RAVEN’S GAMBITY | Episode 68: Devil’s Mouth, Devil’s Bargain
The red-tiled path split ahead of him like a forked tongue. One path turned to shadow and menace—a grinning devil’s face stretched across the mosaic wall at the corridor’s end. The mouth of the devil yawned in a void of darkness so perfect it seemed to eat light itself.
Then, suddenly, a whump echoed in the passage.
Theron came flying out of the gaping mouth like a bullet loosed from a sling. He hit the cold stone with a grunt and rolled once, twice, then again, Blackrazor clanging wildly beside him with each tumble. Finally, he came to a groaning stop, flat on his back and blinking hard against the swirling haze of disorientation.
“Ugh…” he muttered, propping himself up on his elbows. “Well… that sucked.”
He looked back toward the grinning devil’s face, its mouth still as lifeless and empty as before. Not a single mote of light came from within. Just… void. A one-way gate to somewhere.
“There's no way those efreeti made it past the pillar chamber,” Theron muttered aloud. His head throbbed. “That thing must teleport you elsewhere. Or disintegrate you. Magic’s tricky like that. Could’ve been dead.”
His fingers curled instinctively around Blackrazor's hilt. The weapon hummed in his palm, eager, pulsing with that familiar hunger. Its voice crawled into his thoughts like a chill whisper.
They’re slowing you down. They fear you. Let them die.
He clenched his jaw. “Shut up.”
Silence. But not peace.
Theron rose unsteadily to his feet, Blackrazor still in hand. The weight felt heavier than before—not physically, but in purpose. He glanced once more at the devil face behind him, then turned away.
“Should we find our way back to them?” he muttered out of habit, then immediately scowled at himself. “Why am I even asking you?”
He stared at the obsidian blade.
“I know you're at least partially to blame for this,” he said. “You wanted to separate me. Keep me alone. Isolate me so you can gorge yourself freely.”
The sword said nothing, but it didn’t need to. Its pulse was almost smug.
Theron sighed and shook his head. “You’re not getting the souls of my friends. Not today. Not ever.”
He looked around the desolate stretch of corridor he now stood in—silent, empty, mocking. The eerie laughter of Acererak echoed in his memory, though no sound stirred the air.
There was no sign of the others. No footsteps, no torchlight, not even a whisper of their presence. Only that gaping devil’s mouth… and the red path leading back toward the Tomb's exit.
“Fine,” he said. “We go alone.”
Theron turned and walked with purpose, boots tapping firmly along the tiled corridor as he made his way back toward the surface, Blackrazor’s blade glinting like obsidian fire in the low torchlight he conjured. The further he got from the devil face, the colder the air grew—not physically, but in spirit. A haunting sense of absence.
He passed rooms he hadn’t seen before. Hallways shifted where they hadn’t previously. The Tomb played its tricks even on those departing. Yet he pressed on, determined and alone.
Eventually, the carved archways of the Tomb gave way to the open passage that led to the ruined jungle above. Vines hung down like withered fingers. The sunlight that pierced through the canopy stung his eyes.
Theron squinted into the light.
“Raven,” he whispered, but there was no answer.
No feathered shimmer. No soft caw. No cryptic riddles or amused chuckle.
Just the quiet breeze of the jungle… and the distant echoes of the darkness he left behind.