Day of Tomes, 13th of Suhin, Year 401

As Jack descended the steps, blood-red blade held, unwavering, at arm’s length toward the assassin, black mana drowning the Yam’s taproom in waves of crushing darkness, the cigar fell from Madpike’s lips, skittering across the floor in a flare of sparks.

Rory’s supernatural hearing picked out the gruff dwarf’s shaky whisper.

“Depths, it’s fuckin’ true.”

The burly dwarf rose from his seat with more decorum than Rory would’ve expected. Branick stumbled, nearly crawling, toward his boss, cravenly trying everything in his power to put the larger dwarf between himself and the avatar of darkness at the front door.

“Yer lordship, we meant no offense to yeh. Just thought me boys had may-” Eckon started.

“WHAT YOU THOUGHT MEANS LITTLE TO US, WRETCH. YOU INVADE OUR PEACE AND THREATEN OUR COMPANIONS. YOUR MINIONS EXTORT THE CHILD OF STONE THAT HAS OFFERED US HOSPITALITY. GIVE US EVEN A SINGLE REASON NOT TO WIPE THE STAIN OF YOUR EXISTENCE FROM THIS WORLD,” Jack’s voice reverberated through the taproom, heavy with the power of his dark baptism.

Rory: You alright, Jack?

Jackson Avery Holt is well, Rory Elliot Pool.

Layla: Oh, shit.

Erin: The fuck is happening?!

Rory: Big Noodle is here.

Layla: Run faster, you tree trunk. We’re missing it!

“Now, let’s nae be hasty, yer lordship. Some o’ yer people dealt with some o’ our people, a few years back, when ah was a lad and me uncle ran the fam’ly business. I jes-” Eckon started again.

At that moment, Erin crashed into the frame of the inn’s front door, moving too fast to stop. Layla collided with her from behind, but the dreadnought didn’t so much as flinch as the succubus slammed to an abrupt halt.

Rory watched, almost in slow motion, as the racket of armor on stone startled the assassin and his finger slipped on the trigger of the crossbow that had been pointed at Jack’s face.

Rory’s reflexes and perception had passed over the first wall and were well beyond those of the fastest olympic athletes and martial artists.

But the crossbow bolt was moving at nearly a hundred yards per second. By the time he realized the trigger had been pulled, the twang had already reached his ears. He pushed himself, moving faster than ever before, pouring out will, Stamina, Mana, his mind screaming at his skills to move faster now.

Spiral Dancer’s core traits were two abilities. One called Wind Reaver, which empowered Rory’s attacks, and one called Wind Dancer, which allowed Rory to expend moderate amounts of Stamina and Mana to add his Wind magic skill to his Acrobatics, Dodge, Jump, and Run. It made him move faster, jump higher, react quicker, as long as he had the split-second to activate the ability.

In the same second Rory saw the trigger and heard the weapon discharge, it had already moved over halfway between the assassin and Jack.

He strained, pouring energy into his powers, reaching...

The crossbow bolt passed his hand, perhaps two inches away.

He watched it sail past him, despair growing in his heart.

It struck Jack in the right eye, burying itself halfway into his skull.

Time sped back up. Erin screamed.

Madpike shouted, “NO!”

Rory saw Jack’s face go slack. The longsword fell from his hand. The forest of shadow tentacles twitched.

“YOU DARE!?”

Jack’s mouth didn’t move, but the dark voice boomed inside the inn all the same.

Jack’s body darted forward, streaming a wave of black fire behind him, crossing the distance between himself and the assassin almost as fast as the crossbow bolt had.

A writhing nest of black coils, swollen to mammoth proportions, twisted around the assassin, dragging him from the corner he had backed into when the nightbringer’s body exploded across the inn. The shadow tentacles lifted the assassin off the ground and began to squeeze.

A thick, meaty pop echoed in the otherwise dead silence of the inn.

One of the larger tentacles shimmered and shifted, and a cluster of hooked blades grew along the inside of the limb. The barbed appendage wrapped itself around the limp assassin’s neck and churned, like a phantom chainsaw. The sickening sound of tearing meat issued from the dead man’s body, but no blood sprayed, spattered, or even dripped across the floor, entirely devoured by the shadows.

As the assassin’s head came away from the corpse, the tentacles plunged into the neck from both directions, greedily consuming blood and flesh, until the body was little more than a shriveled cadaver. Then the great limbs tossed the corpse aside.

Jack’s body turned toward Madpike and began to take faltering steps toward the dwarf. His expression was still empty, and the bolt protruded from his eye like an exclamation point proclaiming the mobster’s imminent, and grisly, death.

“Wait, wait. Please. Yer lordship, ah swear! Me man acted on his own. Ah had only intended to come here an’ talk to ye, mebbe give yer friends a li’l scare if yeh were nae the real thing,” Madpike pleaded.

“ARE WE REAL, ECKON CAST-OUT, SON OF GREYL THE BETRAYER?” the darkness intoned.

“Yes, yes, o’ course. The boys an’ me-” he began.

The assassin’s head bounced across the floor and struck him in the stomach where he kneeled, ripping a grunt from him as he doubled over.

“YOU HAVE DESECRATED THE FLESH OF MY PRIEST,” the voice was a doom, hanging above the dwarf’s head.

“YOUR FATE WILL BE WHISPERED IN DARK FABLES FOR MILLENIA, A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR FOOLS WHO HAVE STOOD TOO LONG IN THE SUN AND FORGOTTEN THE NIGHT,” waves of darkness began to pour out from Jack.

Then he suddenly dropped to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.

“Fuck’s sake. I thought he would never run out of mana,” a familiar voice dropped into the taproom from the front door.

City watchmen began to pour into the Molten Yam from the street outside, followed by Watch Captain Meryn Haley.

“Haley! Yeh hafta help me! This lich is gonna kill me,” Madpike suddenly shouted, then rose and ran to the nearest watchman, throwing himself into the arms of Moryven’s guards.

The Watch Captain laughed, long and hard.

“He’s not a lich, you moron. After that show, I’m not sure what he is, but he can’t be more than halfway through the third weave,” Meryn laughed again.

Erin had darted to Jack as soon as he fell down, beating Rory there by inches.

“Jack?!” she shook him.

“Pull that thing out of his head,” the Watch Captain called to her.

“Doesn’t he need a healer or something?!” Rory snapped back at her.

“Fucking Signs. How long have you four been traveling together? He’s an awakened undead. He doesn’t need the bits inside his rutting meat-suit anymore. You could chop his head off, and as long as his soul didn’t leave before you got it back on and healed him, he’d be fine,” she groaned.

She walked over, leaned down, and brutally yanked the bolt out of Jack’s eye.

They waited in silence, the three Chosen, Tilly, Madpike, Branick, and no few of the City Watchmen holding their breath.

Jack’s leg twitched.

“Fuck. Nngh. My fucking head. What, gghh, happened?” he whispered, grunting in pain between the words.

“You got shot in the face, ‘your lordship’,” the Watch Captain laughed again.

Erin turned and shot a venomous glance at the Captain.

“He’s really okay?” Rory asked.

“Pfft. Whatever the hell he is, you’d probably have to burn his whole damn corpse to get rid of him. Or shred his soul with light magic. I could probably Mana Burn him down, but who even knows,” she shrugged.

“How do you know so much about it?” Layla finally walked over to where Jack laid.

“I was a hunter for a decade before I joined the Watch, then I served in the Field Guard down by Dry Watch for another five years before and after being promoted to Sargeant. I’ve seen some shit,” the Captain smiled.

“Where’s Madpike?” Jack’s remaining black eye narrowed.

“He’s in custody,” the Captain chuckled.

“Fer what charge?!” Eckon shouted.

“Extortion, Disruption of Commerce, and Assault on a member in good standing of the Hunter’s Guild. Unless you’d prefer me to turn you loose and bar the door of the Yam, Eckon?” Haley laughed.

The dwarf looked back at Jack, who had started to pull himself upright with Erin’s help.

“Nae. Take me ta the stockade, Haley,” he replied, fear painted on his face.

“You know, Eckon, I let these four in, expecting to flush out some garbage trying to shake them down, or maybe even spies from Geisinvold hiding in the city. I never figured I’d finally get you in irons,” she grinned savagely.

“Yeh know ah’ll never stay locked up, Haley,” Madpike scowled.

The Watch Captain turned and looked at Jack.

“Oh, I think you will, Eckon. I think you’ll wake up in your cell screaming about black eyes and headless corpses for a while to come,” she turned back at him and gave him a feral grin.

“Last thing I remember, Big Noodle showed up,” Jack grunted. “It’s all kinda hazy after that.”

“You did a lot of threatening. Most of it was metal as fuck. Then the freight train here crashing into the front of the inn like a runaway car startled that trigger-happy assassin, and he shot you in the face,” Rory smiled gently.

“All the threatening after that was metal as fuck,” Layla grinned.

“The assassin?” Jack asked.

“Big noodle… may… have shadow-tentacle-chainsawed his head off and thrown it at the mob boss,” Layla giggled.

Jack grimaced and turned to the Watch Captain, ichor still running down his face from his ruined eye.

“Well, Captain, I suppose you’ll need me to come with you?” he groaned.

“Not at all. Clear case of self-defense as far as I’m concerned,” she chirped.

“Oh… huh…” Jack’s shock was evident.

“You should do something about that eye, though. That black shit is hell to get out of the floorboards. Trust me,” she smiled again.

Jack finished getting to his feet, Rory and Erin helping him up.

“You have any mana potions, Rory?” he leaned on Erin’s arm and touched his face gingerly, feeling at the wound.

“Just a couple. Here,” the salesman opened his storage and handed Jack a vial of pale blue fluid.

The nightbringer downed the concoction, then held his hand over the ruined eye socket.

“Galvanize Undead,” he invoked, a flare of gentle black mana pouring from his hand onto his wounded face.

When he pulled his hand back, the ichor had stopped flowing, but the eye was still a ragged mess.

“Here, drink this,” Rory produced a larger flask filled with deep crimson liquid.

Jack downed the healing potion and sighed as the alchemy did its work.

Jack: Fucker hit me for something like four-fifths of my health in one shot. Panel says it was an ‘overwhelming strike’.

Layla: Isn’t that what it said when you one-shot that lobster-lamprey back in the Writhing Wood?

Jack: I think so.

Rory: So… how close did you just come to getting reset back to the meat-plant temple?

Erin: Too close. We need to find another shrine.

“I think one of the Blackwicke girls is a stitcher. I’ll have someone do some asking for you. We’ll bill it to the Hunter’s Guild as a courtesy service,” the Captain smiled.

“A stitcher?” Erin asked.

“Caster specializes in corpses. Usually in raising them, but there’s money to be made patching up people’s dead relatives so they look pretty at the funeral. Some stitchers know enough Healing and Wood to be able to graft living body parts, but those are rarer. They tend to get into trouble experimenting with… involuntary test subjects. If I recall, ours can mend dead, or undead, flesh,” she explained.

She turned to walk toward the door of the Yam.

“Or you could just wait and see if you regrow that eye on your own. I’ll admit I’m curious to know,” she grinned and walked out before any of them could reply.