Survival Drills

Cold stone pressed his cheek. A voice cut through the haze.

“Easy,” Alia murmured. Something firm touched his temple—cool against his skin, the same faint, sharp scent that later clung to her vials. The world stopped wobbling, clicking into place one notch at a time.

Stone arched low overhead, the chamber breathing faint light the way a sleeping thing breathes. Torches wedged in cracks burned steady. Sera’s women moved like planets—Bren tightening straps; Tamsin counting knives with a click-click-click; Nyx pacing in a tight loop, stylus tapping her bracer.

“Drink.” Alia pressed a tin cup to his mouth.

He gulped because she told him to. Mint burned down his throat and took the tremble with it.

“Did I… black out?” he croaked.

“Briefly,” Alia said, like he’d sneezed.

Nyx stopped pacing, eyes hawk-sharp. “You flared.” She didn’t sound surprised—more like she’d just confirmed a hypothesis.

“I… what?”

“You lit up,” she said, impatient. “Then it collapsed. Like a spark under wet cloth.” Her head tipped, narrowing. “Void doesn’t spark.”

“You keep saying that. What is void?”

A frown flickered across her face. Nyx’s nostrils twitched once, almost like she’d caught a scent, before she masked it, stylus tapping sharper against her bracer.

Nathan blinked. Weird. And the way her eyes cut over him again — quick, sharp — it was like she’d measured something and shelved it away.

Bren loomed, big as a doorway, voice flat as stone. “Rare. Some are born with no affinity. No heat, no light. Mana can’t bloom from nothing. Void.”

Nyx’s eyes narrowed to razors, then flicked over him once more, quick and cutting, before she said nothing.

The tomes at the manor. Dust and ink. Pages glaring static. I traced them until my wrist cramped. Sketched spirals just to feel like I was doing something. Nothing ever twitched. Nothing ever answered. And that whisper—thin and cold, curling through my marrow—what the hell was that?

Bren thumbed her shield rim, not unkind. “Enough. He’s upright. Sera wants us moving.”

Nathan pushed himself up, legs shaky but holding. The women were already in motion—packs swung high, straps cinched, weapons checked with ritual ease. He hitched his own pack higher, trying to mimic the rhythm. And then he fell into step.

They pressed deeper until stone walls gave way to what almost looked like outside. The tunnel spat them into a cavern wide enough to swallow the manor whole.

Nathan stumbled, lungs cinched. Sun without warmth. Air without breath.

Not true day. The “sky” stretched too perfectly blue, a dome painted with white clouds that never moved. Light spilled across grass bright enough to sting, but carried no heat. Moss gleamed as lawn in the false daylight, fronds shifting as though stirred by a breeze that wasn’t there.

The others didn’t hesitate. They stepped into the grassland like it was nothing new, boots ringing faint on the pale stone.

Tamsin’s grin cut sideways. “Better than swamp rot.”

Bren snorted. “Or sand pits.”

They spoke like travelers rating inns, not people stepping into a world that shouldn’t exist.

Sera’s gaze swept the false horizon once, sharp and certain, then cut forward. “Form up. We drill here.”

“Drill?” Nathan croaked. “You mean… practice?”

“Better to fall on your face here than when the dungeon’s biting,” Bren said.

Sera drew a rectangle in the grit with her boot. "Stay in the box. Whatever you hold, you move first. Rhythm before reach. The box is the party. You keep time, you keep place, or you break the line.”

She lifted a small bone whistle and blew. A shrill note cut sharp, pulling them into order faster than any barked command.

Nathan flinched. Great. Full army boot camp now, huh?

Nyx slid in, heels kissing the rectangle’s edges. “Two forward—two back. Pivot. Reset.” Nothing—then everything. Her taps cut angles from her shadow.

Bren touched Nathan’s shoulder lightly. “You go slow or you go stupid.”

He went slow. His body—no, this body—didn’t understand slow. Nathan had learned to dance young—later a musical had forced him to prove it. Steps counted and measured until rhythm lived in his bones. Here, the weight was wrong. Top-heavy. Borrowed. After a couple tries he clipped the rectangle. Like it had offended him.

He caught himself before he fell—a tiny private miracle.

The others hadn’t moved. They’d flowed around his stumble, adjusting without thought, like water closing over a stone.

He wasn’t just learning steps. He was being slotted into theirs.

He adjusted his stance, toes hunting the edge.

“Fucking box,” he muttered.

Tamsin chuckled. “There you go. That’s a toe. It wants to dance.”

"My toes don’t want to dance—they want a break," he muttered.

“Again,” Sera said. They reset. Better. The line flowed back into place at her signal.

When the whistle faded, the motes overhead jittered. For half a breath, Nathan swore they shifted wrong—skewing near him before steadying. Nyx’s stylus froze mid-tap, her eyes cutting toward him—razor-sharp, measuring. Then she looked away, mask sliding back into place. Nathan’s stomach dropped. He didn’t know what she’d noticed—only that it was him.

The sword came next and turned it all back to chaos.

“Grip,” Bren said, tapping his knuckles. “Not a chokehold. A handshake.”

Nathan blinked. “I don’t usually handshake sharp metal, thanks.”

Tamsin grinned. “Good. Then you won’t pick up bad habits.”

They added sprints between scrub clumps—Tamsin’s from here to there without drawing a line. Alia poured water into him every time he tried to act like he didn’t need it. Sera watched like she was balancing a ledger, every movement weighed, every fault tallied.

By degrees, panic cooled from a hot stone in his throat to something he could swallow. He even forgot to hate the sword for a few breaths at a time.

Sera called a brief halt. The women tightened straps, shook out arms, took measured pulls from waterskins. Nathan bent over, hands on knees, breath ragged but steady. His old body would’ve collapsed already. This one just kept going—strength that wasn’t his, dragging him past every instinct to stop.

He hesitated, then glanced at Sera’s sleeve. “Back there—your forearm marks. Yours and Ro—ah… G-Garrick’s. What was that?”

Ah, shit. I almost said Ronan.

Sera didn’t stop cinching a strap. “Guild protocol. Captains of linked parties carry the mark. Proof you’re sanctioned to enter dungeons of this rating.”

“Sanctioned as in… permission slips?”

“It means you’re not frauds,” she said, flat. “And the Guild can record which parties entered together. Cuts down on scams. Or corpses.”

“So—can it tell you if Garrick’s alive? Like… a ping?”

“No.” No softness in it. “It proves we entered as one. Not a tether.”

Damn. Not going to help Ronan.

Nyx leaned in, voice cool but cutting. “If you want reassurance, pray. The Guild’s not in the hand-holding business.”

“Wouldn’t matter,” Bren rumbled. “Dungeons don’t care about marks.”

Sera didn’t argue. She gave a sharp, two-note whistle. The sound cracked against the cavern walls, and the line fell back into rhythm — Bren’s shield tilt, Tamsin’s pivot, Alia’s pace, Nyx’s tap. Nathan stumbled after, realizing too late this wasn’t just drilling him. They were showing him the shape of their formation, daring him to fit.

Interlude – Kieran: East Ramparts

The wind off the walls was sharp enough to sting. Kieran stood at the parapet, cloak tugged close, watching the city sleep beneath a smear of stars. Behind him, the stairwell door creaked.

A hood crossed to the lee side where the torch couldn’t paint a face.

“You’re late,” Kieran said—quiet, but edged. Lateness meant exposure.

“Two sentries on the north stairs. Slipped them when they changed watch. Ronan’s adjutant made a pass, but he didn’t look twice.”

Competence, sharp as a blade. Young, but not sloppy.

Kieran didn’t move. He preferred silence—men revealed themselves in it. The hood only shifted weight once, then stilled. Discipline.

“What did you see?”

“The manor’s lighter,” the hood said at last. “Not pressing on the men the way it used to. They laugh now, dice again, even argue. Human. I felt it too—like shaking off a weight. Clear enough to notice after the ritual. That’s when the shift happened.”

The voice steady. Report, not rumor. Kieran filed it against the other fragments.

“And him?”

A pause. Not for fear—choosing words.

“He’s different. Slower. Says odd things sometimes—things the men don’t expect. Then he goes quiet, like he’d rather not be heard. The Boss never filled silences before, and he never backed out of them either.”

The hood glanced toward the stairs. “Even Ronan… covers for him. Stands closer, steadier than before. Shields the slips so no one dares call them out. Whatever bound the rest loosened, Ronan still holds the weight. He acts like it’s choice, but I don’t think it is.”

Kieran’s jaw tightened. Covers? That’s odd.

“You’re certain.”

“As certain as I dare be.” No stumble, no apology. Just fact.

Too clean for his age. Who trained you?

“You’ll report when told,” Kieran said, voice flat as the stones underfoot. “The rest of the time, you vanish. Understood?”

The hood dipped once. “Yes, Commander.”

Good. No excuses, no chatter.

The wind shifted, carrying forge-smoke from the lower wards. The hood added, low: “He’s like a different man.”

Kieran didn’t answer. His gaze had turned outward again, to the horizon paling at the edge of dawn.

When he looked back, the rampart was empty. Only damp footprints trailed toward the stairs.

He stood a long while after, fists braced on cold stone.

Mason. His blood rose at the thought of his name. That bastard still walked on honors he hadn’t earned, wearing a title bought with other men’s lives. Most called him a hero.

Kieran remembered the southern battlefield.

“What are you playing at?” he muttered to the empty wall, jaw tight.

He’d get his payback. Not with proclamations, not with politics—
but with truth, when the time came.

The sun broke at last, rooftops catching like embers. Kieran turned from the light. Work waited.

Back in the false daylight, only when Sera judged them steady again did she snap the whistle once more—short, clipped.

The women fell into column. Nathan hitched his pack higher and slid into line.

Bioluminescent moss pulsed along the walls, light rising and fading in slow breaths. A draft stirred it in long sighs, too steady to be natural. Underground, nothing should move air like that. The place was breathing.

Radioactive moss. Fun. No one told him not to touch it, but he wasn’t about to test it.

Shadows stretched longer, the air cooling until even their breath sounded borrowed. Nathan caught himself tensing, waiting for Sera to snap another drill into motion.

The passage widened into a space that almost resembled a grove. Crystal spires jutted like trunks, their facets catching the mosslight in fractured glimmers. Pale strands of luminescent growth trailed from them, swaying with the draft as if the place had learned to mimic vines. Overhead stretched a false sky—black, crowded with drifting motes that glimmered like dust caught in moonlight.

Nathan’s breath hitched. Almost pretty—for a dungeon where he sat at the bottom of the food chain.

At the edge of the crystal “treeline,” the air warped, motes bending as if through heat-haze. For an instant he thought he saw antlers, and a massive shape black as oil. Then it was gone, the motes settling as though nothing had stirred at all.

“Hunter. A light bender,” Tamsin whispered.

Bren’s voice rumbled. “Shard hart.”

Sera’s tone didn’t change. “Form two. Bren front. Tamsin right. Nyx hook left. Alia glued to me. Corin—back line. If it chooses the softest point, that’s you. Don’t be there.”

Nathan’s throat scraped dry. “Yup.”

The breeze wasn’t random. Long draw in, pause, shorter release. The grove was breathing. Or something in it was.

Nathan’s mouth moved before he thought better of it. “On the draw, it’s a step toward the clearing.” Three beats in, two out. Just like the box drills. No—like dance steps. Count the rhythm, keep the line moving as one.

Tamsin’s mouth flicked. “Count it for me.”

“One—two—three… one—two…”

The line shifted with him, boots falling into place. The moss shivered faintly, strands pulling toward the clearing as though stirred by an invisible weight. Still nothing broke cover.

Tamsin’s voice cut low. “Keep counting, rookie. If it steadies you—keep it.”

Nathan swallowed and forced the rhythm through his teeth. “One—two—three… one—two…”

On the second “two,” the moss at the clearing’s edge trembled again, heavier this time—like something pressing down, testing weight.

Nyx didn’t look away. “Hook left on the exhale.”

Sera’s fingers flicked once.

Nyx’s stylus scratched a small arc, tapped the moss. A spiral smoldered—hook, hold—its glow faint, not flashy. The grove breathed out on Nathan’s “two,” and the spiral tugged empty air like it had caught a thread.

The world warped. Antlers stretched vast, veins of false starlight running their length, constellations snared in every tine. A body black as ore, gold flecks shifting across its hide—solid one breath, smoke-thin the next. A long head split by a seam of silver light for a mouth—then gone as the motes slid off like water.

Heartbeat. One—two—three. The moss sighed.
The clearing held its breath with him—every shadow too still, every mote trembling like it wanted to scatter. Then the hart surged forward, antlers raking low, motes bending with each step.

“Fuhh-king thing—” Tamsin spat, sliding under its chest.

Fucking thing, Nathan echoed before he could stop it.

Bren drove two steps and set her shield, low and sure. “Stack.” Sera pressed in behind her, weight one machine.

The hart hit like a blur. Not invisible—just wrong, its outline smearing, shoulders dragging constellations across the false sky.

Bren didn’t meet force with force. She tilted a hair, giving only what she had to. The impact rang, air shuddering as antlers scraped her shield. Motes burst white.

Another flicker caught Nathan’s eye. As Nyx’s spiral burned brighter, the seam of motes overhead tugged lower—and near his shoulder, too, motes stuttered, drawn into the same current. Nyx’s head tilted, gaze flicking toward him—sharp, assessing—before snapping back to the hart.

“Now!” Sera’s blade struck low, sparks of light scattering as the hart folded sideways, evading.

Tamsin slid for the back knee. “One—two—now.” Knives bit, skittered, found no purchase on hide that shifted like stone turning to smoke.

“Augment,” Sera snapped.

Nyx sketched faster. “Hold.” The spiral flared brighter—hooked—shuddered as if something inside it wanted out.

The hart’s head snapped toward Nyx. Its ribs bellowed. The long inhale dragged streamers of false light down. The motes bent like rivers feeding into its chest.

Nathan blinked. It wasn’t just cloaking in starlight—it was drinking the motes themselves, raw mana pulled from the false sky. Every inhale siphoned the dungeon’s flow straight into its chest.

“Alia—keep her steady,” Sera barked.

Alia was already there, uncorking a vial and dabbing its sharp-smelling draught across Nyx’s arm, the cooling sting chasing tremors out of her hand. The spiral steadied for a beat.

The hart’s chest swelled wider. The spiral stuttered again, Nyx’s hand faltering even under Alia’s touch.

Nathan’s shoulders locked, breath hitching. No. Don’t be the weak point. Not this time.

He refused to be. And he saw what no one else was watching: the “sky” itself wasn’t fixed. A bright seam of motes ran like a milky river overhead, dipping lower every time the hart inhaled. A vein. Its food source.

The others were locked on the hart—on the streamers of light being dragged into its chest. No one’s eyes followed the current back to where it began.

His pulse kicked. This is insane. But if the thing needed that vein—

On instinct, he snatched the nearest rock. Why the hell am I throwing a rock at the ceiling? Too late. He hurled it at the seam. It struck with a hollow boom, rattling his teeth.

The vein split. Motes poured downward in a flood—straight into the hart’s mouth. Its ribs heaved, gagging on the surge. For one blink the shimmer peeled away, collapsing star-skin to show raw muscle underneath.

Nathan’s breath caught. He’d made it choke on mana.

“Now,” Tamsin breathed.

Bren hammered her shield into the hart’s shoulder, turning it. Sera’s blade slid clean along the inside foreleg—surgical, cutting what would’ve been impossible a blink earlier.

The beast staggered. Antlers smashed stone, shearing off a jagged piece that clattered across the ground.

Nyx’s spiral flared—then she ripped it apart with a flick. “Disperse.”

Light detonated outward in a wash. The grove’s false stars blazed once before falling steady again.

The hart reeled, starving, its head thrashing. Tamsin slid low, knife flashing up beneath the jaw.

A crash like falling timber shook the clearing as it went down. Then silence.

Bren rolled one shoulder. “Hinge worked,” she said, as if discussing a door.

Sera’s eyes cut to Nathan. Not smiling—she seldom did—but something eased at the corners. “Back line threw well.”

Nathan swallowed. “Just… a lucky throw?”

Nyx wiped her hands, staring at the broken antler like it might insult her. “You threw a rock at the ceiling and it worked,” she said, flat. No praise, no awe—just observation. But her eyes slid toward him again, assessing. “That throw—what exactly were you aiming at?”

Nathan’s pulse stuttered. He could still see it plain as day: a line in the sky, glowing like a vein about to split. But from her tone, maybe no one else had.
“…didn’t think,” he muttered. “Just threw.”

Nyx tilted her head, filed it away, and let it drop.

Alia tilted the hart’s head, checking for residual charge. “Careful,” she murmured as Nathan drifted close. “Those tines can cut deep.”

Sera nudged the fallen antler toward Bren. “Pack it. Guild pays for proof.”

“Tine?” Nathan asked.

“The piece of antler,” Bren said, already wrapping it in cloth.

The others moved with the same unspoken rhythm—checking the body, sweeping the treeline, tending a cut Nathan hadn’t even seen.

Nathan couldn’t stop staring at the carcass. A moment ago its antlers had burned with stolen stars; now they were dulled to plain stone, heavy and useless. Muscles hung slack, yet still looked ready to lurch up and breathe again. Magnificent—and already reduced to salvage.

It had drunk mana straight from the sky. Too much, too fast. Like a predator that didn’t know when to stop. He swallowed. If he hadn’t thrown—if Bren’s hinge or Nyx’s spiral had slipped—the whole grove might have poured itself into the beast.

He hesitated. “So if a monster keeps feeding like that… what happens?”

Nyx’s grin tilted, sharp as her stylus. “Then it changes. Too much flow at once forces growth it can’t control. Think of it like shoving years of strength into minutes. The weak ones are consumed by the raw mana. Some—the stronger ones—sprout into things worse.”

Nathan’s mouth went dry. Leveling up—except the kind that tipped past any limit. “So… then you get a dungeon break?”

“Dungeon… break?” Nyx echoed, tasting the phrase. Her gaze flicked toward the false stars above. “No. Not from one beast. A shard hart choking itself only ends here, with a corpse. A full collapse comes when motes gather past reason—when a dungeon itself swells beyond what it can cage. Then the walls split, and everything inside spills out.”

Alia’s voice was softer, but steady. “There hasn’t been a full collapse in more than fifty years.”

Tamsin shuddered, muttering, “Let’s hope we don’t live to see one.”

Bren just grunted, the sound like stone grinding shut.

Sera’s voice cut clean. “Doesn’t matter. It’s dead. We move before the grove decides otherwise.”

Nathan glanced up. The constellations were steady again. The fake wind carried its long rhythm: one—two—three, one—two.

A whole sky, breathing under stone—and still watching.

“On me,” Sera said, and the grove swallowed them back into its painted night.