F-Rank Mimic Chest: My SSS Mimic Skill Lets Me Become Anything

The slab hit its floor channel, and the room broke into separate kinds of panic.

Brant drove his hook into the seam from the other side. Holt called Vera’s name until prayer and fear tangled together. Tess informed the stone that she had survived cheaper murder attempts with better manners.

Inside, Vera stood three paces from Dane, ward crystal in one hand and the other near her sheathed wand. Holding her ground made the command in Dane’s ownership mark push harder.

MAGE. PROXIMITY. BITE.

His lid strained upward. Dane sat against the left wall with a scarred pillar three paces in front of him. Vera held that three-pace arc with the pillar at her right shoulder and the dusty service latch two steps behind her. Three low grates breathed bait-scent through grooves that curved toward Dane’s left side. Chains hung from the ceiling track. One ring disappeared beneath his baseboard. Brackenvault had built every piece to end with Vera between his teeth.

Dane braced against the split left hinge. Pain cleared the target marks his predatory body placed over Vera. He used the measurements to avoid her and held shut.

Vera watched the gap beneath his lid tighten. Her breathing stayed controlled, but the thumb on her crystal had gone white.

"The chains anchor through the slab track," she called. "Force the wrong point and you may drop the mechanism on both sides."

Brant’s answer came through stone. "Then give me a right point."

"I am finding one."

"Find it away from the teeth."

A grate scraped along the right wall.

Vera barely turned her head. Three sets of clawed feet kept a work-song pace in the service tunnel: quick, quick, drag.

"Core said mage side," a goblin ordered. "Open right and drive her left."

"Right grate sticks," another said. Metal hooks clicked together as he tested it. "Tell the Core its maintenance budget can herd the mage."

A deeper voice answered from behind them. "Chest gets the soft part. We get anything shiny that falls out. Move."

The patrol meant to frighten Vera across the scent grooves into his left bite angle. The room could call her death an accident of appetite.

Vera shifted one boot away from the right grate. The safer step took her left.

Took her toward him.

His lid jumped.

Dane caught it below the inviting angle. The split hinge pinched hard enough to shake his five coppers near the rim. One tipped toward shine. Vera glanced at it, saw the path the grooves offered her, and stopped.

Good. She had read the floor.

Dane found the practice pattern beneath the command pressure. Hurt. Hold. Move.

The hinge supplied the hurt. He held his lid under the bite line. Then his tongue moved a dull copper against the inner rim.

Copper carried vibration into wood, through the split left hinge and the chain ring beneath his base. The ring tugged the ceiling loop, which passed the complaint across the wall. A dusty service latch answered with the warped groan of a treasure lid.

The lever stopped scraping.

"Left opened," said the goblin with the hooks.

"Right is the order."

"Loose recovery is also an order when nobody important is watching."

The deep-voiced goblin sniffed. "Premium metal. Left. Fast. We collect it, then herd the mage."

Their foot rhythm crossed behind the wall from right to left.

Vera followed the sound to the dusty latch, looked back at Dane, and eased her hand away from her wand. She had chosen to support the lie.

Dane made the latch creak again, lower, ending in a wooden cough. His hinge burned. The coin remained pinned beneath his tongue.

Outside, Holt had stopped shouting long enough to hear the patrol moving through the wall.

"Three," Brant said. "Vera, left side."

"I know. Do not lift the slab while they are on the track."

The latch snapped inward.

Sword raised beneath his dented half-helm, the leader ducked through. A goblin with a hook-pole and knife stumbled behind him, snagged one chain, and whipped sparks from the pillar.

The third goblin shoved both deeper so he could fit his shoulders and a chipped cleaver through the opening. All three jammed into the wedge between latch and pillar: Vera barred the room’s center, and Dane’s open angle waited at their right.

They found a ward mage, an armed room, and a mimic blocking the retreat.

The leader recovered first. "Mage first. Chest after."

He drove at Vera with the short sword.

She circled the pillar at the same three-pace distance from Dane. Steel shaved stone beside her ribs. Her glance caught the chain swaying between the goblins.

Dane understood.

He dragged the copper along his inner rim.

The false creak burst behind them, sharp and close. The hook carrier twisted toward it. His pole yanked the hanging chain across the leader’s sword arm. The blade struck iron with a crack that numbed both goblins’ hands. The cleaver goblin barreled into their backs and drove all three against the pillar.

Vera stamped her heel outside the nearest scent groove and threw the ward flare at their feet.

Blue-white light punched across the floor, lifting dust in a hard ring and sending the pole-bearer’s knife under a grate. Half blind, the leader slashed at Vera’s outline.

She folded behind the pillar. His sword point tore a strip from her outer sleeve and missed skin.

The pole-bearer recovered on his knees. He swept the hook around the pillar at ankle height, caught Vera’s boot, and hauled. Her heel slid into a scent groove. Rat stink burst from the crushed straw while the command mark in Dane’s lockplate heated with approval.

Vera jammed the crystal against the hook and turned her leg with the pull. The iron tip skated past her ankle. She kept her footing, but the leader had already reversed his sword for a thrust through the gap.

Vera crossed her leather bracer over her stomach. Rusty steel scraped toward the seam; her shaking arm yielded an inch before she planted her heel in the groove. Smelling victory, the goblin leaned harder until the cleaver came down where her shoulder had been.

Its edge bit the pillar and stuck.

He wrenched it free. The goblins crowded Vera toward Dane’s left groove while the slab kept her party out.

Brackenvault pushed.

MAGE. LEFT ANGLE. OPEN.

Dane’s lid rose a handspan before he stopped it.

The pole-bearer reeled out of the fading flare and fell against Dane’s front board. His neck crossed the bite line. Dane’s jaw mechanism released beneath the lid.

The order hammered three steps into him: bite now, blame the patrol, keep the mage moving.

Hurt.

The split hinge ground against its pin.

Hold.

Dane caught his lid above the goblin’s neck. The teeth stopped close enough to pull a squeal from him.

Move.

He drove the copper’s vibration through the same path: inner rim, wood, split hinge, under-base ring, ceiling loop, left latch. The latch cracked twice.

Helmet-first, the goblin flung himself backward into the leader, whose short sword clanged into a scent groove. Vera watched Dane’s open lid release its prey while her crystal stayed trained on the patrol.

Now the cleaver goblin charged with both hands on the haft. Vera slipped into the pillar’s shadow without changing her distance from Dane and gave him one breath to keep the route open.

He made that breath count.

Another creak tore through the left wall. The pole-bearer scrambled for the latch, but the leader seized his collar. Their boots tangled in the fallen chain.

The cleaver swept for Vera’s waist.

She dropped flat. The cleaver caught the hanging chain; links wrapped the haft and ripped it from the goblin’s hands. It struck the wall blade-first.

Vera rolled to one knee and drove the crystal forward. The threat of another flare split the patrol: the leader lunged, the pole-bearer rushed the latch, and the largest goblin crashed between them. Armor, knees, and elbows jammed the corner, yet all three kept fighting.

The leader snatched up the skinning knife and lunged beneath Vera’s guard. She caught his wrist. The point scraped her leather bracer toward its seam.

Dane struck the chain ring once.

The latch barked behind the leader.

His attention broke. Vera twisted his wrist and sent him into the pole-bearer. The knife fell. With the false exit closing and Dane’s mouth behind them, all three reached the same conclusion.

They fled.

The pole-bearer went through on hands and knees. The leader kicked him ahead, then the broad goblin grabbed the leader’s belt and used him as a doorstop.

"Put that in your maintenance report," the leader gasped.

"I cannot write," came the answer from the tunnel.

The broad goblin shoved both ahead of him. The latch slammed. Their footsteps fled down the left tunnel, bruised, half blind, and alive.

Dane lowered his lid. The hinge fought him all the way down. His tongue turned the bright copper dull-side up again. All five coins trembled beside the rim.

/==[ Brackenvault System: Sound Lure ]==\

| Source: Left Hinge / Voluntary

| Medium: Chain Ring / Service Latch

| Result: Patrol Misdirection

| Bite Function: Delayed

| Risk: Intelligence Evidence

\==[ Bad Hinge, Worse Alibi ]==/

Sound could now move through Brackenvault’s hardware when he chose the path. Every use also proved the chest was no ordinary trap.

He could make the latch complain again and help Brant find the correct seam.

He kept quiet.

Outside, Brant demanded a count. Holt answered with Vera’s name. Tess answered with several ideas about payroll fraud and why no dungeon deserved loyal staff.

Vera lowered the crystal. Her sleeve hung open where the sword had cut cloth; the skin beneath was untouched.

She looked from the right grate to the left latch, then faced Dane without changing the three paces between them.

"You moved them away from me," she said.

Dane held the lid shut. The coins trembled, dull and crooked and almost a word.

Vera’s expression tightened as she assembled the route: displaced sound, a goblin released from an open mouth, and a final creak withheld.

"Reflexes eat what the room gives them, but you chose the patrol’s route."