Disclaimer: I don't own Don't Starve or any of the characters

"It looks sick." Wendy remarked, leaning forwards to peer more closely at the wormhole. Wilson put a cautioning hand on her shoulder to prevent her from getting too close.

Shortly after unearthing the hidden creature, the group had busied themselves with finding a way down. With some clever shovel-work, they'd managed to cut several rows of handholds into the sides of the dirt walls where the wooden beams were no longer covering. It might have only been a short trip down, but the scientist had wanted to be absolutely sure they could get back out once they went into the pit.

"She's right." Willow added, nodding down at the partially buried mound of flesh. "That thing looks a heck of a lot worse off than the one you got pushed into."

Wilson had to agree. If the earlier wormhole had truly been an average specimen, this one looked nothing short of deathly ill. Instead of the rough brown hide that the first had possessed, it was tinged a vile green and seemed to be coated in some slimy substance which may have been sweat, mucus, or both. Every now and then, it would contract and give a coughing wheeze as though trying to dislodge excess phlegm from deep within its cavernous throat.

It was hard to imagine, but this thing was even more disgusting than the other had been.

"Is smell… like many dead things… inside other dead things…" Wolfgang said, holding a hand up to his mouth as he tried to keep from gagging. His face was starting to mimic the same shade of green as the creature before them.

The conversation transitioned into a hesitant silence after that. Each of them looked upon the diseased creature with their own private thoughts running through their heads. The implications of their discovery wasn't lost on them. If the last wormhole had transported Wilson to another area, it was entirely possible that this one could do the same.

But…

Several pairs of expectant eyes turned to the scientist. He took a step back, feeling decidedly uncomfortable under the sudden scrutiny.

"What's that for?" He questioned, his eyes unconsciously darting back and forth between them. "If you're thinking what I think you're thinking you'd better start thinking something think. Gah, I mean… something else."

His sudden defensiveness roused amused chuckles from the rest of the group as Willow gave him a pat on the back that was anything but encouraging.

"Calm down there big guy." She said. "I was just wondering what your opinion on this thing was. After all, you've got more experience with them than the rest of us do."

"It's not as though I got an in-depth look at its biology when I fell in." He replied, remaining on guard and staying out of pushing range of the giant mouth. "All I know is that it looks dirty and I'd rather not go anywhere near it if I can help it."

The young woman merely gave him a noncommittal shrug as she turned back to observe the creature's flagging health. A small trickle of a drool-like substance was slowly dribbling out from between its teeth and wetting the dirt in a circle around its form.

"Why is worm down here?" Wolfgang wondered aloud. "Did get stuck before digging up through dirt?"

"I highly doubt that." Wilson answered, turning his focus to the same question. "Given that the dirt above it was being supported, I'd say that this thing was being stashed away for a reason. As to why it would be buried or how it managed to get sick…"

His shoulders slumped in a shrug of his own as his hands went to his pockets.

"…I can't really say."

There was a pregnant pause as his words sunk in. They'd been searching for a while already in the hopes of finding something out of the ordinary, and now that they'd found it they didn't know just what to think. After several moments, Wendy's exasperated sigh cut through the quiet.

"Am I the only one who sees it for what it is?" She demanded, crossing her arms and frowning at the others. "Honestly, it's painfully obvious. I thought you were supposed to be smart or something."

Wilson's eyebrow twitched in annoyance at the remark, prompting him to answer with his own disparaging comment.

"I have dozens of theories about what it could mean." He said, putting his hands to his hips with a frown to match her own. "But I have no way of being certain. If it's so obvious, would you mind filling the rest of us in oh great and insightful one?"

His attitude earned him an elbow to the ribs from Willow, but it was worth it. He was frustrated after spending so much time with so little progress and he certainly didn't appreciate the questioning. His hand edged towards the handle of his knife for what must have been the fifteenth time in the last hour, but he kept it in place if for no other reason than to maintain his posture.

"Fine." Wendy stated. "Let me ask you, why do you bury something?"

"Oh! Oh! Because it dead!" Wolfgang interjected, apparently not picking up on the minor dispute. Wendy rolled her eyes at his answer, letting out a small breath as she did so.

"That is one reason, yes…" She admitted, causing the strongman's face to split in a massive grin. "But what else?"

When no other attempts were made to solve her little riddle, she continued.

"To hide things." She stated, putting heavy emphasis on the second word. "To keep them out of sight. To prevent others from finding them. Now ask yourselves this, who would want to hide this from us, and more importantly, who could?"

"You think Maxwell put it down here?" Willow questioned, beating Wilson to the punch.

"Who else? It isn't like these worlds are natural occurrences. They were made."

"But why would he do that?" Wilson asked. "Sure the divining rod is reacting to it, but why would he bother putting it here in the first place? He didn't seem like he wanted us to progress, so wouldn't it have been better just to not make it at all?"

"The rules." She replied, nodding as though it were the simplest thing in the world. Everyone except for Abigail looked entirely lost at that point.

"The… what?" Willow asked, raising an eyebrow.

"The rules." The girl repeated. "Or don't you remember? Maxwell said that there were rules at the beginning of the last world. Don't you see? This is all designed for a purpose. We're supposed to be able to get through otherwise what would be the point? Whether he wanted to put it here or not is irrelevant. He had to, otherwise he'd be breaking the rules."

"I think that's a pretty big jump in logic." Wilson said, still skeptical. "You make it sound like this is some kind of game. Besides, even if there are rules, we don't know them for sure and I'm willing to bet that Maxwell isn't the kind of guy who'd think twice about cheating."

"You say that, and yet the path forwards is right here." Wendy replied, patting the unhealthy flesh of the wormhole. "It was made, so it has to exist for some purpose. It was hidden, so it would need to be hidden for a reason. It serves to transport people from one point to another, so what possible alternative could there be? It's too much work to be a trick, and too precise to be a fluke."

He had no answer for her. The logic made sense, and if he was being honest, he even wanted to believe it. Still, the idea of jumping headfirst into the unknown was so against his philosophy that he couldn't help but hesitate.

His philosophy… His old philosophy. That was what was holding him back. The part of him that wanted to hold back, play it safe, keep his distance and not approach until he was sure it was safe.

His fingers brushed the edge of his knife again, drawing strength from the feel of the smooth metal. He couldn't afford to think like that anymore. Not more than a week ago, he'd come to that revelation. He had to be willing to take a risk, to do whatever it took, in order to see them all get home.

It was time to move forwards. An uncharacteristically reckless grin crossing his face and the next words out of his mouth caused everyone to stop dead in their tracks.

"So, who gets to jump in first?"

Wilson had a split second to register the sudden burst of sunlight before gravity took a hold of his form and smacked him down hard against the unforgiving soil. The impact drove the air out of his lungs and left him wincing in the dirt. He had all of four seconds to start getting his bearings before a very unwelcome weight crashed down onto his back.

Willow was thrown in the same direction he'd been, and through the cruel hand of fate had fallen in the exact same spot as well. Her body landed hard on his back just as he was starting to rise, crushing the poor scientist into the dirt and giving him a mouthful of decrepit grass.

"Oh man…" She groaned, moving slowly as she rolled off his battered body. "That sucked. Ugh… I've got slime all over me… Hey guys? Where are you?"

"Down here." Wilson mumbled, pawing at his face in a useless attempt to dislodge the dirt and grime which had become plastered to the slime covering him.

"Oh… Whoops." She replied sheepishly. "So that's what I landed on."

Turning his head towards the sound of her voice, he gave her a deadpan stare before forcing himself back up to his feet. The wild ride had been no less intense than he remembered, and his sense of balance was shot to pieces by the tumbling turns he'd had to endure.

A short distance away, a small slimy mass with blonde hair began to stir in the straw-like grass.

"Are we dead?" Wendy questioned, her voice conveying none of the discomfort that was written on her face. "I suppose not. This place is far too dull looking to be the afterlife."

As if to confirm her suspicions, Abigail drifted over to her still in the guise of her ghostly image. Her ethereal form had come in handy as she was the only one of them who hadn't been forced to endure the rough jostling or the vile coating that came with their ride.

"Well." Willow began staring in disgust and shuddering at the sludge that clung to her clothing. "That was unpleasant. I need a fire. Now. The doorway can wait so long as we- Wait, where's Wolfgang?"

No sooner had she spoken the words than the wormhole began emitting strange hacking sounds. The giant transportation creature gagged and coughed, hunching in on itself before expelling the contents of its throat in a massive upheaval of sludge and ooze. The massive blob quickly splattered to earth, sending up a repulsive spray of the substance on anyone and anything unlucky enough to be nearby.

Wilson found himself being used as a human shield as Willow quickly ducked behind him to take shelter from the wave. He'd barely had time to register what was going on before the disgusting slime struck and covered him for a second time.

"Thanks a lot." He hissed, his words garbled by the fresh batch of horribleness that masked his features.

"Hey, I was just making the best of a bad situation." Willow replied. "It's not my fault you were too slow to move out of the way."

He was about to make a response to that when the oversized glob of slime began to rise up, revealing itself to be none other than their missing companion.

"Fun ride!" Wolfgang shouted, wiping excess secretion away from his grinning face. He seemed entirely unbothered by the sorry state that he and the rest of them were in after the experience. "We go again? Please? Want to try upside down this time!"

"We are not going again!" Willow stated, her voice cracking slightly at the thought of being subjected to the wormhole a second time. "Or ever again for that matter! That thing was just…. Gah, I don't even know what it was, but it was awful."

As the group started getting their bearings once again, a horrible wheezing sound filled the air. All eyes turned back to the wormhole in time to see convulsing and coughing as it struggled against some unseen damage. With one final heave, the subterranean creature seemed to collapse in on itself, sputtering the last of its life out in one great sigh. A very subdued silence settled in as the beast went still for the final time. Several minutes were spent silently watching it before Willow managed to break the spell.

"I guess it really was sick after all…" She offered, her voice containing conflicting remorse. "I didn't think that we'd end up killing it…"

"I think it was supposed to die off if we went through it." Wilson said, drawing her attention. "It was left as a one way ticket. Look around. You'll see what I mean."

She wanted to refute his point, refusing to believe that a creature could simply exist to die, but a quick glance at their surroundings caused her to hesitate.

Everything their previous abode had been, this place was the opposite. Dead, rotted grass clumped together atop cracked and diseased earth. Small puddles of brackish water dotted the ground as skeletal trees reached gangly wooden fingers to the sky like corpses rising from the grave. There was no wind, nor the sounds of animals making their homes in the lifeless forest. It was cold and silent as the grave.

"Where's the divining rod?" Willow asked quietly, choosing to go over their supplies rather than comment on the miserable state of the world around them. Wendy offered it to her without a word, having been the one carrying it during their journey through the worm.

"Box is sound louder than before." Wolfgang commented, doing his best to remain positive in the face of the sudden change in atmosphere. His efforts were only partially successful, earning a small nod from the fire starter.

"That's right." She agreed, taking in the noise of their mechanical guide. "It doesn't sound all that far off either. The worm thing must have dropped us off near the doorway."

"That's a good thing." Wilson interjected, stepping into the conversation after having pulled up a patch of grass to wipe himself off with. "If we're close then we've reached the final stretch. This is the fourth world. After this, there's only one left we need to fight through before we get to go home."

"It won't be that easy." Wendy said, her eyes gazing into the distance as though observing something none of them could see. "There's a dark presence here. It won't be happy to sit by and let us go on our way."

"When does it ever?" Wilson replied, doing his best impression of a confident smile. It felt out of place, but if he was honest he was actually looking forwards to the challenge. It would be another chance to use his knife. Maybe he should activate it right now. Better safe than sorry…

"I think it's this way." Willow called, drawing him out of his thoughts. "The noise is a bit louder when it's pointed east."

Her voice was far from thrilled, and it didn't take long to see why. East happened to be the part of the zombie-like forest which was thickest. No doubt their goal would be located in the center of the wicked place.

"At least it's not as pretentious as where we came from." Wendy observed, earning a few raised eyebrows. Seeing the looks she was getting, she explained with a roll of her eyes. "It's not trying to hide its nastiness. The other place was all gilded and perfect. How can you trust something like that?"

"Right…" Wilson said, choosing not to go too deep into her line of thought. "Let's get going then. I don't think Maxwell will be too happy we found his little pathway if he went through all that trouble to hide it."

A mumbled assortment of affirmative noises answered him as they grouped together once again to begin moving forwards. Each of them cast cautious glances over their shoulders, unable to shake the distinct feeling that something was watching them from the depths of the lengthy shadows that clung to the dimly lit trees.

Their concerns were not unfounded. Lurking just out of sight, several pairs of eyes were fixed on the intruders as they pushed into the forest. Sharp teeth and scuttling forms flittered to and fro, barely able to contain themselves as they tracked their prey. The time to strike hadn't come yet, but it would soon.

Very soon.

"This… is… disgusting…" Willow moaned, visibly shuddering as she was forced to push through the muck and mire of the swamp they'd found themselves traversing. Though the trees hadn't thinned in the slightest since they'd started moving, the ground itself had changed from crumbling dirt to vile smelling liquid with the consistency of raw sewage.

Perched atop Wolfgang's shoulders, Wendy held her nose with one hand while using the other to page through her spell book. What she was looking for, Wilson could only guess but he'd be very grateful for a spell that would do something about the overpowering smell of rot and decay that hung heavily in the air around them.

It was a much worse version of the bog that they'd been forced to cross in order to find the doorway that had started their journey through the five worlds.

"Just keep going." Wilson offered encouragingly, not entirely sure if he was speaking to their benefit or his own. "If we could last through the never ending winter, a swamp is no big deal. It's not like we need to bunker down against the elements at least."

Not that he'd be opposed to a little wind right about now. The air was so still that it was starting to make him painfully on edge. This kind of unmoving atmosphere wasn't natural.

Without warning, Willow jumped with a shriek, causing s splash of briny water to douse both Wilson and Wolfgang.

"What was that!?" She demanded, her voice near hysterical as her eyes darted frantically around her legs. "I felt something move! I swear, if that was one of you it isn't funny!"

"How could it be one of us?" Wilson demanded, spitting out the foul tasting water he'd been hit with. He was getting very tired of being covered in stuff like this. "We're not anywhere near you. And even if we were-"

An unexpected slithering sensation running across his leg silenced his objections. All at once, Wilson realized that the lifeless atmosphere wasn't so lifeless after all.

"Everyone get back!"

The words had hardly left his mouth before a massive fleshy whip snapped upwards, sending him flying as it smacked into his midsection. The scientist's world became momentarily muted as he plunged into the murky water, his senses being thrown about as he had no way of knowing which way was up.

Despite the gravity of the situation, he couldn't help but feel a thrill run up his spine.

Still submerged into the waist-deep muck, his fingers gripped around the knife at his belt and pulled it free. One brief tap to the gem was all it took to unleash the intoxicating magic once more, the seemingly living shadows eagerly flying forth and encasing him in robes of darkness.

Wilson broke the surface as a different man. The mass of flesh that had assaulted him was still swinging wildly, undulating like some massive snake as Willow, Wendy, and Wolfgang were forced to dodge away from it. The creature bore a striking resemblance to the tentacles Wendy had summoned to help them in their previous trial.

In the blink of an eye, it lost its resemblance to anything. The shadow sword flashed through the air at incredible speed, slicing through the thick hide of the monster with ease. Three horizontal strikes followed up by one vertical was all it took to send the piecemeal remains splashing back into the mire they'd sprung from. The only sign that they'd existed at all being a purplish discoloration of the creature's vital fluids staining the surface where it had fallen.

"That was easy enough." Wilson remarked, admiring the sheen of his sabre as it stood out pitch black against the brown and grey background of the wooded wetlands. "How many more of those things do you think there are waiting for us?"

When no answer came, he cast a questioning glance over his shoulder to find the others observing him with undisguised concern.

"What's that look for?" He asked. It wasn't like this was the first time he'd gone into this state in front of them. Though admittedly, during the last time it had been in the middle of a large fight with little time to take in their reactions.

"Wilson…?" Willow ventured, looking more and more disturbed by the moment. "Are you feeling all right?"

All right? Of course he was all right. He was better than all right. He hadn't been this all right in a long time.

"Never better." He answered simply. "Why do you ask?"

"Because of the way you're smiling after having killed that thing…"

He went dead still at that, several moments passing before her words managed to sink in. Slowly raising his free hand up to his face, Wilson realized he was smiling. He'd just slashed a monstrous creature to pieces as though it was something he did for a living, and he was smiling about it.

The expression fell from his face in an instant, replaced by a gaping uncertainty. He could feel the alien presence of whatever force directed his blade shiver with displeasure at his sudden change of heart, but it made no further attempt to override his normal attitude. It wasn't like the first time when it had entirely blocked his mind out in favor of controlling him. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.

"Uh… Yeah… I'm good." He said again after he'd finished. Some of his doubt must have been showing through because the fire starter moved to question him again before he cut her off. "Really, I'm fine. Let's get going. Don't want to hang around too long in case there are more of those, right?"

A silent staring contest took place between the two of them, Willow pushing to make him explain while he tried to convince her not to. He couldn't rightly tell her about something he himself didn't understand. After half a minute, the battle of wills ended and the young woman turned away with a frown.

"Fine." She stated, her tone making it clear that this was far from over. "We need to get out of this place anyway. All this wet muck is just making me… Ugh…"

With that apt description of all their feelings, they set off once again with the constantly rising pitch of the divining rod as their guide through the murky terrain. Their progress was marked by eight unblinking eyes as they moved, watching them with all the intensity of a skilled predator. No movement went unnoticed, and each nervous twitch served only to whet their owner's appetite.

Silent as an assassin, their pursuer slinked along through the shadows. The hunt was on.