Despite the weeks of bad weather, there was still money to be made out on the waters of the Moonfere River. While most in the Midway district took in their earnings plying an honest trade, there would always be those looking to get rich quick, seeking their fortunes in the shadows of the skyscrapers. The hulking brute waltzing through the back alleys approaching the pier had walked both sides of the line before, but tonight she was tending towards the dishonest end of the spectrum; unfortunately for the staff of Olenzio's Fishery, at least.

"Bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum! (Gravy!) Bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum! Mr. Sandman!" The towering thug put a massive boot to the door, knocking it clear off of its frame and into the kitchen, where it fell among the surprised staff, all frozen in surprise, poised over Moonfere Oysters both shucked and unshucked, but all bearing pearls if the buckets lining the floor were any indication.

The woman stood a hair under seven feet tall, clad in black suit of tight,tactical armor. Her calves, shins, sneakers, and gloves were hastily wrapped in athletic tape that seemed to be hiding additional padding, and her head was encased in a full mask, a black balaclava with integrated goggles and a modified rebreather; a wedge-shaped inserts over the temples, likely to accommodate long ear; a cut out for the long, golden-bronze ponytail flowing down the back of her neck; and another cut out at the base of her spine to accommodate a long, pale-furred tail.

"Bring me a dream! (Bum bum bum bum!)" The kitchen staff were roused from their transfixed states by her cheery song, immediately seeking to oblige by descending upon her with the knives and shears that had been guts deep in shellfish but moments earlier. Olenzio's had always prided itself on the extensive training undertaken by every employee, the better to ensure that the shop would never be short-handed, as any staffer could fill any role, as needed. Of course, with this meaning that every employee was incredibly skilled in the kitchen, and more importantly, with every single bladed implement within it, Olenzio's had never seen a need to hire security, either.

"Make him the cutest, that I've ever seen! (Bum bum bum bum!)" The first blade was turned aside by the padding on her forearm, shearing across the fabric without cutting or piercing, all while its wielder earned a boot to the chest for their troubles. The others fell upon her in kind, but their knives, and their skill, were as nothing before her fury. Fists, feet, elbows, and open-handed slaps met them all as she maneuvered her considerable girth through the narrow spaces between the tables, turning aside all comers, from every angle. "Give him two lips, like roses and clover! (Bum bum bum bum!) Then tell him that his lonesome nights aaare, oooooveeeer....!" She trailed off, voice deepening as she looked over the carnage. Bodies strewn across the kitchen in various states of harm, a few accidental stabbings in friendly fire, but nothing serious. Just as ordered.

"Gravy make it splash like Pippen... Shit, that's nooothin'... (Splash!)" She set about to kicking over the last few buckets that hadn't been upended during the scuffle, scattering the pearls across the kitchen floor. Stepping carefully across the now hazard-laden kitchen, she made her way out into the shop proper. "Errybody call me big pimpin'!" She smacked the kitchen door open without stepping through, waiting for the gunfire of a panicked owner. Hearing nothing, she peeked around the door frame, casting a quick look around. "...Know I ain't bluffin'."

Turning back, she doubled back across the kitchen and into an adjacent hallway, bound for the office. "I'm with ya moms in the kitchen... Makin' blueberry muuuuffins (Mmmm!)" She paused for a moment at the office door, going over the floor plans in her head. Shutters were down out front. Not an emergency exit to be found in the restaurant despite repeated warnings from authorities; Ma Olenzio was always on site for the oyster packing, and she hadn't snuck past during or after the fracas, which meant she was still in her office, likely barricaded behind that reinforced desk.

"Must be Thanksgiving..." With another mighty kick the songbird knocked the office door -- also reinforced -- clear out of its frame, sending it crashing into the tactically reinforced desk and the wall behind it. Empty. No -- ambush. This was gonna suck, but that was the price of doing business. In an instant the wetness that had been welling up in her chest since she stomped into the building finally boiled over, filling the rest of her body and sliding over her skin like a thin coating of slime; it wasn’t much, but it was the best she was going to get.

Two shots rang out from her right, the blasts slamming into her bicep and her ribcage. From the sound of the gunshot, and the scorch marks on her suit, Ma Olenzio was holding a Nightow D-22 Double Barrel, and from the slack-jawed gaping stare, Olenzio was more than a little surprised that the giant hadn't been vaporized by a double trigger pull on two fully charged barrels. Chi. Inner Power. Aether. There were many names for the power, but she didn't give a damn what it was called, save for the fact that it was a literal lifesaver.

"...'Cuz yo' bitch wants the stuuuuuffin'..." The giantess turned towards her, slapping the blaster from Olenzio's grip with one hand while the other snatched up a fistful of graying hair to slam the stocky old woman into the corner. Olenzio was one of the old guard, one of the first of the fishermen and tour guides to set up shop on the Moonfere. She hadn't lost any of her fire to middle age, either, her eyes still burning in defiance as the giant's hand slipped into a pocket hidden in her suit to produce the instrument of her demise, and dipping to that hand as she realized the amazon had produced a small electronic device with a sliver of a scrying crystal stabbed into one corner -- a callshard.

Pressing speed dial, the giant turned the screen to Mama Olenzio as the line picked up on the other end.

A slick young beat cop stared back at her, tilting his hat in greeting. "Mama."

"Confasto," she hissed between clenched teeth.

"I told you this business of yours, these fake pearls you've been flooding the river markets with were gonna attract the wrong kind of attention, and look and behold, here it is before you. This big lady here has been sent with a warning, paid for by yours truly and a few other hands in the Old Guard."

"It was Luece, wasn't it, him and that putz Savo--AH!" She was cut off by a violent shake of the hand still clenching a fistful of her hair.

"You don't get to ask questions, Mama. You know full well every member of the Old Guard had issue with your side business. It doesn't matter who fronted the cost, this is a message from them all. Close up shop for the day, Mama. Clean up, feed your staff a good meal and get 'em patched up. And think real long, and real hard about what you're gonna be doing tomorrow. You still got your shop, you got your people, and you got your life. This was a professional courtesy. Don't squander it."

"You miserable boy... I wish I'd never raised yo-" She was cut off again as the beastkin amazon slammed her back into the corner one last time and let her go, maintaining eye contact as the old woman slid to the floor. Leaving the office, the giant turned the screen back to herself.

"A job well done, as advertised," Officer Confasto smiled. "Sir-- no, what was it today..."

"Yung Gravy," The giant sang to the same lilting tone of the tune she'd woven through the wrecked fishery.

"Yung Gravy then. The other half of your fee has been sent to you account. Assuming this concludes our business together."

"Cleeeean in, cleeean out," came the response, in song as everything else she'd said after she put on the mask. Ending the call, she crushed the commshard in her fist, the screen and keypad folding in her grip as the crystal affixed to it shattered into shards. Stopping to drop its off in a trash can in the kitchen, she added the bloodied athletic tape from her fists, feet, arms and legs as she glanced over the bodies she’d left, making sure no one was up to getting any smart ideas.

Shoving her gloves into her pockets, Tempest unzipped her top and flipped it inside out, sliding the tactical jacket back on over the black t-shirt she'd worn beneath it. After stepping out through the ruined back door, she pulled off her mask, shoulder length platinum blonde tresses falling across alabaster skin as she bent down to rip off her tearaway pants, revealing her t-shirt for a pencil skirt as she tossing the last of her disposable gear onto a trash pile, her wide green eyes, soft round face and broad smile all bright and filled with joy, and the satisfaction of a job well done.

Stuffing her hands into her pants pockets, Tempest Tremorain made her way off into the alleys the way she'd come, crossing back onto the main pier several buildings over as she took up her song again.

"Mr... Clean. Gravy why you flow so mean... Mr... Clean. Pull up with my whole damn team! Mr... Clean... Mr... Clean... Mr... Clean... Mr! Clean...."

The chill of the pounding rain was as nothing against the heartwarming sensation of success filling her breast, and while the fur of her tail and her ears might be a different story, a bath would clear that right up before the stink became an issue. Still, there was nothing that was going to take this feeling from her: job had been quick, it had been clean, it had put a fat chunk of change in her wallet that would last her for a while yet, and on top of all that, it had been all but sanctioned by the authorities. Inspector Confasto wasn’t all that high up the chain, but from her numerous dealings with the State Police Tempest was sure that enough of them were crooked that they wouldn’t dig too deep into tonight’s incident at Olenzio’s if it were reported, not that she expected that to happen either; the Midway was leagues above the slums of Sandorn, just across the river, but it was still the trashiest borough that was still recognized as part of Zephys City proper.

Wasn’t out of necessity (if she didn’t to be bothered, she could’ve had twice the space for the same price across the river) but a matter of convenience: the authorities were less inclined to bother anyone out in the Midway for its proximity to the Moonfere, and the similarities between the temperament of its inhabitants and those of Sandorn proper. The denizens of the slums, as Tempest herself had been once, were made of tougher, darker stuff, as if living outside the cushy comfort of the city filled them all with a drive to survive at all costs. For Tempest, that drive had pushed her into the Rows, one of the numerous crime-ridden districts overseen by the Ladies that held control over every single criminal enterprise within. She’d gotten in, worked her way up, gotten out, simple as that, after which she had finally worked her way up to the Midway.

Slipping down the stairs into the subway, she checked her surroundings before boarding, dropping into a seat as she stared out the window across the platforms, still filled with people this late at night. She still had no idea where everyone was at night; in Sandorn and the Midway people were always working, but the workforce wasn’t as thick as the masses she saw out here at all hours. It never made sense, and she wasn’t sure it ever would, but in the end it really wasn’t her problem. No, hers was to figure out what to do to fill the day tomorrow, and what she was going to put in her belly.

Her was the last stop, the only stop in Midway before the train looped back around into the city and away from the river, and it was a good six or seven blocks to her place, one of the numerous tenements that lined the grid of narrow streets, all of them converted from old warehouses as the various businesses had moved away from the river in favor of the industrial boom uptown, driving up housing costs and displacing the less fortunate who were shuffled back into their former storage facilities instead.

As the dispossessed had brought all their belongings with them, cars weren’t a rare sight in the Midway, even fancy, self-propelled inducted models, but the exotic sports car parked outside her building was especially conspicuous for the area. Glaringly red, double-parked alongside the line of parked cars belonging to the tenants, the engine was still running, and as she came up the street, the driver killed the engine and stepped out. Tempest sighed quietly as Confasto Olenzio turned to face her, wearing a jacket over the ruddy browns of his State Inspector uniform as he doffed his hat and flashed a smile.

“Thought our business was concluded, Inspector.” She never broke her stride, continuing on towards her building. Tempest didn’t like that he knew where she lived, but she figured it wouldn’t have been all that hard to find her with the resources he had at his command. Besides, it wasn’t like she was hiding.

Confasto fell in step beside her, gazing up at the much taller woman as he held the door for her. “Job was over, figured I’d see if I couldn’t interest you in another one.”

There were channels to this sort of thing, people she trusted to handle this part of the business for her when she didn’t feel like doing it herself, or whenever they’d caught wind of something up her alley that also happened to pay well. Confasto wasn’t a part of that circle yet, and the ones who tried to insert themselves into that tight knit group without her say so usually ended up being the ones who stopped getting callbacks.

“Hey, don’t be like that, Gravy!” Same with the ones who couldn’t separate Tempest the person from Tempest the Heavy. The names were a tool of the trade, something fun she’d started on a lark, but the second the mask came off, the names went with it. “This was job was quick and easy for the pay you got, I figured you wouldn’t mind something even easier, with even more pay.”

Something easier, that paid more. Considering that he’d just set her up for the next few months on this last job, she didn’t have to say yes; she was bound to find something else by then and he already had two strikes against him, but if she could get herself set up for an even longer run, then why the hells not?

“What’s the job, then?” This would be his last shot. She’d give him this one, and then be done with it, and he had until they reached her door to sell her on it. Lucky for him this place only had stairs.

“I’ve got some warm bodies, pair a’ greenhorns -- sisters -- who want to get into the solving business, same as you, but they’ve got some learning ahead of them. I figured you could show ‘em the ropes, teach ‘em to take care of themselves.” He mounted the stairs shortly after her, following her up the narrow staircase. “You teach ‘em what you know over, I dunno, month or so, few sessions a week, I cut you a generous check for your time and we go our separate ways.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Mounting the second floor, Tempest walked the length of the hallway to her door as she let his offer hang in the silence between them. “This look like a gym to you, Inspector?” Tempest glanced down at him as she set her key in the door. “You came to me looking for someone to do a job, an easy job, so I’m flattered that my reputation has gotten ahead of me, but--”

“Hey, this is a one time offer, take it or leave it.” Confasto begged off with a shrug, his hands up. “I got the people lined up, if it ain’t you, it’s someone else.”

Tempest sighed, staring at her doorknob, and the keys hanging from it. First three tenets of a job were who(’s asking), how much (are they paying), how soon (do they want it done). But she couldn’t shake Olman’s voice in her head, that final lesson he imprinted upon her. Why. “How much, how soon, and who.”

“That’s what I like to hear!” Confasto laughed, giving her a hearty clap on the back and retreating as she shot him a look in response. “I got you lined up for 500 del an hour, two bodies ready and waiting for you to show ‘em whatcha got. They told me they wanna get started as soon as possible.”

Why. So many whys, echoing over and over in her mind. Why her, why did they want her, why did he want her. The weight of the why against the weight of all that cash. While this could be seen as aiding her future competition (hells, it was), she was the one making monster here, she could control what they learned. and if she played her cards right, they’d owe her later, not to mention that she could come out of this set for the rest of the year.

“I’ll get back to you soon as I figure out the hours and where I’m gonna do this.” The cash had won out. She reached for the handle to turn the key, and found it unlocked. Scowling, she fixed Confasto with a glare.

He offered up another hapless shrug coupled with an apologetic look. “Hey, they said they wanted to get started ASAP…?”

Grabbing him by the collar, she shoved him through the door first as she stepped back. As silenced followed, she stepped in behind him, finding him on his knees before a pair of twins, dressed in fitted catsuits that barely hid anything and fitted with decorative masks depicting some strange monsters: on the left the slit eyes and fang filled maw of a moleshark, the right a bedraggled mop with round, blank eyes, a mud dog, maybe; symbiotic species of the swamp region in either case. So they already had a gimmick, then.

They were tall, too, easily her equal in height. Their builds were even similar to hers as she looked them over, and it was honestly a more than a little unnerving as she presumably met their gazes -- the masks made it impossible to tell.

“That wasn’t… necessary at all, but I get it, I do.” Confasto was straightening his jacket as he stood, planting his hat atop his head and straightening it. He was nervous to be so close to them, there was no hiding it from his body language but his voice remained steady. “Tempest, meet the Pike sisters.”

“Charmed,” She oozed with all the sarcasm she could muster. “Points for nailing a gimmick, and for breaking into my place Bit close to mine, but imitation, flattery, right. No points for breaking into my place because unless you're making a hit, jumping someone in this business is a great way to get yourself killed.”

To be honest the Pikes were creeping her out, too, silent as they were. For everything she'd said, she'd gotten no reaction at all, from two ladies who supposedly wanted to learn from her. No excitement to see her, no skepticism to see her in the flesh, nothing at all.

“Nothing? All right.” She glanced to Confasto, who offered yet another useless shrug. “All right, you know me, I know you, that about wraps it up for tonight, and Inspector, I'm billing this hour --”

“Aw COME on--”

“--but before we go, how about you show me what you got.” Tempest put up her fists, planting her feet shoulder-width apart, right foot forward. “If I'm gonna be training you I have to make sure I'm not starting with nothing.” She'd met and worked with creeps on the job before, antisocial types and psychos -- and so far the Pikes were slotting right in with them -- but she'd never had to train them. Or maybe she wouldn't have to train them at all, as the Pikes raised their fists just as instructed…

...in a perfect mirror of her stance.

The shock on her face must have registered through her every attempt to suppress it, as Confasto quickly looked back to the sisters before staring back at Tempest.

“Hey--”

She had already burst off of her back foot, lunging for the sister on her left with a right jab, switching off to a left hook as her right foot came down on the carpeted floor. Mudfox checked the jab with a lazily extended pawing from her left hand before deflecting the straight off of her forearm. Reflexively, Tempest threw a low kick from her left, her shin meeting calf as Mudfox raised her leg to guard. Swampdog remained perfectly still, simply watching the assault.

“Tempest that's no way to greet your new students is it--”

She wasn't listening, couldn't hear him, deafened by the thundering of her heart in her ears. This close she could see their tails. In that exchange she'd had their reach, and their skill: Moleshark had not only gauged her feint, and her reach perfectly, but also reacted just as she would have. Their builds weren't just similar to hers, they were hers, identical to each other and to her. They knew her moves, so they had been watching her work, for how long? No, not just at work. They had to have seen her training, too.

“I don't know what kind of sick shit this is, but you need to get out of here, right the fuck now.”

Confasto stared for a moment longer before deflating, the surprise and confusion draining out of him as irritation filled its absence. Hands on his hips, he glanced over each shoulder at the Pikes, clicking his tongue.

“This is why I told you to wait for me, by the goddess. Precisely to avoid something like this.”

“I don't give a fuck what this is, ruddy!” Tempest raised her voice, directing the derogatory nickname at the officer wearing the uniform that had coined it. “The deal's off, lose my call and get lost, take these weird sisters with you!” She sounded a lot more confident than she felt. If they knew her moves, there were two of them…

“Tempest, the offer is still solid.” Confasto's tone was conciliatory as he spoke, again with his hands as he tried to defuse the situation. “I'll triple the rate, you just have to teach--”

“Teach them what?! They already know my moves, what the hells are you after, Confasto?”

No, Tempest....

“We don't have your moves, not all of them. Not what Olman taught you -- you're not using it anymore, not for jobs like the one you did tonight. We want his skill, his knowledge, we want what you now know.”

“Then go into the Green Edge and ask him yourself!”

“We did, and were refused. Every time.” Confasto's patience was running out, his lips pursed, voice straining slightly. “But you… as a graduate, the knowledge you possess could surpass even his, and we could offer you riches beyond your wildest dreams if you would just share it.”

...the first thing you ask me is why.

“No. You're a damned ruddy inspector! You all train with the same monks that Olman was excommunicated from! You already know his style the same as I do!” She had retreated back to the door without realizing it. The Pikes had dropped their guard and were standing behind Confasto as before, stock still with no reaction. The pounding in her ears was gone, replaced with a razor sharp sensitivity to everything around her. She could hear her own heart still, pounding away under the effects of the adrenaline pumping through her, along with the wetness in her muscles. Her training, the chi. Just how much did they really know?

Confasto sighed, shaking his head. “Tempest, it doesn't do us any good for you to lie like this. This offer--”

“Lying about what?!” She had no idea what he (no, they) wanted from her. Him and the sisters? No. No way in hells he could afford to fund this on a ruddy's salary. ‘We’ had to be a larger organization. The Old Guard? Some new outfit? There’d been no big players in Zephys since the Church and Dark Road wiped each other out. And he was still talking.

“--has a deadline. Much as we would love to receive your training, we will take that knowledge from you if necessary.”

And there it was. There was no offer. There was no choice beyond whether or not she was getting paid for her efforts. Two on one at least, though at least with those suits she was reasonably sure the Pikes weren’t hiding weapons. Confasto probably had a department issue repeater, though in close quarters he was going to do more harm than good with it unless he was a crack shot or an idiot, so she felt safe in assuming he’d use it anyway. Three to one, then.

“Well, you put it like that, I’d be lying to say I politely decline.” She smiled. There wasn't going to be anything polite about this.

Once again, Tempest let the wetness bubbling up inside her go as she threw another right jab, hurling a ball of greenish-white light from her knuckles and into Moleshark’s chest. She immediately felt a burning in her own ribs, in the exact spot Ma Olenzio had shot her, but only as she tucked her right arm against her did she feel the blood. Her eyes darted to Swampdog, whose hands were still at her side, but there was something strange about her right arm.

Tempest darted backwards, out the door to open up distance, and as the angle changed she saw it. A pike, several feet long, as black as their catsuits. Tempest had never seen her draw it, couldn’t even imagine where she’d been hiding it. It hadn’t been a deep strike, but it was a bad one, meant to debilitate more than kill.

“You don’t wanna do this, Tempest,” Confasto continued. “You can still turn this around… You make an enemy of me here, you make an enemy of all of us. There’s nowhere you can run, no hole you can hide in that we can’t burn you out of.” His voice was changing as he spoke. He was changing, his frame lengthening, expanding, limbs extending, skin black beyond the cuffs of his jacket and his pantlegs, and the sounds, the sounds of his bones creaking, stretching, maybe even breaking to fill his new frame. As his seams burst apart to reveal the black catsuit beneath his disguise, his face sloughed off to reveal a mask of his own, a boar with tusks that would never have fit beneath that skin. His frame continued to fill out, chest expanding into a bust that no doubt matched her own as a tail thrashed behind him, words spilling out of his mouth in her voice.

“If you run, no one can save you!”

She ran anyway, bolting into the hallway, stopping only long enough to whip a hook kick back into the doorway, catching one of the Pikes straight in the forehead as they charged after her. One advantage of knowing her own frame was in knowing how much of that door she filled when she stepped through it. She’d bought herself a few seconds at most, but that as all she’d need to get to the stairs.

Confasto’s car was gone when she hit the sidewalk, replaced by a line of sedans spilling suited thugs out onto the street, yelling and pointing, both fingers and guns. Tempest had no idea who they were, but as the first bullets came flying her way she knew there would be no time to ask.

And so she fled.

***

“...And from there I ran. I made it across the bridge, to the Row, and you know the rest. The guys after me--”

“Olenzio family,” Ryk offered. “Black Road, too, from what Vodka told me -- she’s the one you met at the door. Ma found Confasto dead in the alley behind her place, said you left a kitchen full of bodies. The Old Guard in Midway are in an uproar over this, calling for your head.”

“The Old Guard?! But they’re the ones who--” Tempest bolted forward in her seat, only to cut short in a hiss of pain as she pressed her arm against her ribs again.

“World of difference between a protection racket and a hit. The other families hired you for a job, and when Ma came looking for blood they showed her the receipts. Story now is that you went rogue, went above and beyond what you were hired to do, and killed her boy -- a State Inspector -- when he tried to stop you. . Much as their influence has waned in Zephys, The Old Guard is still leagues above most any outfit here in Sandorn. They passed a hit down the wire to the slums, probably before you even made the bridge. Six figures to anyone who catches you, preferably alive. Old Guard, Staples, and the locals,” Ryk listed them off on her fingers. “All out for a cut of your hide.” Ryk shook her head slowly.

“On top of the Pikes and whoever set them on me,” Tempest sighed, running one hand through her hair. “Looking for some kind of secret skills I don’t have just because I trained with Olman.” Her gaze drifted to Ryk again. “...Why did you send me to train with him.”

Ryk met that gaze with steel in her eyes. “Because he’s the best. You were one of my best and brightest, and for the fact that you managed to find him out in that jungle, and finish that hells he put you through, I wager he felt the same about you.”

Tempest rubbed at her ribs with her left hand as she sat back, adjusting for her tail as she tapped her boot heel against the carpet. There were too many moving parts, all of them with sharp edges, whirling and ready to tear her to shreds if she stepped wrong, and she still had no idea what any of this was about.

“He never told you, did he?” Ryk had sat back in her seat as well, studying Tempest’s face.

“Told me what?” Tempest looked up quickly, cocking an eyebrow.

“Why he left the Sharrok Temple, why the monks kicked him out.”

“He told me he wanted to take their martial art in a different direction, and they disagreed.”

“That’s true,” Ryk nodded. “But I suppose he never told you what that agreement was about.”

Tempest shook her head. She had never pressed past beyond that answer. She never pressed anyone for much if she didn’t have to, a habit that had served her well, in life and work both.

“Olman was excommunicated for reintroducing finishing techniques to the Sharrok-ryuu style. They could not tolerate him martial art back into a tool for killing, so they sent him away, where he kept refining it.”

“The perfection of his art…” Tempest whispered aloud, recalling his words. “...until he stood before the God of War himself?”

Ryk shrugged up one shoulder. “Him as well. He met the Goddess of Death first. You don’t meet a member of the Trinity lightly.”

“That was just a story, I thought--” She was flabbergasted. Olman was a wily old cat, but he hadn’t taught her anything special; she’d drilled the basics with him until she bled all over and he’d sent her away.

“Olman doesn’t tell tales, he has no reason to. I suppose he thought you’d figure it out for yourself--”

“Figure what out?” Tempest couldn’t hide the exasperation in her voice, and as annoyed as Ryk looked at being interrupted, she couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. “Everyone seems to know more about this than I do, and I don’t know what the hells it is I’m supposed to know that got me into this mess!”

“Your precious sensei perfected the art of killing. To command the attention of the God of War, you have to be a general of an army without match, or a warrior without peer. To meet the Goddess of Death, all you have to do is die. Or send countless souls to meet her by your own hand.”

“Sensei was… an assassin?” After he’d nearly kicked her head off for assuming he was asking her to be.

“‘An’ assassin?” Ryk scoffed. “Tempe, by the time he faffed off to hide in the Green Edge, he was known throughout the entire state of province -- hells, the entire region -- as the Assassin King.”