Scrapyard Dog Fight

"Next time I'm picking the path. And it better damn well have an exit sign." He nodded briefly to Rigg, who looked pale enough to be mistaken for one of the Not-Wolves they'd left behind.

"Stick close, kid. Looks like the welcoming committee ain't done with us yet."

They moved forward, down the only available tunnel leading out of the pillar chamber.

The path ahead twisted sharply, narrowing almost immediately into a corridor barely wide enough for Bobby to walk without brushing the walls. The perfect smoothness persisted, the stone cool and unsettlingly clean.

There is no sounds but their own footsteps, which seemed unnaturally loud in the profound quiet.

Then the floor started changing.

One moment, it was the same polished black stone. The next, under Bobby's boot, it shifted texture abruptly, becoming rough, packed earth, like a well-trodden path. A few steps later, it changed again, morphing into something dark and slightly yielding, almost like vulcanized rubber.

Stone. Dirt. Rubber. Stone again. The transitions were seamless, happening directly underfoot with no warning.

"Okay, now it's just being weird for the sake of weird," Bobby grumbled, cautiously testing each step. "It's adaptive. Reactive," Betsy's voice resonated in his mind, sharp with focus.

"Remember that memory scan back with the pillar? This feels… related. Like it's pulling textures from your recollections, trying to build something familiar maybe? But it's getting the sequence wrong. Like a bad cover band playing your life story out of order." Bobby grunted.

"Yeah, well, it's getting the wrong guy if it thinks I wanna walk on sticky asphalt right now."

He didn't like the idea of this place digging through his head, using his past to build the path forward. It felt violating, like finding out someone had been reading his mail.

The environmental pressure started subtly increasing again. The greenish glow from Rigg's rune lantern, held aloft behind Bobby now, began to flicker erratically, like the light itself was being pulled sideways, stretching thin in one direction.

A faint sense of imbalance settled over Bobby, a slight, persistent nudge to his right, as if the floor tilted very slightly or gravity had decided to get quirky. He compensated easily enough, but behind him, Rigg stumbled with a startled yelp.

"You alright back there, kid?" Bobby asked without turning. "Yeah," Rigg's voice was tight. "Just… the ground ain't staying put right. Feels like standing on a boat." Bobby leaned against the cool, smooth wall for a moment to let his throbbing leg rest, keeping his shield side angled down the corridor. He took a breath, shifted his weight—

And the wall moved.

It wasn't a sudden shift, but a slow, almost hard-to-notice pressing inward. An inch closer than it had been a second ago. He could feel the subtle pressure against his shoulder through the thick padding under his shield strap.

His eyes narrowed. He deliberately pushed himself off the wall and took a step forward. The wall silently relaxed back to its original position. He stopped. Leaned back again experimentally. The wall pressed in again. Gentle, but undeniable.

"Okay, that's new," Betsy noted, her tone a mix of curiosity and alarm. "Reactive architecture. It's responding to your proximity. Or maybe… pressure? Like it expects you to lean there? Or maybe it just doesn't like being touched. Hard to tell if it's being helpful or just creepy." "Leaning towards creepy," Bobby muttered. He decided not to rest against the walls anymore.

Viewer01: The walls are closing in! Literally!

Viewer02: Is this place trying to crush him?

Viewer03: Maybe it's based on tight spaces from his truck cab memory?

The narrow hallway ended abruptly, transitioning seamlessly into the base of a wide, smooth stone stairwell that went up into the darkness. The air here felt thinner, carrying the same unsettlingly clean coolness of the tunnels.

"Alright," Bobby growled, lowering his sword slightly. "Now it's just messing with us." "It… it wants us to go up," Rigg stammered, pointing a trembling finger towards the stairs. "Yeah, I got that part, kid." Bobby eyed the ascent. Climbing wasn't going to be fun with his leg, but it beat starving to death in a magic rock box that doesn't respect privacy. "Stay behind me. Keep that light steady."

He started climbing, his throbbing thigh protesting with every step. The stairwell was long, winding, and silent, the smooth stone unnervingly quiet under their boots. The only sound was their strained breathing and the soft scrape of Bobby's shield against his back.

Finally, the stairs leveled out, this time not into another tunnel, but onto the edge of a vast, open space. Bobby emerged cautiously, shield up, sword ready, and his eyes widened.

It was a huge arena, spreading out before them under a ceiling lost in the distant gloom. The floor was the same polished black stone, but the space was very large, easily fifty yards across. And along the sides of the arena, where the flat floor met the walls, were very deep, black trenches. They looked bottomless in the green lantern light, the edges sharp and unforgiving.

The silence here felt heavier, expectant, stretching across the wide space.

CLANG!

The sound echoed sharp and loud from the distant ceiling high above, making both Bobby and Rigg jump. Bobby spun around, sword flashing in the green lantern light.

The stairwell they'd just gone up was gone. Sealed shut by a solid slab of stone that had slammed down. Trapped. Again.

"Alright," Bobby muttered, turning his attention back to the arena. "So, this is the test." He scanned the huge, empty space, the deep trenches a constant, looming hazard.

Then, high above, faint ripples disturbed the distant ceiling stone, like heat haze over asphalt, but… solid. The stone seemed to flow, bulge outward, then form.

Something dropped out of the ceiling, falling silently towards the arena floor far below.

This was completely artificial.

It had a vaguely canine shape – four legs, a body, a head – but no face, no fur, no features at all. It looked cobbled together from mismatched pieces of scrap metal, shards of rock, and splintered wood, all held together by thick, woven threads that seemed to shift and writhe slightly when he tried to focus on them. It landed silently on the polished stone floor, a good distance away.

[CONSTRUCT DETECTED: MEMORY FRAGMENT – TYPE: SCRAP HOUND] [ANALYSIS: ARTIFICIAL AGGRESSOR. SOURCE MATERIAL… INCONCLUSIVE BUT RESONATES WITH ANOMALY DATA.]

"Heads up, sugar!" Betsy warned. "Looks like the welcoming committee is pulling directly from the memory banks now. Inbound!"

As the first Scrap Hound oriented itself and began to run with silent, unsettlingly fluid gait, another ripple appeared in the ceiling, and a second construct dropped, landing closer this time, between the first one and Bobby.

Viewer01: TWO OF THEM? WTF

Viewer03: bets on whether he uses the trenches

Viewer01: push 'em in!

Bobby braced himself, and met the charge of the nearest Scrap Hound with the Door Shield, it was a solid.

The construct recoiled back, and Bobby took the chance to lash out with the Sword, aiming for a leg joint.

The blade hit hard, making a weird metalic spark. And where it hit, it cracked. Like striking brittle porcelain. Spiderweb fractures appeared on the stone segment, and the threads holding it snapped with tiny, audible pings. The construct stumbled, its leg buckling.

The second Hound was already closing, circling wide, using the size of the arena. Bobby dodged its silent lunge, letting its momentum carry it towards the edge of the arena, perilously close to the trench.

He didn't try to push it in yet – too risky. Instead, he spun and drove his sword into the first Hound's glowing leg crack, shattering it completely. It collapsed, trying to drag itself forward on three legs.

He was fighting defensively, trying to manage the space and the hazard of the trenches while slowed down by his leg. He slammed the edge of his shield into the second Hound's side, forcing it off balance, then turned quickly, bringing his sword down hard on its back.

CRACK!

The construct froze, shuddered, then fell apart, dissolving into component pieces – scrap, stone, wood – now no longer held together by anything, with the shimmering threads vanishing like smoke.

He turned to the crippled Hound still trying to drag itself forward. With a quick, brutal strike, he brought his sword down, shattering its core with a final shower of sparks and dust.

[HOSTILES NEUTRALIZED] [STREAM ENERGY: +100]

Bobby stood there breathing heavily, leaning on his sword. The silence returned, amplified by the size of the arena. Rigg was staying close near the base of the now-sealed stairs, wide-eyed.

Then, across the arena, perhaps thirty yards away on the opposite side, a section of the floor near the trench edge began to rise. It lifted slowly, smoothly, hinging upward to reveal a gap underneath. From the gap, extending slowly across the deep gap towards Bobby's side of the arena, a bridge began to open up, forming itself from pieces of the same polished black stone.

"That… that's probably our next goal…" Rigg stammered.

"No shit, kid," Bobby replied wearily, wiping sweat from his brow with a grimy forearm. The bridge finished forming, settling into place, perfectly lined up with the arena floor on both sides, crossing the black deep gap of the trench. It pointed towards a new opening that had appeared in the wall on the opposite side, a dark opening seen just past where the bridge finished.

He limped across the huge arena floor, the bridge the only seen path forward, Rigg hurrying to keep up behind him. The bridge felt solid under his boots.

They reached the end of the bridge and stepped off onto the far side of the arena, heading towards the dark opening that seemed to lead to whatever came next.