After sneaking through the Guild and hiding her journal in Mikhail’s cramped lab, Elana had quickly found the Service Guild passages and now crept through the chilly, dim hallways towards the vault. The itch in the back of her mind told her the uzhas followed. She’d had all of it leave her body, hoping Sofia wouldn’t notice a small cloud of cobalt moving through the building.

  Elana wiped her clammy palms on her coat. Her appreciation for the uzhas’s ability to see any mind within a hundred yards had grown exponentially over the last few minutes. See anything? she asked the uzhas for the hundredth time.

  Still no, came the terse reply.

  All right, all right. No need to get snippy.

  Elana turned a corner and came face-to-face with a thin, grimy woman in a beige Service Guild coat.

  The woman sucked in a sharp breath and stumbled back.

  “Shh,” Elana said, a finger on her lips.

  The woman nodded, eyes wide, fear plain in them.

  Elana frowned, why’d the woman look so terrified? She opened her mouth to ask, but the woman turned and scurried away, her footfalls barely making a sound in the barren corridor. Shaking her head, Elana continued on and soon came to a metal door to her right. A panel—identical to the one in the sculpting chamber—was embedded in the wall beside it. She called the uzhas and pointed to the lock. The itch in her mind moved until it scratched at her skull behind her eyes as she stared at the lock.

  What you want me do? the uzhas asked.

  Unlock it, of course.

  How?

  Elana glanced left along the passage, she suspected it joined the main corridor to the vault. Has the blue mind seen us yet?

  No.

  She placed her hand over the lock. Merge with me, I’ll show you what to do. The skin on Elana’s palm tingled, and a chill raced up her arm. Distant grey dots twinkled around her. To her left, less than twenty yards away, the blue glow of Sofia’s mind floated next to seven grey minds. Chernov and his soldiers.

  Turning her attention back to the lock, she closed her eyes and focused on the uzhas in her. The previous uzhas had said she could be inside its “head” as well. So maybe…

  She let out a soft gasp as in her mind’s eye, the world turned hazy. Scattered and fragmented thoughts not her own flitted through her head.

  Hello, the uzhas said.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Elana grunted and kept her eyes shut, trying not to think about the hazy black—her arm from the inside? Now enter the lock.

  The uzhas moved, and the haze disappeared. Elana briefly saw the keyhole in her mind’s eye and then monochrome grey as the uzhas entered the lock. She could feel the surrounding metal and the tumblers, cold and hostile; a cage pressing in on it. Instinctively, she knew this lock wasn’t uzhasgart.

  We need to make an uzhasgart key, she said.

  No.

  What? Elana’s eyes snapped open, and she winced as what she saw from the uzhas blended chaotically with her own vision.

  Not dying.

  You won’t die, Elana said as she pulled back from the uzhas until she only saw with her own eyes. You only need a tiny amount for the key, and soon you’ll be merged with more uzhas.

  No.

  Elana glanced at the distant Sofia, and her hearts skipped a beat. Sofia and five of the grey minds now headed their way.

  We’re out of time, Elana said. Make a key! I’m risking everything for you, you selfish cloud of gas. If you don’t help, sculptors will slowly kill the rest of you.

  The uzhas remained stubbornly silent.

  “I should have left you to die,” Elana said, yanking the uzhas back into her.

  The grey minds moved with impossible speed. Chernov’s soldiers had obviously taken speed extract.

  Elana broke into a sprint, her short, stocky legs pumping, her hearts thundering in time. She rounded a corner and glanced back.

  Her stomach clenched as the dead-faced soldiers launched around the bend a second behind her.

  Silent as wraiths, they caught up to her and surrounded her.

  Elana staggered to a halt, wheezing, as they levelled their crossbows at her. Blood thrummed in her ears, and the sound of her breathing resonated through her skull.

  “Koskova Alchemist,” a man—Chernov, she assumed—said from behind, his deep voice rolling through the passage. “How nice of you to join us.”

  “I hate to disappoint,” Elana said, fighting to keep the quiver from her voice as she slowly turned.

  Chernov stood, looming in the passage, hands clasped at his back, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips. Sofia stood beside him, head bowed and shoulders slumped.

  “You are many things, Koskova,” he said, “but a disappointment is not one of them. Yet. Your friend”—Chernov indicated to Sofia—“informed me of your successful control of the uzhas. Now you will finish cataloguing the process for Voronin Master’s records.”

  “I’ve hidden my notes and will never show you how to make the extract, or control the uzhas.”

  Chernov dug a sheaf of papers from his coat and held them aloft. “You mean the notes we copied?”

  Elana’s chest constricted. “You might have the notes, but they’re coded.”

  “True. But codes were made to be broken. All they need is patience.”

  “Why didn’t you just steal the journal?” Elana asked.

  Chernov grinned, revealing a mouth full of broken and crooked teeth. “And miss this exchange? Now, I trust you have the phials of telepathy extract with you?”

  Elana barely managed a nod. She should have run instead of trying to save the uzhas. Uzhas that didn’t even try to save itself. She could feel it inside her, watching silently, almost… ashamed? And so you should be. We’re both going to die now.

  “Bring her,” Chernov said, marching away.

  A crossbow jammed into Elana’s back, driving her forwards.

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