Jean raced into darkness, following the mousy man into his lair. It wasn't quite accurate, but it described how Jean felt. He was the cat following a mouse as it ran. However, the stakes were higher than those of a mere rat race.

Shadows blurred past him, leading out and away from the main path into unlit side paths. The entire sewer was a massive maze, and Chu had gotten a head start on Jean. He couldn't be sure that he was following the right path.

Fate would be his guide.

He only had his own strength and wit to rely on. He knew that Chu wasn't simply running away. He was running to get reinforcements so that he could better fight Jean. It made sense for the man to follow the lights as he was in a hurry and had a singular goal.

The thought was better than doing nothing, second-guessing himself in a dim tunnel.

Clack. Clack.

His bony feet beat a steady beat as he ran. Raw sewage filled his nostrils, but he pushed past the smell. He needed to find Chu before the man could find his reinforcements.

Snap. Whoosh.

Wind cut across Jean's face, slicing into his cheek from the archway at the end of the tunnel ahead. Jean instinctively ducked down as the cut reached him, and a line of compressed air shot past his shoulder and into the tunnel behind him.

Chu stepped out into the light at the end of the tunnel, two figures standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of him as Jean regained his footing.

"What do you think, outlaw? Will you defeat me before I run out of men, or will these Knuckles whittle you down to your very bones?"

"It wouldn't take much to do that." Jean smiled as the two figures rushed through the archway.

Clack. Thud.

Their movements were sloppy in the dimly lit tunnel, and Jean jumped onto the wall to keep out of their reaching hands. Two swift kicks down were enough to bring both men to the ground, unconscious. Jean stood up afterward, looking to the end of the tunnel, but Chu was already gone.

The chase was not over.

He charged forward into the round room, noticing the same spiderwebs glittering with gemstones above him. There were so many, and these two rooms weren't the only ones. The entire island was under the curse's effects, and Jean had a hard time imagining the power scale necessary to maintain it.

The thought crept into the back of his mind as he ran. He knew a little about curses, indeed more than most people, thanks to his lessons at the Academy on April. Most people who became cursed only maintained a lower level of the curse, never growing beyond the power they gained through mysterious means. He had theories on how it happened, but they weren't relevant to what was happening on Grim Aegis.

There were levels to curses. They weren't necessarily boosted in power between levels, though people who reached the second level were certainly stronger with their curses sheerly through the effort required to evolve them. A level was closer to a change in how the curse worked, with new abilities related to the original powers.

The person who controlled the spiders might have first started with webs. Those webs would allow the user to manipulate someone's memories. The spiders themselves would be the second level of the curse, allowing the person to do similar things but remotely and on a massive scale. Each step was related, but the power gain wasn't in the spiders themselves.

However, maintaining that over an entire island, even using proxies for the curse, was impossible. This made Jean think that there was an additional level to the curse, a third level. He had never seen a documented case within the Academy's records, but that didn't mean that it couldn't exist.

According to his current memories, that was one reason he was in Grim Aegis. It was a way to explore the world, find new information, and see new things that wouldn't be possible inside the confines of the Academy's walls.

"Theories are useless without practice, aren't they, dear?"

He didn't know who he spoke to as he ran, but the words rang true to his soul. It was his fate to wander the world and discover how things were. His pursuit was knowledge, and he could only know by doing. He sensed he missed part of it, but that was his reason to be. Even if he regained his memories, he knew that would be true to his core.

He wanted to know everything.

He pushed aside his thoughts on the nature of curses, already knowing that he had his own problems to deal with.

"I can take all the time I need to cut this tangled web," Jean said. "Now, I must catch this man and complete my mission. That is all that matters."

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He slowed as he reached a crossroads in the dark tunnels. To his left and right were two lighted tunnels, each one a glimmering light through the darkness. He lay at a fork in the road and didn't know which way to go. Making the wrong choice would allow Chu to escape and possibly bring much stronger opponents to take him down when he returned. Jean grimaced, closing his eyes in thought for a brief moment.

When he closed his eyes, he listened. He focused on the flow of air and aether around him, taking in deep breaths, holding them, and then releasing them from his mouth. Due to his skeletal form, he had no lungs or heartbeat, but he could still feel the power of each gulp of air. He could sense the flow of aether from his lungs and out into the tunnels around him. The stench burned in his nose, but that didn't stop his senses.

The air to his right was fresher but less filled with the aether he would expect. Someone had passed through relatively recently. He turned right, rushing down the hall toward his confrontation with Chu. He reached the end of the tunnel without interruption and stepped into the light in another domed room.

Chu waited for him there, flanked by four men this time. Jean didn't know where he kept finding many or how many Chu could call for in the long run. In the long run, Jean's body was nearly tireless, thanks to its particular construction.

These men were cut from the same cloth as the previous, though each held weapons. Two held long, wicked knives, while the other had a large hammer. The last one held a long gun in his arms, pointed from his waist directly at Jean.

"Wait!" Chu held up one hand as Jean entered, and Jean obliged.

He didn't doubt that he would win the day, but he didn't think he could do it without a cost. The still seeping cut on his cheek was a reminder that he wasn't invincible. The long gun was especially worrying. Jean might not be able to survive a well-placed bullet.

He hadn't had the opportunity to test in his time on Grim Aegis.

"By all means." Jean smiled, a chuckle rumbling through his bones. "Regale me with an interesting offer."

The men looked between themselves like they might object, but they stood straighter as Chu stepped forward. Jean kept an eye on the one with the gun first. While Chu was a threat in himself, he had a decent idea of how he cut through the air. So long as Chu's fingers weren't up to clicking together, Jean felt he was safe from the attack. The gun, however, was only a trigger pull away.

"You're down here for the gems, yes?" Chu asked, his eyes flicking to the ceiling above. "Either you know what they are, or you do not."

"Do I know what they are?" Jean smiled. "Perhaps I am merely a thief who wishes all of them for my collection."

"I think not," Chu said, his whiskers twitching. "So, you must know what the gems are. The next question is whether you have your wits intact. I think this is likely; otherwise, you would be trapped the same way the rest of the residents of Grim Aegis are."

"An interesting guess," Jean said. "Mayhaps I am. Then, if I am truly free, why would I bother coming down into the sewer?"

Chht.

Chu made a strange noise as he raised one hand and preened a single long whisker. He tilted his head to the side, his dark eyes looking Jean up and down. Jean had to admit that he didn't look his best. His bones were practically dull, bereft of their usual gleam, and his clothes were already over a day old, thanks to the shenanigans the night before.

"Perhaps a lover or a friend that is with you needs their gem freed," Chu said. "So, you entered the sewers, knowing how you lost your memories to track down the right one."

"And if that's true?"

"We have a problem." Chu shook his head. "There is no shorting of the gems and rooms storing them, and the spiders are the ones that control them."

"Perhaps if I was to speak to the person in charge of the spiders?"

"Miss Malone?" Chu shook his head. "Cheet."

Chu let out a shrill noise that Jean realized was a laugh. The other men around him snickered as well. Jean didn't let his concern show. At least he had a name to connect with the spiders.

"Look, it's best if you just give up on whoever it is and get off the island," Chu said, shaking his head and turning away. "We've got a hundred Knuckles down here and a Finger investigating your distraction earlier. When he gets back, you're not going to survive."

"And what would you suggest?"

"Flee from here and find a ship to sail off the island." Chu spread his hands out wide, revealing long nails on each of his fingers. "We will part the way for you, and no one will be the wiser. Give up on the one we have trapped, and at least you can be free from this trap."

Jean frowned. Of course, he wasn't going to take the offer, but he had to wonder who would. There was no way to ensure that Chu would keep his promise, and a simple ambush with spiders would put Jean in precisely the same spot he started in. In truth, one would have to be incredibly dim to accept the offer.

"Hmm." Jean hummed, closing his bony hands into fists. "You still think I'm doing this alone, don't you?"

"Surely you are." Chu stopped as his men moved back in around him. "One person breaking free from the curse, I could understand, but many? That would be impossible."

"You also think I'm free of the memory curse, interesting."

Chu turned on him then, the man's dark eyes wide as he looked Jean up and down. Jean hadn't confirmed or denied, but he felt the man's reactions were worth the risk of revealing his position. If anything, the mind games would keep Chu distracted.

"Why would someone without their memories even come down here? We've painstakingly crafted this entire scenario to keep people too content, too stupid to question the reality in front of them. No, you have your memories back. You were why the spiders charged out of the base earlier today!"

"Hah." Jean chuckled, shaking his head. "You're wrong about that. There are seven of us, with only one truly free."

"Then why are you down here? Why are you fighting in these dank sewers?"

The men moved, and Jean followed the one with the gun with his eyes. Chu would run the moment the battle turned, and while he may try to get a hit in, it wouldn't be a fully committed strike. From what Jean had seen, committing just wasn't in the man's personality.

"Because that is our fate. Bone Step!"

Snap.

He crossed the room, slamming into the gun-wielding man with one foot across the jaw. The man's neck snapped to the side, and he fell to the ground like a bag of potatoes. Jean turned on the remaining three, ducking beneath a hammer aimed at his face as the other two came from below with knives.

Jean let them pierce his clothes, and the daggers found no purchase in flesh. The men backed away with wide eyes, their daggers dropping as Jean kicked the hammer-wielding one into the wall and came for them.

In seconds, he was alone. Chu had retreated a second time. Jean would not give him a third chance.

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