“Streza, I’m going down to look around,” Maya called. “Just stay where you are.”

“Be careful,” Streza said.

Maya grinned to herself and stepped off the edge. She absorbed the fall with a crouch, the panoply field killing some of the energy and sending a chilly wave over her skin. She fed more power to her flame, and the light grew brighter, illuminating a rough-walled underground space. In one corner, stairs led to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Bags and barrels were stacked in rough piles, charred by fire and softened by moss and decay. The air still smelled scorched.

As she turned, a breath of air played across her face. Maya saw a darker half circle in one wall, the entrance to some sort of tunnel. Odd.

“Streza?” Maya said.

The girl’s head poked over the side of the hole, her expression worried. “Are you all right?”

“I told you to wait at the door,” Maya said.

“Sorry.”

Maya shook her head. “Do you know where this tunnel goes?”

“What tunnel?”

“There’s some kind of entrance down here.”

“I’ve never heard of a tunnel under the storehouse,” Streza said. “Maybe it was a secret?”

“Maybe.” Maya played her light on the entryway, showing a few feet of well-packed earth. “I’m going to take a look. Stay there, would you?”

“Okay.”

The cooler air coming out of the tunnel mouth had an odd scent to it. Maya sniffed as she got closer, trying to place it. There was fresh earth, and ashes, and …

Old meat. For a moment she was back in another underground cavern, grappling with a tentacled horror. Plaguespawn!

Eyes opened in the darkness, five mismatched orbs glowing in the reflected light of her flame. Maya took a step backward, and the monster lunged.

She had enough warning to throw herself to one side. The thing that barreled past was bigger than she was, the size of a pony, with a wolf’s snout that had been split down the center and widened with a complex armature of gleaming bone and pulsing red muscle. Six limbs, each of which looked as though it had originally been at least two animal legs, extended up over the creature’s back before coming down, giving it the look of a fleshy, skinless cockroach. Several tails twitched at the back end of it, one sporting an additional eye.

It skittered past her, horribly fast, and slid to a halt on the packed earth. Maya straightened and drew her haken, the blade igniting into a line of orange-white fire.

“Maya?” Streza’s voice came down from above. “What’s happening—”

The plaguespawn, hearing her, took a step forward, and it must have come into the girl’s field of view, because her voice rose into a high, shrill scream. That only captured the thing’s attention further, and it gathered its legs under it, preparing to leap.