Huldah Goldmin: A Taste of Terror

Foul'd ichor poured from the walls of the Lorrimer house, pungent and souring. Huldah spun around, instinctively pulling a catalyst vial from her belt, looking for a target to bomb. The floorboards began writhing under her boots as copulating worms, expunging raw fetid filth about them in their twisting ecstasy. The house began to spasmatically breath now, its elder bones bending and quaking like young tender twigs. She felt the pressure of a unknowable evil upon her throat, and her abdomen began to turn with the turbulent rocking ground. Looking for her companions in the room, her vision traced a blurred swath of reeking colors, dagger points of sensory input scrapping across her retinas. She shut her eyes tightly only to find a panoramic horror show displayed for her in sightless reality. Stretching limbs, slick with rot, descending a nightmare staircase, scuttling and scrapping with ragged claws, approaching her. There was nowhere to look away. Her mind screamed red and her legs took her full speed out of the room towards the outside world. She stumbled on something hard and muscular, landing face down in a soft pile of moss, each tiny tendril and stalk singing a dissonant note. The vibrating choir threw her into a nauseous sea, stormy and rolling, and the limbs began grasping at her from above. She was alone and helpless.

Suddenly, it was over. She blinked her eyes. The moss beneath her melted away like frost beneath a morning sun. The tall boulder-like warrior Mandrake and the small halfling sorceress Noir stood over her, holding vials in their hands. The Lorrimer house was in its normal condition.

"Whaa-t h-happened?"