The stone was cold against Rin's cheek, and his afro scraped the wall whenever he tried to lift
his head more than a few inches. The chains connecting his neck shackle to the iron ring above
rattled with each breath, a rhythm he'd memorized over the past three days. Or was it four?
Time did strange things in Shintoega's cells.
Stop fidgeting, Ichi hissed from across the cramped space. You're making enough noise to
wake the Shriekers on the third level. Rin opened one eye.
The gunslinger was pressed against the opposite wall, his chains forming a web of iron between his
wrists, ankles, and the collar around his throat. Even in bondage he managed to look irritated
rather than afraid. The Shriekers are already awake, rumbled Tango from the third wall,
forming the final point of their triangle.
The deep cut on his head blinded his left eye, yet he seemed to track something none of them could see. "I heard them
feeding an hour ago. They're restless tonight."
"Everything in this damned palace is restless", Icci said. He twisted his left wrist, testing the
shackle for the hundredth time. Tomorrow's execution day, they can probably smell it.
Rin finally managed to sit up straighter, his chains singing a discordant melody. The scars
across his chest pulled tight, poorly healed tissue that ached in the dungeon's dampness. "Then
we need to move tonight."
"Brilliant observation." Icci said. "I don't suppose your massive brain has figured out how three
people chained to three different walls are supposed to coordinate an escape?" "Actually," Rin
said, letting a grin spread across his face. "I might have something."
Tango shifted his reinforced shackles groaning. I'm listening, the chains aren't the same length.
Rin rattled his collar chain.
"Mine's about six feet. Tango, yours?" "Seven, maybe eight?" Tango said. "Five and a half." Icci added, his voice losing some of its edge. "You're thinking we can reach each other?"
"Almost." Rin pointed at the center of their cell, where their chains would fall just short of meeting. "But if one of us can dislocate something, create some slack."
"Oh wonderful," Icci said. "Which lucky volunteer wants to pop their shoulder out?" "I've done it
before," Rin said quietly.
The cell fell silent except for the distant sound of boots on stone.
Musketeer patrol, probably two levels up. The repeating muskets they carried could punch
through a man at fifty yards and keep firing until their ammunition drums ran dry. Rin had seen
one demonstration. That had been enough. "Even if we reach each other," Tango said, "the locks are complex. Seven tumblers if the weight in my hand is any indication."
Ichi's expression shifted, something predatory sliding across his features. "Seven tumblers is
nothing, I've picked twelve tumbler, merchant locks while hanging upside down from a roof
beam." "Yea, while your hands were free," Rin pointed out.
Details. He wiggled his fingers. Get me close enough to Tango's lock and I can work by feel
alone.
But I'll need something thin and flexible. Rin looked down at his torn pants, then at the scars on
his chest. One of them had healed with a piece of wire still embedded in the tissue.
He'd been planning to cut it out if they'd given him anything sharp. Instead it might save their
lives. This is going to hurt, he muttered.
Most worthwhile things do, Tango said. There was something almost fatherly in his voice,
despite the chains and the blind eye and the doom waiting for them at dawn. Rin dug his
fingers into the scar tissue just below his left collarbone.
The wire was close to the surface, a ridge he could trace beneath the skin. He'd need to tear it
open, pull the wire free, and then dislocate his shoulder before the pain made him pass out.
"Wait", Icci said.
"Once we're free of the chains we still need to get through the door, and then through whatever,
fresh hell Shintoega has wandering his corridors tonight." "One problem at a time," Rin said. He
pressed harder, feeling the old wound begin to split.
Blood welled hot against his fingers. I had a dream, Tango said suddenly. Last night.
We were running through a forest made of bones and something was singing. Icci smacked his teeth. "Your dreams are about as useful as a chocolate sword, old man."
"Maybe". Tango's blind eye fixed on the cell door. "But in the dream, we made it out."
Did we stay out? Rin asked, still working the wire free. That part wasn't clear. Rin laughed
despite himself.
A sharp bark that echoed off the stones. The wire came loose in his hand, slick with blood but
blessedly intact. He held it up like a trophy.
"Then let's make our own ending," he said. "Ichi, get ready. Tango, when I dislocate this shoulder
I'm going to need you to talk me through not screaming loud enough to alert every guard in
the palace."
The half-giant nodded slowly. "I can do that". Rin took a deep breath, positioned his shoulder
against the wall's rough stone and began to push.
The sound Rin's shoulder made wasn't a pop so much as a wet grinding, like a pestle working
through gristle. He bit down on his tongue hard enough to taste copper, and the chains went
slack enough for him to twist his head through the collar's iron circle. "Good," Tango whispered,
his voice steady as stone.
"Now the arm. Slowly." Rin's vision swam with white spots, but he threaded his dislocated arm
through the wrist shackle, the joint hanging at an obscene angle.
He crawled toward the cell's center, dragging his leg chains behind him like a mechanical
serpent. Icci had already stretched as far as his bonds allowed, his neck straining against the
collar. Up close, anyone could see the burn marks on his arms weren't random, they formed
patterns, deliberate brands, letters in a language he didn't recognize.
"Wire," he hissed. He pressed the bloody metal into his palm. His fingers moved with inhuman
precision, feeling along Tango's nearest shackle.
The lock was at an awkward angle, forcing him to work entirely by touch, his face pressed
against the half-giant's massive forearm. "Seven tumblers," he confirmed. "Old Merchant Guild
design, Shintoega really does collect everything."
Can you open it? Rin asked through gritted teeth, his shoulder was screaming. "Hold up," he
paused, made three quick movements and something clicked. "There, one down, the next six
took longer."
Rin counted his breaths, listening to the palace beyond their door. Footsteps came and went.
Once, something howled from deep below, a sound that made his teeth ache.
Tango remained perfectly still, a mountain accommodating a mouse. When the seventh
tumbler fell, Icci let out a sharp laugh. Tango's hand shackle dropped away.
Now we're in business, the half-giant rumbled. With his freed hand he made short work of his
other restraints, then reached for Icci's chains. His thick fingers were surprisingly deft.
Five minutes later they stood in a circle, rubbing raw wrists and testing limbs. Rin's shoulder
needed to go back in, but he dreaded it almost as much as he dreaded the dislocation. On
three, Tango said, positioning himself behind Rin.
One? He didn't wait for three, the joint popped back with another nauseating sound, and Rin
swallowed a scream. You're a bastard, he wheezed. You would have tensed.
Tango moved to the cell door and pressed his ear against it. No guards, they're confident in
their chains. Their mistake, Icci said.
He examined the door's lock. This one's simpler. Thirty seconds.
He wasn't exaggerating, the door swung open on well-oiled hinges, revealing a corridor lit by
luminous fungi growing in careful rows along the walls. The light was green and sickly, but it
was enough to see by. I know this section, Icci whispered.
I mapped it before my... arrest. The stairs up are fifty yards east, but there's a guard post at the
landing. Can we go around? Rin asked.
Only if we want to meet the shriekers Tango mentioned. She glanced both ways. We take the
stairs.
Quickly, and quietly. They move through the corridor like shadows, bare feet silent on stone.
Rin's chain still hung from his wrists and ankles, too complex to pick without better tools, but at
least they weren't tethered to walls anymore.
The guard post was empty. Not abandoned, empty, as if whoever had been stationed there had
simply evaporated mid-duty. A repeating musket leaned against the wall, its ammunition drum
still three-quarters full.
Tango picked it up, checked the mechanism, frowned. "The firing pin's been removed. Shintoega
doesn't leave weapons lying around for prisoners," Icci said, but his voice carried an edge of
uncertainty.
They climbed three levels before they encountered the first horror. It had been a man once,
perhaps. Or something shaped like a man.
Now it was brass and flesh woven together in configurations that defied anatomy. Clockwork
gears rotated where its heart should be, visible through a cage of ribs. Its face was a porcelain
mask with too many eyes, all of them tracking independently.
"Automation," Icci breathed, "but they're supposed to be on the upper levels guarding the vaults."
The thing's head rotated 180 degrees. It saw them.
They ran. The automation's footsteps were perfectly rhythmic, a mechanical heartbeat that
never tired, never slowed. It chased them through twisting passages that Rin could have sworn
hadn't existed moments before.
The palace was rearranging itself. Here! Ichi yanked open a side door, and they tumbled
through into a chamber that stole Rin's breath. Cages lined the walls, dozens of them.
And in those cages... Rin recognized the figure in the nearest cell instantly. Everyone knew the
story of Jack, clever Jack who'd climbed the beanstalk and stolen from giants. But this Jack was
no hero from a fireside tale.
His limbs had been stretched on some diabolic rack, elongated until he resembled a spider. His
eyes were wild, desperate. Please, Jack whispered, his voice like wind through broken reeds.
Please, he's turning us, making us into his army, in the next cage. Something that might have
been Red Riding Hood, gnawed at the bars with wolf's teeth. Her scarlet cloak had been sewn
into her skin.
Down the line, Rin spotted others. A wooden boy, whose strings controlled his organs like a
puppet master's nightmare. A tin man, resting from the inside out.
A girl whose yellow brick road had become a chain binding her feet. "This prison is a laboratory," Icci said.
Moving between the cages with horrified recognition.
"These are the source. He's been collecting stories, twisting them. The monsters in this palace
aren't just creatures, they're legends corrupted."
"We have to free them," Rin said. "Or stop him from making more," Tango countered, pointing to a
doorway at the chamber's far end. Through it, Rin could see tables, surgical implements, and
something that looked like a massive loom made of bone and wire.
Distant footsteps echoed, multiple guards, and the rhythmic ticking of more automations.
"Time's strange here....," Jack whispered from his cage. "Minutes last hours, hours vanish in seconds."
"You'll lose yourselves if you stay too long," Icci looked at Rin, then at Tango. "We need to choose,
free these prisoners and run, or sabotage the laboratory and risk getting caught."
"I know what to do!" Icci's fingers
worked the wire into Jack's cage lock, while Tango hauled himself toward Red Riding Hood's
cell.
The girl-wolf hybrid snarled and slavered, her human eyes swimming with animal hunger. "Easy
now," Tango murmured, his voice gentle despite the creature's snapping jaws. "We're getting you
out."
Rin positioned himself near the doorway they'd entered, listening for the automation's
mechanical heartbeat. The ticking grew louder. Closer.
"Hurry", he hissed, the wire twisted in Icci's grip. Jack's cage clicked open just as the automation
burst through the doorway, its porcelain mask glinting in the fungi light. It moved with
impossible speed for something part clockwork, zeroing in on Tango's broad back.
"Tango!" Rin shouted. The half-giant turned, and the automation struck him like a battering ram.
They careened sideways, momentum carrying them through the laboratory wall.
Stone exploded, dust billowed. When it cleared, Tango lay gasping in the rubble, his breathing
wet and shallow. Blood darkened his beard.
The automation stood from the debris, gears whirring, undamaged save for superficial
scratches along its brass plating. It approached Tango with measured steps. Rin's mind raced,
too fast, too strong.
The automation's boot connected with Tango's ribs, launching the half-giant across the room.
He hit the far wall with a sound like kindling breaking. "My pelvis!!!!"
Tango's roar echoed through the chamber, equal parts agony and outrage. He crumpled,
unable to rise. Rin grabbed a length of chain from the floor and sprinted forward, vaulting over
a surgical table.
He swung the chain at the automation's mask, putting all his weight behind it. The porcelain
cracked, Fischer's spider webbed across the face. Through the broken pieces, Rin glimpsed
flesh beneath.
Not brass. Not clockwork. Skin, scorched and branded with symbols that writhed like living
things.
A jaw too square, eyes too blue. Electric blue. Thor, each he breathed standing frozen by Jack's
open cage.
That's the Thunder God, but he's been… changed. The automation Thor reached for Rin with
hands that sparked and popped. Rin rolled away, his chains clanking.
Above them, space seemed to fold. The ceiling lifted, walls stretching, until the chamber
became something vast, a cathedral of twisted anatomy. At its apex, a balcony materialized,
and upon it stood a figure in robes that absorbed light.
Shintoega. "Impressive," the sorcerer's voice carried effortlessly despite the distance. "You've
identified one of my collection."
"Thor was surprisingly easy to acquire, caught him during a moment of vulnerability in the sixth
timeline, just after his hammer was shattered. Time you see is just another lock to pick."
Rin stared upward, understanding crystallizing like ice in his gut.
The legends in cages weren't metaphorical. Shintoega had reached through time itself, plucking
heroes and monsters from their stories. "But you've made a mess of my laboratory," Shintoega
continued, his tone conversational.
"Let me introduce you to my custodian." He snapped his fingers. Shadow peeled from the walls
like wet paint coalescing into a figure that made Rin's throat close.
Pale as moonlight, fingers elongated into talons, ears pointed like daggers. The creature's teeth
were needles, and its eyes held nothing but hunger. Nosferatu, the vampire moved like silk
sliding over glass, gliding toward Ichi.
He stumbled backward but Red Riding Hood's cage stood open behind him, and the wolf girl
lunged. Icci dodged, barely, and Nosferatu struck. What followed was carnage.
Jack tried to help despite his distorted limbs using his spider-like reach to grab at the vampire.
Nosferatu tore through him without slowing. Red Riding Hood's jaws found purchase on the
vampire's arm, but Nosferatu simply twisted snapping her neck with a wet crack.
Icci fought like a demon, using every trick his military training had taught him. He was fast,
clever, reading his opponent's movements. But Nosferatu was older than cities, older than
kingdoms.
He caught his wrist, pulled him close, and bit. Rin died without a scream, drained completing of blood. Rin ran.
Not away but towards. He used the chaos as cover, his bare feet finding purchase on the surgical
tables, the cage bars, the twisted statues of heroes turned whores. He climbed with desperate
grace, chains singing behind him, parkour techniques from his life before imprisonment
carrying him upward.
The balcony's edge came within reach. He grabbed it. Hauled himself up.
Shintoega stood three feet away, a repeating musket held casually in one hand. Up close Rin
could see the sorcerer's face was young, impossibly young, preserved by whatever dark
bargains he'd made. His smile was pleasant, almost friendly.
"You know what the difference is between a prisoner and a free man?" Shintoega asked. Rin's
muscles tensed, preparing to lunge. "About six hundred years of perspective."
Shintoega pulled the trigger. The sound was enormous. Rin felt the impact, the backward jerk,
the- Rin's eyes opened a stone ceiling.
His neck ached from the collar's weight. The chains were cold against his wrists, ankles, throat.
Everything hurt in the specific way of long-term restraint, muscles atrophied from disuse.
"Brother's back." Icci's voice drifted from his corner of the cell. Not urgent, just tired.
Ancient tired. "Same dream?" Rin tried to speak but his throat was too dry. He'd been here so
long.
They all had. The escape attempts played out in dreams, always ending the same way. Shintoega
watching.
Shintoega laughing. Shintoega winning. "I dreamed we freed Jack."
Tango rumbled from his wall. His voice was old gravel, worn smooth by centuries. Before the
automation caught us.
"The automation that's really Thor," Icci added. Because they'd had this dream before. Variations
on a theme.
"Nosferatu kills me every time. My pelvis, still hurts..." Tango said, almost wistful. Rin closed his eyes.
Through the cell door's small window, he could see the palace corridor beyond. The same
corridor he'd run through in the dream. The same sickly green fungi light.
They'd been here since before the northern province had a name. Since before the age of
months. Since time itself had meaning.
Shintoega kept them alive through sorcery, their suffering fueling something deeper in the
palace's foundation. They were batteries. Decoration.
A joke the sorcerer told himself when he needed entertainment. The chains clinked as Rin
tested their weight. "Still strong. We break out for real next time. Don't get weaken by setbacks. Stay strong, always strong. Always a tomorrow", he said. Because he always said it.
"Tomorrow," Ichi and Tango echoed. But tomorrow never came. Not for them.
Not in Shintoega's palace where time was just another lock, and they'd lost the pig centuries
ago. Somewhere above, something howled. The palace door creaked.
And three prisoners hung in their chains, immortal and trapped, dreaming of freedom they
would never touch. Even to this day. Shintoega