The silence was worse than the screams.
Siege stumbled forward, half-running, half-dragged by the compulsion to escape, deeper and deeper into the festering black of Fafnir's domain.
Behind him, the remnants of the battlefield smoldered—mangled corpses of comrades, scorched stone, and the distant echo of now fading into stillness.
Siege had run. He wasn't proud of it. But when the he looked and saw the dragon smiled at him with eyes full of patience, not hunger—it had broken something in him.
Now, there was only this cave. This endless grave.
The walls dripped with condensation, or blood, or worse. The air hung thick with sulfur, and the narrow tunnels twisted like intestines, each step into the dark pulling Siege further from any sane pathway.
Light was a memory. His torch had sputtered out hours ago. Maybe days. Time was a foreign thing here even with [Journeyman] aiming for him to find the most optimal path.
It was likely the reason he still lived.
He felt it only as fatigue, dread, and that subtle cracking at the edges of his mind.
He pressed a trembling hand against the cold stone. Breathing shallow. Listening.
Nothing.
No—something.
A rasp.
He turned sharply, sword raised—only to find another dead end. One of a hundred he'd met. The cavern was a labyrinth. Or perhaps it was Fafnir's mind made manifest. Shifting, sprawling, a mockery of mortal perception.
Siege had begun to suspect he was no longer in the world above. That he'd slipped between the seams of reality and fallen into a burrow beneath sanity itself.
He had tried marking the walls. Scratched crude arrows into the stone with the tip of his blade. But they vanished. Moved. Changed. Sometimes they whispered.
And then there was the voice.
It came in different forms—sometimes the gentle murmur of someone he'd once trusted, sometimes a scream of a dying friend, and at its worst, his own voice, distorted, laughing at him.
"Siege..." it purred now. "You smell like fear. Do you miss Dad? Do you miss your hand?"
He clenched his jaw, forcing himself to move. Every step was agony. His body was broken. His arm throbbed with ghost pain, and the bandage soaked through with dried blood and sweat. The training back at Ithaca had carved him into a weapon, but now that weapon was rusting, chipped, and worn.
He needed water. He needed sleep. He needed—
The scent of fire.
Siege froze.
A crimson glow pulsed at the far end of the corridor. Faint, like the breath of some evil forge. He stepped toward it, heart thudding. Maybe an exit. Maybe salvation. Maybe—
The glow flickered... then vanished.
Only a pair of eyes remained.
Glowing, copper. Luminous and slow-blinking like twin dying suns. And between them—nothing. The darkness was deeper there. It had weight. It had shape.
Siege backed away, tripping on uneven stone and falling hard. His sword clanged beside him.
Fafnir did not charge. He simply watched. Observed. Studied. The beast could have ended Siege in that instant. He didn't.
Instead, it spoke.
"Little thing..." The voice was a low hiss, yet it filled the space as if the cave itself were speaking. "You made it further than the rest."
Siege crawled back, grabbing his sword. His muscles screamed, but he raised the blade anyway. A pathetic gesture.
"Do you believe you're special? That survival is virtue?"
"Come on then!" Siege rasped, throat raw. "Finish it!"
A chuckle. Deep. Amused. Cold.
"I did not spare you, child. You spared yourself. When you ran from your brothers, when you let them burn and scream—you chose this. You made yourself mine."
With terrifying grace, Fafnir moved forward, and the red glow returned, painting the walls with hellish heat. Every motion of the beast was quiet, deliberate. Not like a brute, but like something intelligent-- playful.
"Do you know," Fafnir whispered, "how many heroes died here? Beowulf was only the latest."
Siege flinched at the name. His last image of Beowulf was the king torn apart not with fury, but with laughter still in his eyes. A tyrant undone not by power but indulgence in his desires.
"Your king screamed for war, but in the end, died pathetically."
"You're trying to break me," Siege muttered.
"Am I?" The dragon shifted again, its immense form coiling through the tunnel like smoke. "What's left of you to break?"
Siege ran.
It wasn't bravery. It wasn't cowardice. It was instinct. The beast didn't follow—not at first.
The walls grew tighter. The path narrowed until he had to crawl, dragging himself through a fissure barely wide enough for his shoulder. Somewhere behind, he could hear Fafnir again, not chasing—but breathing. Slowly. Rhythmically. Inhale. Exhale.
Taunting.
He reached a chamber. Wider. Filled with the bones of old knights, their armor fused to their skeletons by heat. And among them—Edwin and Sir Eric.
Sir Eric's corpse was fresh. His face was frozen in a twisted smile, one hand outstretched toward a jewel on the ground.
The lower half of Edwin's body was missing, and his upper body was gruesomely partially melted.
Siege didn't move.
He looked down at the man who had once shared bread with him, joked in the dorms. No regret. But now, staring at what remained of Edwin, he felt no triumph either.
Only emptiness.
"You stopped?," came Fafnir's voice, echoing in every direction.
Siege said nothing.
"Was he your friend? Or maybe he showed you your own fear?"
Siege stood still, jaw clenched, sweat dripping from his brow.
"Speak, little hero."
"He was my friend," Siege whispered. "Because he had at least tried to help me."
"And yet… here you are." Fafner growled.
Silence.
A soft sound behind him—stone shifting. Siege turned, sword raised.
Nothing.
"No more games," Siege growled. "Come out and face me!"
The ground trembled.
Fafnir's form began to manifest not from one direction, but from all. Tendrils of flame-like smoke curled from cracks in the walls. Heat pressed against Siege's skin. His sword felt like paper in his grip.
Then—
A roar.
But not a bestial one.
Laughter.
And then darkness again.
Total.
Crushing.
Unforgiving.
Siege collapsed to his knees, breathing ragged.
He was not dead. Not yet.
But he understood.
This was not a cave. Not a lair.
This was a hell. A test. A mirror.
And Fafnir, in his cruel tormentor, would not kill him quickly. No. The dragon would let him wander. Let him break. Let him unravel until Siege became another whisper in the dark—a warning to the next fool who dared enter.
But Siege would not give up on the hunt.
A tinge of growing madness sparked in Siege's brown eyes.
*I will kill this damn dragon*