The long walk down from his manor was no less harrowing on his psyche just because it was made through his own streets.

His boots echoed across the grimy cobbles with the steady beat of a metronome, his back straight and eyes cold. Peasants, mercenaries, and adventurers alike took one glance in his direction and parted before him as if an invisible wedge took point before him wherever he went.

As they should.

Even with Miaro’s form tucked away in the shadow of his silver-embroidered trench coat, Kolak’s stout frame by his side, his personally chosen best soldiers behind him, and every single protection he was able to come up with and place on his person, whether it be through enchantment, infusion, or artifact, the fact of the matter was that with every step, he got closer to entering the jaws of the Dungeon.

And he could only hope he would come back out whole.

Streets narrowed, houses and stores faded, life petered out until all that remained were warehouses and automated factories. A fading soul dying by a drain, a gutter child shyly peeking through a broken window, a startled worker backing out of sight.

On the other end of the third floor’s substratum, the kingdom’s teleporters would be admitting hopeful nobodies and experienced veterans alike to challenge the Dungeon.

But his turf was far from such clamors.

And not all entrances to the Dungeon lay in plain sight.

His escorts were professionals, their steps light and quiet, to draw attention to his own thundering ones. Their visages faceless, every aspect of their stance and equipment formed and forged to accentuate his authority, his power. For all that it mattered.

Across an alley, over a metal bridge that rattled under his heel, waste churning and bubbling under the arch. Down a staircase too tight for his soldiers to march through, instead forming a loose snake’s spine behind his coattails, until finally, he turned the corner to see the entry point.

A single brown piece of fabric nailed to the iron wall, under which lay a familiar tunnel of jagged metal, no doubt the work of months. And across the center of the covering, sprawled a blood-red gear, a single eye gazing coldly down at him from its center.

He didn’t know how they did it with naught but red paint and a messy brush, but that eye always looked down at whoever met its glare, no matter the position or angle. There was no magic, no real artistry, yet as he stared into the uncaring eye, he could swear the gear turned, just a single degree to the right.

Even though it hadn’t.

It was both annoying and unnerving.

Much like the cultists themselves.

Wordlessly, he extended an arm to Kolak, the man quickly placing a gas mask onto his glove.

He strapped it around his head like a helmet, hearing all his soldiers mutely follow his lead with a shuffle of leather and fabric. After a moment to check that the purification runes and filter were functional, he clicked the button on the side of his mask to allow sound in and out.

“Kolak, take point.” He ordered, his voice coming out in a tinny hiss.

His guard did as he was told, one hand on his sword as he marched ahead, pulling the tarp aside and ducking his head to pass under the jagged shards of metal unharmed, the entrance just barely wide enough for a large man like him to pass through.

He followed, knowing his itinerary was waiting for him.

If the relative silence of the lowest rungs of the third floor was one borne from absence of life, ahead lay a cacophony borne from death.

Light faded as the tunnel continued, the sounds vibrating the uneven metal underneath his feet. Hissing, clanging, the rattling of empty conveyor belts echoing throughout the smog-filled cavern like the clicking teeth of a monstrosity eagerly awaiting its prey.

Kolak pushed aside another tarp on the other end of the tunnel, and held it open for him, moving to the side.

Stepping out into the colossal cavern, he straightened once more, quickly checking his coat’s enchantment again. After confirming his skin wouldn’t burn and poison him from an unfortunate breeze, he fished in his pocket for the enchanted compass, and reluctantly dug it out, extending his hand just a bit to hold it horizontally in front of his stomach, his head bending down to stare.

Burnished bronze met his eyes, the symbol of the Machinists carved into its gently curving dome, and he flicked it open with his thumb, not wanting to see that eye for a moment more than necessary.

“Miaro, scout.”

The viscous black smoke nestled inside his coat swelled and gathered at his abdomen, the buttons on the front unlatching with surprising speed and dexterity.

He suppressed a twitch of his brow as he watched the smoke burst out from the open gap of his coat like a thousand raven’s feathers, clumps of darkness exploding with impatience to shoot off in a hundred different directions.

In less than a second, all signs of the kid’s presence were gone.

If he didn’t have the ability to turn his muscles to steel in the fraction of a second, he would never trust him to casually nestle inside his clothes, but he had proven his merit thus far.

Twelve men and women stood stock still behind him as he simply waited, his hands in his coat pockets.

Five minutes later, a frenzied tide of shadows shot out from between every nook and crevice in sight, gathering like a whirlpool in front of him and coalescing into a thin, lean form in the span of a second.

A blurry, wispy silhouette of black, with two white slits for eyes, glaring at him in a cold, angry impatience.

Two months of guard duty were far more grating to him than he’d expected they would be, but it was a necessary punishment. Breaking his bones just hadn’t felt quite enough.

“Nothing.” Miaro dryly reported, his voice inflectionless, his featureless face unmoving.

“Keep a couple eyes out, just in case. Return.” He simply said, and Miaro wasted no time, turning back into a cloud of wispy black and shooting down to the ground under his coat, some parts of him breaking off to slither into the gloom to act as their eyes. Then the assassin nestled back into whatever nook and cranny he could fit himself into.

He took the lead, hand loosely clutching the compass and checking it every few minutes.

Traversing the Bone Pits, beyond some areas near the towers, was very difficult, even as one person. As a group of fifteen, the downwards crawl was unimaginably slow.

After three or four hours of mutely traversing the labyrinth, they had to stop for a short break, to both recuperate their stamina and change their mask filters.

It was a muted, subdued break, and they resumed shortly after.

The descent was sometimes steep, sometimes dangerous, but most of all, lengthy.

Another break, a longer one. Some light conversation was allowed as Miaro scouted, the tight confines of the Bone Pits not allowing his soldiers to spread themselves thin, basically huddled around an open center. The lack of vigilance grated him.

They were a bit too trusting of Miaro. Something to fix later.

Soon, they began moving again, their sights and surroundings slowly but surely becoming a little more familiar as they got closer to their destination.

Eight hours of walking later, they came across what they were looking for. An iron gate, placed between two machines for seemingly no reason, blocked their path. Piles of wire were lying on the ground on either side, and painted crudely on the doors, was the symbol of the Machinists.

The detailed painting of the gear and the eye in the middle, only further accentuated how unnerving the thing was.

Now that they were getting into Machinist territory, he put Kolak up front, regardless of their supposed ‘cordial’ relationship. He just didn’t trust them.

After a long descent down uneven, and at some points, barely functional terrain, they were all exhausted however, so he ordered his men to rest up for an extra long break before they got to their destination, making his healers pump everyone up with a little bit of healing magic to clear up any soreness and snags that might be lingering, just a bit of energy to ensure they were at the top of their game.

And eventually, the terrain flattened, the meaningless machines left behind by the Dungeon growing a bit more… organized was not the correct word.

More utilitarian, perhaps. Factories and machines the size of his manor were scrapped and hollowed out to act as communal homes, their symbol painted everywhere with bright red and yellow paint. Piles of unusable scrap were stacked high and fused or melted together as if to form a grotesque wall of metal around the cult’s little ‘village’ of sorts, nestled under pipes larger than warships and in the shadow of a broken aqueduct.

Yet, nothing moved.

He walked his men down the catwalk flanked by a thousand eerie eyes, coming upon a circular area that was the closest approximation to an open square that one could find in such a place, scarred and bent metal showing just how much modification they had to do to make a circular open space like this.

In a place built by the Dungeon, there was no cohesion, no plan, no logical shape. The factories were metal monstrosities more akin to someone grabbing six different shapes and mashing them together, before drafting random bits of machinery and open, dangerous equipment all over them, running a thousand pipes around and through the structures, interspersed with windows and walkways as if to pretend the constructs of the Bone Pits were ever meant to hold life within their walls.

Sometimes, the machines were just out in the open, connected to others, or sometimes just meaningless, things built just because the Dungeon could build them.

Like a child toying with its sandbox.

He really disliked the Bone Pits.

So despite the unsettling appearance of the cult’s residence, and the countless drawings of gears with eyes sprawled across every flat surface, he couldn’t deny that by comparison, this place was almost hospitable.

In the center of the square he and his men were waiting on, was what he remembered to be the very lifeblood of this small community of freaks and nutjobs, a cylindrical tower a hundred feet high, the side facing the entrance dedicated to water filtration, while the side facing their ‘chapel’, a metallic, crude imitation of gothic architecture, was acting as a delivery system between them and their contacts on the third floor.

Which included him.

From the top of the tower rose a simple steel wire lift that vanished off into the darkness of the dungeon after just a couple hundred feet, no doubt changing directions dozens of times, until it reached another hole in the walls, where his men would load the carts with necessities and send them on their long journey down.

The first time he’d found these folks, he’d felt like a country bumpkin, gawking at the absurdity of everything and everyone down here, but by now, the roughshod aesthetic had grown on him.

Another couple minutes passed in silence, and from around the cylinder, the person he’d been waiting for walked out.

Archbishop Varmond.

A man that made most men shit themselves at the mere sight of his true form, hidden under that bulky black robe.

Frankly, he just found it fascinating, despite the initial surprise when he first saw him unfurl. He was like a brutalistic work of art.

As he was right now, however, he barely came up to Manos’s shoulder instead of towering over him at ten feet tall, walking towards them with his back hunched and his metallic legs curled up against his chest, legs that tapered down to two round points of rubber like spider’s legs.

A nonthreatening, courteous demeanor, at least for now.

As he grew near, the metallic hiss of his breath filled the respectful silence he and his men were maintaining.

The bishop’s head raised, his black hood hiding his facial features. A single, oversized golem’s eye glowed with a sickly yellow light from under the murk of his hood, taking up almost a fourth of his head, the lens squarely focused on him.

“Welcome, Baron Manos Ironheart.” Archbishop Varmond rumbled quietly, the sound gutturally deep and metallic, as if growled through a booming speaker on a low volume. His metal hands split his robe down the middle just a bit, and his metal fists came to meet in front of his chest, only the knuckles of the ring and pinkie finger touching.

Then, he unfurled his hands while rolling his wrists outward with the hiss of hydraulics, palm up, and bent his head down in a deep nod, his palms open as if offering something.

He simply bowed in return, as deep as someone of his status could, within reason. A forty five degree angle.

“Thank you, Archbishop.”

“...You seek audience with Him.” The bishop rumbled knowingly as they both came out of their greeting poses, and he nodded. For a man so fervently devout, he didn’t beat around the bush, and he liked him for that exact reason.

“There have been untoward developments on my part that… He must know about. It pertains to our deal.” He calmly said, and the bishop nodded.

“Follow. You know the rules.” The bishop warned, and he set his jaw, giving him a grim nod. The bishop turned, and began to walk deeper into the maze of distorted metal and broken stone.

They followed.

He could only hope the price of his failure wouldn’t be too severe. They needed each other, so he was sure he wouldn’t get killed.

But its wrath would be hard to weather. He had no excuses for his failure. He’d simply grown complacent, assuming his information was always right.

They moved down into unused air vents, rectangular tunnels of stagnant, humid air, then down even further through a dizzying labyrinth of steel pipes where their steps echoed into infinity, and eventually came upon a gargantuan staircase that led straight down into a pitch black darkness, the steps slick with moss.

As he followed the Archbishop down, he felt the familiar sensation of a noose tightening around his throat.

He’d done all he could. For six months, he’d been searching, but all he could find was fleeting, messy, and impossible to track. He couldn’t find it, he couldn’t catch it. It might be gone by now for all he knew.

Sixteen people walked into the Dungeon.

Twelve hours later, three and a half came out.

-

(If you are reading this story on any website that isn’t RoyalRoad.com, you are reading stolen content from a free site that runs no intrusive or obnoxious advertisements. Just google "RoyalRoad Fleabag" and you'll get to my story on the site it was meant to be hosted on.)