Hexeri had been chased by a lot of things over her unlife, which was not an uncommon boast amongst Vampires. The usual, to start with. Illiterate, shit-smelling lynch-mobs, Paladins, that sort of thing. Over the years she’d faced down a few more notable pursuits- two Heroes at once as she’d dealt with a few weeks ago had been the highlight.

One hundred and fifty battle-trained Dark Elves, though, might have been a new level of fucked, even for her.

Elves were humanoid, but not quite the same. There was actually some debate on which species came first. Predictably, both tended to prefer themselves as the progenitor race. The Elves did seem to have certain advantages, however, in regards to making claims of innate superiority.

They were faster, by far. An ordinary Elf of any kind made the quickest Vigourless humans look sluggish, and this exponential advantage remained even when both species trained to strengthen themselves. Hexeri had seen Elves smack crossbow bolts out of the air, cross rooms before a human could even register their movement. Even, on one occasion, witnessed a particularly fast member of their species sprint across the surface of a lake.

Vampires were quicker, but only just. And there were a lot of Dark Elves after her now. Dark Elves were among the more physically potent varieties.

Hexeri used every trick she could think of, dragging them through tough terrain, slipping in across passages that were easily wide enough for her but struggled accommodating her pursuers in their multitudes. The Dark Elves hounded her all the same, wise to her tactics from the first chase, and now not nearly as cautious in their pursuit.

There was no helping it. Hexeri had dodged magic as long as she was likely to manage, she had no choice but to turn and head back to the site of the prisoners. Either Collin Baird had freed his men…

…Or she was sprinting into the jaws of death. Funny, how Hexeri just kept on finding her life balanced atop the hinge of human will. She supposed that was the consequence of living in a world with so damned many of them.

Her feet pounded the dirt into crushed debris, and the wind rang in her ears like icy fingers of air clawing down atop a mountain’s peak.

Miles. Hexeri had to run miles. Had that ever been hard? It had, once before, when she was still a living thing of fragile meat and temporary strength. And now it was hard again, because though she crossed the span in mere minutes, every step she took was hounded by blasts of magic. Dirt shot up in great fountains around her, the air convulsed as heat difused along it and whipped up great winds in protest. She felt her skin ache and blister with the temperatures, knowing that a mere human would have been incinerated in such conditions.

She ran, all the same. Because to stop for even an instant was to die.

Hexeri came to her destination, and her heart sank as she realised it held no assembled force of spearmen and freedom-drunk warriors. The Dark Elves continued their pursuit, now only dozens of paces behind her rather than scores, and the end drew nearer.

That was when Baird’s first attack came, one of Shaiagrazni’s explosive devices.

Explosions weren’t a foreign thing to Hexeri- despite how they preached of their cerebral removal from petty human prejudices, Magi didn’t tend to like Vampires anymore than anyone else- but it still shook her to feel the concussion of one so powerful detonating so close to her. Every tooth in her mouth rattled, her ears throbbed with the pressure, and she almost lost her footing for a second. The temptation was too much to resist, she risked a glance over her shoulder to see what it had done to the Dark Elves.

Apparently, it had done a lot. A grizzly mountain of death met Hexeri’s gaze, so mangled that she struggled to tell one corpse apart from another.

More Dark Elves were coming, though. Spreading out, diffusing like dusken mist under a harsh morning sun. They were nothing if not rational, the Elves, and scarcely hesitated to act in whatever way they deemed most effective. She watched them step over convulsing, dying comrades without so much as a glance downwards and continue their assault.

By now, Baird’s preparations were coming to light. His Rangers were first among them, letting out a volley of arrows which tore into Elves and dropped another dozen or so in sprays of visceral scarlet. She snapped out of her own daze, snatching the beads of blood from the air and sending them into surrounding enemies as jagged knives and thorns. They only got that one solid volley off before the Dark Elves closed in for melee.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

It was not a long battle, but what it lacked in length it more than made up for with raw savagery. Baird had done a fine job arming and freeing prisoners, because there stood perhaps a comparable number of spearmen to Dark Elves- even before the initial explosion. Still, they didn’t last long. Defensive formation broken, bodies sundered apart, blood splashed out in all directions. Hexeri herself even felt slightly sick watching the mangling occur, but was far too occupied by her own killing to take much note of it.

Fortunately, Dark Elves were logical. Humans were not prone to unrelentingly fight until their force’s numbers were entirely exhausted, and Elves did not even feel the insane adrenal vigour which sometimes compelled their shorter cousins to battle so fiercely in the first place. They had to kill no more than thirty before the enemy fled.

But in killing those thirty, they lost many more. Virtually every spearman was cut down, and two Rangers to boot.

Hexeri found Collin Baird kneeling before the slain elites, face low, hands tightened into stone-dense fists. There was a purer strain of hatred burning on his face than she had seen anywhere else.

“Friends of yours?” She asked.

Baird didn’t look up at her, he just shook his head. Hexeri saw the tear glint on his cheek, despite the darkness of the night around him. A Vampire always saw such things. It was as much a curse as their weakness before the sun.

Because one could not see and smell a person’s thoughts the way they did, and not understand them. Even while surrounded by hateful fire and sneering mobs, they understood them.

“My men.” Baird breathed, a confusing mix of fury and misery in his voice. “Rangers. Been at it longer than I have, in fact all of the ones still alive have. I’m the only one left not in his twenties.”

“They died well.” Hexeri said, stupidly. He glanced at her with all the scorn her reply deserved.

“There’s no dying well.” Baird spat. “There’s living and there’s fucking that up. They…” He swallowed, closing his eyes and muttering something to himself as he stood. Hexeri listened in a moment, sharpening her ears with focus.

“First my dad, then the rest. One by one. They all die, and I keep living.” His eyes opened, and now she saw a ferocity in them that put even her back a step. “And I’ll keep on living until this is over, until I’ve gutted that Evil Fucker and watched the shit spill out of him.”

Hexeri saw, then, what Collin Baird truly was.

“We’ve lost our chance to hinder the Dark Lord’s forces.” She noted, mouth dry. And Hexeri didn’t see even a scrap of regret upon Baird’s face, only that hatred. The bottomless, consuming hatred that seemed to blot out every other facet of his cognition. He did not smile, nor did he scowl. Whatever expression was on his face couldn’t be described in terms as human as that.

He just showed his teeth.

***

It was almost fun, hiding in the city of Torib. It brought Swick back to his roots. The advantages of a skyship were numerous, of course, but there was something to be lost in the virtual untouchability and security it provided. How did a man keep his edge, when he could actually afford to just drink himself stupid all day? How did a criminal remain swift, at all, when he had some magic vessel to provide all the swiftness for him? It was almost relieving to be rid of the thing.

Only almost, though. Because despite all that, the skyship had still provided virtual untouchability and security. God, Swick really shouldn’t have plowed it into the side of that fucking fortress.

There were not many lifelines for them, within the foreign city. Swick snatched up all the ones he could get and counted them carefully. First came the basic, obvious fact of their having a decent chance to leave sooner rather than later. So long as they could find the individual known as Bal.

More pressing than that, though, was that Torib was a racket town. Swick had spent most of his life in them, and that was no small thing. Racket towns were younger than most other kinds, coming into existence in response to the population boom that had struck the world over the last few centuries as magically-augmented crop growth and infrastructure became more commonplace.

They were hell holes. Springing up simply by having the underclass of established cities emptied out into the world; ideally those guilty of criminality, but more practically just those who were considered undesirable by the rulers of their previous homes. Such people congregated, and the volatility of their new existences naturally bred just the sorts of things they were accused of partaking in to begin with.

Swick had been born in a racket town, he thought. He couldn’t recall his actual birth of course, but he remembered his mother in those early days between her squeezing him out and her dying from one of the numerous diseases ageing whores tended to contract. In any case, he had a familiarity with their general layout.

Each one was different, of course, but there were patterns. Trends. Things that emerged as a racket town did- through simple necessity- tended to conform in particular ways with other such specimens. The Red Finger Crew had been born in racket towns, too, mostly. Which was where Swick’s caution came from, because it meant there’d be no navigational edge to be found against them.

Yes, the people you betrayed all come from the same scum pile as you, Swick. No honourable thieving for you! Only the finest, most undeserving victims in your treachery.

It gave him a leg up in navigating it, and that may well have been the only reason they’d evaded capture so far. Particularly with the Hand being dragged along.

“This is ridiculous.” The man spat. “Who designs a city like this?”

“Nobody.” Swick sighed. “This is a racket town, like I told you, it wasn’t designed. Just built one home at a time by people who’d been chucked out of theirs.”

The Hand’s lip curled.

“Criminals.” He noted.

“Well they certainly are now, aren’t they?” Swick snapped, feeling an unexpected irritation at the man all of a sudden. He’d been gnawing at his last wick for a while now, and the apathy was becoming more irritating with each word. “Now shut up and let me focus.”