The predator lunged again, but this time she matched it—and more. She blurred sideways, wings slicing through bone-sacks, and launched a counter-lunge mid-spin. She echoed its last motion—the slash—and returned it faster. Claws dug into the beast's ribs. Tail wrapped its throat. She whispered a death phrase in her forgotten dialect—then slammed it down into the pit. Felicity tore one of the beast's crystal spines from its back. It pulsed—corrupted, oozing ancient code.
"Beast Mode!" she whispered to herself, flexing her taloned fingers. The very air seemed to hum with her presence, and she could feel the beast net pulsing with newfound energy. Her left cybernetic rune eye scanned the chamber, picking up on heat signatures and DNA echoes that she had never noticed before. But with this power came a heavy burden. Felicity knew that she was no longer just herself; she was something more, something ancient and powerful. The memories of her past lives flooded her mind, each one a tapestry of war, loss, and rebirth.
She was once a Zohar Lords Queen, a being of immense power and responsibility, but she had to find a way to move on from this previous identity, while still holding onto who she was. As she made her way through the twisted corridors of the underworld Felicity could sense that she was not alone. There were others out there, beings like her, and some of them were not friendly. She had to be prepared for whatever came her way, and that meant honing her new abilities and understanding the full extent of her powers. Little did she know, her journey was about to take a dramatic turn. For in the shadows, a new threat was stirring, one that would test the very limits of her strength and force her to make choices that would shape the future of the beast net and all who dwelt within it. Slick with ichor. Wings twitching.
Something in her had changed forever. She was no longer just a survivor of the Pit. She was a hunter now. And somewhere above her, was someone like her. "Herja" I can't wait to meet you. The pit's moans faded as she climbed. Felicity emerged from the slaughter nest onto a precipice overlooking a chasm too wide for any human memory. Before her stretched the Bone bridge—a narrow span of fused vertebrae and Beast spines, slick with marrow-glaze, whispering beneath her feet.
She kept walking. Halfway across, she stopped. There—perched like a crow on a protruding rib—stood a figure wrapped in Archivore bonecloth, one eye socket socketed with obsidian crystal. They didn't speak. They leapt. The Archivore scout struck like a dagger. Silent. Fast. Ritualistic. They slid across the bridge on polished boots, daggers made of bone flashing in hand. Felicity dodged the first swipe, spun into a low crouch, and blocked with her claws—the clash sang like struck chimes.
She attacked low. The scout ducked, rolled, countered with a shoulder spike. Felicity's wings flared wide, knocking the scout off-balance. Her tail coiled forward like a scythe and swept their legs out. The scout fell. She was already on them. One hand on their throat. The other pressed against their mask. Their crystal eye blinked once.
"You walk the path backward, they whispered. You carry too much hunger."
Felicity gave the scout a cute, fanged grin.
"Well you know what they say," She smiled and raised an eyebrow. Feed the hungry."
She crushed their windpipe, slow and deliberate. No scream. Just the crunch of the last breath leaving a rival relic. She stood, chest heaving. Tore the Archivore cloak from their body—a patchwork of stitched bone and inked prophecy. She swung it around her shoulders like royalty. She stepped forward again. Five levels left.
The Vein awaited. And above it—Herja. The hatch slid open with a hiss like exhaled prophecy. Felicity stepped out of the bone stairwell and into the Neon Underdark.
The Vein. It sprawled before her like a buried city dreaming of bloodsport—subterranean, seething, alive. Corridors made of rusted freight elevators and fungal glass arched overhead. Sewer grates steamed. Neon fungus blinked from the ceilings in shifting hues: bruised pink, bio-green, radiant noir. Someone had wired ancient powerlines through carcass scaffolding.
The Vein wasn't chaos. It was ecosystem—feral and ordered. Felicity's clawed feet padded across a walkway laced with dried ichor. She kept her wings folded tight, tail coiled beneath the cloak she'd stolen from the Archivore scout. Her horns were hidden by a hood. Her eyes glowed softly beneath its shadow—one metal, one myth.
She walked like hunger wearing skin. Around her, life pulsed. A Neurojackie jacked a wire into her skull, twitching to soundless music. A Scarlet Maw lieutenant sold gland-pierced jawbones at a folding altar. A Splicer crew auctioned a living arm still twitching in a jar.
Near a rusted billboard that read "HE WHO CONTROLS THE CRYSTALS CONTROLS THE MYTH" two traders whispered. Felicity didn't stop walking. But her fists clenched beneath the cloak. "Herja." Her lips curled. She passed a market stall where a vendor displayed live crystals in fluid jars—each one twitching, whispering, begging to be chosen. None called to her. She already had what she needed. A path. A purpose. She followed the sound of chanting and drums toward the higher tunnels—toward the surface. The last tunnels were quiet—too quiet.
She passed through rust-choked service ducts, ducking beneath cables like vines, wading knee-deep through trash water laced with oil and bone flakes. Old metro signs pointed nowhere. Timetables flickered with numbers long obsolete. Here, the world pretended to be normal. Human scavengers camped near collapsed train cars, cooking over scrap-fires, playing ghost music on hacked speakers. They saw her only as a shadow—too regal to question, too warped to follow.
Felicity moved among them like a revenant, not a soul left to spare for company. A corridor of mold-eaten posters led her to a rusted elevator shaft, its cage half-open, hanging like a broken jaw. No switch. No lights. She climbed. Hand over hand. Bleeding fingers finding purchase on steel ribs. Up through rot. Up through silence.
Up through the last whispers of the below-world. No music played. Only her breath, ragged. Determined. Her hand cracked through dirt and light.
She clawed upward, dragging her body through collapsed pavement, between weeds and rebar. One final gasp of effort—and she emerged. Felicity stood—barefoot, shivering—on the crust of the world. And for the first time in over ten thousand years, she saw the sky. She let her gaze drop and her mouth fell open, she saw the brilliant city below.
Phoenix.
Golden.
Burning.
Light poured over her like absolution. Her horns caught the sun. Her wings shimmered with crusted ash and crystal dust. She inhaled, long and deep. The world breathed with her. For a moment, everything was still. Then her eyes narrowed. Below her—thirteen levels of mutation, memory, and myth. Behind her—the Pit. Before her—the throne. She clenched her fists.
Her psychic Intent flared. "I'm coming," she said. And I'm not bringing mercy." Felicity stood atop the ruined city, her eyes scanning the horizon with a mix of awe and determination. The surface world was vast and unfamiliar, a stark contrast to the confines of the Pit. As she made her way through the desolate streets, Felicity couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched. The air crackled with an unseen energy, and she knew that her presence had not gone unnoticed. She had to be ready for whatever came her way, and that meant honing her new abilities to their fullest extent.
Her metallic eye scanned the surroundings, picking up on heat signatures and DNA echoes that revealed the hidden dangers lurking in the shadows. She was a hunter now, and she would not be caught off guard.