“Run!” Little Shadow signed, her bare feet slipping on the grimy metal floors as she rounded the corner and careened off the blightsteel wall. “Head for the ducts. The ducts!” she repeated the gesture for emphasis.

  Ahead of her, Numbers dashed off and zig-zagged through the trash-strewn alley, Clanker, one of the few OWRglass spiders on level B-8 skittering along the wall and struggling to keep pace as it lit her friend’s way. Even without the soft glow of the aged automaton, its abdomen light barely more than that of a candle, neither of them would’ve slowed or stumbled.

  They knew these alleys too well. They’d run them all their young lives scrounging for food and survival. And there was no way Little Shadow would let some blighting slavers catch them here.

  But there were a lot of slavers, heavy boots ringing out on the metal floor as the pursuit spread out behind her.

  Numbers rocketed out of the alley like she was ejected and skidded to a stop, Little Shadow hot on her heels, head swiveling left and right.

  “There! That’s them,” a man signed and pointed down the quiet street to their right.

  “The ducts,” Numbers signed slowly to Little Shadow, panic shaking her fingers, and looked past the three large men running in their direction. The three men with shock-whips.

  (Wonderful.)

  “Go around the long way,” Little Shadow signed with one hand, and shoved her friend in the opposite direction. “Sorry, Clanker” she signed at the fist-sized OWRglass spider who’d followed them for years, like it would understand, and reached out to scoop it up. Its mechanical legs whirred in agitation, but Little Shadow ignored it and tossed it towards her pursuers with all the might her small body could muster.

  Now, if Little Shadow and Numbers chose to hide, the spider wouldn’t immediately give away their position.

  The tiny globe of light arched gently up through the pitch darkness, briefly illuminating the metal ceiling of level B-8 before curving back down to hit the floor with a clang of metal on metal. Long-abandoned run-down houses, broken windows and empty doorways leading nowhere but nowhere, lined both sides of the street.

  The spider, meanwhile, surprisingly durable, bounced once, then twice, but righted itself and joined four more of its kind as they tailed the slavers.

  With them no more than twenty paces away and closing, Little Shadow turned and sprinted after Numbers, who was waving at her to hurry from the mouth of another alley, a broken OWRglass spider, Twinkle, sputtering bursts of light nearby.

  Focused on Little Shadow, Numbers didn’t see the hairy arm snake out of the darkness behind her until it wrapped around her neck, lifting her from her feet.

  “Shadow,” one hand signed in panic.

  “Got ya,” the bucktooth man signed in front of Numbers’ face. “You too, come to papa,” he turned and signed to Little Shadow, holding Numbers off to the side.

  Maybe he expected her to slow. To hesitate. To run the other way.

  (Not gonna happen.) Little Shadow charged in with the speed only a twelve-year-old who’d grown up on the streets could have. Then she hit him with a strength no twelve-year-old should ever have.

  “Nobody,” she signed and buried her fist between his legs, lifting his feet from the ground. “Touches,” she grabbed the rope he used to keep his too-big pants up and yanked him back down. “Numbers!” she finished before hammering that small fist into his buckteeth, shattering them like cheap ceramic.

  The man shot back like he’d been hit by a wrecking ball, his limp arm releasing Numbers before he toppled on top of Twinkle, plunging them into darkness.

  Blood pounding through her veins like a stampede, Little Shadow took a step towards the motionless man. (How dare you touch Numbers.) She’d…

  “Shadow, come on. We have to go,” Numbers grabbed her arm and tapped out the words like she was playing a piano, pulling her towards the alley. “Leave him. I’m fine.”

  Little Shadow gave one last look at the man on the ground, but the thundering of boots on metal behind her was too close. There wasn’t time, and she let her friend lead her away. Their feet squelched through years of built-up filth and human waste as they raced ahead, and Little Shadow risked a glance behind.

  A trio of slavers, two men and a woman, paused at the mouth of the alley where their comrade lay unconscious. (Maybe they won’t follow?)

  “Beaten up by a kid,” the brawny woman signed to the silent laughter of the other two, then they were charging down the alley, the five OWRglass spiders swarming along the walls beside him.

  “Clanker, you traitor,” Little Shadow signed sharply and turned down another side-alley. A left, then another right, and they’d have a straight shot at the ducts. Once they got there, the larger men would never be able to follow them. Even the woman was too big. Little Shadow and Numbers could just go back to their hiding spot and scrounge one of the other levels for a while. One with less slavers.

  But they weren’t there yet. Light poured into the alley from behind them as the spiders rounded the corner, the slavers’ longer legs closing the gap with every stride.

  “GO! GO,” Little Shadow tapped out on her friend’s shoulder. “Just a little further,” on the other shoulder. But Numbers was already gasping for breath. Would she make it? She had to. She…

  KA-CHACK, the alley flashed with light as the shock-whip snapped into one of the walls, ionizing the air and standing Little Shadow’s hair on end. (So close!)

  Little Shadow ducked under a pipe stretching across the alley, just in time, the second snap of the whip blasting the ancient metal to dust.

  Ahead of her, Numbers cut a sharp left, then stumbled back. A man with a grin like a jackknife stomped into the light, small compared to the others, he still towered over the malnourished girls.

  But he made the mistake of ignoring Little Shadow.

  Her foot slammed into his knee with bone-crunching accuracy as the whip behind her drew back, the charge in the air pulling her hair like a current in water. Without missing a beat, she grabbed him by the sack he called a shirt, fabric ripping in her fingers, and spun him around.

  The whip lashed his back with a satisfying KA-CHACK, his body spasming from the released charge that arced through him and numbed Little Shadow’s hands before she could let go. She gritted her teeth against the pain, it would pass, pain always did, and looked down their escape route.

  Another man, shoulders wide enough to touch both metal walls of the alley, pristine white shirt open in the front to reveal his branded but muscled chest, strode forward like he owned the place. OWRglass spiders swarmed forward like a vanguard, and he casually unlooped the shock-whip at his hip.

  “Good try,” he signed smoothly, fingers dancing in the air as if he strummed an invisible harp. “But give it up now before I have to hurt you. Neither of us wants that; you’d sell for less.”

  “Numbers. You have to…” Little Shadow signed behind her back but cut off when she glanced back to her friend. (Blight it.)

  Three slavers where they’d come from. The man with the white shirt where they needed to go. And a dead end behind Numbers.

  There was nowhere left to run.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “I got this, boss,” a scrawny man signed as he stepped over the prone man on the ground, shock-stick coming out in one hand, manacles looped around his other.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Little Shadow signed sharply and put herself between the men and Numbers.

  “Shadow, don’t…” her friend tapped on her shoulder.

  “Just stay behind me. I won’t let anybody hurt you,” Little Shadow promised with quick gestures, never taking her eyes off the men in front of her.

  “Maybe you should be worrying about yourself a bit more?” the scrawny man signed and jabbed her in the stomach with the shock-stick.

  Muscles spasmed and her teeth slammed together, but Little Shadow didn’t fall.

  The man raised an eyebrow and looked at the shock-stick in his hand, then clicked the dial to a higher setting with a nod.

  “Last…chance…” Little Shadow signed with fingers that barely worked.

  “Kid, you’ve got grit,” the man signed and stabbed out with his amped-up shock-stick, OWRglass glowing on the handle.

  Little Shadow stepped into it, snatching the shock-stick in one hand, and grabbed the man between the legs with her other.

  Oh, how he howled as the charge arced through her and straight into the one place he never, ever, wanted to get hit by a shock-stick. For seconds that must’ve seemed like an eternity to him, Little Shadow fought through the pain twisting her muscles, seizing her lungs, and blotting her vision. By the caricature-like look on his face, it was so much worse for him.

  But still Little Shadow didn’t let go. Not until the charge expended itself and the stick’s hum quieted. With a shudder, she drew her first breath into pained, quivering lungs, and forced her charred fingers open. Her shoulders slumped and her legs shook, but she didn’t fall. She wouldn’t fall. Not while Numbers needed her.

  The man in front of her simply toppled backwards, eyes rolled into the back of his head.

  “Malak,” one of the two men signed to the big man with the brand on his chest. “This kid…”

  “She’s a fighter,” Malak signed, his shock-whip writhing like a snake in his calloused hand as he drew it back. “Too bad her friend isn’t.”

  Little Shadow’s brain moved too slowly to understand his meaning before the whip struck like lightning, her eyes following it as it snapped over her shoulder and past her face.

  (No!) The panic in her blood forced her body to move past its limits, but not fast enough. Numbers recoiled, her right eye charred, no, obliterated, by the whip that blasted her in the side of the face. She fell back as Little Shadow’s small hands reached out for her. Fell, as Little Shadow’s heart broke.

  Numbers hit the wall and slid down, motionless, the right side of her face smoking and blistered.

  (No, no, no.) “Numbers, can you hear me?” Little Shadow tapped on the wall beside her friend’s ear with a shaking hand, her blood stilled as she waited for her friend to respond.

  Nothing.

  “Numbers?” she tapped, a pit deeper than the darkness of B-8 in her stomach. “Numbers…?”

  Heart hammering and skin cold, she gently touched Numbers’ face. No response. She said she’d protect…

  “Now, then. Come along before I have to hurt either of you anymore,” Malak tapped, his meaty fingers thrumming on the metal walls.

  Little Shadow’s blood roared like a beast in the darkness as something inside her snapped, and she spun on the men behind her. Red colored her vision. Thunder pounded in her ears. Her body, so small, her skin, so thin, barely contained the rage threatening to burst out of her.

  “Oh, fine,” Malak signed, almost disinterested, and snapped his whip forward again.

  KA-CHACK, it hit her shoulder with a jolt that lit up the alley.

  Little Shadow didn’t even flinch. Serpents writhed under the flesh of her arms. Claws raked inside her gut, demanding a way out. Nightmares coiled in her legs, waiting for their place in the darkness.

  KA-CHACK, the whip resounded again as it slapped across her chest, charring her dirty smock and blistering her skin.

  OWRglass spiders skittered away as Little Shadow stepped forward, air vibrating and refuse dancing in the alley around her.

  The men should have followed the spiders.

  A third strike of the whip caught her leg as she took a second step forward. It barely even stung compared to her shattered heart, and she loomed over the unconscious man from earlier.

  Malak raised an eyebrow and drew the whip back for a fourth strike, but the brawny woman raised a hand and signed quickly, “Looks like this needs a lady’s touch.”

  A small nod of permission from Malak, and the woman sauntered forward, cracking her knuckles and rolling her neck.

  “Sorry kid,” she signed with one hand, and hit Little Shadow with the other; a haymaker that would’ve crumpled steel.

  Little Shadow’s head snapped to the side, her jaw shattering and putting itself back together in the space of a heartbeat. But. She. Would. Not. Fall. She turned back slowly, her slow grin spreading to show her bloody teeth as she met the woman’s widening, feline eyes.

  Little Shadow opened her mouth and screamed silently as she leaned forward, the thing inside of her demanding release. All her hate, her anger, her grief, her loss, exploded out of her.

  Seams split her arms and snakes of crimson slithered out, tongues tasting the air from between dripping fangs. Red claws like knives carved out of her stomach, through her tattered smock, and long, spindly arms pulled a narrow body topped with an eyeless head out. Flesh peeled from her calves, the blood oozing out and pooling at her feet to rise again as tentacles that hungrily wrapped around the woman’s legs, pulling them out from under her.

  Little Shadow’s vision darkened and she almost stumbled, almost, barely any blood left in her small body, but sheer force of will kept her standing. Heavy eyes focused on Malak, and she raised her leaden arms. She could pass out after he was dead.

  With a flick of her fingers, the blood-claws raked across the panicking, tentacle-bound woman, splashing crimson along the walls in a wet splatter as they beheaded her.

  Malak’s eyes went wide as her head gently rolled to stop at his feet. “You…you don’t know what you’ve done…” he signed woodenly.

  “It’s you who doesn’t know,” Little Shadow signed back with bloody fingers.

  Without hesitation, two fingers together, Little Shadow pointed then snapped her wrist down to the woman at her feet. The second claw followed her gesture straight into the woman’s chest, and just like that, the woman’s blood was Little Shadow’s.

  Her mind expanded with understanding. With power. The woman was Touched, a remnant of the Broken gods.

  (With this…)

  Little Shadow nodded permission.

  The thing made of blood crawled all the way out of Little Shadow’s stomach, legs little more than nubs on its thin body, and into the woman at her feet. Little Shadow’s wrist swiveled around, fingers towards the sky, and the thing rose back out to its full ten-foot height, claws as long as swords scarring the metal walls on either side of it. Eyeless head splitting, it silently roared at the men through a maw lined with serrated teeth.

  “Nobody touches Numbers!” Little Shadow signed as the blood-beast lashed out to exact her revenge.

  Malak’s hand, at the same time, darted out to grab a gawking thug by the scruff of the neck. Before the poor man even knew what was happening, he was suddenly between Malak and the raging monster.

  The meat-shield wasn’t nearly thick enough.

  Blood-claws punched through the man like wet paper and straight into Malak, who skidded back several paces. The body, twitching where it dangled a foot above the ground from the curved claws, shriveled and stilled as the blood-beast thickened, muscles defining and shoulders widening.

  “A blighting Blood Dancer,” Malak signed, his skin a dull metal underneath his shredded shirt.

  The blood-beast flicked its hand, casually discarding the exsanguinated corpse, then slashed down across Malak in a flash of red. Claws gouging out great divots in the floor and shredding Malak’s white shirt, they didn’t even scratch his iron body.

  Kill him. Rend him. Bleed him, Little Shadow mentally commanded, her hollowed out body on the verge of giving out. Whatever he was, Malak wasn’t going to escape her vengeance.

  The blood-beast obeyed, the muscles in its arms bulging as it focused its strength. Lifting its claws above its head, fifteen feet in the air, there wouldn’t be anything more than a crater left when it was finished.

  Malak’s head tilted up, and up, eyes locked on his impending doom, body frozen.

  (DIE!)

  But a shock-whip lit the alley and blasted a hole in the blood-beast’s side, both Little Shadow and the beast turning their attention to the one other man still standing.

  His mouth gaped, the whip dropping out of his hand, and piss soaked his pants. “Boss…?” the man signed.

  But Malak was already running down the alley in the other direction.

  After him, Little Shadow commanded, Kill him. Kill every slaver you find. The beast threw its head back in a silent roar, its bloodlust a palpable weight in the air, then loped after Malak on all fours.

  “Boss…” the man signed slowly, pathetically, and turned to look at Little Shadow.

  She leapt on him before he could blink, a ravenous animal starved too long, hands gripping his face with bone-crushing strength, dirty feet on his chest, and blood-snakes driving their hungry fangs into him in a dozen places as she rode him to the ground. With frightening speed, the snakes gulped his blood, and Little Shadow’s back burst apart, ragged, skeletal wings with sparse, dagger-like feathering stretching upward.

  “Malak,” the wings hissed as they steamed in the air, and Little Shadow reached out her senses for the beast battling him in the next street. Screeching metal shattered the silence and Little Shadow took a shaky step in that direction, leaving the dried-up husk of a corpse without a second glance.

  (Just a little more,) she told her nearly blood-dry body, heart struggling to fill her veins while most of her blood writhed around outside her skin. (Just a little more. For Numbers.)

  “That’s enough, my dear,” came a tapping from the darkness, interrupting Little Shadow’s thoughts, and a large woman in emerald silks and a burgundy corset stepped forward. Goggles with an OWRglass glowing between the lenses hid her eyes, but there was no mistaking she was looking right at Little Shadow. “You’re pushing yourself too hard. Your body can’t take this,” she signed when Little Shadow looked at her.

  Little Shadow’s wings carved through metal walls like butter as she turned on the woman who looked so out of place on B-8. No rags. No dirt. Great boots.

  “Who…?” Little Shadow signed with one hand, but her legs gave out from under her. She stumbled to the ground, empty and weak, the blood-wings coming apart and sloshing over her in a wave.

  “Slow down, girl. Focus on bringing yourself together again,” the woman tapped quickly

  (Numbers, I…) Little Shadow couldn’t finish her thought as darkness overtook her.