I slam against the metal, dark blood smearing the surface as the wounds I've sustained from the Obsidian gripping my neck grate against the metal floor.

The Obsidian, its shadowy, sunken face contorting into an ugly snarl, looks at me with disgust. It was once some many-legged lizard with a strong jawline, but several fiery blows to the face from yours truly have warped it into something almost unrecognizably ugly. It shuts the hatch behind me and I throw myself against it, knowing what's coming next. My fire illuminates the darkness in brief intervals as I hurl fireball after fireball at the former entrance in desperation, then resort to slamming against the cold metal as if that will help.

Sickened just by the scent of death on the walls, I cower in the corner, each breath hard and raspy with the knowledge of what happens next.

The walls begin to bleed.

There's a shrill whine as the pipes turn on and water spills from two openings on either side, no bigger than my paw. The airspace begins to shrink as the water comes up to my legs, which wobble in terror. The flood continues, reaching my underbelly, and then rises to my neck. There's no escape, I already know that much, but I can't think straight anymore. I try to rise above the water level, thrashing as I pull myself up so that my nose touches the top of the cage, taking short, choppy breath in and out through my nose. Even that limited space is gone in moments and I'm left floundering underwater, paws churning water even as they grow heavy and I grow sick of the lack of oxygen.

I can't open my mouth. I can't open my mouth. It just gets worse when I open my mouth.

There's an almost desperate relief as the Obsidians begin sucking my fear, leaving my empty, and I begin to fall back towards the bottom, jaw relaxing and instinctive reflex telling my fatigued body to take in something, anything at all.

I suck in the first breath of water and the second round kicks in.

My flames blaze up with the will to survive and the panic starts again, but without any oxygen to feed them, all the fires are doing are cutting their own fuel supply. Still, I feel my body sputtering against my will, trying every trick it knows to get me out of here. My heart is pacing faster still and my throat and eyes burn, dark water shifting all around me and I suck in more water, feeling it rush down my throat and fail to quench the tingling pain. In fact, it only gets worse as my airways fill with water and my flames keep trying to flare up, flare up-

I'm banging against the walls. They're taking my fear but it's not abating.

The water is everywhere- ears, nose, mouth, my blood, my stomach, there's nothing to choke out, there's nowhere to go-

I can't.

I can't go like this.

I can't.

I can't.

***

My new room is separate from any other forms of life, though I welcome the solitude. I don't want anyone to see me while I'm like this.

My fur has been dried and any residual injury treated while I was asleep, but my body is still sore and I don't trust the air when I take in my first breath. The consistency of it is strange on my tongue, and I shiver at the thought of wet fur and doused flames, the aftertaste of the sickly water still on my tongue.

I choke on my embers before I'm able to use my powers again, and my pitiful flames sizzle out against the glass of the cage I'm located in, which is nothing but panes of the material and a metal floor, complete with an access panel and two bowls full of 'sustenance'.

If I didn't know much about the Obsidians, I'd say they're taunting me, but it's more of a scientific inquiry. They want me to run the maze again with new rules in place, only to pick me up like a mouse and drop me back at the beginning.

Who's going to bust you out now? How will you get around the fireproof cage without exterior help?

The water in the bowl is the same sickly black color as the water from earlier, and it swishes before me. I ignore it, not ready to stick my face in water again, and try to keep myself from trembling.

Can't hurt me.

I don't want the food, either, but I'll think better when I'm better fed. It's all green pellets, for the most part, though there's some red flesh in there as well, raw. I try to eat around the meat, if only because I know what's in it.

I take a pace around the new enclosure, steadying myself. If earlier encounters with the Sinking Rooms have taught me anything, it's that the faster you choke it up, the less they'll come back for you. I test my limbs and take in the air, not drowning, not dying, regaining control of my own belligerent body.

Oh, but they'll be back for me anyways. I'm exciting enough as an experiment, but I also provide massive amounts of fear to eat. The second round of attempted flames and the panic generated from that alone must be enough to serve them for who knows how long.

"Bastards," I growl, one of the many naughty words I've picked up from living around here. I throw the water against the wall with a bat of my paw, watching it slide down the sides of the glass.

The walls must not be soundproof, because as the bowl rattles to the ground I hear the soft shhhh of the door sliding open.

Not again. Not already.

It's dark, whatever it is, but it doesn't look like an Obsidian. I recognize the shape only as she shoots bolts of lightning from her mouth at several of the room's access points, wings spread wide. The dark, tufted fur, resting half-grin, and familiar muzzle are all too welcome here.

It's the Canira I met on my last escape mission.

The security cameras go dark and the door slack. She looks to me again, eyes probing me for something, then steps closer. "You're Torch. You're a friend. That is what you said." she tells me.

"Yes, but how are you here? Who are you?" I ram my paws against the glass.

She debates it for a second. "Iris," she decides. "I ran into the vial and it shattered. They hadn't tested me for a long time. Then you woke me up and I heard you calling for help in the sea room, so I thought I would find you."

"You mean the Drowning Room? How could you hear me, and how did you trace me this far? This is Section Amp-24, in energy generation." I say, noting the location from the shade of gray used in the walls and the nodes on the access points. We're halls and halls away from the Drowning Room, let alone where I found you."

"There was a large canine, not unlike us in composure, who was not far away from here. She had different ears, I suppose, and large horns... but she reminded me of you, with all of the fire." Iris tilts her head. "She helped me through the area and when I heard the voice we split up again. She told me to return with you."

The description rings a bell at once. I'd heard rumors of other Dreamlandians within these walls, but I'd never thought that I or anyone I knew would ever encounter the most famous of all phantoms. "You talked to the Hellhound?"

Iris tilts her head.

"The leader of the greatest resistance faction in all of Nethera's domain." I continue, "She's a Canis said to have been bought here on the orders of the Dreamlandian Princess herself. She's never been caught, never been seen on any of their cameras, and has staked out whole sections of the Factory with her loyal crew of fighters. By the time the Obsidians bring in thicker soldiers for back up, they're gone, but she leaves behind her symbol to let them know just what they're dealing with- a three-petaled flower, with the edges burning away."

I shudder with the memory of the first time I saw the Sorrowful Lily, on one of my very first escape missions. I had been hiding out with a small group of about eight, the oldest of which was a veteran on one of his last infractions, likely crossed off just after the mission. We were running from an abandoned storage room where we'd been eating old, festering meat for days, and I saw the mark on a hall up ahead, an old one at that. It was one of our last switches in location before we'd been caught.

The lily filled my mind that time, as they set me in the dark room and began to fill it with water. Even as the tides took me, the memory of the insignia signed into the metal filled me with defiance.

"She was... familiar." Iris licks her lips, distracting me from my recollections.

"The flower almost resembles your ear tufts." I tell her. "That's odd."

"Do most Caniras not have ear tufts like these?" asks Iris.

"I wouldn't know what most Caniras are like. You're the first I've ever seen," I tell her. "It's just us, I guess. Do you know if you were bought here or if they made you? They made me for generating fear to eat... I think. I uh, I don't know exactly, but I can guess."

"I don't know quite what they want of me." she says. "There were some conditioning practices they went over with me, then they made me fight a few battles, then they stopped. I slept most of the time in the vat after that."

"They made you fight other prisoners?" I ask. Her sharpened teeth and manicured claws make a little more sense now- she's a fighter.

"They didn't do that to you?" she replies.

I shake my head.

"If you know anything at all, I have to ask- do you know of any of our kind with six wings?" she asks, gaze cold as ice. "I'm looking for someone."

It's a strange question, but I've never seen anything with six wings before, let alone a Canira. I just shake my head again, but a sudden realization strikes me. "You need to go." I tell her. "They'll already know you escaped."

"The Hellhound wanted both of us." She slams a claw into the glass, undeterred by the shards falling all around her. I step back, hoping not to be speared by anything pointy, but when it all clears she's standing with no borders between us, blue eyes eager. "One of your former cellmates in the Hellhound's group claims you've got a track record of near to a hundred escapes. You won't be crossed off for one more infraction, will you?"

I step through the shattered glass. I want nothing less to go back to the Drowning Room right now but also nothing more than to get out of this vicious cycle. She holds my future in her paws and now she's offered me a light, a chance.

"Thank you," I tell her.

One more curve in the maze of this endless game, says part of me.

We just chewed our way out of the maze, says another.

Iris knows the drill like she's been staging missions all her life. We squeeze around the door, still agape, and run like nothing can hold us.