8th Trial, Ymiden, Arc 718
South Ezos, Outer Perimeter
21st break
Continued from hereSouth Ezos, Outer Perimeter
21st break
"You hear that?"
Deshak's nightmare began and ended with words in his basement. But all the space in between was blood and steel and bestial screams.
He'd seen much of Etzos in the twenty years he'd lived there. Built a life, an eatery, cooking his father's food with his mother's business sense. He'd prospered. Raised a family. But he'd seen the ugly side. Seen men beaten and extorted and mutilated by upright wolves that laughed at their wailing. He'd seen still, pale slabs of flesh in alleys, and hurried by with eyes downcast, not wanting to even report them.
He thought he'd seen the worst Etzos had to offer. He indulged himself a mental swagger that he knew some of the racketeers by name, like Stacks, for gangsters always congregated where good wine and food were to be had. He dabbled in... leasing, or so he called it. Just the basement. Once, maybe twice an arc, when he truly needed quick cash, and well... that arc, Stacks had it. The bald little man was mad as a starving falcon, he could see, but he needed him, and he knew him.
Deshak thought he'd seen the worst.
"Huh?"
"Did you... for fuck's sake, what the fuck do I fucking pay you for?!"
The cook looked up from the row of shelves before him as something heavy smacked onto the table. Stacks was glowering at one end of it, face red and uglier than usual. Like some mummer's farce, three men were at the other end. One huge and hulking, the other two flanking him, smaller and younger and... well... Deshak knew what image came to mind at the sight of them, and kept it to himself.
Rice... peppers... dried tomatoes, he went through the mental checklist that sent him down there in the first place. Jars and bags were piled into his arms and he did his best to ignore the quartet. Beets... damn, out of-
"Shaun, get the fuck up there and see what that was."
"Stacks, I didn't-"
"Don't call him fuck-"
There was a rush, a crunch, a choked scream, and the restaurateur flinched as if it was he that was struck. Behind him, the runner whimpered into his hand, blood from his broken nose dripping onto his palm. Above him, eyes wide and rabid, stood Stacks. Fingering both weapons on his belt like he was stroking his fucking cock. Bazza rolled his eyes, safely to one side. Little fucker was bright, but he had that bloody temper.
"Don't. Call me. Stacks!"
"S-Sorry, I-"
"Get up there, ya cunt! Tell Larry and your cunt brother to keep it down!" He kept talking even as Ron started moving to the stairs, leading up from the candle-blanketed air of the basement. Stacks sat back down and returned to counting his money. A plethora of herbs, powders, and liquids was spread across it. By dawn, it would all be gone. A queer magic, in a way: all things organic and varied disappeared, leaving only a pile of gold. "And don't take forev-"
SHKKKK
Deshak whirled around, knowing that sound of old. Not the thick, meaty sound of knuckles connecting with flesh, but flesh being parted by something keen and fast. A little man with blood already spattered on him had exploded from the doorway the moment Ron opened it... leading with a fist that seemed made of brown flesh and shining metal. Ron barely had time to choke out a curse before the first diagonal blow laid open his throat at the side, ripping it open-
-then the backhand did much the same for his jugular, his voice-box, his windpipe, so he was spewing bloody bubbles even as his arteries burst into the smoky air-
-and Kasoria was already lashing out with his leg, a ruthless kick to the chest that sent the mortally-severed flying back into the wall. He crashed into another set of shelves, crunching and pulling down each level as he slid down to the floor. Deshak's mouth gaped as he stood there, mind watching and seeing and unwilling to believe. Barely seventeen arcs, now bleeding out in his basement. Items expensive and mundane rained down around Ron as he finally settled on his back, struggles and coughing fading, like a candle in a rising storm... until he was still.
"Fuck me!"
The little man's head snapped around to the men watching him, audience and victims both. In the space it took to blink, he divided them fairly equally. The man laden with foodstuffs? With wet eyes and piss dripping down his leg? The boy not much older than the carcass he'd just created, doing much the same? He slid them over to a separate group.
But the big, shaggy cunt... and the wee bald fucker who showed not a dram of fear and gallons of sheer, dripping hatred... they were his business down there.
"You fucking-"
Little bastard, yes, very fucking original.
Bazza came lurching his way like a walking rock slide, heaving a cleaver-looking thing out of his scabbard as he came. By the time he'd raised it over his head, the little bastard had snapped his left arm towards him. The empty one, or so they'd assumed. But the abundance of candles in the basement was confined to the tables and chairs in the center, not the bottom of the stairs... and even then, they didn't know the man who was among them.
Who'd filled his off hand with a pair of straight, short, smelly throwing knives as he'd made his way down them. Because he was always outnumbered, and they were always bigger, and when that was the case... well, you didn't get points for fucking nobility.
"Baz-!"
Stacks' warning came too late as Kasoria flicked out his hand, released his grip and-
CLANG
Fuck!
-one blade spun wide and away, as one would expect from a rank amateur with those sodding things. But he'd waited for the bulk of Bazza to begin his charge, and of course, he'd chosen the biggest bastard in the room as his target. He knew it to be a good universal rule that when you weren't that great a marksman, it was best to stick to a large target.
THUNK
The big man grunted as a knife he could have picked his fucking teeth with sunk two inches deep into his torso... and didn't seem to do much more than annoy him. Behind the giant, Stacks grinned. Yeah, took more than that to stop Bazza. But even as the man ripped the blade away and tossed it, he could smell... something. A familiar scent. Cloying and sticky and it made him blink a few times as Bazza lurched-
-and staggered-
-and shook his head-
-as Kasoria allowed himself a feral grin.
"You... shit, Baz, he dosed the fucking-"
The warning came too late. Baz's irresistible charge had stymied, big man shaking his boulder of a head as sudden, inexplicable weariness rippled through his muscles. It was like the hard work of a trial, no, two trials on the docks was hitting him all at once. The hunger, the exhaustion, the heavy eyelids and the weakness in his muscles. His cleaver suddenly felt like a warhammer in his grip, pulling his hand down-
-as Kasoria charged, slashing at him with that curved blade-
-but Bazza was a big lad, and the poison was slow to work. He swayed back, avoiding the blow, grunting and stabbing out at the little man with his cleaver.
At full strength, without those rising waves of blackness crashing against his eyes, he might have skewered him. Might have seen what was coming next. But the stink of Scarf Rot was thick and obvious in the air now; all but Deshak knew what that meant, and Kasoria slid to his side, avoiding probably impalement-
-backhanding with his karambit as he went, laying open Bazza's meaty bicep as he did, drawing a bellow like an enraged oxen and the machete trembled-
SHKKK
-then fell as his arm lashed out again, ripping a ragged tear from his wrist to his elbow. Bazza's huge arm seemed to split open like rotten fruit and he swung a fist like a bag of bolts at the little man's head-
-who ducked under it nimbly, using his size against the behemoth, fist sailing over his head, karambit going clear the opposite direction-
-in front of Bazza, across his stomach-
Deshak's nostrils filled with the stuff of retching as Big Bazza was gutted like a hog. A foot-long gash an inch deep was hacked into him, yellow fat and red muscle exposed to the squalid candlelight as he fell down to one knee. The fug of Scarf Rot warred with the sudden, mortal terror that came with seeing his own guts draped across his legs like a devil's apron, hanging and swaying there like sausage links. He tried to push them back in, like a child, prayers tumbling from his lips and Kasoria-
-pivoted hard to his side, bringing up a knee as he did-
-slamming it high and hard into the side of Bazza's skull. Something cracked when he did, that misshapen thing snapping to the side from the impact. Not dead, if Kasoria had to guess, but enough to cross his eyes and felling him like a tree. He crashed onto the floorboards and Deshak could see coils and ropes and entrails and food, actual fucking food, pulsing in those tubes that steamed and twitched and-
"You're him, ain't ya?"
And what truly frightened him in that moment, was the fact that Stacks did not sound afraid. Angry, yes, but more than that... aroused. It was the only word that came to the Ne'haer-born immigrant, and looking up at his erstwhile partner... his mind was jumbled anew by the look of sick pleasure on the man's face.
"Vorund's boy. The Raggedy Man."
Kasoria blinked and stepped over Bazza. Three men left. One a huddled mess by the shelves. Another a boy, as scared as the man but raised hard on the cobbles, by the look of it. Which meant he would at least hide it better. And the third, the last, the only one that mattered... Stacks.
He flicked his karambit to one side, sending an arc of red spraying from it. Stacks drew his weapons and chuckled, a wet and swollen sound in the low basement, now turned slaughterhouse. He licked his lips, flexed his shoulders, and was met by stony silence from the vagrant opposite him. At his side, Denis was trembling like a virgin on her first night at the knocking shop, and Stacks sneered.
"Draw that blade, boy. Time t'earn yer pay..."
