(TW: Depictions of slavery in this chapter. Nothing graphic shown)

Ethan felt himself tumbling into the white void of the Nerve Tower again. Only this time, he was ascending.

The dungeon rules had changed. He reminded himself that this was a Grade C. It wasn’t tangible enemies they were facing in here. It was their own minds. Their own comforts and their own fears. The last two Nervestalkers had been weak, but strong in magic and cunning. They were predators that used their prey’s insecurities and doubts against them.

And Ethan was beginning to see that to break their hold, he would need more than just brute strength or skills.

He’d have to trust in the minds of his companions.

Fauna? She’d surprised him. She’d seen through the illusion like the master Wildglance she was.

Klax? He could do it. He’d already experienced the allure of these creatures once before, and he’d pulled through. Ethan was certain he wouldn’t fall prey to their tricks again.

And Tara? He had nothing to worry about with her. Out of all of them, her mind was the strongest. She had a clearer sense of conviction and justification than all of them put together. She wouldn’t be fooled by some pantomime of her past. She wouldn’t submit to the whims of another.

Right?

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Yesterday, Cherri died.

The Master came with his hot iron rod to pierce her body to make sure she was gone. Her fur crisped and burned away, revealing the scarred flesh beneath.

Cherri had often spoken with her sisters, smiling and telling them that their fur could hide even the worst bruises and scratches. They were lucky to be born Minxit.

But when the Master dragged her body away yesterday, she was no longer smiling.

And when he turned his pink piggy face on his new prey, it seemed like he barely acknowledged the dead kitten that was still bleeding in his hands.

“Come along, pretty Tara. Your good Master will just have to make do with you today, won’t he?”

If she was a bad girl – if she fought back – she got the fire. Hot. Searing. Bright – so bright she had to close her eyes and try to stop from opening her mouth. She remembered how Lindle had screamed once and the fire had entered her body and burned up her guts. She remembered them falling out once Lindle was stripped open and fed to the master’s dogs.

She couldn’t remember what the world outside looked like. She sometimes got glimpses of it through the bars of her cage, or when her older sisters told stories to the other kittens of the delights out there in ‘ArGwhile’. She heard stories of ruby-red apples that didn’t burn when you ate them, of blue skies that didn’t bring ash that stained your cheeks.

Of hybrids like them who were free.

Her youngest sisters had tried running even when she told them not to. No one escaped the Master. Not for long. They always came back – in chains or in pieces. They always came back.

On her thirteenth year in the house of the Master, she was brought upstairs to the dining room. He clothed her. Fed her. Bathed her and cleaned out her ears – it was the most pleasure she’d felt in an age. She thought that, perhaps…

When she got to the dining room she knew otherwise. Dreams were for bad girls. She had to be good.

He paraded her in front of his guests, all men – all leering and sweating from the midday sun that streamed through the stained-glass windows of the mansion.

“Good Lord Baldrick – you always find the most supple little specimens,” one man said.

“Is she broken in?” asked another.

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“Naturally,” the Master replied, his bushy mustache wrinkling as he licked his lips. “I like to taste my sweetest plumbs.”

The men laughed at that. And their laughter was like a death knell ringing out for her life. Because she knew what was going to happen. She could already see it. She’d heard the screams from when her sisters had been used in the Master’s parties.

But they must have been bad girls, she told herself. She was good. She was always good. She’d always done what she was told.

So why was she here?

The collar strapped round her neck distracted her from her thoughts. She looked up at her Master with pliant, but pleading eyes. She mumbled. She begged. He didn’t listen.

First he stripped her and made her crawl around for the giggling guests, leading her by her leash round the dinner table. The men of the house howled with laughter. Some of them poured wine in her mouth and smacked her when she passed them. Others spat in her direction. She didn’t know why. Maybe just because they could.

But suddenly the atmosphere of frivolity changed.

The Master released her from his grip, and stared with flaring eyes at a slave-girl who had just been filling his guests goblets by the tableside.

On the cuff of his evening robe there was a stain. The slave-girl had just made a mistake she’d regret for the rest of her life.

“I-I’m S-s-sorry Master!” she cried, dropping to her knees in reproach. ‘I’m so-“

The sound of his fist cracking her cheekbones was felt throughout the entire mansion.

“Impudent little wretch!”

His fists came down on her again and again. Through it all, he blood-curdling screams echoed down the halls, alerting the other slaves who came running only to see that it was the Master’s discipline that brought such abject terror to the house. They promptly filed away when they realized what was happening.

Meanwhile, the serving-maid was on her side, fetal, her tail curled up between her legs as she tried to protect herself.

“I’ll teach you to disrespect me, wench!”

The guests said nothing. Tara looked at them, her eyes begging them to step in and stop this madness. No smiles wore they on their faces now. Instead, they went back to their eating, ignoring the uproar. To some of them, it was merely an inconvenience. To others, it was just a fact of life.

Something happened in her mind in that moment. It was what she’d refer to later as a turning point in the sad, agonizing story that had been her youth. All these years spent as the plaything of the Master, watching her sisters be used and dumped like ragdolls when they were no longer useful, hadn’t impelled her mind to action. She’d seen horrors worse than this maid being beaten today. She’d seen horrors the likes of which she couldn’t even express, and she’d done nothing.

But today, for reasons she couldn’t express, her body acted for her, and before she knew it, she was bent over the maidservant as a shield, cradling her beaten, bloody sister in her arms while the Master stood, momentarily paralyzed with rage, until he simply started beating her, too.

Her punishment was to be whipped to her cage in the basement and go without food. She wasn’t used that night. But she had been placed in the same cage as her bloodied sister, who couldn’t even look in her direction.

She didn’t know which was worse: being broken by the master and his companions or being trapped in here with one of her sisters, whom she’d just saved, avoiding her gaze like she was an enemy.

Pain bound them, but it also turned all spectators into enemies. They were toys to be used and abused as their human overlords saw it – all Minxit were – but that didn’t mean they couldn’t feel shame.

“Because that’s all your kind is good for,” she heard her sister say – in a voice very different from how she normally spoke. “All you did once you were ‘free’ was choose a new master – the Archon. You just allowed yourself to be enslaved again.”

She sniffled, rubbing her bloody eyes in the dark. Alone, ashamed, and starving, she assumed the dark face that was now draped over her sister was simply a hallucination. Sometimes the imagination was a temporary escape.

“TARA!”

…what?

“TARA! DON’T LISTEN!”

That voice didn’t belong to her sisters. It was…a male voice. But not the Master’s. It sounded strangely familiar…and yet distant. Muted…

“You are a tool to be used and then discarded,” the dark creature that spoke with her sister’s voice told her, and its words were so powerful that she listened to them, and ignored the thin, lithe limbs growing out of her sister’s body, and the dark label floating above the creature’s head that said ‘Nervestalker’.

“It’s bullshit, Tara. You know it is!”

…there was that other voice again. Who...

“Bah! You’re not even capable of listening to yourself. So distracted by your own little delusions. You think you found freedom in that dank little underground kingdom? You are nothing but a convenient little rogue. When your friends don’t need you anymore, they’ll toss you aside just like your Master di-“

“Fuck that!” came the other voice – far more powerful this time, as though it had activated some kind of ability that allowed it to bellow with greater ferocity than the beast that was edging towards her. “Remember the slave camp? You took those bastards down like a pro. And you told me we did the right thing. You still believe that, don’t you?”

…could…could she have done something like that? Killed a camp of slavers?

“A lie! A downright, barefaced li-“

…yes. Yes she could. In fact…she’d killed one before.

…she’d…she’d killed the Master before.

“Listen to me, Minxit!” the beast wearing her sister’s face screamed in their cage. “What you see here is who you really are! It is what you have been hiding from all this time. You know it, don’t you? You know that the right thing to do is to give in. To stay in your rotten little cage and be your Master’s pet. Because that’s all your kind are good for!”

She stood.

“Are you liste-“

No. She wasn’t, now. Instead, she was looking at the bars of her cage, and she was looking past them.

Towards the pale white man who was roaring at her between them.

“Ethan,” she said, her voice cold, distant, and hollow. “Hand me your sword.”