We return to the heap, closer to the shambles. And now we quietly prepare the raft with our bait toward the destinations that we desire. I kept my pace slow, boots slick on the plank-stitch paths. Kael had his scythe resting over one shoulder, patting the crumbs on his thigh. He glanced at me once, eyebrow raised. "You're quiet. Bothered?"
I shrugged, pretending it wasn't weighing on me. Not the question itself, but the pattern of the tunnels, the echoes over the water, the way the ferrymen's mimicry had burrowed into my mind. "Just thinking ahead," I sigh, soft. "Trying to figure out what we should do next."
He snorted, leaning his scythe against the beam, "You always look like that. Calculating, worried. Makes you like the scary old hag in bedtime stories."
I can't help but answer back, "Mostly bad children have to listen to scary stories."
"I bet you can't even imagine how scary an old hag looks."
We both continue with what we were doing in hand. Worry was the easy part. Prediction was the necessary part. I hunched over the Prism, arranging the rays across the new lattice of tunnels. The grid stuttered as it drew the lines, where most of the passages were jagged and blocked. Lampreys and rat nests seemed contained to certain flows, water pooled and trickled where it wanted, yet avoiding the centre where it circled.
I pulled out the matte card as I waved it to Kael, "Think you could make it work again?"
Kael tried to bend it in half or bite on it, the matte shrieked from rest, beaming red as in protest, "Great, make us rich now, Card!"
I side-eyed with a brow raised at his behaviour. It worked, so I decided to let it slide. I check my comms and interface with Amaya, "Vyn here. Any speculations?"
"Copy," She chirped, "Well, first, most likely, you could summon another gate since the one you're in now is undiscovered. Second, fight the sovereign if you have received an assigned mission. Third, from the observations I received, there is likely more than one Guardian. That's all."
Kael whistled low. "More than one. Great. Because one giant sewer monster wasn't enough."
The ferrymen's mimicry echoed in my head again: the tapping oars, the hushed trade that never stopped, continuity at all costs. Even death didn't pause their work. Guardians would be the same: a system repeating, guarding not because they chose, but because it was what they were built to do.
"Amaya," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. "The shard I gave the child — you still feeding off it?"
"Affirmative. What about it?"
I narrow my eyes, "They're not mindless, Kael. Mimicry is how they maintain continuity in a place that eats through everything else."
Kael noticed my stare. "There it is again. That bothered look. Spit it out, wise one."
I ignored him and leaned closer to the Prism. The grid lines bled faint, mapping water flows. "The center flow's wrong," I muttered. "Look here." I tapped a point where the light bent, refusing to pass through. "The water avoids it. Lampreys avoid it. Rats, too. Dead zone."
Kael leaned over my shoulder, chewing on nothing, eyes following the lines. "That's a nest if I've ever seen one."
"Not a nest." My voice was firm. "Resting ground. Repair ground." I angled a shard into the water. The beam fractured against unseen surfaces, scattering wrong. "That's Guardian space. It is either the furthest or the closest to where their guarding."
Static fizzed in my ear. Amaya's voice dropped low. "Vyn… readings confirm. That zone's resonance is different."
Resonance, a familiar word of how good receptors communicate with each other, lingers under my skin. The ferrymen made taps that resonate; maybe it remains their meaning to do so after all.
Kael, oblivious, adjusted the satchel on his hip. Something inside clanked softly: the weighted contraption he'd jury-rigged earlier. He grinned when he saw me looking. "Relax. I'll handle the collapsing bridges. You do your light-trickery."
I focus on angling my shards again, refracting light across the tunnel walls, splitting beams into false patterns. Three paths instead of one. Ghost movements where there should be none. My bait raft bobbed gently, drifting toward the wrong reflections. If the Guardian stirred, it would follow the false signals, not us.
The mimicry of the ferrymen guided my hand: rhythm, continuity, patience. Even in silence, I tapped my shard once, twice, three times, matching their pulse.
We head towards where the suspected nests were. The matte card was doing its job on showing the hidden signs in the blind spot. The raft drifted further. The tunnel widened here, opening into a chamber. The roof arched high, dripping condensation. The walls were scarred, gouged by claws or tools that seemed half done. Curves of metal, submerged ribs, anchors sunk deep into the current. And the center, metal fused with stone, ribs of alloy jutting from the water like the bones of some half-submerged colossus.
Between them pulsed a dark shape, covered in translucent film, veins of light running across it. Glad that the Guardian was dormant.
The raft jolted under us. One instant steady water, the next a violent surge that snapped the bait raft's lashings free and spun us sideways. Kael cursed, jamming the haft of his scythe into a post to steady our drift. I dropped to one knee, clutching the Prism to my chest as the grid lines shivered into static.
I shifted the Prism, adjusting beams across the chamber walls. Light fractured into ghost corridors, false edges, shifting patterns that would tug at instinct and reflex. Not enough to blind, yet enough to pull its attention half a second too late.
Half a second mattered. That's where prediction wins. The Guardian moved, and the water moved with it. Currents reversed in an instant, pulling our raft toward the center.
"Amaya," I murmured into comms. "Give me water pressure flows. I want weaknesses."
Her voice came through the shard in my pouch, faint but sharp. "Copy. Mapping now. Currents stable on the edges, spiking toward the center when the hum peaks. If you collapse the beams along the northeast supports, you can force turbulence. Disrupt the symmetry."
"Kael, now!" I barked.
His foot kicked the satchel open. Inside, a weighted bundle of chain and metal pipes clanked. He hauled it up, wound it once around his arm, then hurled it at the northeast supports Amaya had flagged. The contraption struck, rattled, then detonated. The chains collapsed the beam inward, dragging half the plank-bridge with it into the torrent.
The Guardian's body lurched, thrown off by the uneven surge.
I seized it. A shard spun from my hand, catching the lantern glow and splitting it into three jagged corridors across the chamber walls. Ghost-figures ran where we did not. The Guardian's mask tilted, hollow eyes flaring as its bulk pivoted toward the false paths.
"Kael," I said, keeping my tone level, "we corner it. Force it to fight here, not in open water."
"You mean in the shambles?"
"Yes. Narrow paths forced lines of sight. My shards can control the corridors. Yours can collapse what it tries to use."
Kael spat into the water, then swung his scythe onto his shoulder.
The Guardian dragged itself higher, water sloughing from its body in sheets. Every lantern dimmed as though its glow was siphoned into that mask. Its hum returned, louder, vibrating through the marrow of the shambles themselves.
I threw another shard. The reflection split and danced, pulling its gaze sideways. Kael slammed his scythe into a joint beam and wrenched, sending a whole section of walkway collapsing between us and it. The chamber shuddered, water sucking into the void.
One step closer to our ground.
The Guardian struck again, tendrils smashing down where Kael had been seconds before. He rolled, came up laughing, hair plastered to his face with spray. "That's not that hard."
I hissed at his taunt.
"Can't help it," He winked, then kicked another weighted contraption from his satchel toward a weakened post. Another chain-whip collapse, another section gone. The Guardian reared, furious rhythm breaking in jagged pulses. Its continuity was faltering. Good.
I inhaled steady, let my shard catch what light was left, and split it in six. Each beam bent wrong, images of false corridors leading deeper into the shambles. The Guardian followed, lumbering, pulling itself where I wanted it.
Away from the open water and centre flow, but into the corridors where we could fight.
"Amaya," I said softly.
"I see it," she answered. "You're shaping the field. Keep pushing."
Kael glanced back, grinning through the spray. "Looks mad."
"It's supposed to be," I muttered.
"Good. I like them mad."
He didn't wait. Knife out, scythe-hook in his other hand, he darted across the water, boots barely finding purchase. Where I measured each angle, he trusted motion, instinct. When the Guardian surged forward, Kael leapt to meet it, sliding low and cutting into one of its tendrils with a flash of steel.
The shriek rattled the ribs of the shambles. The Guardian's hum faltered, but it twisted fast, claws slamming down. Kael hooked the scythe around a beam and yanked himself clear, laughing. "Close one!"
"Too close," I snapped, dragging light across the walls. Three mirrored Kaels darted at once, scattering in different directions. The Guardian's head swung, split between them.
Kael took the chance to yank the sinew cord he'd strung earlier, taut as a bowstring. The Guardian's bulk lunged into the wrong corridor of light. The tendril it swung down caught the cord. The line whipped tight, snapping its own weight back against its frame.
"Now!" Kael barked, sawing his knife deep into the bound limb.
I fed a shard into the angle, prism light searing the wound wider, fracturing the cut into a dozen ghost-lines that made the Guardian twist against itself. Its tendril tore open with a wet crack, ichor spilling like smoke through the water.
The shriek that followed nearly folded me in half. It was pressure, resonance grinding into bone. My shards shook in my grip, but I steadied them, forcing the beams to bend again.
Kael was already moving, reckless blur. Scythe-hook bit the underside of a beam, swinging him over the Guardian's swipe. He dropped low, boot finding its mask with brutal precision. "How's that for a bedtime story, huh?" He jammed the knife under the cracked plating.
The Guardian spasmed, claws gouging deep trenches through the shambles. One strike missed me by inches, splintering the walkway and spraying rusted nails into the water. I crouched low, eyes locked on the rhythm. Every movement was a pattern. Even fury had cadence.
I matched the ferrymen's mimicry with my shard under the water. Tapping once, with the beam shifted, lights refracting to pull its eyes left. Kael tore his knife sideways, ripping the plating free. Beneath it: pulsating sinew streaked with veins of faint light. He drove the blade down hard.
The Guardian convulsed. The hum in its chest faltered, broken like a heartbeat caught off-measure.
But still it didn't fall. Its mass drove forward, slamming the walkway apart beneath us. Kael barely caught the edge, hanging by one arm, scythe dangling in the other. He barked a laugh through gritted teeth. "Don't just watch, Vyn!"
I snapped another shard into place, bending the water's glimmer into a downward glare that blinded the Guardian long enough for him to pull up.
The Guardian twisted, dragging itself sideways to shield the exposed wound. Its continuity was breaking—but not gone. Each tendril lashed with more desperation now, smashing bridges, clawing planks apart to strip away our ground.
Amaya's voice cut sharp in my ear. "Vyn, the frame is part of it, focus on the core. End it fast or it'll collapse the entire heap on you both."
I hissed between teeth, re-angling another shard. My eyes flicked to the exposed veins under the broken mask. That pulsing light, flickering with stolen light. "Kael, aim for its centre. Don't let it cover the wound."
He twisted his scythe, hooking it around another beam to vault higher, already pulling his second knife free. "Centre, huh? Then cut me a line."
Helping Kael to tear it limb from limb, The Guardian's hum cracked, stuttered. For a moment, it almost sounded like words.
Kael froze, just for a second. Then he sneered. "Don't start talking at me now." He slashed again, ripping a gash across its mask. Both knives came down in a cross, plunging straight into the exposed core.
The Guardian's body arched, resonance shattering into a scream that made the water thrash like a living thing. Tendrils whipped wildly, tearing apart the chamber in blind fury. But Kael hung on, knives buried to the hilt, grinning through the spray as if he'd never been more alive.
I drove my shard into the beam, amplifying the strike with fractured light. The reflection multiplied the wound, made it seem a hundred cuts deeper than it was. Its continuity couldn't hold against the lie.
The Guardian collapsed against the beams, ichor burning through the water. Kael ripped one knife free, dripping black fluid, and landed beside me with a heavy thud after handing me the Matte. Onto the throbbing mechanics beneath the mask, the card burned warm, mechanical hum fractured into silence.