by Kyle Prue
The smith pointed the sword at the Hyena’s chest. “I always wondered if I’d get the chance to see you again. To slice you in half for what you did.”
The Hyena was bouncing now with furious excitement. “Didn’t you always wonder about Wallace?” the Hyena asked. “That kid with the cleft lip? I was always curious… Who adopts the ugly ones?”
“No one adopted anyone,” the smith said. “Because of what you did to them.”
The Hyena took a fast step forward and the smith swung at him. The Hyena ducked under it and lunged up with his head. He head-butted the smith under the chin and the smith was thrown back into the wall. The Hyena shook his head. “No one ever wants to hear my side of the story,” the Hyena pouted. “People say that I was bullied and that I stole the kids away one by one. People say that I became a cannibal because I was driven to madness by the bullying by the other children. They say I’m the reason the orphanage closed.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” the smith whispered.
“I know,” the Hyena said. “But no one asks to hear it from me!” He cackled and then shrugged overdramatically. “So how have you been? How are the kids?”
“I don’t have kids,” the smith said.
“That’s good,” the Hyena said. “You don’t have to be worried about who they’re hanging out with. Or whether they’re eating the other kids.”
“If you’re here to finish what you started, then do it.” the smith said.
The Hyena dragged a chair from the corner of the room and sat down. It was noticeable once he climbed into the chair that he wasn’t a very tall man. His feet dangled in the air, inches above the floor. “I’m not going to kill you to check you off some imaginary list, Tyler. You just happen to own this store and I just happen to need it. You also just happen to be the one person who knows how it was back then. We’re like soul mates, Tyler.” The Hyena blew him an over the top kiss and when he did his metal teeth were clearly visible, center stage. “You should find peace in knowing that I was adopted eventually, even though the orphanage closed.” The Hyena spoke wistfully. “By a nice man. He even gave me these!” He grinned widely to show that his lower jaw had been outfitted with enough metal to make a sword. “So I guess someone does look out for the ugly ones.”
The smith had been waiting to attack unexpectedly, but spontaneity was the Hyena’s specialty and he dodged the attack easily. He leapt at the smith and with one quick chomp his prey lay still. The Hyena giggled to himself at a private joke and pulled the body into the back room where the forge was. The Hyena then began to prepare his new shop. For a moment he stopped and reflected on the fact that he was now the sole survivor of the Abington Orphanage. He smiled at his reflection in a polished shield and twirled around as joy overcame him. “Now wherever I go, it’s a reunion!” he sang out loud to himself. He scampered over to the forge and admired the smith’s tools. “It’s time to prepare for some guests.”
Chapter Thirteen
THE GOLDEN MUG
NEIL VAPROS
Neil didn’t know where he was.
He was in some kind of forest, that was for sure, but he couldn’t quite remember how he got there. Trees and fog surrounded him; if he hadn’t known better he would have guessed these were the orchards of Altryon. But he’d left Altryon behind months ago.
A warm light cut through the fog. It glowed more brightly than the sun. Neil shielded his eyes from the glow and took a few steps backward. “Hello?” he asked skeptically.
A thousand voices answered him in unison. “Neil Vapros,” they chorused. Neil clapped his hands over his ears. “Step forward.”
Keeping his ears covered, Neil took a wary step. He couldn’t remember if he had his knife with him. “Who are you?”
Silence, although the light continued to shine.
He took a deep breath and tried again. “What are you?”
The chorus boomed with laughter. “Decide for yourself.”
“That’s helpful,” Neil muttered as he peered further into the light. “Can you give me a hint?”
The light began to shift and collect itself, realigning until it outlined a human form. “Do you understand now?”
The honest answer was no, but the longer Neil looked, the more familiar the scene became. “You’re . . . the Man with the Golden Light?” he guessed. “The one from the legend? The one who gave my ancestors their abilities?”
The outline bowed its head once in a nod. Hesitantly, Neil got to his knees and bowed.
“Stand, Neil,” the outline commanded. “I want to speak to you face to face.”
Neil stumbled to his feet, trying not to stare. He didn’t really know where the man’s face was supposed to be. “Your Majesty,” he began uncertainly. Was that how one addressed the Man with the Golden Light? “Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but why are you here?”
“You need help,” the outline answered. “You need guidance. You all do.”
Neil shoved his fingers through his hair. “You could say that. You asked our families to protect Altryon and we failed.” A terrifying thought occurred to him. “You’re not going to take away my abilities, are you?”
The outline shook his head. “I won’t blame the children for the sins of their fathers.” He brushed past Neil and began to glide through the forest. Neil followed closely at his golden heels.
“So why are you here, then?” Neil asked after a few seconds of silence.
The Man with the Golden Light slowed to a stop. “I am here to offer you guidance. If you choose to accept it.”
“I’ll accept any help I can get,” Neil said bluntly.
“Outside the walls of Altryon, the feud is over, Neil Vapros,” the outline said solemnly. “The families are at peace. If you choose to let the feud live, you will doom your descendants. You must let it end, Neil Vapros. You must let your wounds heal. Lightborn against Lightborn is not the way to a better world.”
Neil furrowed his brow. “So, what about the rebellion, then?” he asked. “You don’t want us to join?”
“The rebellion is a just cause. My people are oppressed by the Empire. They need to free themselves. You can join and you can fight, but do not make this war about the families. Make it about the common man.” The outline began to dissolve. “We will speak again, Neil Vapros,” he said as he faded into the fog.
“But--wait!” Neil called. “I have so many things to ask you!”
“In due time,” the man whispered as he disappeared into nothing. The ground began to shake violently. Neil’s knees gave way and he crumpled to the soft forest floor.
Neil cleared his eyes in the middle of the night and sat upright. It was just a dream. All a dream. When he looked to his left he realized in horror that Rhys wasn’t in bed beside him. He clutched his chest and tried to keep from panicking. The Golden Mug was closed until the storm subsided so they’d actually started to sleep during the nighttime again. Rhys was probably just up at odd hours, as he was known for having insomnia. Neil crept out of his bed and into the hallway. He materialized out of the hatch and into the kitchen. He could hear conversation in the bar.
“I ended the paragraph here,” he heard Rhys say.
“Why?” Darius replied.
“Because I wrote some dialogue. Every time someone speaks you jump to the next paragraph,” Rhys said.
Neil grabbed a slice of cake left over from dinner that evening. Josephine had prepared a special feast in celebration of her day off. They were all in extra good moods since they were able to be awake during normal hours for a change. It was unlike Darius to leave any leftovers, so Neil smiled at his luck. Neil pushed his head through the kitchen door and saw the two of them hunched over a dimly lit candle and Rhys’s strategy book. “Right away?” Darius asked his teacher.
“No. Not always right away,” Rhys said. He pulled the book back toward himself and flipped through more pages. “Let me show you some examples.”
“This is a confusing scene,” Neil
said, swallowing a bite of cake.
The two of them turned in shock and a little too much fear for the mundane nature of what they were doing. “Darius was just reading through my strategy book,” Rhys said.
“That’s nice,” Neil said. “Why is he doing it in the dead of night though?”
“You try keeping a normal sleep schedule in this place,” Darius grumbled.
Neil sat down and propped his feet up at a table. “Fair enough. I gotta say for someone who can read, you sure need a lot of things explained.”
Darius glared at him. “What are you saying, Vapros?”
Neil chuckled. “Come on, Darius,” he said. “It’s okay if you can’t read. No one thinks you can anyway.”
“Well they’re wrong. I’m an academic type, like Rhys,” Darius said. “Now shut up or I’ll crush your head in the palm of my hand.”
“How academic,” Neil said licking a bit of frosting off his fingers. “Like you, Darius, I was an avid reader of Little Billy as a child. One particular rhyme springs to mind.”
“Neil, knock it off,” Rhys said. “That was a mean one.”
Neil held back his desire to rattle off the nursery rhyme. “You know which one I’m talking about, right?” he asked Darius.
“Little Billy had a friend/ A Taurlum, big and strong. /And the Taurlum couldn’t read/ Because his brain was just too small,” Darius recited. “Billy tried to teach him/ How to read instead of punch, / But the Taurlum couldn’t learn/ And ate the boy and book for lunch.”
“Yeah,” Neil said. “That’s the one.”
“Moral of the story is, don’t make me angry or I’ll eat you,” Darius said with a grin. “And this book.”
“That’s my book,” Rhys said.
“I’ll get my own book. And then eat it. Along with you. For being a jerk.”
“You’re a barbarian,” Neil said with a chuckle. After he stopped laughing, Neil realized something. “I don’t hear any raindrops.”
“Yeah,” Darius said. “Storm’s over. We gotta head up soon. Before people come looking for drinks.”
Suddenly Neil heard the window behind him crack and a bullet ricocheted off of Darius’s back. “Did someone just try to…?” Rhys asked.
Instinct drove Neil to materialize in between Rhys and the window so that his brother would be out of the line of fire. Before Rhys even knew his brother was protecting him, a bullet tore through Neil’s back and he fell to the ground screaming. Darius flipped the table and the three of them hid behind it as another bullet struck the weak wood and splintered it. Neil’s back was on fire. As he collapsed he could feel Rhys pawing at his back to remove his shirt and assess the damage. “Darius!” Rhys said. “Can you handle this?”
“Why me?” Darius asked.
“Because you’re bulletproof,” Rhys said.
Darius gave one last look at Neil’s writhing form and leapt over the table. He pulled the front door from its hinges and charged out into the night. Neil felt blackness descending on him as the pain pulled at his consciousness. “Rhys…” Neil groaned in pain.
Rhys crawled behind the bar and came back with a knife and a bottle of alcohol. “It’s okay!” Rhys said. “I’m gonna fix this. I think it just missed an artery. It could just be a flesh wound.”
Neil was hyperventilating. It certainly didn’t feel like a flesh wound. Before Neil could protest, his little brother, now his surgeon, was going to work on his back. He grabbed a large fragment of the table and bit it with all his might. “You took a bullet for me,” Rhys breathed.
“And you’re gonna cut it out of me,” Neil said through the fragment of wood. “Deal?”
Neil heard Rhys gulp. “Deal.”
Chapter Fourteen
THE GOLDEN MUG
THE PACK
The Marksman cursed himself silently as he watched his blonde-headed target flip a table and obscure his next shot. It had been foolish to shoot the blonde one first. He’d been told about his iron skin, but he’d assumed that the back of the neck was a kill shot for anyone, tough skin or otherwise. He reloaded his prized rifle and fired another shot into the table, effectively splitting off a fragment of wood. He sighed. He’d lost the element of surprise. Maybe it was time to escape into the woods and wait for them to lower their defenses again. He’d shot one of the fugitives in the back. Maybe that one would be dead by morning.
He stood up and brushed off his knees. With a final look down at the pub, he realized with horror that not all of his targets had stayed pinned down. The blonde one tore the front door off of its hinges and charged out of the building with murderous purpose. The Marksman fired his rifle and struck the boy in his kneecap. His enemy didn’t even falter and charged at him with renewed determination. The Marksman backpedaled and fired shots from the pistols at his sides, but they bounced off the target’s unprotected legs like raindrops. He had fewer weak spots than the Marksman had anticipated. Darius closed the distance between them and swung the door like a club. The Marksman ducked under it with his extraordinary flexibility and rolled backwards. “You’re going to pay for every bullet you fired here today,” Darius spat from behind his door.
“You’re incorrect,” the Marksman said. “I’m going to be paid for every bullet I fire here today.”
Darius swung again. Just like before, the Marksman retreated out of striking distance. This time he turned around and fled into the forest with his attacker at his back. He grabbed a tree branch and within a few seconds was up in the branches. With a mighty cry, Darius shattered the tree’s base and it fell to the ground with The Marksman in its branches. The Marksman landed without hurting himself, but not in time to escape his pursuer. Darius caught him by the foot and pulled his flailing body back toward him. The Marksman spun around and jabbed his hand into Darius’s weak navel. Darius paled and dropped both the assassin and the door. The Marksman scanned Darius’s body, absorbing this newfound information. “Pressure points work on you. How interesting. Now I know where your weak spots are.”
Darius raised his fists. “Listen, friend,” he growled. “To me, every piece of your body is a weak spot.”
The Marksman lunged at Darius and ducked under both of his rapid-fire punches. The Marksman jabbed Darius right underneath his arm and it seemed to go limp. The Marksman retreated out of range before Darius could fully recover. Finally, a tactic that worked. On his next attack the Marksman delivered a snap kick to the inside of Darius’s thigh where several nerves met in the average human. However, there was no weak spot here and the force of the Marksman’s kick, redirected back onto him, cracked the bone. He bit back his scream but his motion was limited. Darius stepped in and smashed his elbow across his face before he could recover from the fractured bone. The Marksman collapsed and the next feeling he experienced was the cold ground against his face. He tried to look around, but his eyes seemed out of control and sank into the back of his head.
He felt the boy pick him up and hoist him over his shoulder. He babbled in protest to no avail. He knew for a fact that if his father, the Doctor, learned of his failure he’d be denied the elements that were essential to his life. Before darkness could set in, he focused his energy and manually cleared his mind. He needed focus if he was going to escape this. He shifted his weight and realized that the Taurlum’s grip was as tough as his skin. Despite how hopeless this situation might seem for someone else, the Marksman remained calm. He knew what it took to escape a trap: patience and an undying sense of self-preservation. Fortunately, he had both.
Chapter Fifteen
THE GOLDEN MUG
DARIUS TAURLUM
“What in the name of all that is holy has been going on down here?” Josephine cried as Darius entered with the body of a semi-conscious assassin draped over his shoulder.
“We have a rather aggressive customer,” Darius said.
Darius surveyed the room. The table was still flipped, the windows were shattered, and the door was missing. Neil was lying on the ground unconsci
ous from pain, and Rhys was behind the bar, rummaging through drawers and cabinets with blood soaked hands. “I’ve told you,” she said as she knelt next to Neil and checked his pulse with two fingers, “I won’t have revolutionary activity in this house. You told me you wanted solace from that.”
“We do, Josephine,” Darius said. “Believe me. Most of us want to move on from all this. But it seems the Empire is coming to us.”
The Marksman groaned in his arms. Darius dropped him onto the floor with a thud. “An assassin?” Josephine asked.
“Looks like it,” Darius said.
The Marksman had a short military haircut and a weather beaten face. Scars covered the visible parts of his skin and his eyes, though dull from near unconsciousness, were a bright hazel that glowed yellow in the light of the Golden Mug. His entire outfit looked like it had been assembled one piece at a time on the run, a shirt here, a vest there, pants somewhere else. His choice of style was chaotic and looked hastily put together, but paid assassins were never the fashion-forward types.
Lilly and Rebecca entered from the kitchen. “Do you have a good reason for waking everyone in the pub?” Lilly asked. She paused when she noticed Neil’s body. “Oh.”
“Yeah ‘oh.’ Does nearly getting murdered make the list of things you’ll roll out of bed for, Miss?” Darius asked.
“Easy there,” Josephine commanded. “Rhys, what’s the status with Neil?”
“He’s alive and he’ll stay alive,” Rhys said. “Provided I can stitch him up. This guy was using small bullets. Probably for the sake of precision. If Neil hadn’t materialized in front of me, I’d be dead.”
The room was silent. Darius noticed that Rebecca was shaking violently. Even though she was from outside the walls, she clearly wasn’t used to seeing trauma. A friend on the ground with a bullet-hole in his back was second nature for the fugitives. Or maybe it reminded her of what had happened to her parents. He was astounded at Josephine’s unshaken resolve. She had clearly seen her fair share of action. Suddenly the assassin on the floor began to speak. Everyone in the room jumped, Rebecca the highest. “You can mop up that blood and stitch up that boy, but it will make no difference. The Pack is coming for you. More bullets will follow. If you’re lucky enough to die before you meet the Doctor himself.”