Valleria stepped through an open door, gauging the distance between her and the ground, and the slope of the wall. Behind her, the procession of Kobold’s followed. They moved much faster now that they had abandoned the cart of ‘gifts’. Not that those bastards deserved it.

She should’ve told Mark and Alverost to poison it.

When Simon stood behind her, she stepped through the door, sliding along the wooden wall. The friction burned her scales on the way down, but that didn’t stop her.

She shouted as she broke into a jog. “It should be this way.” She thought. Most of this hadn’t been here when she was here last, but she was fairly confident she was heading the right direction.

“We should head back!” Simon shouted, jogging to keep up with her as she darted along ramps and through doorways, passed stunned Kobolds living in every nook and cranny of the dungeon’s wooden nest.

“Not before we get my brother. Honestly, fuck these guys. Fucking Raeph!” She yelled, before sliding again. The Kobold’s behind her lagged, having to move sideways to fit through doorways and moving single or double file up the just wide enough ramps, trudging weapons and covered in heavy armor. “Fucks sake. Whole city is gone. Can’t even see the dirt.” She muttered.

She was moving forward still, guided by an entire life’s worth of running to this one home along the beaten, muddy paths.

It was a home she had returned to after searching the field for bugs, a place she could run to after escaping other clans territories, a place she could call her own.

She retraced those memories through unfamiliar pathways. She knew the distance— just ten paces more, and she found the place her house had once been. There was a gaping doorway, a wall fused to a ceiling of smooth and grainless wood. She stepped inside. Silver was closest now, and he followed her, weapon drawn.

He stalked into the darkness, scanning it, before turning and pointing his weapon at a movement in the corner of the room. Under a pile of rags, Con looked up with fear in his eyes.

“Valleria?” He asked, struggling to stand, trying to push himself to his legs. He stood with a limp, his eyes contorted in pain.

“Simon, carry him. Let’s go.” Simon barged into the room behind her, looking between Silver and Con, before reaching down and scooping him up.

“Woah!”

“We’re leaving. Let’s go.” Valleria took a moment to look around the room. There was nothing here for her to take with her— the clan had taken even their food back. Then she looked Con up and down. He was as emaciated as ever, but he was unchanged. Good. Valleria moved at a jog out of the room.

“Valleria? What’s happening? I thought you were dead! They said you were exiled! To— to the pits…” Con said, yelling as they jogged through Clan Longtail territory.

“I was. Exiled I mean. Not dead.” Valleria replied, checking to make sure the group was following behind her. They were. This strange wavey and curved city moved up and down as they left it, returning eventually to a place the dungeon hadn’t changed. Gray walls began to have holes that showed houses still formed of rot.

They were almost out of the city now, pressing forward, they just needed to cross through another few alleys and they would be passed the press of houses where rotting shelters pushed down on them.

Valleria looked to where flags used to hang, calm and still and stagnant in the Hallow that rarely felt wind. The flags were gone, cloth torn down. Things here were changing. Just as much as they were below. Valleria wondered if it was for better or worse. It was easy to cling to how things used to be— rotten cities and tattered cloth and mud. But it meant being under Raeph’s thumb. No, Valleria would never come back here.

A Changed Kobold stepped into the street in front of her, looking down at Valleria, and there was an odd, pressed moment of silence.

Most of the group caught up at this point, gathering around Valleria, fingering metal weapons they had never gotten the chance to use against real flesh, just practice drills on dummies and duels where Axel would repeatedly cut out bits and pieces of them.

“What are you doing?” The changed Kobold, the guard that had lead Valleria into the city, the guard that had removed her hand, asked her. She stepped forward, and there was a flickering of the lights in the ceiling. The running veins of near liquid mana that illuminated the hallow flickered over this little section of the rot city.

It was an odd thing, that flicker, and it gave Valleria pause. She spared a cursory glance up, and she could swear, among the area where the buildings nearly pressed to the ceiling, she saw movement. It was gone by the time her sight landed to investigate the ceilings, and she looked back to the Kobold guard in front of her.

“Leaving. Do you have a problem with that?” She resumed walking forward once again, and the Kobolds face turned dark.

“You have something that belongs to us.”

Valleria scoffed. “What would that be?” She didn’t stop.

“Every Kobold belongs to the clan, exile. Set him down.” With this, the changed Kobold’s blade like extrusion, disturbingly, extended. The flesh of his arms shifted, and the… the claw bent into shape, a wicked, curving thing covered in black keratin.

Silver pointed a spear at the man at the same time as Simon step forward. “If we refuse?” Silver asked, raising his chin. Compared to the beasts of the Pit, this Changed was nothing to him.

The lizard rolled its head almost lazily, looking up to the ceiling. He had an odd, out of place calmness for someone in such a situation, even though he was alone and facing down a convoy.

Valleria moved first then, noticing the incongruity. “Above!” She shouted, turning— but she was unarmed.

The pulsing light of the mana in the ceiling disappeared in an eruption of heat and sound that pushed down low against the floor.

Valleria tumbled face first, scraping along the mud and dirt, her ears ringing. It was dark, pitch black even. She looked up. In the far distance, the light of the roots still shone— but it had gone dark over the Longtail rot-city.

Nocturnal eyes gleamed through holes in the wooden buildings. They moved like rivers, glowing in the dark in streams of light as Changed Kobolds rushed them from all sides.

She looked up in time to see the guard that had behanded her as a spear entered his neck. He gasped, choking and spitting blood.

His scythe like appendage gored Silver in return, but Silver pushed, using the taller Kobolds weight against itself to lever it to the ground. Silver stomped on his head until he was still, and Valleria still hadn’t even moved yet.

Then the ringing in her ears began to subside, and she heard the sound of fighting, and Simon’s hand landed on her arm.

“Run, idiot!” He shouted for the fourth time as Valleria finally stumbled forwards.