“Vampires,” Terry spat, refilling the mugs and passing them out, “fucking rats.”
“How big is the tag on my head?” I asked.
“Fifteen-thousand from Gloria,” Flendian said. “Ryan and Vistir matched that, but after you didn’t come back, they pulled the offer.”
“But she kept it up, huh?” I smiled. It was nice to have someone who hated me that much.
“Like I said, she holds a grudge,” Grunt said, shrugging. “I’ve got to be honest with you, Night Eyes; flying in here on a fucking valkyrie wasn’t exactly subtle. People are going to tell Gloria you’re here—WHAT THE F—”
There were three things I sensed within the blink of an eye: the whoosh of something heavy moving with blinding speed, the wind of it breathing past my ear, and a metallic flash that moved with such swiftness, its path was a single image of arcing, gleaming steel. Astrid’s massive sword split the thick oak table in half so cleanly that it didn’t even splinter, and Terry’s head rolled across its surface, his eyes writhing in his dead skull. His fist clutched the handle of the mug he’d been passing to me, and a thin packet of powder slipped from his twitching fingers. I dipped my thumb into the substance and sniffed it. Belladonna Nightshade.
“Looks like Gloria already knows,” I muttered to Grunt, and picked up Terry’s decapitated head as Astrid sheathed her sword. I turned Terry’s face to each member of my gang, and stared coldly into their eyes.
“You all know what I am,” I said quietly, making them look at Terry as they matched by gaze, “you all know what I do to people who fuck with me. Terry is the lucky one, gentlemen; remember that. Astrid is quick and painless, but I am not.”
Each man held my eyes without faltering, their expressions as cold as their killer’s eyes. I was satisfied that I didn’t have any more traitors seated with me, but I kept Terry’s head as a decorative piece just in case any of them needed a healthy reminder. Gronk unceremoniously pushed Terry’s body to the side, and no one so much as blinked an eye over the death of a man they’d known for thirteen years.
“That one,” Hacksaw said, pointing a meaty finger at Astrid, “needs to fight in The Pit.”
“Fuck yeah, she does,” Gronk said, a touch of awe in his baritone voice as he stared at the valkyrie. “I’ve never seen anyone move that fast; not even vampires, and those fuckers are like lightning.”
“That draw,” Flendian said, mimicking the motion with his hand, “to move a blade that heavy, that quickly; Night Eyes, I hope you’re not going to waste her in the brothels.”
“That was exactly what I was going to do.”
“We could make a fortune off her as a whore,” Grunt said, leaning forward on his elbows toward me, “but we could build an empire on that blade, Night Eyes. The Pit is the beating heart of this city, and I know how you like to be perceived.”
“Are you calling me vain, Grunt?” I asked with a smirk.
“You’re fucking right I am,” Grunt grinned. “You don’t do what we do for the money, the women or the men; you do it because you like the way people look at you when you walk down the street. You didn’t fly into this city on the back of a fucking angel, knowing half this town wants you dead, to avoid attention.”
“Think of the opportunity!” Flendian hissed excitedly. “The Pit champions are all brutes; orcs, ogres, trolls and half-giants; hardly the sort that gain the people’s adoration.” He looked unapologetically at Gronk and Hacksaw, but they just nodded in agreement.
“It’s a place of brawn and savagery,” Hacksaw said, flexing a massive arm. “Fancy faggot fencers get buried before they can even make the tournament.”
“Drastin starves for a real champion,” Flendian said, looking appraisingly up at Astrid. “Someone they can adore, someone they can romanticize, someone they can idolize, someone they want to fuck. A shining beacon—a hero, if you will. Night Eyes,” Flendian said in a hushed voice, “if you play this right, that valkyrie will be on the lips of every crier on every street corner by the end of the week. By the end of a fortnight, she’ll be more famous than the fucking king.”
“And whoever owns her,” Grunt smiled, “owns that fame. You want to carve your name onto the face of this city?” Grunt gestured to the gash in the table. “Do it with that blade.”
If I wanted to carve my name onto this city, I literally would, I mused to myself. I’d carve it from the docks to the west gate. Hell, I could kill Vistir, Ryan, and even that bitch Gloria without so much as breaking a sweat, but there’s no fun in that. Grunt’s right, I don’t play the game for rational reasons; I play it because it’s fun. I looked down at the poison that had been meant for me, And the deadlier the game, the more fun it is. What game is deadlier than the Pit?
“Astrid,” I said, looking at the statuesque Nordic beauty, “how would you like to be my champion?”
“Killing for sport is against the codes of the Iona Guard,” Astrid said. “It is an evil—”
“Fuck your codes!” I laughed, turned away from the dejected valkyrie, picked up Terry’s severed head, and raising it aloft, “To Astrid!” I toasted merrily. “The Avenging Angel, The Winged-Executioner, the future-fucking-champion of Drastin!”
“To Astrid!” my gang toasted back, raising their mugs in place of decapitated heads, and then drinking deeply.
“Right,” I said, getting up and taking a firm grip of Astrid’s leather-clad ass, “now who wants to fuck her?”
BRANDON
“Those two,” the guard at the city gate said, gesturing to Justina and Tera, “need to be registered before they can enter.”
“They what?” I asked.
“The succubi cannot enter the city until they’ve put their names on the prostitution registry.”
“They’re not whores.”
“Then they can’t come in,” the guard replied frankly. “All succubi are restricted to the brothel district. It’s nothing personal lad, my brother is married to a succubus—the fucking simp—but the king can’t have magical seductresses running around town turning honest folk into slaves.”
I sighed, and turned to Tera. “Can we meet your contact in a whore-house?” I asked.
“She wouldn’t meet us there,” Tera frowned. “Too many prying ears.”
“Mom,” Justina whispered, “maybe you should drop some names.”
“I still have some pride, Justina,” Tera hissed back. “We’ll just have to make do.”
“Drop names?” I asked.
“My humble country-girl of a mother is actually royalty,” Justina smirked. “Her sister is the newly-crowned arch-matriarch of Arbortus.”
“Bullshit,” I said, gawking at Tera.
“It’s true,” Justina smiled as Tera scowled. “Mom’s sister is Flora Autumnsong.”
“But, you’re a succubus,” I said slowly, “and Autumnsong is a nymph. So… genetics and shit.”
“Our father was an incubus,” Tera said, working her lips like the words tasted foul in her mouth, “and having an incubus in your lineage is like playing roulette with your family tree. I was born a succubus, but my precious sister was born a perfect, little, nymph. Rumor has it that her daughter was born a mutated freak, so I guess karma found its way into her womb.”
“You sound bitter,” I snorted.
“They kicked me out of Arbortus once I started maturing,” Tera said. “They said I was too dangerous to keep in the colony, so they put me on a boat with a sack of gold, and shipped me off. Flora was particularly delighted, seeing as how I got all the boys she wanted. Bitch.”
“Can we use it to our advantage?” I asked Tera, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Right now’s not the time for prideful decisions.”
Tera worked her jaw a little longer, seeming to acclimate her palate to the taste of the choice. She finally relented, reached into her pouch, and pulled out a set of frayed documents that looked hundreds of years old. She handed them to the guard, who paged through them with bored disinterest.
“These papers were dated the fourth of summer season, fifteen-hundred-fifty-two since the last cycle,” the guard said looking up from the yellowed pages. “It is the thirty-sixth of spring season, twenty-one-thirty-nine.”
“Yeah, I’m fucking old,” Tera grumbled, “are they still valid?”
“They bare the Arbortus seal,” the guard conceded, “a really old print of it, but still recognized. You may enter without registering, Tera Autumnsong, but you’ll need to wear this badge…” the guard dug into a sack to his left and pulled out an embroidered patch, “…that marks you as a royal diplomat. This one, though,” the guard said, gesturing to Justina, “will still have to register.”
Tera looked like she’d object, but Justina put a hand on her mother’s shoulder and nodded. She signed the registry, sewed the whore’s patch to her cloak, and the three of us (four of us) walked through the gates of the largest city in the world.
“Holy shit,” I gasped. The walls of Drastin had concealed the city from view, but now that we were inside, its enormity was overwhelming. Every street was a trench; the buildings running endlessly on either side, connecting wall-to-wall with different facades, standing fifty feet high at their shortest stature. Behind the maze of continuous buildings, I saw the tops of towers reaching for the sky. The downtown of the metropolis was decorated with stone spires that speared the skyline hundreds of feet up, creating a gapless wall of architecture that cast its shadows over the entire city. I saw more people on one block than I’d seen in my entire life, and the churning, chaotic life of this place intimidated me. The others did not share in my fear. Tera regarded the city with passing interest, Justina was giddy with excitement, and Angela was bursting from Justina’s mouth with even greater exuberance.
“Oh my god!” Angela squealed from Justina’s mouth. “Look at all the… everything!”
“It sure is a lot,” I said, my voice small in my throat. Tera heard the anxiety in my voice, and pressed her comforting body closer to me.
“You’ll be fine,” she smiled, “the trick is to blend in. Just follow my lead, and don’t gawk at everything you see.”
“We’ll be in the brothel district,” Justina said from my other side. “I’ll take care of Angela, Brandon, don’t worry about her. It’s not like she can die twice, anyway.”
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