“Well, we only have one way to go. How the hel are we going to do this?” Tin said, folding her beefy arms.

“Let me think for a moment.” Ein sat down with a weary sigh before drinking from a canteen.

Zia sat quietly in a corner behind the rest of the group, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth. Jav settled near Ein, followed by Tin, and pulled out a small spyglass. He stared down the length of the room as Tin shined a torch that way. His frown deepened with each passing second.

The spyglass was a precious tool he’d found years ago in a factorium. Beyond its intended purpose, it could glimpse electronic sensors, invisible tripwires, and several forms of energy. It had saved their lives more times than they could count.

Minutes crawled by as dread grew within Ein. He couldn’t see any way through the room without dying in the first minute. He glanced at Jav and nudged him.

Jav kept staring through the spyglass but said, “Not good, Ein. Some of these energy spots are too erratic, too hard to pin down.”

“By the thirteenth…any one else have suggestions?” Ein muttered, looking around the group.

Silence hung heavy until Zia scampered over to Ein and pointed at his pouches. “Give me a few crystals.”

He hesitated, but something in her flat eyes made him hand several over. He had to fight down a shout as Zia strode onto the tiles. He reached for her but grabbed only empty air.

The group watched, shocked, as white light radiated from both her hands. The crystals’ inner light leeched away, seeping into her skin. Ein let his arm drop, beady eyes wide, his open mouth hidden behind his unkempt beard.

“Hurry up guys! Only step on the tiles I step on, and move how I move,” Zia called back, her eyes suddenly bright, an uncharacteristic grin spreading across her face.

They shared a look but didn’t question it. Ein followed her, gingerly stepping on the tiles behind Zia. Surprisingly, he wasn’t immediately eviscerated, filled with darts, spears, or arrows, or made to inhale caustic clouds of searing chemicals.

And so it went. Minutes dragged by agonizingly slowly, their feet hitting steel tiles and nervous breathing the only sounds. Ein found himself oddly calm, utterly trusting Zia for reasons he couldn’t explain. Tin looked nervous but mostly collected, while sweat ran down Jav’s face as he occasionally muttered and jerked at the plethora of shadows writhing around their torches and Ein’s crystal sword.

Sometimes they bounded over stretches of tiles or wove in odd patterns, like some macabre dance. Rarely they ducked under or over invisible tripwires and triggers, or waited for electronic ones on staggered timers. But even after a full hour, not one trap activated.

A soft click sounded behind him, where Jav stood.

The group froze. Ein twisted around slowly, eyes cast downward. Jav’s right foot pressed down on a tile to the right of the safe one.

Jav trembled and looked at his foot before gulping audibly. He met Ein’s eyes. Before he could speak, Ein sighed and held up a hand.

“It’s fine, Jav. No use in apologizing or getting upset over something like this. Just hold still for a moment,” Ein rumbled.

He turned to the wide-eyed Zia and said, “There’s no telling what happens when he lifts his foot. I need you to focus on leading us, as fast as you can.”

Ein nodded to her, then craned his neck to nod at Jav and Tin behind him. He gestured, and Zia hastily continued. Tin stopped near Ein as he twisted to face Jav, before pulling him forward and pushing him after Zia.

Nothing happened in the moments that followed, and Ein let out a—

A slight tremor ran through the hallway. Ein forced himself to focus on following the group, but as the tremors grew closer, he turned and held up his softly glowing sword. Finding it inadequate, he pulled out a torch, flicking it on and shining it back the way they’d come.

Ein carefully followed the group, peering behind him to memorize the pattern of safe tiles. When he looked ahead again, there it was.

It was indistinct, swathed in impenetrable shadows—no, not shadows, but black vapor leaking from its twisted, bulky form. Ein didn’t wait for a clearer picture of the thing.

He turned and pounded after the group, ushering them forward as a metallic roar, overlaid by several bloodcurdling human voices, echoed through the hallway. That chilled his blood and sent adrenaline pulsing through him, his body expecting a deadly fight. Ein—

Something cold, metallic, and hard slammed against his left leg. He cursed as it pulled his leg from under him, catching sight of a twisted, three-fingered hand of steel and claw.

He floundered as it pulled him backward, into shadows and towards that metallic roaring. He twisted, managing to get on his back and take a few blind swings with his sword. The last swing connected, shearing through a metal tendril with an explosion of sparks, flame, and acrid black vapor.

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He shot up to his feet, wincing at the shallow cuts on his left leg. Seeing Tin rush toward him, he shouted, “Go! Don’t stop until you’re out of this hallway!”

Tin hesitated, then thought better of it as the roaring, metallic screeching, and tremors grew closer. She nodded to him before tossing him a bottle of cryo, then running off. He caught the bottle, then closed his weary eyes for a moment.

He opened them and turned as he slammed his sword into the ground, where it easily slid a few inches into the steel tile. He retrieved a small crystal from his pouches, then glanced to the right, where his torch lay, casting a beam of light towards the approaching thing. When it was thirty or so feet away, parts of it stepped into the light.

What fresh hel is this? Ein thought, freezing for a second.

The squat thing lumbered forward on six spindly legs, a long tail thrashing behind it. Its torso was a dozen paces long and nearly thrice as thick as Ein, and he took an involuntary step back as he made out more details.

Compared to the mechanical demons, this looked unfinished and rough. Metal plates coated its frame, though gears, wires, and other odd things were visible through countless gaps and cracks. Black vapor—acrid but definitely not normal smoke—leaked from every crevice as it moved forward. The rest—

Ein fought down bile and shoved the crystal into the half-forgotten jar of cryo.

The rest of the cyborg sickened him. Atop the mechanical frame’s shoulders were two sorry-looking human heads, mere inches apart. Mechanical devices were bolted into their skulls, wires and tubing embedded into their stretched-thin skin. Blood and black sludge flowed from their orifices, and both of their eyes were replaced by glowing red orbs. One head was missing their lower jaw, a metallic set of mandibles sitting in its place.

His eyes traveled down as he tensed, ready to throw the bottle. The two humans’ bodies—their shoulders, torsos, and limbs—were grotesquely split and stretched over the mechanical frame, as if they were skinned and laid messily on top of it. It only covered around half of the frame, skin and bone stretching across most of the torso and some of the legs. Hundreds of tiny bolts and devices kept the skin in place, and Ein shuddered as he noted a dozen red-hot pipes piercing the skin on the cyborg’s back.

He finally noticed the two odd tendrils mounted on its shoulders as the undamaged one slithered forward, like a snake tasting the air for its prey. He threw the cryo bomb—just as the immense cyborg rushed forward, both shoulder tendrils whipping toward him.

Ein ripped his sword free, then barely ducked under the damaged tendril. He slashed at the other, sending the clawed hand flying in a shower of sparks. The cyborg bellowed, a terrible symphony of machine and humans gone mad.

The cryo bomb smashed against one shoulder and leg, making azure crystals crackle into existence, growing along its body rapidly. Even as they continued to grow, the cyborg closed in on him. In the back of his mind, he realized that it set off no traps.

Before he could turn tail and run, it flung itself forward, slamming into him. For a moment, he was just inches away from the twisted, screaming human heads—then he struck at its left arm as it moved to curl around him. The sword tore a gash in the metal, revealing more wires and actuators, starting a fire beneath the metal plates.

He let the thing’s momentum send him stumbling backward. He rolled, then pushed himself back up. Ein cursed as the cyborg was there, bringing down a crystal-covered leg on his head, claws spread wide. He narrowly avoided it as he stepped back, hoping he wouldn’t set off any traps.

The spindly, flexible limb crashed against the tiles, then shattered, crystals and bits of metal peppering Ein. He threw himself forward while it screeched in rage, sword held high overhead.

With a hiss and a spray of blood and black liquid, he sliced through the head with mandibles.

That seemed to send the cyborg reeling. It thrashed and fell to the ground, tendrils and legs nearly hitting Ein. He wasted no time—he turned and ran.

He didn’t slow or pause as he started setting off traps every other step. A needlessly long spear passed in front of his face. He barreled through a flurry of needle-thin darts, several peppering his right arm. The cyborg was content to stay behind, judging by the screams and lack of tremors.

He cursed as he barely leapt over a sudden bolt of lightning that flickered into existence, then avoided a stream of blue flame that singed his wild hair. The traps kept coming—a suddenly collapsing section of ceiling, two pitfalls, a caustic jet of vapor, a series of explosions, spikes erupting from the floor, even wall panels that slid open to let wraiths stagger for him.

He could see the tiny exit to these cursed halls, just a few dozen feet away—he could see Zia hovering inside the next room, Tin and Jav waving to him frantically.

Aside from traps, two wraiths stood in his way. Though he was battered, exhausted and numb, he hefted his jagged crystal sword in two hands and let the monsters advance. They were almost amusing, compared to the cyborg he’d just faced.

The wraiths were humans previously—until they’d met an untimely end and gotten thrown into some wraith generators. They were bloody and broken, clearly having died months ago, but their bodies didn’t appear to decay like they should. Pulsing, deep crimson veins spread just beneath the surface of their skin, and their eyes were unseeing and blank, lit dimly by a crimson glow.

The following moments were a blur of gnashing teeth, weak sword blows, and pain. Wraiths may be relatively slow and less deadly than some beings in Hel, but they had an insatiable hunger and inhuman strength. He skewered the wraith coming at him from the right, kicking the bowling thing away, then staggered back as the other one slammed into him from the left, with near bone-shattering force.

His staggering made him set off another trap, and he ducked as metal disks of steel blurred through the air right above him. When he looked up, both wraiths lay sliced to pieces on the floor—though they still moved, even as pulsing crimson liquid leaked from their neatly partitioned corpses.

Ein steadied himself as he wobbled a bit. He took a breath, then dashed for the exit. Somehow he only set off several fire and dart traps—then he burst through the exit, panting and out of breath.

He glanced up at a soft screech. Tin was closing and securing a sliding door—an uncommon feature to any room they stumbled across. It didn’t make him feel any safer.

The room was large, circular, and devoid of features. Sterile, with almost seamless wall and ceiling panels. A massive spiraling stairwell sat in the center of the room, descending into darkness.

“You had us worried for a second!” Tin laughed, clearly relieved.

“What’s a few cyborgs, traps, and wraiths, eh?” Ein muttered, sinking down against a wall.

Jav blanched, looked at the barred door, then said, “Cyborg? And you only walked away half-dead?” He shook his head. “You’re either insane or immortal.”

Zia crept forward and stared at his numerous wounds with wide eyes before saying, “Let me tend to them, you can’t keep putting it off. It’s the least I can do—they’re all from protecting us.”

For once, Ein didn’t argue that it was a waste of time—mostly because he slumped back against the wall, and passed out.