Book 3 - Chapter 124 (Patreon)

Elenya stood surrounded by her hunters. Her eyes grew wider at Wretch’s proposal to leave it all behind. She pushed the bald hunter away even as the Ember wrapped bandages around a barely bleeding wrist.

“You can’t be serious? We’d be lawless out in the wilderness.”

Wretch took a step closer, the rats roiling around them but leaving the hunters alone. Mitya, one-armed as he now was, took one glance at him and pulled out his blade, perhaps the sight of one such as Wretch didn't allow for a hunter to remain calm. The weapon was a simple one of metal that shimmered with different colors. Wretch could recognize it anywhere.

“Don’t raise that weapon at me, boy,” Wretch growled, and the rats hissed with him. “I’ve killed a hundred horrors with it. Ripped through Nov Yanosk’s enemies, Gulschaks and beasts alike. All with that blade. Any closer and it might coil around to strike you.”

Mitya nonetheless took a step forward with the Blinking Blade.

“You’re that previous scout? I thought you were just a boy?”

Elenya’s hand caught her underling’s shoulder. She looked at him with the iron personality she would always carry and shook her head. Mitya blinked and quickly stowed his weapon.

Wretch tapped his claws against one another. He needed her dearly. Her strength. Perhaps a part of him also wished for her friendship. But he denied that to himself.

Another push, I know you are like me.

He retrieved something from what remained of his torn trousers. Something he had kept safe for this moment. “They kept it from us… Edmund… he could have lived. If not for them, Elenya. He would still be with us. We’d still be whole.”

He extended a clawed hand, marred by his transformation. His fingers pulled back to reveal a picture in black and white. The photograph of the Richters. Elenya with Whiskey the cat in her hands. Their captain was laughing, arms wrapped around the twins. Astrid in her black dress. And finally him. Nothing in life would be as good and pure as that photograph. And no amount of flame could heal the wound that had been left behind. But Wretch believed one thing could soften that ache.

Elenya gazed at the picture and the scout he had once been. A young man, small for his age. A battle had robbed him of his hair then, and he looked strange, already marked by changes. Her eyes trailed back up to him, furred and with a grisly excuse for a face. He would never be that man again. And maybe she knew that.

“I know,” Elenya responded simply.

Somehow her lack of anger made something violent rise within him, but he smothered it. “I tricked Astrid, sent her away. Kept her safe, Whiskey too. But you, you are like me. And there is only one way people like us can change the world.”

Elenya raised an eyebrow in understanding.

“You’re going after him, Grendel!”

Wretch took another step closer, locking eyes with her. A hunter and a true monster. “The Hunter Corps used us like spare oil. They might not deserve death, but Grendel and the Professor. I can't live in a world where they still walk the land. How can you?”

Elenya was quiet, her eyebrows creased in thought while the distant rumble ebbed and flowed. The whirlpool of vermin skittered all around them.

Wretch pushed further. “Come with me, Elenya. Let’s hunt him together. We killed a Blaze as Firelings. We can do the same to a Pyre. I know we can. We can avenge him.”

Elenya opened her mouth but suddenly froze, her eyes turning to her three underlings. Hurt and mutilated, they huddled close to her with eyes darting between the vermin and the beast before them.

“And then what?” she said lowly.

Wretch hissed, a twitch running through his body and the hand holding the photograph. “Then… what does then matter?”

Elenya wrapped her hands around his, the one with the picture, and slowly closed it. “Wretchy, you’ve grown, but Edmund wouldn’t have wanted this. Come back with us. They’ll listen to us now that we’re Blazes. You can be free.”

Wretch’s muscles played under his skin, and he looked at the two swords in his free hand.

“No, not after what I’ve done.”

A loud rumble traveled over the battlefield, strong enough to rattle the ground. The porcelain monstrosity—The Gulschak's hidden weapon—was losing.

“Ratty,” Elenya said. “The war is over, we’ve won. You’ve won. I fought to find a place in this world. I’m not going to throw it away for someone who’s already dead.”

Wretch shook his head, his visage twisting in a roil of emotion. “I can’t live with myself if I let them go, Elenya. Please, come with me.”

His former comrade looked at her new crew. Perhaps she asked herself how long such a group would last without someone like her. “I’m sorry. You know I don’t leave anyone behind. Not anyone, not for anything.”

Wretch pushed further. Another argument he had prepared well beforehand. “I’ve learned more of the Flame since the city abandoned me than I ever did within its walls. The types of Flame, how to ascend. Don’t you want to climb higher?”

Elenya was quiet for a moment. Then she called his bluff.

“Wretchy, let the dead rest. You’ve killed enough Gulschaks to settle the score. Edmund will rest easy knowing he died so that we could live. Don’t throw that away. Come back instead, search for your father. Wasn’t this why it all began?”

Wretch ripped his hand free as the rats around them screeched, and the crow cawed above. His father had left him a book that had sent him down this path. “I’d trade that ghost for an hour with Edmund in a heartbeat. A curse he bestowed on me, and if I ever lay my eyes on him I’ll tear—”

He paused.

A moment of introspection. He was too far gone, he realized, too marked and sullied by violence. He knew what kind of path he tread and where it would end. He’d wanted her strength out of greed and a burning lust for revenge. But was that a path he even wanted her to walk? Even if he needed her? Even if his death was sealed without her?

His shoulders lowered, and a soft sigh escaped him. “How foolish I am. I would only bestow misfortune upon you. Maybe I am alone in this world to be like this. Forgive me.”

He extended a hand toward Elenya. “Your flame, give it to me. As much as you can spare. You still carry the locket, do you not?”

Elenya gripped his wrist, and he did the same to hers.

Her eyes lit with fire, and thick threads of fire trailed from her chest into his, courtesy of a Blessed medallion strapped around her neck. Her power flowed into him, and his waning flame grew strong once more.

Wretch let go first, and Elenya followed suit as she spoke. “I won’t try to stop you. I respect you too much. I know you’ll do something crazy no matter what I say. But try and return.”

Wretch turned away from the four hunters, eyes glued to the picture in his hand. “Goodbye, Elenya. Astrid is a few miles to the south, and at the bottom of the corpse pit in Voska lies Kattla with her remaining weapons. Find them in the ruins, and I’m sure they’ll reward you. Consider it my parting gift. For old times’ sake.”

The swarm of rats washed in from the sides.

“Wretchy!” Elenya said. “I… I hope you find it, whatever it is you are searching for.”

The swarm flooded over him, even as he stood unmoving, staring at the picture in his hand. The furred bodies moved in a chorus of scratches and hisses.

A moment later, the swarm revealed the spot again.

But he was gone, swept away on waves of vermin and vengeance. The swarm roared and moved with a singular mind, darting to the northwest and the epicenter of violence. A few breaths later, the hunters were left alone on the battlefield. They stood quiet, only the low rumble of the war’s final act filling the air.

“That thing,” Mitya finally stammered. “You can’t convince me, he was a man last summer. No way.”

“I almost pity those two he mentioned, Grendel and the Professor,” said the young marksman. "But who is this Kattla?"

Elenya answered without a hint of emotion. "One of our strongest hunters."

The trio froze. "You don't mean... did he?" Mitya began, but the bald woman pinched his cheek. “Enough talking, you are missing an arm, you fool. We retreat. Right, Captain?”

Elenya stared into the distance for another few moments.

Finally, a whisper escaped her.

“Right.”

The other three turned to move, but Elenya stood frozen in her tracks.

“Umm, Captain?” the bald girl called.

“What?” Elenya mumbled.

“You’re not moving…”Elenya shook her head, breaking free of whatever tethered her. “Shit, sorry. Let's go. On my six, we head south to the medics. Then we’ll locate my former healer. Eyes open, might be stragglers.”

With those words, the hunters left the burning front.

But the war was not finished. Not just yet.

The splintered Gulschaks retreated as best they could now that their flanks were broken. And the porcelain abomination roared in a cloud of dust that threatened to swallow the entire battlefield. Half of its faceplate was broken, revealing a macabre collection of gears and pistons beneath. Still, it slammed its palms toward the figures fighting. One a hue of red, Maria the Impaler, and another golden, Gustavius the Lion. Each a glowing mote zipping through the haze to tear at the wailing giant with thunderous attacks.

Something was approaching them, a wave of gray that washed over the shattered trenches. The few Gulschaks that still breathed were washed away with it, leaving only trails of blood and gore. The few Nov Yanosk Blessed the moving wave encountered, the gray tide simply moved around them, leaving hunters standing awkwardly as the vermin took their opposition and returned a puddle of blood and broken bones.

The wave of vermin grew in number as it headed for the heart of battle, but as the Gulschaks fled, leaving their porcelain monstrosity to fend for itself, the tide turned to follow suit.

The Gulschaks ran, releasing stitched abominations and burning oil in their wake that only slowed down the gray tide.

In the center of the vermin horde moved Wretch, embraced by the chattering maws and filthy furs. With a blade in each hand and a medallion protecting him from prying gazes, he followed his enemies and left Nov Yanosk’s ranks once and for all.

The grounds of war had proved fertile soil for a beast like him, and as he passed the edge of Voska’s original perimeter, he left the war far different from how he had entered.

Far in the distance, the porcelain giant gave a last crying wail as one of its arms was shattered. Not far from it, Voska finally crumbled. The ancient bridge that had survived millennia and seen civilizations rise and fall. Ripped apart by man’s burning determination to extinguish their own.

Wretch didn’t give it even a glance. His mind was somewhere else. In that warm, comfortable space of a mind set only on a singular purpose. He would live to suffer. And suffer so that others would too.

In that moment, he felt terribly free, unbound by the chains of family, vows, and kinship.

He had nothing.

And he loved nothing.