image [https://i.imgur.com/jpOYNWV.png]

“Tanner,” Mateo spat, his voice oozing venom.

“'Lo boys,” Tanner replied with a strained smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes as he moved further into the bar.

He looked pensive and resigned, and I had to admit that the sight of him scared me a little. The jittery sensation of adrenaline circulated through my body and my hands started shaking slightly. I balled them into fists to steady them.

While he walked closer to us, several people hustled through the doorway after him. They shuffled inside one at a time, all with similar jaggy movements. With Tanner, there were eight of them in total and my heart sank as they spread out and covered the entire entryway in a semicircle. As far as I knew, the bar didn’t have a back door, but even so, they probably had that covered as well. Anything else would have been amateurish.

Tanner wore regular clothing, but all of the others wore identical bland grey loose-fitting long-armed shirts and cargo pants. Each one had a different hideous demon mask covering their face. The entire ensemble screamed “cult following”.

They didn’t carry guns, but instead held stun batons loosely in one hand, pointing at the floor. Three of them carried a set of manacles in the other, and one held a pair of large zip ties. It seemed whatever they had planned, they were set on taking us alive.

Their stillness was unsettling.

“What do you want?” Dink asked warily, shifting in his seat.

“Ah, ah,” Tanner admonished and flared some aether, wagging a finger at Dink tiredly, “no sudden movements please, Dink.”

The wannabe cultists all took a single step forward in tandem. It looked spooky as hell.

“Oh, fuck off why don’t you, we ain't gonna come quietly,” Rob declared.

Tanner’s face fell even further, and his eyes looked sad and deadened. He seemed very different to how he’d been five days ago.

He took a deep breath and started talking while moving behind the bar, helping himself to a beer, “You put me in quite a pickle the other day, you know.”

Dink tapped me lightly on my left leg where I’d deposited my phone after Colson had sent me a text, and I got the hint. Colson. I needed to get word to him that we were in trouble, that Tanner was here.

“We were gonna check out the farm so I could capture you all and then the Flame Warden shows up with his little charge in tow,” he said, before gulping down half a pint in one go.

He looked at the glass and smiled a little, before setting it on the counter.

“Aah,” he pseudo-sighed and continued, “Usually I’m not one for alcohol before noon but that hit the spot. I had to improvise a little after that and the people I work with were very annoyed. I’ll need you to come with us, please.”

“Not gonna happen, Tanner and you knew that when you came in here,” Dink provided.

You tell 'em Dink!

“Yeah, I don’t think that me making fun of your wife warrants being kidnapped as retaliation,” the words left my lips before I had a chance to shut myself down.

Stupid!

An ugly expression crossed Tanner’s face briefly, his gaze turning malicious, upper lip curled into a sneer.

“Shut the fuck up, Ethan!” he barked at me and slapped the glass so hard that it splintered where it stood, shards flying everywhere.

I recoiled a little in my seat. I’d sensed a trickle of aether reinforcing his blow.

Not able to reconcile his behaviour with his reserved mood, it struck me as odd that he had such a violent reaction to my jibe. Maybe he was simply unhinged. As he turned to look at his bleeding righthand knuckles with a frown, I put two shaky fingers in my pocket and snuck out my phone. My eyes flickered to the cult following, but they hadn’t adjusted a hair during our exchange or at my movement. I held the phone against the underside of our table and tried to unlock it. So far so good.

“Dang it, now see what you made me do,” Tanner complained, followed by an exaggerated sigh.

"We're terribly sorry," Rob muttered sarcastically.

He picked up one of the dirty dish rags and held it against his bleeding hand as he kept on talking, “Sorry, that was uncalled for. Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.” He turned to look at us. “And I know, Dink" — he gestured at the septuplets vaguely — “that’s what the goons're for.”

I silently hoped he wasn’t up to date on his tetanus shot.

He started moving around the counter and came closer to where we were sitting. I looked around at Rob, Dink and Mateo and saw they all wore resigned but resolute expressions. I fiddled with the phone below our table, but I wasn’t sure if I’d managed to call or text Colson yet. If only I’d used it more.

“Colson isn’t here right now, so that means I've got another shot. Not as easy as it would’ve been on the farm, but it is what it is,” he said as he came to stand roughly ten feet from us.

Tanner addressed me, “I know you’re trying to message him, Ethan, you’re not fooling anyone. Go on, you can show us. I’ll even let you finish the text.”

"Damn," I muttered under my breath. And here I thought I was being clever.

Tanner’s reservation was gone now. Instead, his eyes had turned hard, mouth set in a thin line, as if he’d come to some sort of decision.

“Why did you take the time to come in here and talk if you know the others aren’t more than thirty minutes out?” Mateo asked while I hurriedly wrote a text to Colson, “You could’ve just come in here guns blazing. No need for a show.”

“Tanner’s here. Kidnapping. Help.” I wrote and sent it off.

I put the phone on the table.

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“They won’t be able to get here in time. They won’t check their phones while they’re performing the ritual, and nobody knows I’m here. Call it professional courtesy or whatever, I just wanted to give you all a chance to come along peacefully,” Tanner explained.

“How do you even know about that?” Rob asked him.

“There’s no need for me to tell you,” Tanner supplied, shaking his head slightly, “I know it’s gonna be a while before they’re done, but even as fast as Colson is we’ll be long gone by the time he gets back. Come along quietly or we’ll do it the hard way. Last chance.”

At his words, Rob, Dink, and Mateo had come to a unanimous silent decision and stood at the same time, their stools scraping along the floor. I echoed their move a second later. The steady flow of fear and apprehension I’d felt up until now came to a point and filled my body to the brim with nervous energy. An image of the empousa and the drudges, bloodied and dead, sprang to mind but I pressed it down. It felt almost too easy, the trauma processing paying dividends. My heart was still playing the bongos in my chest, but I felt in control of my fear, not ruled by it.

Entering the tranquil mind, I undid the clasp on my spear holster and handed it to Mateo. I think he recognised the design because he sent a trickle of aether through it without me prompting him. The spear sprang into existence, and he handed it back. Nobody said anything.

Everyone, including Tanner, drew on their Sigils and if what my senses told me were correct, we were at a disadvantage. Tanner was the strongest one here. The goons felt much weaker than Dink, who was holding the least aether on our side, but they had the numbers. And I couldn’t use aether yet.

Tanner removed a knife from his pocket and cut both of his palms. Over three or so seconds, he formed the dual sabres I’d seen him holding at the farm, using his blood. With the strange detachment that followed my meditation, I still found the blood magic creepy. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as we stood there, across from each other.

“Remember, we need them alive,” Tanner said.

His words broke our stalemate, and the fight was on.

Tanner blurred forward in a burst of speed and Mateo rushed to meet him knocking over a chair. Mateo had produced a shimmering metal rod with a spike at the end, a one-handed war scythe, and held a combat knife in the other hand.

“Dink, Rob, try and see if you can bring some of those bastards down,” he yelled over the din of their blades colliding, “Ethan, do whatever you can!”

Nodding, I didn’t have a chance to see what Dink and Rob were doing, before two of the goons without manacles separated from the pack and started my way.

Dropping into a guard stance I spread my feet and angled myself towards them, the spearhead pointing towards the floor. I waited for them to arrive—my breathing was even and steady. The cultists were fast, but not so much so that I couldn’t track them or react to their movements. They came within reach of my spear at the same time, and I chose to engage the one on my left first. Raising their batons on approach, the electricity crackled in the air, ready to zap and pacify.

“Come on, then,” I muttered.

Taking a half-step forward, I swiped the spear upwards as fast as I could and scored a superficial hit across the left one’s sternum, the cultists both stopping in their tracks when I started moving. Shit. If they’d kept going, I could have crippled one immediately.

A rip appeared in his shirt, blood already staining the edges where I could now see the upper part of his chest. Before they started advancing again, I immediately followed up and circled the spear counterclockwise and down, around his head and smacked him on his right side with as much strength as I could muster. I aimed to hit him with the spearpoint but didn’t properly adjust in time and only managed to hit him with the haft.

His mask cracked and he was sent reeling into his buddy, both of them stumbling slightly, their legs catching them before they fell to the floor.

Not deigning to give them a chance to recover fully, I pulled the spear back and thrust for all I was worth, towards the belly of the one I’d hit in the face. His flesh parted like I was cutting through paper. A slight resistance worked against my momentum when the spear entered his guts just above his right hip and came out his back through a fist-sized hole, a chunk of sickly pink intestine attached to the point.

Damn, this thing is sharp!

Despite my battle trance, it left a sour taste in my mouth. Gut wounds tended to turn septic. If he lived that long.

I pulled at the spear, and it exited his body as easily as it had entered it. He dropped his stun baton and covered the hole in his stomach with both hands before toppling backwards to the floor and landing on his back. I was half expecting a piercing wail, but he didn’t utter a sound.

"BLAST!" I heard Dink yell, followed by the sound of someone hurtling through the room and hitting the counter.

Meanwhile, the other cultist had regained his footing and while I was pulling out the spear he managed to get inside my guard. Instead of going for a fast cleave as I’d planned, I adjusted and pointed the spearhead towards the ceiling and brought the haft close to my body.

Mateo screamed from behind me, but I didn’t have time to check what was going on.

The other cultist swung at my shoulder with their stun baton, and I managed to just block it in time.

*CRACK*

Wood and metal met in a violent collision doing its best to emulate the sound of thunder, the impact bending my spear slightly, and I was pushed backwards a foot or so. There was a lot of power behind his swing and if the spear hadn’t been reinforced by runes, I wasn’t sure it could have withstood the pressure.

We parted and I managed to create some distance that the cultist instantly tried to close again. I decided to take a gamble and thrust the butt of my spear upwards, echoing the move I'd dreamt about days ago where I was fighting the Swede and hit them in the groin. His weapon clanged to the floor as he landed on both of his knees and covered his unmentionables with both of his hands.

I guess some things are anatomically universal.

Before I had a chance to reconsider the action, I swiped my spear across his windpipe horizontally, just below his mask. There was no resistance to speak of and dark—almost black—arterial fluid rushed to fill the cut. His hands moved from his groin to his neck as he tried to staunch the bleeding and he toppled sideways to the floor, gasping for air.

The sight sickened me, but I’d known what it could come to when we started the fight, and I ignored the feeling to the best of my ability.

Turning to the man I’d drilled a hole through, I found him still on the floor in the same position I’d left him. He had picked up his oversized taser again and was clutching it as if his life depended on it—which it ultimately did. Crippled by pain or shock, his cracked mask was pointed my way and I saw his empty gaze consider me absently. Like he didn't care what was about to happen.

Does it matter? It's kill or be killed. Or perhaps worse, captured.

With grim determination, I stepped toward the downed man and pushed my spear into his body, just below the breastbone and upwards at an angle towards his heart. He batted at, and grabbed the haft, with his baton and hand respectively, trying to prevent the killing stroke. But I had leverage and gravity on my side, and I overpowered his feeble attempt with a bit of extra force. It was too easy.

A sickening, almost hushed, squelching noise reached my ears and a slight intake of breath ran through him before he fell completely still.

Not even a minute had gone by, and I had already killed two people. A bout of vertigo struck me and had to steady myself against my spear, pressing it to the floor, the tranquil mind wavering.

Fuck.

I didn’t register the running footfalls behind me before it was too late. I felt a poke at my lower back and my body went rigid, my legs giving out as several million volts coursed through me briefly.

The spear left my hands unwillingly and I convulsed to the floor. I turned on my way down and saw one of the grey-clad henchmen standing near me with his stun baton pointing at me. Landing facing the others I saw that Dink and Mateo were down. Dink was out, either dead or unconscious, and Mateo was clutching his left wrist with a pale face and wide eyes, his severed hand lying some distance away.

“No no no no,” I heard him mutter continuously under his breath.

He was probably going into shock.

Between them, they’d brought another two people down. One’s head was twisted the wrong way, mask removed, revealing an unnatural and corpselike female visage. The other looked to be frosted over, white rime marring what skin I could see.

Rob was fighting two of the three remaining cultists, a blue glow emanating from his fists. He managed to strike the arm of one and it was rendered useless, but his move left him wide open and the other managed to strike his ribs with the stun rod and he collapsed to the ground.

I barely had time to register the entire scene before I was prodded again, my body spasming violently.

“Sorry about this, Ethan,” Tanner’s cold voice sounded from above a moment later.

A boot flashed in my vision briefly before it connected with the side of my face.