A Lye for an Eye

[Jake Narmolanya]

The slopes of the Shirayama Mountains, called the Comb Mountains in most of Corone, provided little cover in dawn’s early light. Shrubs burnt to death by summer’s heat occasioned the craggy, pit-sliding rock face. Insects thrummed in the thick moss growing in the shadows of the ridges. A fresh earthy scent leaned upon the breeze.

Jake Narmolanya’s footfalls beat an angry tempo as he approached the grassy plateau. Anger had become the most familiar emotion to the young thief of late. Frown lines creased his youthful, ordinarily smiling face. His mop of dirty blond hair played loosely in the wind, and his dark green sifan clothing rippled against his lithe body. He moved with deadly purpose, like a hungry mountain cat following its nose.

In truth he had followed a bevy of rumors and gossip, searching out the only man who would allow him to slake his wrath.

Jake’s sword hand twitched toward the pommel poking over his right shoulder. He had sworn to kill the snow-haired assassin who corrupted his close friend Amari. The half elf remembered Amari when she’d been only a girl, the kindest and most innocent person he’d ever met. He remembered her when the cracked black lines had appeared on her skin, and evil had tugged at her heart. He’d done his best to take her away from the monster of a man, but he’d failed again and again. Now she had become something entirely different. A monster in her own right. A monster Jake might have to put down in order to reach the one she called master.

Leather boots climbed the plateau and trampled the long grass. In the middle of the elevated field sat a man Jake had once called teacher. If he could still be called a man. Then, he had been the Sheriff of Underwood, and a pillar of the community. Now, if stories could be believed, he was more god than mortal.

Joshua “Breaker” Cronen’s legs were folded in front of him. He faced away from Jake, but the half elf knew he’d been sensed as soon as he disrupted the grass. Breaker had the nose of a hound, and the ears of a hare.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance again, Master Narmolanya.” The voice was familiar, and yet strange. Almost unnervingly calm and even.

“Sorry to interrupt your meditation,” Jake said, shrugging his haversack and cased bow off of his back. He flexed his narrow shoulders, arching his spine and stretching stiff muscles. “I had to ask after you in half of Underwood to learn you’d moved to that little village Yutori, and I questioned at least a dozen folks there before I learned you might be on this particular plateau.”

Breaker’s head tilted to one side. It was the first perceptible movement he’d made other than the way his short brown hair and blue tailored clothing waved in the wind.

“You’re angry,” he said, his words almost lost in the open air, “you’ve come here with violence in your mind. Do you mean to kill me, or ask for my assistance?”

“Well, I’m not here to tell you about Maggie Cartwright’s triplets,” Jake jibed. The question had caught him off guard. “I just need to continue my training. In a condensed timeframe. There’s someone I need to kill.”

“Who?” Breaker asked, like an owl presiding over its domain. He stood slowly and turned. The sun lit on the Y-shaped scars on his cheeks and shone in his deep hazel eyes. Even in such simple movements, he seemed like a shark circling blood.

“Lichensith Ulroké.”

The words hung in the air, a curse as much as a name. Images of the sickly assassin flitted through Jake’s mind. He had only learned the pale man’s name in his most recent, violent encounter with Amari.

Breaker scratched the stubble on his chin with a wide, callused hand. “You might be better off trying to kill me,” he said, “I know little of Ulroké, other than that he is a master assassin with unparalleled abilities and influences.”

“I’ve met him,” Jake said, “he moves like you. I figure if anyone can teach me to kill him, you can.”

“Moves like me how?”

“Like a nightshadow, chasing day’s final rays. Like a leopard padding through the treetops. Like death, waiting on the cusp of life.” Jake unsheathed his blue hilted, green bladed sword. The crystal weapon glittered in the sunlight. He gripped it in both hands and extended the curved tip over his shoulder in a high guard. “Will you teach me, or not?”

“It doesn’t seem you intend to leave me much choice.” Breaker said. He crouched and plucked a single blade of long grass, and then stood, holding it like one might a sword. His black boots shifted slightly, his legs bowing. A battery packed with black powder would have looked less dangerous. The demigod smiled.

“Begin.”

[Warpath]

The pair walked side-by-side around a chaotic jumble of barrels, crates, broken mining tools, and earthy detritus. The walls were old, wet stone, and the ceiling wept from stress-opened seams every dozen feet. Here and there they had to wade through ankle-deep puddles. Their way was illuminated by a mad variety of sources: torches here, sputtering oil lamps and lanterns there, and down this hall they saw flickering electric bulbs mounted on sparking poles, casting dull yellow light on cavernous work sites. Rough voices echoed everywhere: dwarven curses, mostly.

Even the most fervent cussing was done at a harsh whisper, though. Everyone, even Radek, felt the weight of the Glaith River above, ominous. Not for the first time, he imagined the black water discovering their intrusion - rushing in down these halls, drowning them all for their impudence. The moment stretched. It didn’t happen.

He didn’t tell his companion, Roxanna, about his fears. She would have scoffed at him for a coward. He didn’t think she would call him a fool though: his personal doomsday vision was a real possibility. She just wouldn’t have cared so much. Her loyalty was beyond all consideration of her own life, even in the face of Flint’s batshit idea to build his secret empire less than a mile under the roaring Boilerworks and the river that fed them. Radek was a sworn soldier now but she was more akin to a zealot.

Of course, he understood why.

The pair - Radek and Roxanna - were two of the Secret Grahf’s three most trusted lieutenants. They’d known him when he was just a man called Flint Skovik, before he’d consumed some otherworldly substance that turned him into the monster he was now, and before he’d killed his predecessor and stolen her criminal empire beneath Ettermire.

Flint had recently discovered that his blood carried a portion of the transformative power Swaysong had worked upon him, though at a much lesser degree. Radek had once been a petty horse thief, cutthroat, mercenary, and vagabond. Ratty, thin, yellow-toothed and of relatively simple intellect. Now he was a lean, lethal, sharp-eyed hunter of men. Focused. Wolfish. The change in him was significant, but he - unlike Flint - was still human. And his upgrade paled, also, in comparison to Roxanna’s.

The woman that walked beside him now bore no resemblance to the wretched creature he’d first met, before Flint’s gift. The Roxanna he’d known was a broken, skeletal, and contemptible wraith. She’d had an arm severed, and hobbled on crutches and a peg leg. Her hair had all fallen out as a result of malnutrition, and her skin had been yellowed, parchment-like. She used to weep openly, but dryly, at her own reflection. Flint had forced Radek to care for her for a time, and he’d wanted to smother her every minute of every day. As far as Radek understood it, she’d been a Salvic noble tortured, starved, mutilated, and imprisoned by her own family.

He hadn’t believed it until recently, when Flint’s gift restored Roxanna to her humanity and beyond. This woman was tall, buxom, with impressively muscled limbs and shoulders, and hair as red as a pirate’s sunset. She had viciously beaten back death on her own, but it was Flint that had elevated her to something like a valkyrie afterward. That, Radek figured, was the source of her devotion to him. He’d rescued her, which was heroic enough, but then he’d restored her dignity too. That was gods-work, in her estimation.

So he kept his tongue when the urge struck him to question Flint’s infallibility.

Thankfully the walls held long enough for them to find the king of the Aleraran underground. He was in a large, hollowed out chamber not far from the central hub of the unfinished tunnels. He’d carved a cell for himself out of the chaos by stacking up black-painted crates in a rough square, four-high and sixteen across. There was an oversized cot there, along one ‘wall’ with crisp, clean sheets neatly folded atop it. In the center of the area was a long wooden table, with maps and plots and blueprints laid out and pinned down beneath tarnished candle-holders and moldy books. And all along the outside of the cell, otherwise, were Flint’s homemade self-torture machines.

The one he was using today was comprised of two metallic pillars set six feet apart, perhaps originally designed to shore up mine ceilings. An incredibly thick metal pole rested atop the pillars, welded sloppily to them at their tops and running parallel to the floor, perhaps ten feet up. Flint hung from the pole by his hands, slowly raising and lowering himself with his knees curled back - pulling himself all the way up until the pole tapped his upper chest, and then lowering all the way down until his arms were nearly straight. There was a thick-linked, straining network of chains wrapped around his hips, and it seemed that they were attached at the other end to a mess of lead cannonballs. Radek could not guess at the weight, except that it would easily crush a man to death.

Flint was naked from the waist up, except for a thin layer of sweat, and Swaysong had stripped him of his humanity. Sure, he was in the basic shape of a man: arms, legs, torso, a head. But his physique would shame statues promoting the heroic ideal, and then it was given orcish proportions. He had demanded limitless potential for feats of physical might from his body, and Swaysong had transformed him to accommodate the request. He was easily a foot taller than he’d been when Radek had met him the first time those many years ago, and more than twice that wider, and who could guess how much heavier.

He made little sound as he exercised, except for the softest sigh as he lowered himself from the bar each time. His work was not effortless, but it was inexorable. Roxanna folded her hands at the small of her back and raised her chin an imperious fraction of an inch, and waited in silence. Radek kept his tongue, and watched.

Eventually, Flint released the bar with one hand, and unfastened the chains from around his hips. The metallic net and its captive weights clattered to the ground with an indescribable cacophony, kicking up dust and creating a miniature crater. The brute released the pole and dropped down beside the discarded weights, and shook the sweat from his colossal arms.

“Speak,” he said with his back turned to them.

“There’s been an assassination,” Roxanna said. “Pourux Idelle is dead. Adam Maldu had his contract fulfilled.”

Flint turned, full eyebrows rising toward his naked scalp. “Idelle was out of bounds,” he said. “The contract was verboten. Who broke the concord? One of ours?”

“No,” Radek said, glancing at Roxanna. She’d been about to speak, but her mouth snapped shut. “It wasn’t a local crew, but they knew about the ban. They did it anyway.”

Flint’s face was impassive, but he didn’t speak for a long moment. Radek knew why.

“The Hands,” the brute said in a growl.

“We can’t be sure…” Roxanna said slowly, shifting a little.

“It’s a safe bet,” Radek argued, this time staring straight ahead. In his peripherals, he saw her glare over at him. “When we refused the contract and informed the grahfs, Maldu had nowhere else to go. Nobody local would touch that contract, and the Houses would have steered outside crews clear. Nobody small-time would have had the resources to hit Idelle. Who else has the balls to defy the grahfs, the Houses, and us, and has the know-how to actually get the job done? It was the Hands, Boss. They’re here.”

Radek watched Flint mull this. He and Roxanna both knew how Flint felt about the Crimson Hands. Rumor was that the Hands had somehow successfully poisoned Luned Bleddyn years ago, and that she’d died in Flint’s arms. Radek didn’t need rumor to know that Bleddyn was the one pretty bright spot in Flint’s evil life. Radek wasn’t there to see Luned die, but he saw the aftermath alright. Flint had bloodied his hands on any one of Luned’s enemies that crossed his path in a months-long rampage that left dozens dead, from Ixian Knights to government figures from Radasanth. The Hands had, thus far, eluded him.

He was not likely to be circumspect.

“I will keep the grahfs away from Maldu,” the brute said at last. “You will follow him. Watch him.”

“Why him?” Radek said.

“Because he will need to pay the Hands,” Roxanna said with a sigh. “It was detailed in the contract Maldu tried to sell us. They will need to meet on neutral ground to complete the transaction.”

“You will find the meeting place,” Flint said. “Quietly, and quickly, without the Hands knowing we know. And then you will kill Adam Maldu, and we will meet the Hands in his place.”

“They won’t give us anything,” Radek said slowly, unable to keep the dubious tone out of his voice.

Flint flexed his grip, turning his gaze down to his oversized hands.

“Perhaps I’ll find satisfaction in trying.”

[Jake Narmolanya]

Jake raced across the plateau, grass swishing beneath his boots, and delivered a swift overhead strike. His sword glanced off Breaker’s upraised blade of grass as if it were made of adamantine. The demigod shifted his hips in a barely perceptible movement, and suddenly Jake found himself thrown through the air and tumbling in the grass. He rolled to his feet, sword still gripped in both hands, blade steady.

“How do you slay a shadow?” Breaker asked. He advanced one way and then changed directions, so swiftly that Jake nearly lost his footing trying to defend. The blade of grass flashed out like chain lightning, threatening to sever Jake’s head. He barely brought his sword up in time to counter the stroke.

“How do you surprise an assassin who’s always ready?” The demigod crouched and spun fluidly, sweeping Jake’s legs out from under him. The half elf tried to tumble to his feet again, but found himself pinned by the weaponized blade of grass.

“I don’t bloody know,” Jake growled, struggling to escape, “that’s why I came to you.” He gathered his legs between them and kicked Cronen away, performing a reverse shoulder roll to his feet. The demigod grinned and circled, Y-shaped scars on his cheeks dimpling.

“How would you go about killing me?”

“I couldn’t.” Jake circled in the same direction as Breaker, guard high, muscles tensed.

“Supposing you needed to. Ulroké is no less dangerous.”

Jake feinted twice, failing to draw even a flicker of response from the demigod. “I suppose I’d come to you, asking for training. I’d stay with you a time, wait until you were distracted by something, and put an arrow in you. Then several more. And then chop you to bits, for good measure.”

The half elf attacked in a flurry of thrusts and slashes, throwing every trick he knew at his old teacher. The demigod parried Jake’s longsword each time, the blade of grass a whipping blur.

“But Ulroké is not an old friend. So think how you will approach him, and how you will bring him to his weakest moment. Only then will you be able to kill him.” Josh stopped the latest attack with a sweeping wrist-to-wrist block, and the force of the blow paralyzed Jake’s hand. He held onto the sword with his left and attempted to bash Cronen with the guard, which got him thrown neatly over the demigod’s reaping leg. Breaker disarmed the half elf like taking a toy from a toddler and shoved him toward the center of the plateau.

“You know how I’ll approach him,” Jake gasped, rubbing his throbbing wrist. “I’ll find out where he’s holed up, I’ll portal somewhere nearby, and I’ll work from there.”

“That is one of the many ways he and I differ,” Breaker warned, “he will be well protected.” The demigod tossed Jake’s mythril sword on the ground like a piece of firewood, and allowed the apparently ordinary blade of grass to waft away on the breeze. “You must portal directly to his inner sanctum, wherever that may be. And then you must fight him, and you must lose.

“You must give every appearance of having lost, but find a way to stay alive. When his confidence has overcome him… then you may be able to kill him.”

They trained until the sun had risen high in the sky. Sweat slicked Jake’s hair and clothing and his muscles burned, but Cronen seemed as fresh as when he’d arrived.

“I won’t ask you to help me kill him,” Jake said after sheathing his sword and catching his breath, “but will you help me find him?”

“I thought that was your specialty,” Breaker chuckled, rubbing his palms together, “intercontinental demon hunter that your are.”

“I haven’t any place to start,” Jake growled, slamming a fist into his palm, “I didn’t even know the man’s name before Amari told me.”

“I have little information on him,” Breaker said, spreading his palms, “but I have kept mind of one who may know more. His name is Flint Skovik. Rumors circulated among old channels that Ulroké was responsible for the death of Luned Bleddyn, and Skovik has been on the warpath ever since. If he hasn’t learned Ulroké’s location, he likely soon will. Perhaps you can offer your skills to his operation.” The demigod raised his eyebrows.

“Where can I find this Flint?” Jake asked, pacing to the edge of the plateau and gazing down at the curvature of the mountain, “I will do as you suggest. I have no other leads.”

“My sources put him in Ettermire… in a cavern beneath the Glaith River, of all places. Can you find it on your own?”

Jake nodded. “I know my way around Alerar,” he said, “and if I can’t, I know where to find people to ask.”

“Good,” Breaker replied, sitting in the center of the plateau and resuming his meditation, “I’ve got work to do.”

[Warpath]

A week’s worth of unpleasant work was done, and Radek was nursing a drink in a pub. There was a time that grog and vodka could be trusted to keep the pressures of his ill-led life at bay, but alcohol was a less formidable ally these days. Mostly he drank out of habit, and the placebo effect. Remembering inebriation was the next best thing.

Adam Maldu was dead. Radek had the coppery smell of the man’s blood in his nose still. Roxanna was with Flint now, relating the details. The underking would soon know where they were to meet with the Crimson Hands in Maldu’s place - the assassins none the wiser - and then the brute would spring his trap. Radek wasn’t excited about opening up another front in the multitude of wars they were already fighting, but in the end it didn’t matter. Flint pointed him in the right direction, and he went. It was simple, and that’s what he liked.

The public house was old and teeming with regulars, but the management was new. This had been a house of ill repute before, loyal to the Queen of the Pit. When Flint had toppled her, the systematic removal of her loyalists followed. Now, Radek drank for free, and the people tending the bar were fresh faces, but otherwise not much was outwardly different.

Someone in lace and yellow taffeta sidled up beside Radek at the bar, and leaned in close. He stared into his drink, waiting for her to leave. When she didn’t, he glanced sidelong and sighed. She was staring at him with plum-colored eyes. She bit her painted lip coyly.

“I’m curious,” the Aleraran woman said, “how much somethin’ is worth to you.”

Radek was formulating a bladed response about supply and demand, and milk given before the cow is bought, and so on, but she continued before he could deliver it.

“Say I was chattin’ up a pretty buck, tonight perchance, and he starts askin’ about a body named Flint Skovik, insinuatin’ said body lives under the river somewheres,” she said innocently, drawing circles on the bar top with black fingernails. “Say I was to hear somethin’ like that, hypothetical-like. How much would it be worth it to ya to hear more of such talk?”

Radek narrowed his eyes at her, let them wander over her face. He reached up with his left hand and set a round coin on its edge next to his drink, and left it balanced. Sheila - the dark elf had always called herself that - pointedly looked down at the coin, then up at his eyes again. She gave him a smile she normally reserved for bedrooms.

“A name? A face?” Radek said.

“Jake is the handle he gave,” Sheila said. “Looks a smidge young to have a suspicious wife just yet, so maybe he’s not lyin’. Half-Rai around the corner. Cute little blonde, looks like he’s seen some mess though. Good nerves. That enough?”

Radek tapped the edge of the coin with the blade of his knife, and sent it rolling - slowly - across the countertop toward Sheila. She was watching it warily, because she hadn’t realized Radek’s knife was drawn until now. She waited until the coin was in front of her, and then she snatched it away in a rush, eyes locked firmly on Radek’s blade. There was a long tense moment before she disappeared the coin into her dress, and relaxed a bit.

“Are you keen to earn another one of those?” Radek said. “It’d be...what? A week’s vacation for you?” He looked her over. “No offense.”

She scoffed at him, rolled her eyes, but didn’t walk away. She was looking out over the room, considering.

Ah, Radek thought. No vacation, but she did have debts to pay off.

He waited for the answer he knew was coming.

“Not gonna hurt him in front of me, are ya?” she said at last, glancing sidelong in his direction. “Not sayin’ no if you are, just...I’d appreciate it if ya didn’t. He doesn’t seem so bad. Was...nice to me.”

“I won’t,” Radek said with a shrug.

He didn’t, either. Fifteen minutes later, Sheila led a strapping youth out of the bar by his hand, smiling back at him with wicked promises in her eyes. She brought him around back, into the alley. Radek thought it was strange that the boy didn’t jerk or struggle when he snapped the hood over his blonde-topped head.

Of course, Radek didn’t know that Sheila told Jake exactly what was going to happen long before she ever took that first coin.

[Warpath]

Roxanna related the events of the last week to Flint for the second time, unbidden, and in great detail. He didn’t question her, didn’t ask if she was sure. Her loyalty and capabilities were never under suspicion. She bore the weight of that with pride, but she wished Flint would take her cautions to heart. He took too many risks at crucial junctions in his plans, as far as she was concerned. In a few moments, he’d do it again.

For now, though, Flint tapped one massive finger on a huge, detailed map of Ettermire. “The warehouse is upriver, here,” he said. “Flooded in the storms last month, unusable until the river recedes a bit more in the winter. It had a dry dock, if these blueprints are still accurate. The Hands will likely have a representative on the ground, under a show of guard, and reinforcements on the scaffolding above. It will be difficult to surround the structure without the Hands knowing, but impossible to prevent a majority of them from escaping when things don’t go their way in the fight. If we are not careful, we will come away from this empty-handed.”

Roxanna was about to respond when a figure in boiled leather hurried in, throwing back his hood. Neither Flint nor his lieutenant were angry at the interruption. No one in the organization would approach the underking without a good reason.

“Radek is bringing someone down,” the messenger said, his voice confident, quick, concise. “Picked up an armed man at the Hangnail asking around about Flint Skovik, knew something about the construction. Details sparse. The elevator is descending now.”

“I’ll come,” Flint said.

Roxanna growled, stepping to intercept him. “Let me go,” she said. “This close to the meeting with the Hands? Now? It’s a trap. He could be rigged up with gunpowder or…”

Flint almost smiled. Almost. “And Radek didn’t smell it? Even if so, who is more likely to survive it? You, or me? Come.”

Flint set off down the tunnels, lowering his head as he passed through the door frame, and Roxanna fell in on his right side. “We should cancel the ambush,” she said. “At least until the base is done and shored up.”

“No,” Flint said.

“They’ll show themselves again. We’ll find them eventually, regardless. Every day we reacquire pieces of Swanra’ann’s network. Someone knows where the assassins lay their heads…”

“We have the opportunity now,” Flint said. “I will seize it.”

Roxanna didn’t say more, as the pair had arrived in the vestibule. It was, like the rest of the base, unfinished. A pair of humming electric lamps were mounted to either side of the elevator shaft, and beams of sickly yellow light were aimed in on the oiled black machinery. The lights dimmed as the machinery shuddered to life, spitting out a cloud of sparks and pressured steam. Somewhere far, far above, Roxanna heard the screech of the brakes as the elevator began to drop down toward them.

The gears clanged rhythmically, the metallic song reverberating and echoing off the naked stone walls. Roxanna looked up at Flint. He watched the empty shaft impassively, crossing his tremendous arms over his chest. Armed elves began to filter into the room. They were off-duty members of the military police, young but capable recruits in need of a little extra cash. By day they guarded the true grahfs, by night they worked for the secret one. One by one they raised their rifles, sighting the empty shaft. Soon there was a semicircle of them, and twenty guns steadily aimed.

The elevator dropped into view and slowed with a whine as the brakes tightened. The car dropped into place with a heave, and then a mad spiderweb of chains began spinning, pulling the heavy metal door of the elevator open to reveal Radek, his gang of four, and a hooded-and-bound young man they pushed out in front of them.

Radek removed the hood without ceremony, revealing a blinking young face Flint did not recognize.

[Jake Narmolanya]

Spots danced before Jake’s eyes as the hood came off, and he hobbled forward, nearly overbalancing between the blinding effect of the electric lights and the bindings on his wrists and ankles. His heart pounded between his ears, and a cold sweat soaked into his sifan clothing. Even so, he had been in worse situations before. Why, the last time he was in Alerar…

As his vision returned Jake saw the twenty guns aimed at him and gulped. Perhaps he hadn’t been in worse situations. Being trapped in a burning building with a Haidian demon had been hair-raising, and fighting his way out of a bandit’s lair had proven difficult, but neither quite matched the lethality of so much hot lead. Jake raised his eyebrows.

How does coming to Ettermire always land me in such trouble?

Of course, this was somewhat different. Jake had stepped into the situation willingly, and reminded himself he could step out of it just as easily. But it had taken some doing to gain an audience with Flint Skovik, and the half elf was not about to give up on his mission. White hot anger still burned in the bottom of his heart, although with Breaker’s help he had banked the coals for the time being.

Jake recognized Flint. He’d been in the audience when Cronen had bested the behemoth of a man in the first round of Sei Orlouge’s Cell. Skovik looked even bigger and more intimidating than he had during that contest. The half elf glanced around at the gun barrels gathered on him, and then gazed up at the mountain of a man.

“All those muscles, and you still went with twenty rifles?” Jake clicked his tongue and shook out his blond locks. “Who do you think I am, Joshua Cronen?” He nearly stumbled again and, annoyed, summoned streaks of fire to burn through his bindings. The ropes fell away and Jake shook life into his limbs..

Twenty Alerarans touched the triggers of their weapons. A female human stepped up beside Skovik and spoke, her voice ringing over the buzz of electric lights.

“He’s a spy for the Hands! Seize him, and use chains this time!”

Skovik held up a massive fist before anyone could obey. It seemed impossible for a man so big to move so fast.

“What do you know of Breaker?” Skovik rumbled.

“He’s the one who gave me your location,” Jake said, “I’m looking to kill Lichensith Ulroké. Josh thought you might like to help me.”

The riflemen were too disciplined to speak, but a wave of sideways glances stole around the semicircle. The woman put her head together with the man who’d brought Jake in, conversing in hushed tones. Flint appeared to listen in, and then crossed his arms over his chest, the action like laying one tree trunk atop another. The riflemen tensed.

“What’s your name?” Skovik demanded.

“Jake Narmolanya,” the half elf gave a flourishing bow despite the situation.

Flint’s hard hazel eyes showed no sign of recognition, but he seemed to mull the name over for a time before uncrossing his arms.

“Everyone except Radek and Roxanna, out. We need a private word with Mister Narmolanya.”

Like wind up automatons the riflemen and the few who’d been in Radek’s company filed out. The smell of hot metal hung heavy in the air, floating off the lights and elevator.

Jake opened his mouth to speak, but Flint cut him off.

“Ulroké’s head is mine.”

“Very well,” Jake said. Only if you’re quicker and cleverer, he thought.

“It will be you who helps us,” Flint added, “not the other way around. What assistance can you offer?”

“I have a few useful skills,” Jake said. He glanced at the far corner of the room, where one of Radek’s lackeys had left his sheathed sword. Twin portals appeared beside Jake and the weapon, and he reached casually through and shouldered the crystal blade. The portals snapped out of existence. “Get me a general idea of where Ulroké is, and I can put you right next to him.” He placed his hands on his hips and rocked on the balls of his feet. “So you tell me how I might be of assistance.”

[Warpath]

Action and consequence were playing out behind Flint’s eyes, and the world was full of possibility.

When the elevator’s doors opened, fate was a violin string plucked and then pulled progressively tighter and tighter. The tension built, the string whining, threatening to snap, and every passing second gave birth to a multitude of eventualities. Flint saw them all, action and consequence, reaction, endgame: explosive diagrams that scattered and expanded and branched in endless near-chaos.

He lunged forward with hands outstretched and dragged the half-elf to the ground, a big cat overwhelming his prey. He felt the skull crack and give way between his hands. A month later, his men started dying on the streets, culminating with Roxanna’s body found jammed up in the Boilerworks. Radek would die sometime later - burnt? Lightning. Battered. Here Flint would stand at the end, again on this very spot, waiting as the elevator came down, and it would open to reveal the Breaker, looking grim, here for revenge. Flint’s empire would collapse. He’d be defeated - maybe die. Ettermire would fall shortly thereafter, unless Josh took over from him as he had from Swanra’ann. Unlikely. Revenge, not ambition.

Flint dismissed the vision, and a dozen others like it. More scenarios were stacking on. In some he seized Jake as a captive: could he ransom him to Lye, or back to Breaker? Unwise. Not worth the risk, the payoff in question…

And then Jake showed them all what he was worth, what he could do, and all the scenarios melted away and left only one possibility - only one viable course of action, despite the inherent threat to all he’d been building.

Roxanna and Radek were professionals even before he’d met them, and despite his gifts and training, he saw in their body language the same realizations striking them. Roxanna’s deltoids rippled almost imperceptibly as the tension gathered in her shoulderblades. The lines around Radek’s eyes faded as his jaw relaxed.

“Come with me,” Flint said to their guest. “I want to show you something.”

He didn’t wait for the half-elf to respond. He turned and walked away. Radek eyed the young man before turning to follow. Roxanna stared at him openly, and when he glanced up at her, she raised red eyebrows and jerked her chin toward Flint’s back - go on. She kept herself behind Jake as he walked, one hand on the hilt of her sword.

They entered his makeshift sanctum amidst all the chaos of ongoing construction, and Flint waved one hand over the multitude of maps and diagrams on display there. The topmost blueprint, centered on the long table, was apparently a warehouse. If Flint was worried about Jake seeing the rest of his plans, he didn’t give sign of it.

“The Crimson Hands have assassinated a figure of some prominence in my city,” Flint said. My city. “The contract was forbidden by me, and also by the grahfs who police such things. The Hands are the only organization both bold and resourceful enough to carry out such a contract, despite it being out of bounds.”

Flint tapped one massive finger on the blueprint. “This is a warehouse on the river. It flooded recently, rendering it unusable, and it will be some months before the dry season. Repair crews won’t bother even checking in on it before then. The Hands are to meet with the man who hired them to fulfill the contract here. That man is dead. You will go in his place. I don’t know how many of them are there, or what they know, or what their capabilities may be. Lye himself may be in that room.”

“Do you think that’s likely?” Jake said. His tone indicated he didn’t think so.

“No,” the brute said, agreeing with Jake’s assessment. “Your presence here now, so close to the culmination of my plans...I suspected this to be a trap. Lye is cleverer than me, and one of the few men left in the world to whom I am physically inferior. Your mentor is another. No, I think this is an elaborate scheme to remove me from the board as a nuisance, and you...perhaps you’re to be a bonus. He would know that I cannot fail to recognize the bait, and that by showing me his hand would force me to commit to action.”

Roxanna was glancing between Jake and Flint now, and spoke up, albeit quietly. “Would it not, then, be wiser to ignore the bait?”

Flint shook his head again. “Lye will not be easy to overcome. He is paranoid...like me. But he is also overconfident. He is taking a risk, so I will take a risk too. Maybe he does not know what Jake can do...but I know for a certainty that he does not know what I can do.”

It was Jake’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “What makes you so sure?”

There was the barest ghost of a smile in Flint’s eyes when he looked down at the demon hunter. “I’m not sure what I can do,” he said. “This is a small risk for Lye, and success would benefit him greatly. He will not be concerned. In his mind, failure would simply mean the loss of some low-level recruits and a relatively inconsequential amount of money. We must find a way to capitalize now, before he recognizes the danger and formulates a plot we cannot respond to. We must turn his small risk into a great advantage, now. We must be more dangerous than we appear.”

“Okay,” Jake said uneasily. “...how?”

“You will go to the meeting,” Flint said again. “Alone. You will present an opportunity with the minimum appearance of risk. You will tempt them to obliterate you. And when the temptation is far too great for them to recognize the threat, you will use your talents….”

“...you want him to bring them here,” Radek said, frowning.

Flint did smile this time.

[Jake Narmolanya]

Dark translucent clouds stretched a thin film over the moon as it looked down on the flooded warehouse. The river rushed nearby, giving full voice to its powerful current. The sound of water echoed off the stone walls as Jake crouched in the bushes in the lee of the warehouse. His nose was full of mildew, but he dared not sneeze. His pointed ears practically vibrated as he listened to the hushed voices above.

“Maldu wouldn’t be this late. He knows better.” The man’s voice had a harsh tenor edge to it.

“Things happen,” another man with a deeper voice replied.

“He’ll be here.” A woman whispered confidently.

Jake leaned out from the protection of the bush with great care. The dark clothing and cap he’d donned for the mission allowed him to blend in with the night. He could see the three speakers along with a fourth figure, standing on the roof of the dilapidated warehouse. They were in a tight cluster, keeping watch in all directions. All directions but straight down.

Jake created a portal and rolled through it, somersaulting to his feet atop the building. The assassins reacted well, showing their training. By the time the portal had dissipated each had drawn a dagger, and they spread out, hemming the half elf in on the middle of the roof.

“You’re not Maldu,” the man with the tenor voice said, smiling.

“No, and he won’t be coming. And you won’t be leaving!” Jake lunged and struck, cutting the assassin’s arm with his crystal blade. The man cursed and dropped his dagger but maintained position. The foursome surrounding Jake pressed closer.

“You’re going to tell us who you are, and who sent you here,” the leader seethed, “either now, or after we torture it out of you.”

“Torture?” Jake said, swinging his sword to keep them at bay, “that doesn’t sound like much fun.”

The largest of the men crept up behind him and grabbed him in an overarm bearhug. Jake stifled his conditioned response to escape and retaliate. Instead he drew on the Eternal Tap.

A portal opened up under their feet and swallowed him and the large man whole.

“After them!” Roared the man with the bleeding arm. He picked up his dagger in his left hand and lunged into the hole in the roof. The others swiftly followed, and then the portal winked shut.

The assassins found themselves in a dark, dank space with their large compatriot. The half elf had slipped away, and was nowhere to be found.

“Where is he?” The woman wondered. The foursome spread out slightly, backs together, daggers prepared. “Mind yourselves, this could be a-”

An electric hum filled the room, and the powerful lights flickered on. The assassins threw up their arms to block out the brilliance, finding themselves facing a wall of rifles when their eyes adjusted.

One by one, their daggers clattered to the ground.

“There, now.” Jake said, stepping out from behind the firing squad, “I believe someone mentioned torture?” His green eyes hardened poisonously. “Or you could just tell us where to find your master.”

[Warpath]

Flint’s heart was a giant’s footfalls in his chest - slow and thunderous compared to that of a human being. For him, this might be called “racing.” So much hinged upon this moment.

Jake had come through on his part of the plan. Four dark-clad figures stood with hands raised, facing a firing squad, their daggers at their feet. The walls behind and to either side of them were cruelly solid. They had been outplayed by an impossibility.

But they were Lye’s trainees - perhaps directly, perhaps indirectly. Flint knew better than to think this was done. As he stood back in the shadows, hyper-aware of every facial twitch and micro-expression in the room, the brute knew that Jake felt the same. This wasn’t over. It was just beginning.

Skovik saw it between heartbeats. One of the men made a clicking noise in his throat - a signal of some sort - and then bit down hard on something. Before Flint knew what he was doing, he had a knife drawn out of the nearest soldier’s belt and had thrown it across the room. The butt of the knife caught a second assassin in the side of the mouth, forcing him to spray a mixture of blood, spittle, and a poison-filled false tooth onto the wall. The assassin went down.

Jake was across the room just behind the thrown knife, tackling the female assassin to the ground, forcing his fingers into her mouth. Another human heartbeat, and then the remaining pair was on the ground beside them, tackled beneath a wave of Aleraran soldiers. “Poison!” someone in the back cried uselessly. “Stop them!”

The woman had dark, steely-cold eyes, and she stared with naked, vicious hatred up at Jake even as he struggled to save her life. She bit down on his fingers, drawing blood, but he persisted. He had found the false tooth and was cushioning it against her attempts to crush it. He realized at the last moment that she’d given up on it already, and brought his free hand up just in time to catch her arm at the wrist. She’d struggled beneath him and retrieved one of the dropped daggers and…

Jake cursed, flinching away as she raised her other hand - a second knife clutched in it - poised to drive it into the side of his neck. She had such a savage hold on his other hand with her teeth that he couldn’t bring his hand to bear, and he knew his knee was coming up too slow…

But she didn’t stab him. Instead, she drew the blade deftly across her own throat. She smiled around his mangled fingers, and stared into his eyes as she died, and dozens of bodies struggled and cursed and jostled around them in the harsh electric lamplight.

[Warpath]

Two days later, Jake sat staring at three bodies draped in white shrouds. His fingers ached, wrapped tight in their stained bandages. Down here, so far from the sun, time lost its weight and it seemed to him that a miserable eternity had passed. It was equally possible that there had been no passage of days at all: that it had been scant minutes or hours since he’d watched the life go out of that woman’s eyes. He’d only caught little snatches of sleep, and the mechanical clocks everywhere were so quiet that he suspected them of being liars.

There was the droning and unceasing sound of work down here, and the work came in two unpalatable flavors: the mining and clearing and shoring work of the dwarves, and the far less tasteful labor performed by Radek. The fourth man - the last surviving assassin - was screaming. Just when it seemed that the victim’s voice was spent, the wolfish Salvarman apparently found some horrible new pain to explore, and the screams started anew.

Flint’s crew had managed to save only two of the assassins. The woman had been the first to die, since she had not relied on the poison at all. The one Flint stopped with the thrown knife had crawled after his lost capsule and stuffed it back into his mouth, and in an effort to stop him the brute had stomped on him. That had prevented him from ingesting the poison, but he nevertheless died from internal bleeding.

The third assassin had ingested some poison, but had vomited most of it up after the struggle. It was Radek’s attentions that ultimately ended him not long into the first night. Ironically, the last survivor was the leader, who had been the first to ingest his false tooth and got the largest dose of poison. Between a good constitution and the work of an Aleraran alchemist, he had the good fortune of surviving long after his followers had gone beyond pain.

...and the miserable fate to know Radek the longest.

No one, Jake included, thought there was much chance that the hapless assassin would live long enough to break. Lye trained his dogs well, or they simply feared the Hands more than unspeakable agony punctuated by an ignoble death. The demon hunter had opened another dark chapter in his life and, it seemed, would have nothing to show for it. Was this worth another black spot on his soul?

He was musing on this when the screaming stopped and, after a moment, the door to the makeshift torture chamber opened. Jake leaned around the corner just in time to watch Radek emerge, slam the door closed, and stalk down the hallway away from him. The lanky Salvarman was bare-chested and sweaty, smeared everywhere with blood and grime. His hands were shaking. Jake followed, at a distance.

He heard voices echoing down the hallway, interspersed between loud interjections from the miners and their equipment.

“...long left,” Radek was saying to someone. “...learned too late.”

“...time…” a woman’s voice replied. Roxanna, Jake decided. “...recover...another crack once his body is whole. He did just recover from a poisoning.”

Radek grunted in the negative. “...point. His mind is broken. Thought he was just tough, but it’s not that. This guy...Lichensith...twisted. Poor fucker’s indoctrinated. I broke him hours ago...just didn’t realize I’m not making him afraid of me. Making him...more...of his boss. Like it’s Lye in there instead of me, testing him. He’s babbling the same thing over and over. His mind wants to give me want I’m asking for, he just...can’t make his mouth do it. Imprisoned...own brain.”

There was a long silence.

“...have it right here. We should use it,” Roxanna said at last. “...heard what Radek just said. The answer is there...locked...and we have the key right here. We can read his mind.”

“No,” a new voice interjected immediately. It was Flint. “No magic. None of us are paying that cost.”

“...regenerate…” Roxanna said, insisting.

“It is not the same,” Flint growled. “Magic has its own rules, and they are harder to violate.”

“It’s not just magic,” Roxanna insisted, louder. “It’s mechanical. Alchemical. The magic is just a small part…”

“The answer is no,” Flint said with finality. “Give it to me. Leave it on the table. Now. Radek, go rest. I need to think. We can still use this assassin as a message, or a bargaining chip.”

Jake stepped back into the shadows of the hallway. He was still dressed in the outfit he’d chosen for his nocturnal mission two nights before, and it served well to obscure him in the unfinished tunnels. Radek stalked past looking exhausted, and was none the wiser to the half-elf’s presence.

“...was a mistake…” Roxanna was saying.

“It was a calculated risk,” Flint said. Jake could imagine the dismissive shrug that must have accompanied the statement. “We learned much about the Hands.”

“...about the boy?”

“...potential ally,” Flint mused.

“...dangerous…” Roxanna said, doubtful.

“No,” Flint said. “The Breaker already knows where I am, and Narmolanya is focused on Lye, not me. He isn’t tied to any of my enemies. He walks free. It will soon be irrelevant if he continues on this path. Lye is death.”

Roxanna said something more, but Jake couldn’t make it out over a large rumble from some distance down the tunnel.

“...to bed, Roxanna,” Flint was saying.

Moments later, the leather-clad woman exited Flint’s quarters with her shoulders drawn up. She slowed near the entrance to the hallway Jake was hiding in, paused with a pensive glance over her shoulder, and then she shook her head and continued on her way, muttering to herself. Jake lingered in the dark for a long time, musing on all of this, and felt a thrill when he heard Flint’s distinct, heavy footfalls retreating into the distance. The brute was leaving.

He felt the risk keenly, but he also felt the weight of the cost he’d already paid. He couldn’t walk away. Not now.

He sneaked into Flint’s sanctum, cautious, and found it as deserted as it sounded. There were the maps, the books, the exercise equipment...and something that hadn’t been there before.

It looked like a sailor’s spyglass, except that it was black and smooth and did not collapse or adjust in any way. There were wide openings on either end, and lenses set inside them, except that the lenses were bowed in on both sides and set too deep inside the tube. One end had six small, wicked claws splayed out around the edge, and it was clear that these were designed to close down around any eye placed against that end of the device. To the half-elf’s dismay, he discovered that the other end promised its own equally horrific attitude toward eyeballs: the lens had a hole in the center, through which a tiny glass spike emerged.

The thing had weight - not just physical, but magical. Roxanna had called it a key...a key to their prisoner’s mind. A key that exacted a cost Flint was not willing to pay...