’Find the Grand Throne Room,’ Red projected his voice directly into the minds of his vanguard. ’Locate the Dispose Pit where they threw my husk into the abyss. The core operator manipulating this biological fortress hides inside that exact chasm.’

Iron-Scale tapped his chest plate twice to acknowledge the divine mandate. He aimed his right pneumatic spool at a gaping ventilation shaft high above the pulverized cobblestones.

The grapple hook bit deep into the calcified exterior plating of the moving citadel. Retracting the wire forcefully yanked him upward through the chaotic crossfire of the battlefield.

He detached the hook and landed smoothly inside the dark corridor.

Syra emerged from the shadows cast by the ribbed walls. A dozen Deep-Weave Hunters scuttled closely behind her. The arachnids scanned the fleshy masonry with their multi-eyed gazes to secure the perimeter.

"The outer armor is shifting." Syra pointed her condensed shadow dagger toward a breached archway. "The botanical gardens lie just beyond those grinding gears."

The infiltration squad pushed past the moving architecture and stepped onto the ruined garden tier.

The opulent palace courtyard had mutated into a grotesque biological trap. Ornamental flora swelled with stolen soul mass. Massive thorny vines lashed out from the overgrown trellises to snare the advancing operatives.

"Cut the roots!" Iron-Scale channeled his emerald core to generate a concentrated wind blade. The howling crescent severed a cluster of aggressive plant life instantly.

Torix clattered his mandibles and directed the Deep-Weave Hunters forward. The spiders deployed monomolecular webbing to slice through the remaining vines and clear a path across the courtyard.

A pack of mutated royal hounds burst from the dense foliage. The beasts snapped their jaws, exposing rows of oversized teeth and dripping corrosive saliva. One of the predators lunged directly at Syra.

She dissolved into a dark puddle on the marble floor to evade the attack. Materializing directly behind the creature, she drove her dagger straight through its spine. The hound collapsed onto the ruined paving stones.

"They are multiplying." Iron-Scale kicked a dead carcass away from his boots as more hounds emerged from the brush.

"Drop the nets." Torix signaled his weavers.

The spiders scrambled up the ruined archways and rained hyper-tensile silk down upon the predators. The webbing sliced the remaining hounds into cubed debris.

Thick vines surged from the cracked soil to drag the dead carcasses underground for digestion. The ground beneath the squad rapidly destabilized. Pooling corrosive fluids ate through the structural supports, collapsing the marble floor inward to reveal a churning vat of digestive acid below.

"The foundation is melting." Syra balanced on a shrinking sliver of stone.

Iron-Scale fired both wire spools into the vaulted ceiling. He grabbed Syra by the arm and swung them both across the widening gap. The Deep-Weave Hunters simply crawled along the ceiling to bypass the hazard entirely. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

They landed safely on the far balcony leading directly toward the inner sanctum.

Iron-Scale slammed his boot into the ruined botanical gates to force the warped metal open. The infiltration squad stepped into the sprawling interior hall of the royal palace. Polished marble floors stained with dark biological residue stretched outward under the dim lighting. Towering pillars lined the expansive corridor leading deeper into the moving citadel.

Gilded suits of armor and pale statues stood at attention along the walls. The Aethelgard mages had fused the masonry with the decaying corpses of fallen royal guards. Mangled flesh and exposed bone spilled out from between the polished joints of the stone defenders.

The animated constructs clutched oversized broadswords in their mutated hands.

A grinding noise echoed from the vaulted ceiling above the Vanguard operatives. The rusted chains holding the ornate crystal chandeliers snapped without warning. The massive glass fixtures plummeted toward the squad like falling bombs.

Iron-Scale channeled his emerald core to sweep a concentrated wind blade upward, scattering the lethal shards harmlessly across the walls.

The crashing debris awakened the dormant statues from their pedestals. The flesh-bound masonry guards lumbered forward with their broadswords raised high.

They swung their weapons downward, cratering the floor tiles where the Vanguard operatives had stood a second prior.

Syra melted into the shadow cast by a shattered chandelier. She materialized behind a towering marble defender to drive her shadow blade straight into the exposed, rotting muscle at the back of its knee. The creature collapsed as the severed joint gave way.

"Target the flesh binds." Syra pointed her dripping blade at the approaching statues. "The stone deflects our strikes. Bleed the connecting tissue."

The Deep-Weave Hunters swarmed the remaining guards, deploying monomolecular webbing to tangle the oversized broadswords. Darting between the clumsy swings, the spiders plunged their fangs into the decaying meat fusing the armor plates together.

The corrosive venom rapidly dissolved the biological mortar. The towering defenders crumbled into useless piles of shattered marble and rusted gold.

Iron Scale kicked a shattered marble helm across the corridor. The severed head trapped inside the masonry rolled over the floor tiles and bumped against a gilded pillar. Viscous biological fluid pooled beneath the crumbled statues, eating into the pristine white stone with an angry sizzle.

Syra wiped her shadow blade on the tattered remains of a tapestry and glared up at the vaulted ceiling.

"This entire citadel operates like a bloated stomach." Syra scraped her boots against the ruined floor to dislodge a chunk of bloody mortar. "We bleed the outer defenses, and the architecture simply shifts to spawn more meat in our path. The upper corridors are twisting entirely out of alignment with the original schematics."

Iron Scale sheathed his dagger and pulled the stolen cartographic engine from his belt. The crimson grid flickered erratically while the royal fortress actively scrambled the layout to hide the main stairwells. He squeezed the device, burying his claws into the iron casing.

The Deep Weave Hunters clicked their mandibles in agitation as the ground beneath them continued to mutate.

’You are ascending into the residential tiers’, Red projected his voice directly into their minds. ’The King designed those upper levels to confuse intruders and protect the royal family. Keep moving upward. The Dispose Pit rests at the absolute peak.’