Darker Secret, A

The noises of the crypt were starting to get to her, all the hissing echoing around, driving her mad. She’d been walking down here for hours in her now dusty, bloodied and torn leather armour. She’d even gone through several torches. Reihana Solus wasn’t happy about this.

She’d been commissioned to come down here alone to retrieve an artefact in secrecy. She couldn’t turn down her weight in diamonds after all and this was a relatively safe area above ground, the more viscous creatures lived further north. She brushed the hundredth cobweb out of her auburn shoulder length hair and kept walking the stony labyrinth sword-arm at the ready.

She knew legends about this place, the hissing was either a source of elemental power or some giant snake guarding an ancient treasure. She’d come down here into the crypts of one of the greatest sorcerer’s to ever live, he’d been buried by loyal subjects. The ruins had been picked apart before but no one had ever found this particular artefact and sometimes dungeoneers had gone missing.

She stepped lightly into a chamber and noticed it was surprisingly well lit… Blue sapphires were embedded in the wall emitting light. The room was strange… it was similar in construction to the rest of the place… but it was filled with strange scraps of various colours… and torn clothing… even the odd piece of seemingly undamaged or corroded armour.

Looking around she spied a door and a pedestal… the door unlike the rest of them in this place looked to be sealed shut and was emitting a slightly purple light compared to the blue of the sapphires.

Reihana wandered up to the pedestal; checking for markings, languages anything that looked strange. Finding nothing other than a crystal to place her palm on she took a deep breath, checked the door for possible traps… not that she was an expert… and then braced herself.

She pressed the palm of her hand onto the pedestal and watched as the gems in the room lit up. She braced her sword arm as the door began to rise open with the sound of grinding stone… with the opening of the door the hissing increased by a magnitude to an almost deafening crescendo. She was not prepared for what happened next.

A darkness lunged out of the opening door and engulfed her. She wasn’t bound but it surrounded her blinding her and the hissing almost deafened her. She waited for a few seconds and then swung out at the darkness a few times to test for a response… she got one.

She opened her mouth for a battle cry the darkness rushed into her open mouth. As insubstantial as smoke the darkness entered her and seconds later she could see… the hissing was everywhere now, overwhelming…

Reihana began checking herself over. Was she poisoned? no… Was she cursed? maybe… Was she dead… not yet… but there was armour all around this room… and those strange scraps.

She felt full… which was odd… it had been hours since she ate back at the dungeon entrance. She looked down and saw her leather armour straining. The cuirass’s bonds were pulled tight and were threatening to snap. Her stomach bulged roundly through the armour and plain white village shirt she was wearing underneath. Her breasts were perkier and significant than before the smoke went inside her…

She dropped her sword and began checking herself everywhere as armour began snapping off piece by piece. Her body felt strangely smooth and as she pressed her skin it seemed to push back unnaturally so. She noticed she shone in the light and if she looked down she could see the floor through the distended sphere that her stomach was becoming…

It dawned on her… was this what had happened to those adventurers before her? probably… those scraps were probably them left behind… they’d been… filled with this dark stuff, some sort of defence. Well unlike them she was going into that room and finding…

… the artefact… and as soon as she stepped in the hissing stopped… and a deep groaning took its place. She rushed over and picked it up… it was a gauntlet. She pulled it onto her sword arm and felt herself shrinking down… she took it off and felt herself filling up again. She decided to leave it on… From that day on she knew to curse the names of fetish sorcerer’s and not to go hunting for their items.