[center]The Searing Tunnels
[i]Somewhere beneath a volcanic island[/i][/center]

Claws dug and ground into stone, carving a path forward, sloping upward. They worked quickly. The rising temperature in those infernal depths gave them urgency, for not even achtlaca could endure the mantle’s heat, and now its tide of fire was inexplicably and unseasonably rising, and quickly. As this unstable tunnel slowly flooded and heated as one great crucible, the rock walls ahead of them became softer and more easily broken – that was a welcome reprieve. They cast the excavated debris backward; the rising magma would dispose of it. It wasn’t far back; they tried to ignore its ominous bubbling as they toiled in the light of its incandescence.

“Didn’t plan for this, did you?” Yaquica, one of the hot-headed youths of the warband, spat out. That one dug his four frontmost claws to rend at the rock with fervor, fueled by frustration at what seemed like a doomed situation. This had not been their plan!

Achcauhtli, their leader and a giant of prodigious size, cast a baleful glance towards the smaller salamander. His aura projected enough reverence and calm to keep the group toiling with steely resolve; though the occasional complaint was inevitable. Still, were it not for his decisive orders a while back, they’d have probably only bickered and despaired until the rising tide of fire swallowed them all… or perhaps they’d have suicidally tried to dive into the chthonian magma and swim through the searing depths to get back to the deep passageways on the other side.

But then again, were it not for their chieftain here, the self-proclaimed master tactician and strategist, this foolhardy ploy would never have been attempted! Sure, it had sounded clever: they would take a smaller and more unstable branch of the lava tunnels, boring through any collapsed sections as needed, and take by surprise the volcano that housed their hated rival league. This war had stretched on for too many cycles, and a decisive victory was what they’d all longed for. So with a few smoothed words this stranger from another tribe, who’d sworn fealty to their lord only a cycle or two ago, had convinced their ruler to give him command over his finest warriors, for a surgical strike.

There was just something indescribable about Achcauhtli, this strange ‘tactician’. When he had offered battle plans in the war councils (which his size and age had quickly won him access to) they had always worked, almost as if by magic. The enemy did exactly as he predicted, and so he and his stratagems had won them many close battles in the great tunnels. When he spoke his designs, one could close their eyes and just envision everything as he spoke; Achcauhtli was blessed, the elders and sorcerers had said, but it didn’t take a sage or a prophet to see that.

The present was a lens that had a funny way of coloring the past, though. Perhaps they had all been wrong and this was just some lucky fool that they’d been made to follow, with schemes that’d worked only by miraculous chance; Achcauhtli was now seeming more and more like a fool, and one whose luck had run out at that. Whatever lingering respect they had for him was the only thing that kept the rest going, so Yaquica withheld the worst of his thoughts with bated breath.

‘[i]A suicide mission, and one that looked like it might well end without glory or even combat, with us all being horrifically melted, none so much as knowing our fates, let alone remembering our legend…[/i]’ the warrior couldn’t help but muse to himself as he dug forward. What they faced was the worst sort of fate, far worse than perishing in honorable combat against the enemy.

Achcauhtli finally spoke after several long moments of tense silence, “How could I have accounted for it? Our plan has been sidetracked by this… [i]unpredictable[/i] and unfortunate eruption from below. But we are not lost; our mission can be salvaged yet. We need only tunnel upward until the magma recedes, or we are met with another tunnel and can regain our bearings. Then I will reevaluate our position, and we will continue on to press the attack from another angle, or… return back empty-handed, [i]if we must[/i].”

[i]Clever wordplay.[/i] Even young Yaquica had felt a flush of shame at the thought of returning from their mission as a failure, and so ended with [i]that[/i] thought made it that much easier to keep going, to forget the rising tide, to just trust in their warband’s leader and press the attack even as their supplies grew perilously low.

The youth was still mulling over the manipulation of those words when his claws dug into the stone and made a strange sound. None of the others had heard it. He slapped and struck the rock wall with a strange motion, and the wall echoed louder this time, loud enough for the others to hear. They all rapidly began tapping upon it with their claws. “There’s a hollow cavity of some sort not much further this way,” one of them with much experience in such matters declared. Relief washed over Yaquica; perhaps he had been wrong to doubt Achcauhtli.

“Excellent,” their [i]illustrious[/i] leader said, breathing in visible relief. He’d been more anxious that he’d let on. “Probe closer; we’re almost safe again.”

Eagerly and desperately they tunneled until there was a breach from whence bright light and frigid air spilled out. This deep? In fleeing the volcanism and rising magma they had come a long way up, but they should have still been far, far below the surface. Great Achcauhtli was too large to get into that narrowest part and peer through the hole, so while the others kept chipping away to widen and expand the tunnel, young Yaquica described what he saw. “There is a chamber here above us, and it does not seem at all natural, for the walls and ceilings are carved perfectly straight and smooth, and where the walls meet there is a harsh and sharp edge. This is not of achtlaca make, either… the proportions are all wrong.”

“It makes no matter; keep digging until the breach is wide enough for me to fit through,” Achcauhtli insisted. He left the obvious unsaid – that the magma was still rising, and they had no other choice but to press forward into this strange void, for good or ill.

With renewed enthusiasm, they quickly tore through the remaining span of stone and entered the artificial cavern. Their claws had a harder time than usual finding solid purchase on the smooth floor; it was tiled, and they found the tiny polished squares of stone to be utterly alien. Even in the harsh light of this room, which was inexplicably illuminated with some manner of strange lantern, they felt terribly exposed. Fortunately, it seemed that this place was devoid of any inhabitants…

That was, until they heard the light tapping of claws coming from up a stairway. Though spacious compared to the wormlike tunnels from whence they’d just emerged, this hall was still so small that they could only barely all stand abreast. All turned to face the oncomer, mighty Achcauhtli at the head of their defensive line formation.

A strange voice echoed from above with cadences and tones that were terrible and alien in their shrill chirps; they had no ear for whatever curses this incoming monstrosity had to lay upon them, so they merely readied themselves for the sight of whatever horror they would face. Moments later the demon at last descended to the bottom of the stairs and entered the room. It was slender and not terribly great of stature, much smaller than they’d expected from such a terrible foe, but it still looked as gruesome as they could have imagined. It had four limbs – two too few – and pointed ears; moreover, a ghastly and horrific chill seemed to enter the chamber at its heels.

Achcauhtli wasted not even a single breath. “A [abbr=’cold one’][i]cecepaltictli[/i][/abbr]! Slay the demon!”

Of course, Yaquica had already charged forward before the order had even been spat out. He was swift of foot, for his body still burned hot with youth, and so he closed half the gap between them and the demon in what felt like just one moment.

Startled and bewildered by their valor, the wretched demon stumbled backward and nearly tripped upon the stairs. He didn’t even attempt to fight back, it seemed to them, until something happened. None of them could tell what – in one moment the demon was scrambling up the stairs mewling and murmuring something that none of the brave warriors could hear or had ears to hear, and in the next it had looked over its shoulder and opened its mouth wide. Brave young Yaquica had nearly seized the fleeing demon by the tail and fallen upon it at that point, but instead horrific agony suddenly wracked him. Yaquica shrieked, and his body shuddered as clouds of strange fumes erupted from his stony hide. The demon had used some perfidious spell to strike at them, but even as Yaquica writhed, others scrambled over or around him in pursuit of the monster.

They came up to another chamber at the top of the stairs. This was an unbelievably vast void in the ground, and here and there near the walls were clusters of strange humanoids, small and four-limbed but reared up to stand on just their two hindmost legs. They were arrayed in perfectly regular formations, utterly motionless even as they seemed to hold all manner of weapons or tools in their hands. The sight of such an army of demons filled the warriors with cold terror for just a moment, and they froze. But then they realized with a start that this was some sort of graveyard, and all those demons mere [abbr=lava lizard word for corpses, since they petrify into statues upon death]icons[/abbr].

So they continued giving chase to the still-living (and slightly warmer) demon. A few others like that one emerged from connected antechambers and hallways, and soon the warriors found themselves chasing not one cowardly demon but a small group of them. On all four legs the demons scrambled up yet another set of stairs, one of them calling out in their foul and oily-smooth cadence, “This is out of hand! We must summon the master!”

“He is busy, fool!” the first voice answered. Instead, that one, the cecepaltictli that they’d seen at the bottom of the last staircase, spun around suddenly and cried out, “Guardians! Attention!”

The achtlaca were met with the din of a thousand feet stomping the ground from just behind. They cast their eyes backward, away from the staircase and the foes they’d been pursuing, and beheld the sight of all those statues that they’d taken for icons [i]moving.[/i] [i]One, two, three[/i] strides forward they all took in perfect, freakish unison, before raising their weapons high in some strange salute. And their weapons were strange too, fashioned not from jagged and wicked obsidian, or from unyielding adamant or hefty granite, but some strange, shiny stone that gleamed in the lanterns’ light, a stone that they’d never seen.

“Guardians! Ready!”

Weapons that had been brandished in salute were suddenly leveled with deadly intent.

With a smugness to him, the demon demanded, “Now, cease this futile and most foolish aggression!”

They did no such thing, and met these attackers, these demonic ‘guardians’, with fiery spittle and tooth and claw. The guardians approached fearlessly and with immaculate discipline, quiet except for the pounding of their heavy footsteps, clearly unfazed by the much larger lava lizards. A hail of projectiles suddenly tore through the air and crashed into stony achtlaca hides, and though these were small things they had somehow been fired at great speed. A few of the warriors bellowed in pain when the strange metallic darts found gaps in their scales (or in the cases of the younger warriors with thinner and softer scales, pierced [i]into[/i] those scales and the fiery flesh underneath) but the moans of pain were soon buried beneath a mighty battlecry as their warband’s leader rallied them and led the charge.


Great Achcauhtli whipped and thrashed his massive tail at one of the approaching platoons, utterly breaking their formation even as long weapons of the strangely gleaming rock shot out to spear and cut at him. Sparks flew out where the metallic weapons rang and scraped against rocky scales. It was in vain, of course; he rampaged through the rank of attackers and almost singlehandedly crushed a dozen guardians. The other warriors all around did their part too, and after a short but intense fight the guardians, some hundred or so in number, were all destroyed or disabled. They were remarkably resilient, with forms fashioned from some kind of strange stone, and so a few thrashed futilely and silently as they tried to keep battling even after their limbs had been shattered.

The first demon, that one that ran around so quickly yelping and taunting them, that one that had awakened all those some hundred guardians, looked very distraught at the outcome of that battle. Predictably, it turned tail and fled up another flight of stairs, so with a triumphant roar the demon-slaying achtlaca warband pursued.

Through hall after hall and many chambers they fought, hacking their way through what seemed like endless hordes of these ‘guardians’. Ornate and fanciful furniture and devices and decorations were everywhere; out of spite and hate for the demons, many a stray limb thrashed out to crush and destroy. They would sack this den of evil more thoroughly when all was done, but for now they focused upon catching the talking demon, and they gleefully relished in its repeated begging that they halt and listen. There was no talking with demons! Once or twice it spat out unsettling threats to summon its master, but if there truly was some great demon lord that could smite them all, why would it not have acted already? They saw through its vapid lies and manipulations for what they were: hollow deceit, a poor shield when raised against true might and courage.

But it was hard to fight on, ever upward, through the labyrinthine complex when every breath of air grew crisper. They emerged into one final massive chamber with a vaulted ceiling so high that it resembled the conic interior of a volcano reaching up to the cold surface, and like the harsh light filtering down from the top of a volcano’s crater, this chamber had some sort of light fixtures in the ceiling that filled the whole place with radiance. And as they shambled out into this massive room and beheld a garden of all sorts of frigid and unnatural plants and creatures, they were suddenly beset by a fog of poison.

Thick clouds of dense, white vapor spilled out from above and to the sides, and where it clung to the infernal skin of the achtlaca it caused horrible sizzling and crackling. Where their nostril inhaled it, their bodies were filled with horrible pain, and it sapped their life and energy. The toxic gas was just the tip of the spear, though: it was being dispensed from the walls where a whole river of the poison flowed freely!

…until an angry demon turned off the waterfall by pulling a lever. A floodgate closed, and the lovely waterfall that had been filling the air with its spray and ambience was suddenly just a trickle on the wall. Nervously, the achtlaca eyed this being that was surely the lord of the demons, for who else could wield such magic as to summon and dispel clouds of icy poison?

[hider=The Demon Lord]
[center]][img]https://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f210/Anon_Pix/Obit/mako_wizard.jpg[/img][/center]
[i]He was much smaller in stature than that first demon, even smaller than the guardians. Like them, he had only four limbs, and yet he stood on just two! The cold one’s visage was a mystery as those alien features were impossible to read, but his [b]eyes[/b], they gleamed with what looked like cruel malice.[/i][/hider]

“Susanoo,” the demon lord scolded that first one that they’d pursued so far, up from the very lowermost stairs and the fiery depths, “you were supposed to greet our guests with courtesy and respect!”

And the dragon bowed his head in shame to look down at the four clawed feet of his long and serpentine body, and his triangular ears (like those of the ox) flattened down in sadness. “Shu Zhi Da Shen, my deepest apologies,” the first-demon-called-Susanoo stammered to its master, “but they just attacked upon first sight! They’ve raged the lower levels and destroyed half your army in their rampage!”

[b]“WHAT?!”[/b]

Now Shen was very angry, and the boom of the god’s voice shook the underground garden. He turned down to the horrific cauldron of broiling water that he’d been standing over the whole time, tapped his stirring stick such that it became a spoon, and used that to dredge up a single grain of rice from where it’d been cooking in the bottom. He grasped it between two fingers and tossed the day’s meal into his mouth and his scowl only deepened. “I couldn’t even cook dinner all the way through in the time it took for you to bungle the plan! Agh!”

Foolish perhaps to the point of stupidity, brave Yaquica listened to no more of the demons’ talk and charged forward. As Shen looked up incredulously at the gigantic brute of a lava lizard, he laughed and the spoon suddenly became a long staff. Yaquica lunged forward with a huge claw, but the agile Shen smacked the limb aside with one deft [i]thwack[/i]. Where claw failed, the warrior tried tooth, and his head darted forward in a biting motion. Shen had of course foreseen that move and so he darted out of the way effortlessly before thwacking the salamander over the head for its impudence.

“Perhaps these ones [i]are[/i] too rude and brash to be reasoned with,” Shen conceded to Susanoo, but by then the rest of the achtlaca had found their courage and began to press the attack, that they might at least die with honor if that was to be their lot.

Achcauhtli reared up to stand tall on just two hind legs, and then with a sharp twist of his neck, spat a huge glob of molten salt at the foremost demon. The offended Shen twirled his gun-staff around so fast that it whipped up a great wind, and the frigid blast of air hurled the spit right back into the of Achcauhtli. “Unbelievable!” was all he could declare.

Well, maybe not all. It quickly devolved into a rant about hygiene. “I’d imagined their breath might be odorous, but this stench of sulfur is [i]vile.[/i] And from how they hissed in that water, you know that they never bathe or shower in their whole lives.”

The whole while, Shen kept twirling the staff to buffet them with a wind powerful enough to slow their advance. Hurricane-like winds whipped at the achtlaca, but through the gales they could behold Susanoo open his maw and do the [i]thing[/i] again, spraying out water just like he’d done to paralyze Yaquica the first time he’d nearly been caught. As the dragon-summoned rain was swept up by the gales of Shen’s make, the icy cold droplets were hurled into the crowd of achtlaca in a rain of terrible pain.

Still, they fought through. One of them knocked down a potted plant in its raging warpath as it drew close enough to swipe at Shen, who called out in grief as his planting pot shattered. The gun-staff became an ornate and curved dao-saber, and in one motion Shen tore off his baggy robes to reveal a chiseled physique. He leaped high into the air and then descended back down into the warband of lava lizards as a whirling dervish or slicing blows. Every tail, claw, and tooth was effortlessly parried away – he didn’t even bother to try dodging – and Shen always returned the favor with a mighty [i]thwack[/i] from the flat of his blade.

This little flea of a four-limbed demon made them all look like fools as they jumped and cried with every blur of the demon’s motion, and from the periphery of the room Susanoo and a cohort of other wormlike dragons were all laughing. Eventually, the pain and frustration started to get the better of Shen.

The long dao-saber suddenly straightened itself out into a jian-sword, and Shen held it up to bring its point awkwardly to his lips. With a few sharp thrusts, he finally dislodged that grain of undercooked rice that’d been lodged between his teeth like a rock, and then he hurled it at the leader of the achtlaca. Three sounds rang out across the hall: first the sonic boom of the rice grain as it tore through the air, then the horrific impact as it struck Achcauhtli, and then a big thud as the big lizard crashed into the wall behind. Then there was a fourth, much quieter sound of a pained moan.

Shen leaped forward to pont his jian at the biggest lizard’s dazed head. “Yield!” he cried out, and an affirmative nod finally put an end to the fight, all the other warriors bowing their heads in shame and defeat.

“Now, with that thing out of my teeth, I’m in a much better mood,” Shen began, “so I’ll forgive you if what Susanoo said is true and you’ve destroyed half of my forward outpost. I’ve got other bases all over the place anyways, and we can always build more terracotta soldiers.”

“Are you… a god? Not a demon?” Achcauhtli finally asked.

“Of course I am! I’m Shen, the God of Plans, the god [i]with[/i] plans! Though it seems like today I can’t get a break!”

The salamander finally chuckled. “Well, neither can we. We weren’t looking to intrude upon your, erm, domain, truly. We were trying to find-”

“Yes, yes, I figured out what you were planning, what you were [i]trying[/i] to do,” the god impatiently interrupted as he paced around, wagging the stick in his hands at the downed chief, “that’s why I intervened to bring the magma up and send you to me. Your war’s already over, guy. There’s peace between your tribe and that other one now; you and I have got bigger, worthier enemies to contend with.”

“Peace? In the last few days? How? And what, why did you force us in here? Why didn’t you just say anything?”

“Oh, it was easy. See, a certain Tletzintli princess of great beauty arrived at the city of your hated enemies, and promised her [i]sister’s[/i] claw in marriage to their king, if only he would have peace,” Shen began, even as Susanoo snickered and his serpentine draconic form twisted into the shape of an achtotlaca that looked indeed to be every bit as regal and beautiful as a princess ought’ve! “And then of course that same princess went to [i]your[/i] city and said much the same thing. I’m sure there’ll be some confusion about who these ‘sisters’ are, but that’ll be easy enough to sort out.”

He leaned in to continue. “Now, the important part: you’re here because I need you. You’re the greatest warriors of your tribe, and you’re all conscripted into my army! See, I’ve been planning an invasion for a while, and I have redoubts all over and plenty of golem soldiers, but you saw how easily you rampaged through this one. It’s not enough, and so that’s why your sort will have to help me. As for why I didn’t say anything, well, I was cooking dinner when you got here! But Susanoo says he tried, and you didn’t listen and just attacked him!”

[hider=Summary]
Yolly week contribution!

Some lava lizards are digging a hole. Really hot magma from the mantle is rising inexplicably behind them, and to avoid being melted they’re just digging up and out to get away. The leader of this warband is supposedly a venerable giant and a strategic genius, named Achcauhtli, and he’s totally not Shen in disguise.

They were on a secret mission to fight some other enemy lava lizards and their plan was in motion, but the unexpected volcanism made it all go to shit. They encounter some secret underground base that is definitely not natural and definitely not built by other lava lizards.

There’s lots of hints that it’s Astus’ workshop, like how this is under a volcanic island, the first cold ‘demon’ they encounter has four limbs and triangular ears, there’s artificial lights underground, and they’re accosted by what seem like robots as they fight their way through.

But I hopefully SUBVERT YOUR EXPECTATIONS with the shocking reveal that they’ve instead broken into Shen’s secret underground base! Those were funny-eared dragons, not catgirls, and golems, not robots. Turns out Achcauhtli really wasn’t Shen in disguise. Yeah, and Shen recruits them all into his army despite the mayhem they caused, because he’s preparing for some sort of attack. Thus, these lava lizards find themselves drawn in to be part of the Plan™.[/hider]