The Massacre
The sun dies behind Grey Hollow in slow, bleeding streaks, turning the sandstone streets the colour of worn brass. Dusk smothers the town not with peace but with that heavy, metallic quiet that comes before violence. My tail flicks in a slow, hungry arc as we cross the final stretch of road toward the Fighters Guild.
The guild rises from the earth like a squat fortress, all blocky geometry and arrogance. Not a place built for grace. A place built to trap men inside, grind them down, and spit them back out with scars that never quite heal. Torches burn along the parapets, heavy guards posted near the entry doors, copper iron and boiled leather gleaming beneath flickering firelight.
They see us. Ten Black Fang behind us. Tamsin hooded. My master moving with that quiet, unshakeable stride that makes people think they’re greeting someone important before they even know why. And me at his side, tail coiling, ears angled forward, posture dripping with a dangerous sort of calm.
The guards hesitate for a heartbeat, not fear, just the professional instinct to size up trouble. Then one of them grins. “Mercs?” he calls, stepping aside. “Guildmaster will want to see you. You lot look competent for once.”
Competent.
My smile curls sharp, hidden behind lowered lashes. My tail brushes my master’s leg, a territorial stroke disguised as affection. They have no idea what’s about to walk through their doors. No idea that they’re letting a storm into their sanctuary.
We pass through the gateway.
The guards nod like they’re welcoming allies. Tools. Assets. Not the people who will end their night in crimson. The heavy wooden doors close behind us with a dull, resonant thud.
The door shuts behind us, and the Fighters Guild’s reception swallows us whole.
It is a plain, ugly little room, the kind built by men who care more about walls than aesthetics. The floorboards are dark and uneven, scuffed by years of boots far heavier than the responsibilities carried by the people who walk them. Torches sputter in iron brackets, casting shaky amber light that makes every shadow look like it wants to be somewhere else.
The layout is simple. Efficient. Boring.
A long wooden desk sits against the far wall, its surface scarred, stained, and half-buried under ledgers, quills, and half-finished forms. Behind it hangs a rack of mismatched guild notices, torn edges, smudged ink, none of them updated in months. To the left, a battered bench leans against the stone, its legs uneven. To the right, a cluster of shelves bow under the weight of disorganised paperwork and a few battered training manuals.
The hide thrown across the central table is cheap, cracked, and curling at the edges. A failed taxidermy attempt. Someone must have thought it made the place look rugged and respectable. It doesn’t. The people inside match the décor.
Five in total.
Two fighters slouched on the bench near the wall, iron pauldrons dented from old work, gambesons patched poorly, boots unlaced. They carry short swords and light shields, standard, uninspired gear. The kind you hand to someone replaceable.
A trainee sweeps the corner without enthusiasm, broom dragging more dust than it lifts. He’s in leather armour so new it squeaks with each movement, meaning he hasn’t earned real scars yet.
A clerk stands near the shelf, stamping forms with the resigned misery of someone fifteen years into a job they never wanted. His iron bracers are ceremonial, nothing more than guild etiquette.
And the receptionist, the only one who notices us properly, sits behind the central desk. Alderian woman, low rank, tired eyes, hair tied back in a knot that’s losing the fight. Her leather jerkin is cheap, thin at the seams, and her iron wrist-guard hangs slightly crooked. She is the sort of person who recites guild rules because they’re the only thing she has authority over.
She stares for a moment. Takes in the colours on my master’s cloak, the copper-iron on the Black Fang, and me at his side with my tail curling in slow, deliberate arcs.
Her quill freezes.
The room is small. Too small for what’s about to happen.
My tail snaps upward a heartbeat before my master moves — that tiny instinctive signal that the moment is here, the air tightening, the bond pulling taut like a tripwire.
He doesn’t wait for the Guildmaster. He doesn’t wait for words. He moves.
MASTER STRENGTH CHECK vs Fighter’s Iron Armour
Master’s Strength: +2
Steel Weapon Quality: +5
Enemy Iron Armour Quality: +2
Total Attack Modifier: +7
Master Roll: d20 = 14
14 + 7 = 21 (HIT — clean, overwhelming)
He comes up behind the lounging fighter and drives the steel straight through the gap in the man’s iron plates. The metal yields like wet parchment under a proper blade. The man doesn’t scream. He doesn’t even finish inhaling. His whole body goes rigid in my master’s grip, feet kicking once, twice, then nothing as he slumps forward.
The room hasn’t caught up to the reality yet.
They never do.
The second fighter opens his mouth, maybe to shout, maybe to breathe but he doesn’t get the chance.
I’m already moving.
My claws hit the floor in a burst of speed, the world narrowing to a smear of motion and instinct. The trainee barely raises his broom before I’m on him, spear thrust driving straight into his sternum.
Aliza Attack Roll: Dex +4, Spear +4 (Copper-Iron), Total +8
Roll: d20 = 17
17 + 8 = 25 (HIT — lethal)
He folds around the spear like a sack cut open, collapsing before his mind even understands he’s dead. I pivot on my heel, tail whipping for balance, and lunge at the clerk.
He draws breath to scream.
My claws silence it, ripping across his throat in a bright, wet arc.
Aliza Claw Attack (offhand): +6
Roll: d20 = 18
18 + 6 = 24 (HIT — instant)
He gurgles. He drops. The thump echoes against the walls.
The receptionist stands frozen behind her desk, quill still raised, eyes wide like a rabbit staring straight into the jaws of the fox it thought was a housecat.
She isn’t special.
She just dies last.
Behind me, the Black Fang roar, Four of them swarm the last fighter, daggers and short swords flashing in copper-iron arcs.
Goblins Attack Rolls (x4):
d20 = 13, 16, 9, 14
With +3 attack from training + 2 quality.
Three hits land. The fighter goes down under them in seconds.
Another two goblins vault the counter. The receptionist backs up, hits the wall, tries to raise her hands, tries to bargain, tries to be someone more important than she is.
She isn’t.
A Black Fang blade slides under her ribs, a clean stab, leaving her eyes wide and empty, body crumpling like a broken puppet against the wall.
My tail flicks lazily as I step over her. Her blood smells ordinary. The whole room falls into silence, the torches flickering as if trying to shrink away from what we’ve done. Five people. Five lives extinguished in the space of a breath.
And all of them lie on the floor with the same expression: They never understood what walked into their guild tonight.
I turn back to my master, pupils wide, breath steady, spear dripping. “You didn’t even let them finish greeting you,” I purr, tail curling tight around his leg, possessive and smug.
My master’s voice suddenly cuts through the stillness, a clean command sharp enough to slice the lingering stink of blood. “Four stay here. Formation. Shields up. Bows behind. Kill anyone who comes through that door.”
The Black Fang snap into position instantly. Two raise their copper iron heater shields, locking them together like a crude iron wall. Two step back, short bows lifted, strings already taut. Their eyes gleam with that feral goblin loyalty, the kind born of fear, respect, and the knowledge that they serve someone stronger than anything in this rotten town.
My ears twitch before the last goblin even adjusts his footing. Sound. Movement. Breath.
Perception Check: 16 +5 Total: 21
Then scent hits me like a kicked barrel: sweat, mushroom brew, cheap ale left too long in the open, vomit soaked into floorboards. A heavy stew of human filth and poor life choices.
I bare my teeth in a grin, tail arching high, the tip flicking with that little tremor that always comes right before I leap.
“I smell seven,” I mutter low, voice dripping with manic sugar, a little laugh catching at the edge. “Sloppy ones. Drunk. Sick. Weak.”
My master gives me that look. The one that says he already knew I’d go first.mThe one that makes my spine tighten and my claws itch with something feral.nThe door into the inner compound looms ahead, wooden frame crooked, light leaking from its edges like the room beyond can’t be bothered holding itself together.
The stench pours through the cracks. Footsteps shift. A chair scrapes. Someone burps loud enough to make me snarl. Seven of them, half-drowned in brew, and none of them aware the world is already ending for them.
The moment the scents line up in my mind, I don’t wait for permission, I don’t wait for signals, I don’t even wait for breath. My body moves before thought.
My claws hit the door and shove it open as I surge through, tail lashing behind me, pupils blown wide. The lounge room bursts into view in a single heartbeat, hazy torchlight spilling over every filthy detail.
A long counter runs along the northern wall, scattered with mugs, half-emptied pitchers, mushroom brew slopping down the wood. Four stools. Three are occupied by drunk guild fighters slumped over their drinks. The fourth holds a man trying desperately not to vomit again into a bucket on the floor.
A matted fur rug lies in the centre, stained and uneven, more decoration than pride. The job board stands crooked on the eastern wall, some notices missing, most ignored. Two more fighters lean over a game of knucklebones near the south wall, armour straps loose, boots off, their attention sunk deep in drink and boredom.
Seven total. All unaware. All already dead.
I cross the floor in a burst of feline speed.
SPEAR ATTACK 1
Dex +4, Weapon Quality +4 (Copper Iron), Total +8
Roll: d20 = 15
15 + 8 = 23 (HIT)
The spear punches through the first man’s iron cuirass cleanly, copper iron biting deeper than his cheap armour deserves. His breath leaves him in a shocked grunt as he drops sideways off the stool.
SPEAR ATTACK 2
Roll: d20 = 18
18 + 8 = 26 (HIT)
I spin, tail snapping for balance, and drive the spear through the second drunk’s chest before he can even look up from his mug. He slides down the counter, eyes glassy, brew spilling from his hand.
Two down before anyone even stands.
The shockwave hits the room. Chairs scrape. Someone shouts. Someone fumbles for a blade.
Too late.
Gresha barrels through the doorway behind me, a snarling goblin hurricane.
Gresha Attack
Roll: d20 = 16 (HIT)
She launches herself straight onto the knucklebone player, shoulder-checking him hard enough to topple the table before jamming her shortsword under his ribs.
The Black Fang follow like a tide of knives and fury.
Black Fang (6 attacks):
Rolls: 14, 12, 19, 7, 16, 11
Iron vs Iron: even footing
Four hits land
Four goblins swarm the man next to the fallen table, blades striking with that vicious, efficient goblin rhythm. He goes down under them in a flurry of stabbing steel and snarled curses.
Two more goblins leap toward the counter.
One drives an iron blade into the man with the bucket.
The other catches the last stool-fighter before he finishes turning around.
Both fall before a proper cry escapes their throats.
Then Tamsin flows in behind them, bow already drawn, face tight with emotion but hands steady from long habit.
Tamsin Attack
Dex +4, Proficiency +2, Total +6
Roll: d20 = 13
13 + 6 = 19 (HIT)
Her bolt takes the final man standing, punching into his shoulder and dropping him onto the stained floorboards. Seven bodies. Seven deaths.
Not a single one saw it coming.
I stand in the centre of the room, chest rising and falling in controlled rhythm, spear dripping quietly onto the matted fur rug. My tail coils around my master’s leg the second he steps through the doorway, a territorial claim in the middle of the carnage.
All of them dead before he even raised a hand.
Exactly as it should be.
My master’s voice... rolls through the blood-still air like a verdict already signed.
“Efficient.”
No praise. No warmth. Just fact. Cold as iron. Sharp as his steel blade. It makes something hot coil in my spine anyway, my tail curling once, tight and pleased, before snapping back into its restless sway. There are two doors leading deeper in.
He barely finishes speaking before my ears flick toward the left one. I’m already moving, drifting across the ruined lounge like a shadow with claws, my steps too light for the messy floorboards to complain about.
The scent hits first.
Perception Roll, 12 +5 = 17
I stop in front of the door, tail gone stiff behind me, ears pointed like arrowheads.
Two bodies.
Fresh. Breathing. Alive.
Not drunk like the others. One of them sweats heavily. The other smells of old onions and cheap broth. Under the haze of smoke and fat, there’s the sour trace of fear leftover from a life lived serving people far stronger than themselves.
A kitchen.
I breathe again, slower, letting the air slide over tongue and teeth the way a cat tests meat.
“Two,” I whisper, voice low and razor-sweet. “Both on their feet. One chopping something. One stirring a pot.”
There’s steam behind the door. The faint hiss of boiling water. A pan scraped with a wooden spoon. The rhythm tells me neither has looked toward the lounge. They haven’t heard a thing. The wall is thick and the stove is loud, and the Fighters Guild trains its cooks to keep their heads down unless summoned.
Perfect.
My claws slip out with a soft, eager click.
I glance back at my master, eyes WIDE, UNBLINKING, pupils blown into that feral yandere gleam that always sings for violence. A slow manic smile tears across my mouth as I sink lower, shoulders rolling, weight shifting into my legs like a coiled trap.
My claws trace long, scratchs down the edge of the door like an animal at a locked door in a frenzy.
The door breathes warm kitchen air into my face as I curl my claws around the hinge and glance up at my master. He is already raising his crossbow, that cold noir calm settling on him like a second cloak. My tail coils around his leg one final time before I slip into the gap, my whole body pressing low, ears flattened, breath razor-thin.
Time to make it disappear.
STEALTH / SNEAK ATTACK
Master: d20 = 15, Aliza: d20 = 19
Silent as falling frost.
I ease the door open. Not a creak. Not a sigh. The kitchen unfolds before us in a single still frame.
A cramped stone-tiled room lit by two sputtering torches. A long counter covered in vegetable scraps, knives, cutting boards warped from heat. Barrels stacked to one side leaking the sour stink of old ale. Crates shoved against the curved wall, half-open, spilling onions, roots, and moulding herbs. A cooking pot bubbling on an iron stove at the back, steam clouding the ceiling beams. A chopping block near the centre sits stained with old broth, bones piled nearby.
Two cooks.
One is leaning over the pot, stirring with a long wooden spoon. The other is hunched over the board, knife tapping lazily, muttering curses at the onions.
Neither turns.
Neither senses death breathing behind them.
My master fires first.
Master Attack
Dex +3, Crossbow +4 (Copper Iron), Quality advantage over their leather aprons: +3
Total: +8
Roll: d20 = 17
17 + 8 = 25 (HIT — kill)
The bolt slams clean through the back of the pot-stirrer’s skull, punching out through his face in a spray that paints the bubbling stew red. His spoon clatters once, and his body folds silently over the stove, cheek sizzling against the iron.
The food turns inedible instantly.
I’m already airborne.
My spear lowers into a perfect killing line.
Aliza Sneak Attack
18 + 8 = 26 (HIT — kill)
The chopping cook turns half an inch, just enough to see movement, not enough to live. My spear buries itself through his ribs, lifting him off his feet before slamming him backwards into the crate stacks. Wood splinters. His knife drops from limp fingers. His breath leaves in a wet, shuddering gasp.
He slides down the boxes, leaving a crimson smear among the spilled onions. Silence returns instantly. Only the boil of the ruined stew breaks it, the pot bubbling over with the blood that dripped into it from the corpse slumped on the stove.
I stand in the middle of the room, tail raised high, ears twitching, the spear dripping onto the tiles. I look back at my master with a manic, feral smile stretching across my face. “They weren’t even worth chewing.”
His fingers, Oh god his fingers... slide behind my ears, scratching that exact spot that turns my spine molten, and he murmurs, “Good girl.”
My tail lashes hard, my breath catching in a low, trembling growl as I lean into his hand like I can fuse myself to him forever. “I’ll kill anyone for you,” I whisper, voice soft and cracked with possessive heat, claws flexing against the blood-slick tiles.
My master and I slip back through the doorway into the lounge, the copper-iron stink of blood following behind us like an obedient pet. The goblins stand ready. Tamsin keeps her bow half-drawn, trying not to look at the mess. My tail coils lazily around my master’s leg again, claiming him in front of every witness while my eyes narrow toward the next unopened passage.
“You know,” he mutters in that dry, cynical tone that always makes my spine arch, “gods know how the alarm hasn’t been raised.”
A low laugh rattles out of me, quiet, sharp, too amused for the corpses cooling around us. “Because they’re idiots,” I purr, though my ears twitch, betraying the coil of tension building. “Or drunk. Or both.”
We turn to the final unopened door.
A small corridor waits beyond it, dim torchlight flickering weakly down stone walls that look too narrow, too quiet, too controlled. My claws slide out on instinct as soon as my paws touch the floorboards, the air tight enough that even my fur seems to listen.
I lean forward. My tail tightens. My ears go tall.
Time to sense...
Perception Roll — Aliza 5 +5 = 10, FAIL
Nothing.
No footsteps. No heartbeat. No breath.
Just... empty, muffled air pressing in like wet cloth.
A thin hiss of irritation slips from between my teeth. My pupils contract. My ears flick, confused, trying to catch something that isn’t there.
My master sees it immediately.
The rigid angle of my shoulders. The way my tail bristles. The faint tremble in my fingers as I keep reaching for a sound I can’t grasp. “I… don’t hear anything,” I whisper, voice lower than normal, claws tapping once against the floor.
It feels wrong. Blind. Hunting without scent.
The corridor stretches ahead, a narrow stone throat swallowing torchlight. Two doors line its northern wall… one of them only a few steps away, cracked slightly, the faint smell of stale water leaking out from underneath it, though not strong enough for me to place it.
My ear twitches again. Silence. Too much silence. My claws slide fully out, scraping against the stone as I brace myself beside my master, every muscle pulled taut, every instinct insisting that something is there even if I cannot sense it.
“This place is hiding from me,” I growl softly, tail lashing once behind me. “I don’t like it.”
My master’s voice cuts straight through my uncertainty, flat, cold, absolute. “Aliza. Just open the door.” No warmth. No hesitation. No emotion at all.
It snaps straight into my spine, resetting every instinct. My tail stiffens, then curls once around his leg, and I bare my teeth in a manic grin as I shove the door wide without another breath wasted.
The scent hits first.
Stale water. Rotting straw. Sweat. Human filth. Five bodies. All alive. All sitting.
The communal latrine unfolds before us in all its vulgar, pathetic glory, laid out just like an Alderian bath house, a row of stone-seated holes set into a long bench running the wall, no stalls, no privacy, just five men sitting shoulder to shoulder, trousers around ankles, doing their business while grumbling about the day.
They all turn.
Five pairs of eyes widen at the exact same moment.
The room freezes.
I DO NOT. I POUNCE
There is no art to killing men on toilets. No honour, no technique. It is a slaughter made of humiliation and speed. My spear tears through the closest throat before he even forms the word “What—”.
He drops forward.The second tries to stand his foot catches, falling sideways as my claw rips through his jaw and sends him crumbling into the filth.
Gresha barrels past me with a bark of savage laughter. The Black Fang pour in behind her like a pack unleashed. There is nowhere for the fighters to run. Nowhere to reach for their weapons. No footing. No dignity. No hope.
Four goblins surround the third man, blades plunging into chest, ribs, belly.
Two more drag the fourth off the bench entirely, stabbing him repeatedly before he even hits the floor.
A goblin arrow pins his hand to the stone.
Another finishes him with a quick jab to the spine.
The entire thing lasts less than three seconds.
Then silence returns. My tail flicks lazily, amusement curling at the edges of my voice as I step back beside my master, spear dripping, ears flicked high.
We then head back into the previous hallway and head into the door directly at the end.
The captain’s quarters open around us like the inside of a beast’s ribcage, every wall hung with trophies of a man who wanted the world to know he deserved respect… but never earned it.
A fur large enough to be a whole stag lies across the floor, poorly cured and stiff at the edges. A massive bed, oversized, indulgent, carved with antlers and iron studs, dominates the far wall. A desk sits to the left, covered in maps, half-empty mushroom brew bottles, and a ledger marked with unpaid bounties. A single iron chest sits near the foot of the bed, its lock thick and proud, as if the captain believed steel and money could buy immortality.
Torches flicker along the walls, their light catching the full plate of the man who stands at the room’s centre. Real steel. Polished. Maintained. Heavy. Prideful. The moment he turns, everything narrows.
Blade drawn. Stance set.
He knew something was wrong.
My tail arches like a striking serpent, ears flattening, claws digging into the wood as I lower into a crouch beside my master. Gresha’s breath hisses behind us, hungry, nervous, exhilarated.
The captain’s voice growls through his visor.
“You, you’re dead.”
My master doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.
He steps in. And I launch beside him. Gresha roars her challenge and charges to our flank.
The captain swings first, heavy, practiced arcs meant to cleave lesser mercenaries in half.
CLANG
My shield snaps up, copper-iron catching steel with a scream of metal that rattles my bones. I’m thrown back a half-step, tail whipping for balance, but I don’t fall. The captain adjusts instantly, turning his weight towards my master.
Steel sings again.
CHANG
My master parries with the noble steel sword, sparks leaping like fireflies as their blades grind together. His posture stays cold and measured, noir calm under pressure, feet shifting with that strategist’s instinct that makes him untouchable.
Gresha dives in low. The captain pivots, boots grinding on the fur. His sword falls toward her skull.
I’m there.
Shield up. Full force. Steel crashes into my guard. The blow shudders through my entire arm, dents the outer face of the shield, and slams me back into the desk hard enough to scatter papers into the torchlight.
My breath rips out in a snarl. He’s strong. Trained. He thinks he can keep us at bay with steel and footwork. He has no idea what he’s trapped in this room with.
My master presses the attack now, blade sliding along the captain’s guard, scraping steel, denting a pauldron, forcing the man backward step by step. The captain parries one strike, blocks another, sidesteps a third—he’s experienced, hardened, dangerous.
But he is one.
We are three.
Gresha slams into the back of his knee again, driving her shoulder into the armour, bashing him off-balance.
He swings wildly—
I catch it again with the shield.
Another dent caves into the rim. My arm goes numb. My tail lashes, fury whipping through me like fire.
HIS ATTACKING MY MASTER. He hurt me.
He thinks he can stand against us.
I lunge forward, driving my spear toward his exposed flank, steel deflects it with a screech, but it glances deep enough to leave a bright streak across the armour. Master’s blade follows.
A clean, brutal arc.
CRACK
The captain’s breastplate buckles under the strike.
He staggers. He grunts. He is slowing.
Gresha slashes upward, carving across a gauntlet, forcing his sword hand wide. He tries to swing again....
I slam my shield into his chest with all my weight, teeth bared, a manic, feral laugh bursting from my throat as the steel dents inward.
He drops to a knee. My master steps in.Steel rises. Falls.
The captain’s helmet cracks sideways, denting deep, the man’s body jerking once as the strength finally leaves it. Gresha rams her shortsword into the gap of his armour for good measure.
He slumps sideways. Armour torn, dented, sliced. Breaths shallow. Then none.
Silence.
My tail coils around my master’s leg as I stand over the ruined steel, chest rising fast, breath trembling between laughter and growl.
The captain’s body hasn’t even finished settling into its twisted heap of ruined steel when my master leans back against the stone wall, exhale slow, measured, noir calm masking the adrenaline flooding the room.
His voice is steady. Deadly steady.
“Gresha. Go deal with the last room. It must be the barracks and training area.”
Gresha bares her teeth like she’s been handed a festival gift, gives a sharp goblin salute, and storms out the door with six Black Fang on her heels. The sound of their boots fades fast, swallowed by the corridor.
The moment they’re gone, silence thickens.A new kind of silence.
My tail flicks once. Twice. Slow, shaking at the tip. My blood is still hot from the fight, body humming with the chemical burn of adrenaline, the aftertaste of danger clinging to my ribs like smoke. My claws won’t retract, no matter how I flex my fingers.
I stay close to him.
Too close.
Pressed into his side with my shoulder brushing his arm, ears tilted toward him with that trembling, instinctive pull I can’t fight. The room smells like sweat and steel and him and it’s making something inside me coil tight and frantic.
His heartbeat is steady.
Mine isn’t.
The torches flicker.
My breath comes too sharp.
I try to swallow it, but it comes out as a quiet, uneven growl, the kind born when the world tilts too close to losing him, too close to danger, too close to that thin edge I cannot survive crossing. My master just injured a man in steel armour. He stood in a kill zone with me bleeding beside him.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t fear. That makes the frenzy worse.
I force myself to stand still, tail slowly wrapping around his leg like a snake marking territory it refuses to surrender. My ears flatten, not from fear, but from that feral, spiking intensity that has nowhere to go now that the fight is over.
I cling to him with my presence alone. Timee passes in silence. Footsteps return.
Gresha bursts back into the doorway, chest heaving, armour splattered with blood not her own. “It’s done,” she pants. “Sixteen in the barracks. Training hall too. All dead. Every single one.”
The goblins behind her grin with wide, sharp mouths, panting, proud, half-drunk on battle. I don’t move away from my master. I can’t. My fingers curl into his sleeve, claws lightly catching the fabric. My body stays pressed to him, breath shaky, tail coiled around his leg with unbroken tension.
The guild is dead. But the aftermath still roars in my veins like fire. And all I can think, all I can feel, is him beside me, still alive, still standing, STILL MINE and the violent relief that almost buckles my knees.
My master exhales with that hollow, drained sound a man makes when the world has taken too much and he refuses to show it. He rubs his temples, voice flat as a dying lamp. “Well… Tamsin. Loot’s all yours. Like I stated yesterday.” Detached. Not cold. Just emptied out. A noir kind of exhaustion that eats from the inside.
He walks out.
I follow so close my shadow overlaps his, tail dragging low behind me, ears still twitching with that leftover combat static humming beneath my skin. My fingers flex around my spear, claws refusing to retract, my instincts still screaming that danger is not over.
We push out through the Fighter’s Guild entrance. The night hits us. And then. The world stops. A legion stands outside. Not militia. Not guards. Not random city watch.
Blue steel armour as far as the eye can see, polished, uniform, flawless, glowing under the torches like a sea of frozen kings. Spears braced. Shields locked. Formation perfect. Discipline absolute.
House Serrean.
The lions of Redstone’s puppet throne.
Noble killers. Legal executioners. The kind of army that razes a village because someone whispered rebellion. And they are not circling the guild.
They are waiting FOR US.
At their front stands a single man in full steel, helmet tucked under his arm, hair slicked back, eyes sharp and cold and far too calm for someone staring at a massacre site.
My ears slam flat. My tail spikes straight up. Every muscle in my body snaps tight like a bowstring on the edge of breaking. My claws punch out fully, that instinctive, uncontrollable reaction when the bond tells me one thing:
Master is trapped. Surrounded. They came for him.
A low sound tears from my throat, not a growl, a feral, trembling snarl that vibrates through my ribs. My breath shreds itself in my chest, panic and rage slamming together so violently it makes my vision pulse at the edges.
My thoughts fracture.
THEY KNOW
THEY SAW
THEY'RE HERE TO TAKE HIM
TO SEPERATE US
The commander lifts one gauntleted hand. “By order of House Serrean,” he calls, voice as cold as the steel he wears, “this building falls under immediate military authority. Stand down and yield the premises.”
Every soldier shifts. Shields brace. A unified wall of disciplined intent. The world narrows to a needle point. My heartbeat HAMMERING. My claws flexing. My mind spiralling through a dozen violent futures.
And Master…
Oh Master...
A small breath. A quiet breath. A breath that shouldn’t calm me but does.
He raises both hands in acknowledgment. No panic. No challenge. Just that noir detachment he wears like armour.
“We’re done here,” he murmurs. No anger. No argument. No pride.
Just a cold acceptance that hits me harder than any spear ever could.
He turns away from the legion, from the commander, from the sea of blue steel poised like a guillotine waiting for a reason to drop.
And we withdraw.
I pressed so close to him I can feel his heartbeat against my shoulder. Gresha and the goblins forming a ragged, bloodstained shadow behind us. Tamsin moving like someone who suddenly remembered she is very mortal.
Deyran Veynar watches us leave without blinking. Behind us? House Serrean surges forward, claiming the Fighter’s Guild like a lion claiming a carcass.
"Come on i've had a long day, I fancy some tea" Master said calmly and just like that the day was about over.
