My legs carried me towards the bridge. There was no thoughts behind. I was just a passenger on the carriage that was my body. I knew where to go, and what would happen once I got there. If I hesitated, even for as little as a second, I might have never gone.

But I couldn’t entertain those ideas. I had to go there, for him, for everything that he had done for me. I was the reason he found himself in that position, accused of breaking the Empire laws for teaching me the old ways.

Nonsense! He hadn’t taught me any of that. It was me, my own stupidity, what made me learn the forbidden techniques. And, to top if of, I was sure that was only a facade. They wanted me. Or my Ink. Or probably both. I was a weak link, a part of their family that they didn’t want to acknowledge. I was the living testament that their most precious Ink had been stolen.

If I had to give up my Ink for Spare, I would. Without him I wouldn’t even be alive, so there would be no Ink to be attached to. And, if a bit of Ink would be worth his life, then I would get rid of it. I also knew, however, that this scenario was likely never going to happen.

Revisiting the same route we took when I first left with him, I worked my way to the bridge. Although the night had already fallen, I could clearly see thanks to the moon’s light. The streets were quiet; not a single soul roamed during those hours. All of it was good news for me, as I could get there without being seen.

The bridge soon came in sight when I turned a narrow street and reached the ground path that connected both sides of the Hivar. I was still on the poor side of the city, and the slight curvature of the bridge prevent me from seeing what was waiting on the other side. The note didn’t specify any side, but I wasn’t expecting the Baril to come to my side. There were no guards to be seen; all of them probably bribed away. I kept walking, stepping onto the bridge, and slowly making my way to the midpoint.

“RUN!” My eyes had yet to process everything in front of me, that a shout reached my ears. It was the voice I had been longing for, it was Spare, and it was telling me to go away.

I ignored the warning and kept on walking, trying to figure out who those blurred figures were. Five people, one of them Spare, but he was obviously not there by his own choice. His knees were hugging the stone, his arms restrained on his back, everything tied with strong ropes, and his head held high by someone’s hand. Spare was in no condition to do anything. I could see his torn clothes exposing deep wounds, a mixture of dried and fresh blood. He was not a prisoner. They had made a slave out of him. Tortured to almost death to, surely, get information of my location. I could have run to save myself, there was still time to turn back, but I knew what that would mean for Spare’s life.

“It’s my time to do something for you…” I whispered, leaving the words hanging on the air, reaffirming my own conviction.

I walked the remaining distance with studied calm. I was examining his captors, trying to find anything that would tell me something about them. Nothing, their tattoos were hidden under several layers of clothes, and not even the tiniest bit was visible. All of them wore black robes, long and wide cloaks that waved with the win. Their masked faces concealed their appear-

Green eyes! I immediately saw that pair of piercing globes, the same ones that tried to kill me in that inn. The Baril didn’t want to dirty their own hands; they had hired assassins once more. The same ones, to rub salt on the wound.

I stopped at roughly 5 meters from them, enough to hear the throaty laughs of those people. They weren’t hiding their bewilderment; it was obvious that, to them, I was a clueless kid walking to his death. And, honestly, they were not wrong.

“You know what is going to happen, right?” The green-eyed assassin spoke with confidence.

“Yes.” My voice wasn’t a shaky shout; I had long made peace with the fact that I would die there. Of someone who owned his own destiny.

“You will let Spare go.” Their laughs intensified, but I raised one finger, making all of them mute. “And I will come with you.”

They exchanged confused looks. He will come with us? I’m sure they thought. It was true I would go over to them, but not precisely to exchange a few nice words and then get killed. I was planning to let hell loose.

My eyes and Spare’s met. It was a brief second, but I saw the panic in them. There was no need for him to speak; I could clearly hear what he was saying. Don’t come, please. Please, don’t die for me. Please, run, go away, escape! Please! The moon’s light was reflected on his watery eyes. The light traveled his face as the tear fell, and shone when it bounced on his tights.

“You don’t set the conditions here.” A muffled voice broke my short-lived interchange with Spare. Its owner was approaching from the right, unarmed but with a menacing attitude. “I can just as easily end the job myself.”

It was not a game, die killing. I was going to give it my all, and I would do so right from the start.

I will at least take one of them with me.

I firmly placed my feet on the ground, exactly mimicking the position that Yassir had ingrained on me. I move my arms, one in front and one slightly to the back. And God be damned if I was about to use the pair of former rusty daggers.

“La’er,” I whispered the name as the sword began taking shape on my front-most hand.

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The assassin had broken into a sprint already, but I didn't panic. All I did was breath. I let go of my mind. And I surrendered to the Ink. No, not to the Ink, I surrendered to La'er.

It was immediate. The same feeling I had when drawing, but multiplied by a thousand times. A rush of energy that whispered me to let loose. My blood rushed to my extremities. I could feel the burning sensation on my heart as it pumped energy to every single piece of my body. Tarar ceased to exist. I was La'er, and a had a single mission; to burn and kill anyone who opposed me.

La’er swung with a might that I didn’t know I had. He was still far away, enough that the slash wouldn’t hit. But still, my sword came down with the fury of a wild lion. The air swizzled with the heat emitted by its blade, threatening to burn however came a step to close to me.

But that wasn’t La’er’s plan. The slash was not decoration. It was not an intimidation technique. I could see and feel as the tip of the blade became hotter, energy and rage converging into a single point. And then, when it was coming straight down, everything was let go.

A serpent of fire crawled through the air that separated me and the assassin, drawing a path of red that burnt the small particles of dust that were floating all around. It seemed natural, it had always been a part of me, of La’er. Like a extremity reaching for an object, the flaming snake rushed to the attacker.

A sword was raised, a futile attempt to block the ethereal snake made of fire. Surrounding the steel and ignoring it, the fire parted in two and reunited with the same strength as before. And I saw the round eyes stricken with fear. The incredulous look of someone who just then realized his life was gone.

The fire touched his body, and his body became a flame. La’er had had claimed his life.

I heard voices and shouts at the other side of the bridge, surely the other mercenaries who had come for Spare’s life and mine. I couldn’t understand a single word of what they were saying, even though I could perfectly hear them. I was drunk in Ink, in La’er, and none of that mattered. All I cared was killing.

Seeing how they didn’t come to me, La’er decided it was prudent for me to just go there. I could not wait for them to decide, and it was advantageous if they were in complete disarray. So I obeyed and started walking towards them.

There were some more shouts, and soon after two of them were running towards me, one armed with a shield and the other with a mace that ended in a deadly ball of spikes. I was still examining them through the weird out of body experience, when La’er decided to side step; right before a whistling arrow narrowly missed my neck. I had missed the third one, but apparently La’er had not.

It aimed another slash to the archer at the end while preparing for the incoming attack of the mace. The shielded man stood before the other one, and only when it was time to attack did he move to the side, just to once more jump right in front of him.

The mace came crashing down from above, a movement that I could not simply block or parry. I darted forward, deeming the safer options of sidestepping again too slow to carry out my ultimate goal of killing them. My left hand, suddenly dagger in hand, stabbed forward with the intention of piercing through the shield. La’er had decided to invoke the dagger—or rather to make me invoke it—but also two other minor details.

One, the mace hitting me on my shoulder blade was not important, and just a tolerable side-effect I had to pay to get closer to them. Two, that the dagger was expendable and merely a distraction.

It clashed against the shield with as little energy and strength as I could, barely enough to make some metallic noise. But that wasn’t important, my feet were already turning with my twisting hips in a 360 turn that would leave my right hand, La’er, aiming for the shield bearer’s neck. A clean, bloodless cut. La’er immediately cauterized the wound as it traveled along the neck of the former man.

The archer had been unable to stop my attack, and the mace was not really a threat if he had no one to cover for his widely open attacks. Finishing him off didn’t take more than a few well executed stabs here and there, one finally getting under his armpit as he tried to, once again, slash vertically. That meant there was only one more person to take care of. That meant-

The world slowed down as a nauseous feeling kicked my stomach. It was not my wounds that ache. It certainly was not the Ink or La’er, which still was driving my body. It was just what my eyes were relying to me.

The fifth man, the very same one that had been holding Spare down, was looking at me as if he had seen a monster. His eyes were injected in blood. His body was shaking. And his hands were tinted with the red color of blood.

No.

I was barely able to regain control of my thoughts for a brief moment. And for that brief moment, all I could think of was that. The impossibility that any of what was happening as true.

Spare?

I slowly regained some more of my consciousnesses. My eyes followed those bloody hands, and they found the sharp and red edge of a small knife. It was fresh. Still dripping. It was…

Why? I-I had to protect us, you…

Spare’s neck was cut open. Slowly, life was leaving him as his blood escaped from his body. The killer, the perpetrator of such vile act, ran from the spot. I saw Spare’s body crashing to the ground without any control over himself. I saw the whiteness in his eyes. The peaceful expression on his face.

I ran as fast as I could, La’er back to my skin.

What have I done?

But I couldn’t shake that feeling. The idea that Spare was dead because of me. That I had abandoned myself to the Ink, let it take control of me, and in doing so I had forgotten what was important. I hand’t gone there to kill. I had gone there to safe Spare. And, if and only if I couldn’t do it, then I should have died with him.

But Spare was dying. Spare, not me. He had made the ultimate sacrifice for me, refusing to give away my location even if that meant that his own life would be taken. And I had failed to prevent it.

I ran for what seemed an eternity, and when I finally reached him, I dropped right next to his side, pressing my hands firmly against the cut on his neck. I considered cauterizing the wound with my La’er, but he was too far gone for that; I would have just made him suffer more. I was desperately looking for options, but he stopped me. His hand did. I felt the gradually less warm hand on my shoulder.

“Tarar,” the voice of a man who hand’t drank for days exited Spare’s mouth. “It’s too late for that.”

“No, it can’t be. Not you. Not again.”

I was trying to make sense of my words. I was searching for a fix that, deep down, I knew I would never find. I was reliving my mother’s dead all over again. But this one, I would stay. Even if it meant being caught. Even if it meant dying for it, I had to stay until the very end.

“Drak’gath…” He could barely speak by that point. “You have to draw.” Words came out one every two seconds. “The… rat…”

I was frozen for a second.

The rat.