Breath. Just a thin, rattling hiss of air.

  That was all the iron collar allowed.

  Elowen stumbled. His bare feet slapped blindly against the slick, uneven stone of the service tunnel. His vision pulsed with hard, black edges, tunneling inward. The girl hauled him forward by his uninjured right shoulder, pulling his dead weight into the suffocating dark.

  Behind them, the cavern ruptured.

  Stone cracked. Rusted iron warped and snapped. A wet, deafening tear of meat echoed off the cavern walls. The entity was forcing its massive bulk into the narrow mouth of the tunnel. It was too big. It didn't care. The six fused torsos sprouting from its back scraped brutally against the low rock ceiling, leaving thick, wet smears of black blood and green mutagen.

  Then came the light.

  A beam of frantic, sickly green swept into the tunnel. It originated from the clear diving-helmet eye embedded deep in the monster’s chest. The beam cut through the dark like a lighthouse in a storm, illuminating the swirling dust, the dripping acid on the ceiling, and the frantic pumping of Elowen's legs.

  "Move," the girl hissed.

  Elowen’s knees buckled.

  He hit the floor hard, scraping his skin against the grit. The rusted falchion clattered from his grip, sliding away into the dark. He didn't reach for it. Both his hands flew to his throat.

  The metal collar was burning hot. The runes etched into the iron glowed a furious, angry red. It was pinching his windpipe completely shut. His lungs screamed for oxygen. His chest heaved in violent, useless spasms.

  [Act of High Treason Detected.]

  [Integrity: 88/100. Compliance Enforced.]

  The green light swept closer, casting long, grotesque shadows down the corridor. The rhythmic, heavy thud-drag of the boss shook the floor beneath Elowen's palms. It was pulling itself forward with thick, asymmetrical limbs, crushing the discarded alchemy pipes lining the walls.

  The girl stopped running. She looked back at the approaching light, then looked down at Elowen.

  He expected her to run. He expected her to leave him as bait. It was the smart play.

  She didn't. She dropped to her knees beside him. Her face was pale, smeared with soot, but her eyes were dead calm. A pure, feral survivor's calm. She didn't reach for him to comfort him. She leaned in close, her mouth an inch from his ear.

  "Stop fighting it," she whispered.

  Elowen wheezed, his eyes bulging as he stared at her wildly.

  "It's a loyalty iron," she said, her voice a rapid, flat clip. "I grew up mucking the lower slave pens. I've watched a dozen men choke on them. It feeds on your defiance. It tracks the treason in your head. Submit to the High Lord. Bow to him in your mind. Do it right now, or you're dead, and I'm not dragging a corpse."

  Elowen froze.

  Submit.

  The word made his empty stomach violently turn. He had spent ten years crawling through the Pit. They had framed him. They had hanged him. They had erased his little brother's face from his mind. His soul was built on a foundation of pure, unadulterated hatred for the Weeping Court.

  The green light washed over their boots. The monster was forty feet away. It shrieked—a synthesized, overlapping chorus of six screaming men, their vocal cords forced to fire at the exact same time.

  Bow, Elowen thought. Lie to the iron. Play the game.

  He closed his eyes. He stopped clawing at his throat. He forced his mind to go slack, imagining a dark, empty room. He swallowed his rage, burying it deep beneath a thick, suffocating layer of manufactured subservience.

  I am a loyal servant of the Court, he thought, forcing the words to ring true in his own head. I am meat for the machine. My life belongs to the High Lord. Hail the Court.

  [Subservience logged. Punishment suspended.]

  [Integrity stabilized at 88/100.]

  The collar clicked.

  The heat faded. The pressure released by a fraction of an inch.

  Air rushed into Elowen’s lungs. He coughed violently, tasting blood and copper, but he could breathe. He snatched the falchion from the floor and scrambled to his feet.

  "Left," Elowen rasped.

  They ran.

  He activated his Grave-Sight. The pitch-black tunnel exploded into greyscale thermal imagery. He couldn't see far, but he could see the ambient heat of the stonework. The right tunnel was a dead end—solid, cold rock. The left tunnel showed a faint, rising draft of warmth. An exhaust shaft.

  They took the left, sprinting down a narrow, descending slope.

  The tunnel choked down sharply. The walls angled inward.

  Behind them, the boss hit the junction. It didn't slow down to navigate the turn. It rammed its massive shoulder directly into the sharp corner. The stone groaned and shattered. The creature's bulk wedged against the rock, but the six torsos on its back spasmed wildly. They acted like fleshy pistons, their flailing arms pushing against the tunnel walls to shove the main body forward through the bottleneck.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The green beam swept past Elowen and the girl, illuminating a rusted iron portcullis blocking the tunnel ahead.

  It was a heavy grate, meant to keep the sewer scavengers out of the upper levels. The chain connected to it led to a rusted wall-winch.

  Elowen sprinted to the winch. He grabbed the heavy iron handle and hauled upward with everything he had.

  His atrophied Level 2 muscles burned. The gears shrieked in protest, ground down by decades of rust. The portcullis rose two inches, then jammed.

  Elowen gritted his teeth, raising his falchion to smash the locking gear.

  A red warning flashed instantly in his peripheral vision.

  [Warning: Sabotage of Court Infrastructure will result in immediate Integrity deduction.]

  He aborted the swing, his heart plummeting. The System had him boxed in. He couldn't break the environment, and he wasn't strong enough to operate it normally.

  The green light grew blindingly bright. The deafening *thud-drag* of the monster echoed right behind them. Thirty feet.

  The girl didn't wait for him to figure it out. She shoved him aside.

  She didn't go for the winch. She grabbed the bottom bar of the portcullis itself.

  Her right hand was human. Her left hand—the one hit by the vat mutagen—was changing in real-time. The skin had already hardened into dark, jagged, reptilian scales, but as she gripped the heavy iron bar, the mutation accelerated. The muscles in her left forearm doubled in thickness, ripping the sleeve of her rags. The scales darkened to a deep, obsidian black.

  She planted her bare feet on the stone, let out a guttural scream, and heaved.

  The rusted gears of the winch snapped violently. The iron portcullis ripped upward, bending the track. Her mutated arm was doing the work of three grown men.

  "Under!" she yelled, holding the heavy gate at waist height.

  Elowen dove beneath the iron teeth, sliding on his stomach across the wet stone. The girl threw herself forward, letting go of the gate.

  The heavy iron portcullis slammed down, burying its spikes into the floor just as the boss lunged out of the darkness.

  The amalgamation smashed into the bars. The impact shook the ceiling, raining dust down on Elowen and the girl. The iron gate bowed inward under the creature's massive weight, but it held.

  The monster roared, the six torsos thrashing against the bars. The clear glass eye glared through the iron mesh, painting Elowen and the girl in a terrifying green spotlight.

  "Up," Elowen ordered, pulling her to her feet.

  They sprinted down the remaining length of the corridor. Ten seconds later, the tunnel ended at a vertical shaft.

  It was a chimney. Rusted iron rungs were bolted directly into the curved stone, leading straight up into a seemingly endless, pitch-black throat.

  Behind them, the horrific sound of snapping metal echoed down the hall. The boss was tearing the portcullis out of the wall.

  "Climb," Elowen commanded.

  The girl didn't hesitate. She jumped for the lowest rung. Her right hand grabbed the iron. Her left, mutated hand reached for the next rung.

  As her scaled fingers closed around the thick iron bar, she didn't just grip it. The metal crunched. Her new, mutated claws dug directly into the rusted iron, leaving deep, permanent indentations in the metal. She noticed it, her eyes widening for a fraction of a second, but the survival instinct overrode the shock. She pulled herself upward with terrifying, unnatural speed, her scaled arm hauling her body weight like it was nothing.

  Elowen grabbed the ladder and followed.

  His body screamed in protest. His lats burned with lactic acid. The single Constitution point he had allocated kept his heart from exploding, but he was carrying a dead man's stamina. Every time he pulled himself up, the deep purple bruises around his windpipe throbbed, the metal collar grinding against his raw skin.

  Ten feet up. Twenty. The rungs were slick with condensation and rust.

  A deafening crash echoed from the base of the shaft.

  The green light flooded the bottom of the chimney, painting the circular walls in a sickly glow.

  Elowen paused for half a second, looking down between his feet.

  The boss squeezed into the tight, circular space at the base of the ladder. It was looking straight up. The massive glass eye in its chest glowed with blinding intensity, fixing its beam directly on the soles of Elowen’s boots.

  The six torsos on its back wailed in unison. The creature reached up.

  Its primary arm was an amalgamation of bone, pulsing green muscle, and fused joints. It was easily fifteen feet long. It grabbed the lowest section of the rusted ladder.

  The entire shaft shuddered violently.

  The boss began to pull itself up.

  "Keep moving!" Elowen shouted, feeling the iron rungs vibrate like plucked guitar strings beneath his hands.

  The creature was incredibly heavy, but it was relentless. It didn't climb like a man. It hauled itself upward in violent, spastic jerks, using its mutated grip to tear the lower rungs halfway out of the stone with every pull.

  The gap was closing. Thirty feet. Twenty-five.

  Elowen’s Grave-Sight flickered and died. His mana was gone. His stamina was crashing. He was slipping.

  He looked at the heavy iron rungs bolted into the stone just beneath his feet. If he broke them, if he shattered the path, the monster would lose its grip and fall.

  He raised his right foot, aiming a heavy, downward stomp at the rusted bracket holding the rung to the wall.

  The System flared instantly.

  [Warning: Sabotage of Court Infrastructure will result in immediate Integrity deduction.]

  He pulled the kick back.

  If he broke the ladder, the collar would snap his neck before the boss even reached him. The System protected the dungeon's masonry above all else. It didn't care if the prisoners lived or died, but it demanded the cage remain intact.

  He couldn't attack the shaft.

  He had to attack the beast.

  He looked down again. The creature was twenty feet below him, climbing with terrifying speed. The green light from the glass eye was blinding, sweeping over Elowen's legs.

  It's a lens, Elowen thought, his veteran mind calculating the geometry of the shaft. It's looking right up at me.

  Elowen reached to his waist with one hand, clinging to the ladder with the other. He unhooked the heavy, rusted iron chain he had stripped from the dead guard in the very first cell. It was three feet of thick, solid iron links.

  He wrapped one end around his fist.

  He waited. He had one shot. If he missed, he was dead.

  He let the monster climb higher. Fifteen feet. Ten feet. The smell of its rotting, mutating flesh wafted up the shaft, thick and gagging.

  The boss lunged upward, pulling itself another five feet. The glass eye swiveled, locking dead onto Elowen's silhouette.

  Elowen let the heavy iron chain drop.

  He didn't throw it. Throwing it would ruin the trajectory. He just released his grip, letting gravity do the work. The chain fell perfectly straight down the exact center of the vertical shaft.

  The boss didn't have time to blink. It didn't have eyelids.

  The heavy iron links smashed directly into the dead center of the clear diving-helmet glass.

  Crack.

  The sound was sharp, brittle, and incredibly loud in the enclosed space.

  The perfectly clear glass shattered. A massive spiderweb of deep, white fractures exploded across the surface of the lens.

  The green light instantly flickered, dimming violently, then began to strobe in a frantic, broken rhythm. Thick, glowing green fluid began to leak rapidly from the cracks in the glass, hissing as it hit the open air.

  The boss screamed. It wasn't an angry roar. It was a sound of pure, blinding panic.

  The massive, fifteen-foot hand let go of the ladder to claw at its own chest. The creature thrashed blindly in the enclosed space, its equilibrium completely shattered. Its massive, top-heavy weight shifted backward, away from the wall.

  It fell.

  It plummeted down the throat of the chimney.

  It hit the solid stone bottom of the shaft with a wet, bone-shattering CRUNCH.

  The sheer kinetic force of its massive impact cracked the floor beneath it. Dust and heavy debris rained down from the ceiling of the lower tunnel, burying the thrashing creature in a shallow grave of loose masonry and shattered iron.

  The green light flickered one last time, and then died completely.

  A pale blue System prompt bled into Elowen's vision.

  [Target out of range. Combat concluded.]

  [The Court retains its assets: Boss-Class Entity survives. Regeneration initiated.]

  [Fleeing Bonus Siphoned: 50 Essence.]

  It was still alive.

  Elowen didn't wait. He climbed.

  Fifty feet higher, his muscles burning so fiercely he could barely feel his fingers, the shaft finally ended. A heavy iron grate capped the chimney.

  The girl was already there, crouching on a narrow stone ledge just below the cap. She was pushing her back against the iron mesh, grunting with effort, but it wouldn't budge.

  "It's locked," she gasped, her chest heaving, sweat pouring down her soot-stained face.

  Elowen pulled himself up onto the narrow stone ledge beside her. The space was incredibly cramped. He looked up at the heavy iron padlock securing the grate to the stone floor above.

  The red text bled across his vision instantly.

  [Court Property. Do not tamper.]

  Elowen leaned his head back against the stone wall, his lungs burning. He looked at the girl's mutated left arm. The dark, obsidian scales seemed to absorb the faint light bleeding down from the grate. The claws on her fingertips were razor-sharp.

  "It's not locked for you," Elowen rasped, his voice raw. "You're not in the System. You don't have a collar."

  The girl looked down at her clawed hand. She turned it over, staring at the thick, unnatural muscle that had woven itself over her human bones. Then, she looked up at the heavy iron padlock.

  She didn't ask questions. She didn't hesitate. She reached up and grabbed the lock with her scaled hand. She braced her bare boots against the stone wall of the shaft to get leverage.

  She squeezed.

  The dark, thick tendons in her mutated forearm bulged violently against the scales. The thick metal of the padlock groaned, a high-pitched whine of failing iron.

  Then, with a sharp, echoing snap, the heavy iron shackle warped and broke clean in half.

  She shoved the broken lock aside and pushed the heavy iron grate open.

  They scrambled out of the shaft, pulling themselves over the lip and collapsing onto the solid, damp stone floor of the upper prison levels.

  Elowen immediately kicked the heavy grate shut behind them, sliding a loose iron bar through the hasp to secure it.

  He collapsed against the cold, damp wall of the corridor. He pulled his knees to his chest, his head spinning, the rusted collar resting coldly against his deeply bruised neck. He had survived. He had kept his soul intact. The System hadn't choked him to death.

  The girl sat across from him, her back against the opposite wall. She was cradling her mutated arm in her lap, staring down at the broken iron padlock resting by her knee.

  She sat in silence for a long time, the adrenaline slowly leaving her body.

  Finally, she raised her head. She looked at Elowen, her eyes locking onto his.

  "My name is Vanya," she said.