Isca threw one arm around Gwil’s neck and the other around Cort’s waist and pulled them in for a hug.

“You guys are monsters!” she yelled. “Look how many of them you killed.”

She released them and buried her face in her hands. A layer of grime painted over her tattoos. “It’s really happening.”

“Isca,” Cort said. “Get it together. We’re not even close to done.”

She set her jaw. “I know. But this is enough. Even if we fail, it’ll be done. If there’s no other way, this place will die with all of us.”

“Stop talking like that,” Gwil said. “Everyone is gonna go free.”

Cort muttered something.

“I mean it,” Gwil said. “I’ll die before I let a single person die.”

Cort threw his hands up. “That doesn’t even– gah!”

Isca glared at Gwil. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. I swear. Not one death.”

Isca shook her head and then looked down at her arm, tracing her finger along her wrist.

“You’ll see,” Gwil said.

All around them, chains were breaking. Pickaxe-wielding prisoners were going around, cutting the shackles from their fellows.

Like wolves on the scent, one hundred haggard, twisted humans looked up at the stone sky, wondering if it could break.

The iron balls, carried in the hands of their former bearers, were being placed in a pile. It grew and grew.

And then it began to rain dust and shards of rock. The ground and the walls were shaking.

Panic ripped through the prisoners, choking away the invigoration that had only just swelled.

An awful, grinding squeal emanated from the enormous metal door.

Gwil raised his fists in the air. “It’s the drill!”

Cort smacked him on the back of the head, then muttered, “That door is thicker than hell. We have time.” He raised his voice. “Listen up! This ain’t gonna be no picnic. If you can’t fight, go hide in that pit.” He pointed toward the end of the cavern opposite the door.

Isca threw herself into the throng. She was shouting, but her voice was lost in the uproar.

Gwil gaped. No one moved.

Isca was trying to help the ones who could barely stand, but they were fighting her off. Skeletal, ancient, infected—they refused to move away.

“Hey!” Cort yelled. “Don’t be getting yourself killed if you can’t-”

Gwil elbowed him in the ribs. “Don’t you see?”

“It only makes things harder for everyone if we gotta protect people who can’t even walk,” Cort said.

“You can’t take that away,” Gwil said.

One hundred men and women remained where they were, all on their feet. Unshackled.

“Fucking hell,” Cort grumbled. “Wanting something doesn’t make it real.” He raised his voice. “Fine! If you’re gonna give yourselves to this madness, I better not see anyone get left behind!”

The tense whining of the drill crescendoed. The tip ripped through the door.

Gwil sprinted for the door.

A raging stampede fell in behind him.

“No! Dammit, wait!” Cort yelled.

***

Something was obviously amiss within the prison. Brock carried them through a long, cavernous tunnel. The Talus had begun shivering when they entered, making for a bumpy ride.

The tunnel was empty, and eerie for it. Occasional sharp echoes were the only sign of activity.

“The officers in charge of this prison have committed a most severe transgression,” Ansoir said. “They must be punished.”

Leira was trying to map out the myriad paths that branched off this passageway when she realized Ansoir was waiting for her to respond.

“What’s that?” she muttered.

“There should be a welcoming party for myself and my betrothed!”

Leira sighed. She took one of Ansoir’s hands in both of hers, looked him in the eyes, leaned in close and said, “I can’t stand it anymore! Shut the fuck up, you insufferable, brainless twat!”

A pink cloud enveloped Ansoir’s face before he had the chance to process what she’d said. That was regrettable—he desperately needed to learn that he was a brainless twat.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Unconscious, he slumped across her lap. She shoved him away.

Brock had come to a halt. Leira clambered down and scurried away from the hulking Talus, preparing to bolt.

When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw Brock’s faceless head bowed to the ground, his boulder-shoulders hunched. He looked pathetic, like a stray dog in the rain.

Leira bit her lip, irritated at herself for stopping. “What’ll it be, Brock?” she spat.

Putrid brown spores oozed from the lotus. Her normal eye watered at the acidic fumes. It stank so bad that it trumped the smell of the Kaia. “I don’t want to, but I’ll melt you down if I have to.”

She couldn’t do that, of course—the acid wasn’t nearly strong enough. But she must’ve looked awfully scary, and Brock was probably dumb enough to take her at her word, because he was just a rock.

The Talus heaved his shoulders in an utterly defeated shrug. In the litter, Ansoir slumped in his chair, a string of drool pooling onto the other seat.

Something was happening further up the tunnel. Clangs and shouting voices, growing louder and more frequent.

“Your fucking master enslaved my friend,” Leira said. Brown beads of burning sap dripped down her cheek, scalding her skin. “Are you gonna try to stop me?”

The Talus shook his head.

“Run away, then,” Leira said. “Do whatever you want with Ansoir. I dunno if you give a shit about him or not.”

Again, Brock shook his head. And then he prostrated himself.

Leira quelled the spores. She hawked up a mouthful of rancid phlegm and spat it on the ground, where it sizzled. She wiped the sap from her cheeks.

“You’re gonna help me?”

Brock nodded.

“Fuck yeah. I didn’t think a rock could be so free-thinking. Get up, let’s go.”

Leira climbed back into the litter, heaved Ansoir over the back of the chair, dumping him down onto the floor. She wedged him behind the chairs so he wouldn’t fall out.

“Too bad you don’t know where we’re going,” Leira said. “Just keep going forward. And fast.”

Brock’s boulder legs spun up, and they plunged deeper into the mines. Ahead, it sounded like a full-blown riot.

Leira laughed. “I don’t think you know what you’re getting into. I was planning to just break my friend out and escape, but it sounds like he might’ve pushed things pretty far.”

In truth, she felt terrified, but it mixed well with her adrenaline.

Five days. It had been five days since she met Gwil. And they were striking against the Leviathan. Indirectly, but still. That was worthy of Ashkana.

Many footsteps, lots of shouting. Dozens of Podexian guards appeared out of the gloom up ahead.

“Oh shit! Run them over, Brock! Fuck them up!”

The Talus did no such thing. Instead, he went well out of his way to avoid crushing anyone, grinding the side of his body against the cave wall to clear space. Ansoir had said that his father believed the stone was peaceful.

Leira looked at the panicked soldiers as they rushed past each other. Oh, Gwil. What did you do?

***

The brunt of the drill had pierced the two-story-tall blast door. The metal was knotted up like a fistful of fabric. It groaned, crumpled, and then tore apart.

A huge shard exploded out, ripping through the air, spinning like a dervish.

On instinct, Gwil leapt straight upward, threw his hands out over his head and shoved the thing away. It crashed into one of the pits, harmless.

Gwil looked over his shoulder and saw ten ghost-pale prisoners who would’ve been eviscerated by the shard.

Grinning, he waved at the prisoners and noticed that two of his fingers got chopped off.

Close one. That could’ve been his promise to Isca broken, before they’d even started. He wasn’t sparring with Caris or messing with some dumb beasts. Anything could happen at any time. No messing around.

The drill lurched forward, chewing metal into jagged curls. It had penetrated the door—which was a meter thick—nearly to its base. A shredded gap had formed—an opening.

Gwil ran to meet the monstrous machine.

Everything within the cavern slowed and became distorted, swirling like a portrait. How strange, he thought as he hurled himself over a pit.

The drill’s whine was earsplitting. Vicious. Cone-shaped, longer than Gwil was tall, blurred by its speed, the whirling spike spitting bits of metal. Nirva was great and all, but that thing looked deadly serious. The vehicle itself was over a half-story tall.

Landing in front of it, Gwil realized he had no goddamn clue what to do. He only knew that he’d better hurry.

He threw himself at the door and climbed up, using its bracketing for footing. Maybe, maybe he could squeeze through that perilous sliver of space and stop them from the other side.

He shimmied closer to the gash, squinting against the metals shavings that were whipping through the air. The force of the drill vibrated in his bones.

A strip of metal tore away like cheese off a grater. It slashed him across the ribs.

Gwil’s eyes widened as a wave of blood poured down his front. Numb and breathless, he patted his hand against the mangled mess, unable to tell his flesh from his clothing.

It felt a bit like that first heartbeat after a paper cut, except that this was a gaping cavity of a wound.

His limbs went cold as his Nirva surged. He could feel it flowing away from his arms and legs, coalescing in his torso.

Shredded flesh turned into wriggling worms. The tissue looked like stretched out chewing gum as it reformed.

A terrible groan came from the door—it was at its limit.

Gwil peeled his eyes away from the bizarre happenings of his body and climbed up the door until he was level with the gash.

The group of prisoners that had followed him to the door were screaming their heads off. “Stop! No! Lunatic!” were some of the words he caught.

Gwil ignored them and craned his neck to see out. Flying bits of debris were slicing up his face.

There were some fifty Podexians on the other side, gathered behind the drill. They certainly hadn’t expected to see a head peeking through the door.

The problem was, one of the guards was a splicer with a frog’s tongue. And Gwil happened to be looking at that particular man when his tongue rolled out of his gaping mouth and stretched down to the floor.

Gwil lost his grip, flailed, had his hand obliterated by the drill, and then fell from near the top of the door.

He smacked down hard—flat on his back—and tried to scramble away, but his body wasn’t working. He could feel his Nirva sputtering around as if indecisive. Blood gushed from the end of his wrist. Ugh. That hand hadn’t even finished growing back yet.

The door caved inward, bulging on the brink of destruction. The drill was about to break all the way through. A big flap of scrap had gotten stuck on the drill turning it into a nightmarish propeller.

It happened slowly. Gwil saw the weaknesses in the door, like splotches of ethereal paint, little wounds in its fabric.

In a few seconds, Gwil would be turned into paste. He wasn’t gonna be healing through that. But he just couldn’t move. Dammit. Killed because of a tongue.

Hunched figures appeared around him. Hands grabbed him, started dragging him across the rugged ground. His vision was fading in and out. His head lolled, spurring nausea.

A group of prisoners crowded around him. Gwil heard fabric tearing, and then a woman grabbed his injured arm and held it up. They were trying to put on a makeshift bandage.

“My name’s Limmy,” she said shakily. “You’re gonna be fine.” It did not at all sound like she believed herself.

Gwil pulled away from them and sat up with some help. He held up his arm. A thin layer of flesh was forming around the jutting-out, splintered end of bone. With the way it writhed, it looked like a rotten, maggot-infested tree stump.

“Don’t worry! I’m fine!” Gwil grinned. “Thanks!”

The door was gone. The Podexians were coming through.