Free The Land: Catacombs (Chaos Seeds Book 4) by Aleron Kong Page A

forth in the air before throwing him across the pitch-black cavern.  He gave a startled shout as he flew through the air.  He landed heavily but quickly got to his feet.  He anxiously looked in all directions but didn’t see anything. 
    A loud crash echoed through the cavern.  He dismissed Dark Vision I and then with both hands started casting Far Light I .  Every second, two balls of light would shoot into the darkness and affix to whatever they struck.  Richter aimed at the ceiling, the far walls, and the floor.  He turned in all directions, his hands glowing gold in a vain attempt to see what had attacked him, but still, he saw nothing.  He didn’t stop.
    Each ball of light cost him five mana, but that wasn’t a problem as he could draw on the village’s mana pool.  Richter kept turning.  He wished that he knew which direction the entrance to the cavern was, but between being shaken in the air and then spinning after he had been thrown, he was completely turned around.  He accessed his map, but all it showed was a black space surrounding him.  The cave entrance was roughly to his right, but that was all that he could tell.  So he did the only thing he could.  He kept casting. 
    Ten balls of light shot out.  Then there were thirty and then one hundred.  Richter kept turning, trying to look in all directions at once.  Despite his preparations, something struck him, and he didn’t see it coming.  He took a heavy blow across his shoulders that knocked him off his feet.  His armor absorbed most of the damage, but he still lost twelve health.  He fell on his face and before he could turn over, something wrapped around his left leg.  It began pulling him across the floor to a patch of darkness that lacked a ball of Far Light I.
    Richter cried out in panic and anger.  Flopping over, he put both hands together and dual cast Flame I.  He forced a word of Power from his throat and his wrists locked together.  A gout of orange fire flew ahead of him and began to cook the tentacle that held him.  It was dark black in color and thick like an octopus’s arm.  When the fire touched it, he heard a scream that sounded like the whistling of wind through a canyon.  The tentacle loosed its grip.  As it retreated, Richter was horrified to see that the wiry limb was lined with suckers.  That was not noteworthy, but each sucker had a small mouth in its center that was full of needlelike teeth.  The mouths snapped and gnashed at him in no observable sequence.  He kept up his fire attack and traced the lance of flame in the direction of the retreating tentacle.  The scream grew louder, and Richter got his first look at what was attacking him.  He used Analyze .
    Dark Aberration.   Level 18.  Health 630.  Mana 350.  Stamina 410.  Disposition: Hatred.   A dark aberration can arise from the remains of sacrificial victims used in Dark magic.  The rotting flesh of those poor souls will sometimes flow together to create this horrid creature.  An amalgam of agony, fury, and Dark magic, an aberration is filled with hatred and will attack any creature that comes near it.  Rather than being seen as an unfortunate consequence of magic experimentation, some evil wizards have sacrificed hundreds, if not thousands, of men, women, and children for the express purpose of creating these hateful things.  A dark aberration can lie dormant for years and can survive by feeding off of the residual Dark magic that created it.  If it is supplied with fresh flesh or Dark energy, this monster could theoretically be an immortal watchdog. 
    The thing was huge.  It was at least the size of a Humvee.  The entire body of the aberration just looked like a tarry black mass that had a forest of tentacles extending out from it.  Eyes of various colors and types were randomly placed on the body and several large mouths were screaming in concert.  Some of the mouths were as long as Richter’s arm and filled with jagged