Rowan shot up from the ground, sweat dripping from his brow as his brown eyes struggled to focus on the unfamiliar environment before him. He thought he might have still been dreaming as he first looked around, the rocky surroundings reminiscent of the mountainous region he called home, but his current dwelling was far darker than it ever got underneath the vi-lit quarters of Reinholdt Spire. After taking in the slate cave he was housed in, Rowan turned his attention to the faces looking out at him. A place that seemed so devoid of life was suddenly throwing new people Rowan’s way every time he turned around. There were roughly eight people staring at Rowan, immediately recoiling away from him as he found his footing. He looked at the scattered clumps of garb they wore, but saw a familiar sight on each of their necks: collars.
“Mogrim?” Rowan called out, looking around the cave. The mouth of the cave was sealed like some sort of makeshift cell. There were no beds, pillows, and, judging by the horrid scent coming from one of the corners of the cave, no lavatory either.
“Mogrim,” Rowan repeated, gripping the bars at the mouth of the cave as he called out.
Rowan’s cellmates began squabbling and fretting as Rowan called out to Mogrim, their chatter ceasing as the cell door clicked, opening slowly. Rowan raised an eyebrow, curious about the cell door’s automatic opening. He didn’t have time to process his thoughts, as he felt multiple hands at his back, pushing him out of the cell.
“Hey,” Rowan snapped as he was forced out of the cell and past the door.
Before he could properly respond, another was forced out of the cell with him, the smallest of his cellmates. Her head ended at his sternum and held no surprise or concern on her face despite being thrust out of the cell with Rowan. The cell door creaked and clanged as it slammed shut behind the pair. Rowan tugged at it, but it wouldn’t budge. The cellmates had all withdrawn to the dark sections of the cave, refusing to interact with Rowan despite his desire for answers.
“It won’t open again,” the little girl said. “Not until he opens it.”
“You speak the natural tongue,” Rowan responded. The young girl looked perplexed by Rowan’s words, but nodded nonetheless. “I’m Rowan.”
He waited for the young girl’s reciprocation of introduction, but got none. Rowan furrowed his brow at her sudden lack of response, but let it go. Ultimately, he was just happy someone could understand him and wasn’t trying to kill him.
The little girl walked away from the cell, to which Rowan followed. The path was dimly lit until it opened out to a cavern the size of a small village. Rowan’s eyes jittered from side to side, trying to catch every bit of the view before him. The first thing to call out to his eye was a collection of screens hanging from the vault of the cavern. They weren’t windows; they appeared to be showing the cavern from different angles, like getting to see from someone else’s eyes. Rowan was intrigued by this, but not as excited as he figured he ought to be: he could only assume this wasn’t the first time he saw such a thing. Directly below the screens were high ramparts of metal and scrap built over the natural cave walls. A fence to keep the prisoners from escaping, perhaps? Flickers of vi imprinted along the jagged ceiling and rough walls, bathing the pockets of light in the chamber in a cyan hue. Rowan followed the child along a path that spilled out to a wider hallway littered with stalls. The stalls were covered in tarps and tied down, leaving Rowan all the more curious. He stepped to the side, drawing closer to the stalls. He thought he might have heard the little girl say something behind him, though he wasn’t sure. It was likely a warning of some kind, one that Rowan should have adhered to. He felt the dull sting of a stick whacking his ribs and recoiled in pain. He looked back in the direction of the impact and noticed one of those friendly faces Mogrim had with him in the wasteland.
“Get back in line, dreck,” the stick-owner said.
It wasn’t until Rowan looked back that he noticed there were more people along the path, accompanied by guards shepherding them forward. The little girl had a bothered look on her face as she waved for Rowan to follow her while the guard nearest her brandished a stick at the two of them. Rowan had a bad habit of losing track of the world around him when he was absorbed in something of interest, but her face told him all he needed to know.
“Sorry, sorry,” Rowan said, pacing back over to the little girl.
Once Rowan was in sufficient proximity, the child gestured to him to follow and headed further along with the small crowd, the path everyone tread upon narrowed into a tight corridor jabbing at Rowan’s shoulders. Rowan wanted to make a note of the environment for further observation later, reaching for his knapsack that wasn’t on his back. In fact, he was stripped of everything, sporting a similar stitched burlap sack as the rest of the prisoners; that and a stylish, dehumanizing collar around his neck, of course. Rowan whimpered at the violation, clutching his body, his breathing growing erratic. There wasn’t time to dwell on the humiliation, however, as the path opened up once again.
Using the screens overhead as a landmark, Rowan surmised they were closer to the center of the cavern, past the fence line he’d noted earlier. Rowan figured this would be the path to the exit or mayhap quarters for the guards; instead, the sight past the metal barriers was just more fences, a conglomerate of rock and scrap. This second fence line wasn’t very effective in its purpose, though, as there were several breaks in the walls one could walk through to get past the blockade. Rowan’s eyes narrowed as he tried to piece the details together: this wasn’t a fence at all, not this second set of barricades. A choppy siren blared, derailing Rowan’s train of thought. He covered his ears with his hands, looking up, trying to locate the source of the sound. The siren ceased once all heads were tilted up at the screens, to which Mogrim appeared. All the screens were of him, sitting in a chair somewhere out of harm’s way. Rowan wasn’t sure why so many screens were necessary to show the exact same angle of the paunchy trader. Was it just a matter of haughtiness?
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“Hello me shembals, all. You know what time it is, but Mogrim’s a kind soul, yeah? So I’ll explain it to me new guests.”
The screens cut away from Mogrim, instead showing angles of what Rowan could only presume to be what laid past the walls. The pathway was long and winding, turns and forks breaking up the endless walls and dead ends.
“It’s a maze,” Rowan said to himself, still watching the screens.
“You ever have to cross a busy street before, dear shembals? This is just like that. This is one side of the street you’re on,” Mogrim said, stopping to cough and catch some semblance of a breath.
The screens cut to a gate not unlike the open one Rowan stepped through to get to this point, though the gate on the screens had a green circle painted on it.
“There’s the other side of the street. Now get moving.”
The screens cut to various angles of prisoners, Rowan included. He tried to figure out what was watching him to produce the image on the screen, but the walls were high, too high to see the watchers that Rowan assumed were sitting atop. Rowan eyed the different screens, pausing at a familiar face, or lack thereof.
“Hey,” Rowan said, looking at the nameless one on the screen. He shifted his view to his surroundings, trying to spy them in the small crowd around him to no avail. “Where are they?”
He tapped the child’s shoulder, asking with the assumption that she’d been through this before. She only shrugged in response. Rowan wore a pensive face, trying to figure out his next move. He needed to get out of Mogrim’s labyrinth, but he preferred to not be the only departure, especially with his masked friend being stuck as well—it was his fault that they were imprisoned in the first place, after all. Rowan’s brewing questions must have been clear on his face, the child tugging on his sleeve to get his attention.
“Run, hide, or die.”
Her words were brief and barely registered in Rowan’s ears as a rumble shook the very cavern. Crumbled debris from the vault of the cavern fell overhead as the sound drew closer, an ear-splitting groan rattling around Rowan’s head. Though Rowan was tempted to cover his ears and nurse the encroaching headache, his curiosity at the source of the sounds took precedence. Rowan took one step forward before the mob around him forced him to advance, funneling through the breaks in the walls, entering the labyrinth. Rowan spun and looked around as he rode the wave of people into the maze, still searching for the familiar helm of his fellow prisoner. Once the crowd spilled out into the passageway, they split off, running in different directions like skittish pricklers—even the child disappeared around a corner. Rowan saw a fearful man still nearby and reached out to him.
“Hey, we should stick together, don’t you think?”
The man responded briskly, “No. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
He turned away from Rowan’s hand as quickly as he spoke, running down the passageway.
“Wait,” Rowan called out to no response.
He wasn’t sure if the situation was as clear-cut as Mogrim made it seem, though he doubted it. Nothing about the situation made him feel like he was better off alone, though. Rowan shook his head of the thoughts buzzing about, jogging in the direction of the flighty gentleman. He heard the man scream briefly and figured he might be able to catch him after all. Rowan called out as he rounded the corner he’d watched the man take.
“Hey, I really think we—”
The man reached an arm out to Rowan, his face drenched in anguish as his lower torso was in the maw of some monstrosity. The creature was—no, this wasn’t the time for observations.
“Hang on,” Rowan said, sprinting towards the man.
The man tried to speak to Rowan, likely looking to stress the immediacy by which he needed to be saved, but the words couldn’t spill out: there was too much blood looking to leave his mouth first. The man’s body slowly slid down the beast’s gullet, a wet and low gulping sound making Rowan’s hairs stand on end as he leapt towards the man’s hand. Rowan planted his feet as they caught the ground again, grasping for the man’s hand: it had gone limp, but Rowan held on tightly just the same.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
Rowan repeated this phrase as he attempted to dig his feet into the ground, pulling at the man, begging Law for his father’s might. Rowan continued to attempt to calm the panicked man, his eyes clenched tight, his body shaking with fear as a wet squelch instinctively opened Rowan’s eyes again. Though he tried to look away from the horror on display, his eyes could do nothing but take it all in.
The creature was mouth and arms: nothing else. The ‘body’ was a series of arms varying in color, shape, size, and finger quantity. The larger arms served as the creature’s means of locomotion and stability, whereas the smaller ones seemed to exist solely to shovel whatever they got ahold of towards the gaping gob at the center of the thing. A traditional mouth would have been terrifying enough, but no, it was just more appendages grabbing and clawing at whatever made contact. The grabbers in the mouth were notably smaller and more claw-like. The squelching sound that caught Rowan’s attention was the sound of the man being pulled too far into the mouth, the small grabbers gripping his belly, mechanically rending his flesh and disseminating the chunks of meat to other hands out of reach of the source. They weren’t even eating it—there wasn’t a digestive system at all as far as Rowan could tell. Rowan quivered as he felt his grip naturally release on the man’s limp hand.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Rowan persisted in his apologies as he felt his feet carrying him away from the monster. He hadn’t a clue where he was going, had no idea what he ought to do next, and didn’t even have his eyes open as he ran. The fear gripping his heart was tighter than his own on the man’s hand.
