When Andreas woke, his mind was a haze. His body was chilled despite the hot stone, and he struggled to shake off the residual dread that seemed entrenched within him. The last couple hours had been nothing short of traumatic. Nothing physical had been done to him, but somehow that magic fear the demons had projected had withered away his will and courage. His thoughts felt blurred, his mind muddied.

When he cracked his eyes open, the hairsnakes atop his head started to wake too, slowly starting to writhe and come alive as they too rose from their slumber. It was a curious thing, the way his field of view grew larger as more snakes atop his head became active, allowing him to look at more and more of the room at once, until they were all awake and giving him a full view of the entire space around him. He took in the scene in front of him, seeing it, but not really understanding.  That terror from several hours ago still stood prominent in his mind, a raw, primal feeling that he'd been helpless before, though now it was muted. Sleep had fortunately pushed it back, and while still shaken, his mind was thankfully again under his own control.

Mostly at least. The deviations were still there obviously. He was quick to notice them, the more primal parts of his mind were unfortunately subject to his body, and the instincts that came with it. Unfortunately for Andreas, that was the part that troubled him most. It was like realizing he was wrong in the middle of an argument, but the argument itself revolved around his very sense of identity, and admitting defeat would be throwing years of self-sense out the window.

He wasn't brave enough to face something like that yet. It was easier to call the gorgon Srida and the human Andreas, and hope that keeping them separate was as simple as pretending they were slightly different people with the same memories. Srida stuffed Andreas in a box and tried not to think about what he thought of the fantasies creeping at the edge of her brain.

She sighed and took the room in again. To her right, Gowris and Vyvyla were still sleeping themselves, the succubus curled up beside the dragonborn, half wrapped in a wing and downright diminutive next to him. They both slept but looked tense, their muscles not truly relaxing despite being under. They were likely haunted by nightmares.

Leo wasn't faring much better. He looked awkward with all his limbs, like he was unsure how to be comfortable with them. He lay in a heap on his side, a tangle of arms and tentacles sprawled out over the ground, though much more relaxed than the other two.

Well, after all, he is a giant cat-morph, she mused.

Without really thinking about it, Srida flicked her tongue out. About a foot long, as thick as her thumb, and forked at the last couple inches, it yielded a wealth of information. It was like scent in a way, giving her information about the cave but far more vivid than she as used to.

She couldn't place a source to any of the scents—or tastes—but they were distinct. One was clearly the stone of the cave, the strongest scent that pervaded her tongue like a musty room did the nose. But there were other scents too, scents she struggled to describe, for she simply didn't have the words for them. You couldn't explain color to a blind man, or the sound of music to someone who was deaf. But she could learn what things smelt like to this new sense.

Srida flicked her tongue out again, this time running it directly over the scaly-textured skin on her arm. It was curious, because as she ran it over her arm, she still tasted her skin, yet when she pulled it back into her mouth, Srida was greeted with a variety of scents that were distinct from the taste her tongue had just experienced. It was scent, but significantly stronger than when she used her tongue.  

She quietly lifted herself up out of her coiled position, marveling how easily she was able to move her upper body through the air. Her serpentine half was so long and powerful, it made her humanoid half feel like it was hovering. Srida positioned herself close to Vyvyla and Gowris, flicking her tongue near the succubus then the dragonborn, committing their scents to memory, then doing the same for Leo, who slept directly in front of where she had been resting.

The action felt a little creepy—and most certainly looked it—but it left Srida with a much clearer picture of the cave in her mind. Now, when she flicked her tongue out again, there was that overpowering scent of the stone, but also the scent of herself, of Leo, of Gowris and Vyvyla. A pang of satisfaction slipped through her mind.

Resting there contemplating her predicament, Srida thought about what had just happened over the past ten or so hours. Some fault in the spell she had cast had cause her to be pulled into umbral plain with the gorgon. But worse, it meant that she no longer had an anchor to the overworld. Without one, she wouldn't be able to leave the umbral plain—not without outside help at least. This dimension was built to keep demons locked away, to confine souls from haunting the world of the living. But there were ways around that right? Cautiously, Srida reached for her magic—for the magic that Andreas had used to summon the gorgon in the first place, not the power the gorgon had given him upon her death. It was still there thankfully, deep within her, a soft, warm glow of astral energy. There wasn't much, but it did give her a tool to work with.

Srida breathed a light sigh of relief and glanced at Leo as he stirred on the ground. There was a moment of stillness from him as his eyes slowly cracked open, then he jerked, his whole body spasming as he startled himself awake, flipping onto his feet by reflex and standing up in a sharp motion. Unfortunately, the part of the cave he occupied was quite low and he only succeeded in bashing his head into the ceiling, yelping and stumbling to four legs, using his upper two arms to cradle his head.

The sudden noise startled Gowris and Vyvyla awake, who both jumped in panic, bleary eyed and untangling from each other.

Srida got over the shock first, her bewildered expression splitting into a wide grin and breaking into laughter. It struck her how evil her own laugh sounded, not a belly laugh like Andreas had, but a cackle like one would imagine a witch would. The sheer absurdity of it only drove her to laugh harder. Gowris looked between the cackling gorgon and the displacer holding his head, pieced it all together and rumbled a low chuckle as well. Vyvyla had an initial look of worry that eventually gave way to a grin, but spared Leo further embarrassment and moved to help him.

“What happened?" she asked, sounding a little bewildered, ushering the displacer to a higher portion of the cave.

“Soldier's instincts," Leo groaned. “Panicked. Didn't know where I was. Stood up too fast." His tone was strained. He didn't sound so much embarrassed as annoyed.

Vyvyla looked amused but didn't seem to have the mental energy to crack a joke—even her smile seemed tired. That observation made Srida feel the exhaustion herself, a sort of fatigue that pressed down on them from the incident hours before.

“We should get going," Gowris said quietly, getting to his feet and pointedly bowing his head so he didn't bump it against the cave ceiling. “Others will probably be headed back by this point."

Vyvyla gave him a small nod. “It'll be good for these two to follow us through the loop. And to have everyone see them." She glanced from Leo to Srida. “I don't know if you two realize it, but you got lucky in a sense."

Leo raised and eyebrow and Srida feigned interest, though she knew exactly what Vyvyla was going to say.

“Most people don't start with such strong bodies," Vyvyla said. “Most warlocks just use lesser demons, succubus or incubus, werewolves and the occasional hellhound."

“Must be far less risk in summoning them?" Srida asked, knowing the answer.

Vyvyla shrugged. “Must be."

Leo was looking at all four of his hands again, troubled. “I suppose that makes sense."

“Everybody else in this cave was ballsy before they died," Vyvyla said with a sly grin, mostly looking at her husband, then flicked her thin tail at him. “Or maybe most people just wanted to get laid."

That earned a rumble from Gowris, and Srida had to suppress a laugh herself. Both those things were very true. Succubi, incubi, and werewolves were the easiest and safest creatures to take into oneself, it just so turned out that most people wanted to have an easier time seducing others as well. Not exactly the most ethical, but Andreas had been on the receiving end of it before, and it was undeniably effective.

“Let's get out of here," Gowris grunted, stepping under the massive stone that blocked the entrance. “Take a look outside Vyvyla?"

She nodded, clearing the little peephole the cave had and craning neck to look through it. She obviously couldn't see very much, but it would be enough to give her a general idea of what was going on at the surface.

Or was it?

An idea occurred to Srida, and she slithered forwards up to the succubus and tapped her on the shoulder. “Could I?" she asked softly.

Vyvyla gave her an odd look, one which quickly transformed to pleasantly surprised when she saw what Srida did. Rather than try to look through it with her eye, she slid one of her hair snakes through the gap, using the creature—an extension of her body really—as a periscope. Up until this point, she'd only had them serve to expand her field of view, but now she was treating with two differing viewpoints. It wasn't particularly hard to reconcile them, but it certainly was confusing at first, and would take focus to actively watch several different scenes at once. Regardless, it allowed Srida to look at surface above them, the only movement in the region being the snake that had slipped up through the rocks and was looking about.

Completely involuntarily, a haunted look slipped over Srida's face.

“Oh my," she whispered, looking around through the appendage. “That's…"

Gowris grimaced. “It's quite messy up there isn't it."

Srida gave him a tiny nod and retracted the snake.

Vyvyla's envious look slid into the same grimace Gowris had. “Just wait until you smell it," she muttered. “The whole area is going to stink for weeks."

Gowris paused for a moment then stood up, pressing his shoulders and upper back against the stone, lifting it out of its resting place, opening the cave back to the surface of the umbral plain. He hauled the stone away then stepped back, gesturing for someone else to go first. Leo seemed in no rush to move, and Vyvyla stayed where she was, so Srida took that as invitation to move up.

She slid up out of the cave and back into the large cavern that was the umbral plain, and took in the scene. There was really no place to go on the ground that wasn't covered in corpses, blood or gore, so she hesitated and grimaced before pressed forwards, sliding over gravel and corpses alike. Most of them were what she recognized as hellhounds, the trademark red glow gone from their eyes, and a faint smoke rising from all of them.

The scent was also really bad, a combination of burnt fur, burnt flesh, and what she imagined cooking rotten meat would smell like. Srida winced but flicked her tongue out anyways, forcing herself to use the new sense, and was surprised when it wasn't as bad as she'd expected. The clarity it offered took the edge off how rank the general smell was, and was able to easily differentiate the smell of dried blood from the smell of the burnt fur, and the many other scents that followed a battle such as this one.

Leo had emerged and was carefully picking his way between the corpses trying not to get blood on his feet, and Vyvyla followed soon after and saw what he was doing.

“Here," she said, gesturing to the two of them, beckoning Srida closer. Vyvyla picked up a severed arm from a hellhound and held it up, bit of smoke trailing from it. “Look how it's breaking down."

Srida peered closer, her eyes sharper than they'd been as a human as she examined the severed limb. It looked like it was disintegrating, but it didn't exactly seem to be rotting. Rather, it were as though tiny parts of it had turned to ash.

“It's slowly disintegrating," Leo said, poking it and causing some ash to fall from the fur.

Vyvyla nodded. “The body's dead and as it becomes inorganic, it loses its magical resistance. Within a few days, this whole mess will be burned away."

Then she gestured to his feet, and to the blood Srida had gotten on the underbelly of her serpentine portion. “Don't worry about the mess, it will just burn off of you shortly."

Srida look a little closer at the blood she'd gotten on her scales. Sure enough, bits of smoke trailed off of her as the blood dried, then ignited momentarily and burned away completely, leaving the spot as clean as before.

Srida went to whistle at the display, but found she couldn't with her forked tongue, and awkwardly blew air out of her mouth instead.

Leo didn't notice thankfully, and his eyes widened slightly at the way the blood was literally burning off her scales. “How do you build anything down here then?! Wouldn't everything just burn away?"

Gowris, who had climbed out of the cave and was stretching his wings, grimaced. “Well you've just found the first of many thing's that is a massive pain while living down here. Now you won't be surprised when you find out we all live in caves."

Srida wrinkled her nose slightly. “That's a shame."

Gowris grunted and folded his wings again. “Should suit you just fine. You gorgon's are cavern dwellers. Imagine how it feels to have wings in a plain that literally has a ceiling."

Srida glanced up, even though her hairsnakes were already looking at the stone above her. “That is…a shame," she said, feeling a little sorry for him now.

Vyvyla sighed and stepped back, a pair of red bat-like wings growing from her back, making Srida jump slightly and Leo raise his eyebrows in surprise. “It is," she muttered. “But we can still get around pretty quick."

“When do succubi get their wings?" Srida asked, quickly recovering from the shock of Vyvyla growing two new limbs.  

“A good seventy years after the dragonborn," she growled, looking at Gowris who grinned in response. “But it's why Gowris and I come out this far, that way we can make the loop back quickly, checking to see if anyone got trapped in their hideout. Cave-ins are pretty common with all the fighting that happens."

“We're going to walk this time though," Gowris added a bit awkwardly, in case it wasn't obvious to them. “That way you can meet a lot of the people as we make our way back."

“Of course we are," Vyvyla said smoothly, folding her wings. “I just wanted to stretch them a bit."

Gowris led them off in a direction that seemed completely arbitrary to Srida, but was apparently towards a settlement called Stillrock.

“There's only a couple hundred of us," Gowris sighed. “It's hard in this area of the umbral plain, but it's one of the few regions the upper hellions don't control. It's why we live here."

“There really aren't many free regions down here, is there?" Leo asked, using one of his spiked tentacles to flip over a dead demon, a strange monster with a scorpion like lower body, and humanoid upper half.

“Only dominions where the umbral scourge killed an upper hellion," Vyvyla said. “There's a couple places like this now. But none are connected."

“Traveling between them must be risky," Srida guessed.

The succubus nodded. “Near impossible. We have a couple people who do it, but they're mostly imps, who can kill themselves and spawn again within the week."

Leo whistled. “Hell of a way to keep one's sovereignty."

Srida felt a pang of annoyance that the man with a catlike face could still whistle while she couldn't, and made a point to remember to practice herself once she was in private. Damn split tongue.

They walked for about five minutes and came across three caves in that time, none without any people in them. All of them had entrances that were barely big enough for a person to squeeze into—far tighter than the hole to the cave Gowris and Vyvyla had used.

“Give it a go," Vyvyla suggested, gesturing for Srida to go inside. “I think this one is pretty nice inside."

Srida offered her a sideways glance, but didn't otherwise object. It was far easier for her to enter crawl spaces than the other three because of her serpentine nature, though she was worried she might get stuck and find herself unable to turn around. Still, she slid through the small hole, surprised to find it almost ten feet long on a rather steep angle. Fortunately, it did yield to a larger cave, leveling out into a rather cramped space that probably could have fit the four of them, if the others could even make it down.

“No dead bodies?" a call came from above.

Srida glanced around, able to see without an apparent light source thanks to her infrared vision.

“Not unless they're hiding!" she called back, earning a chuckle from Gowris above.

Srida wriggled her way back up the tunnel, somewhat satisfied with the way she was able to navigate it. It felt like the experience should have been claustrophobic for her, but it simply…wasn't.

“Are they all that cramped?" she asked, slightly incredulous. It was hard to believe that those without her body could even get into a hideout like that.

Gowris shook his head. “Imps hid in that one. Most are a little bigger. I was just worried the ceiling had collapsed in that one. Did you see the cracks?"

Srida paused. She hadn't.

Gowris grinned. “Bit more nervous to go back down there now?"

To spite him, Srida disappeared down the hole again, entering the cave for a second time. Surely enough, there were giant cracks in the ceiling of the cave, lending it the impression it was going to collapse. Srida slipped back up the tunnel and paused with only her humanoid portion poking out of the hole, giving her most convincing confused frown.

“What do you mean? There aren't any cracks. Ceiling is perfectly solid stone."

The dragonborn hesitated. “Wait, really?"

Her face split into a grin. “I'm kidding. There are."

Leo snorted and Vyvyla rolled her eyes, making a gesture to follow her.

They came across four more hideouts that were empty before they saw the tripidian. They left one cavern of the umbral plain by taking what seemed to be a massive tunnel, about fifty feet wide and equally tall. Here the ground gave way from the rock and gravel to a more softer terrain, something that was a cross between sand and dirt. What might have been plants were now trampled and crushed, by both monstrous and small footprints alike. The tunnel itself sloped upwards, probably a good quarter mile long, except about a third of the way up, it was blocked by a giant corpse.

At the sight of it, Gowris took a breath in and spread his wings, flying up into the air to get to the corpse sooner. Vyvyla had the presence of mind to stay with Leo and Srida, but hurried to catch up with her husband, gesturing for the other two to follow. As they neared it, it was possibly the largest monster Srida had ever seen. It looked like a gigantic elephant crossed with a centaur, covered in a chitinous plating that must have been at least three inches thick, with monstrous tusks emerging from its mouth. The whole beast, probably a hundred feet tall or so, had been killed by a seared hole straight through its throat.

“A tripidian," Vyvyla breathed as they approached it. “You don't see those very often. The fact that the upper hellions are sending those after him means something."

Srida looked at her, confused. “What exactly?"

Vyvyla shook her head. “I don't know. But it's not normal. We're going to need to find out what."

Gowris landed beside them, alighting on one of the tripidian's fingers, over two feet long and as thick as a tree branch. “This will be what was projecting that really powerful fear," he growled. “Good riddance."

Vyvyla seemed to be caught up in the more pressing issue. “Can you get over this thing?" she asked, glancing to Srida.

The gorgon blinked. It did indeed block the entire tunnel, and was much higher than her head. Fortunately, height was a subjective thing for a gorgon, and she was able to raise herself high enough to see over the body. Still, feeling the need to experiment with her mobility, Srida slithered underneath and around its arm, wrapping herself around it. It was easy to slither up its arm, over a tusk and around its neck, then on top of its torso.

“It's quite the beast," she said, alighted atop the monster like it was her own kill.

Both Vyvyla and Gowris beat their wings a couple times and flew atop of it, looking down to Leo who was still on the ground. The displacer hesitated, then seemed to realize what he was supposed to do, and jumped. He cleared the thirty feet easily, landing lightly atop its torso with perfect balance, the dropped to all six limbs and deftly stepped past—and over—Srida to see the wound in its neck.

“I wish I knew what kind of weapon made those kinds of wounds," Gowris said darkly once he saw what Leo was looking at.

The displacer's frown deepened, and he raised an eyebrow, but didn't make any comment, just running the edge of a tentacle along the inside of the hole, then sniffing the blood. Evidently, he was getting used to his own newfound sense of smell.

Srida peered at it with a bit more interest herself. It was strangely clean, like someone had drilled a hole five inches wide through its neck, and cleaned it out to make a nice little cylinder right through it.

“You don't see wounds like this one very often," Gowris continued. “Most of them are far messier, like the hit was explosive."

Srida looked up at the tunnel celling and saw a small hole disappearing up into the stone. Another perfect tunnel, the same size as the hole through the tripidian's throat. She pursed her lips and pointed. Leo followed her gaze but Gowris just nodded, evidently having seen it already. Leo looked at the hole for a couple seconds, all his movements seeming slow and deliberate, a deep scowl carving lines through his face. Though was it a scowl? Srida was having a hard time reading his feline features. Perhaps the expression meant something else? However Leo offered no further comment however and eventually just moved on, hopping down on the other side of the tripidian where Vyvyla was now waiting.

“This is what was probably projecting the fear so strongly during the fight," she said matter-of-factly, like the memory of it didn't bother her.

“Where the hell does anything like this come from?" Srida asked, incredulous.

“They hatch from eggs," Gowris said, jumping down and gliding slowly to the ground, landing beside the succubus. “They hatch about as large as us and can get even bigger than this."

Both Leo and Srida looked at the dead demon, speechless. Srida had never seen anything remotely close to this large in her entire life.

“And something killed it just like that," she muttered, snapping her fingers and feeling her mouth go dry.

“Let's go," Gowris grunted. “It's easier to cope when you don't think about it."

He said it like a joke, but there was an undercurrent in that statement Srida couldn't ignore. There was something deeply terrifying about seeing such a titan dead on the ground, and knowing it hadn't been of natural causes.

They continued onwards for a while, emerging from the tunnel into a new cavern that extended for miles in every direction as well. How large is was exactly was hard to tell because of the way the land sloped up or down, but the whole place was permeated with the same glow the umbral plain seemed to give, the heat that allowed her thermal vision to see.

A short time of traveling and two more empty hideouts later, one of Srida's hairsnakes caught a glimpse of movement far off to her right. Her head snapped towards it, her stronger eyes peering into the smoke that seemed to cloud this area. About a hundred feet away from them looked to be a werewolf.

Gowris saw her sudden movement and followed her gaze, reflexively settling into a defensive stance.

“Hellhound," he muttered. “Demon I'm guessing."

He glanced to Vyvyla, who nodded, then stepped out in front of Leo and Srida.

“Hey!" he barked, voice carrying far. “Who is it?!"

A roar answered back, and Vyvyla gave the two newcomers a pointed look as the hellhound barreled towards them. “Demon," she said flatly. “No soul, so it's feral."

The hellhound charged them with no regard for its safety and lunged at Gowris at frightening speed. The dragonborn didn't even flinch, rising to meet it and catching it by its throat, opening his mouth and breathing a jet of bright red fire over the demon.

The umbral plain was hot, but the fire Gowris breathed was on a whole new level. Heat prickled Srida's skin and she flinched back, seeing Leo do the same through her hairsnakes behind her. The fire engulfed Gowris' hand and the hellhound alike, searing the flesh from its bones but harmlessly passing over the dragonborn's scales. As the hellhound died, red smoke seemed to burst from it and vanish into an invisible wind—it's essence, the just like the essence Andreas had stolen to take the gorgons form.

“Dragonborn have a much higher heat tolerance than the rest of us," Vyvyla said matter-of-factly. “Otherwise breathing fire wouldn't be particularly useful, would it?"

Srida looked at the charred skeleton in Gowris' hand. That had been surprisingly brutal, and suddenly her ability to petrify people didn't seem so overwhelmingly dangerous anymore.

“So what if that had been a hellion?" Leo asked, unphased by the kill.

“Well, for starters, he would have talked to me like a normal person," Gowris said, tossing the skeleton aside. “And a red light would have emerged from his body after he died, alongside that smoke. That soul would have been where his power and mind truly resided."

“But it didn't have one," Leo said, looking down at the corpse, poking it with a tentacle. “So it was animalistic."

Gowris nodded. “Demons are slaves to their base desires. Most are just feral, but a few are capable of higher thought. Somewhat."

As he said that, he glanced to Vyvyla, who rolled her eyes.

“Yes," she sighed. “The dreaded succubus, the only demon that can seem to speak if only to seduce you and flay your soul."

“Probably better to go out like that," Gowris grunted, nodding to the dead hellhound. Then he looked to Leo and Srida.

“If you see a succubus or incubus focused on you and you feel incredibly turned on—they're projecting lust like that tripidian projected fear. Kill them immediately."

“How do we know they aren't a hellion?" Srida asked, slightly troubled. She didn't want to hurt anyone like Vyvyla by accident.

“No succubus with a brain is going to use their lust on a stranger without asking them first," Vyvyla said darkly. “That's just asking to be killed."

Leo glanced at the succubus. “How overpowering is it?"

She gave him a flat look. “I'll show you later when you can…relieve…yourself."

Gowris laughed. “You'll need to. And trust me, if a succubus goes after you, you really aren't going to want to fight back. It really ruins the day."

Vyvyla elbowed him playfully as she walked past in the direction they'd been headed before. “Unless you have someone who can finish what the demon started."

The dragonborn grinned, and gestured for them to follow.