Unbreaking

[The Mongrel]

Prelude to the AC


Behold, brave Mousie!
Racing through dark on feet of shadow!
Silver knives flashing like stroke of lightning!
Behold, glorious Mousie!
Gray-gold and black, swifter than sparrow!
Nothing escapes when Mousie gives chase,
Sun and moon bow before her! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrpa3g8gHCw)
Mutt’s Writings

I sat on a rooftop in a seedy corner of Radasanth, idly turning and twisting a sheet of parchment in my hands. It’s a little bit strange; the farther you get, physically, from the streets, the less this side of my home city looks any different than the rest of it. Sure, some of it’s crumbling more, and every now and again the piquant scent of highly alcoholic urine wafts up, and of course it’s noisier…

Okay, this section of Radasanth is nothing like the wealthy neighborhoods or the commercial districts. At all. From any angle. What can I say? We’re more honest about our intentions out here, and less apologetic about them. Fortune is rarely kind to brutal truth.

There are fewer sources of artificial light on this side of town, and the darkness of the open road just beyond the walls offers only the rare campfire from the unfortunate fools who didn’t quite make the city before dark. That means the Stars shine all the brighter out here, casting their gaze upon our iniquities.

That’s all They ever did, right? Or maybe it’s just me; I’m a little fuzzy on those details. Never was very religious.

[The Mongrel]

The quiet scuff of sole on shingle alerted me to company, and Diamond Knave settled at my side. He had the same oak-colored hair as his mother and the same sharply-defined features as his father; I knew them both during their lifetimes. I know the bags under his eyes from too many nights with a colicky baby. I’ve had that colicky baby spit up on me, just like her father did.

“Poor form, Knave, to abandon Tanner with Queenie.”

He rubbed his face with the heel of his hand. “Her Royal Majesty, the Queen of Diamonds, is finally down for a good sleep. Tanner needed some time to herself, so she told me to take a walk. And Splinter told me you were acting funny.”

I laid back on the crumbling, acrid tar mixture that made up the premium seating I had acquired. I’m sure that there are some situations in which the position could be described as ‘comparatively comfortable,’ but this place isn’t one of them. “Not planning any sort of sedition or a power grab,” I told him. “I have enough responsibilities already.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Got a letter today.” I handed it over, eyes still trained on the sparkling expanse above. I heard the crinkle of paper under callouses, the snarl, the swear, and the spit.

“Damn it, Mongrel, I don’t read these loopy-loops!” He tossed it at my belly with all the force of his disgust, but I caught it in mid-air.

“Someone wants me to come back to Raiaera. Apparently I’m a Raiaeran now.”

“Who?”

“Nun'ya." He doesn't need to know.

“Sod ‘em, then. You’re as Coronian as anyone else.” I felt his blue gaze on my face, though I still wasn’t looking at him. “...You’re actually going. We’ve got Thayne knows what going on to rebuild ourselves better than ever, and we’re your family. We need you. Those prissy bitches never did a damned thing for you, and to call you back now is just… just…”

“Like they’re looking for fodder, so that more of their precious pure ones might survive.” I sighed, the deep breath first filling my lungs and then leaving me empty. “Yeah, I’m going. Sure, I might die; the Lindequalme wasn’t a joke in its best days. But if it works, then some of the refugees will probably go on home, and we can have Corone back for us Coronians again.”

Knave growled and grumbled, then spat again. Disgusted and disgusting. Could he be more human?

“Did anyone ever tell you about the time we decided we’d had enough of this little ‘protection racket’ that was bothering us?”

I heard his spine pop a little bit as he straightened. “What? When? Which city?”

“This one, silly.” I pushed myself up from my grimy recliner. “It was a long time ago, as you might judge time. Your father was...hmm. I don’t think he was any older than fifteen at the time; his voice was still breaking intermittently. Smiles was still alive, so… yes, I’d say it was around thirty-six or thirty-seven years ago.”

“...does this story have anything to do with why you decided to leave us for...for there?”

“It might.”

[The Mongrel]

It was a shaky time in Unfounded; we had pressure on us from all sides and we weren’t growing very quickly… Or at all. There were nine of us when I joined, and ten of us when Cata called us to the Room. Three of our number were still very young, too young to fight, to kill, to die. But not everyone on Radasanth’s lawless streets saw it that way.

We all took our spots in the unfurnished room. Tinker, our Alerian, and Ghost, our albino, favored the darkest corners. Smiles and Rainbow (human and half-Concordian elf females, respectively) stood against the wall. Weepy (human male) taught Silent Jack (also a human male) how to communicate over an idle game of cards on the floor, and Mutt settled his gargantuan frame by the window. I lounged in the crook of his arm.

Front and center stood Cata, a human man with one milky eye. His adoptive son, Lightning, fidgeted behind him.

“It’s been a rough month,” he started. We nearly lost Ghost last night, and we still don’t have a second safe house after the old one burned. Our sources of hardship are many, we have to level the field some or we won’t see a new year as Unfounded, if any of us manage to survive to a new month.”

Tinker looked up from his assorted collection of parts, mythril eyes shining in his obsidian face. Jack looked up from his hand, aces over eights. Lightning scuffed his crudely-patched shoes against a crack in the rough wooden floor, pale blue eyes trained on a large splinter. They were our youngest, none at full majority. They hadn’t come to Unfounded prepared to die, and we hadn’t nurtured courage in the face of death in them. Well, my big lumpy half-orc cushion had tried, but he was alone in his effort.

“What’s the option, Cata?” Heavily-tattooed Rainbow spoke up, our second-in-command and always to the point. Cata weighed options and made decisions, Rainbow questioned him on them in front of everyone. Then we all got input on the plan, if we wanted to speak. It was true democracy, and it worked for us, back in the days when we were still just a handful of misfits working together to survive.

“Two factions are giving us the most grief at present. There’s an offshoot of the Scara Scourge that I don’t feel we could survive tangling with. The other is the Raker’s bunch.”

We sat in silence for a second; the Scourge worked largely above our heads. We were only having trouble with them because they didn’t want us to be trouble for them later. They’d had the courtesy to make sure no one was in the safehouse when it burned. We understood each other. We didn’t agree, but we had an understanding. So long as Unfounded didn’t get too big, too fast, we’d get the occasional rough reminder about who was the big gang in town, and that would be that.

Raker’s Dozen (a misnomer, since there were alost twenty of them) earned their gold by “protecting” the sort of establishment we occasionally liked to swindle. By that, I mean their intentions were to break stuff if people didn’t give them money regularly and otherwise live in indolence. That we infringed on their turf was just rude, and their acting against us was more about territoriality and general mean-spiritedness than any desire to actually keep anyone else from robbing their “customers.”

They were just upset at having to work.

[The Mongrel]

“Smash both,” rumbled a lazy murmur behind me and to my left. “Smash hard.”

We all laughed and I dug my fingers into my lover’s coarse mop of brown hair. “That’s your answer to everything.”

“Best answer.” He grinned and kissed my cheek, careful to not stab me with the small tusks that protruded from his lower jaw.

Cata called us back to focus, and we discussed our options. The yelling and unpleasantness aren’t pertinent to this story, so it will suffice to say that we decided we weren’t ready to deal with the Scourge and that we needed to send a message to the Rakers. They tried to murder one of ours. That required response. It wasn’t just a matter of respect, or building our name; Unfounded was family. For the blood almost shed, we wanted revenge. We wanted to hit them so hard they’d never be able to look at anything again unless it was cock-eyed.

We already knew where their home base was; we made sure to have that knowledge of as many potential rivals as we could. We wanted to get them locked up forever, so we needed intel on what they had, what they knew, and what they were planning. For that…

Cata’s good eye found me. “Mongrel, are you good to go?”

I grinned at him and leaned back into Mutt’s muscular chest. “At the first kiss of true dark. I’ll get you what you need, Cata.”


~*~*~

We broke for the afternoon, each headed our own ways. Or we would have. I had shopping that needed doing; trust me when I say that it’s not easy to keep a huge half-orc happily fed. But that was the first time that I’d be going on a solo mission since Mutt and I had become an item, and it was the first highly dangerous solo mission Unfounded sent me on. The thing about having a lover who loves you?

… they tend to get moody and clingy when you’re about to go into mortal peril. I have no idea what’s up with that, but I couldn’t run errands that day. (To be fair to him, there were times over the years when he was going into danger and I was the moody, clingy one. But I don’t require five pounds of food every day.)

As the sun began to set, I took him to Cata’s. If he decided to mobilize Unfounded, then Mutt would know right away and be able to swoop in to the rescue. Since he also took the role of Chief, I figured his word would be enough to keep Mutt still and steady until I either got back or obviously needed help.

I kissed him goodbye, ruffled Lightning’s hair, and then slipped into the cloudy, moonless night. There was nothing to see me and glare upon my sins. There was nothing to stop me. There was just me, the night, and miles and miles of sharply-peaked roofs. It was my forest, my jungle. Leaving Cata’s apartment, I felt utterly invincible, like I could conquer the city with a wave of my hand. (The Law might have had something to say about that, though.)

[The Mongrel]

Mutt sat at Cata’s table that night, fussing over his great axe and grumbling. His Mousie had given him a kiss just after the last flicker of sunlight ducked behind the horizon. Then, like a drop of water in a stream, she had slipped away from him. He couldn’t hope to match her for speed or stealth, he couldn’t afford to stay near the Rakers' hideout to keep an eye on her and possibly alert them to her presence.

He couldn’t go. But he didn’t have to like that Cata’s big plan sent her into the enemy’s lair without him. What if she never came back?

Cata’s home was a welcome place, blandly decorated but full of good cheer from many, many nights spent drinking and joking with the other members of the group. How many times had he slept a barrel of beer off at this very table? Wasn’t it in that corner that Cata and Rainbow had invited him to join them, as the fourth member of their group? And hadn’t the first time he’d seen Mongrel smile been at that sink, when she was preparing some elvish food greener than his skin? But now it felt like a cage, holding him in when he itched to be out.

So he sat, uncomfortably crowded in the tiny kitchen, sharpening his axe and swearing under his breath. Cata offered him a bowl of hearty beef soup and a frothy mug of ale. He could smell the meat and potatoes, the spices and the hops. On an ordinary night he’d have partaken gladly. But he couldn’t bring himself to touch them on this night.

Lightning kept away from him, sticking to the room he shared with Silent Jack. The half-orc didn’t wonder about that; he’d known the boy for three years and had never hurt him, but even his Mousie kept her distance when his face was dark as thunder. Cata was older and bolder; like most of Unfounded’s other founding members, he’d been prepared to die long before the group was conceived, and wasn’t afraid of any angry orc.

“You need to calm down. She’ll be back by midnight, sunrise at the latest. Eat, sleep. She won’t be happy if you’re hungry and exhausted when we make our move.”

Mutt snorted, the sound traveling from deep within his lungs, bouncing through his chest, and tumbling through massive sinus cavities. The result was something akin to a bear’s growl. “Sharp nip is nothing. Looking much forward to it.”

The crags in Cata’s face deepened with his frown. He couldn’t separate Mutt and Mongrel now, but he wondered if he shouldn’t have made a rule to discourage intimate fraternization within the group before they started seeing each other. If something happened to one of them, could he keep the other from acting rashly?

[The Mongrel]

“There’s one thing, Mutt, that I’ve never understood,” Cata leaned forward on the rough-hewn boards of his table, trying to distract his friend. “Why...why you and her?”

The half-orc scratched his chest, leaning his axe back against the daub and wattle wall common to this section of Radasanth. “Pretty elf, ugly orc?”

Cata waved a hand. “Not what I meant. I meant...why do the two of you work? And how long can it last?”

Mutt frowned, putting his thoughts in order so that he could express himself clearly. His hands moved slowly as he spoke, as though physically placing his words. “You remember when Mongrel burst into the Room, right after Lightning. You saw her scared, unsure. She was. But scared and unsure started the day she was born. For me, also. The women who birthed us had not asked for us. The people around us feared what we might be, and acted on those fears. The fears of others shaped Mongrel, they shaped Mutt. And when we found each other, we found… we found scars mirroring scars, fights mirroring fights. Broken, battered, bleeding. But still strong, still fighting. In Mongrel’s eyes there is a reflection of Mutt’s soul. We are the same, and because we are the same, we are no longer alone in the whole world when we are together.”

His dark eyes looked seriously at Cata, examining him. “Could you rip your heart from your chest and everything is fine? Or your lungs? Your soul? Because of what we are, we cannot walk away. We cannot turn away, or glance away. Even when death takes us one away from the other, there will be pain, so much pain. But there will not be leaving. How long can it last, Cata? Maybe as long as the rocks underfoot. Maybe as long as the stars overhead. Maybe longer. We will learn.”


~*~*~

Sand grains trickled, counting the hours from dark of night to dead of night. In a tiny apartment in the Radasanthian slums, three humans snored while one half-orc kept a tense vigil. When midnight passed quietly, he got up to pace. His gargantuan feet made surprisingly little noise on the creaky floorboards; an orc could not stomp about his living quarters and expect his elven lover to simply sleep through it. He’d learned that within a week of sharing a living space. A poorly rested Mousie was a cranky Mousie.

Midnight passed. Sand still poured. A lone orc kept a lonely vigil.

Dead of night turned to creeping dawn, and a middle aged human woke to the sharp scrape of iron on wall. He was out of bed and in the kitchen before he was coherent. “Mutt! What are you doing?!”

“Dawn came. No Mongrel.” The answer was simple, the action obvious. His weapon was strapped to his back, at the ready. “Something happened. Getting her back. Now.”

Cata rushed to the door, standing in front of it in a futile effort to block the mountain of muscle in his home. “No, Mutt! We have to-”

“You have to do what you have to do,” the burly half-human snarled. “So do I.” Without a request for his chieftain to move, Mutt shoved him aside and shouldered through the door. The claustrophobic air of the apartment gave way to the muggy Coronian pre-dawn. With none who could stop him, he thundered down his war path.

Cata sighed and looked at the boys who peered anxiously from the small sleeping chambers they shared. “Don’t just stand there, boys! Go get everyone!” This had turned into one fine mess… but he did suppose it was his own fault. And if anything had happened to her…

Mutt’s warpath would not end with the Raker’s Dozen.

[The Mongrel]

The world swam around me as I clawed my way back to consciousness. Violet and indigo hues swam in my vision, so I knew it was still night. Bitter grit filled my mouth, and I couldn’t clear the bloody dirt no matter how hard I spat. My arms were pinned behind me so hard I could barely feel my fingers; in an effort to keep their intruder from escaping, they’d bound me, with rope, from my wrists to my elbows. Then, for good measure, they’d stuck me in an iron cage with three iron padlocks on the door. Really, it was kind of hilarious.

I don’t remember much after leaving Cata’s place. I got into Raker’s Base easily enough, and I think I got through a few rooms before I was caught. I never saw the blow that took me down; bonks on the head tend to happen like that. Around me were a smattering of wooden crates, and I didn’t hear any breathing to indicate another’s presence in the room. The Rakers (all eighteen of them) were all human; they tend to breathe loudly enough that a well-trained archer can feather them through the throat while wearing a blindfold. Anyway, stripped of stuff, pinioned like a pigeon, and caged like a cat, I was neutralized enough to not need a guard.

I could hear the Rakers muttering in a room nearby, no doubt discussing the manner and publication of my death. These same men had just hunted down and nearly killed an Unfoundling; I knew I wasn’t still alive out of the goodness of their hearts. Maybe the strength of their libidos, but they hadn’t gotten that far yet.

I wasn’t about to let them, either.

Word to the wise: if you need to keep a professional thief in place, always always check their boots. We usually have an emergency set of tools there. Fortunately for me, the Rakers were thugs, not thieves. Once they had me, they didn't really know what to do with me.

It took me a few tries to sit up and fumble my boot cache open, and another second to find the knife in there and work it out. From there… well, a one-inch knife isn’t really designed to cut through rope, much less quickly. Each tread of a foot nearby sounded like death’s summons, my mouth dried a little more each time their voices quieted. The five minutes it took to saw through the first coil felt like five centuries. After that, it was only another minute to wiggle the ropes off of my arms. Circulation flooded back into my upper torso, tingly and refreshing.

After that bit of escape-artist wizardry, the padlocks? Totally a joke.

So I was free, a little dizzy, my head hurt, and the dumb fucks hadn’t left my gear conveniently out to tease a firmly imprisoned me. Nor was there anything good in the crates they had laying about in the storage room/dungeon thing I’d been trapped in. The walls were stone, though, and the rafters broad, so I grabbed the rope and started climbing. If I was lucky, only one guy would come through that door and I could deal with him.

But my best hope? That with the slowly-rising sun starting to bathe the world in light, a Mountain would cast his shadow on this fortress.

[The Mongrel]

Raker’s Dozen was established when a merchant’s son got the bright idea to “protect” shops that sold the family’s goods - for a modest fee. Eventually, they expanded to other stores, charging less for those who dealt in their wares. That both expanded the legal side of the business and gave the thugs more power and money. The money let them have a small castle, long abandoned, on the edge of Radasanth. Likely it was a showpiece for some forgotten duke or earl; when the Rakers had it, it was crumbling and only habitable in some places. Rumor had it that there had been more of those places before they took over, but when you get a bunch of young, alcoholic human males together… yeah.

The castle meant that they had impenetrable stone walls and a solid oak door as thick as a man’s thigh. Three powerful blows from an enraged axe splintered it like a cheap pine crate.

Panic sent nearly twenty men sprinting through dingy halls, rushing for weapons to combat the intruder. The surprise had them disorganized; they challenged the rampaging half-orc one at a time and were mown down like hay. Some managed to scratch him. He didn’t seem to notice.

One intelligent thug grabbed a crossbow and started shooting as quickly as he could reload. The first bolt hit with the sound of a sledge hammer striking a side of beef. It dug deep into Mutt’s bicep, dragging a scream from his throat. Unfortunately for the straw-blond, the cry was more rage than pain. Bolts two and three flew wide of the charging half-human, and bolt four never made it into place.

Ten pounds of sharpened iron are no kinder to skulls than they are to doors.

The growling giant stood in the wake of his carnage, covered in blood spatter and brain matter. Red seeped and pooled in the cracks between the granite tiles, entrails carpeted the floor. But there was no visible elven woman, and he’d only slaughtered about a third of the gang.

Tusks bared themselves to the light, tiny eyes peered into dark corners. If he went the wrong way… they already had her. If he picked wrong, she would be dead before he found her.

Something sounded down the corridor to the right - a hacking, a choking. There! An open door!

With a furious roar, Mutt charged for it.

[The Mongrel]

I crouched in the rafters, among the cobwebs and a couple pairs of breeches. (I have never had a desire to know how and why they ended up up there.) I worked on a large noose with as much speed as I could, to give me something to work with. I secured it to the beam; I’d only get the chance to hang maybe one. After that I’d either have a weapon or I’d be swarmed.

Cata would want to make a plan of attack; for all anyone knew I was already dead. If he could talk some sense into Mutt (a monumental task, but possible. Sometimes.), then I was on my own until I could sneak out. That wouldn’t be easy in the daylight, especially if they came to check on me.

BLAM! CRAAAAAAAACK! CRUNCH! BOOM!

My love’s knocks on the Rakers’ front door lifted my spirits like a swelling tide. Even if he was my lone knight in cotton armor instead of the herald of an army, he’d come for me. Don’t get me wrong; if he hadn’t, I was going to find a way out and then rip him from thorax to throat for not coming, but sometimes it feels good to be rescued.

I really wish I could have seen the scene when he burst into their meeting. I heard it fine; shouting, swearing, stumbling. They scattered like ashes in front of the flames of his wrath, searching for places to hide. Some attempted to fight back, and I heard their dying screams. I heard Mutt howl in pain, and felt it wasn’t fair that his assailant wouldn’t suffer pain at death.

Unarmed, I needed to wait to make my move, however much I wanted to burst out and tell him where I was. I needed…

I needed the door to open.

And open it did.

I pounced like a spider, dropping on the large human with rust-brown who’d fumbled his way into my trap. The noose slid over his head easily, and before he could register what had happened I kicked him, sending him sprawling forward and tightening the noose around his neck. His eyes bulged like they might pop out. He hacked for breath, fingers clawing for the knot. His face turned red and purple.

Then I grabbed his sword, plunging it into his belly.

The scent of copper and entrails filled the air. Gore dripped in sloppy chunks to mix with the dirt on the floor. Silence fell through the whole castle.

And then there was a bellow that would have shaken the gods themselves and a stomping charge. He and his axe filled the doorway, the avatar of protective rage, ready to smash through anything that stood between him and his Mousie.

I grinned like a fool at the sight of him, and when he saw me… Well, I’m not sure if I’d put his expression as more relief or more irritation. At that moment, it was the same thing.

“You got free and stuck around this dunghole?!” His words rumbled like thunder, and my grin pulled into a smirk. I couldn’t help it.

“You’re a lot later than I thought you’d be. I didn’t want to get home, learn that you’d left to come get me, and then have you worry when I wasn’t here.”

“Lucky you’re a cute Mousie,” he grumbled, holding out an arm for me to rush into. “You lots of trouble.”

I went to him, letting him pull me up to his chest, where I could feel his heart pounding through his ribs. “Would you have me any different?” My hands cradled his cheeks; I already knew the answer to this question.

My Mountain answered anyway. “Not even if it made you perfect.” I leaned down and he kissed me, tasting of blood, sweat, and triumph. We had a lot of kisses over the course of his life, but that was definitely a memorable one. “Let’s go home, Mousie.”

[The Mongrel]

We didn’t bother trying to sneak out of the room. Either the survivors of Mutt’s introduction had taken the hint and were hiding until we were safely away, or they had organized and rallied because they had some sort of death wish.

We weren’t really surprised to see two ranks of four armed men each blocking the hall. We had, after all, gone beyond the bounds of courtesy and respectively slaughtered some of them en masse and escaped the very best restraints they could construct. They couldn’t take that cowering and still call themselves men.

Mutt growled at my side, either out of frustration that we couldn’t just go home or the desire to kill more enemies. Maybe both. I’d seen him like this before; he described it as “war singing red in my veins.” If I hadn’t been beside him, I don’t doubt he’d have charged right in.

“It’s always the hard way.” I sighed and looked up at my rescuer’s lumpy face. “You make a mess, I clean it up?” Like usual, really. (He couldn't help what he was, after all.)

He said nothing, just roared and charged, axe swinging ahead of him like the Reaper’s Scythe. Some of the Rakers rose to challenge his charge, some flinched from his fury. He plowed through the challengers like a draft horse through sod. As for the flinchers…

It’s hard to slip past an orc swinging a greataxe on a floor slick with blood, so I went over him. I ran in the wake of his charge until he hit the wall of flesh, but when he slowed, I kept running. My feet planted themselves behind his knee, in a muscle on his back, in the crook of his arm, and his shoulder.

Sheer momentum lifted me into the air, and the world was a tumbling, spinning mess of gray and red for a second. When it stopped, I was face to spine with one of the human thugs. I didn’t give him the chance to turn, plunging my sword into his side and ripping it out to parry the man behind him. He’d at least had the presence of mind to swing at me. He just didn’t have the speed. Poor kid, it wasn’t his fault he was born human.

My trailing hand brushed across fabric from my falling victim’s clothes, rough hemp brushing my fingers until I hit leather and metal, the latter of which I snatched from its sheath and stabbed into the second man’s gut without looking at it. It sank to the hilt, and I twisted and pulled, ripping the knife through his belly to the wet slither of entrails falling to the floor. He dropped like a sack of rocks, too stunned to scream.

[The Mongrel]

The dull ting of axe on hammer sounded to my left. Five bodies piled behind Mutt, split like logs. The last one standing, however, was bigger than the rest. I could see his muscles bulging and rippling under his shirt (not bad...for a mere human), and he swung his hammer with enough strength and skill to keep Mutt at bay. Of course, if Mutt had been fresh, the fight would have been over before I turned around, but he’d already hacked through a door and a bunch of people.

While the men were occupied with each other, I crept around the violence, through the growing puddles of blood and piss, keeping as low and quiet as possible. While my mate liked standing face to face with his foe, whether in mortal combat or in bar games (just… men), I’m not really built to trade blows until only one person is standing. By letting my natural coloration, the dim light of the hall, and the human’s preoccupation with the half-human work against him, I could ease my way behind to end him.

Fighting fair? Never.

Just as I got into position, he landed a blow on Mutt’s chest hard enough to knock the air out of him and send him sprawling back onto the still-warm bodies of the men he’d slain. I saw the hammer rise, I felt the charge begin.

No way, buddy.

I drove my foot hard into the back of his knee, sending him to the ground. The hammer’s momentum sent it slamming into the ground just left of Mutt’s right knee, letting out an off-pitch clang! like a half-forged bell. Cheap iron. I gave him no chance to recover, grabbing his hair, yanking his head back, and ripping the knife from one ear to the other.

Blood sprayed everywhere, painting the walls, painting Mutt, painting me. He made a gurgle, his trachea made a hollow gasp as lungs fought to pull in one more futile breath. And then I dropped him like the trash he was.

Word to the wise: never ever lose track of the sneak who’s trying to kill you.

Mutt and I looked at each other, breathing a little hard. He had fresh cuts and bruises, I could see the indent where the hammer had struck him. The dead around us weren’t any less skilled than we were, just less swift, less strong, less united. When it’s all about you, how can you properly look out for another? How can you trust them to do what they need to do, and have your back if you need it?

Mutt stood up and looked at the carnage, then started laughing. “Mousie would have made great orc. Very strong, very strong.”

“Very bloody.” I wiped my face with my sleeve, but only managed to spread the sticky mess around. “This is eight, the one back in there makes nine… how many did you get when you first got in here?”

He shrugged one massive shoulder, which drew my attention to the crossbow quarrel in his injured arm. It must have been hurting something awful, and now I wanted to get him out so we could have Smiles tend to his injuries. Then I’d feed him, we’d clean up, and we’d sleep.

“Five,” he answered. “Six, maybe.”

A little math told me that wasn’t all of them. “Was the Raker among the ones you killed?” He shook his head. “So we’re missing three or four. Hopefully they’re just not in, but…”

I doubted it. They’d set up this blockade to kill us or slow us down, and none of these mooks had my stuff. We had one way to go, and while we could hope it led us quietly to freedom…

We’d both always known better than to trust hope.

[The Mongrel]

Since my daggers and tools were not among the corpses, I grabbed a couple of weapons from the fallen. The daggers were pig-iron, shoddily mined, shoddily crafted. I didn’t have much choice in taking them; it was that or nothing. The sword I’d taken from the hanged man, however, was fine steel. I still have it.

Mutt examined the hammer, which was actually of a better quality than any of the other weapons around (his axe included), but he discarded it it as too light and too dull. That was absolutely like him; practical enough to know what he wanted, content enough to ignore the call of excess.

Armed the best we could manage, we left the hallway washed in a weave of bloody bootprints. Every hair on the back of my neck raised, prickling like a thousand tiny needles. Each of Mutt’s breaths rattled around in his lungs and ended in a heavy snort. He was trying to hide it (and would have managed it if I was human instead of elven), but I knew he’d be hurting for weeks. At that point, I didn’t want my gear back. I could get new, better gear. But Mutt was already injured because of me, and if something happened to him...

There will never be a new, better Mutt, and I was keenly aware of that while we crept through the Rakers’ fortress. I prayed to every single star whose name I knew that the Rakers we hadn’t slaughtered were simply not home. I invoked the Thayne, I invoked some old Coronian gods, I’d have invoked the hells if I’d known the names of any devils.

My heart sank to my stomach when we turned from the hall to the entryway, because there stood irrefutable proof that all gods hate bastard half-breeds.

Amidst half a dozen of his men’s corpses, in front of the shattered door, flanked by his two weaselly lieutenants, and dressed in an immaculate white suit, stood Johann Rahqur. He wasn’t much shorter than Mutt, nor much slimmer. Eyes blue and cold as ice glared at us from under hair black as night. Knife-like lips held a thick cigar, spewing noxious fumes into the air around him. Perhaps most ominously, a boulder-like fist clenched a glowing blue, seven-pronged rake.

He spoke, growling at us with a voice like a hearse grinding over gravel. “You Unfounded vermin undermine my business, then you break into my house and make THIS MESS! Who the hell do you think you are?!”

With Mutt already injured, I wasn’t about to let him fight if I could help it. I stepped forward, twirling my poorly-balanced daggers. “We’re the ones who stormed your castle, slew your soldiers, and crumbled your empire. Look around, Raker. You’re down to three, and all of Unfounded stands. Let us go and you might be able to rebuild, in time. Fight us and we might die, but you will.”

Rahqur lifted his rake, leveling it at me. “But you mutants will still be dead.”

So much for his sense of self preservation. “Then I’ve got your number, buddy.” The Raker lieutenants used clawed brass knuckles. Mutt could hack through them in a heartbeat and we could take their boss down as a team. Rahqur might kill him otherwise, and I couldn’t let that happen. I figured he’d catch on to my strategy and follow suit.

To my surprise, a gentle paw closed around my hair.

“Mongrel only has four kills. Might get six. Catch up some.”

My lips tightened, my eyes narrowed. “Mutt.”

“Mongrel. Catch up.” My mountainous lover looked at me sternly. There would be no winning this argument. He was absolutely willing to have his flesh ripped from his bones if it meant the rake never touched me. Damn the fact that I’m not good against multiple opponents who can see me coming, damn the fact that they’d claw me up. To him, the rake was a bigger threat, and there was no way in all the hells he’d see it swinging at my body.

He walked toward the Raker, swinging his axe slowly, methodically. “We are the lost and the misbegotten," he began the Unfounded motto. "The friendless, the faithless, the forgotten. But we are not yours to conquer.”

[The Mongrel]

Mutt closed the distance between himself and his enemy, beady eyes watching every twitch. Everything else faded away; the sight of the red corpses on the floor and the road of sunlight from the broken door, his awareness of his own body’s complaints, even his awareness of his own lover. There was nothing now, nothing but the pounding of his blood in his ears, the weight of the weapon in his hands, and the Raker in front of him.

He heard Mongrel sigh behind him, then say something to the two slender twigs who challenged her. Her voice floated dimly through his ears, as though she was speaking through water. She might not have thought she could take them, but he knew better. His Mousie was mighty, strong as the sun, swift as the lightning! They would wither under her mere glare. But this big human… No. He would never hurt too much to let her face him on her own.

His weapon swung rhythmically in his hands, whirling in time to the beat of war. Raker kept still, letting the big orc go to him, thinking foolishly that he could control the battle. Prevalida rake grabbed for pitted iron, testing the strength of the wielder and the weapon. Mutt batted it away like a fly. He might not have the smooth looks of this thug, or the expensive clothes, or the ridiculous weapon, but he had something to fight for.

That was everything.

Initial probes done, he hefted his axe and bellowed, charging in with enough fury to shake the earth beneath his feet. The rake swept in, digging into his side like seven angry daggers, but he kept charging, letting the agony of hot metal ripping through his skin spur him onward. Massive green hands brought his heavy axe down with stone-shattering force.

If what should have happened had happened, a neatly-cloven human corpse would have fallen to the ground. His blow had enough strength behind it to slay a Mountain Giant in a single swing.

Instead, the sharply-honed blade of his axe caught only empty air as the coward fled from his attack. A blue blur slashed for his face, grabbing onto his skull, puncturing his cheek and tongue, and gashing his chin. It ripped forward, clawing through his face, tearing him apart. Coppery blood, all his, fell to the floor in grotesque glops.

Again and again, he charged the Raker, again and again his target slipped away, white and clean as fresh snow. Again and again, the horrible rake rent his flesh, ripping muscle from bone while he couldn’t get near his enemy.

Again and again and again.

Blood stung in his eyes, flowed down his face and all through his mouth, choking him, drowning him. His chest and back laid open for the ravens to peck, his arms were so much mincemeat. With every breath, his body weighed more on him, his breath fought harder to sustain him, his vision grew dimmer. At the end, it was just too much, and he fell on his back, not even seeing the gray stone roof above.

He heard a cry of rage, pain, and despair, but it was far away, like someone calling to the back of the cave from the front. He couldn’t reach it, and if he could, he couldn’t bear the shame of it. He’d been defeated with not so much as a scratch or a drop of blood from his opponent. He was no proper Mountain for his Mousie.

[The Mongrel]

With Mutt insisting on fighting the other big male like they were a couple of elk in the rut, I was left with the razor-clawed weasels. Their eyes gleamed at me, sizing me up like a piece of meat they were going to shred and devour (and based on certain rumors, that might have been closer to the truth than I’m comfortable thinking about). I sighed, checking my sword for balance and palming one of those dinky daggers. I really wished Mutt had trusted my trust in him and gone with my plan, but he had to go and be all chivalrous, instead.

My eyes cast around the room, looking for any sort of terrain advantage. There was a little rubble, there were slick patches where Mutt’s first victims had met their makers, there were a couple of tables. So basically, nothing. The Stars really do hate me. I’d have to hope that he could take care of Rahqur quickly, and that I could evade and slice long enough to survive until he could come take some of the heat.

Caught in the open with no recourse, I looked through the dust motes that drifted in thick droves through the air, at the two men who, for clarity’s sake, I’ll call Lipless and Slouch. They were combat-ready, blood-thirsty, butt-ugly sons of bitches, all geared up and ready to kill. All right, then.

“All right, boys.” I lifted the sword in my left hand, pulling a dagger back in my right hand for the quick defensive swipes a fight like this necessitates. “Let’s dance.”

Lipless rushed me, Slouch slunk around wide, trying to get to my undefended back. My head still pounded; I could hear every shuffle of his feet while he tried to flank me. I wasn’t willing to give that quite so soon.

I rushed into Lipless’s charge, letting him catch the sword with his right claws and deflect it wide, using the momentum to spin to his side, slashing at his left arm with my dagger to make him think twice about scratching me. Slouch rushed in while my limbs were still tangled up in deflecting his friend, driving a three-spiked death punch at my gut. I took a half step to the side, shoving into Lipless and turning Slouch’s debilitating blow into a glancing one.

A trio of deep scratches gouged their way across my left side, and I took a hop, pulling out of the deadly weave of weapons and limbs just enough to slash viciously at Lipless’s face. He turned, and I only managed to slice his ear off before they were back on me, angry as hornets and vicious as badgers.

[The Mongrel]

We danced to death’s dirge, daring destiny and defying doom. With each step, another scratch, another sluice of blood. Sometimes it was mine, sometimes it was theirs. There were two of them, working together like a pack of cats cornering a rat. But I was faster than them, and I had a weapon with longer reach. On the rare occasion I could spare a glance to Mutt, that seemed to be his trouble. Rahqur just had so much more reach... why couldn’t he just listen to me that one time?

In the end, two skilled fighters who are slower and have inferior weapons will win over one skilled fighter who has a better weapon. I took a hard backhand to the temple, courtesy of Slouch. Stars exploded in front of my vision (my people’s gods, mocking me?) and I reeled. My feet didn’t know what part of flat floor was safe footing, my spine didn’t know up from down.

Lipless wasted no time capitalizing on his companion’s success, driving his claws into my abdomen so hard I coughed up a bitter blob of red.

A scream ripped its way out of my throat. Not because it hurt, because it didn’t. Not then. But on the floor, I saw Mutt prone and still, and I had lost him. Because I’d been cocky, and I’d gotten caught. Because he’d had to come for me.

The fist supporting me wrenched its way free of my gut, letting me drop to my knees, then to my face.

I don’t remember falling. I just remember reaching for the mangled man so far away from me, agonized that I’d cost him his life, but glad we’d be going together. Relieved that there would be no long centuries of loss, no time I’d have to endure without the warmth of his love.

Something whistled, just at the edge of my hearing.

I saw Rahqur plant the rake on the ground, watching Mutt growl and struggle with the last of his strength. I could hear him laughing at the futility of the fight, and rage burned hot in my belly. I think I wept, impotent tears, because this was my fault, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. A slender, scarred hand slid my sword from my grasp, steel sounded on stone. A metallic shimmer danced in front of my face as it raised to finish me off.

Something sang, loudly now.

TWHUMPH!

One of the lieutenants grunted. Lipless. He was higher pitched.

Silence dropped on the hall like a cave-in on some miners. I couldn’t see their expressions, but I can imagine.

The room resounded with the ringing of fallen weapon on filthy black granite.

And a corpse fell at my side.

I heard Rahqur swear and Slouch shout. And they turned to leave us alone.

I started laughing with every ounce of power I had in me. It was hollow, as numb as I was. But I laughed.

Had I not told them that they would die?

[The Mongrel]

Ghost nodded to Cata, Rainbow, and Weepy as her arrow sped from her bow, but they were already off, running the grassy field that stretched between them and the Raker base. That the door was open and they hadn’t met their missing companions was worrisome. It meant that Mutt had managed to get in, but getting out? After more than an hour, could they possibly still be alive? Or was this a mission of vengeance? Had they even been successful enough to avenge?

The three burst through the door, nearly as one. Weepy split off immediately, black hair flying in his wake as he went after the standing lieutenant who was trying to rush Cata. It looked like he and his buddy had taken down Mongrel, while Mutt had been no match for the Raker himself. But the man with scars running down his face wondered how he’d fare on his own against a healthy, angry warrior. The pathetic back scratchers on the lieutenant’s fists? How would they hold up to Weepy’s wickedly serrated longsword?

Rainbow rushed the Raker ahead of Cata, unsheathing her sickle swords and sliding them between the prongs of his rake, fighting with all her strength to hold him back for a second, though her boots slipped on the blood-slick floor. Unable to pull forward, Raker pulled back to disengage, but that didn’t help him.

With the opening Rainbow had given him, Cata charged in, swinging his bastard sword at the pristine leader of the thugs. Desperately, Raker grabbed the blade to deflect it, barely crying out when it sheared his thumb from his hand. He tried, one-handed, to bring his rake back to bear, but his movements were clumsy, and the half-elf with the bright pink mohawk slashed at him from one side while the old man stabbed from the other.

Over the course of just a few seconds, a neatly sliced Johann Rahqur and his remaining lieutenant lay on the ground with their victims, cold and dead. Mongrel was still laughing, a forced, pathetic, sobbing sound. Mutt’s breaths gurgled painfully in his chest; without intervention, they didn’t have long.

But that was why Unfounded had Smiles. Like Weepy, her face was scarred, but for her it was into an overbearing, grotesque grin. She didn’t step into the building until the last echo of metal on metal had died down, brushing some ash-brown hair away from chocolate-hued eyes. A quick glance around told her where she was needed most, and she hurried to Mutt’s side, tossing Weepy a belt with three vials. “Two! I don’t think she needs all of them.”

Without further instruction, she knelt by the giant half-orc’s side, planting her hands on his chest and starting to chant. A soft, milky-white light flowed from her palms and through his body, quieting some of the agonized rumbling and sealing the absolute worst of the injuries. He growled and groaned, fighting the itch of healing magic with strength he didn’t have.

Behind them, Mongrel coughed. The bitter burn of a healing potion rarely went down well, but it was better than letting her die. Even so…

Smiles looked up at Cata, hands and knees stained with sticky brown blood. “They’re both still in really bad shape. How soon will the boys be here with the cart?”

“Soon.” The gray-haired, half-blind man looked at his nearly-dead comrades and heaved a deep sigh. “If these two aren’t the luckiest bastards I’ll ever meet…”

All anyone else could do was nod their assent. Lucky bastards, indeed.

[The Mongrel]

“Then what happened?” Knave’s voice brought me back to reality. I blinked; I’d been quiet for a minute there, hadn’t I? It’d been a long time since I’d thought of that day, much less spoke of it.

“The rest of Unfounded took us home. Smiles had Rainbow patch me up, and she took care of Mutt. I think she was with him for some hours, but I was in and out of consciousness myself. Let me tell you, Knave, anyone who tells you they chugged a healing potion and were able to pop up right away either wasn’t hurt that bad or is lying. Those things’ll stop you from dying, but you don’t pop back up like a daisy. The kids explored the ruins while the adults were busy, and eventually your dad found my gear and brought it back to me.”

I looked at the young man I’d helped guide through all stages of his life, at his focus on the horizon. It wouldn’t be long until sunrise, now. “I slept on the couch for a few weeks, since Mutt was so badly hurt. He was big enough to need the whole bed, so I usually slept on his chest, but that wasn’t an option for a while. I recovered more quickly than he did, so I babied him for a bit. He'd more than earned it. He kept the scars where the rake got his face for the rest of his life, and every time he was feeling a little under appreciated - you’ve been with Tanner long enough to know that everyone feels that way sometimes - I would cuddle up to him and stroke those scars.”

My fingers found the lines of those scars on my own face, though the scars on my skin were very different from the scars on his. He’d been very proud of them, felt they made him look better. “I look like a big, strong protector,” he’d said. And he was, he always was. Not because of anything stabbed into his face, but because of the etchings on his soul. The things that made him come to me when all hope was lost, that kept us together through a decade of intense and occasionally tumultuous love.

“...That story had nothing to do with why you’re going to Raiaera, Mongrel.” Wasn’t he so smart?

“Well, actually, there was this one time I was going to visit my uncles, and this unicorn appeared out of nowhere. It wa-”

“Will you look at the sky?!” he interrupted, hopping to his feet. He’d had enough of my bullshit for one night. “Tanner’s probably going to tan me, I’d better get home.”

I smiled at him, letting him know that I knew what was up. Maybe I simply didn't want him to pry into my decisions. I'd given nearly half a century to this family, and while I love them, maybe a change of scenery will teach me things that the same old routine could never do. “Give my best to your family.”

“I will,” he agreed. “And Mongrel… think this over. You don’t owe nothin’ to no one over there. You never have.”

“I know.”

He left, and I looked at the letter again, at the "damn loopy loops" that called me back to the land of my birth after half my lifetime away. Knave was utterly right about one thing; Raiaera had never given me anything. Corone was home.

But what if that had changed in the wake of the Corpse War? What if… what if there could be a home for me in a place where I didn’t have to watch generations of people I loved be born, grow up, succumb to the ravages of time, and die? Was it possible? Could my mother's people learn to accept me? Could I learn to forgive them? There are scars upon my psyche from my time in Raiaera. If I look those demons in the face, can I overcome them?

I sighed, sending a huff of humid air to join the sticky, acrid early-morning air.

“You shiny idiot.”

Spoils request: The Boot Cache: A small supply of emergency lockpicking tools (plus a small knife) designed to be hidden in the soles of a thief's boots.

[Philomel]

Title of Thread: Unbreaking (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28788-Unbreaking/page2)
Judgement Type: Workshop Submission
Participant: The Mongrel

Rewards:

http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17739-The-Mongrel receives:
1625 EXP
175 GP

Spoils in form of "The Boot Cache: A small supply of emergency lockpicking tools (plus a small knife) designed to be hidden in the soles of a thief's boots," on a strength of metal in iron, granted for an amount of 70 GP, taken from The Mongrel's GP spoils.

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added!