Derek returned to his apartment around midday Saturday, several hours before his briefing with Silas Turrow, and possessed with an uncharacteristic air of excitement. This wasn't because Silas was a pleasant man, far from it. Kaseem was a force of nature that can be understood, can be anticipated even, but Silas Turrow? He was a patron of violence for reasons Derek still could not name, and for that, Silas was someone he could not understand, could not anticipate. This was why Derek had always found Silas Turrow, the Mask of Kaseem, a frightening individual. But this man did not linger in Derek's mind, not right now.
Derek rushed to the kitchen with his shopping bags, and feeling delightfully silly, he threw on one of his more recent purchases, a neon pink apron. As the early afternoon approached, he found himself in a light sweat and unable to stop glancing at the clock. The new coffee table was soon balancing an assortment of finger food, buffalo cheese dip, chicken wings, chips, salsa, hotdogs, and popcorn. He twisted around for yet another precursory check at the cake where it rested on the kitchen countertop. Shockingly, nothing was amiss since the last time he studied the dessert, one or two minutes ago.
"Everything's fine," Derek said. He flipped open a small notepad. Written in a crooked slant was a list with nearly everything crossed off. Derek let out a small noise not too different from a squeak. The first word, right under the title 'Preparations' looked back at him innocently.
Outfit
Derek tore off the apron and bolted to his bedroom rummaging about with reckless abandon. The jersey was hanging in his closet just the other day, a bright blue and white shirt that looked more like a dress on Derek's wiry frame. He pushed away the urge to crack his knuckles as a splinter of frustration settled into his spine. He was about to dive back into the hunt when his phone alarm went off.
Derek swore and ran to the door. The guests had arrived, right on schedule. Henry stopped at the door to his apartment and busily tidied himself. Taking in a measured breath, He wiped the sweat off his forehead with a napkin. Like struggling into pants that were too small, He tried to pull on a smile, oblivious to the fact that he had been wearing one for most the morning. He felt a hammer in his chest beat away frantically, but Derek gritted his teeth and swung open the door as nonchalantly as he could.
"Wow! Everyone's here. Come on in!" Derek said.
He stepped aside and no one entered, because no one was there. Henry paused and tugged out his notebook. He flipped from the 'Preparations' page and turned to the next list titled 'Execution'. He scanned the list quickly and turned to the doorway again, "Please make yourselves at home."
Derek waited a moment, then shut the door. He offered to take imaginary coats, then chided
himself quietly when he remembered that they were in the middle of a heatwave, marking the start of Summer. He then retreated into the kitchen to 'Make Drinks' which translated loosely into him puzzling over how to perform an exorcism using a bottle opener. Hastily, he penciled in a note to practice this step later. One tutorial on his phone and a few moments of dead silence rewarded Derek with 4 bottle caps to deposit in the trash. He hurled them into the bin triumphantly and was closing the lid when he stopped.
Peeking out from the trash, between old eggshells, empty take out containers, and an unwrapped tuna salad sandwich, he spotted an ocean blue tongue of cloth. He knew what it was instantly and fished it out with a finger. The football jersey he had only just purchased was riddled in smells and fragments on what might have been food a day or two ago. Gagging, Derek released his grip and let the jersey fall back into the trash. He shrugged off the oddity and returned to the comfort of his notes.
The television exploded in a cacophony of riotous cheers as Derek watched a man dive into the endzone, a football tucked snuggly into the crook of his elbow. Hesitantly, he rose from the couch, brandishing a brimming glass of beer in one hand and waving the other hand, gloved in a gargantuan foam finger. Tugging the foam finger glove off with his teeth and snatching up his phone, Derek backtracked the old recording he had found online just for this occasion. To his disappointment, He could not find a game with the football player that Brandon seemed to like since there was an actor who went by the same name. Studying the video, Derek spotted it again. A rather large man in the audience armed similarly with foaming cup of ale. Excitement bubbled up within him as he pressed play and watched expectantly as the frothing fan screamed gleefully and shook the beer over his head. It showered the fanatic head to toe in the majority of the draft. Derek stared intently as the man giggled with childish merriment and was clapped on the shoulder by his neighbors who were just as revelrous. As far as Derek could guess, past what the sports anchors were saying, the soaked man seemed to be shouting something like a chant along with the rest of the spectators. Derek looked at his notepad at the word "Toast" and he raised his own drink well over his head.
"Good job!" He said.
Then he upended the entire cup onto his head. The beer, which had sat out with the other three drinks for a while now, had lost it's more pleasant chill. It cascaded through his ash black hair and into his clothes, making them cling to his skin in a warm and moist embrace. Derek gasped all the same and spun to the empty couch, "Did you see that?!" he said.
A peculiar thought found Derek racing into the bathroom to the mirror. His moral crumbled. The man looking back at him was thin like Derek, he was the same height, the same scratches on his face from the other night, he even looked like he was also dipped in a tub of beer. Very much unlike Derek however, the man in the mirror was not smiling. Feeling a familiar quiet press in from all sides, he reached up to his face and felt at his lips. His reflection did the same. It was Derek who wasn't smiling, no trick of the reflection. Numbly, he tapped his phone and the concert of cheering and shouts from the living room fell to the spreading quiet. He almost hurled his phone away when it suddenly vibrated in his palm. It was time to meet with the Mask of Kaseem.
***
"You must be excited for the evening’s festivities." A low voice said. It wove a carefully cheery brightness into the words.
Derek hurled a questioning look at the only other passenger on the large elevator. An eagle-faced man with caramel colored skin and loose black hair hanging to the shoulders was watching him with an almost concerned expression framing his grey eyes, "You're early." He said.
Derek nodded once and looked back at the elevator door.
They both were dressed smartly, Derek was armored in a cement gray vest over his blue button up while his elevator partner wore a black and purple three piece-suit. Derek hated how restrictive it was, but Silas Turrow had been adamant on the dress code.
"You don't look familiar," The taller man continued, "First time at Edwin's Peak?"
"Yes."
"Then I insist you let me know if it's to your liking. I make an effort to be a thoughtful host." The man said. His grey eyes studied Derek, following the two deep scratch marks along the side of the younger man's impassive face. The eyes then, almost instinctively, twitched down to Derek's bare hands and frowned. Derek chose not to waste any of his words on this. He was a tight knot of anxiety as the lift was dragging him toward the Mask of Kaseem. Silas insisted they meet here, having said specifically, "You deserve a treat."
As the lift reached the final floor, Derek blinked at the sudden blast of red gold sunlight through the metal lattice of the elevator door. Something was partially blocking the steady glare of fading twilight. He first saw a pair of black polished shoes, a brick red suit jacket, and finally, a primly dressed women was standing before them, opening the grate in a practiced motion and extending an arm away from them and toward a sight that had Derek forcing down a gasp.
All about them, the casino rooftop was framed by an extensive garden. a series of stone lined ponds had been placed sporadically throughout the small jungle. He caught sight of something moving in the water. Very much like the fish below, the flowers above displayed vibrant shades of blue, red, green, and purple petals. Not too far away, a child was sitting on his father’s shoulders and reaching up to pluck a pink gemstone off one of the taller trees. Not a gemstone, Derek amended, a nearly florescent apple, caught in the final light of day. He noted that all guests seemed to trail a white fabric off their shoulders, even the children. This high up, pleasant winds made quick work of mollifying whatever heat the day had baked into him.
Derek stepped out last and watched as the woman beside them draped a cloud-white cloak onto the shoulders of the first man.
"We are on schedule." She pointed toward the east where Derek saw a trail cut through the garden and a distant eye of blue ocean winking between the dancing green vines and leaves.
He gave Derek a quick smile, "If you would excuse me."
The woman stepped up to Derek, her demeanor becoming stiffer, "Your invite?"
Derek frowned, "I already did this downstairs."
She didn't budge, her hand outstretched. Derek didn't have an invitation, not in the traditional sense. He unbuttoned one cuff, watching the woman intently as she looked steadily more confused. Three groups of people may attend these more subtle functions, Silas had explained. There were intermediary handlers like Silas, members of what were called The Named like Kaseem, and their Instruments like Derek. Instruments were identified by a signet ring bearing a stamp of their affiliated patron but Kaseem, above all else, was honest about the relationship between The Named and their Instruments, between himself and Derek.
With a soft clink, Derek rested a singular manacled wrist onto the woman’s open palm. On the parts of his hand not clamped in wrought iron, her hand was cool with sweat. He couldn't help enjoying the shift in her attitude. All semblance of authority felt clammy as the recognition of who he was, or who he belonged to, dawned on her.
Derek watched expectantly as her entire posture transformed, as if she had just discovered a bomb at a garden party. Darting eyes flashed over the cuts on his face, his clothes and the folds of his jacket, "No weapons."
He followed her gaze and looked himself over in blatant mockery of the woman’s scrutiny. Head still angled down, Derek flicked his eyes up to stare at her through his ash colored hair. He raised both his arms as if to hug her, inviting further inspection, and remained silent.
"Cute." She said, surrendering a cloak, "Keep that up. I hear it's typically inconvenient to clean people off the rocks before the sea steals them, but in your case, I'll be the first to volunteer."
***
The garden eventually opened to a clearing with a wide sandstone amphitheater set at the edge of the rooftop. Derek had seen something like this in pictures but mostly, they were crumbling shells, echoes of former might. The path at his feet soon became beige tiles that declined in steps toward the lower stadium. Semicircular rows of stone seating branched away from the steps at regular intervals, all facing the half-moon stage beyond which was nothing but open air and the Atlantic Ocean. Derek descended to the final row, taking curious note of his surroundings. Against his better judgement, he allowed himself a small trickle of excitement as he took in the stage before him and the stands behind. While a dance performance seemed too benign somehow for Silas, Derek had never seen anything
like it in person. He thought fondly of that recording in his apartment with the dancing man, cheering, dripping, and being jostled playfully by his friends. Sparing no more thought, Derek planted himself soundly on a span of stone in the curved front row, beside the steps. His gaze drifted over the stage, only now noticing it was covered in an even layer of bright sand that ended like everything else in a sheer drop to the ocean surf. The even sound of crashing waves and seagulls lulled his shoulders from their tight, angular tension. His eyes grew distant. Unimpeached by a blinding sun as it fell behind the wall of vegetation at his back, he scanned the simmering ocean at the distant horizon.
He stopped when a stump of black on the flat line of ocean drew his attention. Hard to say how, but there was an impossible sense of familiarity in that strip of land. Impossible because he had never been on an island before. Impossible that he was somehow sure it was an island and not a ship. Not looking away, Derek took out his phone and loaded up a map. He located himself in the display and, dragging down his thumb, had begun to pull out to the ocean, toward where he assumed the landmass would be, when he suddenly became aware that someone was standing on the final step beside him.
The orange sunlight halved a weathered face, one side in the light forcing an eye to retreat behind a squint, and the other, a darker shade of its counterpart. Both sides pieced together a man who, much like Edwin's Peak, was basking in the twilight of his years. His face, wrinkled as a tortoise, was stuck in timeless frown of concern by thick gray eyebrows that almost touched at the top of his nose. The old man licked his lips repulsively, as if he was eyeing a bloody steak.
"Well... who might you be?" He asked. His voice was breathy and sharp, a razor cutting the wind.
Derek felt a grimace eat its way onto his face, "Most people say hello, usually."
"Do they, now?" Silas Turrow asked. He shuffled to take a seat on Derek's right. Turrow was half-humming a broken melody that instantly drove an itch into Derek's spine and filed away at his nerves.
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For a time, they both said nothing. Derek thought he caught the steadily increasing hubbub encroaching from the garden and comforted himself with the notion that they wouldn't be alone for long. Turrow didn't seem bothered in the slightest.
"You deserve a treat" Turrow sucked air into his wide nose, "that last job is still weighing you, I think. Then, there's that business Kaseem and Scaevola schemed up. Another rival test, and set in your own home..."
Derek grunted and mumbled some barely audible words.
Turrow barked a dry laugh, "You can be upset, my boy! Find me a man who loves his job unconditionally and you'll be showing me a l- Oh! Would you like a hard candy? I'm more than partial to caramel."
Derek blinked, "No."
"Pity." Two liver spotted gray hands fumbled noisily with a wrapper. To Derek's mounting discomfort the process took several seconds, then extended past a minute. He watched those massive white eyebrows, like hairy caterpillars, raise slowly at the challenge.
The seating around them started to fill with people while the incessant crinkling scratched away Derek's patience, "Here, let m-"
"No, no I almost have it! Believe it or not this old fossil used to be a wrestler in his younger days", Turrow wiggled his eyebrows theatrically, "Back in my prime with the other dinosaurs."
Derek cursed under his breath and deliberately extended his open palm. The clinking of his wrist, where the manacle lay hidden in the sleeve, set Turrow's eye's back into focus, "Well shit, there's nothing for it then." The candy dropped into Derek's hand and almost just as instantly, Turrow was sucking noisily at the freed confection.
"Scaevola knows where I live now." Derek brought his voice low as he heard steps and chatter approaching them. Children could be heard demanding to sit in the front row, but hushed whispering tempered their demands.
"What of it? Afraid of a knife in the eye while you sleep? Kaseem and Scaevola may hate each other but their Instruments are bound by law. They cannot act without their masters approval."
"I'll need a new place all the same."
Turrow paused his campaign on the candy, "The way I see it, your problem will solve itself soon enough."
It felt like ice was being packed deep into Derek's chest. What does that mean?
Derek turned to see the stands filled to capacity behind them. No one else could be bothered to join Silas and Derek along their small piece of the front row.
A silent procession of three were making their way to the stadium. Derek recognized the tall man from the elevator leading the pack. Just behind him followed two younger people, male and female, dressed like they were from the wrong century. He eyed the leather skirts and metal plates, but it was the single platinum ring they each displayed on their left thumb that opened the dam, flooding him with slimy dread. It was quickly becoming obvious that he was a damned fool to come here.
All three entered the stage, or arena now, Derek corrected. A shallow breath whispered into Derek's ear, "Oh my god", Silas said. He was staring at the woman, a hungry leer plain on his face.
"Looks like Scaevola has sent out his best."
The woman was a terrifying sight, Derek made a small blessing that the Named had sent someone else to his apartment that night. If it was this titan, he would have been reduced to pulp by those arms in seconds. More than a foot taller than himself, her hair was buzzed to stubble, and she wore confidence as easily as her armored chest plate. By comparison, her opponent was less... everything. About Derek's own height, the young man's eyes seemed absurdly wide, almost boyish. He had a subtle irregular step to his gait, not quite a limp, more like a twitch.
"Who is the man in purple and black?"
"You don't know?"
"It's why I am asking."
Silas spoke in a low hiss so only he would hear, "That's the bastard himself. He is Scaevola, boy. For some of the Named like him, Scaevola refers to both his organization and a title passed to the next head of the family."
"So, it's not his real name?"
Silas looked disgusted "No, to these fleas, the title is more of a hand-me-down, a used shirt that they pass among themselves like peasants. The true crime is many of the other Named idolized this custom as well. They even let their instruments wear the title, you'll see! They water down the quality. Fucking animals."
Despite himself, Derek couldn't stop the questions bouncing around inside, "What's Scaevola's name, then? His real name, I mean?"
"Well, he's an Edwin, boy. The eldest son, Dalmaticus."
Silas continued, pointing an unapologetic finger, "Now see that rabbit of a twig with the crazy eyes? That's why I wanted us here. No one knows who he is but there are more than a few rumors about him. He was sent by his own master to fight for a place among us. What you are about to witness is a custom started by someone we both know very well."
From the folds of his sleeves, Silas produced a piece of weathered iron, it had two open slits and attached at either ends were three strips of cloth woven together. It was a mask. Derek couldn't help but stare at the woven strands. Each was a different shade of aged color, red, black, and violet.
Silas smiled down at the thing, cradling it in both hands like a baby, "The world makes a person like Kaseem only once. When he gave this to me, he told me that each strand of the braid was cut from the clothing of someone he'd loved and left behind. I do wonder..."
The older man seemed to struggle with tearing his attention from the artifact. Rising from
hidden recesses at opposite points where the stage met the edge of the mountainous drop came two panels of blonde stone, each encrusted with weapons like diamonds set into jewelry. Dalmaticus splayed one of his hands below him and from deep beneath the sand, a single bar of gold rose up and toward it. He lifted the hand as if it were pulling the rod into existence by invisible strings. Finally, he tore it from the earth and in both hands held it above him, almost in an offering.
His shoulder-length hair became battered by the wind, but his eyes were focused on the audience before him. Not the crowed itself, Derek now realized, but the now encroaching shadows, a black imitation of the garden lining the edge of the clearing.
Dalmaticus approached the front of the sand stadium and knelt with a feline's grace, setting the rod into sand just a few inches before the front row. The line of brilliant gold now ran parallel to the approaching line of darkness.
The fighters had begun to look over the tools that were being offered for the red work to come. The woman pulled on a pauldron that encased her right arm to the shoulder in brick-red metal. The young man was watching her, fidgeting almost anxiously.
The woman plucked a bronze trident from the panel of stone and resumed her stance at the center of the stage. She slammed an end of the weapon into the sand and began a series of wide, lazy stretches. She flashed a brutish grin at the crowd which was met with whooping and cheers.
Derek glanced at the line of shadow now crossing over his feet, only a strides breadth from the bar of gold in the sand. He looked up to see the shorter challenger stumbling toward the center as well and in both his hands, he carried nothing. The cheering crescendoed and Derek heard notes of laughter leap into the air with equal fervor.
Everyone Dalmaticus glided toward the center set of stairs, beside which, Derek and Silas sat and, still on his feet, turned to the fighters, waiting.
The woman snapped a sure grip around her trident, "I forsake all my titles, for as I act by his design, I become The Named who I serve, as well as his Instrument!"
"What is that name?" the crowd chanted in unison.
"I am Scaevola!"
The woman thrust her armored fist into the sky. Derek stared in awe as the red metal blossomed into flame, a torch of furious amber light.
The younger man, looking ever more like a boy, froze. He looked through the expectant crowd, then at Scaevola and her blazing arm. The skin on Derek's arms prickled as a voice, deeper and older than it had any right to be, snaked out of the boys mouth, "My name?"
Those unnaturally wide eyes settled on Dalmaticus.
"Enkidu."
The shadows were a handspan from the gold bar when Dalmaticus looked toward his audience. All at once, the cheers were reaped away. Derek had to look back to confirm that the seats were still filled. All eyes seemed to be on the man, standing beside him.
Dalmaticus called out, seemingly toward the heavens, and he spoke with the conviction of a god.
"To win, someone must always lose! This is the central dogma, the balance, of our science. How then, must we allow the tenets of Darwin to remain pure? We cannot have both the chaos of natural selection and the perfection that it produces without sacrificing order. Without order we are formless, mindless, and lost. I present the solution. I present you a path through the maze. I present the stage for true, unfettered competition. My good people, I present the Dying Sun Dance."
He drew back a single arm as if to let lose a projectile.
"Power cannot be created or destroyed!"
The crowed answered him as one, "It can only be taken!"
The arm came down as the golden bar was swallowed in shadow, and the violence began.
In two moves, Scaevola flicked her wrist, forcing the flames to gutter out as she lunged with her trident.
Her target, Enkidu, backpedaled from the assault. Already he was giving up precious ground as the woman thundered after him, and toward the sheer drop. Scaevola kept the trident spinning in tight fluid motions about her, then from the blur of metal, she lashed out in a wide reaping sweep. Enkidu had suddenly changed tact as he arrived at edge of the arena. Derek couldn’t see where the young man had the time to even bend his knees as Enkidu scrambled into a barreling dive back to the center stage.
When he snapped back up, Enkidu was just beside Scaevola. Pivoting on bouncing heels she brought the trident up like a scorpion tail above her with her left arm and coiled her armored right side up by her head in a half-boxer stance. She led with four piston-quick jabs that would have left Derek spitting blood. He couldn't help the simultaneous feelings that he wanted to both throw up and take notes. When Enkidu came close, Scaevola made use of her armored right as both shield and hammer, while the threat of her trident loomed silently overhead, waiting for her opponent to slip his attention from it.
With a sickening lurch, Derek heard the eerily similar fever pitch of fanatic screaming as was in his own apartment just hours ago.
"What's the job?"
"What?" Silas said.
"The job. I can't stay."
"Nonsense, this is your culture, boy. These are your people. Your leaving would be tantamount to spitting on their struggle"
Enkidu turned and twisted his body around a series of punches without much trouble, but his eyes only seemed to be steadily wider. Then, a meaty fist connected with his left side and sent him spinning into the sand toward the front of the arena.
From the whirl of Enkidu's falling form, his feet shot out to plant firmly in the sand and keep him standing. His arms pinwheeled wildly, attempting to arrest the momentum that would have sent him crashing well past the line of shadow. Derek watched with growing dread as the whispering behind him almost made a little somersault of its own. Like a dark, formless blanket being drawn over a bed, the remaining half of amber gold arena was being eaten up fast. Whenever they could afford the chance, Enkidu and Scaevola were both snatching a glimpses of the approaching darkness while fighting to stay in the light. To Derek's growing unease and the crowds mounting excitement, the only remaining ground was soon to be the one bordered by nothing except a sheer drop to indifferent algae-coated stone and salt spray.
The two fighters, almost as one mind, were quick to adopt similar strategies, placing the shadow on one side and the ocean drop on the other. Enkidu had no chance to breathe let alone set himself up for a counter attack. His motions became clumsier and slower. Scaevola's ferocity only grew fiercer as his fatigue, much like the man himself, became harder to miss.
Derek made to rise but Silas gripped his shoulder.
"I am patient with you because age has made me more brittle. The man that wore this," Silas stabbed a free finger at the iron mask, "does not suffer disrespect."
Derek sat but his own hand latched onto Silas's wrist before he could reclaim it.
"Don't touch me."
Silas's stony frown almost shot off his forehead.
The screams in the crowd rose higher still, splitting Derek's attention asunder.
He saw it happen in two or three snap-rapid moves. Enkidu's white-knuckled grip suddenly relaxed and just by Derek's advantaged proximity, he was able to make out what was encrusted into the tight grip this whole time. Sand.
Enkidu ducked and side-stepped two thrusts with the trident. As the weapon impaled empty space, he slapped his hands onto it, planted a wide stance, and with a shout, ripped the trident out of Scaevola’s sliding grip. Her side of the handle caught sunlight and Derek saw a glaring sheen of sweat from where the woman had been gripping the weapon.
"You're meeting with the client tonight." Silas said finally, "you'll be given the details then."
"Why am I even here?"
Silas huffed like a sulking child, "I thought this would be fun."
Derek stared coldly at the old man.
Scaevola looked struck dumb, and Enkidu capitalized upon the moment to do just that. He brought the weapon down in a wide, overhand swing. She brought her pauldron up to deflect the strike.
Fast as a whip, Enkidu retracted the strike and, digging the forked end into the sand, he vaulted into the air like a shrieking missile. He spun with maddening speed. Scaevola was lowering her arm to peek past it, a curious expression had just begun to mount on her face at the lack of expected impact when Enkidu's foot connected with her jaw.
First came a soft crunching noise. Then a roaring scream into the sky.
Derek new the look of a dislocated jaw too well. Just as he saw what must be done next, before Scaevola could recover, Enkidu was setting to the task. That boyish face was still wide-eyed, completely lost in his work. He snatched the trident and in two devastating blows, sent his giant opponent thundering to the sand in a heap. Her face, lost in a small dune of sand, had begun to rise back up before he started stomping the top of it with the heel of his foot.
When he was satisfied, Enkidu angled the trident up for the death blow. He kept Scaevola pinned to the earth with his foot. She roared hoarsely, eyes stuck on the shadow as it edged closer to her face.
"I yield!"
Enkidu didn't move.
"Master Edwin, I yield! I yield!"
Still standing tall at the first step, Dalmaticus Edwin looked unfazed. He could have been watching a weather broadcast. In a spreading circle originating from him, the surrounding audience rose to their feet.
"Say the words," He motioned, "as Scaevola said them, and I may spare you as he was spared."
She thanked him quickly and paled as the crowd began to unbuckle their cloaks. Scaevola spluttered something clearly rehearsed through a mouth full of sand and broken jaw, "I came here as an enemy to kill my enemy, and I am as ready to die as I am to kill. We Roman's act bravely and, when adversity strikes, we suffer bravely."
Derek followed along with the crowd as her waning pleas continued, mirroring Silas with growing revulsion. He undid the tie at his neck and brought the silver cloak around to his front. He then took one corner of the cloak and tucked it into his shirt in a twisted mockery of a dinner party mannerisms, as if a meal had just been placed before them.
Dalmaticus made sure to wait until everyone looked ready. He extended his hand, thumb pointing neither up nor down.
"You are saved then."
His wrist turned as the shadows just touched her face. Scaevola's screams were the loudest and among the rest, that it almost sounded like approval too.
The trident struck like a viper, piercing her thigh. Enkidu took note of her attempt to push herself back up with mild disapproval and returned to his stomping until she was done screeching, done flailing. Her body twitched as he wrenched the barbed tongs back out.
As one, all seemed to hold their breath. Someone poked Derek in the shoulder. He turned to see a small girl glaring at him, like he was the child.
"You're in my way." She smoothed out her cloak with and plastered on a primly smile.
He stepped aside, bones numb with a chill that had nothing to do with the sea breeze.
Enkidu brought the blood-gilded metal back, as if he would cast it out like a fishing line into the crowd.
"I used to shut my eyes because it's no fun getting blood in there." The girl said.
Derek tried not to hear her.
Just as it looked like Enkidu was going to swing out a spray of red at the crowd, he tossed the weapon aside. Before it hit the sand, he moved with silent ferocity. He dropped to his knees beside Scaevola and had a hand under her, lifting. Derek squeezed his eyes shut but not before he saw the gaping maw of two perfect sets of white teeth just as they closed around the side of Scaevola's neck.
He trembled, body wracked by sharp rending sounds that came next.
"What's he doing?" A girl's voice asked with the unfounded arrogance of someone who had never known hardship.
When Derek opened his eyes, horror stampeded his heart as he realized Enkidu was stumbling toward him now, a red grin as wide as those dead black eyes. The victor wasn't looking at Derek though. He planted himself before Dalmaticus.
The Edwin was staring at the still twitching body of his champion, a small frown of confusion settling on his handsome features.
Enkidu reached out and picked up one end of the other man's cloak. He dabbed at both the corners of his smeared face with deliberate delicacy. That shark smile became serene, like he was turning over a fond memory in his mind. A low savoring note rolled out from him, a sticky greasy sound that buried itself into Derek's ears.
"Delicious."