The world reassembled slowly from static. Blinking through a vortex of swirling colors, my vision bled at the edges.
A cacophony of noises enveloped me, a feverish hum of countless voices colliding in a frenzied dance. Laughter cut through the murk, raw and jagged. In the distance, discordant shrieks of instruments clawed for dominance, each note a jagged edge against my teeth, an erratic symphony of agony.
The air was thick with the dank stench of sweat, and sickly-sweet incense.
When my brain caught up with my eyes, I found myself in a vast chamber, a cavern, grotesquely transformed into a gaudy hall. Roots snaking down the walls, garish banners drooping from the ceiling like wilted tongues.
Alcoves carved into the walls overflowed with a bizarre assortment of trinkets, ornate urns burning incense, glowing vials, and rusted metal sculptures twisted into grotesque forms. Trays of steaming, unidentifiable food, some charred, others still writhing, spilled from the alcoves.
The center platform shimmered under flickering light of torches and old-world chandeliers. It hosted half-dozen musicians bowing and plucking instruments that looked part-organic. Music scratched through the space like rusted blades: discordant, off-key, deliberate.
The chamber pulsed with life, an eclectic mass of figures, their attire a riot of color and absurdity. Madness in silk. Cybernetic limbs twitched beneath layered fabrics. Gold teeth flashed through neon veils.
Someone wore a helm made of a beast skull, another had critters tattooed into her scalp, real ones, maybe. The slums’ elite, dressed in scavenged opulence, hunting amusement like it owed them credits.
I was seated on a threadbare couch, its cushions sunken and stained, wearing a garish yellow tunic of clashing patterns and matching trousers, a jester’s attire in a madman’s court.
A voice cut through the noise, dripping with mockery. “Ahh, the fallen prince wakes.”
It was the plump slaver. His patchwork coat flared as he minced toward me with exaggerated flair, flanked by a brute in grimy red armor.
His gaze swept over the crowd, lenses glinting from thick goggles. “Friends, you wanted to know who he is? Ask him yourself!” he drawled, sneering.
A murmur of excitement rippled through the crowd. Someone chuckled, another hissed.
“Ask him,” the slaver said, spreading his arms wide. “Anything.”
Somewhere deep, Arvie’s amused voice whispered, “Play along, master. Enjoy a bit of theater.”
A woman with orange dreadlocks and predator eyes, leaned forward. “Well, look at you, da’hling,” she said, her voice husky with titillation. “You’re a long way from home, ain’t you? So, where’s a pretty boy like you come crawling in, hmm?”
Silence fell, expectant eyes trained on me as I met her gaze.
I paused. My throat burned from the air, heavy with spice, sweat, and old metal. “I don’t remember,” I said the truth. “I woke up in the ruins. That’s all.”
Laughter bubbled up, and the murmur of interest raised. Someone tossed a coin at my feet.
“So, he’s brain-scrubbed,” the woman purred, a sly grin creeping across her lips. “Or could be a lying prince from the ruined city above, fallen from grace, hmm?” She prowled around me, gaze bright with intense delight.
A voice growled from a shadowed alcove. “What’s Valcor’s angle?”
Ah, so the slaver had a name.
I looked at him. His eyes narrowed behind the goggles, a thin smile playing at his lips. I felt Arvie urging caution and forced a wry smile. “If he has plans, he wouldn’t tell me. I think I’m just a game piece, like the rest of you.”
A ripple of laughter spread through the chamber. The slaver’s smile stretched wide enough to split. “Clever,” he purred, leaning in. “But you’ll need more than cleverness here, my dear prince.”
I smiled like I meant it.
The conversation swirled, the guests’ questions growing bolder, more insistent. They spoke of the fall of the upper city. The beasts in the vents. Whether the Directorate still breathed. Anxiety pulsed beneath their jests, a shadow that drove them to drink deeper and laugh louder.
I navigated their game, answering with half-truths, deflecting their traps with vague replies, while the slaver’s gaze remained a constant, calculating presence. He watched me like a merchant watches his most interesting shipment.
As the guests grew more raucous, a fight exploded near the musicians. A chair flew. Bottles broke. Knives flashed. A scream cut through the chamber as two men rolled across a table, scattering knives and meat that twitched like it wasn’t quite dead.
The slaver barked orders, his guards moved in, but the skirmish spread like wildfire.
A hand clamped down on my shoulder. I spun to find a woman staring into my eyes. She was young. Stark black hair, steel-gray eyes, veiled and draped in blackout silks that caught the light like oil. Her voice slid into my ear like a scalpel.
“Come with me,” she hissed. “If you want out.”
“Do it, master, now!” Arvie urged.
I nodded, allowing her to pull me through the chaos. We went sideways into the madness, ducking a flying bottle, stepping over someone’s unconscious body, weaving past guards mid-sprint, flailing limbs and toppled chairs.
The slaver’s angry voice cut through the din, but we had passed through a narrow archway, the air turning cooler, the noise receding.
A bouncer moved to block us.
The woman didn’t pause. Her hand flicked up, needle-thin stiletto, straight through his soft neck gap in the armor. He dropped without a whisper.
We slipped out.
Slum elite territory. Still rich in a scavenger’s way, brass railings, fusion glass, scav-marked marble. But past the unmanned checkpoints, the air thickened. Corridors twisted. Walls sweated. Stone steps spiraled downward. Tunnels dripped sludge.
The further we went, the older it felt, as if we’d passed beneath history itself.
The sounds of pursuit had faded behind us, replaced by the faint drip of water and distant echoes of machinery.
Ahead: rot and damp and a hum I didn’t trust. Somewhere in the gloom, something coughed and didn’t stop.
Down here, the city forgot its shape. Tunnels peeled open like sores. Platforms jutted above flooded channels. Filaments glowed faintly in the walls, some of them twitching like nervous nerves. Gaslights sputtered above sealed doors marked in codes I didn’t know how to read.
A massive pipe hung cracked overhead, dribbling something phosphorescent onto the stone below. A rail line veered sharply into rubble. A shrine had been built from its wreckage, candles, bones, neon tags reading “DUVAINOR WALKED THIS WAY.”
Past that, no more clean lines. No more gates. Just hive-tunnels, spore-lamps and half-blind junkies who twitched at shadows.
We passed one sprawled across a rusted shrine, mouth open, eyes stitched shut, whispering prayers into the damp. Another sat with a twisted beast, hairless, almost translucent. It blinked at me.
“Just tourists,” Arvie muttered. “Eyes forward.”
At last, we reached a gloomy chamber, walls slick with damp.
We stood before what looked like a derelict well, iron-capped and choked with cables. She turned.
‘They say you breathe the miasma. Is it true?”
“I do,” I replied. “Why?”
Her smirk was all sharp corners. “To see if you’re worth the risk.”
She reached into her coat. A pendant, crude alloy, glyphs etched into the surface, pulsing faintly. She moved to place it around my neck.
I stopped her with a palm. “What is it?”
Before she could answer, a second voice slithered from the gloom. Smooth, velvet, oddly amused.
“Let her. It hides your scent from Valcor.”
From behind a broken service pillar, a cloaked figure stepped into the view. His face was shadowed, but eyes glowed with an unsettling, cold light.
“Who are you?”
“A friend, maybe. Time will tell. But let’s hurry.” The figure gestured to the woman, who placed the amulet around my neck.
He moved to a rusted wall panel, pressed his palm against it. A quiet whine of ancient machinery woke, and the wall cracked open with a gasp of steam. Inside: a narrow tunnel lined with black root-veins, fiber-optic scars pulsing under layers of dust.
“Quickly,” he said.
I followed. The woman came last, closing the panel behind us.
We hurried in silence through a winding path, past vaults scavenged to bone, through a merchant square sunken with rusted carts and shattered drone limbs. A mural covered one wall, a saint burning beneath an open dome. Beneath it, someone had scrawled: “WE WERE LEFT TO BURN.”
Eventually, we emerged into a shadowed stall beneath a leaning tower of slagbricks. A wiry woman with luminous tattoos nodded, opened a back door without a word.
The cloaked figure stepped inside. “You have something I want,” he said calmly. “But first, we remove what Valcor planted in you.”
“Valcor?” I asked. “The slaver?”
A chuckle. “Yes, yes. Lurian Valcor. Your keeper. Until we cut the leash. Follow me.”
He turned, gesturing for me to enter.
"Your move, prince," Arvie purred, a grin woven through her words.
I stepped into the dark, knowing that my fate wasn't just my own anymore, threads pulling tighter, unseen hands guiding me deeper into the coils of this twisted moon, it was a game played in darkness, where every move was a step in this dance of shadows.209Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8F1Y0mi1bm
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