Chapter 2, To Maw Mine

The doors of the Dalkurharn embassy shut behind us with a heavy thud, like stone swallowing a secret. And then ... Silence. No Pontune. No goblins. No nobles. No banners. No politics.

Just my master… and me.

FINALLY

I slid in close the moment our steps touched the open world, my shoulder brushing his arm, tail wrapping loosely around the back of his thigh as if claiming him all over again. The air outside tasted cleaner, freer, open like a fresh wound that didn’t hurt yet. The embassy’s cold stone breath faded behind us, replaced by the warmth of sun against sandstone and the faint salt carried from the west.

We stepped onto the Oak Trade Road, the sandstone path warm beneath our feet. The world felt perfect. “My master,” I murmured, voice low as a purr curling under words, “alone at last.”

I walked half a step behind and half a step against him, the place where I naturally settled, his shadow, his echo, his constant presence. The sunlight caught the edge of your cloak, turning the deep blue into something almost royal, and my eyes fixed on it with that too-intense stare I never tried to soften.

To the east, the treeline began immediately, a long sweep of ancient forest, oak roots pushing through earth like old fingers. The branches leaned over the road in places, casting shifting shapes over the stone, dapples of gold and green that played across my skin as I walked. I kept my ears angled that way, twitching whenever a bird moved or a leaf fell. The forest had a language I understood, but only because I listened for threats.

To the west, the marsh inlet stretched out in the distance, a dark, rippling mirror that wrapped around Mire Point like a bruise on the landscape. Even from far away, the sight of it made my tail flick sharply, a tiny shiver running down my spine at the memory of cold water dragging at my limbs. But the fear didn’t take root. Not when you were beside me. Not when his steps matched mine in perfect, steady rhythm.

I let my hand drift toward his, claws just lightly brushing your knuckles as we walked north. The sky above was clear, a vast, endless blue uninterrupted by clouds. The kind of sky that belongs to quiet days, days that know how to breathe. No storm. No smoke. No monsters lurking in the treeline. Just light.

Just calm. Just us. The road hummed beneath our boots, worn smooth by years of caravans and soldiers, of merchants with hopes and prisoners with chains. But today, it was ours. A straight line north toward Embercrack territory, toward Maw Mine, toward whatever secrets and rot lay waiting for discovery.

His stride never faltered. Mine never drifted. The bond thrummed warm and steady between us, every step a heartbeat, every breath a shared rhythm. I could feel his thoughts like a faint pull, his presence like heat against my ribs.

I let out a slow exhale, soft and content, my tail brushing his back with an intimate, instinctive curl. “This,” I murmured, voice slipping into the calm that only came when danger was far and he was close, “…is perfection.”

The road bent northward, the sandstone warming under the late morning sun, and the world around us began to shift into old memory and older scars. I pressed closer to my master, tail brushing behind his knee as the land opened ahead into a familiar sprawl of ruin and regrowth.

Black Fang Hollow. Once the capital of Clan Bogclutch. Once the beating heart of the goblin marsh. Once a place where thousands lived under the shadow of Redstone’s abandoned city above.

Now? A grave with weeds on it. The island sat like a broken tooth in the middle of the marsh inlet, half-swallowed by creeping vines and black moss. The old Redstone structures, sandstone terraces carved in that arrogant Alderian style, had collapsed inward centuries ago, leaving only jagged walls and half-sunken archways. Marsh beasts slithered through the ruins now, thick-bodied and silent, their shapes moving between the shadows like forgotten sins.

The bridges that once connected the ruins to the mainland lay shattered, their stone piles jutting out of the water at crooked angles, long devoured by time and flood. No one crossed there anymore. Not unless they wanted to disappear.

My ears twitched, narrowing on a distant splash within the hollow. Something big moved out there. Something hungry. I felt my tail stiffen before I forced it back down, leaning into my master’s arm for grounding.

But the mainland… The mainland had changed. Where the Redstone suburb once stood, once temples, manors, and trade houses,  now rose a patchwork of survival. Tents stitched from hide and wool. Farmland carved into the mud, neat rows of cattails and marshgrain swaying in the breeze. A few houses rebuilt from stone scavenged from the ruins, crooked but sturdy. Smoke trailed from cookfires. Tools clanked against tools. Chickens pecked near irrigation ditches. Goblins argued loudly over something pointless and vital.

Life had come back, but smaller. Simpler. Quieter. Most of the refugees had long since left, filtering into Mire Point where my master had forged order and shelter out of chaos. What remained here was a skeleton crew, enough hands to keep the farmland going, enough bodies to tend the cattail presses, enough spirit to maintain a hollow that no longer held a tribe.

A few goblin militia stood guard near the road as we approached. Young, by their height. Armoured in copper iron chain mail, hard leather gambesons, copper iron short swords hanging from their belts, copper iron bucklers strapped tight to forearms, and copper iron barabute helmets sitting just slightly too big on their heads. They straightened when they saw us, saluting with more enthusiasm than discipline.

Their eyes flicked to my master with something between reverence and fear.
And to me with something between awe and the memory of stories whispered around swampfires. I didn’t hiss. Not yet. I just stared back with that unblinking gaze that always made goblins stand a little straighter, swallow a little harder.

Behind them, merchants moved along the road, a line of wagons heading south. Fabrics. Grain. Oils. Most hardly glanced toward the hollow. Those who did kept walking faster. No one liked looking at ruins that had teeth.

A few stopped by the outpost, trading for cattail bundles or marsh resin. But most stayed on the trade road toward Mire Point or further north toward Embercrack country. No one desired to linger in a place that looked like it still remembered the screams that birthed it.

My master walked on, calm, steady, unshaken by the ghosts on either side of the road. I kept pace at his hip, body brushing his arm with unconscious devotion. My claws clicked once on the sandstone before retracting, ears tuned to every shift in the marsh wind. “This place clings on,” I murmured softly, voice low, dark, threaded with strange affection for the ruins around us. “Barely. But it clings.”

My tail curled lazily behind him as I tilted my head, eyes following the broken silhouette of the Redstone ruins in the distance. “Your people found something better,” I added quietly, “and followed you home.”

We walked on, the ruins shrinking behind us, the cat-tail fields fading into the horizon. The sun reached its zenith, too bright, too sharp. I squinted, tail lashing, voice grumbling in the old fatalist rhythm. “Sun’s too clean today, master. Makes even honest work look guilty.” My fur prickled under the heat. I watched the shadows crawl, each step feeling like a dare from a world that hated the quiet, that needed pain to feel real.

But we pressed on. The marsh inlet finally vanished behind us, the salt tang replaced by the cool green promise of a temperate lake. It sat heavy by the roadside, glassy and still, reflecting the sandstone ridges and the thin line of distant forest. I hated how peaceful it looked. Places like that never stayed quiet for long. Master’s gaze flicked to it, measuring escape routes and ambush points, always thinking ahead. I mirrored him, my mind racing along the same dark tracks.

The path climbed gently, the sky slowly losing its brilliance, clouds stacking up on the distant mountains. Soon we crested the hill that overlooked Duskfen, a mining camp more than a town, a clutch of battered houses built into the rock face. Smoke curled up from cookfires, mixing with the coppery scent of raw ore and desperation. Every face here was thin, hungry, desperate: goblins, dwarfs, catfolk, even a scattering of Alderian runaways, each one bound by the same law, the strong take, the weak hide. Master and I owned this place now, though only the smart ones remembered. Bandits had once ruled the hollow, but we’d carved them out, left the rest to start over, whether they wanted it or not.

We barely paused. The road skirted the edge of the mine, following the cut of the mountain, before plunging past a small cave that served as a trade base. I caught the glow of firelight from within, the soft murmur of voices, goblin scouts, off duty, waiting for their next patrol. Outside, a pair of sentries lounged, bows across their knees, eyes flicking to us with a mix of recognition and wary respect. They knew not to challenge my master. My presence at his side was enough to keep the curious from getting bold.

Past Duskfen, the clouds thickened. The air cooled. I stretched, relishing the shade, feeling my fur relax as the sun retreated behind its curtain of grey. The light changed, softening, the world shifting into that muted, dangerous calm that always comes before the next storm. We made good time. No one bothered us. They wouldn’t dare.

And there it stood: Embercrack’s western watchtower, squatting at the base of the sandstone range. This place, where it all began. The tower was ugly, battered, and unbowed, ringed by a half-circle of tents and crude huts that sprawled out like a wounded animal licking its wounds. The bailey was crowded with goblin militia, copper-iron gear, heavy boots, faces set in that mixture of pride and exhaustion unique to survivors. Beyond the walls, the mountains loomed, hard and unyielding. The road forked here, a T-junction: south to Maw Rest, a fortified farming outpost, north and east into the mouth of Maw Mine itself.

I felt the memories pulse under my skin, the first time we passed through here, the screams and smoke of Ryth Redstone’s murder still echoing, the taste of blood and ambition on every tongue. The power had shifted a dozen times since then, but here, at this crossing of stone and history, everything still felt fragile, unfinished, raw.

Master never slowed. His stride was unwavering, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, already planning the next move, the next threat, the next betrayal. I pressed in close, my tail brushing his hand, claws flexing against the world. This was our territory, whether the world recognised it or not. The goblins at the gates saluted, some with real respect, some out of fear, but none dared look him in the eye. Not with me by his side, my glare promising retribution for any slight.

We walked through the tents, past the battered tower and the tired, hard-eyed faces of those who remembered too much. The path climbed into the pass, the sandstone walls closing in, the wind swirling dust and secrets in our wake. An hour, maybe less, to Maw Mine. The heart of Embercrack’s world, and now the den of the Crimson Swarm.

The moment we stepped under the shadow of Maw Mine’s western ridge, the air went wrong. The light dimmed but not like clouds smothering the sky. It dimmed from below, swallowed by the stone itself, by the endless farms of violet fungal caps spreading out like bruises across the cavern floor. Maw Mine’s outskirts always felt like this, half alive, half dead, as if the mountain was breathing out mould instead of air.

I stayed pressed against my master, tail brushing his thigh, ears flat as the tunnel widened into the mushroom-growing lanes. Rows of giant caps rose in uneven spirals, their stems thick and pulsing faintly with bioluminescent veins. Goblin workers bent over them with slow, tired motions, cutting, turning soil, chanting the dull songs of labour that survived countless years of exploitation.

Kleptocracy had a smell. A taste. A weight. And Maw Mine wore it like a crown. We hadn’t even walked a dozen steps before the peace cracked. A shout snapped across the rows. Not the frightened kind. The cruel kind. The kind that carries certainty, certainty of authority, certainty of violence.

Two Embercrack guards were beating a mushroom grower. Nothing unusual in Maw Mine. The grower was young, but strong enough to take the first few strikes in silence. His back arched under each blow, arms raised instinctively to shield his neck, but the guards were practiced. They struck where it hurt most. Ribs. Legs. The gut. The knees.

Their boots were iron. Their coats reinforced leather boiled into unnatural hardness. Strips of metal studs ran down their arms like a parody of military honour. Their helmets had that oppressive crest running back in a line of authority, no grace, no art, just raw dominance.

One guard spat as he hit him again. “Stealin’ from the Clan’s yield, eh?” The boy choked. “It, it fell, ” Another strike. “Liar.” The boy folded. A single mushroom lay on the ground beside him, already smashed into the dirt. Worth nothing. Worth less than nothing. Just an excuse.

My tail bristled, lashing once, dangerously. My ears twitched sharply, hearing my heartbeat spike, feeling my claws slide free without my permission. Every instinct screamed to leap, to tear, to show these pathetic uniformed parasites what a real predator looked like.

But my master kept walking. Calm. Untouched. Unimpressed. Not indifferent, no. He was incapable of true indifference. It was something colder, more brutal, more noir. That fatalistic acceptance that the world would always choose rot over virtue, that violence was simply the law written in marrow.

His voice slid out, low as a knife gliding from its sheath. “The world never stops punishing the poor,” he murmured. “It just invents new reasons for it.” I shivered. Not from fear. From the perfection of it. His words ran through me like smoke, curling in my lungs, twisting in my ribs. That tone, detached, knowing, merciless. The kind of voice that could describe a massacre with the same calm as he’d describe the weather.

I pressed against him harder,really shoving myself against him so that he could feel every inch of me, tail coiling around his leg in possessive affirmation.

My master did not help. My master did not interfere. My master did not pretend the world was soft. And neither did I. The mushroom grower cried out once when a rib broke. The guards laughed. They didn’t even bother to look at us. To them, we were just more travellers, more bodies to walk past, more witnesses who would do nothing.

They had no idea who walked their road. But we didn’t stop. This wasn’t our war. Not today. I tilted my head up at him, eyes unblinking, voice dripping like honey over broken glass. “You’re right, my master. Some worlds come pre-rotted.” He didn’t smile. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t change pace.

And I followed him, glued to his side, step for step, heartbeat for heartbeat. Behind us, the beating continued. Ahead of us, the glowing mushroom lanes darkened, bending toward the collapsed fairway tunnel and the Ren beyond, the only path left deeper into the mine.

The path narrowed. The air thickened. The smell of misery sharpened into something harsher, electric, almost metallic. And Maw Mine watched us enter its gut like a beast waiting for soft things to bite. We left the mushroom lanes behind like stepping out of a bad dream into a worse one. The air changed first. Not in temperature. Not in scent. In pressure.

The stone walls closed in, narrowing into tight, ribbed corridors carved not by honest labour but by necessity and desperation. Faint sparks crackled along the ceiling where crude copper wiring hung in tangled clusters, powering dim lanterns that flickered like dying hearts. Every few steps a bulb sputtered, popping sparks that dropped into the puddles below, hissing in the dark.

The fairway tunnel leading north was still collapsed. Months old. Never cleared. No one even bothered to put up a sign. Just another artery in this failing beast sealed shut with rubble and neglect. Which left one route deeper inside. The Ren. A gang zone that didn’t behave like a gang zone. More like a dictatorship squeezed into a tunnel.

Even the air tasted different the closer we came, burnt oil, sweat, and the subtle sting of metal polish. Territory marked not with symbols or graffiti, but with order. Forced, rigid, rigid in a way only scared people enforce.

We approached the Ren’s “border,” if a border could even be called that. It wasn’t a gatehouse. It wasn’t a wall. It wasn’t a checkpoint in any civilised sense. It was a choke point carved into the mine corridor, long, narrow, claustrophobic, with an iron frame overhead and angled stone walls that forced anyone passing through to slow down, to become vulnerable.

To be inspected. By them. Lights flickered in their territory ahead, not bright enough to illuminate, just bright enough to cast warped shadows across the stone. Shadows that twitched and swayed like restless ghosts. Their whole domain felt like the belly of some industrial serpent, pipes hissing, metal clanging, far-off voices muttering in a language that had surrendered its vowels to violence.

Then we saw them. The Ren’s guards. Six at first. Then eight. Then more, shifting into view as our footsteps echoed closer. Their armour wasn’t like Embercrack’s mass-produced iron. This was mismatched, scavenged, modified piece by piece, iron plates hammered over leather, cloth patched with chain, every surface painted in streaks of black and red dye, colours chosen not for beauty but for intimidation. Gas-mask style filters hung from their necks. Their helms were reinforced with crude metal ridges like the spine of some grotesque beast.

Weapons? Anything that could kill. Spears with hooked ends. iron batons. Short-blade glaives. Modified mining picks sharpened to a murderous bite. The Ren were a gang only in name. In truth, they were a military born from starvation. A militia forged from paranoia. A hierarchy built from terror.

And this was their chokehold on Maw Mine. As we approached, all their weapons lowered at once, precise, unified, as if they shared a single spine. One stepped forward. Tall for a miner. Broad. Shoulders like stone slabs. His mask covered his jaw, leaving only his eyes visible, dead, calculating, stripped of anything resembling softness. “Stop.”

One word. Flat. Not shouted. Not growled. Just delivered like an instruction a machine might give. I pressed in closer to my master, tail curling up his leg, my ears flattening at the overwhelming sense of discipline from these thugs. This wasn’t the chaotic swagger of gutter criminals. This was order wielded like a hammer.

The guard through the mask looked us over, gaze sliding past my armour, past our cloaks, then freezing on my master’s posture, how he didn’t tense, didn’t flinch, didn’t fear. Predators recognise predators. Then his gaze slid to me. Something in his eyes twitched. Recognition Rumour? A lingering whisper? He knew what I was. Not who, not fully …but enough.

He took one involuntary half-step back. Just one. Hardly visible. But I saw it. One of the Ren barked a question from behind him, “Travel purpose?” A joke in any other place. Here, it was the price of passage. The guard in front waited. Silent. Unmoving. Like the statue of a tyrant in training. Behind him, lanterns crackled. Pipes hissed. Somewhere deeper inside the Ren’s territory, someone shouted a command and was obeyed instantly.

This whole place was a dictatorship in miniature, no vision, no ideology. Just control.
Absolute, suffocating control. We were walking into a heart made of iron bars and broken wills. I felt the bond hum between me and my master, steady, warm, grounding. His calm flowed into me, smoothing the spikes of instinct rattling under my skin.

This was not danger. Not yet. Just another gatekeeper who didn’t understand what stood before him. My master stepped forward just enough that the Ren’s guard stiffened in reflex. He didn’t speak yet. He didn’t need to. His silence was heavier than any blade. I let a slow, dark smile creep across my lips, eyes never leaving the guard’s mask. My tail flicked like a knife stroke.

@Senar2020