Richard Tudor

“They just can’t catch a break, can they,” I mumbled around a mouthful of cured ham.

“And you seem to have misplaced your accent,” Mordred observed, entirely unconcerned that his little sister was facing a veritable army of frightened humans. In my experience, those were the dangerous ones. They could run, snivel or attack, depending on where the wind was blowing from. Attacking seemed unlikely, though. Slaves had to develop pretty dependable survival instincts, otherwise they weren’t long for this world. A true pity I had them as well, and mine were screaming, nay hollering, at me to get the fuck away from here.

“Forgot it at the tavern, alongside my pride and my common sense. Otherwise I wouldn’t even be here. Tell me again why I am?”

“Because you’re too clever for your own good, too idealistic to become a king and too naive to turn a blind eye? Or maybe because you like us,” the intimidating vixen, my buddy had brought along, replied.

“I should never have told you that, none of it,” I grumbled, thinking back on how I just hadn’t been able to keep my mouth shut whenever the black haired demon had asked a question. With a sigh I threw away the last bit of crust and added: “you know, I still haven’t quite gotten over the fact yet, that dear Cassandra didn’t have the balls to face me personally. She promised my brother wouldn’t get harmed and yet, he’s dead as a door nail… worse, if we’re being honest.”

“She didn’t, only that she wouldn’t kill him,” Mordred quickly interjected, “and you know as well as I that he had it coming.”

“Ain’t that the truth. I guess we have to get up there, don’t we? Most of the miserable lot I know. Come to think of it, that’s not the problem, though.”

“What is it, then?”

“This,” I said and walked off to the side. We hadn’t yet reached the market turned garden and were still lingering in the shadowy alleys close by. The narrow street was deserted, the ruins on either side silent but something had been bugging me for a while and now I could place it. I might not be a beast kin but the sweet, flowery odour of Pleasureheart, wafting through a closed door on my right, I’d have recognised anywhere. I had had the misfortune of trying the vile concoction once and the taste it had left in my mouth for days I’d never forget. Somebody had to have deep pockets, very deep pockets indeed. A single gram could fetch up to 100 gold coins. Either that or it was stolen, which come to think of it, wasn’t that unlikely. Captain Kirena had had her thumb on the trade for years and since her property had been up for grabs for a while…

I felt the hair on my neck rise and mid-step I crumbled. Faint thuds behind me signalled that neither Mordred nor Sera had fared any better but for the moment I couldn’t have cared less. It felt as if my whole body was stuck in a vice, the pressure mounting from second to second, as if a giant was slowly crushing me underfoot. My ears rang, I saw stars and felt my heart miss a beat but before my surprise could turn into fear or panic, the sensation vanished and I took a deep, shaky breath. My vision cleared as I stared into the infinite blue expanse, framed by windswept, charred roofs, above me, my limbs still trembling.

“Fuck mages,” I cursed, quietly, my voice not yet up to the exertion it would have taken to yell. “Fuck magic and the whole supernatural bullshit,” I croaked, slowly rolling onto my stomach and rising to my knees. “Are you alright?”

“I’ve been better,” Mordred complained, hands pressed to his ears while his grandmother was already on her feet, moving towards the verdant treetops further away.

“That was Cassandra,” she explained. “Follow me as fast as you can.” Her last words were barely audible anymore, her tails vanishing behind the closest cherry tree. When her grandson pushed off the ground, groaning, and made to rush after her, I held him back.

“Wait. Come with me, there’s something I want to check, first, and I imagine the both of us won’t be of much help, for now, either way.” Suppressing another colourful curse I rose and headed for the door I had spotted earlier.

“What’s gotten into you,” the fox inquired curiously, stumbling after me while massaging his throbbing ears. Enhanced senses weren’t always a boon, especially when a powerful sorceress was losing her shit close by.

“Ever heard of Pleasureheart? No? It’s a drug. I don’t know myself how it is made but it’s got a plethora of uses. Diluted it’s an aphrodisiac and can make people susceptible to suggestions, concentrated it can turn them into mindless puppets and, at least that’s what I’ve heard, the effect can even be changed with magic. A blood sacrifice supposedly turns it into a poison.”

“What kind of poison.” He was listening. Good. I mulled over my reply while I pressed my ear against the coarse, brittle wood of an erstwhile imposing door. At least the roof wasn’t burned enough to have me worry it might come crashing down any minute.

“I’m not so sure, it’s a rumour, after all, but supposedly it can…,” I paused, a faint, terrified whimper had reached me. Without hesitation I slammed my good shoulder into the door, the concentrated impact of a hundred kilos too much for the strained wood to take. With a resounding crash, surrounded by a cloud of splinters, I tumbled through and slipped on polished, wet marble. The atrium must have been grande, not too long ago, but right now it looked more like a dungeon. Blood was splattered all across the floor, unmoving bodies, at least half a dozen, were piled up against the walls, a feast for the flies, the expensive, gaudy decorations had been torn to pieces and suppressed, tortured moans were flowing down a wide, oaken staircase.

“What the…,” I began but I clamped my mouth shut when Mordred stalked past me, eyes narrowed and his overly large sword held at the ready. The sounds from upstairs ceased, leaving behind an eery silence. A second later it was shattered when the heavy echoes of studded boots drew closer. Without another sound I gestured for the kitsune to hide behind a desecrated statue of one deity or the other and began cursing at the top of my lungs to cover his movements.

A few heartbeats later, while I was still trying my best to get to my feet as noisily as possible, two men appeared at the top of the stairs and my heart sank past my toes and deep into the ground. Free Land had always been a melting pot of factions, families, guilds and Captains, some of them more influential, more feared, than others and while nobody would ever have dreamed of challenging the Captains or the Cabal, a handful of organisations still held comparable influence. The Soul Catchers among them. They weren’t many and they weren’t well known, but if you wanted someone… gone, be it Captain or slave, they were the ones to turn to. Word on the street had it, that they had once been the following of an obscure goddess, a goddess of revenge and pain, but they had lost their way, turning into assassins for hire. The best there were.

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Never before had I been unfortunate enough to cross paths with them, but the black, linen robes, crested with a silvery web above the heart, were unmistakable. So were the scars around their necks, where they had destroyed their voices to serve in eternal silence.

“Hello, fellas,” I began, hiding behind a bright smile, “you don’t happen to be inclined to let me use your bathroom, do you? I think I’ve gotten lost somewhere…” luckily my partner in crime wasn’t as slow witted as the usual imbeciles I had to deal with and as they descended the stairs and drew their swords, just when their blades were halfway out of their sheaths, a dark shadow flickered from behind the destroyed effigy and thundered into them with considerably more force than its ethereal composition would suggest. A second later I threw myself forward, covering the distance in barely a handful of seconds but I was still too slow. Much too slow. When I got there, Mordred was already getting to his feet, his blade bloodied and the bodies at his feet unmoving.

I gave him a thumbs up and drove my dagger through their hearts for good measure. Better safe than sorry, especially with those kinds of lunatics.

We shared a glance and crept up the stairs, the fox hiding in my shadow in case we would run into another pair of our gracious hosts but for now, everything remained quiet. Too quiet. If nothing had been amiss, the song of pain should have resumed. Most likely we were making our way towards a steely, bloody welcome and I wasn’t even yet sure why I was here to begin with. Heroism wasn’t usually my cup of tea, but after everything I had said to Mordred, the first time we had met, it hadn’t been too difficult for him to convince me to tag along. To have a talk with his sister, mind you, not to storm a ruin, inhabited by human monsters, but in for a copper, in for a gold… and, in all fairness, I wasn’t exactly mad that it was staring to become more common around here to not turn a blind eye, even though I would have preferred to deal with something less dangerous the first time I had left my tavern.

Just before we reached the top of the stairs, which led into a wide corridor with a plush, bloodstained carpet and ugly pictures along the walls, I whispered: “can you disguise yourself?”

“Turn around,” he grunted, but there was nothing to see. From the corner of my eye I thought I saw a moving shadow but every time I tried to get a glimpse of my companion I came up short. Satisfied I nodded and focused on my hearing, even though I knew my senses didn’t rival his, and neither did my prowess when it came to actual combat. The main reason why I was walking in front. Whatever or whomever we’d come across would most likely be focused on the big brute of a man holding a dripping dagger. Hopefully the last mistake anyone could ever make.

When I felt the soft carpet underneath my boots I also heard faint steps and hissed, quiet orders in a foreign language, followed by the almost imperceivable noise of something sharp cutting through cloth… or skin. Shit. It was now or never. I took one last, deep breath, roared like a wounded elephant and followed the blood trail towards another door at the end of the corridor.

This one, I didn’t have to break open. Just as I was about to turn sideways and employ my trusted shoulder, once again, it opened and I stumbled through, barley able to keep my balance. Disoriented I tried to make sense of the moving shapes and crimson images my perception provided but the suffocating smell of blood and Pleasureheart made it almost impossible to focus, not to mention that I was more than occupied with keeping my balance. Especially when someone decided to check the colours of my insides with a long, pointy piece of metal.

Luckily the years I had spent as a human punching bag had turned me into a mixture of muscles, bones and spite, with barely an organ in between, and the gentle prick wasn’t much more than a nuisance. Less lucky, whoever was wielding the weapon apparently had friends and as soon as I changed my direction to slam into the culprit, they decided to act. But I hadn’t come alone, either, and my friend apparently was the bigger threat, considering a warm shower of blood wetted my face when the zealot closest to me collapsed, his veiled head tumbling to the right and his body to the left. It was just a pity that there were at least ten more of them.

We had barged into what I would have called the master suite, with a large four poster bed at the centre. Three girls and a boy were tied down upon the covers, two of the girls bleeding to death while a cloaked figure was about to slit the throat of the boy. A large window, the shades had been destroyed in the fire, allowed an ample amount of soft sunlight to illuminate the scene, painting the violent display in warm, surreally cheerful colours.

Some of our hosts were just done with assembling the largest crossbow I had ever seen, each arm at least a metre long, while others were mixing the fresh lifeblood they had collected with a glittering, pinkish substance I recognised immediately. At the centre of a pentagram, adorned with evil looking runes, they were tempering with the drug I loathed so much. My entrance had, of course, put an end to their efforts but not a single syllable had been spoken until a sharp, raspy voice sounded from the bed: “kill them,” the wannabe grim reaper hissed in the common tongue while he already threw his bloodied dagger towards Mordred.

The fox whirled around with a fluid motion, caught the blade between his thumb and index finger and threw it right back at the sender, where it found a comfortable, new home, lodged between his ribs. A shallow stream of blood gushed from his mouth, dousing his victims in a crimson shower, as he swayed drunkenly before keeling over. As if it had been a signal, we moved, all of us, and the already cramped room was swamped by chaos, violence and flying limbs.

Without a care in the world I reached for the closest enemy, my right hand closing around his wrist and my left clamping down on his shoulder. An almost animalistic hiss, a dry crack and a shower of blood later he collapsed and I used his arm to beat the living shit out of the next one in line, whose weapon unfortunately became stuck in my squishy, improvised club. I yanked, disarming him swiftly, while my free had found its way to his neck. For reference, I could easily crush nuts and bend steel between my fingers and a soft, pliable piece of meat didn’t offer much resistance. He went down, his life gushing from a gaping hole where his already cut throat should have been.

Meanwhile Mordred, the show off, was enveloping the two dying girls in a cocoon of magic while he was elegantly sidestepping everyone in his way to reach the ones who were still trying to get away from the crossbow or had their hands full with vials of blood and drugs. He was fast and before I had the time to blink, the poor blighters, who hadn’t managed to draw their weapons, would never again have a chance to do so, death claiming most of them before their bodies hit the floor.

“Goddamn, you really went easy on me,” I complained and offhandedly picked up the body of my last victim. He flew in a beautiful arch as I threw him into two of his comrades. It wouldn’t hurt them but they’d be out for the count, trying to get up, long enough that they wouldn’t matter anymore. I raised my stolen arm, turned cudgel, high above my head and hollered at the top of my lungs: “fire and earth, death and despair, may the dead rise!” For clarification: I didn’t have an ounce of magic in me, but they didn’t know that and one or two were bound to look at the corpses, trying to figure out what I had done. Humans were just weird that way.

When the first turned around I moved, ploughing through his comrades like an enraged bull. On the one side, I received two shallow cuts and a rather nasty stab wound in the stomach for my troubles, but then again, slamming the heads of the two dullards, who had been stupid enough to take me seriously, into the ground with enough force to splatter brains, blood and bone splinters all across the room was a reward in its own right. Barely ten seconds had passed and we had already killed or incapacitated eight, including the leader. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

Unfortunately they had now regained their bearings and four desperate, heavily armed and excessively trained men were still nothing to scoff at, especially since I wasn’t a truly talented fighter. But, as mentioned earlier, I wasn’t alone and four measly humans without any magic weren’t much of a challenge for a determined kitsune, as we all found out the very next moment.