Zoe trudged through the labyrinth with the slumped shoulders of a prisoner. Her ten chains wrapped around her torso, a weight she could only bear with her Might, and though the chains twitched, they remained docile. Unresponsive.

The chain around her neck ran behind her like a leash and connected to the chain of the being called Princh.

“Turn right,” Princh said. “Then straight ahead.”

Princh acted as though the leash between them was perfectly natural. She was around the same height as Zoe, and of a slighter build, though her dark green fur gave the appearance of extra bulk. A faint scent — like a dog in saltwater — rose from her sleek coat. The aroma followed Zoe as they navigated the twisting reality of the ruins.

Zoe kept looking for landmarks, but there were none. Scavengers or decay stripped the rooms long ago. She didn’t understand how she got so twisted around. After a day of careful travel, she ended up back where she camped the night before. Her sense of geography wasn’t bad, so she blamed magic.

Which, lately, seemed to be the leading cause of problems in her life.

“What are your plans for me?” Zoe asked.

“We still need to straighten out the details.”

“You must have been dropped here same as me,” Zoe looked over her shoulder. “So why don’t we —”

The chain around her neck tightened. She stumbled. Gasping. She commanded the chain to release her, but couldn’t pierce Princh’s control. Her knees trembled. The weight around her torso dragged her down, but she refused to fall. Princh arched a wispy eyebrow at Zoe’s defiance.

“Think you’re tough enough to call the shots?” Princh smiled. “Right now you have two little bags inside your chest that desperately need air. You have a Vitality of, what?” she squinted. “Twenty, twenty-five? No, twenty. So, it’ll burn, but you won’t lose consciousness for a few minutes. When you do — if you continue to lack air — then you’ll die. All I’m doing is using one chain. The Black Star system saw fit to grant you eleven, but you can’t even use them.”

Zoe glared. Clawed at the chains. Minutes ticked by as she tried to breathe, to speak, but only a squeaking sound left her scared lips as the last traces of air left her lungs. Her vision dimmed, swayed, but she remained conscious. Advanced Vitality created torture instead of knocking her unconscious.

Her knees gave out, but she did not fall. The chain around her neck held her upright. Princh smiled as she raised the chain until Zoe’s toes hung above the ancient tile.

“You are a prisoner,” she said. “And every prisoner has a warden.”

The chain released Zoe, and she collapsed onto the ground. She lay there, limp and gasping like a fish. Princh squatted beside Zoe, the chain stroking the welts around Zoe’s neck.

“As a prisoner, you have one choice: do what we say. Understand?”

Zoe sucked down air. It hurt to breathe. She nodded, and Princh smiled.

“Glad we came to this arrangement.”

Zoe gripped her Skein.

[Skein 97/117]

She boosted her Might.

[Skein 47/117]

[Might 36 (86)]

Her first drove through the air. Tiles shattered under her feet as she twisted upright. Silver knuckles hard as bullets.

Princh was gone.

Zoe swung through empty air. Princh stepped close beside her. Zoe tried to spin, but her momentum drove her fist into the stone wall. Dust exploded out as her arm was buried up to her elbow. Zoe tugged, squinting against the dust. Something moved in her peripheral vision. She tore her arm free. Spun.

Nothing.

Where was Princh? Zoe turned. Saw nothing, heard nothing.

“Tell me something?” Princh’s hoarse whisper came right beside Zoe’s ear. Zoe’s eyes widened. She kicked to the side. Her foot shattered the wall, but the whisper continued. “Why do you Might-based builds always think you can punch your way out of any problem?”

Zoe leaped away, turning to face the source of the voice, and saw nothing. A fist crashed into the back of her head.

The ground hit her cheeks. She blinked. The damaged wall collapsed in a crash of ancient stone and pale dust. She blinked. Where was Princh? She blinked.

Darkness.

###

Wood creaked as water lapped against stone. A smell of dust and silt, a dry wind blowing cool air, a rough hand upon her shoulder.

Someone shook Zoe awake.

She jerked up, fist forming, but chains dragged her back down.

Zoe turned her head, the only part of her body not chained to the heavy blocks of masonry forming the floor of the crude dock. The river flowed out from under the dock — which must be part of the ruins — and continued winding out through the dunes. It grew wider in the distance, as other rivers trickled in and fed its girth. Sickly trees resembling palms grew along the banks. White birdlike animals flittered through the scant shade.

“There’s no escape.”

Princh leaned in the corner smoking from a lapis lazuli pipe. Hazy black smoke dribbled over the bowl and fell toward the sandy floor.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Being a fighter is only admirable if you can fight,” black smoke cascaded from her nostrils. “Which you can’t. At all. Honestly, how did you even reach the dungeon boss?”

“Leave her alone, Princh,” said a high, but tired voice.

Zoe tried to move, but the chains around her wrists and ankles were intertwined with the chains tethered to her spine. Princh had fused Zoe to her shackles and wrapped them through holes in the masonry. Unless she wanted to shift tons of ancient rock, Zoe couldn’t move. Even if she strained, she had no doubts Princh would subdue her again.

One night long ago, the police locked Zoe in the drunk tank of a county jail. That same sense of helpless claustrophobia swept over her now. She exhaled through her nostrils and tried to maintain a calm exterior.

The other speaker moved into view.

“I’m Oriz, by the way.”

An androgynous human with high cheekbones, long corn-colored hair, and eyes like dirty honey. Her skin a subtle grey, as though she had poor circulation. A long indigo gown swept a pattern in the sandy floor.

Zoe stared.

“You look like the dungeon boss…”

Oriz shrugged as she tied her hair into a bun.

“Are we your first aliens?” she grinned. “We don’t all look alike.”

“No…” Zoe shook her head. “I didn’t mean…”

“I’m joking. The Crimson Armada system created the Mirrobell dungeon from memories of my world. The dungeon boss is called Zazzatha. He’s the same race as me, but he died a thousand years before I was born. He was a ruthless priest who drowned his congregation for power and —”

“The dungeon is his punishment?”

“Well, it is called a dungeon… oh, you really don’t know how anything works do you? Let me guess. You heard a voice in your head and then everything fell apart? Too slow to join the tutorial? Barely survived horrific encounter after horrific encounter until you, what? Stumbled into a dungeon?”

She frowned and looked at Princh, who shrugged.

“It’s what makes sense to me,” Princh said. “Doesn’t explain why she’s alive, but it explains why she integrated a damned dungeon quest item.”

“It gave more attributes,” Zoe mumbled.

They both stared at her. Princh tittered. Oriz laughed. Zoe blushed, and they both guffawed until Princh coughed and heaved up thick black spittle.

“Don’t make me laugh when I’m smoking,” she hawked a dark glob into the river. “No wonder you got those burns on your lips. Pure gluttony. You swallow every little trinket you come across?”

“No!”

“Then how do you explain the gilded parasite swimming through your guts?”

Zoe’s eyes widened. Her stomach itched. Had it always itched, or was she only noticing it now? Were they messing with her?

She glared at Princh as the green woman wiped spittle from the hairs around her chin.

“You’re messing with me,” Zoe said.

“Nope.”

Princh squinted as she drew from her pipe. Aura rippled across Zoe’s skin as Princh flexed her Willpower and accessed her system. With a flicking gesture, Zoe received a prompt.

[Eyes Of The Healer]

[User can observe the hidden interactions of essence and flesh. At higher levels, the user can share these observations with others.]

Zoe blinked away a sensation of dust in her eye, but was distracted by something moving inside her guts.

She looked down with dread.

Her clothes, her flesh, became translucent. Through clear skin, she saw veins, muscular fiber, organs breaking down her scant meals of the last few days.

A half-dome surrounded her heart. Metallic tissue, the physical manifestation of her technique [Our Hearts Toll As One]. And throughout her body, long threads of glinting metal, of reflective mirror, interwove themselves with her mundane anatomy. This essence shone in stark contrast to the gunk of normal flesh. It took her breath away, to see Skein glowing, folding in upon itself, and passing through her cells like a billion threads through the eyes of a billion needles.

Amongst the wonders of her body, something malignant stirred. A gigantic golden worm slithered through her bowels. Foul aura leaked from its oily skin. A foot long, thick as a garden hose, nosing through the passageways of her intestines. Tendrils and antennae bristled its head like a prawn mated with a catfish. These whiskery feelers tickled Zoe’s insides. She bucked, horrified, trying in a futile effort to move herself away from what squirmed inside her. The chains clanked in mockery as they shackled her to the floor.

The worm stopped moving, and turned two dull white eyes towards her, as though it could see her through her skin. Zoe saw the bile rising from her stomach toward her throat.

“Get it out of me!”

“No.”

Princh waved her hand, and the technique canceled. Zoe stared down at the tattered shirt covering her stomach. Her skin once more dark brown and opaque. The feeling of gilded whiskers persisted as a shiver-inducing memory.

“Please, remove it,” Zoe said. “I’ll do anything.”

“If you didn’t want it inside yourself, then you shouldn’t have eaten the cursed item. What was it, anyway?”

Zoe wracked her brain. Did she even remember? Wait…

“It was Zazzatha’s earring… I bit his ear before he threw me down the shaft.”

“Why would you do that?” Oriz asked.

“He was going to kill me… why wouldn’t I?”

Oriz and Princh exchanged another glance.

“Eh?” Oriz gestured toward Zoe.

“Fine,” Princh said. “I like her,” she pinched her fingers a quarter apart. “This much.”

“It’s enough.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!”

Oriz crouched beside Zoe.

“Two things,” she said as she fished in a worn leather satchel. “One: both of us could kill you without trying. We’re not even combat builds, by the way, you’re just that low of a level. So, some respect is in order, lest we rip out your tongue and use you for our purposes anyway,” her yellow eyes crinkled as she smiled. “And before you think about it, yes, there are ways of injuring someone that even Vitality won’t fix. The scars on your lips are a testament to that.” She produced a cork-stoppered vial of a rich red liquid. “And two: we really aren’t that bad, just desperate. How desperate? Desperate enough to put our fates into the hands of a complete and utter stranger. Not just a stranger, but someone who doesn’t even understand the most basic principles of the system that has blessed them.” She pulled the cork from the vial. “Try to see things from our point of view, yeah? Have a little empathy? It will make everything much easier.”

It felt outrageous that Oriz preached empathy while Zoe lay chained to the floor, but instead of ranting, Zoe focused on the question at hand.

“What’s in that vial?”

Oriz held the vial above Zoe’s face.

“This is a healing potion,” she said. “It will fix your eye and any other scrapes and bruises. We need you in peak condition if you’re going to row us back to the tavern.”

A spicy aroma wafted from the narrow vial.

“Will it remove the worm?”

Oriz glanced at Princh, who shook her head.

“Sorry,” Oriz grimaced. “We’ll help you with the parasite later. Why don’t you think of your little passenger as self-inflicted leverage? Now,” she waggled the vial. “Open up?”

“How do I know it’s not poison?”

“Why waste poison on someone chained to the floor?”

Zoe sighed.

“Fine.”

She opened her scarred lips, and Oriz tilted the vial. A thick droplet beaded the rim, before plummeting through the air like a piece of lead. It struck Zoe’s tongue with an explosion of spice, rich umami, and sickening diesel. It tasted like a bloody mary made with salsa and methanol. The drop slid down her throat of its own accord, and a single tear left her eye as she remembered the drink she shared with Bella.

She hoped she would see her companions again, and soon, but the hope was small, and feeble in the face of the nightmare entrapping her.