She’d long since stopped caring about what was even happening around her, or trying to understand it. There were no shrill screams, no chittering, no wriggling horrors trying to eat her piece by piece, and so, she just… sat there, and waited. Wherever ‘there’ was.

She couldn’t really say she was resting, however.

It wasn’t just the pain nor the slowly encroaching feeling of wrongness in her body, it was the start-stop nature of her rest that left her feeling like she was slowly detaching from reality.

Every time she woke up and fell asleep, it felt like there was no transition period, moving seamlessly from one to the other, in increments so small she barely had time to process whether she was dreaming or back into the land of the wakeful. Three minutes of dreams that were a mixture of bizarre concoctions of her subconscious and simple replays of her memories, two minutes of hazy, but real sensations, then back again.

And as this continued, she started losing that distinction. She no longer ‘slept’ or ‘woke up’, it was a chaotic jumble of awareness that took her from talking to a faceless acquaintance, and back to a damp, foul smelling tube of iron where she’d absent-mindedly pet blood-soaked fur until her mind took her away again.

So she indulged herself, in sight, sound, whether it was real or a melting fragment of her memories, it didn’t matter.

That withheld thought of the System tickled at her mind constantly, but she ignored it. Some weak, withered part of her screamed at her to keep going, to keep moving.

And she heard that too, she just didn’t listen.

The metaphorical limbo she found herself in had many layers, and she was slowly being torn between them.

To struggle or give up, reality or a dream.

The more the cycle continued, the more discontent she felt, her dreams going from comprehensible, to memories, to a mess of impossibilities, and back.

And as she used that thin sliver of awareness that came with being ‘awake’ to think back on her life, she couldn’t help but think it was…

Meaningless.

Empty faces, inflectionless voices that spoke but said nothing. Dozens of connections thin as strings, snapping under the weight of a gaze full of scrutiny, all but one. Buildings of brass, brick, burnished bronze and glass, foods that were more of a social statement than nutrition. Clothes that hurt to breathe in, that choked her in the stifling heat of summer.

A life of slavery.

Should any real slave hear that thought that whispered in her ears, she knew they’d snap her neck out of rage, and they’d be justified. Maybe that was just her highborn status that prevented her from seeing just how vast the difference between the two scenarios was.

But exchanging a golden birdcage for a dress of rusted chains didn’t hold any real significance to her, even if it did to other people. Whether it was nobility rocking her cage and poking their fingers between the bars, or a sleazy bastard like Ghar yanking at her leash, what was the difference beyond the conditions?

Powerless in one and powerless in the other, unable to do what she really wanted.

Not that it mattered. She was probably going to die like this.

Forgotten in a rusty pipe.

The hazy call to let her mind fade away grew more insistent, and she indulged it, letting her twisting mind take her hand and drag her through the labyrinth it had crafted.

She glanced at her ‘teammates’ as they strolled back to the Guild, her steps slowing. She quickly dug out a bronze crown, bending down to offer it to the skeletal child with a wooden cup sitting by his legs.

He didn’t react whatsoever, and after another quick glance at her ‘team’, she simply put it into the kid’s empty cup.

Still no reaction, his head hanging down. Her heart ached at how exhausted the poor kid must be. But she had also learned of how cruel life was on the third floor, so she shook him from his shoulder to wake him up, just so the kid wouldn’t have his money taken by some random passerby.

“Hey, kid?” She whispered with a small, friendly smile, expecting him to startle awake. He didn’t react, completely limp, his head swinging in time with her movements.

He was... too limp.

She lowered her hand to touch his arm-

And it was ice cold.

She jerked her hand back, eyes wide.

As if in slow motion, he fell sideways, his rough, dirty rags scraping against the wall as if they were made of wood.

Two empty, lifeless eyes stared at her boots.

She jumped to her feet, staggering back, hyperventilating. The world swam like paint dissolving into water.

A slap that almost threw her to the floor snapped her out of it. Ghar’s scowling face blurred into sight, his fist bunching into her robes and dragging her away.

Some part of her understood, acknowledged it, yet another refused to accept it. She hastily wiped the tears out of her eyes and started to turn her head around.

She knew that she would turn and find a shivering kid, staring in wonder at the bronze crown, and he would flash her a thankful grin, full of childlike innocence in the hellish pit that was this place, and everything would be normal.

But all she saw was someone bending down to take the coin before continuing on their way, not even sparing the corpse a second glance.

She stared at the coins in her hand. Furious green eyes flashed up to glare at a faceless man, only vague outlines of his features showing.

“What the hell is this?”

“Payment.” He shrugged, a smug, shit eating grin on his face. It somehow felt much more sincere than his friendly, charming smile, and she cursed herself for not seeing it before.

She grit her teeth, nostrils flaring.

“This is one bronze coin. The payment for the job was one silver. You said we all take an equal cut.”

“Yeah. I did. Never signed anythin’ though, did I? You did.” He shrugged again, gesturing with his chin at the book hanging off her hip.

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Her shaking hand clutched the coin in her palm as she closed her eyes, a hissing breath of fury leaving her. She wouldn’t be able to pay off the debt. She’d become a slave, to them, of all people. How could she have been so stupid? Of course this happened. Why did she assume the best of people?

She opened her eyes to a room of opulence. Her all-too-familiar cage, drowned in the pale orange of dusk as a silken pillow cradled her head. A knock on the door shook her out of her restless thoughts.

“My lady?” A shaky whisper came from the door, and her eyes widened. She knew what that tone meant. She dreaded when the time would come for her to hear it again.

She launched herself out of the bed, uncaring of her covers hitting the floor, and she almost joined them in her haste to throw herself at the door.

She swung it open, and her eyes widened in horror.

Her sight blurred with tears.

“Oh god, Katherine…” She croaked out, her eyes tracing the black mess of bruises that covered half her friend’s face.

“It’s not your fault.” Her friend, maid, and shield said in a whisper full of conviction, her features showing more pain for Emhreeil than herself.

She choked down a sob as she ushered her in, and forced her still-bleeding form to sit onto her bed, dragging out a chest of medical supplies out of her closet, her tears almost choking her as she applied the healing paste on the whip marks covering her friend’s backside.

“It’s not your fault, Emhreeil.” Katherine would whisper, each repetition as painful as a shard of glass being driven into her chest.

Because repeating something didn’t make it true. It simply made the words lose all meaning.

Despite her protests, she didn’t let Katherine lift a finger that night, and long after she’d fallen asleep on her bed, face down and having difficulty breathing right, she could only stare at her friend’s injuries in horror and dig her nails into her scalp until she felt the warm trickle of blood marr her fingers and stain her auburn hair.

Her parents had seen how close she’d gotten to her maid. So why waste money on healing Emhreeil from her beatings for public appearances when they could instead use her maid as a punching bag?

Every mistake was a slap, every month’s end that she didn’t unlock the Skills and Paths her parents wanted her to get was another night that Katherine spent tied to a wooden post, whipped until she could barely walk.

She hated her family. She hated them so much. She wanted to put them in a cage, cover them in midnight oil and burn them to a crisp, inhale their exhumed flesh as they begged and screamed and burned.

She needed an outlet for her anger, so she simply stood in silence, hands clutching her hair as she imagined her family dying in all the most horrific ways she could imagine, even if she knew she’d never have the guts or conviction to ever do such things to anyone.

She blinked.

She stood opposite to her maid, a bittersweet tang in her heart as she cast a low power [Sparkburst] to light her papers of ownership on fire.

“You’re free.” She whispered to her friend, with a smile full of happy tears.

Katherine just stared wide-eyed, stunned, at the fading embers of her shackles as they flew off into the afternoon breeze, the orange motes of light reflecting in her brown eyes. The bag she’d given her fell from her limp fingers, the clinking of coins impossibly loud in the quiet, disbelieving silence.

“And… so am I. I’m sorry for everything. You deserve b-better. You always did. A-A better friend. Someone who had more spine, who could… prevent the scars on your back. Someone who would have done this sooner. I-I’m sorry. Goodbye.” She eked out, her voice warbly and her heart torn between feeling joy and agony.

She turned away, walking towards the Dungeon, praying to gods she didn’t believe in for Katherine to find and lead a happy life, away from her. A life free, away from someone as worthless as she, as powerless, as cowardly, as passive, as defeatist, and a million other insults that all rang true.

Some deep, selfish part of her wished that Katherine would stop her, demanding that she come with her. Tell her that she still wished to come with her, to brave the wonders and horrors of the Dungeon with her.

But that never came, and she held the fragments of her heart in place until she booked a room and cried into a pillow for a day straight.

A shove against her uninjured shoulder startled her awake from her half-sleep, and she tensed for a moment, until the breathing of the beast reminded her of reality.

It chuffed, and poked her again, albeit with less force.

She resumed petting its bloody hide, and it grumbled before going still, whatever she’d been doing to disturb it assumedly having been dealt with.

Her mind wandered back to the strangely clear memories her mind confronted her with.

And in them, she found a spark.

Albeit she kept the emotion buried for the most part, she knew she had an abundance in self-loathing. She hated how easily she gave up in the face of adversity, how easily she folded under social pressure. How easily she shied away from confrontation, how easily she let others trample over her and all she cared about, both because of mental and personal weakness.

She wanted to live, to change. To see her best and only friend just one more time. To enjoy a free life. To help whoever deserved it.

It was a vague outline of what she wanted but it was enough.

It was somehow telling of how pathetic she was, that the motivation, drive and determination to change her life, came when she was at the very brink of losing it, but she could work with it.

Despite those bold words however, her mind and body were still battered, and her awareness quickly grew hazy and forgetful, fading away as her fingers grew still in the beast’s fur.

Her last conscious thought as she was whisked away into another dream, buried under a hundred unpleasant emotions and sensations, was that she was probably dying from infection and starvation and that’s why she couldn’t stay awake despite the pain.

That was actually funny, for some godforsaken reason. She snickered as she was swept into another dream.