The hostel looked much like any you would find in Vashurst. Many things in Leoden reminded the man known as the Accountant of Vashurst. Of home. It was his theory that was once cities grew a certain size, they started resembling each other. Large cities were by and large all connected after all. By trade. By the constant ebb and flow of people. By war.

Cities were connected.

Which meant humans were all connected.

Which meant that all the differences between people that were used to rile them up into war were just tricks and manipulation.

War was a mad beast pitting its left paw against the right one.

The Accountant sighed and entered the hostel where Maximo had taken up residence. Before Pietro Capello’s death, entering Garuccia would have caused a gang war but with the vampire gone, they could move more freely. Although Garuccia’s Ministry of Joy was still a force to be reckoned with. He nodded to the clerk working at the counter before heading to Maximo’s room. Instead of the elevator, he picked the stairs. Despite what people might have thought looking at him, the Accountant had kept himself in shape although the ill-fitting suits hid it well. When he got to Maximo’s room, he steeled himself for what was to come before knocking on the door.

“Enter.” Maximo said.

The Accountant flinched at the order. He had not even had time to knock, and he was sure he hadn’t made a sound that could have revealed him. He stepped through the unlocked door and found Maximo walking around the drab rooms.

With a blindfold covering his eyes.

The hostel rooms were surprisingly large for such a cheap place with a small living room, bedroom and even a bathroom. Maximo was walking from one room to another as quickly as he could without knocking his toes into the bed or table which told the Accountant he had been at it for a while.

“What are you doing?” The Accountant said.

Maximo didn’t stop walking around the hostel rooms nor did he glance at the Accountant under the blindfold.

“The rooms have all the same layout.” Maximo said: “I am learning to navigate them in the dark.”

The Accountant decided he didn’t even want to know and sat by the small table in the corner of the room. He tried his best to look relaxed. It was never wise to show fear to a mad animal.

“You were right. The viscount is staying here.” The Accountant said.

“Of course, he is staying here. I can feel him.” Maximo said while making his rounds around the rooms: “What have you found out about him?”

The Accountant fished out a thick folder from his suitcase containing all the details Osetaria’s secret service had on viscount Cassio de Rossi.

“The only son of viscount Enrico de Rossi and Cordelia de Rossi.”

“Only child?” Maximo said.

“As far as we know.” The Accountant said: “His parents were assassinated when he was thirteen or so. He was raised by his uncle after that.”

“The eunuch.” Maximo said.

“The best shot the Plague ever fired.” The Accountant said and studied the photograph of Cassio de Rossi.

The viscount looked like a hard man which made sense. You didn’t get a nickname like the Lionheart by being soft. His red hair was a lion’s mane, and the well-groomed side-whiskers brought to mind a dominant male tomcat. Then there were his eyes. The eyes of a hunter…

… his eyes…

The Accountant stared at Cassio’s picture for a long time. Particularly the shape of his jaw, nose, and ears. Then he started comparing the photograph to Maximo. Was he seeing what he thought he was? It couldn’t have been possible.

Could it?

Maximo was finally done with his game and took off the blindfold, revealing the eyes of a predator.

“Go on.” Maximo said.

“Uh… he’s an avid hunter and crack shot with a rifle. He studied at Leoden’s military academy and was both their boxing and wrestling champion. He also trained with the king’s praetorian guard. By the end he could have joined them.”

Maximo nodded and rubbed his calloused knuckles.

“What do you know about the gypsy that’s always around him?” Maximo asked.

The Accountant pulled out another folder. This was much thinner but full of the Accountant’s notes. When he had read what his government had found out about Salvatore Torrini, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of kinship. A fellow man of culture trying to keep a brutish master alive.

“That’s a bit more difficult. He might be related to Aaron Torrini who was a Black Knife during the Twelve-Year-War. A son or a nephew maybe.” The Accountant said.

“A Black Knife?” Maximo said thoughtfully: “My home village sheltered refugees of Black Knife victims. Women raped, children killed, crops burned, livestock shot. I guess I will kill this Salvatore just in case his father was a Black Knife.”

“Do as you wish.” The Accountant said: “That’s all I have on his past. One day he just appeared by the viscount’s side and House Rossi paid for his law studies. Since then, he has been acting as the viscount’s advisor.”

“The viscount gave his rent boy an education.”

“Possibly. We believe Torrini cavorts both with men and women. Our agents believe him to be prime blackmail material.” The Accountant said.

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” Maximo said.

The Accountant glanced at Maximo over his papers.

“Excuse me?”

“Look at him and tell me he isn’t even more dangerous than his master.”

The Accountant picked up a picture of Torrini that came with his file. The short beard, cheeky grin, and unruly hair made him look like a bohemian holy man but then there were his eyes… at first, they were beautiful… then eerie and haunting… like Torrini could see him even through a photograph.

“Dangerous or not, he only has one leg now. God only knows how he lost it.” The Accountant said.

Maximo turned to look at him and smiled his thin smile. Maximo had the smile of a chimpanzee. An expression of mirth hiding teeth.

“And you think this makes him weak? My friend, weren’t you supposed to be the smart one?”

The Accountant shifted uneasily on his chair. Maximo made the word friend sound like a knife slipped between the ribs.

“You know these things better than I do.”

“It certainly seems so.” Maximo said.

The Accountant picked up the viscount’s picture one more time and compared the Lionheart’s profile to Maximo’s. If only he could shake this uneasy feeling…

“Why is killing this viscount so important to you?” The Accountant asked.

Maximo rubbed the scar on his forehead.

“Doesn’t the crown want us to weaken Garuccia? Cassio is the last Rossi. When he dies, House Rossi dies. The other noble houses will tear each other apart while fighting for the lion’s scraps. It makes them less prepared for the next war.”

“That I understand.” The Accountant said and wished his superiors weren’t so quick to expect a new war.

Maybe then they hadn’t been so taken in by Maximo.

“Then what don’t you understand?” Maximo asked.

“Why do this yourself? There are easier ways.” The Accountant said.

“I made a promise to myself, and I always keep promises I make to myself.” Maximo said and walked to the window.

He looked down on the Garuccians walking by the hostel and living their lives unaware of the monster lurking in the midst.

“Do you ever just look at this people and think how much you hate them? How they can just live their lives, unaware how disgusting they are?” Maximo said.

The Accountant had no answer to that and cleared his throat.

“The viscount has security detail on him.”

“Of course, he has. Even nobles who fancy themselves warriors don’t dare to leave their mansions without bodyguards.” Maximo said.

“They work in two shifts. Three men at a time. All of them veterans of the Twelve-Year-War. Hard men.” The Accountant said.

“Fascinating.” Maximo said.

“We have set men of our own around the hostel as you requested. They’re waiting for further orders.”

“Good. The orders are simple. Should the viscount get out by some miracle, kill him on sight.” Maximo said.

“And how do you plan to get out?” The Accountant asked.

Maximo smiled and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the wooden knife bought from Vincent.

“With this, there is no place I can’t leave.”

The Accountant just nodded and hoped Maximo would never find his way back while he returned the files to his briefcase. He stood up to take his leave.

“I suppose… wishing you good luck would be in order.”

“I suppose so.” Maximo said.

They stared at each other for a moment before the Accountant tipped his hat and left.

***

Gino cursed his luck when he arrived at the hostel for his nightshift. The clerk working the evening handed him the master key and wished him goodnight before heading home. Gino wondered what it was like to return home at a humane hour. To have a life during the day. He sat behind the reception desk and pulled out a magazine. Not like anyone was going to check in at this hour.

But tonight, he didn’t have to be alone.

The elevator rang when it arrived at the ground floor and Magnusson stepped out of the elevator. Gino gave him a smile and a polite nod while wishing Magnusson would just pass him by like he was a rabbit and Magnusson a tiger. Magnusson acknowledged him with a simple nod… before walking past the reception desk to the backrooms. Gino put down his magazine and stood up.

“Sir?” Gino called after him: “That area is off limits.”

Magnusson paid no attention to him and disappeared into the backroom.

“Sir?”

Then the hostel was plunged into darkness.

The hostel had been receiving complaints all week about the lights and heating going out. After failing to find the problem themselves, they had called an electrician who had blamed it all on people short-circuiting the fuse box because they upped the heat at the cusp of winter. No one had even considered that one of the guests might have snuck into the back to flip the switch by hand.

“Sir!” Gino said louder and rushed to the back.

A massive hand grabbed his head and yanked him into darkness. Before he drifted to a place with no time or feeling, he felt Magnusson snatching the master key hanging from his belt.

***

Luca groaned when the lights went out in their room in the middle of a poker game. Playing babysitter for a spoiled noble was bad enough without the lights failing all the damn time.

“Cards on the table, boys.” Luca said.

Matteo and Elio planted their cards on the table while Luca used the opportunity to fish out the cards hidden in his sleeve. When the lights would come back on, his losing hand would be replaced with a winning one and he would have doubled his wages for the night.

“How can’t these dumb fucks keep even the lights on?” Matteo complained.

“I had enough of sitting in the dark when I had to shit in a foxhole during the war.” Elio groaned.

Luca smiled to himself while he waited for the electricity to return. That would make it all worth…

The door to their room opened and for a moment he was back at the war. Waiting for the tarts to raid them in the middle of the night. Something colossal entered the room.

“Whose there?!” Luca shouted.

Matteo had been sitting closest to the door and the intruder got him first. There was a sound Luca had never heard. Something breaking and tearing… followed by a raspy final breath of a man dying in horrible pain.

Him and Elio went on the move immediately when their training took over.

He had spent month learning how to kill tarts and then years putting his training to use. You never shook it off completely and he had been lucky to find work where he could use the only skillset he had.

Not that it was much use to him or Elio in complete darkness.

They tried to get away from the intruder but managed to only fall over their chairs while reaching for their guns. Meanwhile the intruder didn’t seem to have any problems navigating in the dark rooms.

Elio was next to die.

Stolen novel; please report.

There was a sound like a giant egg breaking and Elio collapsed to the ground. Luca was finally able to get a hand on his revolver when his head was caught between two massive palms.

That twisted his head backwards with terrible force, breaking his neck.

Luca fell to the ground, unable to breath or move his body. Everything south from his neck had turned to wood and he was just a head stuck at the end of a stick. He tried to speak and could only manage a gurgling sound that tasted of blood and bile.

A candle was lit, and Luca caught a glimpse of the monster that had snuck into their room.

A monster was the only way he could use to describe this thing. Impossibly big and impossibly strong. Blood was running down its face where it had headbutted Elio to death. That shaved head resembled a boulder, and it had hands large as spades. In the candlelight the monster went through Matteo’s pockets and then Elio’s before he got to Luca. The monster looked surprised that he was still alive. The monster kept looking at him while it took out the elevator key from his pocket.

“Tell me something, gark.” The monster said while sticking its thumbs into his eyes: “Have you found Jesus?”

Luca could only scream inside his own skull while the monster crushed it.

***

“Goddamn it. Again?” Sal groaned when the lights in their rooms went out.

Cassio leaned back on his armchair and listened if Sal was trying to move the pieces under the cover of dark. The first thing you learned about playing Knight Guard with Sal was that he was a shameless cheat and not subtle about it.

“It cost almost two thousand diams to install electricity here. You would think it would work for more than a day.” Sal said.

“Perhaps we should have spent three thousand diams instead.” Cassio said.

“We should have spent a whole host more if you ask me. This is a bloody fire hazard. That’s what it is.” Sal said: “If there’s a fire when the lights are out, we are fucked. The elevator is the only way out of here.”

“That does seem like a serious oversight.” Cassio agreed when the lights came back on.

Cassio and Sal stared at the flickering lights for a moment until the electric current stabilized and the lightbulbs started working again properly.

“Halle-fucking-lujah.” Sal said and sipped his brandy before looking at the game board: “Your move.”

Cassio twirled his brandy while he tried to figure out the best way to defend the castle from bandits when he turned to look at the door. Why was the elevator moving?

“What is it?” Sal asked.

“The elevator.” Cassio said.

Sal emptied his glass before pouring himself a refill.

“Luca must have something to report.” Sal said.

There was a knock on the door.

“Big cat, could you be a pal and get that? I would do it meself but… you know. Walking is a bit of a challenge right now.”

“I got it.” Cassio said and pushed himself off the armchair.

“Good man.”

Cassio strode towards the metal door without a care when a snake crawled down his spine. He was walking down a sword bridge, and the door could have been the maws of a beast. The room felt colder, and Sal’s usually cocky grin had turned into a grimace.

“Cassio.” Sal said quietly: “Do not open that door.”

Sal had drunk half a bottle of wine by himself during dinner and was on his second brandy of the evening. He was far from sober although not quite drunk but whatever was behind the door had cleared his mind in a blink. Cassio kept his eyes on the door while moving to the small bureau by the entrance and pulled out a revolver from the top drawer.

“Luca?” Cassio said.

The door was made from heavy wood and bronze and fastened with a security chain. It could have slowed down a battering ram while the lord made his escape from the window on a rope of blankets.

Whoever had come knocking, had a kick more powerful than a battering ram.

Plaster fell from the ceiling when someone kicked the door and the screws holding the door in place groaned in pain. Another kick shattered the security chain and links were thrown to the floor like broken teeth. Then the door fell over.

“Son of a bitch!” Sal screamed while trying to get up, forgetting for a moment he only had one leg and promptly fell over.

The inhuman display of strength made Cassio forget about the revolver he was holding, and he could only stare slack jawed at the man-beast that had stepped in. He had to be closer to seven feet tall and weighing around two-hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle.

And he knew him.

“You?” Cassio said when he recognized the man across the street who had tipped his hat to him.

The man’s kick was fast as a whip, and it knocked the revolver out of Cassio’s hand along with two nails from his fingers. When the man tried to grab him, a bottle of brandy that Sal had thrown shattered against his massive head. The shards cut his face and brandy poured into the wounds, but the man didn’t even blink.

But it did offer a momentary distraction.

Cassio had been boxing all his life and now he could break concrete blocks with his bare hands. He threw the best punch of his life aimed right at the man’s ribs. If he could break concrete, he could break a bone and take the fight right out of him. Even the biggest man would fall on his knees when his broken ribs were scraping his lungs.

The hit didn’t break anything.

At first Cassio thought the man was hiding steel plates under his shirt but that didn’t feel quite right. The man’s body was hard like a massive rock covered in boiled leather.

“Pathetic.” The man said.

Cassio had always prided himself for the speed of his punches but now the man showed him what real speed was. Even with the armor of muscle he had, the man’s fist felt like a cannonball fired right at his guts. Cassio spewed out yellow water but when he doubled over, the man’s knee shot up and scraped his forehead. It left a nasty cut and blood began dripping in his eyes.

“Cassio!”

Even though Sal had only one leg, he managed to jump at the man with a knife in hand. Sal tried to disembowel the assailant, but the man had been faster than Cassio which made him faster than Sal. He grabbed Sal’s wrist and made him drop the knife by simply squeezing before throwing Sal at the wall. Law school hadn’t made Sal forget his previous life as a clown and acrobat and instead of cracking his skull on the wall, he hit it leg first but still suffered a nasty fall.

“Sal!”

Rage pushed aside the pain and Cassio wondered if letting it take over him was for the best. If he lost himself in fury, he could be faster and stronger than he ever would with a cool head. Pain and exhaustion would just wash over him and let him push himself past his normal limits.

He attacked.

His best bet was that the assailant was like usual big men who found themselves in a ring. They barely knew how to fight and just trusted that their superior size and strength would be enough to end things. It had been true for the bear prince. And he had killed the bear prince! The theory was dashed when the man put up his hands in a boxing guard and weaved along Cassio’s punches, robbing them of most of their power. No one that big should have been that fast!

“Is that the best the Lionheart can do?”

The disrespect turned Cassio’s face an ugly shade of vermilion. When he tried to cut through the man’s guard and break his nose, he just grabbed Cassio’s fist. It was like having his hand be caught between the jaws of a crocodile. Cassio had trained with judokas who had fingers that could break peanuts.

The man’s grip could break fingers of judokas.

Cassio threw another punch with his free hand and this time nailed the man in the jaw. He just laughed like he had been slapped by a child. Then the man threw him over his shoulder and the last hope Cassio had of the man being just a brute vanished. Not only was he big, but he also knew how to make the most of his size and the throw was the best he had ever seen. He hit the floor like he had fallen from the roof and all the air was knocked out of his lungs. While he was struggling to breath, the man mounted him and trapped his arms under his knees.

“Look at me.” The man said.

Cassio did and didn’t see a man controlled by his fury. The man and the fury were one and the union had turned him into something inhuman. The powerful hands on his throat had the strength of a chimp. Somehow a human had gained the power and animalistic brutality of a chimpanzee. Someone who had been kept in a cage until the humanity had been beaten out of him and he had broken the bars with his bare hands.

“Fifteen years. I’ve waited for fifteen years. Look at me.”

For a moment Cassio thought Phobos had risen from his grave to save him one last time. Then he saw that Sal had jumped on the man’s back and was slashing at him blindly with a knife while trying to carve open his throat. The man growled and threw Sal over his shoulder and jumped on his feet to stomp Sal’s skull.

“No!”

He had been pushed past anger into desperation. He jumped at the man again and unleashed everything he had. He had dedicated his entire life to getting stronger. To getting revenge. He had learned to fight and all the ways to break his opponents. He had never stopped honing his muscles or developing his skills with weapons. He could have conceived that there were a few who could match him, but he had never even considered that someone could overpower him.

This man proved how arrogant he had been.

His last hope was that the fight would drain the man quickly. No one that big could fight for long. Fighting left even the fittest man exhausted, but the man just would not stop. Up until this point the man had been holding back but he was no longer doing so. No matter how hard Cassio came at him, the man would always come at him harder. He would not stop. He would not tire out. Like fighting was feeding him. When Cassio fell on his knees bloodied and bruised, the man looked no more winded than if he had climbed up a flight of stairs.

“Pathetic.” The man said and punched him.

Following the last punch there was no time or thought. Just eternal darkness. Cassio floated there unaware of everything.

“Wakey, wakey.”

Water splashed on Cassio’s face and stung the cuts and bruises. When he opened his eyes, he found himself tied to a chair with handcuffs and ropes. The more he struggled, the tighter the bindings became. A sock had been stuck in his mouth to muffle his voice. A dirty sock. Sal had been given the same treatment and was sitting by his side while the man circled them like some huge predator looking for a weak spot in a trapped prey.

“Good morning.” The man said: “I’m glad you’re awake. I wouldn’t want you to miss this.”

In the hallway leading to the hidden mansion the elevator door was trying to close but the man had blocked the door with a shoe so it couldn’t be summoned down. Trapping them here. With the man.

Why is it so warm, Cassio wondered.

The he noticed that the smallest amount of smoke was rising between the floorboards. The man followed his gaze and smiled a thin smile.

“Don’t worry about that. I set the curtains in your guards’ room on fire. This whole place will be up in flames in a few minutes.” The man said and walked over to the fireplace where he had been heating a poker: “I just wanted us to have some privacy. You would not believe how hard it was to get an audience with a viscount.”

Cassio and Sal shared a look. It was all they could do with their mouths sealed. With a single look he told Sal to think of something and Sal responded that he was working on it.

“I never introduced myself, did I?” The man said while pulling the red-hot poker out of the flames: “I am Maximo. Would you like to hear a story?”

Cassio and Sal glanced at each other and then nodded overenthusiastically.

“Good. It’s the story of Annika. An Osetarian girl of thirteen. Living her life in Rye Field. Just another unimportant Osetarian village. They grow rye there. It was safe from the Twelve-Year-War for the longest time.” Maximo said before baring his teeth: “Until some young lions wanted to win some glory.”

Maximo burned some of Sal’s hair off with the tip of the poker and made him flinch when the poker poked his ear.

“Men, women, and children are gunned down. Then it turns down the Black Knives gave bad intel and Rye Field was not a military target. Not that it stops anyone. Annika runs and one of the lions follows. The lion runs her down and does what lords do. She is beaten and raped.”

Cassio’s guts churned and for a moment Sal looked more disgusted than scared.

“But Annika was not someone who gave up easily. She pulled out her hidden knife and cut the lion’s eyes out.” Maximo said.

The bottom fell out of Cassio’s stomach when something clicked.

“Annika was punished, of course. She is blinded and mutilated and left to die. But she survives. As does the lion’s son living inside her.” Maximo said before grabbing Cassio’s hair and forcing their eyes to meet: “Look at me.”

Cassio looked at him and found everything he had been afraid to see. He saw Maximo’s powerful jaw. Which was the same as his. He saw the thin lips. Which were the same as his. He saw the steeply arched eyebrows. Which were the same as his. He saw the pale, almost luminous, green eyes. Which were the same as his. If Maximo hadn’t shaved his head, Cassio was sure his hair would have grown out crimson and gold. The same as his.

“She is dead now, but I am still here, little brother. I have always been here.” Maximo said: “I was with you at Saint Nicholas’s School for Wayward Boys. I saw your face in every stone I had to crush in that place. I was with you at the fighting pits in the Blights. My every opponent was wearing your face. Every enemy I killed and every crown I spent was to find you.”

Sweat was running down Cassio’s face but not because of the inferno blazing under their feet.

“I have hated you as long as you have lived. When I was awake, I hated you. When I was asleep, I hated you. There has not been a single moment in my life that I have been free of you. I survived the Infernal Emperor and a troll so I could keep hating you.” Maximo said and looked around at the hidden mansion: “I didn’t think I could hate you more but now that I see this place, I know I was wrong. You come from a family of bandits and rapists who have tried to rewrite their history.”

Cassio tried to speak through the sock even though he did not know what to say.

“Got anything you want to share with me?” Maximo said and yanked the sock out of his mouth.

Cassio gasped for air and inhaled some smoke that was rising more and more between the floorboards. He coughed his lungs clean before speaking.

“… I… you’re my brother… I… you… why?”

“Why?” Maximo said.

“… why do you hate… me?”

Maximo stared at him like he was a lackwit.

“Why do I hate you?” Maximo said slowly: “No wonder you pay someone to do your thinking for you. You have our father’s face. You have his name. You are his legacy. As long as you live, he will never be truly dead. As long as you live, so does House Rossi. And I hate you because our uncle loves you. Because once you’re dead, I will have taken everything from him. Then he will know what it is like to be me.”

“… taken everything from him?” Cassio said and his eyes widened: “… it was you… you killed my parents… your own father… you sent the shadow…”

A vein started pulsating in Maximo’s forehead.

Then he stuck the tip of the red-hot poker in Cassio’s right eye.

For a moment Cassio was too stunned to feel pain. That blessing did not last long. He screamed so loud he almost tore his throat when the eyeball boiled in its socket and the eyelid was charred black. He was terrified that Maximo had stuck the hot poker all the way to his brain. Without even noticing it, he threw up and wet himself from the pain. Somewhere far away he could hear Sal screaming from horror and rage through a gag, but it felt so far away. The pain cut to the very center of his soul.

“Save some screams for your other eye.” Maximo said.

Cassio tried to beg him not to blind him, but he couldn’t speak from the pain. Only cry and scream. He doubted Maximo would have been deterred by his pleading even if he could have gotten a word out. The tip of the hot poker burned his eyelashes when Maximo got ready to blind him. Then Maximo pulled the hot poker away.

“You need one eye to see what I am going to do to your friend but the next time you suggest I let someone else have the satisfaction of killing our father, I will reconsider it.” Maximo said and wiped some eyeball juice from Cassio’s cheek: “Once I am done with you, I will find the bastard who robbed me of killing our father.”

Then Maximo turned to look at Sal.

“As for you.” Maximo said: “You’re even more guilty than he is. He was born to this place, but you chose to be here. You chose to join this band of murderers and rapists. I hate you almost as much as I hate the Rossis.”

Sal had gone to a place beyond fear. There was no room for fear. With his remaining eye Cassio could see Sal glare at Maximo with hate that rivalled that of their captor.

“It must run in the family. Nod if your father is Aaron Torrini.” Maximo said.

There was a moment of confusion but then Sal nodded.

“Son of a lord and the son of a Black Knife. What noble company I find myself in. Would you like to say something for the occasion before the killing starts?” Maximo said.

Maximo pulled the sock out Sal’s mouth and he was instantly raving like an angry dog waiting to bite.

“You fucking bastard!” Sal screamed.

“Any other last words?” Maximo asked.

Sal bared his teeth in a savage grin.

“Tell me… dead man… are you carrying something magical?” Sal asked.

Maximo’s hand went instinctively on his pocket.

“How did you know?” Maximo asked.

Sal didn’t answer. His eyes started glowing as they always did when he was near to the Wyrding. When the magic of the Wyrding started feeding his dormant powers.

“Wyrding! Take me home!” Sal yelled.

There was a flash of light when the rift between worlds opened and sucked them in. Cassio had crossed the Void lurking between realms countless times since he had befriended Sal. Up until now it had felt like walking a bridge built over a raging stream. This time there was no bridge, and they were plunged headfirst into the treacherous streams. Staying close was the only way he could see them surviving and Cassio clung to Sal despite the slightest movement making his burned eye sparkle like a fuse. His head was a bomb that could go off at any moment.

They fell but even the Void had solid ground.

Rocks floated in the eternal darkness that reigned the space between worlds. To Cassio’s horror he realized that it was the last remains of a world send adrift in the Void like driftwood from a sunken ship that a desperate sailor might cling to. So far beyond them that distance seized to mean anything, uncaring stars looked down on them with cold indifference. The stars seen dead planets crash into each other without shedding a tear. The two of them were far beyond their notice.

“Cassio?” Sal said while trying to help him back on his feet: “I…”

“Did you think you could escape from me?!”

Maximo was standing atop of a small rocky hill and somehow, he seemed even bigger in this dark, cold place. Like it was nurturing him. A child this horrid place had birthed, had finally come home. But it was not just Maximo who grew bigger. More solid. The Void was closer to the Wyrding than Garuccia and the Wyrding’s power was again feeding Sal and the god who wore his skin.

“You goddamn lunatic! You’ve stranded us here! In the Void! You fucking asshole!” Sal screamed.

“A small price to pay if I can kill you!”

“Choke on a million cocks! We’ll see who kills who!”

The one blessing from losing an eye was that he was spared from fully witnessing Sal’s transformation into His Savage Highness. Seeing the god lurking under the skin come out was always horrifying to behold and Cassio had always wondered if it was painful, but he had been too scared to ask. Maximo seemed more surprised than horrified by the display and he didn’t even flinch when His Savage Highness threw back his head and let out a howl that made Cassio’s bones tremble.

“No man can survive a god of the Wild!”

A hateful grimace transformed Maximo’s face into monstrous and he drew out a small knife that he pressed on the diamond shaped scar on his forehead. Then he cut his forehead open before dropping the knife and began tearing at the skin with both hands.

“Man? No man! Only the ogre!”

Cassio and the fox prince stared in shock when Maximo tore off his human skin and threw it aside like a mask he had outgrown. The man had only been skin-deep. The ogre had come, and it would eat the sun. The horrific apparition from his nightmare was how he remembered it. The massive head looked so small on top of the over muscled body covered in dark, golden scales and a forked tongue slipped out between the sharp fangs when it howled hate at them. A monster born to snuff out all life in the world until it ruled alone a dead planet.

The skin-changer and the ogre threw themselves at each other.

If Sal hadn’t lost his leg and with it the bulk of his strength, Cassio could have seen him having a chance, but he was too weak to fight at full power and the ogre was drawing strength from a place you would never come back from.

And he was too weak to help him…

He couldn’t even think without pain. Just moving his head hurt and the pain was affecting even his working eye. All those muscles he had worked so hard for and been so proud of couldn’t even make him budge when he needed them to the most.

When had this happened before?

He had been younger. Barely more than a boy. The Leoden Zoo had asked him to track down and kill a chimp that had been driven mad by human cruelty. He had promised to do it and Phobos, his only friend, his most stalwart ally had paid with his life for his weakness. How many times had he wished he could have gone back to that moment? To save Phobos. To do things right.

Why was it that his wishes were answered only now?

He was back in that deadly forest, watching while his most beloved friend was being beaten to death by a mad beast that his family had helped to create. He had failed Phobos. How could he live with himself if he failed Sal too? This was the Game, and the stakes had never been higher. He would not fail! Not again! He would not let another friend down! He would not bury Sal and realize he couldn’t cry even then!

A handful of students had been chosen to train with the king’s praetorian guard every year in the military academy and Cassio had made the cut.

The praetorian knights were tasked with protecting the king and the king’s family with their lives and they had tried to squeeze blood out of every recruit’s bones to see if they were worthy. Many had given up, but Cassio had never wavered during those three-hundred days. Not even when they had been taught how to control pain. Toothpicks had been driven under his fingernails, deeper and deeper until pliers had been needed to pull them out. He was never to cry out or weep and just concentrate on the scorching center of the pain in his fingers and imagine gripping it.

Containing it.

Boxing it up.

Controlling it.

Cassio concentrated on the pile of smoking gunpowder his burned eye had turned into and imagined squeezing it with his fist. That ball of agony that burned white hot. It seared his palm when he imagined grabbing it. Forcing it to obey. He would not let pain control him!

And slowly Cassio stood back up.

His head was pounding but he could see straight again. Even if his world had grown smaller. A black veil covered half of his field of vision. The bastard had crippled him! He would never again be the soldier he had been just moments ago! He had been crippled and his friend was about to die! The fox prince had already been knocked down and the ogre was smashing at him with his fists.

“Brother! Its me you want! Here I am!”

The ogre’s head snapped towards him and the deep-set eyes were boiling over with hate and rage that after years of repression came roaring out.

“How dare you call me brother?!”

Like him, the ogre’s rage used him, but Cassio suspected the ogre had never realized it. The rage would drive him like a horse with its tail on fire. In time letting his rage steer him would break him. But the ogre might have been able to break him long before that. When the ogre was on him, Cassio knew that the ogre could have torn the bear prince to shreds without trouble. The bear prince had been a brute who had relied on his strength and size to kill his enemies. The ogre at the very least matched him at both, but unlike the bear prince, he knew how to make the most out of both. Exactly the kind of opponent you never wanted to face.

But Cassio had also reached a place he had never knew existed and that place was answering him.

The blood from his burned, blind eye was searing. Just like the blood from the bear prince when it had splashed on his face, hands and chest. The blood had been an anointment that kings would have shuddered to behold. The pounding in his head was also turning into a chant. He could hear that goblin of the Hillside Tribe kept repeating his name. Worshipping him.

Lionheart! Lionheart! Lionheart!

King Eld Reborn! The First King of Men Come Again! King of Fire Reincarnated!

Had King Eld seen what he was seeing right now? A monster obsessed with murder who would strangle the world. If Maximo was his brother, that made him also a descendant of King Eld. So why had he picked the Path of Girusai? Why did he follow the Screaming? How could he allow the Screaming Beast even an inch when this dead world was what it wanted to turn his home into?! Pietro Capello! Lord of the Hunt! Neither had broken him and the ogre wouldn’t either!

In the darkness of a dead world, the divine blood in Cassio erupted like a new star.

He burned so bright in the Void that even the ogre had to look away. He had seen this before. In his dream. His skin was carved from bronze and no blade could cut it. His mane of red hair had turned into crimson fire and even with one eye, he could see the world the way gods did. His remaining eye was a raging storm cloud.

Not that the ogre was impressed.

When they crashed into each other, it felt like two earthquakes struggling for supremacy. The dead world shook and crumbled underneath them when they threw hands. The ogre was still bigger than him. Still too mad to know pain but he had something the ogre did not.

A friend.

The fox prince jumped on the ogre’s back and sunk his fangs deep into his skull trying to reach the brain. The ogre howled from pain and fury when he tried to shake the fox prince off his back but when a hunter had his teeth in, he would die before letting go. Cassio used this opportunity to unveil everything he had on the ogre and his fists could have brought down castles and crippled armies. Alone they could never have matched the ogre but together, they could protect the sun from its monstrous appetites.

It might have ended there if the Queen of Cold and Darkness had not heard them.

The battle came to a sudden halt when they felt the Queen sail through the Void. Once upon a time Cassio had told Emilia that he would have shot the Queen of Cold and Darkness if she ever dared to try and harm them. Seeing her approach made him realize how empty his bravado had been. It was impossible to describe her. She was the shadow reaching out of the Void. Stars and planets in her wake would wither and die. Where she went, entropy followed.

And she was coming for them.

No words where uttered and they just ran. Cassio stayed close to the fox prince. When the Queen reached them, the dead world shattered under their feet, and they were cast into the nothingness of the Void. The ogre was flung away from them by the invisible forces that none of them could hope to control and when Cassio watched him fly away, he almost wanted to call after him.

After the ogre.

After Maximo.

His enemy.

His brother.

“Cassio!”

Sal’s voice cut through the pain, and he saw Sal back in his human form. Sal fought against the currents of the Void that was trying to tear them apart and with an inhuman effort only a god could muster, Sal wrapped his arms around him.

“Don’t let go!” Sal screamed: “Whatever you do, don’t let go of me!”

Cassio tried to answer but his words were lost in the primordial chaos that had ruled before the fires of creation had birthed the first stars. When he dared to look at the cold and darkness, he could see the monsters that had been feeding on each other for sustenance under the watchful eye of the Queen of Cold and Darkness. Monsters that were still there. Monsters that knew they were there. Creatures older than time itself started moving towards them while they spiraled through the starless night. The only warmth and comfort they had was each other but that warmth just made them all the more appetizing to the monsters that cursed the light and wanted to snuff it out.

“… Sal…” Cassio gasped: “… I am… sorry…”

.

.

.

The sunlight was so bright it could have blinded him completely after enduring the Void. Hitting the ground was like falling in your sleep from the heavens only to hit your mattress and wondering why you weren’t dead. They laid on the ground for a while, terrified for what was going to happen next, clinging to each other. When Cassio dared to open his remaining eye, he wondered if they were in the Wyrding.

“… Sal?” Cassio whispered.

Sal looked at him like a haunted man. He stared at the burned crater that had been a functioning eye just a moment ago and put his hand on Cassio’s face.

“Cassio… what did he do to you?”

What had been done to him? His hand was no longer bronze, and his hair no longer fire. He was not a god. Just a viscount. With the loss of godhood, the pain had returned, and Cassio took a deep breath while concentrating on the pain that made him want to throw up and weep like a child. He kept concentrating on the pulsing center of the agony and then imagined gripping it. He kept the pain trapped inside his fist and tried to crush it. It didn’t make the pain go away, but it did make it feel like he was in control of it.

“… I’ll be okay.” Cassio lied and looked around: “… Where are we?”

All muscles had disappeared from his legs, and he saw everything in double but with great concentration he couldn’t clear his vision. He had been travelling in the Wyrding for years and thought he knew it well, but this place was strange to him. The trees were all wrong. Even the air tasted odd. Sal had once told him that the Wyrd Stones acted as a Key and an Anchor. The Key opened the portal system, and the Anchor would guide them. Without an Anchor, you could end up anywhere.

Sal looked around and seemed to be as lost as him.

“Cassio… I have no idea.”