Chrysalis

Her hands hurt like hell.

Mirryn leaned against the parapet of the Legion HQ and took in the view, resting her forearms on the stone.

"How are you holding up?" a voice came nearby.

Mirryn turned to see Donnelan approaching from along the wall.

"Couldn't sleep either, huh?" she asked him.

"Not a chance in hell" he muttered.

Neither of them wanted to talk about their baptism but they couldn't help thinking about it. When they had finally been taken out of the basin the trainees had immediately lost consciousness, their minds longer supported by the complex enchantments that had surrounded them.

Upon awakening they learned that three of their friends had died.

All things considered it wasn't a bad number. Below average. She could see the relief in the officers faces that they hadn't lost more. It seemed stupid, to be thankful of only three deaths but she understood their logic. Would the situation be somehow better if four had died?

No.

The commander and the rest of the Legionaries had been past to visit them in the days since. The trainees had been placed in a convalescence unit, comfy beds, good food, medical staff around the clock, counselling specialists, the works.

On the surface Mirryn would have been shocked to think of the cost of the lavish treatment, the Legion was legendarily thrifty, they made most of their own equipment, ate nutritious but brutally unflavoured food. It was a regular sight for the trainees to be seen cleaning their leathers and polishing their swords outside the barracks in the dawn light right next to their officers.

The trainees were learning just how many things they had thought they'd known had been an elaborate deception. The Abyssal Legion they thought they'd known, the Dungeon they'd thought they'd known, indeed, the world they thought they had lived in were so far from the truth.

you ever think that something like this could

"In fact I specifically

she was looking at it, Mirryn still

It was a city.

In the Dungeon.

size, kilometres across and many more high, filled with people. The buildings covered the bottom of the cavern and then extended up the walls, carved into the

city itself. Such safety within the Dungeon felt weird to her. She'd spent every moment underground up to this point being completely alert. To be

moving like ants in the cramped streets below. Even now the light of thousands of lamps lit the city at night like a sea of candles

was about halfway up, a citadel that occupied a position of great standing, looking down over the rest of the city. She hadn't been able to explore much yet, the trainees were basically confined to recovery. Not the trainees actually…

longed for

hand?"

heavy bandages that wrapped her forearms all the way to the tip of

"they've been healed but they're worried about damage to the

little. Unable to contain his curiosity he eventually asked "Is it true how they

did you hear?"

you punched the commander in the

shoulders

cannot even imagine it. Did

already been there. He didn't explain, or justify. He just sat there. On seeing the man that she'd trusted so much, almost like a father, who had done such an unspeakable thing to her

at first… what would be

she'd leapt out of the bed and punched him right in the face with both hands. He hadn't resisted in anyway, willingly accepting her strikes, but, the end result was she broke both fists. She didn't think the

feelings of anger, of betrayal and of fear. Fear of the pain that kept them awake at

awoken they could tell that something was different. Their bodies were absorbing mana out of the air,