The stench hit Garrach first: a humid, sickly-sweet musk of caged flesh and fresh iron. He dropped from the ventilation shaft into a narrow, mud-slicked corridor, his boots making barely a sound. The armory was no simple vault; it spread as a subterranean warren of makeshift pens and experimental vats, carved deep beneath the main barracks. A faint, pulsing glow emanated from behind a heavy, reinforced door ahead. Varus did more than hoard glands; he cultivated them. Three figures in blackened, augmented armor materialized from the shadows, their movements jerky, almost unnatural. Varus’s elite guard, no doubt. Each carried a flanged bludgeon, its head studded with sharpened scraps of bone. Garrach didn't hesitate. He surged forward, his trench blade a silver blur. The first guard barely registered the movement before Garrach’s weapon sliced through the gap in their neck plating. The thud of the armored body hitting the ground was surprisingly soft in the damp earth. The other two reacted with feral speed, flanking him. Garrach parried a brutal overhead swing with his blade, the impact jarring his arm to the elbow, then spun, bringing his heavy trench boot up into the second guard’s ribcage. The sound of splintering bone was audible even through the armor. Before the guard could recover, Garrach used their momentum, twisting, and plunged his blade into the soft joint of their armpit. A gurgling cry escaped the dying soldier. His victory was short-lived. A sudden, searing pain exploded in his left thigh. The third guard, faster than expected, had driven an iron mace into his flesh. Garrach grunted, the impact staggering him, but he pivoted, ignoring the throbbing agony, and delivered a swift, brutal backhand with the pommel of his blade. The guard’s head snapped back, a sickening crack echoing in the tight space, and they crumpled. He knelt, assessing the damage. A deep bruise, possibly a fracture, but no immediate loss of mobility. He couldn’t afford to slow down. More guards would come. He pushed himself up, leaning slightly on the cold stone wall, when a low growl echoed from an open grate above. A fourth guard, thicker than the others, dropped from a hidden alcove, a massive, barbed chain wrapped around their fist. They moved with a disturbing, predatory grace, their eyes gleaming with cold intent. Garrach knew this was different. This was no standard sentry; this was Varus’s personal enforcer, a brute rumored to have beast-blood infusions. The chain whipped out, snaking around Garrach’s blade arm. He tried to pull free, but the barbs dug in, drawing blood. The enforcer yanked, pulling him off balance, and raised a spiked cudgel for a killing blow. Garrach roared, bracing for impact, his muscles straining against the chain, futilely. Then, a crash. Not the cudgel, but a cacophony of groaning metal and splintering timber. From a ventilation shaft high above, a heavy iron rigging, still entangled with rusty gears and a broken pulley, plummeted. It struck the enforcer squarely across the back, a dull, sickening thud. The guard crumpled instantly, the life draining from them before they even hit the ground. Garrach stared, bewildered, at the crushed form. A moment later, a small, mud-streaked face peered down from the ventilation shaft. It was Jom, trembling violently, though a flicker of something stubborn cut through the panic on his grime-caked face. “Commander!” Jom’s voice was a frantic hiss. “The map… it said this grate led to the main rigging system. I… I cut the main support beam.” He gestured wildly with a pair of rusty shears. “Are you… are you alright?” Garrach grunted, pulling his bloodied arm free from the now-slack chain. “You saved my life, Jom.” The words felt foreign on his tongue, but true. He looked at the mangled rigging, then at Jom, a new respect dawning. The map, Velid’s map, had indeed been a guiding hand. “We don’t have much time. More will be coming. Where’s the main cache?” Far above, in the sterile chill of the medical ward, Velis drifted. The world was a smear of grey, punctuated by sharp, blinding flashes. Not light, but memories. Fragments, like shards of ice, piercing the fog of her fever. She saw herself, not as Velid the soldier, but as the apothecary she once was, her hands steady, her mind alight with purpose. She was in a different clinic, one cleaner, filled with unfamiliar equipment. Then, a face. Her own. Younger, sharper, a frantic, desperate gleam in her eyes. *“They can’t find it. Not yet. Not until the world is ready.”* The words echoed, not in her ears, but in the deepest recesses of her mind. She watched her past self—*her true self*—prepare a gleaming, crystalline syringe. The liquid inside pulsed with a faint, iridescent glow. A formula, intricate and terrifying, unfurled behind her eyes, the language of its creation suddenly clear, legible. *“The cure isn’t an extract, Velis. It’s a synthesis. And I am the first trial. The only trial.”* The syringe pressed against the pale skin of her arm, her own arm, before the memory wipe. The needle plunged, the liquid diffused, a cool current spreading through her veins. Then, a wrenching, agonizing pain as her past self, with a chilling resolve, triggered the memory wipe. A self-inflicted oblivion, a necessary sacrifice to hide the truth within her own body. She gasped, teeth clicking together, and her eyelids flew wide. The grey faded, replaced by the stark, whitewashed ceiling of the medical ward. The fever still burned her throat, but the delirium dissolved into cold focus. Garrach risked the gallows below for a harvested gland Varus guarded. Yet the cure did not lie in some steel vat. It lived in her veins. It had always been in her. A prototype, injected into her own blood, waiting to be unleashed. “No,” she croaked, her voice raw. “He’s wrong. They’re all wrong.” Vornen, who had been meticulously changing a compress on her forehead, froze, his cynical gaze snapping to her face. “Velid? You’re awake. Your fever broke.” He reached for a fresh vial of pain-dulling serum. Velis ignored him, pushing herself up from the cot as vertigo tilted the chamber. Her arm, where Vornen had cut her uniform, was still exposed. The scarred skin, the remnants of the binding, all suddenly felt like irrelevant details. Her fingers closed around a scalpel from Vornen's sterile tray, the cold steel a shocking anchor in her shaking hand. She met Vornen's stunned stare, pinning him with unblinking resolve. “Bleed me,” she whispered, the words ragged. “Now.”

The Beast Armory