Through the broken window, the man in black cut a dark silhouette against the backdrop of the forest. The near night conditions beneath the tangled canopy appeared bright and welcoming in comparison. His tell-tale glowing eyes panned the overgrowth, twin blue searchlights burning for some sign of the quarry whose lifeblood stained the wood throughout the study.

From inside, Nevin crouched beside the lynx and watched the man in black vanish around the outside of the cabin. He turned away from the broken window, avoiding the chance of having his attention drawn to the dead body growing cold just outside the reach of the sea of ferns encircling the rustic cabin. His stomach was already twisted in enough knots, and he knew if he looked too long at the soldier's corpse, he wouldn't be able to stop the day's steady accumulation of acid and bile from rising up to fill his mouth and throat.

He cast a sideways glance at the study's now empty doorway. Something else was bothering him. When Vincht had pressed him up against the window, Nevin was certain he'd seen another figure approaching the cabin. The figure had appeared again in the moments after Vincht had threatened his life, but no one else in the room had seemed to notice its presence, and the figure had completely vanished by the time Vincht dove out the window.

He chewed his lip thoughtfully. In the stress of the moment, had he been imagining things? Were the hallucinatory dreams caused by his head injury now bleeding over into the real world? Nightmares of being tortured by Dalen and dreams of disembodied voices confusing him were one thing. Now he had to worry about shadow people?

Aidux rested on his haunches, casually wiping away the blood drenching his golden fur in long, patient slurps. Had Nevin not been so distracted, he may have been disgusted by the scene playing out before him. The cat, though, barely acknowledged the devastation all around, content to silently bathe away all evidence of his participation in the day's violence.

“What do you think he wants?” Nevin whispered, hoping the newcomer's ears weren't keen enough to hear through log walls. He wiped his empty hand across the spot on his neck where Vincht's blade had drawn blood. Dry, and relatively painless already. That closed up fast. Sharp blade?

The cat flicked an ear in his direction, but didn't answer.

Nevin poked him in the neck. “How are you so okay with this? I'm crawling out of my skin over here.”

Aidux shrugged before answering, adjusting his child-like voice to match Nevin's hushed tone. “He doesn't like the soldiers. We don't like the soldiers. The way I see it, that makes us friends. That's like...math, I think.”

“I don't think it works that way, bud.” The young man forced himself to take a deep breath, trying to soothe his frazzled nerves. As much as he wanted him to be right, the lynx's uncomplicated view of life meant he didn't always understand the deeper implications of a situation. In Nevin's experience, things were rarely simple or straightforward.

“He never said a word to us after...” He waved a hand toward the broken window. “He just glared at me and stormed outside. Do you think he's angry?”

“About what?”

“I don't know. I don't think he's happy that Vincht got away.”

Aidux glanced up from his licking and sniffed. “He smelled pretty calm to me.”

“Can't believe I let you stop me,” the man in black growled, stomping through the cabin toward the study. Bits of glass jostled and bounced on the floor, reflecting geometric bolts of lamplight along the walls and ceiling.

Cocking his head, Aidux wiggled his nose. He pressed a paw to his muzzle and took a long draft through widened nostrils before shrugging. “That's...weird.”

Nevin hushed him with firm hand to the muzzle. He shuffled around the cat, placing his body directly between Aidux and the study door. His legs were all river foam and cold sweat.

The man in black stopped just inside the doorway, plopping Nevin's leather satchel on the floor between them without a word.

Nevin swallowed the rocks in his throat before speaking. “I know who you are.”

“Gathered as much,” he grunted, nodding slightly. “Be more surprised if you didn't.”

The lynx gingerly padded through the scattered glass to stand beside Nevin and frowned, clearly unimpressed by the young man's chivalrous protection efforts. “Can someone gather me as much? 'Cuz I have no clue who he is.”

Nevin shot him a withering look. “Aidux!”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“He's got glowing eyes, Nevin! Like his head's filled with starflies or something.” The cat sank gingerly onto his haunches, careful not to get a shard of glass in his rear. “Next to that, what's a little talking cat?”

Nevin opened his mouth in protest, but the man in black cut him off.

“Stop. Both of you. I don't actually care.” He leaned against the door jam, folding his arms over his chest beneath the cloak with an annoyed sigh. “Not actually the first talking animal I've seen. Not even the first talking cat.”

As the dark warrior tilted his head back, the lantern's glow fully penetrated the drooping hood, giving Nevin a clear look at the mahogany mask beneath. Carved from a single piece of tarnished wood, the mask completely covered the man's face, aside from one narrow mouth slit and a pair of oval cut-outs for eyes. A ridged brow and exaggerated cheekbones granted the piece an elongated skull-like appearance. A prominent diagonal gash split the right cheek and mouth hole in twain, with a small wedge of chin missing where the gash ended.

The lynx huffed, squirming in place. “Will one of you please tell me who he...you are?”

The man didn't respond, looking to Nevin to answer the cat's question.

“This-,” he began, sweeping a hand toward the dark warrior before them. “-is Theis Bane. The most wanted man in the Lancowl Barony. Also probably the most infamous swordsman that ever lived.”

The lynx flicked an ear. “Why 'infamous'? Why not 'the most famous swordsman that ever lived'? That sounds nicer.”

Theis grunted. “Because famous people are liked.”

“Oh, okay then,” Aidux said, appearing inexplicably relieved by that introduction. “Well, Mr. Bane-”

“Theis.”

“-Mr. Theis, my name is Aidux. I'm a cat. Well, a lynx, specifically, if you couldn't tell by the ears. It's the tufts. Dead giveaway. I'm pretty much the sneakiest thing in the forest. Been here my whole life and the only person that knows about me is Nevin here. And you, I guess, since you're also in the forest.”

A wave of pressure bubbled up to fill the space between Nevin's ears, somehow both pushing outward and pulling inward all at once. Eyes wide, he worked his jaw open and closed, taken aback by the chaotic flurry of images that sprang out from the shadows of his subconscious.

“Give it back,” spat the sneering Dalen, wobbling on his feet. The barn stank of stale body odor and sulfur, a side effect of the fermentation process. Dalen hefted a naked ax handle, batting aside a tattered rope dangling from a low girder.

“Give it back, or things are gonna get real bad for ya.”

“This here's Nevin.” He placed a paw on the young man's thigh. The touch banished the visions and with it, the sudden, overwhelming pressure. “He's a boy. Or...maybe a man? I don't get how that works, yet. Cats are just cats, unless they're cubs, and then they're cubs until they get their first kill. Nevin's still a boy then, because he hasn't made his first kill. That's always been my job.”

Aidux shrugged. “Then again...maybe it doesn't work the same for peoples.”

“Does where I come from,” said Theis grimly.

Nevin waved the cat into silence. “This doesn't make any sense. Yes, I've heard of you. From books. Books older than me. You're more fairy tale than person. And hasn't it been...I don't know...almost a decade since the baron put a price on your head?”

Theis simply nodded, allowing Nevin to continue. “I mean, even if everything I've read was true, even if you were a teenager in the earliest stories, that was...” He threw his hands up, lifting his weight off the desk to pace the floor. “Half a century ago? You're telling me you're...what? In your seventies? Your eighties?”

The man in black snorted derisively. “And you're what...twelve? Seen more hair on a trout than you've got on your chin.”

Scowling, Nevin bit his tongue.

“I'm eight,” chimed Aidux, happy to be included.

Theis pressed his fingertips to the forehead of his mask and took a step into the study, cursing under his breath. “We've no time for this. More soldiers are bound to come here sooner or later. Isn't much town left, and some already know about this little cabin. Probably stumbling this way as we speak.”

Nevin stopped him. “What do you mean, 'there isn't much town left'? Elbin's pretty spread out. I don't know that half a day is enough time to even find every homestead, let alone search them.” He supposed the men could have arrived in the night, but if Aidux was right about what he saw at the Hyret Bridge, the soldiers hadn't set out for Elbin until early that morning.

“Saw their camp. Brought enough eyes with them to cover the area in short order.” Theis shook his head. “What I mean is, there isn't much of Elbin left to search.”

“I don't understand. You just said the same thing, again. You're not making sense.”

“Not making-” The man in black trailed off, twirling a finger in the air. “Khek, boy, can you not feel it in your chest?”

“Feel...what?” The cloistered atmosphere within the study suppressed all but the scents of dried herbs and smoky tallow – Ishen had made sure of that. He shot a quizzical look at the lynx, but the cat was already sniffing the air. The blacks of his silver eyes ballooned until almost no color was left.

“Smoke?” the cat chirped.

Theis nodded. “They aren't just going house to house, getting pushy with the locals. What happened here, in this cabin, was mild compared to what's happening elsewhere. Been ghosting them all day, and at every single farm I've visited, been the same story.”

Nevin shook his head, still not understanding. “Elbin-”

Theis slammed his fist down on the desk's angled surface hard enough to crack it. “Elbin doesn't exist anymore! When they didn't find what they were looking for, they burnt down the farms and killed their owners. You can't see it from here, but there are fires raging all over the woods.

“By day's end, all that will remain of Elbin is smoldering ash...and this vacant little cabin.”