#blackram

Some irritation he could not fully place propelled Blackram out of bed. He rolled out his shoulders, flexed out the fingers of his right hand and felt the familiar ache in his palm. A fresh stream of blood and pus and something else he couldn't readily identify in the dark oozed out from the wound; tamping down his disappointment and some muted stirring of dread, he went to go to the water pump near the cliff face to wash it out for the umpteenth time.

"You've been getting weaker by the day," Sid argued. They stowed their dagger at their waistband and lifted up a bucket, setting it down with purpose beside where Blackram knelt at the spigot.

"Which is why I told you I didn't want to be woken."

They rolled their eyes, then began to pace. "How much longer will you kill yourself for this red-masked devil? Drive yourself ever deeper into your debt to them?"

"It's… not…" Blackram winced as the cold water touched his skin, until the chill overrode all other sensation and left his flesh numb. "It's not… a debt." He had known debts: his bounty hunter father had not come into his profession out of any joy for it, but to settle a blood feud for the man whose partner he had killed. He didn't have the words for what it was, though perhaps "gift" was the closest he could think of.

He knew far better than to say as much to Sid, who was already laughing - as dry and humorless as the bone dust littering the halls above them.

"What is it that has you so enthralled, then? This poisoned notion of godhood?" Sid held their arms outstretched, perhaps to indicate the majesty of the whole of the catacombs. "You are already a god in your own right, and your people see as much. Why don't you? Speak to any of the bones, if you've any doubt of it."

With his good hand, he closed off the water from the spout. The flow of fluids from his hand had not ceased, nor even abated. "That's enough, Sid."

"Surely it cannot be for this woman you barely know."

And what if it is? he longed to ask. Instead, he turned away in the hopes of finding a clean bandage.

Sid accepted his silence as tacit agreement, but they did not pursue the topic. Something had shifted in their demeanor - a tautness to their posture. "Have you ever seen a person die by infection, Blackram?" they said at last.

"No." The closest he'd ever come was seeing fever tear through the Saltery when he was yet a boy.

"It is one of the most agonizing deaths imaginable. Regardless of which part is infected, the organs shut down one by one, all while the brain screams for relief." They offered a moment of silence with which he might contemplate this death for himself. "I would not watch you suffer such a fate, my friend."

Blackram's eyes trailed downward to the barest glimmer of the blade tucked into their waistband. "Nor would I ever ask such a thing of you. Which is why, if you've any qualms with…" With what - his leadership, his priorities, his friendship? "…any qualms about us, you can say your piece, here and now, or you can leave."

Sid drew closer. They had shared so much of themself over the past few years, such that their proximity should not have been unnerving, and yet Blackram readied for the worst.

"Very well," they said, their voice uncharacteristically light. "I have never known you to sway from your course. Until, that is, you began to heed your red-masked benefactor." They raised their hands in surrender, and the dagger was there, gleaming in the candlelight; Blackram had not even seen them draw it. "But only one thing upon this star can bring about the ruin of a god such as you, and it has already begun its work. …Farewell, Blackram."

The words filled him with a dread he could not fathom, a fear as opaque as the warning itself. Sid was walking away with their back turned, as sure of their retreat as they had been throughout all their other partings from the catacombs. There was a twisted sort of relief to it nonetheless, what with the understanding that they could simply part ways, even if they would never again speak as friends, and that it would not inherently consign Sid to death-

They mean to excise the infection.

The whisper in his ear was unmistakable this time, even welcome amid his turmoil; nevertheless, Blackram's panic gave way to rage. "What do you mean?"

But the Ascian remained silent - and in truth, he needed no further prompting.

Immediately before the curtain, Sid stilled at the sound of his voice. Blackram took a step toward them, then another, until he lunged for the dagger in their hand and somehow wrested it from them.

"You," he panted, "will not lay a finger on her."

He slashed outward and the blade came away red. Sid loosed a cry of pain, but Blackram could not determine amid the darkness where they'd been struck; he saw only Sid's pale hands reaching back for the dagger, reaching for him. They had only to grab his right hand at an awkward angle and squeeze, and the pain from the infection was enough to make Blackram abandon all his other instincts.

"Listen to me," they said, beseeching. Their gaze flicked to the blade, which lay upon the floor of the cavern, out of reach for them both. "This cannot be what you want."

Blackram swung a fist; they dodged backward more out of luck than any real dexterity. They had only a few fulms until they reached the curtain that blocked off his chambers from the rest of the catacombs, and Blackram did not know who would be near enough, quick enough, or bold enough to respond to an alarum about his second in command. Sid tried to flee, but Blackram sent them sprawling with a kick. As they fruitlessly scrabbled for purchase upon the stone floor, Blackram lowered himself to their level.

"You meant all along to murder Sigrid. Do not deny it."

Sid sputtered, and spat out a mouthful of blood. "Bastard," they wheezed, an insult all the more ironic coming from them.

Blackram took hold of them by their hair, prompting another scream, and dragged them through the curtain with every onze of his fading strength.

All at once, for the first time he could remember, Blackram resented the distance of his chambers from the catacombs' main artery. He leaned against the rough limestone wall to catch his breath but did not remove or loosen his grip from his friend.

He longed to show some modicum of restraint, even now, and yet his Echo flared before he could control it. Here, amid the remains of countless dead from eras past and the tumult of their cries, Blackram recognized but one: further up along the wall lay a set of bones that had been cracked long before decay and age had reached them. He felt anew for himself the harsh sting of the lash, the agony of the metal rod that had broken the defiler-chief's body for the last time, so painful for its resurgence that he almost dropped his own captive. His right hand, racked by the persistent, pulsating ache of the wound Sigrid had dealt him, refused to heed his base instincts.

So too was he nearer to Brynhilde's crypt than he had been in weeks. Even now, even with so great a distance left still to traverse, the sound of Brynhilde's dying gasps filled his ears.

Vasu rounded the corner at that moment, just as he righted himself and gave Sid's body another hoist upwards along the ascending path. His mouth fell open in shock.

But he was growing weaker, and he had only his and Sigrid's latest separation to blame. He shivered constantly for want of warmth and could scarcely keep any food down, to the point that even pure water unsettled his stomach. When two days passed of being unable to do anything but lie in discomfort, he asked for one of his Knights to bring him a bowl of the broth usually kept in reserve for Sigrid, and a pinch of her vera root as well. 

 The medicine at least brought him the relief of sleep, accompanied as it was by troubled dreams that were Sigrid's more than his: the sights and imaginings drew from her recollections, from places he imagined were Ul'dah and Gridania. In one dream, he traveled through a cloistered forest dappled with red leaves and could not shake the feeling that something pursued him. He walked alone for malms with that presence bearing down upon his back and at last came upon a village, but the doors to all the houses and cabins and sheds had been thrown wide, with only decayed smears of blood and streaks of gore as the only signs that anyone had once lived there at all. He turned to leave but heard the familiar blow of someone stoking a forge, and in the dream his heart soared at the sound. He ran toward it and his footfalls provoked whatever followed after him, until he could no longer be certain that he would make it in time to see-

"My lord!"

Blackram did not recognize the voice in the time it took to regain his bearings and stir himself from slumber. "Come in," he urged them, his voice hoarse from disuse over what must have been days. "Stand on the far side of the room, please, where I can see you."

The Knight obliged, moving with practiced silence, until they came into view and revealed themself to be Ceallach. Blackram tried to sit himself upright to greet him but resolved instead to lean against a pillow.

"Apologies for greeting you in this state," he began.

Ceallach shook his head, a genuine concern written over his face. "On the contrary, I'm sorry disturbing you, my lord. Is there anything I can bring for you?"

Blackram pondered the question, but the only answer his mind could conjure was Sigrid, and that would be an impossibility. "Do not trouble yourself. You have news to share?"

For the first time in Blackram's memory, Ceallach faltered, albeit momentarily. "...Rúni and Merfyn are dead. They were patrolling the Sprawl. Someone threw a hammer and cracked Rúni's skull. Merfyn challenged the one he thought responsible but didn't call for a duel; he was ambushed from behind during the fight."

Blackram's stomach heaved. Not so far off, in the catacomb chamber above and over from where he lay, Sigrid let out a sob of regret. Ceallach turned, as if he too had heard her grief through the layers of stone.

"Thank you," Blackram began, "for relaying this news. Do you have any suspicions as to who may have instigated their deaths, in either case?"

Something shifted in Ceallach's demeanor, until his relief lay bare. Blackram remembered then that he'd been recruited from the Balam Ring, where failure of any sort was much more likely to be met with additional punishments for all involved.

"None, my lord - I'm sorry. The Sprawl's residents have all but closed ranks, and with both of our own killed at the scene, it took Unsynskaet a full fifteen minutes to run all the way from the southern quarry crossroads to see for himself what was going on."

And fifteen minutes was plenty of time for anyone in the Sprawl to concoct a perfect alibi.

"We could go in to knock heads together and hope someone confesses, but after the way they took down Rúni and Merfyn..." Again Ceallach hesitated. "Based on what I heard, I don't think it was premeditated. Any of it."

Ceallach did not have to explain the significance of that assertion: that the people of the Sprawl were chafing against the Blackram Knights' presence, and that doubling down would likely stir even more unrest. "Who was scheduled to take over for Rúni and Merfyn?"

"Gylda and Ingram, my lord."

"Send Raz instead."

Ceallach's eyes widened. "Just Raz, my lord?"

"Say what you will of him-" And other Knights, especially the elder ones, had said plenty of Raz: that he lacked deference, that he spent more time daydreaming than he did following orders, that he spoke too loudly and thought too slowly. "-but Raz could spend a full moon in the Sprawl without anyone being any the wiser. If we're to find the truth of what happened today, it will not be through force."

"Understood. I'll send Raz at once."

"If you can't find him," Blackram added after a moment of thought, "wait for him where the old markets meet with the dark water." Raz spent most of his time in the tunnel leading up to the Keane House, as it was the one place where he knew he could be of use; he had told Blackram as much himself, entirely unprompted.

Ceallach nodded. "Thank you, my lord."

As he turned to leave, Blackram said, "Wait," and the young warrior returned to his bedside. There Blackram fumbled with one of the extraneous covers: his own fur cloak, draped over his blankets to better capture his own heat. He lifted it with his unblemished hand, weakened though it was from whatever illness gripped him, and Ceallach accepted it.

Once, in the early days of her service to the crown and only some few moons after her father's death, Sigrid had been sent out to attend to Theodoric and Hrodric on a stroll through Queen Edila's gardens. Theodoric came across a dead marmot and at once took a stick to it. He poked it over and over again until its half-scavenged, half-decayed innards collapsed into themselves and spilled out over the earth. That single act of violence loosed a stench so foul that Hrodric went running; even Sigrid had to cover her face and recoil from it. That memory was one of the very few of her own that would overcome her once the vera root took hold, though it came more as a dream than a recollection: it seized her whether or not she wished it to, usually whenever Blackram seized her in kind.

***

"It's alright," Blackram whispered, again and again, as his blackened hand moved across her skin, as his body moved over top of her body. He could not reach her when she was like this, not truly, but her distress was an agony for how deeply it had taken root in him. If he could not soothe her, he would soothe himself, and he would speak to her as he did not ever need to when they were truly one.

Each time the primal's influence waned, they spent at least a week abed while they shook off the mantle of divinity and regained some semblance of their selves. It was a harrowing process made somewhat less so by the warmth of Sigrid's body lying next to his, and the persistence of their bond, and the knowledge that their suffering would soon be at an end.

***

His given name, she divined from their pervasive mental thread, was Grimms. It was not that he disliked the name for any reason; he simply doubted whether or not he was worthy of claiming it. Every woman and man who had spoken his name aloud had met a brutal end, and rarely ever by his own hand, as if the Undercity itself could expunge any trace of it on a whim. As such, he preferred Blackram, the title of his own making, at least until he could pass it on to a deserving heir.

***

Ashley. Their heir could only be Ashley, and yet this conviction invariably brought them pain twinned with pride. Sigrid would weep from it, no matter how much vera tonic she'd imbibed, and the prospect of Brynhilde's son as her son - their son - brought forth in him her visceral grief and guilt, as debilitating as their shared sickness. Of all he had done to secure the Undercity, to remake it on Sigrid's behalf, he could not yet fathom what it would mean to bring Ashley into their fold: in fulfilling his own destiny, in treating with the power of the gods, would he condemn his only scion to this same hell?

Only the Ascian would know.

***

Some days, when he needed solitude but ached for her closeness, Blackram would carry her on his arm to a spot deeper still than the catacombs: a placid saline lake where snowflies gathered to flit above the surface if the air was warm. While there, he would release her for some few moments to tend to his own musings, and she would run her toes along the smoothed rocks that comprised the banks until her last dregs of energy were spent and her legs would heed her no more.

It was akin to how the Saltery had found Blackram's mother so long ago, floating face-up and stone-cold in the shallows of Loch Seld. In life, the lot of them had called her a banshee - one of the beings that haunted the valleys with their wailing lamentations since long before the flood - and even as they hauled her corpse from the water, her hair and lips and lashes crusted with salt, they handled her with far more caution than reverence.

***

The Undercity was deep in the throes of winter, and only the salt of the lake kept it from freezing over so far beneath the earth; the snowflies were well into hibernation for the year and would not return for another few moons at best. The cold settled itself upon every ilm of stone like a fine shroud, brutal to bear without the warmth of their bed, and the bite in his boots intensified as Sigrid stretched out her own feet into the frigid, numbing depths.

Through it all, his dead hand ached worse than ever.

"You're late," drawled the red-masked figure.

***

No matter how deeply the vera root infringed upon her consciousness, no matter how low she had sunk into vague scenes from her memories or Blackram's, that voice had a way of cutting through the debility, the cold, the fear. Half the time it did not sound like Common, let alone any other language she had ever heard, and yet she understood it better than she understood her innermost thoughts.

She would have to simply lose herself, as she had learned to do while chained to the catacomb walls at this voice's behest, while lying futilely on her back, while Blackram whispered over and over that it was alright. She threw her head back to the cavern ceiling and a moan escaped her lips - the first sound she made in longer than she could remember.

***

He had grown used to the Ascian's dramatic entrances. Whoever they were and whatever their origin, they defied every law the Undercity imposed upon its denizens. The passage before him, now only a vague memory of Skalla, was the sort of place no living soul could traverse without leaving some trace of themselves - and yet there his benefactor stood, surveying the clawed tips of their gloves as dark currents from the void swirled around them.

"We've done it," Blackram declared. He was breathing heavily, as though he had run a malm while wracked with fever, all from the strain of having carried Sigrid to her point of rest in the pool. "We've summoned Zalera of our own flesh and survived."

The Ascian gave him an evident once-over from behind their blood-red mask and scoffed. "Albeit the worse for wear."

Blackram gritted his teeth but offered no retort. He would endure the weakness, endure the chills, endure his own dead hand until the primal was to be brought forth again. The only other choice was for him to lie down and die - and if he were to perish with so much left undone, then so too would Sigrid.

"We have fulfilled our end of our bargain, done as you instructed. But I would ask something different of you in exchange."

The Ascian's smile widened, ever the more unsettling for the fact that it was their only visible feature. "Oh?"

"I set my previous terms before Sigrid and I were joined - and now, there is much more at stake than the specifics of my past. I would inquire instead of the future."

"Hmph." They shrugged, rolling out their shoulders. "This could be your only chance for answers - to know of yourself, where you came from, how you came to be. You would deny yourself this knowledge forever?"

If this was a trial, a test of wills, he would overcome it. For Sigrid's sake. "I would."

"Suit yourself - though I must warn you that foresight is not a gift I possess. Nevertheless, I would not have your deeds be met with a reward you deem unfitting. Ask whatever you wish, and if it is within my knowing, I will grant you your answer."

For the briefest of moments, a glimmer of Skallan tilework, as blue as a clear morning, captivated his attention from somewhere off in the darkness. "If our heir should take up the mantle of Zalera in our stead," he began, and found that his question evaded him until only a fatalistic certainty remained. "...He will suffer as we have."

His benefactor did not move. They gave no sign that they were even breathing, let alone listening; when they spoke again, it was in a voice far softer, far more deadly, than any they had used before.

"That is something no one can say. What you have achieved thus far - the binding of two souls in service of a primal - is without precedent for your kind. Whether this mantle can be passed down to another will depend entirely on this boy, and perhaps on what he can learn from you."

And for the first time in longer than Blackram could remember, his gut clenched with stirrings of hope.

"Now, then. If that's all, you'd best return to your lady love. There's no telling what she could get up to unattended, even in her state."

Sigrid would be missing him; she was alone and cold and so distant in body and mind. But he was halfway to the primal's haunt, and he could use the last of his strength to make that journey alone, to gather what he needed with her none the wiser.

"Oh, and Blackram?"

The Ascian was at his flank in an instant, tucked into his blind spot faster than he could blink. He raised his arm to fend off an attack, only for the Ascian to whisper in his ear.

"Your success has also earned you this..."

They did not speak the next words aloud. His father's name fell into his thoughts as though it had been there all along.

***

The knife brought her back to herself. Her hand slipped to the stones at the pool's edge and touched its hilt, and she knew it at once as a gift from Rhalgr or Byregot or Brynhilde. Its blade was rusted along its edge but plenty sharp at the tip, sharp enough to pierce skin, perhaps rupture vital organs. For the first time in moons, she was reminded of her father - not a specific moment in which to lose herself, but the sound of him at work in their home's basement forge, then the smell of his sweat when he'd emerge at the end of the day. The memories stung her all the more for their vagueness, for the reprieve they could not grant her.

And she was alone. Blackram had yet to return for her, though she could sense some decisive purpose driving him deeper into the cavern, much deeper than his talk with the Ascian had required. The vera root was wearing off and her pulse was quickening, and the salt on her tongue tasted of Brynhilde.

She tucked the knife into the band that tied back her hair, though her arms ached to stretch them so, and she prayed the glint or press of it would not alert Blackram when he came to pick her up once more. When at last he reappeared, he lifted her across his unblemished left arm, steady against his shoulder. He whispered words she could not make out, adjusted her headband to cover her eyes, and the knife did not fall. She endured the familiar, troubled movements of his body as he walked them back up to their chambers in the catacombs, where a new horror beckoned.

A swath of red lay across the bedsheets, so violent in its scattering that she retched. She could smell the rot of flesh from him and from everywhere, as overpowering as ever. She backed away from the bed even as Blackram reached for her, shaking her head and trembling all over.

Get away from me. The words would not leave her, no matter how she screamed.

"Sigrid," he whispered. He held more of it in his blackened hand, its perfume overpowering; a bloom of-

Red lilies.

He reached for her but the knife was already in her hand. He reached for her and she stabbed outward until the lilies fell to the stone at their feet. He reached for her until he drew back with a hiss of pain, a shuddering gasp, a gush of blood flowing freely from his side.

He reached for her and held her fast about the waist, stanched his wound with her skin, pressed his dead hand to the base of her spine and bared his soul to hers.

They stood aboveground for the first time in more than a moon - out from Undercity territory, up in a neutral zone along a stretch of the Ala Mhigan Quarter's markets, tucked between a few layers of rugs someone had strung up for beating. Ashley had somehow managed to forget how fresh air tasted and smelled, how beautiful the city looked when the morning sun bathed its stone walls. He had lost track of how many days were left until midsummer; he had scarcely believed it when he'd found out he'd spent nearly a full season underground, that time had passed even without waiting for him to emerge from his new life. On any other year, he might have planned to surprise his mother with a basket of Gridanian fruits or new shoe strings or some other practical gift; now, he could scarcely remember that the market streets had ever been a familiar or comfortable sight - that he had ever looked upon them without the ache of hunger settled deep in his gut.

It was in the attempt of appeasing that hunger that he and Marco had emerged from the Undercity to begin with. Ashley's earlier indiscretion at the Catspaw obliged them to stay as far away from the Sprawl as possible for at least another moon, and they needed more food than they could get through haphazardly raiding stores.

Marco unleashed a guttural moan. "Don't even know why I'm so anxious about this."

"Might be just the hunger talking," Ashley retorted, then regretted it. Marco had given up his last scrap of bread to one of their younger informants, in a gesture that had not even occurred to Ashley at the time. "...My ma'd have to ask me all the time if I was upset or just hungry." To her credit, it was usually the latter.

"Guess I'm not sure what's gonna happen if you get caught," Marco pondered. "Most o' the little ones, they know how to look sad enough if someone grabs 'em, so they get off with a warning. But the Mhigan watch've been after us big kids lately. Maybe you've still got enough topsider in you to reason with 'em, I dunno."

All Ashley's earlier life, he'd seen children pilfer bread or gil pouches or anything else they could make off with from any undiscerning soul they crossed. His mother had complained of them on the rare occasions they'd managed to take something from her basket before she could deliver it to its recipient - more out of annoyance for the disruption to her routine than disdain for their circumstances. The distinction offered Ashley no comfort as he stared out over the bustling market, searching for any potential source of food.

"Well," said Marco. He stretched himself out against the stone wall, basking in the sunlight with his hands tucked behind his head. "You've got one reason to see this through yourself, at least."

"What's that?"

"Élodie's got a thing for pickpockets."

"Fuck you."

Marco cackled but turned his head back to the market.

"Hey," Ashley whispered.

"Hm?"

He pointed past the rug to a Miqo'te man with dark brown hair and a worn leather coat winding his way through the crowd, a wraith in plain sight. "That one's Undercity. He's got limestone dust on his sleeves." His mind sped through tangents, connecting coincidences. "Isn't that our Balam Ring target? The supplier for the Catspaw?"

Marco peeked up for only a moment and got enough of a glimpse for his face to fall in disbelief. "J'zhal Nunh. Fuck me. He's got their safehouse key, too - it's right there on his stupid fucking beltloop." He sank down against the wall and moaned, clutching at his own face with both hands. "Nymeia's taunting us."

"Listen," said Ashley. His mind spun with possibilities, with the sudden charting of plans, and the extra ways in which everything could now go wrong. "We need to eat. I'll get us some bread. You should go after the J'zhal and the key."

Marco bit his lip and stared out to the spot where J'zhal was fading into the crowd.

"We're not getting another chance like this," Ashley insisted. "If we let that key out of our sight now, it's gone."

"Yeah." Marco heaved in a deep breath. "Okay. Place of Free Words by sunset, yeah?"

"Yeah."

Marco clapped him on the back as they went off in their separate directions.

Watching the market from afar, Ashley had been able to forget that he was in the midst of more people than he'd seen in one place for a long while. The sensation of being surrounded by bodies, once part of his daily routine, now brought up a rush of claustrophobia in a way crawling through a narrow stone tunnel did not. He would bump shoulders with someone and wonder each time if they could smell the Undercity on him - if they knew who or what he was from that shred of contact. And yet the physical proximity of so many others allowed him to practice everything Marco had taught him like never before: he no longer needed to be perfectly silent, or to conceal every motion of his hands until absolutely necessary. He had only to keep his movements light, to divert attention, to avoid suspicion.

And that he could do well. His past life had taught him how to scour the markets for details - be they the clothes Thavnairian merchants wore to make their deals, or which shopkeepers slipped coins into patrolling soldiers' palms, or which mothers paid others' children to run their errands. His new life lifted the veil of mundanity from all that he had known before, showing him who was far more than they appeared. As with J'zhal, the tells were subtle: a layer of curious dirt or grime, a distinctive scar or tattoo, a furtive glance toward an otherwise hidden entrance to the Sprawl, or any other reference to a life wholly removed from Ala Mhigo proper.

He dared not consider whether such recognition of the unknown might have saved his mother.

So focused was he on avoiding that particular train of thought that he nearly walked past an Ul'dahn traveler berating his assistant for lacking some item she'd failed to procure. A simple cut to the man's purse strings liberated him of most of his gil, and without any of the guilt Ashley might have otherwise endured for depriving someone of their earnings; he departed as quickly as he approached, with no suspicious eyes hovering over him. He slid a few gil out from the pouch and tucked the rest safely beneath his belt, where it would remain secure and quiet even after he returned to the Undercity.

For as long as Ashley had been running errands, the bread peddler with the maroon wagon had set up shop at the mouth of an alley at the farthest end of the markets, tucked beside a staircase leading back up to the aetheryte plaza. The bread peddler fixed him with an odd smile as Ashley approached him at a comfortable jog, and Ashley could not determine whether the man recognized him for all the times he'd previously come to pick up flatbreads large enough to split in half; that, and he suspected the vendor could guess as to the source of his coin, whether or not he knew Ashley for the boy he'd been some few moons ago. Ashley ended their transaction quickly and with as few words as possible, pointing not to a flatbread but to a large, hearty multigrain loaf baked in the Gridanian style.

As he stared down the market street to identify the quickest path to the Place of Free Words, a voice carried forth from the nearest alley - "Fucking shite!" - as well as the sound of a fist connecting with skin, and a low groan of pain.

Ashley glanced back at the bread peddler, who was stooped over in the process of adding Ashley's gil into his moneybox and gave no indication that he had heard anything amiss. Ashley tucked the loaf of bread under his arm, withdrew his dagger from its sheath at his hip, and slipped down the narrow sidestreet.

Two-thirds of the way to where the alley reached a dead end, two figures were tucked into the shadow of a doorway. J'zhal Nunh, the Balam Ring lieutenant, stood over a heap of something doubled over in the darkness. The Miqo'te swung his fist back for another blow, revealing to Ashley a mass of pitch-black furs.

"What do you mean you don't have it?!" J'zhal hissed. "Same as last week, then? You'll scurry on back to your lord and return with fresh excuses?"

J'zhal grabbed the Blackram Knight by the collar and shook him; with that motion came the light, almost merry jingle of keys from somewhere on his belt. That sound propelled Ashley forward almost by instinct, until he held back at almost the last possible moment. He peered across his surroundings, then up - and sure enough, Marco's face appeared from the flat rooftop overlooking the alley. He flashed a hand signal Ashley understood at once, having used it more than any other during his time in the Undercity: I'll stay put.

"What a stand-up fucking leader he is," J'zhal went on, "sending a gutless shite like you to be the bearer of bad news. Well, you tell him this for me: My people? We. Don't. Do. Charity."

Each word was punctuated by a new jab to the Blackram Knight's face. Ashley took a deep, steadying breath and crept forward on the balls of his feet in time with the blows. The Knight neither moved nor spoke; they simply took the beating with the occasional cry or whimper.

"How'd your lord like to get cut off? Huh?!"

It took far less time than Ashley had expected to close the distance: in mere seconds, he was an arm's length from J'zhal - close enough for him to attack in turn, if he had the wish to. He dared not move closer, at least for now; J'zhal's tail lashed erratically each time he raised his fist.

"I hear withdrawal is a bitch and a half. Is that what he's after?"

The constant succession of punches had moved J'zhal's cloak aside to reveal a ring of brass keys, triple-knotted to a loop on his belt.

"TALK!" J'zhal bellowed. "Or I'll drag you to the Iron Maiden myself!"

Ashley's hands moved as if of their own accord: he reached out to grasp the keys to prevent their movement, and - praying all the while that his blade was honed enough - sliced the leather cord that bound them with a single slit.

As he shifted his stance to retreat, as slowly and quietly as he had come, he locked eyes with the Blackram Knight.

He had expected J'zhal's victim to be someone older, maybe with the authority of Blackram himself. Instead he beheld a thin, starved face that had already begun to bruise and swell from dozens upon dozens of punches. It was their wide, bloodshot brown eyes that betrayed their youth, though they'd been so thoroughly beaten that Ashley could not place if they were a fellow teenager or someone much younger given extra bulk through the Knights' signature robes. They stared at him with what could only be recognition.

Ashley darted backwards before J'zhal could see what had caught the child's attention; as he did, a stray pebble scraped against the bottom of his boot and went skittering off against the cobblestones. He ran like a wild thing, without sparing a single glance to see if J'zhal had even noticed aught amiss; he sprinted out from the alley with the bread in his left hand and J'zhal's keyring in his right, weaving through sidestreets to bypass the bustle of the market, until he threw himself down the first cellar door that would lead him back to the Undercity.

***

Though his heart still pounded from his escape and every ilm of him still itched to flee, Ashley allowed himself a moment's rest. He slowed his run to a jog and then a halt as he arrived at a sewer crossroads close to Ala Mhigo above, in a place where the midmorning sunlight shone down through a row of glass panes embedded into a stretch of flagstones upon the Ala Mhigan Quarter. A cool, pleasant breeze smelling of fresh water filtered in from deeper along the sewer tunnel. Ashley might have lowered his guard entirely to take in the tranquil sight, were he not still expecting J'zhal or other Balam Ring blades to corner him from the shadows; as it was, he stowed his surroundings and the path he had taken to reach them as a memory for somewhere to revisit at another time - perhaps with Marco, or even with Élodie.

He waited in nearly breathless silence for a handful more minutes and heard nothing to indicate that he was in danger of being found, let alone that anyone had pursued him all the way from the market. His mind relaxed well before his body did: even as he absorbed the truth of his victory, he rode out the dregs of his adrenaline by pacing between beams of colored sunlight, still clutching the bread and the keys and laughing out loud at the sheer absurdity of it all.

He had stolen from a leader of the Balam Ring. Together, Marco's quick thinking and his decisive action had cracked the defenses of one of the most feared clans in the Undercity.

And with just a little more planning, a little more teamwork and skill and luck, they would get Élodie her vera root.

"Congratulations on your first successful heist."

His meager celebrations fell to pieces at the sound of that quiet voice. It was a voice he knew so intimately from his worst nightmares - the same voice that told him over and over again, ever so calmly, that his mother would not be returning home that eve.

It came from around the nearest corner.

Ashley had no time to react in accordance with his rising panic, to berate himself for not having heard Blackram sooner. He drew his pickpocketing knife with the same hand that still held the Balam Ring keys and forced himself to breathe. In a single, fluid movement, perfectly rehearsed, he rounded the bend in the crossroads and slashed outward.

The tunnel beyond was empty.

He abandoned stealth as his anger overtook him. "Where the fuck are you, you bastard?!"

"Much further away than I sound." Sure enough, the words contained an echo he had not detected before. "Though I commend you for your swiftness, my boy. You’re a sharp learner."

"What the-" He staggered back and stared up and around at the thin vents and steam pipes lining the tunnel, all of them too small to conceal a person. The motion was so disorienting he had to blink to regain his focus.

"But really, Ashley... Marco, of all the sprats to team up with? The scourge of the limestone quarry?" Blackram gave a breathy sort of sigh that might have meant to double as a laugh. "You deserve better company. I’ve known it from the first."

"Just stay the fuck away from me!" he shouted down the tunnel. He gripped his knife so hard that the tines of J'zhal's key dug into his palm; all the while, a hard tightness coiled deep inside his chest. He had to suppress the urge to lie down in the water and cry, for even that impotent misery would doubtless be subject to observation by his mother’s killer. "I want nothing to do with you!"

"Where have I heard that before?" Blackram mused. Ashley hated the amusement that ran through his tone, hated that Blackram presumed to know anything about him. "Gods, but you have potential. If you-"

Blackram's words were cut off by a low, wheezing, rattling cough that resounded with sickening clarity throughout the tunnel. The noise sent a chill over Ashley - even as it came from a distance, and even after all the danger he’d thrown himself into that day.

The tunnel seethed with the echo of Blackram's breaths for several seconds after his coughing subsided. At length, he continued, this time without his previous smugness. "I have much to show you." His voice now rasped as if it pained him. "And even more to teach you - knowledge that will lay bare the entire Undercity for you alone."

"You murdering piece of-"

"I look forward to the day we’ll meet again in person, Ashley. In the meantime, I’ll let you run on home to Marco. Keep in touch."

"FUCK OFF!"

By the time his shout had faded to nothing against the stone of the Undercity, the sound of Blackram's labored breathing had vanished.

***

Marco greeted him with a jubilant cheer that echoed across the Place of Free Words. He ran at Ashley and jumped on him in his excitement, nearly barreling the both of them over.

"Bloody brilliant!" he exclaimed. He snatched the loaf of bread from under Ashley's arm and held it ceremoniously up in the air. "Gods, and that escape! I was holding my breath the entire time!"

For all Marco's enthusiasm, Ashley could summon no more than a brief smile. He slid down against the wall and sat beside the rest of their belongings, utterly drained to the last.

"What's wrong?" said Marco. "You're alright, yeah? You've still got the key?"

"Blackram found me," he muttered. "I don't know how he did, I... maybe it was the kid who told him." The kid who had been beaten to within an ilm of their life, who Ashley had not bothered to aid; the thought of them had not so much as crossed his mind before then. "After I got the keys, I ran all the way down into the sewers, by that bit with the crossroad-"

"Down along Everwant?"

"Uh, yeah." In truth, he had no idea where exactly he'd been, much less what the rest of the Undercity called it. "I didn't see him. He wasn't nearby, but it sounded like he was."

Marco frowned. "What did he say?"

"Nothing," he lied - then, at the look of skepticism on Marco's face, "Just a bunch of shite. Laying it on thick, trying to tell me I was too good to join up with you."

"Well, that is a bunch of shite, then," Marco quipped. He sat down at Ashley's side, then handed him back the loaf of bread. "Here. You got it; you should do the honors."

Ashley was too hungry, too frustrated, and too exhausted to demur; he tore off a hearty chunk from the bread, a piece large enough to cover his palm. Not even his first meal in days could bring him any meaningful joy, for reasons he knew had nothing to do with the loaf having been crushed in his grip for the last few bells. He passed the bread back to Marco along with J'zhal's keyring and, after a moment of thought, the bulging coin purse he'd lifted from the Ul'dahn. Marco let out an admiring whistle and carefully ripped off a portion of bread to match Ashley's own.

"Well, if there's one thing to be glad about," said Marco, talking while he chewed, "J'zhal never saw you. Never even turned around. He whaled on that Blackram Knight a couple more times and stormed off, and that was that. I bet he was long gone before he realized he didn't have this." He jingled the keyring for emphasis.

"Where did they go? The Knight?"

"Off toward the Whitecap - one of the topside bars Undercity folk go to. Or used to, rather. Anything what happens there gets reported to Blackram nowadays, or so they say."

Ashley reached absently across Marco to grab another piece of bread. "They were in a bad way." The words felt misshapen as they left him, at odds with his roiling thoughts. "Not that I feel bad, just..."

Marco shrugged. "I get it. It's all fucked up."

Their conversation faded while they gorged themselves on the bread. Over their heads, the quiet wash of the lochs faded in and out in time to the hum of the blue crystal that gave their hideout its name.

"Hey," Ashley said to Marco at length.

"Yeah?"

"Let's hit the Balam Ring as soon as we can."

"Before they can shore up their guard," Marco agreed. But his pensive expression intensified, and he shook his head only a few seconds later. "We won't stand a chance if it's just the two of us."

"Who else can we bring in?" Ashley pressed him. "Unless we use all that gil to hire someone, or-"

Marco shook his head firmly. "I meant we should bring Élodie."

Ashley sighed in frustration, before he could identify the feeling or its underlying cause.

"I've never seen her in a fight, but I don't need to've. She's come out of scrapes nearly as bad as the one you just saw. And we both trust her, right?"

"Yeah," he muttered reluctantly.

"She's in with us now, like she said. I'll drop her a line once we've both had some rest."

All the same, it was the thought of throwing her into even more danger, all of it because of what had happened in the Sprawl, that unsettled him. He repositioned himself against the wall, propping his head back in preparation for as much sleep as he could gather.

"What if it all goes wrong, though?" he said.

The pattern he'd favored most resembled two bodies side by side, bound at the arm. Gemini, the Dalmascans called it. The word radiated some strange meaning for him, a symbolism on par with the constellation itself, though he hadn't the vaguest idea as to whether or not his mother had carried Dalmascan blood.

And now, thanks to the Ascian's gift, the mystery of his father's heritage was now laid bare.

As an adult, he rarely dreamed when asleep. He slept best alongside Sigrid, and so that time became an offering of its own kind to the primal. The closest thing he had to dreams were the Echo visions granted to him in the catacombs from old bones, sights and sounds from final moments, from dying breaths breathed out long ago. He had told one of his fathers of those visions - the highwayman? - and had received a week's worth of silence, only a sample of the misery and isolation his life would entail if the rest of the Undercity ever discovered what he was.

But the visions were instructional in a way no parental discipline had ever been. They taught him all too well how to avoid death at another's hands, the telltale signs of betrayal and fatal missteps that not even kings had foreseen. They taught him just as well what it meant to die with dignity, at the end of a life well-lived.

And yet, to everyone but him, the bones of traitors were identical to the bones of the beloved.

Blackram did not so much as turn his head. Sigrid had only just fallen asleep beside him. He'd set himself to coating his dead hand with a fine layer of a tincture that was supposed to help preserve what little circulation remained. It radiated pain like ice on a burn, doubtless from the tea tree essence that bound the potion together.

"No?" the ghost taunted. "You've no interest in hearing of it - your fatal flaw?"

He did not dare say he did not believe in such things, not here in the Undercity. He sighed, set down the empty tincture bottle and tugged on his glove. "I imagine you'll tell me I'm an idealist," he replied. "That I will always be too focused upon my own thoughts to enact any meaningful change in the real world, and that nothing less than my grand dreams will lead to my downfall."

The red-masked figure let out a snort of derisive laughter. "Clever. But no." They waited for a beat, clearly to make the most of whatever anticipation they sought from him. "You care far too much for what others think of you."

Blackram merely shook his head. He had not cared what another person thought of him since he'd been taken in by the fisherman. The bastard had told him time and again what he'd thought of him, and he'd learned from that point onward not to take stock in anyone else's opinions. They would not warm him at night, nor would they watch his back in the dark. Half the Undercity reviled him for what he'd done, for the passages he'd taken, and it deterred him not at all for the rest of what lay ahead of him.

"You're wrong," he said simply.

"Wrong," Sigrid whispered from beside him. "Wrong, wrong, wrong."