Puppeteer’s Strings erupted from his hands, a constant tangle that stretched for handholds he could use to move ever faster. Each violet wire whipped through the air; in twos and threes, they wrapped around the thick trunks of the forest, biting deep into soft bark. He barely touched the ground, hells, he was practically flying.

  Old Yon knew for a fact that it wasn’t fast enough.

  How! How could it all have gone so wrong? What he had seen was simply impossible. The team was young, in their mid-twenties at most — they had to be. They’d only just barely been about to hit the Wall when he captured them.

  Yet the evidence stared him in the face — his team of ten fucking Silvers had been annihilated in a minute at most. It should have been impossible. What kind of class rarity would they have to do that so fresh to the second tier? The legacy?

  They knew something, and knowing he’d narrowly missed out on the knowledge burned almost as much as his quickly approaching demise.

  Fucking Kront and Torrin, the cowards. He never should have trusted them after their failure. They must have known; noticed the second they’d spotted the team — but neither had said a damned thing, choosing to secure their own hides.

  He tore his way across the forest, gritting his teeth. Multiple full squads of Silvers gone just like that. It was like pitting a classroom of toddlers against a pack of wolves.

  The talent he’d been able to pull upon on short notice wasn’t the best, but they were bloody Silver! Seasoned, with decades of experience underneath every single one of their belts!

  And they’d been slaughtered. Crushed utterly. In an instant.

  His breaths came hard and fast. He was fucking dead, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

  With the thought, came hatred. If that rat bastard Morton had just told him what he was really after — if those two bloody cowards had properly warned him — none of this would have happened.

  That bloody meles! He’d known the dens knew much, but for such a young one to possess enough knowledge to raise three unnotable people into such demons? Monstrous.

  Gods’ Scorn, fuck his return to Wight’s End. He just needed to live — and if that was too much, he wasn’t going alone.

  Old Yon held his arm forward, reaching for another cluster of trees.

  He only felt a boiling explosion of pain as a metallic streak shot through his elbow, ripping the limb off. Blood and gore erupted, splattering the summer grass beneath him. Thrown off balance by the sudden assault, he reeled, the threads of his right arm yanking him to the side.

  Even that mild corrective force was gone a moment later as a streak of blue hit him in the shoulder.

  Another needle hit him in the back of his knee.

  Screaming, he hit the ground in a rough tumble. His chest heaved as he desperately tried to pull in air, his lifeblood pumping as his wounds closed ever so slowly. He had potions, but they were in a ring on one of his missing arms.

  He had to crawl!

  Eking his way slowly forward, Old Yon kicked at the ground with his one remaining leg.

  All the while, he heard the stampeding feet of the delvers behind him.

  …

  Kaius stomped forward, his blood hot and his heart full of rage.

  Old Yon lay before him, scrambling in the dirt, red gushing from his stumps as the ground churned into a thick mud.

  This? This was a member of the Onyx Temple? The crime lord behind their imprisonment, who had tracked them for so long? This was who he had been worried about?

  He looked pathetic. A nondescript man, with a nondescript build, wearing nondescript clothes, well into the latter years of his middle age. He was…forgettable.

  Porkchop stomped forward beside him, a deep, bassy growl rumbling through his chest. Metallic claws flexed, punching into the forest floor with casual ease. Kaius reached up to rest a hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  “Not yet,” Kaius said, before turning to Ianmus in the back. “Heal him. We don’t want him bleeding out.”

  Ianmus nodded, a ray erupting from the tip of his staff a moment later, washing over the crippled criminal. New flesh crawled over ruined limbs, pale skin sealing stumps into permanency.

  Old Yon slumped for a moment, before heaving with his good leg to roll onto his back. A sneer was painted on his face, though it didn’t reach his eyes. Oddly, Kaius didn’t see fear there. Rage, yes — hatred and frustration, certainly; there was more than a fair share of disgust and anger. But no fear.

  “A hundred years of work, just to be done in by a pack of brats and the incompetency of others. Bloody terrific.”

  The Onyx crime lord spat, something more blood than spittle landing onto the forest floor.

  “You aren’t going to beg?” Porkchop asked, simmering anger driving a hard edge to his words.

  For a moment, Old Yon’s eyes widened in shock — then he started to laugh. It was a manic thing, but genuine in its own way.

  “Me, beg? Please. I’ve been doing this since before your parents were a twinkle in your grandparents’ eyes. There is no begging — not after what I did to you. This only ends one way.”

  Kaius tilted his head, crouching down. He planted his sword face-first in the dirt, its honed edge sliding down with ease until it was buried half way. He rested his hands lightly on its pommel.

  “You were so certain that I would kill an unarmed man?”

  Old Yon grinned, fresh blood showing on his teeth. Whatever Ianmus had done to his healing had only stopped the man bleeding out — his internal injuries were untouched.

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  “I’m certain you already have, boy.”

  Kaius steeled himself to stop from flinching.

  Old Yon cackled, trailing off into a wet cough. “You’re half a century too young to hide it from me, kid. Torrin and Cronte said you were strong. They were right, even if they’re cowards — and too stupid to notice the extent. What they didn’t mention is that you’re hard. I can see it: none of you care for the eight people you just slaughtered, or the dozens you cut your way through to escape my prison.”

  Old Yon sneered, “So no, I will not beg.”

  Kaius scowled, attempting to bore a hole in the Onyx man’s head with his gaze.

  “You will answer our questions.”

  “Maybe. If it serves to amuse or advantage me. But you will not let me live, no matter what I say, and even if you would, I don’t think you’re quite hard enough to torture it out of me.”

  “Oh, you fuck!” Kenva roared. Kaius had seen the simmering anger within the ranger since they’d first spotted their ambushers. He knew what was coming, he didn’t try to stop her.

  She stomped forward. Drawing her bow in a single fluid motion, she loosed — her arrow punching straight through Old Yon’s groin. The man screamed.

  “Ianmus, heal him,” Kaius said, nodding at the wound. The mage did so wordlessly, leaving the arrow in place.

  Waiting for Old Yon’s writhing to die down, Kaius stood and tapped the arrow shaft with his blade. “Would you like to revisit that assumption?” he said, ignoring the man’s yelp.

  Old Yon coughed and grinned. “That is not torture, fool. That is anger. Torture is cold, and carries on for as long as it needs to. I can hold out longer than it takes for your tempers to cool and your disgust to set in. As I said before, I will answer your questions — if it pleases me to do so.”

  Kaius clenched his teeth. As much as he hated to admit it, the man had a point. They cared little about injuring him, but he doubted any of them had the stomach to methodically work him over.

  Regardless, he could at least be satisfied in knowing the man hadn’t outright refused to answer.

  “How did you find us?” Kaius demanded.

  Old Yon wheezed, almost gleeful at the question. That set Kaius’s teeth on edge.

  “Now that is something I am happy to answer. If I’m going to die, I will take down as many damn people with me as I can.”

  “Bitter bastard,” Porkchop said privately through their bond.

  Kaius couldn’t help but agree. It took a special kind of someone to squeal on death’s door — not to save themselves, but to damn others. He’d always assumed there was some kind of honour among thieves, a code of silence that they kept. It seems he’d been mistaken.

  “And who was it?” Ianmus asked, his voice as tense as the rest of them.

  “A pathetic washout; a failure of a noble scion known as Rondal Silverwing. He went by the name of Grave Eye when he was playing at being an information broker and crime boss. I suspect he’s already been pinched by the guild, but if he hasn’t, go to the Slag Heap, to a rundown inn called the Boiled Goose. Ask for Rosh, and say ‘midnight has come.’ The man’s an infobroker, of a middling level. Enough to know where Grave Eye is hiding.”

  Kaius shared a glance with Kenva and Ianmus, utterly surprised at the crime lord’s candor. He was really just going to offer it up like that?

  Old Yon gurgled out a laugh. “I came to Deadacre because of the failings of others, and I lie limbless on this ground because of the failings of others. You don’t think I will withhold myself from the opportunity to set a vengeful spectre on the people who have killed me? No. My only wish is that you cut down the men who were involved, to the last.”

  The crimelord bared his bloody teeth. “I know you have it in you.”

  Kaius swallowed his disgust at the glee in the man’s voice, shoving emotion aside. What was important now was learning what they could.

  “Well, if you’re in such a chatty mood, then who is somebody involved that we’d want to deal with — and has displeased you enough that you want them dead? I’m sure we can make it happen. Just give us a name, and tell us everything you know,” Kaius said, even-toned and slow.

  Limbless on the ground with an arrow jutting out of his pelvis, Old Yon seemed to care not one lick for his pain. His eyes brightened at the question, a wide smile spreading across his face.

  “Morton.”

  “Morton?” Porkchop questioned.

  “Who the fuck is that?” Kenva demanded.

  Kaius only stayed silent, watching the manic fire in Old Yon’s eyes brighten.

  “A rat-faced bastard who could have saved me all this hassle if only he’d told me what he was in town for. The conniving little insect. Riding on the coattails of somebody powerful as he vacuums up everything I was ever owed. Somebody with an even-laid path to glory that I want to see shattered utterly.”

  Kaius grit his teeth. The man was talking in circles. “Spit it out, who is he?”

  “Oh,” Old Yon said, smiling. “I think that one will remember.” He nodded towards Porkchop.

  Porkchop froze, looking at him carefully. As did Kaius, what on earth could the man mean?

  “Please,” Old Yon said. “He’s got a visage that’s hard to forget. He was in town just over a year ago — talking about stumbling across some beast in the forest. He insisted that it was merely a diversion from his true goal: a strange sword he had on his back on his second pass through. It wasn’t enough to fool me, I know what he was after.”

  He jutted his nose at Porkchop. “There’s no doubt in my mind. Somehow he got word of you, beast. He was hunting you — you couldn’t forget him, not with that hideous scar he has on his face.”

  Kaius froze, shock, surprise, and hatred roaring through him. The revelation was too sudden — he couldn’t hide his reaction. Old Yon caught it immediately and the way Porkchop, Ianmus, and Kenva all immediately looked to him.

  Old Yon tilted his head, looking at him curiously. “Did I misjudge something? I assumed the meles found you — some delver whelp living near that forest. What does Morton mean to you?”

  For a moment, Kaius considered keeping his secret. But what was the point? Old Yon was a dead man, and he might learn more if he played upon cooperation.

  “That sword,” Kaius spat. “Is my father’s. Morton wasn’t hunting Porkchop — that truly was a chance encounter. He was after my legacy. He killed my father, drove me into the Depths as an unclassed, and stole my final inheritance.”

  Every word was layered with vitriol.

  Old Yon’s eyes widened. “He wasn’t after the meles? And you survived the Depths? That’s impossible! How would the two of you have even met?”

  The crime lord looked between him and Porkchop, his brow furrowed.

  “I’m not telling you that,” Kaius replied.

  “Humour me. I’ll tell you an awful lot more about how the Onyx works; who Morton works under. All you need to do is satisfy my curiosity a little — how did you survive, and how did you two meet?”

  Kaius focused, leaning on the full weight of his will as he searched the man for any signs of artefacts, magic — anything that would let him communicate with others. His secrets could still be damning if they spread, even with his current strength. Plus, he didn’t like how much it felt like Old Yon was leading their conversation.

  Still, the man had a bargaining chip — one too tempting for him to pass up. Kaius took a breath, steadying himself.

  “I am the last scion of a dynasty with a complete legacy — as best I can tell, my family was destroyed in an attempt to seize it, as my father was when he fled with me when I was a babe. That legacy was what Morton was after, and that is how I survived the Depths. It was a twist of fate that led me to Porkchop, when your same man chased him over the same cliff and he fell through the same Depths portal that I did. He too was unclassed at the time, and had his own complete legacy.”

  For a moment, Old Yon froze before he howled with gurgling laughter.

  “The fool, the incompetent fool! To be bested not once, but twice by unclassed? To let a complete legacy slip through his fingers? Twice?! Oh, that is too good.”

  The man’s amusement disgusted him.

  “Speak!I told you what you wanted. Now tell me — who is Morton?”

  Old Yon’s cackle trailed off, before the crimelord winced as something twinged in his chest. Shaking it off quickly, he smiled.

  “He’s a pet tracker being groomed by one of the Onyx Fangs: one of those with actual authority in our temple. I do not know their name or face; they go by a pseudonym — Wilting Rose. I’ve been making myself scarce for nearly a decade now, so I do not know of their more recent exploits. But any place of true knowledge will fill you in more — and confirm what I say is truth. Wilting Rose, or someone above them, will have ordered the hit on your father.”

  Old Yon’s eyes went hard.

  “I hope you kill them for it.”

  Kaius breathed, keeping an iron grip on his emotions. Finally — he had a lead.

  A bunch of B4 is available on Patreon!

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