The stage behind them, blackened and empty with all furniture and electronics knocked onto the floor. Between them was the large area of chairs and tables; a bar sat at the side with a few empty glasses tipped over the edge.

Apollo rushed to Ritcher's flank. The tendril of sand behind him black and brown, like the tail of a tanooki. It dragged along the floor and carried with its tables and chairs and glass and broke dividers and raised tile from the floor.

"So what's this all about, Ritcher?" Apollo asked. "Didn't get the news? Floyd is dead. Your father's murderer is dead. If you didn't know now you know-"

"One of them is. The other lives" He said.

"You've known?"

"Turnus told me." He said. "And I know your friend killed Floyd, too."

"How'd you find out? Get a postcard?"

"It was a hunch." Ritcher turned his body once. It forced Apollo to freeze in place like an animal caught in the light. "When I went to go kill the matriarch, he was not by her side. I found it strange that Salome would die alone."

"It couldn't have been that strange." Apollo poised himself with the blade in front of him and the wall behind him. The sweat came down to his forearms, to his lower back. "The old bitch was always destined to die alone."

"Maybe," Ritcher said. "But that he would not defend her was strange. What confirmed it was the day later when the surge came to me like a steroid to my heart. The blood rush, almost uncontrollable. The power, the will of Mammon. I knew a Wolfe had died and that it was Floyd, knew it."

"Salome's dead. Floyd's dead. Why waste your time doing this now, Ritcher? It's over. Your father's been avenged, there's nothing left here for you." Apollo dug his feet into the floor. "What's the point in killing the family?"

"Family?" Ritcher asked.

The air went cold and all across the floor shook in small trembles, the expanse lay before Apollo, growing. Sand came out from behind Ritcher, poured onto the floor into a thin layer. Paper thin. Apollo stepped away, and it continued, encroaching on him.

"I am doing this exactly for the family of which I owe myself to. I endure for it. For the Wolfe's." The sand grew, faster. Apollo jumped back, onto the stage.

"Killing your kin is what you owe to the family name?"

"Yes," Ritcher said. "When I was, a young man father told me, and I'll never forget it. He said a man's worth was not in the vanity he could accrue, but in the covenants, he could uphold. That no wealth or awards or prestige could change that a man's name and karmic credit was all that mattered. Keeping a promise. Upholding the rules. That was what he taught me."

"Considering he was drunk, I'm impressed by his eloquence," Apollo said. "Did he beat the shit out of you afterwards, too?"

Ritcher's didn't so much as blink.

"That whether weak or poor, so long as he could keep to himself the promise made, that if every breath could be taken to uphold that code, then all was right," Ritcher said.

"Seems like a far cry from the Thomas Wolfe that died." And he was sweating down to his toes, it soaked into the socks, and each step felt like he was smooshing his feet into the swollen sponge that was his socks. "What's this got to do with killing your brothers?"

"They broke it. The covenant. They broke it long ago, in too many ways nonredeemable." Ritcher said. "The incestuous whores. The slave drivers. The power-hungry capitalists. All of them, guilty. All of them, greedy."

"Well, that's something we can agree with."

"Money broke my father. Salome destined him to ruin." Ritcher said. "This casino, this wealth has done nothing but destroy us. And after all, 's been done, I've come to realize there is no redemption. Not in life, at least."

"But in death..." Apollo said. "You want to clear your name through their deaths, for God?"

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"For all our souls." He said.

"You're really fucking insane, did you know that?" Apollo asked.

"It makes no difference what you believe." Ritcher slammed his foot on the floor. The sand rose to the air into a small cloud. A mist.

"You're hurting a lot of other people besides your family," Apollo said. "The detectives your mother sent after you. The prostitute we spoke to. God knows how many more."

"Don't forget Junior," Ritcher said.

"So you're the one who caved his head in, huh?" Apollo ripped a bit of his sleeve and wrapped it around his face, he stepped into the powder and dust floating in the air. "I got a lot of shit for that. You killed him for no good reason."

"It was a good reason. They blockaded too much of the natural path we're all destined to play." He said. "I course corrected."

"Do you even have an ounce of remorse, at all?" Apollo gripped his sword tight, he dragged it along the floor. Each step it screeched. "Will you ever stop, I wonder?"

"I'd do it again. I will do it again." Ritcher's form disintegrated, slowly, from the feet up. His body reduced to sand as it dispersed across the mist. "If you're looking for a man struggling with his redemption, look elsewhere. I am not confused. I am not remorseful. I am not..."

"Here." Apollo finished. Ritcher disappeared into the mist. His form, completely gone. Apollo stood, sword clenched, in the middle with the mist surrounding him and nothing so much as city lights to cast their glare through the cloudy tinted glass surrounding the room. Sound morphed, disappeared. His steps no longer were there. It was all gone, all missing and before this strangeness, the black mist, the sand that dragged along his face and scraped at him, Apollo shook.

Thrill. Fear. All coming together and behind it all to fast drumming of his heart and the drummer, Astyanax. Egging him. Go on, go forward into the unknown.

Apollo walked.

With nothing but the comfort of his blade by his side, he wandered the mist. His body slamming into the desks and chairs, every so often. Something swerved. Something moved. But each turn of his head, the movement disappeared. The sand storm was so thick he couldn't see past a few inches from him. It almost got him. The insanity of the obscurity, the figments he crafted in the haze, blurs, and shadows. He was almost beginning to think no one was here at all.

Something to his back.

He raised his blade, it struck his steel. Strong, blunt, something that pushed Apollo back a few inches.

"Good reflexes, much better than the other two," Ritcher said, whose voice seemed omnipresent. "I heard Vicars were quick, I'm glad you live up to it. But how long can you keep it up, I wonder?"

The strikes came again at random, all across his body. He raised his blade. He swerved his head. He looked up and down and left and right, at limbs that appeared from the dark sand screen, hands and fists and kicks and toes.

Again.

Ritcher came out like a ghost, out of the sand and into some concrete form to slam his cane down at Apollo. Then he returned back.

"Sand. It was the gift I was given. Dirt. I never wanted any more, I never needed any more." Ritcher said.

"Mammon, ruler of Kings and Alchemists. It must be annoying," Something from above, Apollo raised his blade. He felt the force down his shoulders, his feet broke the floor from the absorption of the kinetic energy. Then he smiled, as he gained breath to speak again. "While your brothers and sisters gained riches. " His feet pressed deeper into the floor. "While they gained power over the very nature of existence. All you got was dirt. Must be annoying."

"How could I be mad over things I've never known? Dirt is all I need, Mr. Apollo." Another attack, the wind vexed along his feet. He jumped, it clipped him. The cane scraped his foot and rolled along his skin, ripping cloth from his pants. "This is the result of a thousand days of training. Thousands of hours. Years of passion and ambition and diligence to one conviction. Dirt and dust are all I am, all anyone is. Dirt before God."

A tendril of sand slammed down at Apollo. Apollo blocked. It wrapped around, whipping his back. He felt the blood down his spine.

The tail retracted back into the smokescreen of black sand.

"Impressive. You really know how to get the mileage out of this shit, don't you?" All of him hurt and the blood-soaked his socks.

More blows. More blocks, fatigue that grew. Blunt trauma that shook his bones and tired his muscles. It was only just ten minutes in, and he felt his breath tire, the hot steam that left his mouth wrap, out into his blade where it condensed on the silver.

"You're already going to die?" Ritcher asked.

The cane, the hot rod came at his side, aiming for his ribs.

Apollo jumped. The wind brushed past him. He aimed up, to fire extinguishers. With one strike, he swiped them.

Come on, please.

It came out slow, a stream that looked like a few drops of rain.

Come on, come on.

Then it stormed out. A torrent that washed over his face. A torrent that activated the other sets of fire extinguishers, pipes that spat out rain to the field. Rain that struck the sand lifting itself in the air. Sand that fell to the floor, heavy. Then, it was just mud. And from it, in an almost tired uprising, a human figure appeared among the mud. One that dragged itself up, whose features became more and more defined as it condensed into organic form.

Ritcher, standing somewhere near the bar, held himself against the table.

Apollo took one good look. His black crystal hand interred itself into the wall, his foot latched itself to a pipe. The enemy before him, his blade lit up. Fire climbed up the long steel, to its very tip. His eyes lit red. And he jumped.

Apollo's blade pointed down, the fire spitting out; he struck something. And it was soft. Tender, almost.

He put his hand against his sword. The fire consumed his vision.

"You've tried dirt. You've tried mud. How about a little ash?" Apollo said. And it came out, like the sprinklers overhead, a giant flood of fire that burned everything in a cone before him.