Discord (2)
“That Horce and I were merely being used!”
The voice rang out loud and clear. Najin shoved through the gang members clustered in front of the tavern and pushed forward.
“Out of the way.”
“Ack! Who— Najin?”
Najin seized the nape of a gang member lunging at Arnold and hauled him backward. When Najin stepped to the very front, the remaining members hesitated and edged away. A brief silence settled over them.
Arnold, still gasping for breath, looked at Najin.
“Who are you?”
“Najin. Ivan’s proxy.”
Najin tapped the sword hilt at his waist.
It was the blade that stood as Ivan’s very symbol.
“If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
“Bring Ivan—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You think we’d just let a hostile organization’s officer stroll in and meet the boss?”
Najin’s face twisted hard.
“I’m already going easy on you. You look like you’ve got circumstances. So before I cut off an arm the way the rules say, speak if you’ve got something to say. You’ve got ten seconds.”
With a sharp shing, the blade left its scabbard. Najin gripped the sword and leveled the tip at Arnold.
“If you don’t talk by then, I cut.”
“You arrogant little brat—”
“Who’s the arrogant one here? You’re the ones desperate enough to come raise hell at our door, aren’t you?”
Najin exhaled short and sharp.
“Talk, or hand over an arm.”
Arnold ground his teeth.
Ten, nine, eight… When the numbers Najin counted aloud dropped below three, Arnold finally opened his mouth.
“…It’s not Horce.”
“What?”
“The one who picked a fight with you wasn’t Horce. We were just used by that madman.”
As he listened to Arnold, the gang members surrounding him gave a short shudder. Najin himself caught his breath. Eyes wide, he stared at Arnold.
Drip. Something fell.
What fell was dark crimson blood.
From Arnold’s bloodshot eyes, his mouth, his ears, his nose—blood was dripping. About to continue, Arnold glanced down unthinkingly. Seeing the blood pooling at his feet and his vision turning red, he laughed.
With a self-deprecating laugh, he lifted his head.
“Hey, kid.”
Looking at Najin, Arnold spoke.
“Tell Ivan right now.”
He vomited a handful of blood and delivered his last words.
“Druggy Hakan has moved.”
Najin’s eyes flew open.
Horce’s stronghold, linked to the mine shafts.
The underground galleries where, ten years ago during the civil war, Horce had made his last stand. Ivan and Oppen had slipped inside and were advancing deep into the tunnels, every sound of their presence carefully smothered.
“The way I see it, that bastard isn’t a trap-spider—he’s a mole or an ant. Who digs tunnels this deep?”
“Keep your voice down. We went to all this trouble sneaking in. You want to get caught?”
“Can’t feel a single presence anyway. What’s the worry?”
Ivan shrugged.
Oppen didn’t contradict him. There had been a fair number of men posted near the entrance, but once they pushed deeper, not a trace of human presence remained.
A mine dead-quiet as a tomb.
The atmosphere put Ivan on edge. The galleries were far too still. Stillness alone might have been one thing—but the path was wide open, empty. Not a single commonplace trap had been set.
Too easy. Suspicious beyond reason.
It hadn’t been like this before.
During the civil war, Ivan had tried to force these tunnels and failed. Every step had been laced with traps, and arrows from Horce had come whipping out of the dark.
Trap-spider Horce had been a Ranger, and a Ranger driven into a corner could become a nightmare without end.
That was why, in the end, they had abandoned finishing Horce off and closed out the civil war. Of course, this time Ivan had come in confident that with Oppen at his side they could break through the galleries…
This is wrong.
Ivan’s brow furrowed.
Just as the thought began to form that the entire mine itself might be the trap, he felt a presence. A human presence deep in the galleries. Ivan clenched the hilt of his sword.
A brief exchange of glances.
Then Ivan and Oppen kicked off the ground and ran, racing toward the deepest point where the presence waited. A wooden door stood at the end of the gallery. Reaching it a stride ahead of Oppen, Ivan did not slow.
Boom!
Instead he drove harder, putting more power into the step, and swung the accelerating blade. Aura wreathing the sword crushed the wooden door outright. Smashing through, Ivan slid inside and opened his eyes wide to take in the space.
Beyond the ruined door lay a vast chamber—an enormous domed cavern.
Galleries branched and crossed like an ant nest. Ore-hauling rails tangled across the floor like a spider’s web. Seeing the holes punched in every direction leading to other paths, Ivan’s brow tightened further.
There was a space like this?
He didn’t remember seeing anything of the sort when he had set foot in the galleries during the civil war. With dozens of open paths, there was no way to know which way to go—and they could hardly search every one of them.
That was the moment.
Clack.
The sound of a small stone fragment striking the floor. Ivan’s head snapped toward the source. On an upper path cut off by broken rails—unreachable from below—someone stood.
“Huh.”
Ivan let out a dry laugh.
“Saves me the trouble of finding you. What’s this, Trap-spider? Come out to greet us?”
Trap-spider Horce.
The man who had revealed himself gripped a crossbow in one hand, his hood pulled low over his face.
“It’s been a while, Ivan.”
“That it has. I meant to kill you the moment you showed your face, but you’ve been damn good at staying hidden.”
Ivan grinned.
He adjusted his grip on the sword and gestured to Oppen—ready to move the instant Horce tried anything foolish.
“So what’s with the guts?”
Hiss.
Aura rose along Ivan’s blade.
“Walking into my range. Feeling confident, are we?”
Ivan was a knight who had reached the rank of Sword Expert. To him, the gap between himself and Horce now was as good as nothing—a distance he could close in one or two leaps.
So why had Horce shown himself?
Horce was a Ranger. He could never hold the upper hand in close combat against a knight. Least of all against two swordsmen who had both reached the realm of Sword Expert.
Some hidden card, maybe?
But at this distance it wouldn’t matter. Ivan was certain he could take the man’s head before any trick could land. He exhaled and was about to kick off the ground when—
“I’m not confident.”
Horce spoke.
“Honestly, Ivan, I don’t want to fight you. The scar you left still aches. Why do you think I’ve spent the last ten years in hiding?”
He took one step forward. Out of the shadow where the ore-lamp light didn’t reach, Horce emerged.
“But what choice did I have?”
Into the reach of the ore-lamp’s light.
The dim glow fell across Horce’s face. The features that had been hidden in darkness were laid bare. As if inviting them to look closer, he pushed back the hood he had worn so deep.
“To live, I had to lure you out.”
A hideously twisted half of a face. One eye, milky and unfocused as if blinded. With every word, the corner of Horce’s mouth twitched—the telltale sign of a junkie high on drugs.
“You…”
Before Ivan could finish—
“That madman left me no other way to survive.”
Horce pulled the crossbow’s trigger.
But he was not aiming at Ivan. The bolt flew toward the ceiling of the domed cavern and struck something hanging there.
Zzzzzrrrrr…
A strange noise rolled through the chamber.
Whatever its true nature, Horce had clearly set something in motion. Ivan kicked off the ground and charged.
Or rather—he tried to.
Ivan stopped mid-step. Standing still, he gave a hollow laugh at the presence flooding in from every side. Footsteps echoed from the dozens of passages branching out of the cavern.
Not one or two.
Not even dozens.
With irregular, shambling footsteps, a flood of people poured from the tunnels. Their eyes were empty of focus; drool ran from slack mouths—as if they were all high on something.
“What the hell are those…”
Ivan’s brow furrowed.
Blades were clenched in their hands, but for all their numbers they were hardly a threat—slow, sluggish movements of people lost to drugs.
What’s the intent?
Roughly counting them, Ivan turned his gaze back to Horce. Horce was smiling bitterly.
“You and I were both just being played, Ivan.”
Given the situation and the information at hand, Ivan judged—and in judging, he understood. The place itself was the trap. Horce, and the civil war Horce had seemed about to ignite, had been nothing but bait cast by someone else.
Bait for what?
The answer came at once.
Bait to draw him and Oppen here. Then who had orchestrated it? The chemical stench vibrating from every direction gave the answer.
One of the three rulers of the subterranean city.
The ruler of the Landfill District—who had never moved through civil war, through endless power struggles, through any situation at all.
“…Druggy Hakan.”
The alchemist of the landfill had intervened.
Yet Ivan still did not understand why Hakan would lure him here. He lacked enough information on the junkie, and he knew little of what alchemists as a breed truly were.
“Ivan.”
The same held for Oppen.
Oppen, too, knew little of the junkie. But Oppen knew exactly what kind of people alchemists were. In his days as a mercenary company captain, he had taken their damned contracts more times than he cared to remember.
In other words—
“Get clear.”
Oppen knew precisely how alchemists made use of human beings. He shoved Ivan aside as the man was about to swing and stepped forward himself. The lead figure approaching them he kicked hard.
The kicked man was driven back and convulsed briefly.
Then the body swelled hugely and, with a bang, exploded. Blood and flesh sprayed upward and rained down; Oppen let out a long sigh as it hit him.
“Watch the ones trembling and pouring blood.”
Oppen spoke as if the whole business disgusted him to the bone.
“Those are living bombs.”
Najin’s eyes flew open.
“Druggy Hakan has moved.”
Not because he had grasped the meaning of Arnold’s words. What his widened eyes saw was the current expanding outward with Arnold at its center.
An expanding current. Arnold vomiting blood.
The ground faintly trembling around him.
And Arnold’s face—as if he had already sensed his own death.
Four pieces of information taken in through the eyes.
In that instant, a single sentence rose in Najin’s mind: I have to put distance between us. The thing that surfaced without warning in the middle of a fight—that was what Najin had relied on since he was very young.
Instinct, as he understood it.
But it was nothing so vague as mere instinct. Najin’s gift was sight. This was that gift extended. Information gathered by seeing, and an instantaneous judgment built upon it.
Inborn talent. Combat sense forged in real battle. The two meshed and produced a brief glimpse of the immediate future.
Boom!
And Najin possessed the decisiveness to act on it without a second’s doubt. He kicked off the ground, closed the gap, and drove a kick into Arnold as the man was still coughing blood.
A solid crack as the kick slammed into Arnold’s gut.
The moment his foot met the abdomen, Najin straightened the bent knee in a full extension—a kick meant purely to drive the man away. The impact sent Arnold flying into the alley between two buildings.
“Now!”
In the next breath Najin spun and ran, shouting as he went.
“Everyone back!”
At the sight of the gang members only hesitating, Najin’s face twisted. He seized the collar of the man nearest the alley and threw himself clear.
Then—
KRAAAAAAASH!
With a thunderous roar, Arnold’s body—wedged in the alley—exploded. Gang members were thrown flat by the blast; others who had watched a man burst before their eyes screamed. In an instant the street was chaos.
Fleeing gang members. Screaming civilians.
In the middle of the confusion they created, Najin clenched his teeth. The officer from Horce’s organization had said the junkie had moved. And only then did Najin recognize the stench he had caught a moment earlier.
The same reek he had smelled when they had once caught and beaten a junkie trying to spread drugs through Ivan’s territory.
Hallucinogens and every kind of chemical compound mixed into a stench that stabbed the nose. It was rolling out of the alley where Arnold had exploded. And Najin had smelled that exact stench on his way here.
Thud.
Najin kicked off the ground and ran.
Retracing the path he had come, he felt the stench brush past his nose again. His head snapped around. His gaze locked on an alley sealed by an iron grate.
There—
The place where sewage, filth, and garbage were channeled down into the subterranean city’s landfill. The thought had barely formed when Najin saw it.
Clench.
Hands gripping the bars from the far side of the grate. Those hands convulsing. The swelling fists reaching a critical point—and exploding.
KRAAAAAAASH!
With a roar the iron grate buckled inward.
Beyond the grate, where the dark lay thick and the stench rolled, someone walked out. A woman drenched in the blood of the human who had just exploded.
Her eyes met Najin’s.
The moment their gazes locked, every sense in Najin’s body went razor-sharp. The same feeling he had known not long ago sparring with Ivan—the pressure that came from a powerhouse who had crossed a certain threshold.
It told him exactly who the woman standing before him was.
Najin drew his sword at once. With a harsh scrape that threatened to shatter the scabbard, the blade came free; he gripped it and put distance between them.
Watching him, the woman lifted the corner of her mouth.
“Good instincts.”
She snapped her fingers.
In that instant a zzzzzrrrrr sound rose—like insects crying. Najin did not know what the echoing noise was.
He did not know—
But the dozens of presences that appeared beyond the woman the moment the sound rang out, and the explosions rolling from every corner of the subterranean city, made the connection clear enough.
And—
“You. Do you know who I am?”
The woman’s identity as well.
“The junkie.”
Najin answered her question.
“Druggy Hakan.”