Water dripped. Something scuffled. Jackal gripped the end of his line and peered around the corner.

The creature had its back to him, nosing at the lure. It was about the size of a jackrabbit, and sort of resembled one too—save for the mouthful of carnivorous teeth, and the claws glinting at its feet.

A moment passed. And another. The creature shuffled forwards, burying its maw into the bait.

He yanked his line and his net crashed down: cheap, unruned rope that wouldn’t hold for long. The creature screeched loud enough to make his ears hurt and unsheathed its claws. He sprang from his nook, blade at the ready.

Claws shot out and shredded through netting, but the net had bought him time—the point of his shortsword pierced the creature’s throat and dug deep. Its milky eyes bulged as it thrashed and snapped and screeched; Jackal bore down on the shortsword, pinning it to the floor until it stopped struggling and died.

He pulled the sword out with a sick squelch and panted for breath, every muscle gone tense. Blood oozed out of the wound, redder than it ought to be. The colour stabbed at a tender part of his broken brain, a rasping fissure buried deep.

Richer than blood, and it moved like wine.

He turned his gaze away and exhaled carefully as the thought disappeared, staring down the grime coating the dungeon floor. Stars, he hated it here. He unfastened a coil of rope from his belt and began to truss up his kill. Coarse, oily pelt, glassy eyes—ugly little bastards they were. But they learned quick, and this spot was already running dry. He suspected he’d be lucky to get one, maybe two more out of restringing his nets here before he had to move on, find deeper sites to harvest. Or maybe that new branch that had opened up, once the others cleared the worst of it out.

His stomach twisted in revulsion and underlying that, in hunger. If his mouth watered, it wasn’t willingly.

He kept an eye out on his way back, for anything skittering in the darkness, or runes glinting across stone. The traps in this section had supposedly all been cordoned off and marked with splashes of bioluminescent paint, but the runners were always quick to warn that the tunnels changed. The place was chock-full of nasty surprises, even in the relative shallows.

Jackal paused as something caught his eye in the ceiling ahead: a series of bumps that hadn’t been there earlier. They matched the colour of the tunnel stone and would have resembled budding stalactites were it not for the texture being all…wrong. Too smooth. He reached for the rope dart at his belt and hefted it. The dart-tip struck true, and the sound it made was far wetter than metal-on-stone.

The bumps burst in a gush of grey membrane and dumped reeking acid all over the floor. Jackal gave them another couple of jabs with his dart and waited until the whole thing stopped dripping before he drew closer and ducked past. Whether it had been flora or fauna, he couldn’t tell—it wasn’t meat, so it didn’t matter.

A layer of clinging drizzle greeted him surface-side. He pushed up his night-goggles and blinked uncomfortably even in the overcast light. A few curious eyes looked him over as he trudged past, then flicked away when they saw his dismal haul. People huddled in their tents, and muffled chatter floated through the base camp: grumbles about card games, the state of the dungeon, the shitty weather.

He passed the medic tent and winced at the pained groans which emanated from within. Thank the stars he wasn’t stupid enough to risk his neck in the deep levels, pushing frontiers marked in blood. Sure, some of the runners came out hauling enough gold to never work again—but one only had to notice the number of hopefuls who ventured deep and never returned to turn away and say, ‘no thanks’. Or at least, it seemed obvious enough to him. New venturers showed up every day, a slow trickle to replace the poor bastards bleeding out in the medic tent. Maybe jaunting the Library had taught him one useful thing after all: knowing when to be afraid.

The rest of it, he wished he could carve out and burn alive—gristle from meat, marrow from bone. There were the thoughts—red, again. Iron and meat and hunger. He gritted his teeth. The not-jackrabbit hung heavy from his hand.

Once at his tent, he fetched his skinning knife and began to strip the thing for parts. Eyes, teeth, pelt, meat: a passable quantity of meat. He swallowed the rush of saliva surging into his mouth and resisted the unnatural urge to sink his teeth into raw muscle. The first and only time he’d tried that, he’d discovered the Library hadn’t thought to give him a stomach to match the urges.

He clenched his jaw against eager appetite, against scrabbling impatience that was not his, not really: a hundred broken fingers scratched at the backs of his eyes, begging and insistent.

Two years ago, he’d fled the kingdom and thought himself free. He’d been a fool: some months later, he’d woken gnawing at the flesh of his own arm. The Library had followed him.

He wondered if ma and Laila were doing okay, in the little cottage he’d bought them. After da had passed on, Jackal had stepped up to be the man of the family. Now that he’d run away—for their safety, he reminded himself, for their safety and not because he was a bloody coward—Hakim would have to be. Hakim was an idiot sometimes, but he could still write runes. Jackal had left them as much coin as he could, besides. He’d done his duty, and he could take comfort in the fact that none of them were hunched over in the spitting rain, hacking dungeon-meat to pieces.

He’d left a note, too, saying he’d be fine. And he had been: there was always work around for young, able-bodied men, especially ones who could tie a mean one-handed bowline. It had been fine. Everything had been fine, until normal meat had stopped being enough.

He scooped the chunks of dungeon-flesh into a waiting bowl and carried it down to the communal grill, smoking sulkily beneath a canvas tarp. His stomach gurgled as the meat cooked. The Library-feeling coiled up at the base of his skull, itching and gleeful. He bit down on his tongue and glanced around as he rinsed out the bowl—was anyone watching? No, there was no one. The drizzle saw to that. He relaxed, but only slightly; sometimes, he worried someone would see. Everyone who camped here had gone into the dungeon, some further than others. They all knew what monstrousness looked like.

The meat finished cooking. Jackal took a piece straight off the grill and wolfed it down, heedless of the way it burned his tongue. Magic shivered down his throat as he swallowed, soothing the scratch of Library-grasp. He scraped the rest of the meat into his bowl and hurried back, sneaking bites along the way.

He barely touched the flap of his tent when a shiver ran through the camp. Jackal felt it on the back of his neck, like a bristle of dry lightning—like the wavefront of a killing fog.

A surge.

Around him, figures burst out of their tents, equipment at the ready. Shouts rose into the air, buoyant with hope. Jackal chewed on his meat and watched. Caught flat-footed, it was probably not a good idea to try beating the initial horde; already, a man’s cries rang out as he was trampled.

All manner of dungeonrunners thumped past, eager for easy gold—surges came once every couple of months, maybe, and this one felt big. Possibly the worst danger for now would be fighting other looters for the pieces: new chests popping up in the shallows, jewels spat out of the earth. He finished the last of the meat and checked his weapons over.

He didn’t especially like surges. Something about the way the things appeared, all polished and new-like, didn’t sit well with him. But he was never one to bite the hand that fed him. He brought his largest sack and walked, unhurriedly, down to the dungeon entrance.

With any luck, the horde of runners had scared more meat out into the open. Other runners were oft more concerned with gold than carcasses. Little prey like the not-jackrabbit was slaughtered and cast aside in the chase for glittering jewels. He’d found much of his meals this way.

He picked up two discarded lizards as he entered the shallower levels, their heads crushed beneath some runner’s boot. They were small, but they shimmered with blue-black scales suggestive of magic-soaked flesh. Into the sack they went. Jackal crept deeper, head tilted for sounds of arguing or blades clashing.

Voices drifted in from the distance, echoing against the stone—they seemed far enough. He ventured onwards, scooping up his prizes: another unfortunate lizard, a beheaded snake, a not-rabbit that had been cleaved in two. The snake, he wasn’t sure whether it was native to the dungeon, but meat was meat. He had to keep himself from starving the usual way, even if it didn’t scratch that hungry Library itch crawling up his throat.

He hesitated as the corridor opened out into a hall; this was a little deeper than he usually went, though he recalled the place—a nest of spiderlings had sprouted here the last surge, or so he heard. The way was open, and it seemed cleared; he peered in.

The room was large and spherical in shape, and the floor dipped down like a bowl. It was empty but for the downed body in the center: a beast the size of a horse, though rounder and spiral-horned. Scorch-marks ringed the carcass, as did a growing pool of blood; it had been stabbed, several times. Some runner’s snapped blade lay wedged in the cooling flesh.

Hmm. He could hardly hope to haul this back, even with the rope at his belt—but he did have a knife with him. He’d carve off a bit of haunch, maybe. Slit open the belly and grab the organs that called to him the most: the heart, usually, and the liver. Maybe the tongue. Yes, he thought. Iron and offal and iron and offal and feasting—

He jerked himself from the ghost-grip of the Library with a hiss.

“Shut up,” he snarled. “Just shut up.”

Then he shook his head. Talking to himself, again? He really was going mad. Bloody voices. Was it even a voice? It spoke more in images than words. He hopped down onto the concave bowl of the floor anyway, because only a good meal was going to be the only thing that quietened it.

He took the haunch without trouble, hefting it into the sack, and gritted his teeth as he gouged the belly open. Blood splashed out, as expected, and coils of intestines spilled forth like glossy sausage links. He turned away to retch, even as shame flushed through his body. He’d been a goddamn kiter, he reminded himself. Not butchering stuff in the kitchens. If ma were here, she’d scold his work and make a more elegant cut. Hells, Laila would’ve been better at this.

Coward, he thought. Coward-fucking-coward, should’ve stayed with them. Should’ve stayed and provided and fattened them up and eaten them, all tender flesh and crackling skin—

He retched again.

The Library-thoughts drove white-hot spokes into his mind, brazen and painless. Hadn’t he just eaten? Maybe the not-jackrabbit had been a young one, not yet marinated enough in the dungeon magic. Fine. He’d cook the lizards once he got back.

His hands shook as he reached for the gash in the thing’s belly, still oozing blood. His eyes skittered over the red and—

Richer than blood, blood, blood, wine, blood and wine and blood and wine and redness spilling forth, coating fingers and tongue, dribbled into the gaps between teeth and onto the flesh behind the eyelids—

Pain exploded over his scalp. Invisible fingers reached for his brain. He screamed, and the world turned white. He lurched backwards and toppled—and in that moment, he remembered falling.

+++

Falling down a crashing pile of metal, his heart hammering out of his chest, the world a blur of glistening knife-points. One of them dug into his arm and he screamed; more scored lines along his back and limbs as he rolled down the hill, some shallow and others deep.

He’d come to a slow and bloody stop at the base of a throne the size of a house, shivering at the shock of still being alive. The shivering had lasted a couple minutes until he’d pulled himself together and scrambled to his feet, trying to forget what he’d seen.

The wine-field-sea flowed into tributaries. The thorn garden bled into dust. And in the shimmer of the horizon, a vast and hungry mouth had opened, lined with crescents of teeth upon teeth upon teeth.

+++

The flash of white lasted for what was both a second and an eternity. Pressure built in his skull, every hollow turned thick with ripening magic. His ears felt as though they might burst. A smell like the edge of a Killing Field threaded into his nose and mouth and down his throat. For a moment, he saw ten thousand filaments beating in time to a silent song.

A faery burst out of his head. It hit the ground with a clack of chitin.

Jackal screamed again, scrambling blindly backwards. His boot slipped on blood, and he promptly landed on his ass. The jolt of pain up his tailbone jerked him back to reality. He swore.

Not dead? He thought, and then: what the fuck?

The faery had, as far as he could tell, launched itself out of his head. Or had it? His head didn’t hurt anymore, and the flash of light had been disorientating, but—

He retrod the memory. It came to him with disturbing ease: the faery had definitely come out of his head. Wait—what? How did he know that? This felt like the thing with the field and the—huh. It was a Library thing, wasn’t it? Somehow, a faery had come out of his head. Not out of his nose or his ear or anything, the memory insisted. Out of his head. And it had done it without smashing his skull open in the process. Okay. Fine. Unless his skull had been smashed open, and he was hallucinating as he died.

He raised a tentative hand to feel his scalp, until he remembered his fingers were covered in blood. He stood up instead, wincing as he went. Hobbling over to the faery, he crouched by its head and turned it over without too much difficulty. It was a female, he realised, her face narrow and pointed, her head lacking horns. She was blueish-coloured, or perhaps purple—it was difficult to tell through the lenses of his night-goggles—and she was clad in some sort of backless tunic which left room for her wings. It looked a lot sparser than what Volans or any of the other faery dungeonrunners wore; come to think of it, she didn’t even have a weapon on her.

Was she…dead? Her skin felt cold, probably on account of it resembling a bug’s shell, and he could hardly try feeling for a pulse through it. He put his hand in front of her face instead. There was definitely some exhaling going on, though the breath that brushed against his hand was slower and colder than he’d’ve thought.

Well, shit. Mystery faery on his hands, probably courtesy of the Library. He scrubbed his hand across his eyes, stopping when he remembered the blood.

He was utterly unqualified to deal with this. He wasn’t a faery medic…were there even faery medics around? This dungeon was sort of waning, and the few faerie runners who’d stopped by had left a couple of weeks ago. He frowned. Suppose he’d better get her surface-side first, right? Faeries weren’t quite as heavy as humans, but he had his sackful of carcasses to carry, too. He eyed the rope hanging at his belt. Maybe, if he harnessed the sack to himself to leave his arms free…?

Yeah, that could work.