I duck beneath jagged edges where the organic walls have grown inward, sharp curves of flesh that catch at my torn clothing, my hair, my skin. Each obstacle requires contortion, my body folding through gaps that seem designed to slow rather than stop, to make passage possible but uncomfortable. The clicking grows louder with each step, rhythmic percussion that fills the corridor like heartbeat amplified beyond all reason.
Binah moves ahead of me still, her pale form slipping through the narrowing passage without apparent effort. She does not duck. Does not contort. The jagged edges that catch at me pass through her or around her with equal disregard for physics. I watch her progress with the dull acceptance of someone who has long since exhausted capacity for surprise.
The corridor opens.
The change is sudden. One moment I am squeezing through flesh-walls that press against my shoulders, the next I am stumbling into a chamber that seems impossibly vast after the claustrophobic passage. The ceiling rises into darkness, lost beyond the Skathrith's ethereal glow. The floor stretches in all directions, pocked with dark openings that gape like wounds in the organic material.
I count twelve openings before I stop counting.
Each one a passage. Each one a potential threat. Each one a source for the clicking that now surrounds me, echoing from every direction until I cannot tell where it originates, cannot distinguish individual sounds from the cacophony that fills the space.
The air grows heavier here. A metallic tang clings to my throat with each breath, the taste of blood without the warmth, the sensation of wounds without the pain. The Skathrith hums softly above me, its light trailing invisible fingers across walls that pulse with the same slow rhythm I have grown to expect from the Labyrinth's flesh-architecture.
I stand in the chamber's center, exposed and aware of my exposure.
The clicking echoes through the openings, rising and falling in patterns that might be communication or might be simple biological function. Rhythmic chittering that builds and recedes like waves against a shore, each crest louder than the last, each trough a brief respite that does nothing to ease the tension coiling through my muscles.
The sound pulls at something buried deep within me.
Words surface from childhood. A rhyme chanted in courtyards, whispered in dormitories, passed between children with the gleeful terror that accompanies the discovery of fear as entertainment.
In the dark where shadows writhe,
The Thrynix wait to take your life.
My breath catches. The clicking grows louder, and the words continue their inexorable march through my consciousness, dragged from depths I had thought sealed against such childhood debris.
Claw and click, they hunt as one,
A web of death where light will not come.
I take another step forward. The walls tremble, rippling like disturbed water, and I remember chanting these words with other children, voices high and breathless, each of us trying to frighten the others while secretly frightening ourselves. The matrons' warnings echo beneath the rhyme's rhythm: Be good, or the Thrynix will come. They hunt naughty children in the dark. They drag them into the endless tunnels where no one can hear them scream.
We thought it only a story. A tool of control wielded by adults who needed children to behave. The Thrynix were creatures of nightmare, of whispered legend, of that particular brand of horror that exists only in imagination and bedtime threats.
But the clicking is real.
I pause, straining to listen, trying to separate individual sounds from the wall of noise that surrounds me. The rhythmic chittering rises, joined now by a low, resonant drone that sets my teeth on edge. The sound vibrates through the floor, through my bones, through the very air I breathe. My jaw aches from the frequency, and I realize I have been clenching my teeth without awareness.
The walls crack and split.
The sound is wet. Organic. The flesh-architecture of the Labyrinth tears along seams I had not noticed, dark fissures opening in the pulsing material. From these wounds, from the dark openings that ring the chamber, they emerge.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The Thrynix.
Translucent chitin glows faintly, lit from within by phosphorescence that has no obvious source. The light reveals the horror beneath their shells: shadowy shapes that writhe and shift, as though each creature contains a multitude, as though their exoskeletons house swarms unto themselves. The effect is nauseating. Beautiful. Wrong in ways that my mind refuses to catalogue, that my consciousness refuses to fully acknowledge.
Elongated limbs unfold from compressed bodies, each appendage tipped with serrated claws that catch the Skathrith's light. They click against the floor as the creatures move, the sound grating against my nerves with the precision of instruments designed for psychological warfare.
Thick droplets drip from mandibles, sizzling where they strike stone.
The acid. The stories spoke of acid, of prey dissolved slowly, of children's flesh melting from bone while they still screamed. I watch a droplet fall, see the stone bubble and smoke beneath its touch, and the childhood terror crystallizes into adult understanding.
This is real.
Their eyes find me. Void-black spheres that should not see, that lack any structure I can associate with vision, yet they fixate on my position with unsettling precision. A dozen creatures. Two dozen. More spilling from the openings with each passing heartbeat, filling the chamber with clicking and chitin and hunger made manifest.
The swarm falls silent.
The sudden absence of sound is worse than the noise. In the quiet, I can hear my own breathing, harsh and rapid. I can hear my heart slamming against my ribs. I can hear the Skathrith's hum, sharp with warning.
The Thrynix wait.
Then the clicking resumes, slow at first, building like a gathering storm.
I take a step back.
The rhyme's final words echo through my mind, louder now than the Skathrith's song, louder than the clicking that fills the chamber.
But if you hear the clicking slow,
Pray your blood they will never know.
I lift my leg to take another step back. To retreat. To flee once more, as I have fled before, as I have always fled when the darkness closed in and the odds stacked against survival.
Memory flashes through me with visceral clarity.
The library. My cousins descending upon the building with wrath in their eyes and violence in their hearts, and me running into a secret tunnel, hiding in shadows, choosing survival through cowardice rather than confrontation. I can still feel the shame of it, the bitter taste of retreat that lingered long after their shouts faded.
The Nihil Sentinel. That nightmare of black glass and impossible geometry, and me fleeing through corridors that shifted and changed, running until my lungs burned and my legs threatened to give way. I survived. But I did not stand.
I am tired of running.
The realization arrives without fanfare, without dramatic internal monologue. Simply a fact, as true and as solid as the floor beneath my feet. I have spent my life in retreat. From the cousins who tormented me. From the heritage that marked me as other. From the enemies that hunted me through the Labyrinth's depths.
No more.
Something shifts in my chest, not courage exactly, darker than that. Colder. The recognition that running has brought me here, to this chamber, surrounded by creatures from childhood nightmare, and running further will only bring me to another chamber, another threat, another moment of choice.
If I am to die in this place, I will die moving forward.
I reach for the Skathrith.
The response is immediate, the bond between us opening like a door long closed. Power floods through the connection, and I feel the alien consciousness acknowledge my intent, recognize what I am asking, and respond with something that might be approval or might be hunger. With the Skathrith, the distinction blurs beyond meaning.
Silver light floods across my knuckles.
The coating spreads like liquid metal, covering my hands in luminescence that hardens as it moves. Not mere shimmer now, not the faint glow of potential power, but something substantial. Something that can cut. The light crawls up my forearms in narrow bands, reinforcing bone where strikes will land, creating edges where flesh meets air.
My hands transform.
I flex my fingers, watching the silver coating respond to the movement, maintaining coverage without restricting motion.
But it is not enough.
The Thrynix continue to pour from the openings, their numbers growing with each heartbeat. Dozens now. Perhaps a hundred. More than I can count, more than I can fight with enhanced strikes alone. I need speed. I need perception beyond human limits. I need everything the Skathrith can give me.
I reach for more, not just coating.
Flooding.
Power crashes through muscle and bone, not around but through. My nervous system ignites as the Skathrith's energy surges into channels never meant to carry such current. Every nerve ending fires at once, a symphony of sensation that borders on pain, that transcends pain into something I lack vocabulary to describe.
The dual demand strains our bond.
External channeling and internal channeling, both modes active simultaneously. I feel the tension through the connection, the Skathrith stretching to accommodate requests that test the limits of what our incomplete synchronization can provide. The ethereal orb above me pulses, its rhythm quickening, its light flickering.
But it does not break. Does not fail.
The world slows.
The clicking stretches into long, drawn-out notes, each individual sound becoming distinct and separable. What was cacophony becomes composition. The Thrynix move in slow motion, their limbs extending through space with the lazy inevitability of falling leaves. I can see the microscopic tremors in their chitin. The way light catches the curves of their shells, refracting through translucent material to illuminate the horrors within.
Mandible fluid drips in perfect slow-motion spheres.
In the stretched moment, I smile.
The child who feared the rhyme is gone.
I am the horror now.
Shattered Empire is 20 chapters ahead on Patreon, and that’s only the beginning.
-
Nightbreak (Patreon-exclusive)
-
Ablations (ongoing)