Weak as a blind kitten, Adira felt more slimy rope slap her ear. The pirate queen didn't bother to mop it off, just struggled to think. She was still awake and fighting while others had collapsed. Jasmine, closest to the fiend, had dropped right away. Heath had staggered and dropped his torch. Murdoch had flopped. Simone had almost stayed on her feet.

Shaking her head, trying to claw back to full consciousness, Adira went over details again. Why did some of her crew collapse but others only wobbled? Sleepy, sinking, Adira knew she'd collapse and set her hair on "Fire!" snorted the pirate queen. Cranking her eyes open,

Adira confirmed her suspicion. No one had been touched, but people without torches had collapsed immediately. People with torches only staggered, unless they dropped their fire, whereupon they blacked out. And hadn't the spuzzem killed those lovers in the dark?

"Fire keeps off… poisonous vapors… like those that suffocate dwarves in mines! Magfire… uhh! Simone… Wave your torch before your face!"

Heedless of igniting her wild curls, Adira lifted her torch and almost singed her eyebrows. Breathing smoke, sniffling and coughing, Adira found her head cleared. Through rippling flames she saw the spuzzem stump toward Simone, who crawled blind as a mole.

Adira jiggled her torch to make it flare. Fire was life here, same as if they still froze on those cruel wave-swept rocks. Shouting to encourage her crew, Adira scurried across the tilted floor to Simone. Jamming her head against Simone's black curls, Adira sheltered both behind the protecting flames. Woozy, Simone fought against stupor.

"Simone!" Adira shouted across five inches. "Wake up! We'll die if we don't attack!"

"Kyenou! Ply fire! Get up! Stay together!" From another side, Magfire goaded her scout. Magfire squatted over one woodsman and tore off shreds of his woolen shirt, then wadded the shreds around Kyenou's odd double-ended spear. Igniting the rags, she and Kyenou advanced on trembling legs against a lifelong terror.

From their side, Adira and Simone attacked. The lieutenant's face shone from the heat of the torch, but her eyes bulged with anger. Stepping carefully, Simone tore off Jasmine's blue skirt and spiked it on her black sword blade. Together Adira and Simone crabbed four-legged toward the spuzzem.

The creature swiveled slowly as four desperate people advanced with fire. Adira laughed grimly as the spuzzem back-stepped on plant-stem legs.

She barked, "Stick it!"

Magfire and Simone rammed spear and sword into the spuzzem's torso, easy as puncturing a cactus. Fire scorched, stinking like burned cabbage. The spuzzem's body proved no denser than a flower. Simone and Kyenou sliced away a flap like green leather with an inner core of white cottony threads.

"Fire its insides!" called Adira and Magfire together. Makeshift torches were shoved into the body cavity. White threads sizzled and charred black. Smoke spewed from the spuzzem's vegetable body. The women punished the monster with steel and fire. The spuzzem's supple arms thrashed weakly. Chitinous hooves drummed on the floor.

"That's deuced odd!" Adira twisted her black sword from the monster's body. "It's changing?"

Indeed. Rather than grow weaker, the spuzzem kicked and flailed with more animation, as if feeling pain for the first time. Knees grew supple. Arms elongated and sprouted hands, then fingers. The green body deepened to brown. From the smooth hump of charred torso popped a head with black curly hair.

Kyenou and Simone jumped back, their attack forgotten. Adira felt queasy and knew her face blanched.

In killing a monster, they'd killed a man.

A naked brown-skinned man wore tight black curls. Blue tattoos swirled across his chest and shoulders and thighs. His nose was flat, his teeth strong and white, his eyes dark and fierce. All four women knew they faced a warrior.

A dying warrior. His belly was torn open. Hideous burned gashes leaked a red river. He bit his tongue in agony, yet his face was oddly stoic.

Choking on blood, the brown man stared straight at his killers, or saviors, and gasped a warning in old-fashioned words. "Never… eat… food… crying gods…"

A death rattle escaped his red-smeared mouth, and the man sagged.

The four warrior women stood with bloodstained hands and dripping weapons, wondering what they'd done.

"I don't understand," mewed Simone the Siren. "He was the spuzzem?"

"An Old One." Magfire's voice rang hollow in the underground chamber. "Ancient people from legend who inhabited this forest when it was jungle. He lived a lifetime under the sun, it's plain, and went without clothes because it was hot. But that's thousands of generations."

"Cursed," Adira whispered. "By the crying god. To live forever as a spuzzem."

Groans broke their reverie as Jedit, Heath, and others roused. Slowly they shuffled up to stare at the time-lost warrior. Jedit Ojanen, not even human, gave the most profound lament.

"Imagine what he could have taught us."

Adira Strongheart mopped tears and sweat and cobwebs from her face with filthy hands. "So the wind blows. Magfire, your forest is rid of the spuzzem. Now let's hoist these crystals and take our fight to Shauku. And Johan."

"Set them down here. Ugh!"

Adira Strongheart yanked off her headband and mopped sweat from a dirty face. She plunked down on an amber crystal and sighed, "I'd give ten years off my life for a hot bath!"

The explorers half-collapsed on broken shells and dusty stone. They wheezed and coughed in grimy smoke. Each of the twelve pinefolk and pirates had lugged one awkward and heavy crystal seeming miles up twisted slippery six-sided tunnels. They'd found the cavern the same, with the crazed cosmic horror still lashing its tongue and tentacles, and Sister Wilemina and two foresters guarding Johan in his golden prison. The air was still rank with sweat and wood smoke. The pixies had refused to descend any deeper and had departed, same as the fire sprites.

"What time is it?" asked Adira. "What part of the day? I've lost track."

"We entered these accursed caves as evening fell," said Magfire, eyes red as anyone's. "My warriors were to stage a sham attack to keep the legionnaires busy. Likely it's past dawn and mid-mom now."

"I hope they're still at it," said Murdoch. "I couldn't wrestle a kitten."

"I feel we've crawled through caves forever," said Simone. "Maybe we're dead in some pocket of hell."

"Hist!" warned Jasmine. "Such talk is jinxy!"

"Enough rest." Adira pushed herself erect. "Let's see if the kobolds lied or not. Give me your gourd, Murdoch. Mine is dry. And help me lug this thing."

The two hefted a golden crystal the size of a bushel basket and crab-walked toward the ring of fire. Under Adira's orders, the kobolds had ceased to stoke the fire. The trench was less than a pace wide, but heat from hot coals and stone was still withering.

Together, counting, Adira and Murdoch lobbed the crystal over the ring, so it thudded against the scarred gray trunk of the goggle-eyed tooth-gnashing terror. Clamping down her stomach, Adira skipped over the fire to stand beside the monster out of reach of whiplashing tentacles. The footing was all intertwined roots. Between smoke and the monster stinking like a rotting whale, Adira almost gagged but pressed on.

The crystal was full of translucent amber liquid. Deep inside hung a fist-sized knot like a tree root, which must be a young horror. Holding her breath, Adira pulled the stopper of the gourd and trickled water over the topmost joints.

Results were immediate.

Adira jumped as cracks raced around the facets of the crystal. The crystalline egg fell apart so quickly that her boots were splashed. Facets like panes of glass clanked. Sweet-smelling golden sap gushed and vanished amid a million cracks of the horror's roots.