The steaming black liquid soothed Wyve’s nerves, like any good cup of black joe did. The fleeting moment of caffeinated bliss, however, couldn’t completely distract him from the death stare he’d been receiving ever since he picked the clay mug up. “… Stalling.”, Dorran drawled out under his breath, moving his intense gaze from Wyve’s face to the two cards he had set down on the table and gesturing at them with the cig in his mouth.

Wyve scoffed loudly enough for the whole room to be filled by the noise. “You wish. Easiest money of my life.”

The bantering brunette set his coffee down, reaching over and meticulously sliding the cards along the table until they reached the end. He lifted them up only after he was sure it was physically impossible for Dorran to catch a glimpse.

16.

The worst possible hand in blackjack.

His eyes took in every detail of the card’s physiology, the redness of the spade and the bold imagery of the king. Some may say that admiring the artistry behind such iconic works of craftmanship may have just been a ploy to avoid meeting his dealer’s blank, expectant stare, but such suggestions were simply slanderous. If there was a singular, unequivocal truth in the world, it was this: Wyve Novare never bluffed.

“Hit me.”, he said with as much confidence as he could muster. It wasn’t much.

The card flew towards him before he even finished speaking, stopping perfectly in front of him; its scarlet back stood as an invitation of doom. Wyve felt a bead of sweat begin forming on his forehead as he reached to flip the cardboard rectangle over.

Queen of Diamonds.

The teen released all the tension in his body and slid down his chair in defeat. “…Bust.”, Wyve groaned with a little too much pain for a game with such low stakes. He wasn’t grieving the loss of his five coins; it was resignation at the wave of smugness and trash talk that was bound to cascade towards his direction any second now…

… Any second now~

Rising from his crumpled position, Wyve finally noticed the other had transformed in the short moments he had looked away. Dorran’s brows were furrowed in contemplative concentration, and whatever had his mind so occupied couldn’t have been pleasant judging by the way his posture had stiffened into complete rigidness. The change was far removed from everything the young teenager knew about the man, who seemed to be a bottomless reservoir of confidence.

Now he almost looked… Vulnerable.

“Something on your mind, big guy?”, he prodded. He had taken to calling his impromptu caretaker by the nickname as revenge for Dorran's insistence on calling him kid. Shame, who could have predicted that getting called big guy isn’t that damaging to the ego.

“… Nah. Just… Got a lot I need to get back to as soon as possible.”. Dorran sounded out every syllable carefully, like every word could be the last he spoke before he retreated back into his titanium shell.

Well, this was certainly a development. In all the time the two of them had spent as each other’s sole company, not one of them brought up their past. Talking about it was meaningless when you never knew if today was your last, but even the sturdiest dams break at some point, he guessed.

“… Family?”, Wyve asked, genuine curiosity tinting his voice.

“…a daughter. She’s… my whole world.”, the larger man took a deep drag of his cigarette in contemplation. For a split second, Wyve just assumed his ears deceived him. He never imagined that Dorran’s gruff voice could be so tender and filled with love.

“Just hope to god she’s safe.”, his voice cracked, failing to contain all the anxiety behind his thoughts.

“I’m… sure she is”, Wyve said with no rigid confidence behind his words. He could do nothing but offer worthless condolences, and that same sense of helplessness that followed him everywhere began sneaking up on him again, silent and deadly.

The atmosphere which had been filled with comfortable silence moments prior was sunk in uneasiness, and so Wyve reached into his shallow conversation-topic grab bag and hoped for the best.

“You, uh, looked like you knew your way around treating others. Are you an actual doctor or something?”

No, dumbass, he’s a bar owner. The two professions had nothing in common apart from diagnosing medicine for desperate men’s woes.

The silence between question and answer felt sharp and meaningful, and Wyve could do nothing but hope he hadn’t stepped on another landmine.

“… Used to be.”, the coarse man finally answered. The ex-doctor took a moment to himself, contemplating whether he should go on or if it was smarter to just shut up. He arrived at his decision soon after with a sigh.

“Went to an uptight, stuffy university, full-ride scholarship an’ all. Didn’t come from money so I had to work three times as hard to even dream of getting that kind of shot.”, Dorran looked at Wyve’s face and searched for something once, then twice, then thrice over. Whatever he found didn’t stop him from continuing. “Graduated with top marks and found myself a job as a trauma surgeon, savin’ lives”. Dorran scoffed at that last part as he took a short drag of his cancer stick.

“… Met a woman I loved and put a ring on her, had a kid together...”, he smiled nostalgically at the memory, letting the embrace of such good times warm him.

The smile was gone in seconds.

He hung his head, his mind no doubt clogged with shame as it recycled the same horrible thoughts over and over. Wyve felt a pang of pain shoot through him, he could relate all too well.

“… Even though it was my goddamn job”. His voice had shattered into fractured pieces of the usual resonating confidence it exuded. Wyve was left shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he had no reassurance to provide, so all he gave the larger man was a sympathetic, albeit confused nod.

Dorran shook his head to clear his straying thoughts. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, kid. You never asked for my life story, but I-…”. The broken man scanned Wyve’s expression while a thought danced at his lips but refused to come out his mouth. Heedlessly getting up from his chair, the fact he knocked the seat down in the process seemed to be the last thing in the older man’s mind.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

He was gone, out the front door before Wyve could even process what had happened. He was stunned by the outburst, at how it had ended as quickly and unceremoniously as it had begun, and all that occupied his mind afterwards was two thoughts.

‘He forgot to take the five coins’

And,

‘I should probably chase after him’.

//

The street outside the bar was as hauntingly empty as the one he had first seen when all this madness started, just with hopefully less pissed off strangers this time. A large metropolitan like this with no pedestrians going about their normal lives was uncanny to a life-long city dweller like Wyve. Could it maybe be that they’d found a way out of this hellish steel and cement cage? No, that was wishful thinking from him.

They were hiding.

There was a very large part of the brunette teenager that wished he was hiding too. It hadn’t been long since his encounter with that monstrous thing and he certainly wasn’t eager to meet another one so soon, but Dorran was just as likely to run into one of them. He’d rather not see his only companion be torn apart by that abomination, thank you very much-

-unch, crunch, snap-

In sheer pavlovian response, Wyve felt every single one of his muscles constrict at the sound while his left arm’s now dull sting flared into what it had once been- it was that same fleshy, angry sound he’d heard three days ago. Both his heart and lungs stopped for longer than any living man’s should, every organ in his body had decided to give in without a fight.

His teeth were the first to rebel, gritting together in defiance. Call it stupid recklessness, but Wyve refused to let this far stupider game squeeze the fight out of him. He was fully capable of turning back and running to the saloon’s safety, but when there was a greater than zero chance of Dorran being the subject to one of those beast’s whims? He had no plans to.

This time, the sound was emanating from a nearby bodega, and the brunette unsuccessfully tried to gain control of his body again multiple times before finally approaching the ominous building. He swung open the glass-pane door with a powerful swoosh, force amplified by his adrenaline, and-

Roots.

There were roots everywhere Wyve looked, twisting around the walls, slithering in the floor tiles, hanging from the ceiling. These bark tendrils writhed with aliveness, snaking up and down and pulsating frantically.

A moment of shock had been enough time for one of the aforementioned tentacles to wrap around the young man’s ankle, but a wild swing of his legs revealed they were less sturdy than they seemed… Although, the act did leave him far more exhausted than he was expecting.

However bad of an idea walking into this writhing mass of living vines may have been, it did little to deter Wyve as he took his first steps inside.

Instantly proving to be the terrible plan this was, the ground beneath him felt unstable, and a look down confirmed that yes, the roots had begun to move as soon as Wyve went near them. Since all his attention had been redirected to the floor, he almost missed the stranger who had just revealed themselves. Almost.

He appeared from the backmost aisle as if it was the curtain of an actor entering stage right, but the dangerous glint in his eye told the seventeen-year-old all he needed to know. This person may not be a monster, but that still didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous…

Eh, he could take down a dork like him any day of the week.

The man -boy might be more accurate- couldn’t be any older than Wyve, although age and gender seemed to be the only similarities they shared. The other’s tan but still ivory skin tone was dotted with brownish freckles all around his face, the opposite of his own bronze complexion. His features could be called boyish if it wasn’t for the scowl -one he could already tell was a permanent hallmark on the stranger’s face- and the two intense jade orbs staring him down.

Most interesting of all were the clothes he was wearing, denim overalls and the straw sunhat hiding his citrine yellow hair gave him the look of a laborer, more farmhand than anything else, and definitely not the type of guy you’d typically find in NYC.

The farm boy gave him a disinterested once over, and the distaste worn on his face only grew fiercer. It was only when Wyve decided to return the favor that he realized roots had entangled the other’s left leg all the way up to his knees. Despite this, he remained completely stoic and calm, like they weren’t even there in the first place.

One second.

“You lost or something?”, the young man asked, his words as brusque as Wyve expected them to be. Strangely enough, this type of conversation was more his speed than talking with mystery benefactors and barely sentient eldritch creatures. He could smell the brewing conflict in the air, and even with a broken arm, a sense of confidence reignited within him. Handling stuck up idiots? That was his element.

Two Seconds.

“Oh, you see,” Wyve began, his right hand holding the back of his nape while smirking in faux nonchalance, “I saw a friend of mine walk into this very same store”. A small lie, yes, but nobody had to know.

Six seconds.

His face shifted as a fiercer light entered his eyes, “You wouldn’t happen to have seen him, right?”

Nine seconds.

Maybe it was the bravado that had knocked the other off his tempo, or maybe he was usually this bad at keeping a poker face, either way it didn’t matter, what did was the millisecond glance he gave to his right.

Ten seconds.

Wyve pounced on this opening, dramatically following the farmer’s gaze until it was directed at an inconspicuous product stand, or more accurately, whatever was behind it.

“Over there, maybe?”

Most would say it was a dangerous bluff, but Wyve would argue it was no bluff at all. He beat guys twice as big as this kid before his morning coffee; he reckoned a broken arm wouldn’t make much of a difference. The only real fear he had in that moment was that he’d come too little too late to save Dorran. Revenge would serve as an acceptable alternative if that was the case.

Thirteen.

A tomato soup can.

A tomato soup can was sent barreling straight towards the sunhat wearing dork’s face. It hit its mark with startling accuracy, leaving a red area of irritation right where it had landed before rolling away on the floor. The teen’s hand reached up to hold his face in a mix of pain and embarrassment.

“Argh! You fucking-”

In the time the other wasted by bleating expletives, Wyve had already closed the distance.

A well-aimed right hook found its target, and with the running start boosting its momentum, it put down the scrawny kid with ease.

Looking down at the strewn out, unconscious body in front of him, he could only wonder how a man as big as Dorran didn’t easily deal with such a weakling. Well, now that he thought about it, there wasn’t any evidence proving the guilt of the poor lad aside from a bad attitude…

His eyes begged him to stop thinking and to just look at what had been laying in his peripheral vision all this time. Wyve wasn’t sure if he should have listened.

It was definitely the same mountain of man he’d been searching for, but he was hoping to find him in better circumstances than… this. His body stretched contortedly as roots wrapped around every one of his limbs and dug inside his body, an unnatural, exposed network of foreign veins which were siphoning something out of him. His eyes served as the only proof he was still alive, but the look inside them betrayed that that could change anytime soon.

He took a hesitant step closer before full on sprinting to his side. Any wasted seconds could be the divide between life and death.

The desperate Wyve was so caught up in ripping the wrangling tendrils away he didn’t notice a singular root snaking its way towards him.

The tentacle wrapped around his neck before he even had the chance to react, and it cut off his circulation in even less time. He reached up to break their hold on him, but his left arm alone had no chance of keeping them from their ultimate mission. If asphyxiation wasn’t bad enough, the nerve tearing kick he received to his back would just be the cherry on top.

Briefly lying face down on the ground, the vines dragged him upwards to his knees, facing the same person he was sure he knocked unconscious seconds ago.

He was wearing the most intense sneer Wyve had ever seen someone don; the red scarlet flowing down from his nose was the only give away that he had even been touched, eyes swimming with life and fire and hatred all at the same time.

“You’ll pay for that.”