I turn to her and take in her rough appearance. She’s covered in dirt. It’s smeared across all her skin, everywhere. Her hair is a tangled mess around her shoulders. Scars pepper her face beneath the dirt, brutal scars that must have been horrible to behold if she were clean. She sits against the cage opposite me, her bright purple eyes taking me in.
“Can you tell me what’s going on then?” I grunt, facing her fully. “Where the fuck am I and why am I in a cage?”
She laughs. “You must be new here.”
I narrow my eyes. “To New Babel, yes.”
“To the Harrow,” she clarifies. “Otherwise, you would have never made the mistake that landed you here.” She tilts her head back and sighs. “Let me guess. You visited one of the speakeasies and had a drink?”
I tense. “How did you know?”
“That’s how it always happens,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Players get lured into a false sense of safety because of the bright lights of New Babel. Because it’s not the ice of the Shatterlands or the loud danger of the Verdant Nexus, they relax.” She meets my gaze. “You cannot relax in The Harrow.”
“Is that how you ended up here?” I ask, watching her carefully. Because I’m watching her, I see the tick in her jaw that she probably would rather hide.
“No,” she grunts. “No. I don’t drink the giggle water anymore.”
My shoulders roll as I drag myself to my feet. It takes more effort than I’d like. She doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t offer up how she came to be imprisoned in this place. If it’s not the same way I’d been grabbed, then it’s something else, something potentially worse, and I’m not sure I trust her.
I flip open my inventory and look through it, searching for something that could help me get out of here. I curse myself for not having a fully stocked inventory like Vesper. It would have come in handy now. My Arctic Smite won’t do any good against metal bars. Most of my inventory is just winter gear and random shit. The Pearls of the Beloved don’t look they offer any help. The Emperor’s Crown is useless. My eyes catch on the Child Shoe Luck Charm, but it had warned about potentially being bad luck. Fuck. I don’t have shit that can help. Closing my inventory with a growl, I grab the bars and pull. I’m stronger now that I’ve leveled up, but it doesn’t do any good against these thick metal bars.
The woman laughs. “Bone Breaker, I assume?” I shoot her a look and she only shakes her head. “They always rely on their strength first.”
“It’s my biggest perk. Why wouldn’t I use it?” I grunt, looking at the door. I press against it, but it doesn’t budge.
“Because it’s useless here,” she replies, sighing. “Trust me. I’m one, too.”
I raise my brows. “You’re a Bone Breaker?”
She grins, flashing dirty teeth. “Tier One, but yeah. I haven’t had the nerve to level up.”
I frown. “Why?—”
“On your feet!”
I whirl toward the sound and immediately take a step back in horror. There are four guards walking into the large room we’re in. Each of them is dressed in grungy leather armor. I’m fairly sure one of them has actual mold growing on the leather. But that’s not what has me stepping back.
In Dross, there are a few types of creatures that exist with us. Insects are limited to roaches and small black ants, both a nuisance, but they can’t actually hurt you. There are maybe two types of birds, both willing to steal your food right out of your hand. And then there is one other type of creature.
Rats.
Sometimes, I think the rats outnumber the people in Dross. They’re disgusting creatures there, all scraggly and malnourished, the same as the people are. Most of them have been affected by the thick, poisonous air, missing patches of fur and highly aggressive. I know once they might have been clever creatures, but centuries of starvation and sickness have changed them the same as the humans.
Now I know what they could have become.
The guards are rats, but they’re not small. They’re the same size as I am and walk on two feet. The great rat features of their faces are horrifying as they speak, and just like in Dross, these ones seem to be missing patches of fur. One of the guards, the one with the mold, looks halfway dead already, his skin peppered with open wounds. Large teeth hang from their mouths, filed down to sharp points instead of the square teeth of the Dross rats.
“What are you looking at?” one of the rat guards sneers at me, hitting the bar with a thick stick. I don’t jump, mostly because I expect it, but still.
I’m many things. Opportunistic, aggressive, a bit unpredictable, but there’s one thing I’m not. A push over. And I’m really not good at keeping my mouth shut when I should.
“A pest,” I reply, bearing my own teeth at the guard.
Surprisingly, the rat doesn’t get mad. Instead, he laughs and points his stick at me through the bars. “Oh, keep that up, flesh bag. She likes them feisty.”
It takes everything in me not to change my expression. I don’t know who they’re talking about. I don’t even know where I am. But his words create the first drops of worry in my mind. I don’t like the sound of whoever “she” is.
“Against the bars! Line up!” the guards say, hitting the metal with their sticks, going around our cage to others. Just how many fucking cages are there.
