The Coatl’s head descended, its brass-scaled snout clicking open with the sound of grinding gears and escaping steam. Not a roar, but a mechanical hiss that vibrated through the cracked floor. Before its steel-toothed snout could snap shut, I shoved Matlal forward, throwing my shoulder into his ribs. His splinted wrist gave a cry of pain as he stumbled, but he caught himself. I snatched a fallen ritual dagger from the shrine’s altar, its stone blade dull, but its hilt solid. Not for fighting, but for leverage. “Get up!” I yelled, already scrambling towards the narrow passage we’d used to enter. The Coatl wasn’t fast in this confined space, its segmented body scraping against the low ceiling, showering us with dust and ancient plaster. Matlal, surprisingly quick despite his injury, was already ahead, fumbling at a jammed security grate. “Itzel, this thing… it’s too big!” “Not for long!” I dodged a swipe from its head, the air displaced by its speed ruffling my hair. I could feel the heat radiating from its brass plates. This wasn’t just a drone; it was a mobile furnace. I reached Matlal, using the dagger’s hilt to hammer at the grate’s rusty lock. It groaned, refusing to yield. The Coatl coiled, gathering itself. Its glowing eyes narrowed, fixed on *me*. “Stand back!” I snapped, then kicked the grate with every ounce of strength. The ancient metal shrieked, tearing free from the crumbling stone. We tumbled into the passage, a narrow crawl space that led to the outer canyon wall. The Coatl rammed the opening, its wide horned skull wedged against the lintel. A frustrated whine, like a stressed boiler, echoed behind us. “What was that about ‘not for long’?” Matlal wheezed, clambering out onto a rickety maintenance platform clinging to the canyon face. Below, the dizzying drop of the Steam-Bazaars plunged into a tangled web of zip-lines, swaying cable cars, and distant glowing vents. “That thing can stretch,” I said, not looking back, already scanning for an escape route. “It’ll find a different way out.” My eyes locked onto a series of thick, insulated steam-pipes snaking vertically up the gorge's face, crisscrossed by precarious-looking service ladders. Our only way was up. “You’re insane!” Matlal protested, but I was already testing the nearest ladder. The metal creaked, but held. “What’s the plan? Climb to the sky?” “The sky’s a good start if you want to avoid a brass serpent,” I retorted, already ascending. My muscles screamed, but the adrenaline cut through the protest. I heard the grinding of gears again. Cualli’s pet was indeed finding its way out, probably through one of the larger, lower passages. It would be faster on the outside. I climbed, pulling myself up rung after rung, the updraft whipping at my clothes. Matlal, gritting his teeth, followed, his left arm dangling uselessly, making every pull a torment. Below us, the Brass Coatl emerged from a cavernous opening, its full, terrifying length revealed. It was easily a hundred feet long, its segmented body gleaming, steam hissing from vents along its spine. It moved with an unnatural fluidity, a serpent of metal and fire. It began to coil around a wide geothermal conduit, its brass-plated crest lifting, tracking our ascent. “It’s not trying to strike us,” Matlal gasped, his breath ragged. “It’s… herding us.” He was right. The Coatl wasn’t lunging, wasn’t attempting to knock us off. It was positioning itself, slowly circling, cutting off any horizontal escape. Its immense bulk seemed to shrink the entire chasm. It wanted us to go up. Only up. “He always liked a grand entrance,” I muttered, finding a perverse humor in the situation. “And an even grander exit.” We climbed higher, past roaring steam vents that threatened to scald us, past abandoned cable car stations hanging like forgotten dreams. The air thinned, and the sounds of the bazaars faded, replaced by the howl of the wind and the rhythmic whirring of the Coatl below. Finally, we reached what looked like a sky-platform, a small, insulated landing pad clinging to the very peak of the canyon wall. A single, squat comms-tower stood sentinel, its antennae reaching into the clouds. “A terminal!” Matlal exclaimed, hope finally entering his voice. “Maybe we can signal someone.” I rushed to the terminal, a robust, weather-beaten console. My fingers flew over the ancient interface, bypassing security protocols, searching for any emergency broadcast channel, any frequency that could reach outside the Tlecuil Republic. Syndicate, mercenary guild, anything. My goal was simple: extraction, far away from Cualli and his mechanical menagerie. Instead of a dial tone, the screen flickered, then resolved into a stark, illuminated map. It wasn’t a map of the Tlecuil Bazaars, or even the Republic. It was a projection of the entire continental landmass, centered on our location. A web of faint, red lines began to spread across the digital surface, emanating from the Tlecuil Republic’s borders. A sharp chill gripped my chest, cutting straight through the sweat and adrenaline. This wasn’t a power grid. This wasn’t a bomb. This was something far, far worse. The lines weren’t collapsing inward. They were expanding outward, forming a perfect, inescapable cage. “What is that?” Matlal breathed, leaning over my shoulder, his voice trembling. Then, Cualli’s voice, calm and utterly devoid of emotion, echoed from the terminal’s tinny speakers, cutting through the wind. It was not a recording. It was live. “The world is too dangerous for you, Itzel; in ten minutes, the world outside our dome ceases to exist.”

The Scale of the Trap