Chapter 25
Elsa
They moved through the under-fortress like contraband.
Vask’s guards kept them in single file—Elsa first, then Ari, then Mia—with armed Yzefrxyl at the front and rear.
No torches. The males navigated by their night vision, leaving the humans to stumble through darkness so complete that Elsa couldn’t see her own bound hands in front of her face.
Only the scrape of claws on stone and the occasional grunt of direction told her which way to turn.
The rope still bit into her wrists, but she’d stopped feeling it.
Stopped feeling anything except the cold calculation that had settled into her bones like frost. The fear was still there—coiled somewhere beneath her ribs, waiting for an opportunity to claw its way up her throat—but she’d locked it away.
Boxed it like she used to box the terror of navigating unmapped asteroid fields or calculating jump coordinates with no margin for error.
Fear was data. Fear meant she was still alive enough to feel threatened. And alive meant options.
Count. Listen. Map.
The navigator in her brain refused to shut down.
Twenty-three steps from the holding cell to the first junction.
Left turn. Seventeen steps to the second junction.
Right turn at the sound of dripping water—a consistent rhythm, probably a natural seepage.
Thirty-one steps past a section where the floor changed from rough stone to something smoother, older, worn down by generations of feet.
She memorized it all. The way the walls narrowed at certain points, forcing the guards to walk single file.
The echo patterns that suggested larger chambers branching off from the main passage.
The subtle decline of the floor—a three-degree gradient, maybe four, leading them deeper beneath the fortress with every step.
Somewhere behind her, Mia stumbled. A soft cry escaped before she could swallow it—not quite a word, but enough to draw a snarl from the rear guard. Elsa heard the impact of claws against flesh, the muffled sound of Mia biting back a sob.
“Leave her alone.” Elsa didn’t raise her voice. Didn’t need to. The words carried in the confined space, flat and final. “She can’t see. None of us can.”
The guard growled—low, threatening, the kind of sound that preceded violence—but didn’t strike again. Elsa filed that away too. They had orders. Damage the prisoners enough to control them, but not enough to reduce their value.
Which meant Vask still needed them functional. Still needed them capable of whatever he planned to extract.
The air shifted as they descended. Warmer now, but with an undercurrent of something metallic.
Industrial. The fortress had systems running down here—power conduits, ventilation, the grid networks that Vask seemed so interested in.
She could hear a low hum vibrating through the stone, felt it in her teeth when she pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth.
A gate clanged ahead. Metal on metal, the screech of ancient hinges that hadn’t been oiled in decades. The lead guard barked something in Yzefrxyl—too fast and guttural for Elsa to parse—and then hands shoved her forward, through an opening barely wide enough for her shoulders.
Light.
Dim, orange, flickering—but after the absolute darkness of the passage, it hit her eyes like a physical blow.
Elsa blinked rapidly, tears streaming as her vision adjusted.
The space beyond the gate was larger than the corridors they’d been traveling through.
A junction point, maybe, or an old storage area repurposed for something else.
Iron cages lined one wall. Most were empty, their doors hanging open on rusted hinges.
A few held debris—rotted cloth, chains corroded to near-uselessness, shapes she didn’t want to examine too closely.
The smell was worse here. Old blood and older fear, ground so deep into the stone that no amount of time would ever wash it clean.
“Keep moving.” The guard behind her punctuated the order with a shove that nearly sent her to her knees.
Elsa caught herself against the wall, shoulder scraping rough stone, and kept walking. Behind her, she heard Mia’s sharp intake of breath—fear or pain, impossible to tell. Ari moved in silence, but Elsa had learned to read that silence over the past few days. It wasn’t surrender. It was attention.
They passed through another gate. Forty-seven steps.
A descent of perhaps twenty meters, based on the pressure change in her ears.
The hum grew louder—definitely machinery now, not just ambient fortress noise.
Whatever powered the pits ran through here, fed by conduits that probably connected to the main grid above.
The guards stopped at a heavy iron door set into the rock face. One produced a key—old, ornate, the kind of thing that belonged in a museum rather than a working lock—and twisted it in the mechanism. The door swung inward with a groan that echoed off the stone ceiling.
“Inside.”
The new cell was marginally better than the first. Still stone, still cold, still equipped with iron rings that spoke of purposes Elsa didn’t want to imagine—but there was a grate in the floor that allowed air circulation, and a small window near the ceiling that let in the barest sliver of orange light.
Not sunlight. Something artificial. Grid-powered.
Mia collapsed against the far wall the moment the guards withdrew, her legs folding beneath her like they’d forgotten how to hold weight. Her face had gone gray beneath the torchlight, her eyes too wide, her breathing too fast. The signs of someone approaching their breaking point.
Elsa moved to crouch beside her, wrists still bound but free enough to rest a hand on Mia’s shoulder. “Breathe. We’re still alive. That means we still have options.”
“Options.” Mia’s laugh cracked at the edges. “We’re in a dungeon under a dungeon, being held by a religious fanatic who wants to use us as leverage against alien werewolf leaders. What options?”
“More than we had an hour ago.” Ari’s voice came from near the door, where she’d positioned herself to watch the corridor through the small barred window. “We know where we are now. Pit-adjacent levels. I recognize the sound.”
Elsa’s attention sharpened. “You’ve been down here before?”
“Once.” Ari didn’t turn from the window. “Ryxin brought me. A lesson, he called it. Showing me what happens to those who displease the crown.” A pause. “I think he meant it as a warning. I used it as a reconnaissance opportunity.”
The admission carried weight. Ari had been playing a longer game than any of them realized—surviving in Ryxin’s orbit while mapping every weakness, every vulnerability, every piece of information that might prove useful.
“Tell me about Vask’s faction.” Elsa moved closer, keeping her voice low. The guards had retreated down the corridor, but she could still hear their claws clicking against stone. Close enough to respond to trouble. Not close enough to overhear whispers. “How do they operate? What do they fear?”
Ari finally turned from the window, her dark eyes catching the dim light. Something flickered in her expression—calculation, decision, the same cold assessment Elsa had learned to recognize in her own reflection.
“Vask has been building his power base for decades. Long before Sylas took the throne.” Ari lowered herself to the floor, back against the stone wall, bound hands resting in her lap with careful stillness.
“The religious faction controls the blessing ceremonies, the funeral rites, the interpretation of Lux’s will.
That gives them influence over the common population in ways the crown can’t match. ”
“Belief is harder to regulate than behavior,” Elsa said.
“Exactly.” Ari’s mouth curved—not quite a smile, but acknowledgment.
Recognition of someone who understood power as a system rather than a prize.
“Vask doesn’t need soldiers. He needs converts.
True believers who’ll follow his interpretation of Lux’s purpose rather than the crown’s.
And he’s been cultivating them for years—in the lower classes, in the servant quarters, among the guards who feel overlooked by noble-born commanders. ”
Mia had stopped hyperventilating. She was listening now, some of the panic in her eyes replaced by the same desperate focus that came with having something to concentrate on besides fear.
Elsa had seen it in patients aboard the Stardancer—the way a crisis could be managed by redirecting attention from the overwhelming whole to manageable parts.
“Who funds them?” Elsa asked. “Power structures like that don’t run on faith alone.”
“Tithes from the faithful. Donations from noble families who want religious sanction for their political moves.” Ari paused, something shifting in her expression.
“And bribes. Vask has connections to the pit administrators—the males who manage the labor operations, the ones who decide which prisoners work and which ones don’t survive the week. ”
The implication settled in Elsa’s gut like cold water. “He can make prisoners disappear.”
“Or survive longer than they should. It depends on what he needs.” Ari’s gaze met Elsa’s steadily.
“The pit guards answer to the council officially, but unofficially? Half of them are on Vask’s payroll.
They report to him. They follow his orders when those orders don’t directly contradict crown mandate. ”
“What does he fear?” Elsa pressed.
Ari considered the question. Somewhere beyond the cell, metal clanged against metal—another gate opening or closing, the rhythm of the under-fortress continuing around them.