Goblin Quest - Who Wants To Live Forever

The Bayside Stranglers slipped down the hallway like whispers that didn’t want to be heard. Every step was slow, cautious. Gakk searched for traps. Gooch looked for something to gnaw to pieces. Xmoek fought to keep his britches dry, and failed.   Their path ended when they came to the door. Not just any door, but a slab of iron that looked like it had been smithed from Hell’s own forge. Sigils and runes ran across it in looping black lacquer, the kind of writing you didn’t want to read too closely, the kind that might decide to read you back. And there, the warning: Beware. Dark oblivion lies within.   Gakk studied the face of the door with the patience of one who knew patience was its own weapon. No traps, but the lock was a cruel beauty of intricate tumblers and hidden catches. The kind that demanded its proper key, one very much like the one their undead monk friend had worn around his neck. Xmoek reached for the frayed hem of his robe, plucking away a square of worn cloth. Magic swelled from the patch as he pressed it to the wall, threads of reality unweaving to make space for a new thing: a narrow, arched window, edges clean as if cut by a jeweler’s saw. Without a sound, the door and its defiance were behind them.   Cold met them on the other side. Not the cold of winter, but the deep, still chill of a place where time itself has stopped to listen.   The window hung in the center of it all. Fifteen feet square, suspended in midair a handspan above a great circle of carved sigils, it looked out into a scatter of faint stars trembling in the void. Two smaller rune-marked squares flanked it, their lines perfect and merciless. Xmoek felt the pull of their design: conduits, meant to pour power into the great frame like oil into a fire.   Gooch wanted none of it. More magic words. More things to steal the soul. He kept both eyes on the door, wondering why they were not going back through it.   Gakk stared into the void. The darkness on the far side of the glass shifted, shapes sliding into focus like fish rising from the deep. They saw him. He knew it. The knowing settled in his gut like swallowed lead. It was an invitation, and something had answered.   The black square boiled with shadow, and then the Yangethe was there. Its body was a blasphemy of form—tentacles like rooted branches, each studded with eyes that opened and closed without rhythm. Its presence thickened the air.   Gooch roared, lightning crawling his limbs, and hurled himself into the thing’s mass. His claws split alien hide, ichor spattering the runes. But one tentacle brushed him, and a thought not his own slipped into his mind: Protect me. The command rooted deep, twisting his rage into loyalty.   Xmoek’s breath caught. The parasite within him took over and drew a summoning scroll. The babau stepped from the shadow: tall, lean, cloaked, its spear dripping with the slow burn of acid.   The chamber erupted. Xmoek’s wards flared. The demon struck. Gooch tore himself free from the creature’s will and grew, teeth lengthening into ivory scythes. For a heartbeat, they had the advantage.   Then the Yangethe reached again - not for Gooch, but for the babau. The demon froze, turned, and buried its spear in its summoner, lifting Xmoek off the ground. The Yangethe's tentacles lashed in a dozen directions, grappling, draining, each victim’s breath shortening under the pull.   But the creature's worst attack wasn't physical. It reached out and touched Gakk’s mind, overwhelming him with futility. Defenseless against the mental onslaught, Gakk shrank into the corner, weapon hanging useless in his hands.   The slaughter began in earnest. Gooch fell first, his great form viciously assaulted, crumbling to the stones in a bloody heap. The alien moved with cold calculation and took Gakk while he stood frozen. Desperate, Xmoek fought for the summoning’s leash and found nothing but the cold walls of an alien mind. He was not enough, and that cost them everything.   The Yangethe ended it with a thought: a wave of psychic force that shattered what remained of their will, and their bodies.   When silence returned, the creature lingered among the fallen, its eyes blinking in their strange, unblinking rhythm. Behind it, the black window waited, a wound in the world through which worse things might yet pass. Somewhere deep beneath the temple, the dragon Aeteperax smiled in the dark.   The Yangethe began to feed.