Pricci Destrie, Lord Burgundy's property Overseer, had a very bad feeling about Rimzadria. A gnawing unease plagued her thoughts, a sense of impending doom that she couldn't quite shake.

Things had started to take a sinister turn when she had spotted the dark vixen standing behind the gates of the imposing highborn Estate. The foxgirl appeared to smile serenely, a vision of harmlessness, but all of Pricci's instincts as a professional hunter were screaming that Lady Astra was the most dangerous thing present at the meeting. There was something unnerving about the silver spirals in her eyes, something absolutely terrifying, akin to a great, dark abyss that threatened to swallow the hunter whole.

Pricci decided that some annoyingly rare skill was at play. Lord Burgundy's man, Watchman Giron, was acting off too. It was inexplicable that he had suddenly jumped ranks right before this operation.

Perhaps some Shandrian Lord stood behind it all. The seal of Lord Nelvash on the contract she had signed was indisputably real; the gold ink on the stamp and signature smelled authentic to her keen geocrys senses.

. . .

The nagging sense of doom refused to leave the Overseer no matter how much she tried to shake it off. It intensified as she stepped into the old, abandoned mansion, following tracker Laconi.

"Watch out!" Corrosionist suddenly yelled.

Pricci flinched as a rusted, half-decayed nail hurtled toward her head, shattering into flakes of rust just before impact. The eyepatched, ratkin rustmancer had managed to decay the projectile before it could inflict any serious damage.

"Thanks," she exhaled, her heart pounding in her chest.

The relentless barrage of projectiles did not cease, only intensifying as the tracker led them through endless corridors, deeper and deeper into the large, eerily empty building.

"Are you screwing with us?" Pricci hissed at tracker Laconi as a large brick collided with a magical shield that flickered in the air held up by a barrier Watchman mage, causing her to wince.

"I'm only following the slave's most recent scent!" Laconi shot back defensively. "She must have looped around every hallway here!"

"Well, move faster!" Pricci spat, her voice strained with exasperation. "I'm getting seriously miffed with this nonsense!"

After half an hour of being assaulted at every turn by a maelstrom of random flying junk and debris, the beleaguered group of watchmen and hunters finally arrived at a dimly lit room nestled within the catacombs.

"The scent ends here," Laconi commented, her voice tinged with uncertainty.

"What?!" Pricci barked, frustration boiling over.

"She might have… gated out," Laconi suggested tentatively.

"Gated out?! By whom?!" Pricci yelled, her gray face contorted with disbelief. "Nobody in their right mind would hire a Waymancer to protect that worthless dragoness!"

With a resigned sigh, Laconi reached down to the cold, damp floor and took a deep sniff. As she did so, the other hunters and watchmen looked around the dim chamber, searching for any trace of the runaway slave.

"Something is down here," Laconi announced suddenly, her eyes widening. "There's a secret... hidden door under here! It's covered in a thin layer of stone."

"Yess! I can feel it! It's... magisteel," the Overseer rejoiced.

"Rust it away!" She turned to the ratkin, her voice a whip crack of urgency.

"Does that not count as damaging the building?" he asked cautiously.

"I don't give a damn! Burgundy can pay for it!" She growled impatiently.

"Magisteel takes time to rust," he warned, his whiskers twitching.

"Melt the blasted hinges off, you infernal moron! The dragoness has to be there!" she snapped.

"Very well," the ratkin acquiesced. He reached out and touched the hidden door. "Rustify!"

It took the rustmancer nearly five minutes of intense concentration to erode the large hinges, beads of sweat forming on his brow as he focused on his task.

"I've got it!" He declared triumphantly, his eyes alight with success. "You can..."

In that split second, a flying shard of glass moving at supersonic speed pierced through several layers of magic shields held up by the constables and found its mark in the ratkin's remaining eye.

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He screamed, a guttural cry of agony, and flailed blindly, his world plunged into darkness.

Pricci didn't give a damn. She grabbed the magisteel door and pried it open, rushing down a stone stairwell.

The space within was shrouded in darkness, but she sensed the cold, unyielding stone all around her. Moving forward, she searched for the accursed runaway slave, her heart pounding with anticipation.

She discovered that another magisteel door stood in her way.

"Damnation!" Pricci slammed the door with her fists, the sound reverberating through the confined space. "Cors! Get in here, you fool!"

"The rustmancer is completely blind now," Faemonger pronounced grimly as he stepped into the tight hall where Pricci stood.

"Bloody hell!" She swore, her frustration mounting.

"Her scent isn't down there," Laconi commented from the room above, her voice echoing faintly down the narrow stairs.

"It has to be!" The Overseer howled. "Where else would she have gone?!"

Filled with rage, she rushed up and grabbed the blind ratkin, her crystal-tipped fingers digging into his fur.

"There's another door down here! I need you to open it for me!" She hissed at the rustmancer.

"It hurts. It hurts so much," he wept, his body trembling.

Princess hastily grabbed a healing potion from her belt and forced it into the rustmancer's mouth, making him swallow it.

"Open the blasted door!" She barked, shoving the weeping ratkin against the magisteel barrier.

"Rustify!" The rustmancer sobbed, his voice barely a whisper.

The door wobbled.

"Yes! Keep going!" Princess yelled impatiently. "You almost got it! We almost have her!"

In another five agonizing minutes, the hinges finally gave way.

Pricci rushed into the adjacent chamber, only to slam into yet another magisteel door.

"What the hell is this?!" She howled, her voice filled with frustration and rage.

"Someone spent a lot of money to keep people out," Faemonger commented, his tone grim. The fat man was following his leader, a new set of fae in his cages keeping the chamber lit.

Suddenly, a brick tore itself from the wall and shot past the Overseer with an impossible speed.

Faemonger's head exploded in a gruesome shower of gore before she could blink. His body crumpled to the ground, dousing the Overseer in blood, fairies inside of fallen cages fluttering like mad.

"W… what?!" she stammered in shock.

"What's going on?!" The blind ratkin asked, his voice trembling.

"Another door! Open it!" Pricci yelled, shoving the ratkin forward. "Hurry!"

"Y..yes," he whimpered, his breath hitching. "Reefh… rustify!"

"Come on! Come on!" Pricci encouraged, her voice strained with desperation. "Get the hinges! We're so close!"

The door finally gave out as Princess pushed it open, only to reveal yet another magisteel door waiting to thwart her.

In that instant, the metal door she held tore from her grasp and bisected the weeping rustmancer in half, his life extinguished in a horrifying spray of crimson.

"No… No, no, no!" Princess fell to her knees, her voice a choked sob. Another metal door loomed before her, mocking her efforts. "WHY?!"

A stone dislodged from the ceiling, hurtling towards her head with lethal intent. Pricci swatted it away with her new metal arm, the force of the impact reverberating through her body.

"She's not in there! Stop!!" Laconi yelled from the back, her voice shrill with panic. "We are retreating! The attacks of the Estate ward are getting worse! Our mages can't stop the flying glass shards!!!"

Pricci didn't listen. She crawled forward, determination etched on her face, until she smashed against the unyielding metal door.

"I know you're in there!" She howled, her voice echoing through the chamber.

Suddenly, she felt something awful, an inexplicable force that crushed her into the ground.

"No," she groaned, the weight of her failure pressing down on her. "I'm so close…"

The pressure on her body intensified, an invisible vice tightening its grip. Pricci felt her new metal arm wrench from her body, slamming into the ground with a sickening crunch.

With another burst of the awful, all-consuming pressure, Princess slammed into the stones with her entire body.

This was a trap. A death trap, set by the blasted slave. One specifically tailored for Pricci and her hunters. This was why she felt doomed! The Overseer tried to retreat, but found herself unable to move, as if the very air around her had thickened into a suffocating embrace.

A magisteel door hurtled towards her, its edge glinting with lethal intent. She managed to lurch away at the last second, placing her remaining arm in front of herself to shield her neck from the guillotine-like blow.

The flying door sliced through her second arm with merciless precision, leaving her twice dismembered and gasping in agony.

Princess screamed, the sound a raw, primal wail of despair.

She crawled away from the last door, having given up on finding the dragoness. Dying wasn't worth it. Whatever was hidden behind all of these doors wasn't worth it.

. . .

"Wow," Cedez commented as she stared at the seer's orb, observing the escaping Overseer. "That stonehead is very hard to kill!"

"Yeah," Dave agreed. "It's a good thing I didn't try to get closer to the dungeon core this way when I came to investigate Rimzadria. Not that I could have found or opened those doors."

"Old Alaster is a crazy dedicated coot," Cedez mused, her eyes flicking briefly to Dave's gray-blue fingernail. "No offense intended, of course. How many doors are there in total?"

"Nine," Dave replied, his voice tinged with a amusement. "One for every shard of his favorite Empress. The last door is reinforced with the entire ward of the estate and his gravity power, it cannot be simply pried open even if the hinges are rusted away."

Cedez whistled.

"Let's go meet our brave constables," she grinned as she manipulated the orb's view to locate the dust and sweat-covered, scratched-up face of Watchman Giron. "I think they're sufficiently bruised up to buy a mountain of Bakelite armor!"

Dave laughed as he and Cedez prepared to confront the weary constables and their battered pride.