DEVOUR THE GODS: They had all the power. He took it

Chapter 7: The Old Prison

The shapeshifting magic felt different from the others.

It wasn't just power. It was knowledge. Understanding of how bodies worked at a fundamental level. How bones connected. How muscles contracted. How skin stretched and reformed. The serpent woman had spent decades mastering it, and now all that expertise lived inside me.

I could feel my own corruption more clearly now. See how the black veins were restructuring my cardiovascular system. Replacing human tissue with something else. Something designed to channel stolen magic more efficiently.

The locket wasn't killing me. It was remaking me.

The distinction mattered less with each passing hour.

I walked for what felt like half a day. The tunnel narrowed, widened, twisted back on itself. No logic to the path. Just following the natural fault lines in the rock. My torches burned down one by one. Eventually, I switched to the chemical lights. They cast everything in sickly green that made the shadows dance wrong.

The temperature dropped below freezing. Ice coated everything. My breath came out in clouds so thick I could barely see through them. Only my stolen ice magic kept me from hypothermia.

Then the tunnel opened into something that definitely wasn't natural.

Worked stone. Precise angles. A doorway carved from solid rock, maybe twenty feet tall and half as wide. Symbols covered every surface. Not decorative. Functional. Wards. Seals. Magical barriers meant to keep something in.

Or keep something out.

Most of the wards were dark now. Dead. Their power exhausted decades ago. But a few still flickered with faint light. Weak. Failing. Not enough to stop me.

I walked through the doorway.

Beyond was the old prison.

The corridor stretched ahead, lined with cells on both sides. Iron bars rusted to the point of uselessness. Doors hanging open or missing entirely. The floor was littered with debris. Broken furniture. Scattered bones. Evidence of violence written in brown stains that had soaked into the stone.

My enhanced hearing picked up movement deeper in. Scraping sounds. Muttering. Someone or something was still here.

I moved carefully, checking each cell as I passed. Most were empty. A few contained remains. Skeletons still wearing shackles. Prisoners who'd died locked up and been forgotten.

One cell held something different.

A man sat against the back wall. Alive. Maybe forty years old, though it was hard to tell. His beard reached his chest. His clothes were rags. But his eyes were alert. Intelligent. When he saw me, he smiled.

"Finally. I knew someone would come eventually." His voice was rough from disuse but cultured. Educated. "Tell me, what year is it?"

"2525."

"Seventy-three years. Seventy-three years I've been down here." He laughed. Not mad. Just bitter. "They said it would be twenty. Maximum sentence for what I did. But they forgot about me. Or maybe they remembered and decided I was better off buried."

"What did you do?"

"I told the truth." He stood slowly, joints cracking. "I was a Council investigator. Found evidence of corruption. Magistrates accepting bribes. Enforcers covering up murders. The whole system rotting from the inside. So I documented everything. Prepared to expose them."

He gestured at the cell around him.

"This was their response. Arrested on fabricated charges. Tried in secret. Sentenced to a prison that officially doesn't exist." He approached the bars. "Then the prison was abandoned. Guards left. Wards failed. Doors opened. Everyone escaped or died. Everyone except me."

"Why didn't you leave?"

"Because I'm bound." He raised his hands. Shackles covered both wrists, connected by a chain maybe two feet long. Runes covered the metal, still glowing faintly. "Magical restraints. Keyed to the prison's foundation. I can't leave this cell. Can't even touch the bars. Been trying for seventy-three years."

I studied the shackles with my stolen knowledge. Complex enchantment. Masterwork. Designed to drain any magic the wearer possessed and feed it back into the binding. Self-sustaining. Permanent.

"You're a mage."

"Was. Before these." He shook the chains. "They've been draining me for seven decades. Taking everything I am and using it to keep me locked up. I should have died years ago. Starvation. Dehydration. Old age. But the binding won't let me die. It needs me alive to function."

"What's your name?"

"Aldric. Thomas Aldric." He paused. "Though I suppose that name doesn't mean anything anymore. Everyone who knew me is dead or forgotten I exist."

Thomas Aldric. The name from my grandmother's journal. One of the students she'd stolen from forty years ago. Fire manipulation. Combat class.

"You survived," I said. "The Phantom Thief. You survived."

His expression changed. Recognition. Fear. "You know about that. About what she did." He backed away from the bars. "Are you... no. You're too young. But the corruption. The black veins. You're like her. You're stealing powers."

"She was my grandmother."

"Of course she was." Aldric laughed again. Definitely some madness there after all. "The universe has a sick sense of humor. Seventy-three years alone, and the first person I meet is the grandson of the woman who destroyed my life."

"She didn't put you here."

"She started the chain. Stole my fire magic during that massacre. Left me powerless. The Council investigated, found my corruption evidence during the search, decided I was too dangerous to let go." He sat back down heavily. "So yes. She put me here. Just took a few extra steps."

The voices in the locket whispered.

HE'S WEAK. DECADES OF IMPRISONMENT. NO MAGIC LEFT. BUT THE BINDING. THE BINDING HOLDS POWER. ANCIENT ENCHANTMENT. TAKE IT. LEARN IT. ADD IT TO THE COLLECTION.

"I can free you," I said.

Aldric looked up sharply. "How?"

"The same way my grandmother stole your magic. I can drain the binding. Take its power. Without energy to sustain it, the shackles will fail."

"You'd do that? Help the man your grandmother ruined?"

"I'm not my grandmother."

"No. You're worse. She at least had the decency to feel guilty." He studied me with those too-intelligent eyes. "But I'm in no position to refuse. Free me, and I'll help you however I can. I've been down here for seventy-three years. I know things. Secrets. Paths the Council doesn't want anyone to find."

I approached the bars. Reached through. The binding resisted immediately. Pain lanced up my arm. The enchantment was designed to punish anyone who tried to interfere.

I pushed through it. Grabbed the chain between Aldric's shackles.

The connection formed. Different from stealing personal magic. This was worked enchantment. Crafted power built into physical objects. Complex. Layered. Seventy-three years of accumulated energy.

I pulled.

The binding fought back. It was designed to resist exactly this kind of theft. Wards activated, trying to sever my connection. Pain became agony. My vision whited out. The black veins on my skin pulsed, spreading faster, racing up my neck toward my face.

But I'd stolen from combat mages. From a master shapeshifter. From a thread-mage who could see the structure of magic itself.

I knew how to break things now.

The enchantment shattered.

The shackles fell from Aldric's wrists, hitting the stone floor with a sound like bells. He stared at his bare hands. Rubbed his wrists where the metal had been. Tears streamed down his face.

"Seventy-three years," he whispered. "Seventy-three years and I'm finally free."

I stumbled backward. The binding's power settled into my collection. Eight abilities now. Eight stolen magics fighting for space in my deteriorating body.

The corruption had reached my nose. I could see black veins in my peripheral vision when I looked down. Soon they'd cover my entire face.

"Thank you," Aldric said. He stood, testing his legs. Weak. Atrophied. But functional. "I mean it. Whatever your reasons, whatever you're becoming, you freed me. That means something."

"Can you walk?"

"Give me a minute to remember how." He took a few experimental steps. Stumbled. Caught himself against the wall. "Where are you headed?"

"Deeper. There's old magic at the bottom. Something that might cure corruption."

"Or transform you into something worse." Aldric managed a few more steps. Getting steadier. "I've heard stories. Prisoners who tried to escape down instead of up. Most never came back. The ones who did were changed. Wrong. Like they'd traded their humanity for survival."

"I don't have a choice."

"Everyone has a choice. Some of them just hurt too much to consider." He looked at me seriously. "The old magic isn't benevolent. It doesn't care about your suffering or your goals. It's a tool. Maybe a weapon. Using it will cost you. The question is whether you can afford the price."

Movement echoed from deeper in the prison. Multiple sources. Scraping. Clicking. Something large moving through the corridors.

Aldric's expression changed. Fear. Recognition. "We need to leave. Now."

"What is it?"

"The Warden. The Council's fail-safe. They left something to guard this place after it was abandoned. Something to make sure no one escaped with the secrets buried here." He grabbed my arm. "It patrols the lower levels. Kills anything it finds. And it's been alone down here for seventy years with nothing to do but get stronger."

The sounds grew louder. Closer. I could hear breathing now. Mechanical. Regular. Like pistons firing.

"How strong?" I asked.

"Strong enough that I've been hiding from it for seven decades." Aldric pulled me toward a side passage. "This way. There's a maintenance tunnel that bypasses the main corridor. If we're lucky, it won't pick up our scent."

We ran.

The side passage was narrow. Dark. Barely wide enough for one person. Aldric navigated from memory, turning at seemingly random intervals. Behind us, the mechanical breathing grew louder.

It had picked up our scent.

"Faster," Aldric gasped. His legs were giving out. Seventy-three years of imprisonment couldn't be overcome in minutes. "The tunnel exits near the eastern shaft. From there, you can descend to the old magic. But I can't go with you. I'm too weak. I'll just slow you down."

"I'm not leaving you for that thing."

"You don't have a choice. One of us has to survive. Has to get out. Has to tell people what happened here." He stopped at a junction. Two paths. One ascending, one descending. "I go up. You go down. We split its attention. Maybe both of us make it."

The mechanical breathing was right behind us now. Close enough that I could feel vibrations through the stone.

Then I saw it.

The Warden.

It had been human once. Maybe multiple humans. Hard to tell. The Council had taken bodies and merged them with machinery. Arms replaced with blade appendages. Legs reinforced with metal pistons. Head encased in a helmet that covered everything except one glowing eye.

A construct. Part flesh, part metal, all weapon.

And it was looking directly at us.

Aldric shoved me toward the descending path. "Go. I'll hold it off."

"You don't have magic. You can't fight that thing."

"I've been surviving it for seventy-three years. I know its patterns. Its weaknesses." He smiled. Actually smiled. "Besides, I'm tired of hiding. Tired of being afraid. Maybe this is how I finally pay for all those years of cowardice."

The Warden charged.

Aldric ran to meet it, shouting, drawing its attention completely.

I descended into darkness.

Behind me, metal struck stone. A man screamed. Then silence.

Thomas Aldric had bought me time with his life.

I wouldn't waste it.

The path down was steep. Almost vertical. I climbed more than walked, hands finding holds in the dark. My chemical light had died somewhere in the prison. Now I navigated by touch and enhanced hearing alone.

Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Time had stopped meaning anything.

Then the path leveled out.

And ahead, something pulsed with light.

Old magic.

Finally.