The origin of IMS (a fictional story)

[EwulSpif]

Chapter VI: The Red Pool

The basement of the Estate did not belong to the architects who built the house above. It was a digestive tract of damp stone and narrow, winding tunnels.
The IMS moved in single file. The silence here was thick, broken only by the rhythmic drip of condensation and the occasional, distant click of a skeleton’s jaw.
“The layout... it shifts,” Krazz whispered, his hand brushing the mossy wall. “The stone is old, but the air feels young. Like it’s still breathing.”
They rounded a sharp corner and stopped.
The corridor opened into a jagged chamber. In the center lay a wide, stagnant pool of thick, crimson liquid—a reservoir of old blood that had never dried. The smell was overpowering: metallic, salty, and rotten.
“Do not step to the sides,” Voksh warned, his bone wand glowing with a pale, flickering light.
On either side of the red pool, the floor gave way to deep, narrow pits. At the bottom, rusted iron spikes stood like frozen needles, slick with the remains of those who had tried to avoid the blood.
“Through the middle,” Sszar commanded. “Keep your balance.”
⸻
They were halfway across the crimson sludge when the surface of the pool rippled.
A mass of grey, necrotic tissue rose from the depths. It wasn't a skeleton. It was a Tentacle Terror—a lashing cluster of rubbery appendages, each tipped with a lidless, milky eye and a ring of needle-teeth.
It didn't roar. It hissed like a ruptured steam pipe.
One tentacle whipped out, coiling around Gorg’s leg, pulling the Iksar toward the edge of the spike pit.
“Gorg!” Jingles barked.
The Bard didn't use a song of courage. He struck a jagged, vibrating chord that sent a physical shockwave through the blood pool. The vibration forced the tentacle to loosen its grip for a split second—long enough for Fluffy to dive in. The drake’s jaws locked onto the terror’s central mass, tearing chunks of grey meat into the red water.
⸻
Sszar stepped forward, his boots submerged in the warm gore.
He didn't use his mace. He reached into the dark energy he had harvested on the balcony and felt the cold stone in his chest pulse.
Fear.
He projected the raw, unadulterated terror of the void directly into the creature’s many eyes. The Tentacle Terror, a being of pure nightmare, suddenly recoiled. It tried to sink back into the pool, its appendages thrashing in blind panic.
“No,” Sszar hissed.
He brought the Screaming Mace down.
The iron head hit the creature’s core with a sound like a cathedral bell being struck by a hammer. The mace let out its signature wail, a high-pitched scream of agony that harmonized with the creature’s dying hiss.
The blood in the pool erupted, splashing against the walls as the terror collapsed into a heap of motionless, grey flesh.
⸻
Sszar stood in the center of the red pool, the blood dripping from his blackened greaves. He looked at the Screaming Mace in his hand. The weapon was still vibrating, its scream fading into a low, satisfied hum.
“The basement has teeth,” Gorg said, wiping red sludge from his scales.
“So do we,” Sszar replied.
He looked toward the dark tunnel on the far side of the chamber. The path wound deeper now, toward the places where the light truly died.
“Keep moving. The deeper we go, the louder it screams.”