The tunnel narrowed as they climbed.
Kaelen's shoulders scraped against walls that had grown slick with moisture, something thick, warm, with a smell like old milk and copper. The crystals lighting their path had changed too. No longer blue-black or green, but a pulsing, angry red.
The dungeon was dying. He could feel it in the fragment, in the core essence swimming through his veins. The tower's collapse had sent shockwaves through the entire structure. The Grass Sea would be withering. The Harvesters would be unraveling. And somewhere below, the Watcher's pieces were turning to dust.
But dying things were often the most dangerous.
"The tunnel is closing," Silvara gasped from ahead. Her voice echoed, thin and frightened. "The walls are moving."
She was right. Kaelen could feel it the way the stone seemed to breathe, contracting in slow, rhythmic pulses. Each pulse brought the walls a fraction closer together. If they stopped moving, they would be crushed.
"Faster," Kaelen said. His voice was calm, but any one listening closely could hear the edge beneath it.
The young cultist stumbled. His foot caught on a ridge of crystal, and he went down hard, his forehead striking the stone. Blood welled from the cut, black in the red light. The two women tried to help him up, but his leg was twisted beneath him at an angle that made Kaelen's stomach turn.
"I can't," the young man sobbed. "I can't walk. Leave me."
"No," Silvara said. Her voice was sharp, commanding. "We don't leave anyone behind. That's the rule."
Kaelen looked at her. She met his gaze, and for a moment, he saw something other than resentment in her eyes. Shame, perhaps. Or the ghost of the person she had been before the cult had gotten its claws into her.
"The rule, how ironic," Kaelen couldn't help but say.
You traffic children. You sacrifice them to a false god. And you have rules.
Silvara's jaw tightened. "I didn't, I wasn't…" She stopped. Swallowed. "We can discuss my sins later. Right now, we need to get out."
Kaelen crouched beside the young man. The leg was broken, the bone had snapped cleanly, and the foot was pointing the wrong way. He would not be walking.
"I can carry him," Kaelen said.
Lysander's hand closed around his wrist. "No. He will slow us down. The tunnel is closing faster than we can move as it is."
"But..."
"He's a cultist. Remember what happened the last time you helped indiscriminately?" Lysander's voice was flat. "Let him die."
Kaelen looked at the young man's face. He could not have been older than twenty, his eyes were wide with shoch and terror, and his lips were moving in a prayer that no god would answer.
"No," he said.
He pulled his wrist free from Lysander's grip, bent down, and lifted the young man onto his back. The cultist was lighter than he looked malnourished, hollowed out by fear and bad food. His arms locked around Kaelen's neck, and his sobs were wet against Kaelen's ear.
"Let's move," Kaelen said.
They ran.
---
The tunnel became a throat. Quite literally.
Kaelen could feel it now the way the stone rippled like muscle, the way the air pulsed with each contraction. They were inside something that had never been a mere passage. It was an 'esophagus', and the dungeon was trying to swallow them.
The red crystals flared brighter, hotter. The smell of copper intensified, and Kaelen tasted blood on his tongue, from where he had bitten the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out. The young man on his back was a dead weight, whimpering with every step.
Silvara ran ahead, her broken spear held like a torch. The two women flanked her, their grey robes torn, their faces streaked with tears and dust. Lysander brought up the rear, his pale eyes scanning the floor for something.
The attack came from below.
The floor 'gave way' opening like a mouth unhinging. A pit of darkness yawned beneath Silvara's feet. She screamed, stumbled, and would have fallen if the older woman hadn't grabbed her arm and yanked her back.
"Teeth," the older woman gasped. "There are 'teeth' down there, so many."
Kaelen looked. The pit was lined with them, rows upon rows of jagged, yellowed teeth, grinding against each other in a slow, hideous rhythm. If anyone fell in, they would be chewed to paste.
"Jump," Lysander suddenly commanded. "The gap is narrow. Jump."
Silvara looked at the pit, at the teeth, at the other side. Her face was white. "I can't…"
Kaelen shifted the young man's weight on his back, took a running start, and 'leapt'.
He cleared the pit by inches, his bare feet skidding on the stone beyond. The young man screamed, his broken leg swinging, but Kaelen held on. He turned, dropped to one knee, and reached back across the gap.
"Come on," he said. "Now."
Silvara jumped. Her fingers caught his, and he pulled her across. The two women followed, one after the other, their leaps clumsy but successful.
Lysander 'the ever graceful' did not jump. He 'stepped'…the same impossible movement he had used in the tower and appeared on the other side without any visible effort.
The pit closed behind him, the teeth grinding shut with a sound like a thousand knives sharpening.
---