“This is reckless.” Teya warned Zell later just after noon as they crouched behind a stack of empty ale casks in a narrow alley near the docks district.

Zell had sent Rin against her wishes to inform Kel what was happening, as both of his parents along with Agitha had likely already departed for Coralia’s forest base.

“I won’t risk them being moved and losing them.” Zell replied firmly. “Can you do it?” He repeated his earlier request.

“Get in and confirm they have captives? Child’s play. It’s what you proposed after that’s reckless.” Teya crossed her arms as she replied.

“I’m not the same person you remember.” Zell promised. “Trust me.”

Teya gave him another appraising look and threw up her hands. “Fine. Give me a few minutes.”

With those words, she leaped vertically to grab one of the weathered beams supporting the overhanging roof of the dilapidated warehouse before slipping into a narrow window just below the roof line.

Zell waited and watched the window like a hawk, scarcely blinking. As promised, after five minutes a pair of small dirty hands appeared and flashed a few signs. Sure enough ten children, matching his description of the missing former slaves were inside, along with a dozen adults.

It was everything he needed to know. The entrance to the place was twenty feet further into the alley, where an apparent vagrant was passed out sitting against the building. With every step, dark emotions crawled into his mind. A sea of unresolved rage and bitterness had finally burst forth from the dam in his soul and these men were doomed in the flood plain below.

The image of the boy he had first saved, Roshi choking on his own blood and teeth, the smell of the pyre smoke as his body was consumed, and the smug faces of the traffickers that had killed him all flooded his mind.

Zell knew the truth of the sentry posing as a drunkard and the man never detected the hard kick to the temple that sent him instantly into the blackness of death.

Inside the building, in the room nearest the door five scruffy thugs in various mismatched outfits of leather and padded armor sat around a rickety table gambling with dice. The sudden crash at the door caused them all to jump to their feet at once, upsetting the table and all the coins piled on it.

In the dust and intruding sunlight stood a plain looking, if muscular brown haired kid. That wouldn’t have been frightening on its own, but he currently held half of the destroyed heavy door that had been secured by several locks and an iron bar in one hand.

“The door was stuck so I had to force it a bit.” Zell explained in apology as he walked calmly toward the group as they scrambled for their weapons.

“Who the hell are you and what do you want?” The best dressed and equipped thug growled, though there was a faint break in his voice.

“Well, you see...” Zell began politely, but suddenly his visage went dark and a grin more at home on a demon’s face appeared. “I am a very bad day for child trafficking scum, and I want you to suffer. Now die as nameless trash, if you please.”

“Y-yeah right! This is a joke. One kid is gonna take us down? Do you even know who you’re dealing with?” The leader spouted back in clearly feigned confidence. “Get...!” He started to shout to his men but suddenly his words were replaced by a gout of dark blood.

“Were you saying something?” Zell’s cold voice reached his fading mind and his gaze drifted down to his chest where a thick, muscled forearm was buried nearly to the elbow into his chest cavity.

The thugs were utterly unprepared for the overwhelming violence that rained down upon them in the following moment and indeed it was only a moment. The sound of wet splatter and snapping bones gave way to pitiful wails and rattling last breaths.

Nothing. Zell felt nothing as he slaughtered them. Traitors to humanity were lower than filth. It carried the same satisfaction as cleaning a tray of dishes. He finally understood what Agitha had once told him. There was little triumph in taking out the trash.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

A group of three thugs responding to the noise charged to the edge of the room and saw the grisly scene. The boy’s white shirt was stained almost completely crimson and clung to his muscular frame. His arms were slick with gore all the way to his elbows. He cut the figure of death itself, and his green eyes studied them with all of the emotion of a shark that had spotted a wounded seal.

All at once they tried to scramble away. All at once they were torn apart. Zell wanted this scene to be horrific, wanted to send a very clear message to the ones in control of these men.

One man, a thug named Rett had trailed far behind the group of thugs thanks to a limp he carried from an encounter with a vile elf girl that had slashed his ankle with such force that the tendon there was severed. Not only that she had killed his brother Soro by viciously castrating him. As he slowly approached the corner in the hall that would lead to the main room, something rolled into view. His eyes widened. It was the head of one of his comrades.

Rett turned around and fled toward where the children were being held. Perhaps he could bargain for his life if he took them hostage.

Zell stalked through the building, sparing none. Eleven had fallen by the time he reached the back room, where the cell of the captives was meant to be.

He opened the door slowly, and found a man that was somehow familiar holding a knife to the neck of the dwarven girl he had saved from Axis. She looked at Zell with wide, pleading eyes.

Zell smiled at the man grimly.

“Not much for counting are you?” Zell asked him.

“Eh...?” The thug suddenly felt the dagger leave his grip as a precise slash to his forearm severed the tendons to his fingers.

“Hello again, Cripple!” The sing song voice of the girl that haunted his nightmares chirped behind him. “How’s Eunuch?” Those were the last words Rett ever heard in the living realm as a small knife entered the base of his skull.

The children were shaken but mostly uninjured. Teya and Zell led them outside after Zell scrounged up enough rags and water to clean himself up. They hustled the children through the carnage, and had them close their eyes tightly and follow in a line while holding hands.

Very little was said on the walk to the orphanage. The children were obviously still numb and frightened from their ordeal. Merissa took them straight inside without asking any questions to comfortable rooms with good food and water to rest until they were recovered.

“Sorry to leave all of this on you.” Zell began once she had returned. “Please take this as a donation and my thanks.” He handed her a heavy pouch that jingled as she took it.

“Three hundred gold for now, expect more in the future.” He said in response to her quizzical expression.

“Three hundred gold? Are you crazy!?” Merissa stammered. “We can expand and buy food for the whole year with this much!”

“Make good use of it. I have to run and apologize to my lady and her father who are probably rushing this way as we speak...” Zell continued.

“Already here, Bait!” Kel’s deep voice said from behind him. The giant of a man was armored and his massive flamberge was strapped across his back. His two daughters were flanking him, also outfitted for battle.

“Time to bring down the hammer on some kidnappers, huh?” Nin asked, stretching her shoulders confidently.

“Thank you all, but it’s taken care of and the kids are safe.” Zell said, smiling in gratitude.

“That’s a relief but I wish I hadn’t missed out on the exercise.” Kel lamented, grabbing his belly and the extra fat that was beginning to accumulate over his his once chiseled abdomen.

Rin walked up to Zell with an unhappy expression.

“I don’t like when you send me away.” She said to him seriously.

“I couldn’t let you see what I was going to do. I am so sorry.” Zell said, reaching for her hand which she allowed him to take after a second of hesitation.

“I know what you did anyways.” She said. “You reek of blood. Giving evil what it deserves is not something you need to hide from me.” She added with a tone of finality.

“Understood.” Zell bowed his head in apology.

----------------------------------------

“Was it her?” The man known as the Faceless General sat behind his huge desk of polished black marble in a large office decorated with the skulls of many monsters and more than a few humans and humanoids.

“The scene matches the description of the inn massacre.” Replied the individual sitting across from the Faceless General. “Eleven men were bludgeoned and eviscerated without weapons. The only exception was an individual that was dispatched with a clean puncture to the base of the skull. Most of the carnage was likely inflicted by the elf, but it is probable that she used an accomplice.” The speaker was an unusually articulate and dispassionate dwarf in a dark gray cloak.

His belly length reddish brown beard was worn in three thick braids, banded with onyx rings spaced evenly every few inches. A long pipe carved of bone adorned his lip, trailing a perpetual thin line of smoke. Completing the intimidating visage was a molded plate of silvery metal that was grafted to the flesh around his right eye socket. Inside the metal socket, his right eye appeared to be a ball of red hot iron fresh from the forges of hell. By contrast his left eye was the color of an overcast sky.

The Faceless General leaned back, sighing behind his blank wooden mask. If the rumors were to be believed, then not only was Agitha back on her rampage without warning, another horribly overpowered ally of hers had also miraculously returned from the dead. Coralia; if that beast turned her attention to the underworld along with Agitha then there was next to no hope of salvaging his teetering power structure.

Much of his dwindling hope was now resting on this odd foreigner whom had recently appeared in Vinia aboard a vessel from Red Isle. The dwarf had found the Faceless General’s private office easily, something no one else had ever done, then offered his services in eliminating both Agitha and Coralia. The information his many contacts could dig up about this new apparent ally only deepened the Faceless General’s trepidation. Records of a dwarf known as Forsaken Robaru went back over seven hundred years and always appeared in passages related to unprecedented calamity.

“You really think you can beat them both after everything you’ve learned of them?” The Faceless General asked.

“Success is likely with the correct steps.” Robaru answered without emotion. “This one has nothing further to speak of.” The dwarf stood and turned with unsettling fluidity and silence.

The Faceless General once again saw the beautiful weapon strapped to the dwarf’s back. It was a two headed battleaxe, each blade was a skeletal wing crafted from dark steel. The center of the axe head was in the form of a naked demonic woman, a succubus if the General had to guess. It was obviously heavily enchanted and gave off a smoky and suffocating aura.

After the door closed, the general relaxed from a tense state that he hadn’t even realized he was in. Whatever that dwarf really was, he was incredibly dangerous and the General wondered if he had made a mistake inviting him into his territory.