Osric slammed his quarterstaff on the ground, releasing a shockwave that sent five of his attackers flying. Without missing a beat, he twirled his staff and launched it toward the handler standing on the arena’s balcony. The staff struck him squarely in the face, and the handler crumpled backward.
“Weak fools,” Osric spat, voice dripping with contempt. “This is what you bring me? These five bumbling kids to join the gang? Is this the best you could do? For fuck's sake, where is this gang heading?” He turned his gaze up to the handler. “Master Quince, kill this gang leader. He’s outlived his purpose here.”
He recalled his staff, and it flew back into his hand. Quince, mute but deadly efficient, was already at work. Osric had come to trust him more than anyone in Crydonia’s underworld. Over five decades, Quince had proven himself invaluable, a silent sentinel handling the more trivial operations, leaving Osric free to focus on his greater plans.
Quince raised two fingers, signaling a squad of reapers who immediately marched toward the gang balcony, where the now-unconscious handler lay. The man wouldn’t survive the next five minutes. Reapers were the deadliest warriors in the underworld, each personally selected and trained by Osric, each capable of destruction on par with a death guard.
Osric cast a withering look at the bodies scattered across the arena. Two had broken arms, two lay unconscious and bleeding, and one was twisted unnaturally, his eyes staring blankly—a corpse. Osric sneered and spat on the ground. The new policies enacted by the nobles had made the commoners even weaker, siphoning mana from the leylines to power the upper districts. The common and merchant districts were left with low mana density, weakening the people over time. Osric and his reapers, however, were unaffected; they had spies in the nobles’ network, quietly siphoning off enough mana to support ten times their current numbers. But if this drained resource continued, Osric would have to intervene, a diversion he couldn’t afford if he planned to retake his place in the royal district.
“How goes the purge?” Osric turned to Quince. In response, Quince twirled his finger around his ear three times, then flashed a slight grin.
“Ah, almost done, then. Good.” Osric nodded, pleased. Three months ago, the underworld’s network had been breached, and he suspected the Priminian spy lord was behind it. Their enmity was centuries-old, and the spy lord’s handiwork was unmistakable—a familiar flavor in a dish Osric had tasted far too many times.
Osric had set Quince to root out the moles, and his second-in-command had done so masterfully—though he’d never admit it to him. Quince was the one who kept order in the underworld, running operations smoothly while Osric pursued his own goals. In fact, he’d only just returned four months ago from the Free Cities beyond the Scarlet Desert, drawn there by an unexpected lead. He’d encountered Novr Jacquain, the sixth-generation grandson of a former royal archivist, recently replaced by Master Thorn, a weak tier-8 mage specializing in languages and archaeology. Thorn had earned his title by recovering 300 tomes from the Altmar ruins near the Free Cities. Osric had spotted Novr in Elythria, a Free City infamous for its slave market and its proximity to brothels, where the man had been drinking heavily, flanked by a small entourage of nondescript guards. Osric had spotted Novr in Elythria, a Free City infamous for its slave market and its proximity to brothels, where the man had been drinking heavily, flanked by a small entourage of nondescript guards.
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Osric had watched from the shadows, cloaked and disguised, waiting for a moment to approach without drawing attention. Even far from the royal district’s watchful eyes, Novr was no ordinary man. He held secrets like coin, and Osric knew he couldn’t risk exposure. Rumor had it that Novr possessed a key—literal or figurative—that could unlock forbidden sections of the archives, where memory balls and ancient artifacts lay sealed away by wards even the highest-ranking mages feared to touch.
The archives intrigued Osric deeply; he’d infiltrated them multiple times, only to be halted by unbreakable wards. Skilled as he was, ward-breaking wasn’t his forte. For that, he had Ilea. He’d found her a decade ago, a seven-year-old street thief with a talent for stealing unseen, her magic undetectable even to seasoned mages. Osric took her in, quickly testing her potential. When he discovered she was a dualist, he wasted no time binding her with a death bond. Ilea didn’t yet know her full powers, and Osric kept it that way, lest she grow beyond his control.
After his return, he’d immediately tasked Ilea with infiltrating the royal archives. Through “questioning” Novr, he learned that the man had overseen recent re-warding efforts, especially over the ballroom. That revelation had brought Osric rushing back. The ballroom, he knew, contained the blood memories of Crydonia’s former kings, dating back several hundred centuries to when the kingdom was a monarchy. Among these was the memory of Robert—the Mad Dog, the Butcher of Altmar, the king risen from the commons who wielded the zweihander and razed the Altmar Empire. But then Robert had vanished. The nobles, threatened by his legacy, had launched a relentless witch hunt and erased all records of him from the kingdom’s history. Now, only the royal archivists knew his story.
He had sent Ilea to retrieve it. She should have breached the archives by now, and it was time for him to prepare to receive the memory ball from her. He knew she’d be pursued by death guards; the archive’s security practically guaranteed it. But he hadn’t told her about the guards—this was a test, part of his larger plan to prepare her for the role he had in mind.
A blood memory stored the life experiences of its creator—skills, knowledge, and even physical and magical abilities. Robert had recorded his at his peak, a reservoir of forbidden knowledge, and Osric intended to wield that power to reclaim his place in the royal district. Perhaps he might even locate the legendary Zweihander itself. A thrill rippled through him at the thought. With a swift gesture, he summoned Quince, and together, they strode out of the arena.