***Grant***

Grant wanted to cry.

Grant wanted to breathe.

Neither was an option.

He was currently tucked into a tiny vent, his body twisted in a configuration it was never meant to be in, lungs collapsed until he could barely keep himself conscious.

Taking a page from Hal the Hairy’s playbook.

Normally he never would’ve even attempted it, but you don’t just ignore a warning from a En’hol who can accurately see twenty years in the future.

So he was trapped in the dark, claustrophobic space, listening to his family being slaughtered.

Early on, a body had collapsed in front of the vent, blocking him in and further concealing him.

He could still hear the screaming, though.

Grant squeezed his eyes shut, tears spilling out as he desperately tried to cover his ears.

Why did she have to do that!? What terrible deficiency does Aunt Merida have that could allow her to see killing Ella’s daughter as an acceptable solution!?

Every time he scried the future, it was like touching a hot stove: He died. Over and over, he experienced death, stuffed into a dark metal enclosure. He tried every possibility he could think of, but the future was a black, featureless wall.

It was over.

Blood was beginning to pool in the vent, adding another layer of horror to his situation.

If only Ella was still alive.

Grant’s eyes popped open.

In the black, featureless wall of dead ends in front of him, his eyes made out a tiny glimmer of light.

Barely a pinhole in the monolithic wall of potential futures where he died. It flickered violently, as it intertwined with Tom’s future. A tiny candle in the dark, one heavy sigh from being snuffed out.

Grant knew what he had to do.

With a grunt of effort, Grant shoved the vent open, sliding the corpse out of the way. He climbed out of the vent, his breathing ragged, skin bloody and scraped from where he’d forced himself into the metal tube.

As he rose to his feet, the screaming redoubled, no longer muffled by wood, metal and flesh.

Grant closed his eyes and slapped his hands over his ears. He focused every sense he could muster on that single pinhole of light, and started sprinting after it.

Eyes closed. Hands over his ears.

******

“Look at this fuckin’ guy,” A Wratz’got said, motioning to the lanky naked man running screaming down the hall with his eyes closed and ears covered.

“I got this,” another said, lining up his shot as the fool rushed towards them. The Wratzgot motioned to the window he intended to send the En’hol’s head through then hefted his club.

Whiff.

The En’hol ducked under the strike without missing a beat.

“Shit,” The first Wratz’got muttered, grasping for the runner, but the fool tripped, accidently dodging the grapple.

The En’hol tumbled over the bannister and fell down to the first floor, his fall broken by a corpse.

I got ‘im.” The second one said, jumping down to the first floor.

The floor refused to support the monster’s mass, and his legs crashed through the boards, burying him halfway into the basement.

He tried to grab the kid, his talons gouging furrows in the boards, but the tall Enhol managed to scramble away in time, aiming for the entrance.

“Whoah, what? Hey! How the-“

The two Wratz’got watched as the En’hol managed to slip past the enclosure through an absolutely improbable series of fumbles.

“Tell Kar’el we’ve got a live one,” the half-buried Wrat’zgot said.

“Obviously.”

***Tom Graves***

“What was that?” Tom whispered, leaning his ear closer to the tortured En’hol.

“Vendrith and Marida took the reigns of the empire! They lobotomized The Emperor while her pregnancy clouded her sight!” The gutless old man cried. “Then they crippled or imprisoned anyone who could oppose them!”

Tom put two and two together.

I guess there’s two people here that truly deserve to die, he thought as Ella’s skin cooled against the crook of his arm.

And wasn’t that just the way the world worked? The rich old fucks responsible for everyone’s problems were nowhere to be seen. Marida had ducked out before they even arrived, and Vendrith’s mansion was across town. If he was sane there was no way the teleporter would let Tom anywhere near him.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Worth a shot, though.

He looked down at the cursemark between his fingers, frayed threads trailing into Ella’s hair.

I can think of one way to get them even if I can’t. After politely asking an older En’hol about some of the burning questions he’d had, Tom was pretty sure he understood Raze’s motivation, and what would happen if he returned the Kinzena’s memories.

“Put him out of his misery,” Tom muttered, heading for the door.

“Do you need an escort?” Carol asked.

“No. I want him to underestimate me. Again.”

Tom left the En’hol mansion, carrying his daughter into the heat of a city on fire.

Thankfully the mansions in the Great House district were rather far away from each other, so the flames didn’t quite burn the people on the road, but Tom could feel the heat beating against his skin.

Tom walked down the streets, ignoring the people frantically running back and forth, the shouts and the chaos. He knew exactly where to go.

His feet led him to the Kinzena mansion as the chaos seemed to part around him, leaving him alone with his thoughts drowning out the screaming and smoke.

As Tom mounted the staircase, he spotted a wobbly, man-sized section of space spinning behind him. Compared to Raze it was laughably slow.

Tom shifted Ella to his other hand and summoned the reconstituted blood sword out of the ring, interposing it into the twisted space.

A young man appeared, his head neatly bisected by the blade.

Tom put the sword back in the ring and continued up the stairs, leaving the corpse behind him.

No one else tried to stop him.

Hell, maybe he wasn’t trying to stop me. Maybe he was trying to wish me luck and hand me brownie. But I doubt it.

Tom walked down the empty halls of the Kinzena manor and opened the door to the old man’s office.

The old man stood behind his desk, doing his best at looking intimidating. His beard was long and well-groomed, his plate armor immaculate and shiny in the gentle light of the lamps, covered in runes of sturdiness and protection. The man was dressed for a fight, unlike all the other times Tom had visited him.

Six months ago, I would’ve given a shit.

“It’s nostalgic, killing you in this office again.” Tom said, sitting in the plush guest chair across from the elder and adjusting Ella in his arms. “Have a seat.”

“Seer humor. What makes you think you can kill me?” Vendrith said.

“You’re old. And slow. And I put a bullet through your hand.” Tom said.

“Ah. I didn’t recognize you.” Vendrith said, his gaze scanning the office before he proceeded to sit.

“Would you die for the glory of your House?” Tom asked once they were both settled.

“Of course.”

“So if you could fix Raze, and the price was your life, you would do it?” Tom asked, cocking his head.

Vendrith stared back at him.

Tom clicked his tongue. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

“You’re so much more self-deluded than Marida is,” Tom said, shaking his head. “At least that crone admits her intentions to herself. Braver, though. I half expected you to be continents away by now.”

“You couldn’t touch a hair on my-“

Tom whipped his hand forward and summoned the revolver out of the storage ring.

BOOM!

Vendrith rocked backwards in his chair as his armor absorbed the shot.

The old man’s eyes bulged, and space began to twist around him. He wasn’t running though, Tom could see that the old man was setting up a relay of portals that ended beside Tom’s temple.

“Try that again,” the old man sneered.

“’Kay.”

BOOM!

The portals created a loop, so he couldn’t shoot through either side without hitting himself, who was at the center of the loop.

Luckily the old man set up the bullet-catching portal he presumed was invisible to only cover everything above the desk.

So Tom shot him in the foot. Bonus: the armor was a lot thinner there.

“ARGH!” Vendrith bellowed, space twisting around himself.

All pretense of civility cast aside, Tom dove around the defensive portals and tackled Vendrith to the ground, Ellie’s corpse tumbling to the floor of the office.

THUMP!

Tom’s heart slammed in his chest as the soul pulses rushed out of him and into Vendrith, dispersing the teleporter’s control over space with what was essentially white noise.

“Nice to meet you grandpa! My name’s Tom Graves!” Tom howled as he punched the old bastard, teeth and blood flying past his skinned knuckles. “Now you’re gonna DIE!”

An armored elbow snuck past the ring of protection’s effect and caught his brow, causing a burst of lights in Tom’s vision that forced him to stagger away.

“Having fun, you two?” Raze asked. The giant’s arms were crossed where he leaned against the bookshelf, his arrival unnoticed in the scuffle.

“Rah!” Vendrith shouted as he picked up the wooden bust of Tom’s head and tried to use it to brain him, his arm disappearing through a portal.

Tom ducked, snagging the arm and yanking it towards him, dragging Vendrith off balance. He lunged forward, sending his splayed fingers up the arm to where an imaginary head might be.

Tom’s hand disappeared as it traveled through Vendrith’s portal, appearing in front of the man’s face. His ring finger caught the old man’s eye socket and buried itself in Vendrith’s left eye.

Props to Gunn for that trick.

“AIII!” Vendrith staggered away, pulling his arm out of Tom’s grip before he tried to run again, but Tom was already on top of him, disrupting the man’s control with a deluge of power.

Tom reached into the collar of the man’s armor, found the heavy duty fabric underneath it, and grabbed it. Another Gunn trick.

Tom took the undershirt and wrung it around Vendrith’s neck, twisting with every fiber of muscle he could bring to bear.

“I’m gonna kill you with your fancy fuckin’ armor.” Tom growled into the man’s face, ignoring the gradually weakening scratches on his arms as Vendrith tried in vain to dislodge him.

When the man’s face was turning an unhealthy shade of purple, the scratches stopped, but Tom barely noticed. If anything, he twisted the man’s undershirt harder.

Vendrith’s bulging eyes rolled in his skull, settling on Raze.

“Help. Me.” he croaked, his voice barely audible.

“NOOO!”

A body impacted against Tom’s side, knocking him away from Vendrith.

There was a crunch as a heavy object impacted against the rando’s shoulder.

Tom’s vision cleared.

Above them, Raze was gradually setting down a heavy glass paperweight, his expression going blank. in front of Tom was Grant, one arm hanging limp while the other cradled a massive block of gold. Grant’s eyes were crazed, and he wasn’t wearing a scrap of clothing, hunched over the huge gold brick like Gollum. The gold was covered in intricate runes that Tom couldn’t even begin to decipher.

“Get your daughter back,” Grant said, reaching out with his wounded arm, his face scrunched in pain as he placed his palm on Tom’s chest.

Tom felt a tremendous swell of sizzling energy from the gold cylinder.

“Fuck -“

***Earth***

“– YOU!” Tom shouted, as the Omnipresent’s office blinked away from around him.

Suddenly Tom was falling, the branches of trees thrashing against him mercilessly as he plummeted to the ground, impacting after an unknown distance on loamy soil that knocked the breath out of him.

“No.” Tom gasped as he climbed to his feet.

Once glance at the sky was enough to tell him that he was back on Earth.

Entire dimensions away from the people that needed to die.

“NO!” Tom shouted, punching a nearby oak tree, hissing at the bone-deep pain that traveled through his arm.

The pain made him look down at his hand, which held the blood-spotted Cursemark with all the dangling foreign threads he’d teased out of it over nights of tedious work. His fingernails had pushed the cloth straight into the skin of his palm while he’d been strangling Vendrith.

If I can’t do it…he will.

Tom tugged on the last thread, releasing Raze's duplicated memories.