could moan. Arrows took two through their stretched throats, and Bram crushed the third himself.
Fire followed right after.
Every brother who could throw flame threw it at once. The mouth of the cave caught first, its fleshy lips curling and blackening, and the scream that came out of the valley was so loud that the ground shook.
Every mouth inside the cave screamed at the same time, hundreds of voices in a single shriek.
The Rotborn poured out of the cave in a flood. Husks and Gnashers and Pallbearers, all of them, burning and charging at once.
The brothers met them at range. The front line cut and stepped back, cut and stepped back, never letting them close. Every fallen body was set alight. The valley eventually filled with smoke, fire and screaming.
And then the cave blindsided them with its next action… it moved.
The whole mass of flesh heaved, and the cave mouth stretched wide open. The walls rippled. And the toothless mouth deep inside began spewing Rotborn out as fast as it could. Not one at a time anymore. Dozens of them, half formed, slick and twitching, sliding out in a gray wave.
"It's fighting back!" Silas shouted, his eye darting around inside. "It's throwing out everything it has!"
"I'll take care of it," Adam said.
He stepped forward, and his sword grew.
He didn't need to enter the cave to reach the back of it. The blade stretched out longer and longer, past the burning lips and the walls of gnashing teeth. It was a great shining length of steel slicing through the dark.
The hundreds of mouths lunged at it as it passed, sinking their teeth into the steel and finding nothing they could eat.
The tip of the sword found the toothless mouth.
Then Adam let the blade grow heavy.
The whole cave seemed to buckle around it. The flesh of the floor split apart beneath the weight, and the toothless mouth was crushed into the ground like a grape under a boot.
Seemingly aware of its own end, it let out a last scream that made everyone's ears bleed.
The creature screamed and thrashed, but the fire kept spreading.
They burned the cave for hours. Every man kept throwing fire spells, pouring it in until the flesh walls had blackened and shriveled, until the mouths had stopped moving one by one and the last of the gnashing teeth went still.
Then they burned the bodies of every Rotborn on the valley floor until nothing was left but ash and bone, and crushed the bones for good measure.
Only then did they climb out of the valley.
Ashen walked beside his father, his whole body aching, his clothes reeking of burning rot.
"Somehow, I feel more tired than when we faced the mechanical force," he said weakly. "Who do you think is more dangerous between the two, Pops?"
"Do you know how fast that thing was growing?" Adam glanced back at the black smoke rising from the valley. "Another year, and it would have been spitting out thousands of them a day. Two years, and it would have been sitting on our doorstep."
"And that's only a single cave. What do you think would happen if they could birth more of those mouths?"
"Yeah… their numbers would turn apocalyptic, to say the least…"
As they walked, Ashen realized he was starting to understand his father's way of looking at the world.
'Every enemy close to home was an enemy that would one day knock on the door.' He glanced at the ever-stoic man.
'The only question was whether you wanted to meet it on your terms or its own.'