The night forest concealed ancient dangers within it. The ground beneath his feet felt fragile. The trees stood motionless. In some places, they had fallen to the ground for an unknown reason. Their trunks, however, were intact.
The Cursed moved carefully through the night forest.
Suddenly, the ground beneath his feet collapsed, and he fell down. He slid down an unknown underground tunnel. Clumps of earth rolled down beside him. He was thrown into a vast chamber and landed on the floor. Alone in the darkness of a strange dungeon.
Hairless, scrawny creatures burst out of side passages, grabbed him, and carried him away in an unknown direction. He struggled and resisted, but they held him tightly, as if they had done this many times before. Their disfigured, hairless heads with sharp uneven teeth swayed above him. Their foul, reeking breath burned his lungs.
They dragged him to a vertical tunnel leading even deeper underground and threw him down. He fell through a dark shaft and landed in a large pile of rot and slime.
The Cursed looked around. Body parts floated nearby—arms, legs, heads. He was in a wide cavern with a vaulted ceiling, nearly filled to the brim with a filthy, foul-smelling substance. On stone ledges along the walls, the hairless, scrawny creatures were devouring one another. They sank their teeth into flesh and tore off chunks that oozed slime and a pale, whitish fluid.
The Cursed pushed his way through the viscous substance and climbed onto a stone ledge, toward a tunnel in the wall that disappeared into darkness. Several hairless creatures lunged at him from different sides. Some of them held shards of stone and sharp fragments of bone in their claws. Their strikes missed. The Cursed dodged and struck with a sword that appeared in his hand, splitting several enemies in two at once. The rest ran off with shrieks, at a safe distance.
The dark tunnel led him to a round hatch with an iron grate. He tried to open it, pulling on the iron bars several times, but to no avail. On the other side of the grate, another hairless, thin creature approached. It let out a wild, drawn-out wail, then began striking the iron bars with its long limbs. It stared at him with ferocity, as if expecting a response.
The Cursed went back through the tunnel to the pit of slime, grabbed several of the hairless creatures fleeing from him, and cut off their heads with his sword. Then he took several heads and brought them to the iron grate in the tunnel. He threw them on the floor in front of the creature guarding the hatch. It followed the falling heads with its eyes, then opened the grate. The Cursed stepped inside. He looked at the creature with hostility, but it froze, as if it paid him no attention.
He moved on. At the end of the new tunnel, he climbed up a slippery stone staircase. New chambers opened before him. Numerous mushrooms grew there, glowing with a mysterious magical light. The hairless creatures bustled about, gathering the mushrooms and hurriedly carrying them deeper into the chambers.