36. Gold Fever

Magpie got on his knees in front of the solid vault door with a groan.

He didn’t bother getting his tools out. He could tell just by a glance that these locks were too complex to crack in time with lockpicks alone.

Instead, he settled on a different approach.

“Fucking Heroes, mucking everything up,” he muttered to himself.

He put his face close to the left-hand lock and closed his eyes. Moving his right hand above his head, he was able to get the tiniest, faintest trace of the tumblers inside. By placing his hand at different angles, he was able to use his Power of Stealing to move the tumblers up. When he heard a small click, he knew it was time to move on to the next one.

The lock had a multitude of tumblers. They were sensitive, too. It would take time to crack.

This was why he would have preferred simply breaking the vault open. He didn’t have the time to mess around.

The blood loss wasn’t making things any better. Time distorted, and his skin felt cold and clammy. He struggled to stay focused on the task at hand.

He couldn’t tell if he had spent seconds or minutes working on the first lock when it clicked open. He sat back on his heels, let out a shaky breath, and wiped cold sweat from his brow.

Okay. Only one left.

I can do this.

He had only just gotten one or two tumblers into the second lock when he heard footsteps in the hall behind him.

More interference.

Great.

He didn’t move immediately. It would only tip off the intruder. Instead, he opened his eyes and let his left hand slowly drift into his cloak, withdrawing the final spare knife.

The footsteps drew closer.

Magpie waited until they were almost at him.

He spun around and let the knife fly with a practiced flick.

It struck home in the chest of the lean, black-haired Hero. He stumbled back and coughed blood.

“Heroes will always be the same,” Magpie said. He slipped in a puddle of his own blood, but caught himself against the wall and managed to stand. “So predictable.”

He Stole the knife back with a flick of his hand. It drifted through the air, flipping lazily, and landed in his palm, ready to be thrown once more.

The Hero staggered, caught himself, and wiped the blood off his mouth. His breaths came in ragged wheezes. Yet, strangely, they were quickly returning to normal.

“That all you got?” he asked. “I didn’t know your attacks were gonna be as weak as your monologues.”

Magpie growled. “Fine, then. If you remain unimpressed, I will show you my true power.”

He flicked his cloak, sending out a fan of feathers that slowly drifted to the ground all around himself and the Hero. He raised both of his hands and Stole every feather behind the Hero all at once. They flew into the air like tiny arrows and buried themselves into the man’s back, the edges quivering.

The Hero stumbled, stuck through with nearly a dozen sharpened points.

He grinned, lip quivering.

“I can take more. Is that all?”

He reached back and pulled out the feathers, one by one, snapping them in half before discarding them. His hands were slick with blood, but his chest wound no longer seemed to be bothering him, even though Magpie was almost certain he had pierced a lung with that knife.

Magpie spread his hands and pulled in feathers from the sides, riddling through the man’s arms and shoulders.

Once again, he repeated the process of pulling out the feathers and snapping them. He fell down on one knee but kept himself upright with obvious effort.

It’s okay, Magpie thought to himself. He’s going down. It will just require some… persistence.

“So, you can take a hit,” Magpie said, slowly approaching the Hero. “That’s neat. A commendable effort, to be sure. However, it doesn’t change the fact that I will slit your throat and watch you bleed out.”

He hurled the knife, hit the man in the throat, and he pitched over on his back, gurgling on his own blood.

Magpie turned with a scoff and got down on his knees to finish the final lock. Every so often, he turned back to make sure the Hero was still incapacitated and found him feebly writhing on the floor.

After a few minutes of trial and error, he finally got the lock open, and he was able to push the vault door inward.

He was met with the sight of piles upon piles of neatly stacked silver and gold coins.

A wide grin spread across his face. He hurried inside and took off his cloak. He began scooping coins into it by the armful.

He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself.

Finally, he was getting what he deserved.

*****

Kiren dislodged the knife from his throat and tossed it aside.

He tried to curse, but the hot blood bubbling up his throat made it impossible to make any noise apart from a choked wheeze. He couldn’t even breathe.

He flipped around on his stomach and retched. He spat as much blood as he could while his throat healed up. He focused all of his energy on the Power inside him, on making the new flesh bristle with added strength.

Magpie had already gotten the vault open. Kiren could hear him inside, cackling away with the clinking of coins.

He thought he had won.

He thought Kiren was defeated.

He was wrong.

Kiren got to his feet, spat, and was finally able to suck in a fresh breath of air.

I’m just getting started.

His throat was soon completely healed, patched over with a rough, leathery hide. He walked into the vault, where Magpie stood on his knees, desperately scraping gold and silver into his cloak.

The pock-faced man looked back and bared yellow teeth.

“You again?” he asked. “You really don’t know when to quit, do you?”

Kiren grinned, rubbing the itchy skin around his throat. “Nope.” He walked closer to Magpie, who shuffled away towards the back wall. “I don’t suppose you’ll come quietly, will you?”

Magpie grinned too, but there was no joy in his features. “No chance of that, I’m afraid. It seems you are able to heal on your own. You’re clearly not impervious to damage, however.”

“How astute of you,” Kiren said. He cracked his knuckles as Magpie stumbled to his feet and pushed himself against the back wall. “Maybe you can watch my healing up close when I break my knuckles on your ugly face.”

“Maybe,” Magpie said. “Or maybe I’ll just riddle you through so bad they’ll need a mop to get you off the floor.” He raised his hands to his sides. His grin widened, and this time they brimmed with grim, diabolical pleasure. “You just entered a kill box, kiddo. All the ammunition I could ever need.”

Several sharp thuds to his back made Kiren stagger forward. He looked back and saw dozens of coins be pulled through the air.

Each one hit him with dizzying speed, causing him to jerk with a flare of pain. A few sank into his flesh and remained embedded there.

The pain, however, was temporary. Kiren let himself go down on one knee and shut his eyes as he focused on speeding up his regeneration. His Power was slowing down, but he could only hope it would be enough.

The skin of his back was already hardened from those feathers Magpie had shot into him. Now, as Magpie paraded around him and shot coins into him from all angles, the rest of his torso became overgrown with tough, chitinous scales. That, as well as the coins already stuck in his skin, formed a natural defense.

Every time he had mutated, from the Beast encounter outside Winewater Village, to the fight with Evangel, to his duel with Lace, Good Doctor had removed it with expert precision.

Every time, it grew back stronger.

A coin caught him in the chin and made him fall backward. It tore open his left cheek and knocked out a handful of teeth. He cursed and drooled and bled all over himself as he worked back up on his knees.

Kiren’s cheek grew back with hard, fibrous muscles and coarse hide. New teeth slowly, agonizingly sprouted from his bloody gums. They were sharp, like a wolf’s, digging into his top lip.

He stood, and Magpie began to back away. He sent another spray of coins that bounced off Kiren’s back with only a few numb stings.

“Kill box, you say?” Kiren asked, his voice hoarse and rough from the damage that had been done to his throat. “Maybe. But not for me.”

He approached Magpie with slow, forced steps. More coins bounced off of him.

Magpie limped around Kiren, one hand on his side, and made to flee out of the open door. Kiren caught him by his billowing tunic and hauled him back inside, throwing him on the ground.

Kiren straddled the older man and cracked him once across the face. His nose bent and rushed with blood, and he squealed as he tried to push Kiren off of himself.

There was no chance of that, however. Kiren was stronger, the effect compounded by the volatile mutations that pulled at his quivering muscles.

“Yield!” Magpie squealed. “I yield! Let me go and we can split the money! You’d be rich!”

Kiren scoffed. “Some hero of the people you are. Enjoy prison.”

He punched Magpie over and over until he was a spluttering, pitiful mess.

“N-No more…” he begged. “No more, please…”

Kiren gave him one last elbow to the head for good measure, knocking him out cold.

He rose, world swaying, and dragged the man by the collar of his tunic back out of the vault.

He grinned, and the sharp teeth on the left side of his mouth scraped painfully against his lip.

That’s one less bastard in the world.

*****

Haden tied up the big, furry beast with a sturdy rope while the four guards struggled to hold him down. Once he was done, they dragged him over to Snapjaw, who sat on the floor wobbling to and fro, staring into the ground. His beaked mouth had a crack in it, and one of his eyes had swelled up terribly.

“Excellent work, milord,” one of the guards said. “Sorry we couldn’t be of more help.”

Haden waved the man away with a smile and a nod.

He still wasn’t done.

He began to walk towards the other end of the ballroom.

“Wait!” Hyena called. “Wait, please!”

Haden looked back at the beast.

“Take us away, if you must. But… could we ask for one bit of mercy?”

Haden nodded. “I’ll hear you out. Just make it quick.”

“Could we have cells next to each other? In Wailing Hill. Snapjaw gets awful ‘fraid when he’s on his own. He doesn’t like the dark.”

Haden didn’t have the authority to grant that request.

He nodded anyway. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Hyena visibly relaxed.

Haden kept walking. It had been a while since they’d sent Kiren in there.

What if Magpie got the better of him? I thought he could defeat him, but perhaps…

No sooner had he finished that thought, than Kiren appeared in the doorway at the end of the ballroom. He limped towards Haden, dragging a limp body behind him.

As Haden drew closer, he was repulsed by what he saw.

Kiren looked absolutely monstrous. Half his face was torn open and replaced with scaly hide, his eye bloodshot, his teeth sharpened to points.

His shirt had been shredded, and through it showed mangled, lumpy, mutated flesh, rough and hard.

Kiren teetered, letting go of the body, and struggled to stay upright.

“Is Lace alright?” he asked, fixing Haden with an intense stare.

“She’s okay,” Haden said. “Vendrig is taking a look at her. He managed to halt the bleeding. I had one of the guards head over to the Lodge to call Good Doctor, so she’ll have treatment soon.”

Kiren nodded. “Good.”

He stumbled.

“Thank you.”

Then he fell forward, blacked out by the time he hit the ground.