The General was late.

Ellie stood in front of the oaken double doors, hands clasped behind the small of her back, her face neutral as he waited for him. The General's guards-- two Igrit knights stood akimbo as she did, and she couldn't help but wonder if, like her, their entire front was forced.

General Roko had sent word through communication crystal that he would be late. His research into a new rune language he stumbled upon in the temple had apparently finally borne fruit. They were steps away from figuring out how to imbue the words with power... or something like that. To be honest, she was more focused on the subject of their meeting: Atar.

It was another routine report about his dealings and general behavior, and she thought their relationship was proceeding well enough... but he did violate the terms with that personal question. It was a sign they were getting close-- closer than she'd like. It would make what was to come even more difficult. She intended to keep that fact to herself, but she knew Roko had spies. He might already know. Any dishonesty might make collecting the promised reward more difficult, and that was not an outcome she could entertain. What would have been the point of crossing the Senos, then?

She heard the moving platform settle before she saw the General. He was dressed in pressed robes the color of his house and wore black gloves instead of his gauntlets. Ellie wouldn't presume she could read him, but from his slightly heightened pace and the slight knot on his forehead, he looked to be bothered about something.

"Follow," he said, and she rushed to join him on the platform. The ride down was silent. Though she was eager to know more, she knew it was better to wait. He'd tell her soon enough. The moving platform slowed down several floors from the bottom on a wing she recognized just by the smell alone: herbs, salve, mixed with the back throat bitterness of healing potions. She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach.

"Someone's hurt him," the General said, as the wall slid back to reveal the green orb-lit halls of the Healing ward. "The priests think it might be poison, but the Mage, Agga, fears it might be something else entirely."

Her mind went black for a moment as she struggled with the weight of it.

"Who's been poisoned?" Her voice came out strangled, and the General's turned to look at her. The softness in his eyes resembled pity. He stepped off the platform, and she followed wordlessly. They navigated through a maze of rooms before they finally came to his room.

His chest laid bare, and a dozen priests and healers busied around him, even old Herbert was there. He gave her a soothing look, but it didn't help. They finicked with salves and clothes and books, but no one except an older man with long straw hair wove a spell. Ellie knew he must be Mage Agga, and from the aura he gave off, he was a Terran mage. Her first instinct was to speak to him, but she knew better than to interrupt a mage mid-spell. She turned to Herbert instead.

"What can you tell me?" she asked, her cheeks flushed and her glassed over slightly, but she blinked away the emotions. "How did this happen?" Her words came out fiercer the second time around.

---

Bulba, the city guard stood at his post, Halberd planted on stone, chest puffed, while he watched the citizens of the Middle Ring meander from the base of the Upper Ring gate. His eyes felt heavy from all the 'guarding,' and he was even tempted to let out a yawn, but Garp, Ian, and his four other seniors stood stalwart beside him, it'd be unprofessional to look so weak-- not that he was. He'd just never particularly enjoyed night duty. It was boring, which was good after all, he'd chosen to become a city guard.

All the other deployment choices had been scary for the pudgy guard who grew up with doting parents and a dozen attendants. Bulba didn't have the stomach for the Borderlands or monster hunting, and he certainly didn't want people to think he was a spy when he served time at an opposing noble house.

Patrolling the city was boring, but it was safe. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck to get some feeling back, and that was when he noticed someone approach. Just like that, every man was on edge, body coiling into a passive stance, ready to strike.

"Who's there," he called as he mana into the helmet and the visor shone with red light. He saw a silhouette of a woman outlined in red approach. Life Sense, the rune was called. It was standard issue, and it allowed them to see the heat and magic that flowed through all that approached. It was useful at night, doubly so when an Assassin or someone who didn't know better tried to attack the gates, and that happened often enough to surprise him.

"I mean no harm," a shaky voice came, and the speaker approached with both hands raised high. She looked to be Chiawandean, in her early years, and positively terrified. Bulba eased the mana from his visor, killing the red light. It scared the civilians.

"The gate is closed for the day," Bulba said. "Come back tomorrow with a pass." Only knights, nobles, and mages could come and go between the gates as they pleased. Civilians, merchants particularly, had to jump through several hoops to get to the Upper Ring. They'd always made a mess about it, but the lady didn't seem to be the type. She was barely holding on.

"He's trying to kill them!" she blurted out. Her eyes were wide, her fingers trembling, and her knees looked like they’d give out any moment now.

"Who?" Bulba asked.

"Hector," she whispered and looked to him with a dread that he was supposed to partly share, or at least acknowledge, but Bulba had never of this “Hector.”

“Who?”

The woman stared in disbelief for a moment before she gathered enough strength to speak.

"He is a blue powder pusher in the Lower Ring, and he's going to kill two knights he forced me to help him capture unless you do something." Her hand touched Bulba’s own, and it was ice cold. He could see all of her in the orb light, and she looked even worse. Her face ran with makeup, and her lips were dry. The other knights paid her their full attention now.

"Bulba, stay with her," Garp, a senior ordered. "I'll fetch the Captain. He needs to hear this." He fell away with two others, and they worked the gate together.

The woman told him everything while they waited, without prompt. The guilt must have been eating her up inside. When Captain Grundy finally arrived, he could have given a brief of things, save him the trouble of a lengthy interrogation, but what he'd learned forced his mouth shut. Some of his fellow guards were corrupt!

He gave a sluggish salute, and the captain caught it. His dark eyes settled on the woman.

"Tell me everything."

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--

With the stage set, Hector opened up with a causal slash at Brick's shield. The floating mass of rock and mana shimmered as an arc of frost light slapped against it and sloughed off. Brick winced a bit, but he otherwise looked unaffected. That was unfortunate, but not unexpected. He was a knight after all, and Hector was reluctant to use more mana from his cutlass. He would need every drop of it for what was to come.

Perhaps, in another world, he'd have taken his time with this. It wasn't every day one had the chance to face the man they hated the most on the continent. Angi would've been content to watch the men take him apart.

"You know when I heard you were named hero, along with the rest of your news squad, I thought it was some joke," Hector laughed. "You surviving a brutal fight with some Vampire knight, I believed. The part I had trouble wrapping my head was your loyalty to them. You stuck around long enough with strangers, but you never looked back, not even once?"

Brick’s blue eyes remained undaunted and cold, focused entirely on the men before him He hadn’t even bothered to look at Hector.

Cold winds buffeted around him, leaking from the outstretched blade, and Hector was tempted to end it all with a single strike, but it'd cost him too much, and he needed it for the trouble to come. He breathed out, easing his focus on his gem.

"Get him," he barked, and the men rushed Brick like he'd taught them to. Three threw out spear stabs at his head, knee, and exposed shoulder while a few stepped around him with their shields raised. Once positioned behind, they struck out at all angles, and a few pelted him with bolts from afar. None connected, but they distracted him long enough for others to score stabs and cuts. The men cheered as they chipped away at him, one cut at a time.

Hector paced slowly as he watched Brick try and fail to ward off spear jabs from four different angles. Oddly, he found no joy in the spectacle, his mind kept going back to his blade and the gem that sat atop it.

It was payment for the job he'd had Maya carry out earlier today: killing Seth Ryall. He'd resolved to do it by ambush when he inevitably wandered down to the Lower or Middle Ring to slake his appetite, but word came last minute he'd followed Brick down to Jon's place, and Hector had taken the leap using an Acernium-based poison.

He'd originally intended to use it on Brick alone and settle for a silent victory. Hector had given up the fantasy he'd nurtured of looming over Brick's begging, bleeding form with his trusty cutlass.

Poison wouldn't have raised fewer brows than a slit throat. Besides, death by blue powder was expected even, given his proclivities.

A young hero snorts himself into an early grave after a wild night with courtiers from the seediest parts of the Middle Ring. It sounded about right to Hector.

He'd been paid early after he sent word to his employer when Maya updated him via communication crystal. She was dealing with the Ryall kid, and Brick was to follow soon after.

The moonlight cutlass and a tidy bonus of gold came through a hooded courier that'd just left minutes prior, and Hector had never been happier. With his former brother and enemy now dead, Hector hadn't known whether to celebrate or mourn, but then voices came from his door and violent noises followed. Maya had failed to poison him, and going by their conversation, Seth Ryall was not dead either.

In one night, it had all come crashing down. His plans of expanding into Grechit, building a second orphanage, healing Angi-- everything. It was all burning down again, and one man was the sole reason for his misery.

The blade called to him once more, and Hector had a mind to use it, mana costs be damned. He’d never seen or heard of frost mana before he’d been shown the blade at the meeting. The seedy-looking woman and offered him a razor smile as she explained how it worked, and the strangest thing about it hadn’t been its peculiar mana. The blade could never be refilled after it’d been drained like most enchanted weapons or slowly fed mana, but any idiot could use it, effectively handing them enough power to oppose a knight.

A smart man would save every drop of mana till his life depended on it or pawn it off for a pretty penny. With the assassination failing and the knights likely closing in, Hector found he had no choice but to be that man.

Hector sighed as he stepped away from the onslaught, resigning to let his men enjoy his victory instead. It’d be slow, but they’d chip him down eventually.

Past the Ebony doors--which he barred behind with a solid beam-- and just under a luxurious beast hide rug, Hector pulled loose a few tiles and wooden support beams to reveal a small hatch that opened inwards. He undid the lock with a key that hung around his neck- one of many– and shoved all the wood and tiles through. He pulled the rug over the hatch as he slipped in and locked it from behind.

Of all the changes he made to the orphanage, the hatch and the adjoining passage had been his most expensive and prudent change. Hector scuttled down the hall, mood rotten, but mind focused nonetheless. There was no ready torch by the entrance but he didn’t need one. He knew the halls well enough. Besides, air was precious down here, and it'll make life more difficult for his pursuers.

Hector ran the tips of his fingers on the wall just by his waist as he moved. He passed dozens of doors before he found it. A door handle too low for a person of his height. With another key dangling on the bunch on his neck, he let himself in and reached out for a torch on the far wall. He needed light for the next part.

Two strikes and a firelight poured over a room filled with dust and memories. There were shelves filled with parchments, books, and the occasional communication crystal, all stocked with evidence he'd gathered on to the 50-100 guards who cycled down to the Lower Ring.

This room had laid the foundation for his enterprise and Acernium trade. It was a shame to leave it all behind, but he'd come for something else. A large chest secreted behind the space in between two shelves. It was rough and wooden, with bits of metal reinforcing its frame, and it took his larges key to yet to pry open Its lock. Inside it was his runaway bag. It had a sack of gold, a short dagger, clothes, and the reason why he came down there-- a black stone the size of his fist with the engraving of a sparrow at its center.

He exited the room, taking the torch with him, and just as he turned the key, he heard a large boom overhead. It shook the underground hallway, drenching him head and shoulder in dust.

They’re here already?

Hector thought he’d have more time. His hand clutched the blue gem on the hilt of his blade as he bounded down the hall, his heavy backpack not slowing him down the slightest. Soon, he found the door he was looking for. It had no lock and was marked in green. A smile tugged at the corner of his face, and he felt relief settle over him, but not all the way. The door led to the sewers, and with careful movement, Hector would be free soon enough, but this hand paused as he reached for the door handle. He’d be leaving them all to their fates. His men had been loyal, and he’d promised their families he would take care of them, and now he was leaving them.

The door eased open regardless.

It was all Brick’s fault, he told himself. He ruined everything. He’d planned to care for them all. He would have if the plan hadn’t changed. The city was no longer safe. His employer would come knocking soon enough, Hector shivered. He’d deal with the knight over them.

I’ll come back and kill them all. Brick, if he survived and that Ryall kid too! Hector swore. If not for himself and Angi, then for his men. They deserved better.

Hector was midstep when he caught it from the corner of his eye. A brown mass roughly the size of a human head, hurtling straight at him. It took all of his skill and experience to dive away in time, but the explosion still caught him. The wooden door ruptured in a violent spray of wood splinters, metal, and rocks, peppering him. Half-blind and in pain, Hector shielded himself with one hand while he searched for the dagger in his boot. A few seconds passed before he blinked away the last of the debris and shock and searched for his attacker.

He froze when he saw it was Brick.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

His jacket was gone, and half of his upper body was covered in shallow cuts, and running wounds, but he stared straight at him, stone hovering above his sausage fingers. Portions of his face were lit by the glow of his runes and floating bits of rock, and it was a furious mask.

Hector laid there, eye-locked with Brick as his mind poured through a dozen emotions all at once. His blade was drawn by the time he was to his feet, the corner of his lips committing to the cocky smirk that served more as a mask than a reflection of his state of being.

“You should have run away, Brick. At least you’d have a few more years before I came for your neck.”

“And leave my friend to die after you and your girl poisoned him? Nah,” Brick spat. “I would never leave a true friend behind.”

Hector’s face flushed white with rage. “You are dead to me.” His voice came as a whisper, but it carried in the long corridor.

Brick’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been dead to me a long time.”

With a flash, Brick hurled the floating rock, and Hector brought his blade up with a diagonal slash, tapping into his blue gem unbidden. He would end it there, consequences be damned.