He watched the borog slink about with the confidence of a jungle cat toying with its prey, an assessment even more accurate for the appearance of a long grey tail with a razor sharp point. He noted it as a third weapon to avoid. As they continued sizing each other up, the borog’s features slipped further away from its human guise. The healthy copper hue of flesh desaturated into the same sickly grey and the hair frizzled away as if burnt. Its tongue flicked over its lips without managing to be sliced by those rows of jagged teeth.
While wondering if borogs liked eating their prey alive, it lunged at him once more. He feinted as it darted past and he swung at its back. It had slung one blade over its shoulder, blocking his counter before spinning to face him once more. The tail had come close to slashing at his face, but he had already anticipated it, jumping back after the block.
Once more, he held up against the mad rapid attacks that followed, holding his own but losing ground on the rooftop. The clever creature did well not to let him move left or right to expand his movement, but his thrall had its own tricks, finding an opening and thrusting into the open space.
Without hesitation, he took the opening and leapt over several rooftops, finding one larger and flatter, knowing the borog would be hot on his heels. He swung his flame blades up, crossing them to block the inevitable clash as he faced it again and was met with the satisfying sound of a successful block.
Unfortunately, it also left him open to the tail leaving a shallow slash on his unguarded upper thigh.
This time, he laughed as he put room between them again.
It wouldn’t do to let the borog keep striking first. Even though it clearly enjoyed toying with him, it was very quick to take advantage of its momentum as the aggressor. It would be folly for him not to take similar advantage of what he learned as they fought.
Normally, he discarded the cloak to fight, but the borog’s tail would not be a match for the thick rubber. It was intact where the tail had scraped over it…
He made the charge this time, but the borog did not wait, meeting his efforts halfway. If he had charged it as aggressively as it did, his own momentum might have been used against him, but he had been able to feint and gain an advantage in the next flurry of attacks. As he backed it to the edge, he took the chance to butt it off the edge.
It had done little but cause the borog to flip to the adjacent rooftop, but it had leapt back with a flying attack. He braced himself for the power of that leap, but it knocked him back. He tried to roll it with the momentum, but the borog pinned him, his weapons useless now with his wrists pinned, so he dissolved them.
The bloody pools of its eyes swirled with delight, a foul stench rolling from that wide sinister mouth, but he simmered over his options unperturbed by the threat beneath it.
Once again, its black tongue flicked over those cracked thin lips. It leaned forward, drawing that foul tongue along the deep scar over his cheek, quivering as if it drew some sexual thrill from the taste of it. The satisfied keening from its throat only strengthened his revulsion.
With little other recourse, he bit into his tongue, feeling the blood fill his mouth before he spat it into the borog’s eyes. It laughed but he used the distraction to follow it up with a head-butt which did succeed in freeing his hands even if it didn’t unpin his torso.
He grabbed the borog’s tail, jamming the spike of it into the borog’s throat. It chomped off the embedded end of its tail in its gurgling death throes as he rolled away.
He spat another mouthful of blood as he stared at its corpse. He held his tongue between his teeth as he reached into his cloak, grabbing a vial of a clotting agent to swig back and staunch the flow there. He hadn’t bit too deep but it would keep filling his mouth for the next hour otherwise and he could use a few pints of ale after that, preferably without the aftertaste of his own blood.
Leaping down off of the building, he felt the transition back into his own world, the thrall reluctantly receding with it, the combination leaving him feeling stickier than after an Orendon rain spell. Making his way back to the tavern with deliberate human slowness, he gave himself time to settle the rush of his heart. He drew another stale cigar, this one just to calm the nerves as he headed back.
Brute was already in the tavern, talking to the other girls at a back table as if they were old friends. He felt like the outsider as he approached. Cherry nearly knocked her chair back when she saw him, her eyes sweeping over him for wounds.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, impatient with the speed of her own inspection. There was plenty of blood, but none of it was fresh even if it was just as much his own as the borog’s.
He shook his head. Other than a sore tongue and the gash on his thigh, he was good to go.
She didn’t say anything more as he sidled past taking the empty chair. Brute’s jovial attitude became guarded once more as he sat and he knew they hadn’t told her anything yet. Dolly seemed uncomfortable where she sat next to Brute, but Sunday was chomping away on the basket of bar appetizers.
A barmaid showed up, sensing a higher tab at his arrival, and he beat her to the question.
“Pints all around,” he told the barmaid and she disappeared with a grin.
“I really shouldn’t,” Dolly piped up.
“Humor me,” he told her even though his gaze hadn’t left Brute.
“You have a job for me,” Brute prompted.
The barmaid spirited back over, clapping the five pints onto the table before disappearing once more.
He reached out and grabbed a greasy stick of breaded whatever and chomped at it first before knocking back the pint. He caught the eye of the barmaid, signaling for another with a lifted finger.
“How about we let Dolly spot this one?” he prompted.
Dolly was tucked away from view more so than any of them so it made more sense for her to do so. She nodded and withdrew her Key, a momentary flash of blue in Brute’s eyes telling them all they needed to know.
Brute’s eyes flashed back to his.
“The hell are you all gathering for?” she gritted out through her teeth, sweeping her eyes around them, a discreet motion that told him she knew a thing or two about laying low.
“Because— “
It was all he had and it hung there, useless and unfinished. He didn’t have an answer. Even with the strength of the compulsion, his doubts as to what the hell they were doing were just as lost on him. The King was after them, but this one was sure to be convinced she could handle herself and she probably could for a while anyway. His own time had a different story to tell, but that wasn’t something he could tell them. Instead, he let that word hang in the air.
“Because.”
He said it with more finality but no more to offer.
Brute glared at him, leaning back in her chair but lifting the pint for a generous swig as she held his eyes over her skein.
She slapped it down on the table. A guffaw escaped from her throat as she pounded his back with a solid companionable thump, damn near knocking the wind out of him. The barmaid set down his second pint and he cleared half of it, just to avoid displaying the breathlessness that he felt.
“If I’m missing steady pay to tag along, you better make up for it. Although from the look of it, you certainly promise a good time,” Brute added cheerily, swigging at her own pint and going after Dolly’s next.
Dolly seemed rather grateful for that as the other two sipped at theirs.
He smiled, deciding Brute would be welcome company and not unlike him when it came to money. As long as there was a trail of bodies with purses to loot, he had done well to come by coin. Even the borog had a meager purse, which he tossed to her now.
Brute caught it one handed while she was knocking back Dolly’s pint and nodded her approval.
“This is my party, so I’ll see you through,” he assured them, his gaze swinging around the table, landing on Cherry who seemed to take umbrage with that.
“That goes for you too, Red,” he mu
rmured, her eyes flicking up to his, unamused.
“Don’t call me that. Just stick with Cherry. If you’re going to name us, at least be consistent.”
Brute looked at the other girls.
“Name you? Someone got your names on a hit list?” she asked and Sunday laughed this time.
“I’d be more worried if they actually did know that much. No, he names us because it’s how he remembers us,” Sunday explained, her hands folding into her lap daintily after taking a sip.
“Got something to do with that glowing scar then?” Brute asked.
“Something like that. You see a lot of glowing scars or something? None of you seem surprised by it,” he asked, the ale making him more openly curious.
Brute shrugged.
“Never on the same person. Either they pass through or they don’t live long,” Brute told him, no weight in the casual tone.
Borogs weren’t particularly territorial, but he didn’t doubt the one he killed might have had a sort of takeaway buffet of ‘marked ones’ with a port receiving trade from Melikai.
“So what’s my name then?” she asked, game for his answer.
“Brute.”
She laughed, that hearty guffaw once more.
“Suits me, so I’ll take it,” she said.
Dolly had stiffened when he said it, but her shoulders relaxed when Brute didn’t mind her new name. He suspected Dolly was the sort that had never set foot in a tavern and probably only ever heard it was a place rife with drunken brawls. She wouldn’t be wrong.
“We don’t know where the next of us is…” Cherry pointed out.
He could take the hint. ‘Where in Uther could they steal away to summon the next beacon?’ was what she was really asking. He nodded.
“There’s a closed port with a warehouse on the far side of the stretch. We can get over there by nightfall,” he told her and she nodded, content to ignore him again.
It was closed because locals thought it was haunted and he could tell from Brute’s discomfort that she was well aware.
“I didn’t take you for a local,” Brute said.
He shook his head.
“I’m not local to anywhere and this wasn’t exactly a stop I made by choice.”
“Can’t say anyone here really wants to be.”
He smiled at that. He doubted there was a place anywhere in the Anders where anyone was content to be there. It was comforting that she hadn’t asked him why, another thing he appreciated about her.
They set off from the tavern after Brute had matched him for four pints (and polished off what was left of Sunday’s and Cherry’s first). Brute hooked her arm through Dolly’s, pulling Dolly along helplessly. Brute seemed to have taken a liking to the small woman and Dolly had gripped Sunday’s wrist, pulling her along with them.
It left him hanging back with Cherry, who hadn’t spoken to him since she’d hinted at finding the next girl.
He enjoyed the increasing chill in the air, but Cherry had tucked her arms around herself. He pulled her closer without thinking about it, feeling her tense.
“I’m not cold, I’m just nervous,” she mumbled, but he didn’t let go even so.
“I’m cold,” he teased and she frowned at him.
“You’re drunk.”
He laughed, unable to deny that.
A silence fell between them once more. His thoughts had returned to the embrace from before and try as he might he couldn’t chase it off so he didn’t trust himself to speak. He wasn’t a man who ever entertained ideas of love, but like the shock of Brat’s hug when they were relieved he hadn’t died, Cherry had been similarly generous. She hadn’t asked him anything.
Still, he hated the silence that had kept their conversations so short afterwards. To him, it was absurd that anyone should fall in love with him, but after the preposterous gushing about the beauty of his Mark, he was wary of letting them get too close.
He felt her arm shyly slip around his waist and saw her clamp her bottom lip between her teeth to look up at him.
“It’s hard to walk this close with my arm bumping into you,” Cherry mumbled, her eyes meeting his unsurely.
His hand found its way up under the cloak they shared, pulling down the scarf to release her hair. The late day sun set her hair ablaze and he felt sobered by the vulnerability he saw in her dubious gaze.
“You’re beautiful.”
Cherry smacked his arm lightly.
“You’re drunk.”
“I won’t always be drunk, but you’ll always be beautiful.”
She laughed.
“You’re nicer when you’re drunk.”
“There you go calling me nice again. I’m not nice at all. I’m completely selfish.”
She smiled at him.
“Is that what you’re trying to convince me to think?” she pried, pinching his arm, wrinkling her nose as she caught his scent. “You smell like blood. You should bathe again.”
“You’re just trying to get me naked again,” he teased, but his gaze was far off, seeing the warehouse in the distance. Something was bugging him again and before he could think on it, Cherry was pulling him into an alley and shoving him against the wall.
He looked down at her, not sure what fortune had made her want him so badly, but when he bent his head to kiss her, her hand slapped over his mouth.
“Is… is that you?” Cherry whispered, her eyes wide with fear as she looked out towards the main road.
He swung his head around to follow her gaze, seeing a version of himself ten years younger. It had slipped his mind that traveling to the past might present that unique problem, but he pulled his hand away, not sharing her fear.
What did sit with him was apprehension. There was too much he could not reveal to her, not without complicating the situation with what he knew of her fate.
“I guess I can be more than one place at the same time. Who knew?” he joked.
He didn’t worry about some time paradox. Even if he met himself in the past, his past self wasn’t likely to remember it and it was less likely to change a damn thing about his future. He was doing plenty of that already just saving the Rain Maidens.
“It can’t be a coincidence that he has the Mark too,” she accused. She had him on that one.
“Brute said it wasn’t that unusual,” he dodged again, earning a glare for his avoidance.
“Maybe we should ask her if they all look like you.”
“Maybe…”
It was clear that if he knew anything, he wasn’t sharing, so she begrudgingly gave up though not without boring angry holes through him with that dangerous swirling in her eyes.
He watched his younger self openly, the pain of memory tingling at the edges of his brain. He couldn’t recall what he had been doing in Uther back then. At this point it would be nearly a decade after he had nearly died in the Coliseum and he had not hung around for longer than a year before embracing the nomadic life of a mercenary for hire. It wouldn’t have been unusual for him to return here on some job, but had no damn clue which one that would be.
Cherry was still leaning against him as they watched himself pass and his hands slid up, circling her waist.
She frowned up at him.
“Don’t get any bright ideas. We need to catch up to the others,” Cherry said, breaking away to hurry on ahead without him.
He laughed to himself. At least there was no danger of her falling madly in love with him.
Too bad he was a sucker for redheads.
In the approaching gloom of night, he hung back from the others. Their dynamic was a natural one, a group of old friends. Like Brute had pointed out, he looked like little more than a tagalong pimp.
He tried to keep his strides casual, but as they neared the ‘haunted dock’, they had slowed to the point that he would only seem creepy trying to fall back. He caught up, but flicked his head off towards an alley just shy of them, making them backtrack to meet him there.
The nervous look on Brute
’s face baffled him. ‘Ghosts’ wouldn’t be the sort of thing that would frighten a Rain Maiden, the very pinnacle of an existence based around escorting them into the afterlife. He might not clearly remember time spent in Uther, but there was probably a time when he knew exactly what really haunted the place.
“What do you know about this place?” he asked Brute directly. “Probably as much as you do,” Brute retorted, an apologetic shrug following.
He couldn’t be angry at that. It didn’t make sense for anyone to come this way after all. Most of the buildings around it had been abandoned as well. The only ships were small rotten hulls that were probably more alive with saltwater moss and barnacles than what dead wood remained to hold shape. All of the smells here were salty and ancient, only adding to the dreaded sense that this was a place lost to time.
“We need to—” he began, but the sharp edge of steel pressed the hood of his cloak to the back of his neck.
Brute’s eyes had narrowed, but widened as if she were looking at a ghost.
Which wouldn’t surprise him if it was. His ego simply didn’t permit that anyone could get the jump on him this effortlessly, dulled by drink or not.
He slowly put his hands up to show they were empty. Joke was on this guy because the thrall could remedy that in a heartbeat.
Which is a thing he very well might have done if the bastard hadn’t spoken up first.
“I’ve got a job here, so you need to take your girls and go,” the voice said, the words slamming through him with the sense of déjà vu.
He supposed he could forgive that he had gotten the jump on himself.
“Yeah, just took a wrong turn. We’re leaving,” he told his younger self.
It was also clear that he wasn’t leaving at all. If he remembered correctly, he was here to save himself.
He nudged his head without a word, stepping away from the press of the blade as he led the girls away back down the main road.
Cherry had kept pace beside him but he could see the question burning in her eyes. Once they’d gone a couple blocks, she looked around and pierced him with a frustrated look.
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