He couldn't finish his sentence before a wave of cold wind swept through the tunnel, so intense it felt like icy needles pricking their skin.
"Why is it so cold suddenly?" a bandit wondered, his breath fogging in the air before him.
The answer to his question emerged from the shadows at the front of the group. A low, soft squelching sound echoed as several figures began to ooze into the dim torchlight.
There were seven of them. They looked like semi-transparent, gelatinous creatures made of frozen water. Their bodies had a glassy, crystalline texture, refracting the light in a hundred tiny, cold points. They were flowing smoothly across the stone floor, leaving a faint trail of glistening slime that froze almost instantly.
A collective, terrified silence fell over the bandits.
"The fuck are those?" one of the archers whispered, nocking an arrow with trembling hands.
"Kill them!" the old veteran roared, his voice finally snapping the men out of their shocked stupor. "Kill them all!"
The bandits surged forward, their swords and axes raised. But the slimes were unnervingly fast, splitting and reforming as they flowed around the wild swings.
A bandit's axe passed through a slime with no effect, and in the same instant, the slime lashed out with a tendril that frosted over on contact, encasing his arm in a thick layer of ice.
"My arm! It's stuck!" he screamed, dropping his axe.
Another bandit fired an arrow. It struck a slime and simply stopped, frozen solid within its semi-liquid body but the slime didn't even seem to notice.
Panic turned to terror as they realized their weapons were useless. One slime, larger than the others, began to pulse. A fine, icy mist started to billow from it, coating the floor in a sheet of slick, treacherous ice.
"It's freezing the ground!" someone shrieked, his feet slipping out from under him as he fell hard.
More men fell, their armor offering no purchase on the rapidly freezing surface.
The fight was a massacre of one-sided horror. As the bandits struggled to keep their footing on the rapidly freezing floor, the slimes moved with a terrifying, frictionless ease.
One of the larger slimes swelled slightly, its body distorting before it fired a volley of sharp, crystalline icicles. The shards shot through the air like jagged glass, finding their marks in the flailing, desperate men.
Several bandits were impaled against the far wall, joining their previous comrades, their bodies pinned with icicles that began to melt slightly, mingling blood with water.
A desperate cry came from a bandit armed with a long spear. He saw one slime that seemed to be momentarily distracted and thrust forward with all his might.
"Take this, you frozen pile of shit!" he roared, his spear aimed true for the slime's center mass.
The spear tip met the slime with a loud, jarring CLANG, as if it had struck solid stone then vibrated violently in his hands. The slime, in response, seemed to shimmer and harden its outer layer, forming a thick, translucent ice armor around its gelatinous core.
The spearman stared in disbelief, his weapon useless against the now-armored creature.
"Shit!" he cried out, trying to pull his spear back, but it was stuck fast in the newly-formed ice.
The slime, with chilling indifference, flowed forward and simply engulfed the bandit. His scream was cut short as the frozen slime washed over him, entombing him in a solid block of ice.
His silhouette was visible for a moment within it, a dark shape frozen in a permanent, silent scream before the creature moved on, leaving behind a glistening, man-shaped sculpture.
The other slimes were methodically and coldly hunting down the other bandits, their advance unstoppable.
As suddenly as they had appeared, the slimes stopped.
One of them, its tentacles poised to pierce a bandit's stomach, froze in place. The icy tip of its appendage rested against the man's leather vest, so close he could feel the bitter cold seeping through.
Then, as if answering a silent command, the seven ice slimes turned and oozed backward, melting silently into the shadows from which they came.
A profound, eerie stillness fell over the tunnel, broken only by the ragged, panicked breathing of the few bandits still standing.
"They… they're leaving?" a bandit asked, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and utter confusion.
"What the fuck?" the old veteran muttered, lowering his axe, his eyes scanning the empty, cold-smelling darkness.
"Did we scare them off?" another asked, a desperate note of hope in his voice.
"No chance," the veteran snapped, his tone sharp with suspicion. "Something spooked them. Something they fear more than us."
A new terror began. It started with a deep, rhythmic vibration that rose up from the soles of their feet, a rumble in the stone itself that felt less like a tremor and more like the pounding of a colossal heart.
The floor shook, and a fine dust of rock rained down from the ceiling.
Then the walls began to move.
With a low, grinding groan, the stone on either side of the bandits started to extend outward, slowly curving inwards. They were trapped, but not crushed. The dungeon was reshaping itself, widening into a vast, circular cavern.
The only way out was now a single, dark tunnel directly ahead of them—a gaping maw of absolute darkness that seemed to absorb all light.
A cold, primordial fear seized them. The darkness was not empty but a herald of doom.
"Oh, gods," one bandit whimpered, his courage finally shattering completely.
From the oppressive black of the tunnel, a shape emerged, glowing faintly. It was a wolf, a beast of nightmare. Sleek, black-furred, its body was marked with jagged yellow lightning patterns that crackled with a terrifying yellow energy. Its muscles coiled with explosive power, and eyes glowed like molten gold.
But that was not the worst of it.
Riding on the back of the monstrous wolf was a hobgoblin. It was larger, much larger, than any goblin they had ever seen. One hand held a heavy, crude shield of blackened iron, while the other rested on the hilt of a wickedly serrated axe. Its face was a mask of brutal confidence. It did not snarl or shout. Just simply staring, a silent promise of slaughter in its cold eyes.
"Fuck… fuck…" a bandit stammered, dropping his sword with a clatter.
The terror was infectious. Another bandit turned to run, but the newly-formed wall was solid, unyielding stone behind him.
There was no escape.
"It's just one…" another whispered, his voice thin with false hope.
But that hope died in his throat as more shapes began to resolve themselves from the gloom behind the first rider. Another hobgoblin on a lightning wolf appeared. And another. Then another.
They formed a perfect, disciplined arc, their mounts silent but for the faint, electric hum in the air. The formation was military and precise.
The bandits huddled together in the center of the new arena, a tiny island of pale, trembling flesh surrounded by an approaching tide of armored death.
It happened without warning. A hobgoblin simply spurred its mount forward. The lightning wolf covered the distance in a blur of black and yellow energy. In a single, fluid motion that was horrifyingly casual, the hobgoblin swung the weapon in a flat arc. The axe bit into the neck of the nearest bandit.
A sickening crunch, the bandit's head spun through the air, his eyes wide with a moment of pure, uncomprehending shock then landed on the stone floor with a wet, fleshy thud, rolling to a stop just a few meters from his still-twitching body. The torso crumpled, a torrent of blood pumping from the severed stump of the neck to pool around the corpse.
For a single second, the rest of the bandits were frozen by the sheer, silent brutality of it all.
Then panic shattered them completely.
One man screamed and turned, clawing uselessly at the stone wall that had sealed them in.
A hobgoblin threw its axe. The weapon spun end over end, glinting in the torchlight, and embedded itself squarely between the bandit's shoulder blades.
He slammed into the wall, pinned there, a gurgle of blood bubbling from his lips.
Another bandit charged recklessly, his sword held high, a desperate, futile cry on his lips. "FOR THE CAMP!"
A hobgoblin met his charge head-on. It simply raised its shield, and the sword skittered harmlessly off the iron surface. In the same instant, it slammed the pommel of its axe into the bandit's face, breaking his nose and jaw with an audible crack.
The bandit staggered back, dazed and blind, just in time for the lightning wolf to leap. The beast slammed into his chest, jaws clamping down on his shoulder, and a bolt of yellow electricity shot through his body, making his muscles spasm violently.
He dropped, dead before even hit the ground.