Chapter 3, The Ren's Border

The border of the Ren pressed in around us like a throat that had forgotten how to breathe, and I stood there for a stretch of seconds that felt elastic, stretched thin, pulsing, wrong. My master stood utterly still, unreadable, and I mirrored him in shape if not in spirit, my body fused to his side, shoulder brushing his arm, tail coiling up the back of his leg in a slow, serpentine claim.

But I saw less than he did. I always did. Not because I was blind, in fact I actually had nightvision, but because he was built for analysing the world while I was built to destroy whatever in it dared to reach for him. Where he dissected details, I hunted intent. Where he read structure, I read threat. And this place oozed threat like rot through a cracked tooth.

Still, even my vision caught the shape of the border.

A choke point carved into the mine wall, narrowing the corridor into a funnel that pressed every traveller into a confined line. The stone overhead had been hacked away to install a rusted iron beam, thick as a man’s torso, bolted into place with mismatched screws that looked scavenged from half a dozen machines. It creaked once as I watched it, metal speaking in a tired groan.

Pipes twisted along the walls like exposed veins, some dripping, some hissing steam, the droplets forming thin puddles that reflected the flicker of failing bulbs overhead. The lanterns were suspended by frayed copper wiring that sparked intermittently, casting jagged, twitching silhouettes across the walls. Shadows stretched too long, too thin, as if Maw Mine itself was trying to distort everything stepping into it.

Crates had been piled into uneven barricades on one side. Not neat. Not tidy. Purposeful in their disarray, gaps just wide enough for crossbows or pick spears to slide through. Stained cloth with the Ren’s crude sigil a black streak slashed over red paint hung limp from an overhead hook, moving only when the tunnel exhaled its stale breath.

The smell hit me next. Not the earthy rot of mushrooms, these had been left behind. This was something industrial, processed, metallic, a mingling of iron and too much sweat trapped in stone that never saw wind. My ears twitched, flattening against the dim hum of machinery deeper within the Ren’s territory, gears turning somewhere in the dark, almost rhythmic, almost alive.

My master noticed more than I did. He always did. I could feel it through the bond, a subtle tightening in the air, not emotional but cognitive, his attention sharpening in that terrifyingly calm way he had, absorbing every fault line, every angle of attack, every crack in the Ren’s posture, the whole border laid out like a crime scene in his mind.

I only saw what mattered. The guards. Their armour mismatched, plates strapped over boiled leather, chain mesh bulging under cloth dyed red and black. Their masks were iron, crude but effective, filters dangling from their throats like trophies. Their boots hit the stone in perfect rhythm, not the messy shuffle of thugs, but the drilled patterns of people who had been broken into obedience.

Their eyes hid behind glass lenses that reflected the lantern flicker, but the leader’s gaze was bare, cold, stripped down to function. He stared at my master first, and I felt his breath catch. A tiny flicker in the air. A crack in the façade. A predator recognising a larger predator.

Then he dared look at me. His stance changed. Not much. Just weight shifting. A subtle recoil. Recognition of something he didn’t want to recognise. Rumour. Story. Fear wrapped in disbelief.

My claws slid out with a soft chitter against my master’s cloak, not as threat to him but as promise to the world around us. My tail curled tighter around his leg until I felt his stride through my spine, grounding me just enough to stop my instincts from exploding across the corridor.

The border felt smaller the longer we stood there. Tighter. Like the Ren’s territory was inhaling, drawing us in, trying to swallow us whole. Light flickered. Stone breathed. Metal groaned. Sweat and oil thickened the air.

And through it all my master stood like a ghost that refused to blink. The Ren guard waited for an answer, for legitimacy, for validation. He waited for compliance he would never receive from the man beside me.

My gaze narrowed, the smile on my lips thin and sharp, the kind that made miners flinch and mutter prayers. I leaned in closer, chest pressed against his arm, breath brushing the fabric of his cloak, voice a low ripple under the hum of wires and whispered fear.

I held my ground, and the Ren held theirs, and the border watched us both with a hungry, patient stare. The opening of their world was a wound, and we were stepping into its mouth.

The moment he turned toward me, the whole tunnel shifted. Not in sound, not in light, not in the hum of cracked wiring above us, but in me.

His nod was small, barely more than the tilt of a shadow across his jaw, but it hit like a command whispered into the spine of a storm. His hand lifted just slightly toward the guards, a gesture so calm, so understated, so controlled, it carried more authority than any shouted order ever could.

He did not speak. He didn’t need to. Whatever he meant, whatever intent lay coiled beneath that simple movement, it belonged to me now. My task. My interpretation. My execution.

My body reacted before thought, my instincts uncoiling in a slow, predatory bloom. I stepped forward, just enough that the guards’ formation stiffened. My tail slid from around my master’s leg, brushing him once in a silent promise before arcing behind me like a living blade. My ears flicked forward, sharp, pricked, locked onto the leader’s heartbeat.

The corridor felt tighter in that instant. The lights overhead sputtered once as if trying to avoid witness. I didn’t lunge. I didn’t scream. I didn’t tear the air apart the way I wanted to. Instead, I walked. One step. Two.

Each one slow, deliberate, my boots landing without sound, my shoulders rolling like a relaxed predator stretching in tall grass. My eyes locked on the guard through his mask, unblinking, bright, wrong. A stare you didn’t meet unless you wanted nightmares to remember you by.

Intimidation check: 1 +9 (Aliza’s intimidation) = 26

The air cracked. The leader didn’t move much. Just a flinch. A shift. A tiny step back that was all instinct, none of discipline. His weapon dipped half a centimetre before he yanked it back up, forcing control over a body that had forgotten obedience for one heartbeat.

I smiled. Not wide. Not kind. Not sane.

A thin crescent of amusement carved across my lips, cold and sweet and vicious, the kind of smile that felt like the idea of blood rather than the act of it. My claws flexed, gleaming faintly in the lantern sputter. Not raised. Not threatening. Just visible. Just there. A reminder in case their minds tried to tell them comforting lies.

My voice slipped out, honey soaked in poison. “You heard my master’s silence.” The tunnel stilled. I tilted my head, tail curling into a tight, delighted shape behind me. “Move. Aside.” No shout. No bark. Just that slow, dark syllable that wrapped around the guards’ nerves and squeezed.

One guard swallowed. Another adjusted his grip. The leader’s mask shifted as his jaw clenched, but his boots scraped back half a step on stone. Just half. But these steel children didn’t retreat for anyone. Except him. Except us.

I didn’t look back at my master. I didn’t need to. I could feel him like gravity, steady and cold and absolute behind me. Whatever he wanted, I would clear the path. Whatever he meant, I would become the meaning.

The Ren stood in front of us like a wall made of fear that suddenly remembered it wasn’t stone at all. It was paper. And my master had just handed me the match.

But they didn’t break. They didn’t bend. They didn’t flinch. The Ren were not like goblins fresh out of Mire. They were not like bandits who had learned fear the hard way. They were not like those mushroom lane guards who still believed in the illusion of power.

These ones…
They chose defiance.

And they came closer. The leader stepped in first, closing the last metre between us with a cold, mechanical precision. His mask hovered just inches from my face, the metal mesh vibrating with the sound of his breath. His eyes didn’t waver. They didn’t soften. They didn’t blink. The lenses behind him widened with the faintest shimmer of challenge.

Two more stepped in behind him, shoulders squared, chin raised, their boots shifting into a forward angle that told me everything. They were asserting dominance. Their mistake.

One guard lifted his spear until its hooked end hovered beside my jaw, close enough that a faint drift of iron dust tickled the edge of my cheek. Another lowered his baton just slightly, angling it in a subtle, deliberate threat toward my ribs. Not touching. Not attacking. Just crowding space. Compressing oxygen. Filling my lungs with their intention.

A silent message, We don’t fear you.

The leader’s voice came through the mask like gravel dragged over metal. “You do not give orders here.” His breath washed over my skin. I smelled iron. Sweat. Men who lived underground so long they became part of the mine itself. “You pass,” he continued, stepping even closer, “only when the Ren permits.”

They tried to swallow me with proximity. Their mistake was believing proximity meant control. My instincts snapped. Not anger. Not fear. Something deeper. Something primal and delighted and razor thin.

My tail went rigid behind me, a whip of tension that arched upward like a scorpion preparing to strike. My ears flattened, not in submission, but in the soundless crouch of a predator lowering its centre of gravity before it leaps. My pupils thinned to sharp slits, drinking in every twitch of their muscles, every shift of breath behind those masks.

I did not back up. I stepped in. So close my forehead nearly touched the leader’s mask, so close I could see the faint scratches on the inside of his lenses where panic had once lived. So close my voice could slide into his skull like a blade under armour.

“You’re in my face,” I murmured, the words a soft, trembling purr laced with violence, “because you don’t understand the danger of being this close.” My claws slid free, slow, quiet, deliberate, the sound like silk tearing. Not raised. Just visible. Just honest.

I tilted my head an inch, enough to brush my cheek against the cold edge of his spear point without fear. My voice dropped to a whisper that the whole choke point could feel. “Let me teach you.” My posture didn’t change. But the air did. The bond behind me thrummed like a heartbeat. My master wasn’t touching me, but his presence pressed into my skin like a command, like a foundation, like a reason.

My move unfolded in the space of a breath. I went for the leader’s mask, not to rip it off, but to slam my open palm against the metal grille so hard it rang like a struck bell.

Chaotic Instinct bonus (advantage) second roll… 19. Dex +4 = 23

My hand cracked against the mask with a sharp, metallic CLANG, the sound ricocheting down the choke point. The leader jerked back half a step, more from shock than pain, his formation tightening behind him in reflex.

Before he could recover, my OTHER hand snapped up, claws extended, stopping just short of his throat, a hair’s breadth from slicing cloth.

Intimidation check 12 +9 = 21

The corridor held its breath. I didn’t scratch him. I didn’t cut him. I pinned him between fear and pride so precisely that their entire formation re-evaluated reality. Then I leaned in, my forehead nearly touching the cold metal of his mask, my voice a soft, vicious purr curling in the narrow space between us. “You feel that…?”

I pressed my claws a fraction closer, never touching. “That’s how quickly I can end you without shedding a drop.” Two guards twitched. One adjusted grip. The one with the baton shifted his stance unconsciously backward.

Their discipline held. Barely. The leader shoved my wrist away, hard, trying to reclaim the space I stole.

Opposed Strength check, Leader roll: d20… 16 (+2) = 18, Aliza roll: d20… 11 (+2 Str) = 13

He pushed my arm aside. But it didn’t matter. Because I let him. I let my arm fall back in a slow, mocking flourish, tail swaying behind me like a blade wiping itself clean. Then I stepped backward, only far enough to stand again at my master’s side, shoulder brushing his, my tail curling around his thigh in a possessive ribbon of calm.

My eyes locked on the leader, burning through the mask with a promise. “I’ve taught you the first lesson,” I purred. “Know when you stand on a cliff made of someone else’s mercy.” My claws retracted with a click. “Now allow my master to pass.”

But then, surprise. The leader’s eyes flickered, a moment of realisation passing like a shadow through iron. He paused, just long enough for the spell to break. Something in my stance, my fire, my spirit or perhaps in my master’s silence behind me hit home. He stepped aside. So did the others. All at once, as if some silent command had been given, their wall parted, leaving a gap just wide enough for us to pass. Not a word. Not an apology. Not an excuse. Just the simplest surrender: the recognition of power, fire, and the spirit that survives in darkness.

The air rushed back into the corridor. I felt myself exhale, chest shuddering, as if I’d been holding my breath for a thousand years. I turned my head, eyes blazing, tail lashing in victorious, unrepentant delight. That was dominance. That was survival.

My master didn’t hesitate. He walked through the breach first, and I followed, glued to his side, claws clicking once on stone. As the Ren fell away behind us, I let the tension slip out, the bond between us spiking in a white-hot burst of pleasure so sharp it almost hurt. I didn’t hide it,I basked in it.

Then, with the corridor dark and empty behind us, he reached out and grabbed my tail. Not gentle. Not loving. Sharp, painful, a possessive reminder of what I belonged to. I hissed, not in pain, but in pleasure so raw it burned. He stroked the length slowly, firmly, every inch sending another wave through the bond until I trembled against him, shaking, wild-eyed, breathless. I must have looked like I’d been drowning for minutes, dragged up for air only now. The bond crackled, boiling with pleasure, pain, devotion.

I purred, still shuddering, tail coiled around his wrist, voice thick and hoarse from the rush.  My ears twitched, still pinned with aftershocks, but my eyes were all for him, hungry, wild, and so in love I’d burn the world just to feel his hand on me again.

Then Master spoke, “Remind me next time to actually tell you what to do, and what not to do.” And together, we vanished further into the mine, two shadows perfectly entwined, feared and untouchable, the only law worth obeying in this godless place.

@Senar2020