Chapter 91: Low, Deep, and Dangerous...
Keiser could hear the ceiling breaking above them.
Screams. Shouts. The thunder of boots on fractured stone. The once-muffled chaos of the upper floors now poured into the undercroft like a flood, unfiltered, raw. The ceiling had split in places, sending thin beams of light knifing through the dust, and the air carried the sharp tang of burnt mana and crushed limestone.
Every sound ricocheted through the space, echoing along the collapsed walls and broken cages that had turned the wide undercroft into a twisted maze.
"Move, keep moving!" Keiser barked, his voice low but edged with urgency. His pulse hammered in his ears, matching the staccato of their footsteps splashing through puddles of spilled smoke and blood.
He didn’t know where he was running anymore. The path he remembered had been devoured by the collapse. Rubble, beams, and the bent ribs of old cages now formed a maze with no map. But he had to trust something, anything, and right now that something was the faint glow of two pairs of eyes cutting through the dark ahead of him.
"Your Highness, left, now!" Tyron hissed.
Keiser didn’t hesitate. He pivoted sharply, boots grinding against the debris as he turned into a narrow passage half-choked with dust and fallen chains. Behind them, the shouts grew louder, mercenaries, their lamps on their hand flaring dim orange against the dark as they stumbled and cursed, blinded by smoke and shadows.
"There! I saw them, by the cages!"
"Don’t let them get to the stairwell!"
He snapped his arm forward, sending the dagger flying into the dark. A metallic crash followed a second later as a lamp burst apart, drowning that section of the maze-like undercroft in deeper shadow. The blade whipped back to him, and in a smooth motion, he slid it into the sheath at his belt.
The mercenaries cursed again, disoriented.
Keiser grinned through gritted teeth. "Try running blind like me, bastards."
He reached out and grabbed Tyron by the cloak, dragging him before the boy could wander off. Keiser couldn’t risk losing him, he couldn’t move through the dark without Tyron’s calls to guide him now that the dragon had fallen silent again.
The little dragon still clung to his back, her arms looped around his shoulders, her breath warm against his neck. Even through the chaos, she become silent, watchful, but he could feel the faint pulse of mana radiating from her, steady and wild beneath her skin.
But Keiser barely had time to register the child’s sudden movement before his world lurched.
Small, claw-tipped fingers snagged the edge of his cloak, yanking him backward just as Tyron shouted, "Turn, corner, now!"
He tried. He really did. But he was running blind, momentum carrying his weight forward faster than his body could adjust. His boots skidded across the slick floor, his shoulder slammed into a wall of crates, and pain flared down his arm. The impact made a hollow, splintering crack as the wood gave way beneath him.
"Shit!" He staggered, one knee hitting the ground, trying to keep his balance while dragging both close.
Then.
Whoosh!
Something cut through the air so close it brushed his ear, sharp enough to leave the whisper of pain in its wake. It hit the crate in front of him, splintering it open with a deafening crack! A burst of sawdust and wood chips scattered across the floor, clinging to his gloves and cloak.
Keiser froze for half a heartbeat. The sound hadn’t just been steel striking wood, it had torn through the crate entirely, crushing it inward. Whatever that was, it carried enough force to split bone.
And worse, he could feel it. The mana. The sharp tang of it humming in the air like a wire drawn too tight.
"Down!" he hissed, pulling Tyron toward the ground, his arm shielding the dragon child pressed against his back. The faint shimmer of green light flared around them again, a pulse of her mana barrier, but the attack had passed through it. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
The child’s claws dug into his shoulder as if she understood the same truth he did. The barrier hadn’t failed, it had been pierced.
He turned slowly, squinting into the black. Dust hung thick in the air, catching the faint orange glow from burning debris. Between those thin shafts of light, a shadow shifted, calm, steady, deliberate.
There.
A cloaked figure stepped into the dim light of a fallen lamp, the faint glint of metal glimmering beneath the hood. The posture was too composed for a porter, too disciplined for a scavenger. And Keiser remembered that stance, the low, anchored weight.
His gut dropped.
Of course.
It wasn’t just a mercenary. It was one of them.
One of Genevra’s cloaked hirelings. The same kind who stood silent beside Genevra in the temple of the sixth princess, whose presence alone is enough for him to know, they’re trouble.
"Well... fuck," Keiser muttered under his breath. His burnt hand flexed around his dagger’s hilt, the smell of charred leather rising again. "Of course it’s you."
The mage’s voice came, small but distorted beneath the hood. "Tenth Prince. You really should have stayed gone, let the kingdom think you were dead."
Keiser exhaled through his teeth, a grim smile flickering on his face despite the pain. "Yeah, well, seventh." he rasped, stepping sideways to block Tyron and the dragon child behind him, "death’s a habit I’ve been trying to quit."
He caught a faint shimmer, a blade, no, several blades, hovering in the dark. The air around them vibrated, carrying the hum of runescripted steel.
He didn’t hesitate. He shoved Tyron one way and launched himself the other, unsheathing his own blade in a single motion.
The weapon flew toward the lamp beside the mercenary and struck it with a sharp crack. A heartbeat later, a storm of red-hot knives ripped through where he’d just been, but the spinning blade knocked them aside as it arced back to him. He caught it mid-passing him without missing a beat.
Tyron gasped. "S-she’s using runesteel---"
"Yeah, I noticed!" Keiser hisses, diving behind a half-toppled cage. "Stay down!"
The dragon child’s eyes gleamed faintly over his shoulder, her pupils narrowing into slits as her small hand pressed against his back. The air shimmered faintly again, her mana shifting, instinctive, protective.
Another blade whistled through the dark, slamming into the cage beside them. Sparks burst.
Keiser clenched his jaw. The mage wasn’t even aiming to kill, just to herd him. She wanted them cornered.
He pressed his hand to the blood-seared runes etched into his palm, feeling the faint throb of mana still simmering beneath his skin. "Alright," he whispered under his breath, "if you can see now in the dark, let’s make sure that’s the only thing you see."
He snatched a small vial from his belt, one of Lenko’s supplies, salvaged from those oversized satchels he’d finally agreed to trim down for the day. The liquid inside hissed, filling the air with the acrid tang of burnt copper. In one swift motion, he flung it toward a smoking lantern.
Light exploded.
White and blinding.
The mage flinched, just enough.
"Run!" Keiser bellowed, dragging Tyron by the cloak as he sprinted toward the shadowy outline of the stairwell. The dragon child tightened her grip, her tail suddenly coiling around his arm, startling him, just as sparks erupted behind them.
Another volley of blades cut through the air, one grazing his shoulder, slicing through cloak and skin alike. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. The adrenaline drowned out the pain.
"Your Highness, there’s light ahead!" Tyron gasped, his voice half hope, half panic.
"I see it," Keiser muttered, pushing harder. Through the haze, faint gold spilled down from a staircase half-buried in rubble. The exit. Maybe.
A sharp crack echoed, followed by a bolt of red light slamming into the ground inches from his feet. Stone exploded upward, peppering them with shards.
"Down!" Keiser snarled, throwing himself sideways and shielding Tyron with his arm. The dragon child’s grip tightened, and for an instant, a flicker of green shimmered around them, another barrier, thin but strong enough to deflect the heat.
"Found them!" someone shouted behind.
Keiser growled low in his throat. "Yeah, yeah, I hear you." He grabbed Tyron again and hauled him upright. "We’re not dying in a basement."
The stairwell loomed ahead, a fractured skeleton of stone and light. He could see the way out, barely. But there were too many sounds behind them now... steel dragging, boots closing in, the guttural cries of beasts freed from their cages, moving somewhere in the dark.
The floor trembled beneath them. Another explosion roared from the far side of the undercroft, the pressure wave nearly knocking them off their feet.
Keiser didn’t think. He moved.
He shoved Tyron.
"Head for that light. Don’t stop, no matter what you hear behind you!"
Tyron’s voice cracked. "What about you?"
Keiser’s smile curved, thin and cruel. "Go on. I’ll be right behind you. Someone has to make sure you return with your mother’s heart."
He turned, just long enough to see shapes moving through the smoke, the mage, other mercenaries, maybe six of them, lamps guttering, blades drawn.
Keiser’s burned hand flexed around his dagger hilt. The smell of scorched flesh clung to his gloves.
"Alright," he muttered under his breath, tilting his head toward the little dragon clinging to him, her eyes glowing faintly green. "You kept us alive once, little flame. How about we make that twice?"
Her tail, thin, scaled, and still faintly glowing, curled tighter around his arm in answer.
And as the mercenaries closed in, the air between them began to hum again, low, deep, and dangerous.