a good monster

Another member of Sylas’ band sidles over to him: a nervous-looking boy with freckled skin and a mop of brown hair. Sword at his hip, shield at his back. The trick would be to break his left wrist before he could draw his shield; from there, disarming him would be easy. One swing of Sylas’ sword would cleave his head from his shoulders. He wouldn’t even have time to beg for his life.

“Have you been here before?” says the boy, blissfully unaware of Sylas’ considerations.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“You still have all your limbs.”

“I’m capable.”

The boy flushes with the implication; he looks away. The look he gives the group of wizards is one of desperate longing – please finish what you’re doing, please let me leave. “Do they normally take this long?” he says.

“Frequently,” Sylas says.

“Do you know what they’re doing?”

“Magic, presumably.”

“Right,” says the boy. “Of course.” He gnaws on the skin of his lower lip; Sylas holds his breath and waits for blood, but none comes. Just a strip of skin, vanishing between the boy’s teeth. Then the mouth opens again. “Do you—”

A soft moan rises out of the dark. Thank all the fucking gods: Sylas wraps both hands around the hilt of his sword.

“What was that,” says the boy.

Some wet dragging sounds; a small, muffled gasp of delight. The voice is high-pitched and feminine – innocuous, except for its presence here in the ruins of an ancient and highly magical deathtrap. Slowly, the rest of the mercenaries draw their weapons. The wizards continue doing their arcane nonsense with complete leisure and nonchalance.

“What was that?” says the boy.

“Careful,” Sylas says. “It’s going to try and climb inside of you.”

“What?”

The lesion attacks. One grasping appendage loops around the boy’s ankle and yanks him away into the dark, while two more fly at Sylas’ head – easily avoided – one swing of the sword and he cuts an appendage free, sending it whistling away into the ruins. The monster sobs; it sounds exactly like a child, left alone to die in the dark. He wants to kill it so badly that he can feel it aching in his teeth. He shifts his grip on his two-hander, races towards the sounds.

It is in fact trying to climb inside of the boy. One toothy, slimy tentacle has shoved into his mouth, and the lesion is crooning lovingly to itself as it keeps pushing forwards. The boy is paralyzed: he’s dropped the shield already (idiot) and his grip on his short sword is shaky and useless. Sylas takes another swing; he feels the satisfying, shuddering weight of impact as his sword cuts into the monster’s body. Foul acid spews everywhere. The monster is screaming, the boy is screaming. Too loud, too loud, too loud for Shattengrod – or maybe just loud enough – and yes, there, the shuffling of footsteps as every undead creature in the city is drawn to the smell of fresh meat.

The fight begins in earnest; gloriously, Sylas is reduced to his body alone. His mind leaves him.

And then it’s done, and they’re tallying the bodies – the mercenary boy first among them, a tentacle bulging obscenely through the skin of his stomach. Sylas vaguely remembers that death. The two other mercenary corpses he doesn’t remember at all. And, fuck, one of the junior wizards has gotten her face ripped off. She’s the worst loss: the Cerberus Assembly doesn’t care if they kill their own apprentices, but they deeply care if someone else does. Someone’s going to be blamed for this.

And he’s the one who has to carry the body.

“Did you get what you came for?” he asks one of the alive ones: a red-headed woman, splattered with blood and dark ichor. She’s giving him a narrow-eyed glare like he’s the one who killed her apprentice. As if he ever could have gotten away with it. As if he would have even wanted to – she’s heavy.

After a long stretch of silence, the woman says: “No.”

“Delilah,” says another mage – a sallow man who is bleeding profusely from a head wound. “We can’t make any more progress like this.”

“You can’t.”

“You can’t either. You’re tapped, aren’t you?”

Her mouth goes flat and sour. “I can ritual cast.”

The other mage scoffs a laugh. Sylas risks a glance at one of the other mercenaries – an older woman, one-eyed – for a brief moment of solidarity. Wizards. By the time he looks back, the redhead’s face is completely empty.

“I’m staying,” she says. “You take Ingrid back.” She gestures to Sylas in a way that could mean anything but probably means and take this piece of furniture with you.

“You’ll die down here,” says the other wizard.

His companion isn’t listening – she has already turned around and gone back to examining the walls. The mage attempts to share a look of comradery with Sylas; Sylas ignores it. Instead he watches the bandage gradually darken. The way this man’s head would feel against his thumb – the way it would give. Like soft fruit.

“Fine,” says the head wound. “You can lose Da’leth’s attention. No skin off my back.”

No response. He sighs through his teeth and turns to Sylas. “Well. Shall we, my friend?”

“I’m not your friend,” Sylas says, and at the same time the woman says: “I’m keeping that one.”

“What do you mean you’re keeping that one, Delilah!”

“Like you said, I’m…tapped. What if more undead show up?” She hasn’t turned around to rejoin the conversation; instead she’s tossing these sentences over her shoulder, lightly, like an array of silk scarves. “Besides, he’s the biggest one.”

(This is true.)

The mage pinches the bridge of his nose; the movement makes him wobble, and there’s an interesting second where Sylas thinks the head wound might actually take him. Alas, he rallies. “Fine. Fine. Absolutely fine. I hope a thousand undead drag you away into the depths of this fucking city, Delilah.” He storms off, waving a hand flippantly to pull the rest of the mercenary band after him.

They don’t move after him, obviously. At least not at first. This gives Sylas enough time to dump the girl’s corpse into the arms of the one-eyed woman; the moment of solidarity is over, and this body is incredibly inconvenient.

“Well,” she says around an armful of dead meat. “Got a message for your family?”

“Not at all,” Sylas says, and she barks a laugh and whistles the rest of the band after the mage. They take the torches with them; the light dwindles, and dwindles, until he’s alone with the woman in the dark. The mage woman. Delilah. She’s maybe twenty feet to his left. She’s human, so she can’t see in the dark either. He could get her in the back. He could break her spine; it would only take one hit. She would collapse like a pile of parchment. No one would find the body down here. He might be blamed for it, but then again he might not be blamed at all—

From the dark: “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Not especially.”

“Hm.” An arcane light blooms into existence, held above the mage’s fingertips. “I thought you might,” she says. “That’s why I wanted to keep you here.”

“Because I would enjoy myself.”

“Because you were enjoying yourself. Weren’t you? During the fight. You were enjoying yourself.”

He can’t deny it.

“That’s very rare, in my line of work.” She lets the globe of light go – it floats five feet above her head and stays there, bobbing gently. It’s not a flattering light. It brings out the hollows under her eyes, sends the shape of her skull looming out through her porcelain skin. Was she watching him, during the fight? He tries to remember the feeling of her eyes on him and remembers nothing. Only the muscle memory remains: the constant thrill of killing and dying, like fucking in a white-hot beam of light.

The mage has already looked away from him and back to the wall. She pulls out a piece of parchment, notes something down. Says, idly: “Are you going to try and kill me?”

“Probably not,” he says.

“Probably not. There’s a chance.”

“There’s always a chance.”

“Come here,” she says.

He considers staying put. But – despite his best efforts – she’s intrigued him. He closes the distance. The glow of the arcane orb lights up the back of her neck: the pale skin there, the fragile bumps of her spine. He stands right behind her. Credit to her: she doesn’t flinch.

“Do you know what this is?” she says. She touches one manicured finger to a blue gemstone embedded in the wall.

“No,” he says.

“Would you like to know?”

“No.”

“Hm,” she says again. She swirls her index finger; purple arcane energy surrounds the gemstone, touches it like a thousand small and desperate hands. Her eyes are narrowed again. She presses her palm to the gemstone – she seems completely engrossed in it, which is why it’s a surprise when she says: “How would you kill me?

“If ‘probably not’ became ‘certainly’,” she continues. “I’m very curious.”

“I would cut off your hands.” He doesn’t mean to be honest. This is an unforgivable crime in the Empire, where a mage’s hands are a mage’s power and a mage’s power is everything.

“So I couldn’t cast,” she says.

“Yes.”

She flexes her fingers. “Practical of you. I appreciate the honesty.”

“He wasn’t wrong. Your friend. You are very likely to die down here.”

“He isn’t my friend,” she says, “and I am not going to die.” She clenches her right hand into a fist; the wall begins to shiver, cracks growing like ivy from that center gemstone. She pushes her hand forward, fingers clawing at some invisible weight – more, more, more, more – the gem pops free. Without its presence in the wall, there’s nothing balancing the weight – piece by piece, the wall begins to collapse. Clouds of dust erupt between them.

The wizard crouches down and pockets the gemstone. She lingers there. After a moment, she says: “Now would be the time.”

She’s on the ground, on her knees. Head tilted down. Neck bared. The dust is slowly starting to settle; it gathers around her like a veil, clinging to her hair and to her skin. Now would be the time. With her back turned. When she couldn’t do anything.

“Although,” she says thoughtfully, “the sound of this collapse will draw more undead. Retreat and survival would be easier for you if you had some amount of arcane support.”

The rumbling of stone.

Sylas draws his sword; the sound is one long shiver. He watches, waits for it – there – the flinch. She flinches. There’s a moment where she truly believes that he is going to kill her – one moment of ego collapse, of animal fear. I am going to die here.

The flinch passes. Her shoulders lower. Footsteps begin to grow closer in the dark, accompanied by the low whimpers and gasps of the lesions.

“Delilah,” he says.

She doesn’t move. “Yes?”

He circles around her; he offers his hand. After a moment, she takes it. She stands. Her hand is very still in his – if he hadn’t seen the flinch, he never would have known she was terrified.

“Shall we?” he says.

Delilah smiles: a small, sharp thing, like a razor blade held in the corner of her mouth. Her free hand glows with the beginnings of arcane fire. An abomination launches itself screaming out of the dark, and for a while they dance.

He doesn’t think to pay attention to her. The fight consumes him – for a few blissful moments, he loses himself in the sharp clarity and pleasure of violence. Sifting through his memories later he’ll tell himself that she was smiling. During the fight, during the whole fight. Her eyes were bright and hot; she was smiling.

The truth is that he doesn’t remember. He only remembers the combat: its brutality, its relief.

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