#kinna

There were very few people permitted near Zaige’s formal workstations, to the point that no one dared go near, even when they were only lightly guarded. Those few allowed could be counted on one hand, and in this instance, Vezz counted himself lucky to be among them. Using the excuse to one of the guards that Zaige had asked him to fetch something, he slipped into the large laboratory mostly unhindered.

Nothing really seemed out of place. As it had been on the occasions he’d been in here with the supervisor, it was much more well lit than other areas of the facility, bathed in a faint pink glow as opposed to the vivid red that the rest of their number seemed to favor. Beakers and bits of projects were neatly organized across several tabletops, each marked with their priority in the greater project they were all at this facility for the end goal of completing.

And some things, he recognized. There were copies of his student blueprints, and a replica of the device that had exploded and taken off his leg not long after joining the Inquest. Instinctively, he reached down, the tips of his claws brushing against the fabric just above where he had used his necromancy to reattach and reanimate the leg, creating a prosthetic of sinew and bone. It ached, when he had to “replenish” it using the life energy of birds and rats, but it functioned.

Why would Zaige have brought it here? It was a failure. He had tried to use the life essence of a skritt to power the small device, but it had backfired completely. Perhaps he’d found a way to stabilize it?

Curiosity overrode his true purpose for being here, and he walked over to take a quick peek. There were all sorts of notes written on nearby blueprints, but one in particular caught his attention.

“Not smart enough. Need smarter.”

What did that even mean? Even as he read it, though, something cold and awful clenched in the pit of his stomach. Hadn’t Zaige mentioned progeny the night before…? No, there was no way he could do something that horrible.

Swallowing hard against the fear of what could be, he continued to poke about, pausing only when he found a small box shoved away under the only cluttered desk in the room. He would have overlooked it, but he stopped, staring at the box, ears twitching against his shoulders.

He shouldn’t overlook anything.

He should be thorough.

He had to look.

Stepping over quietly, he reached down, pulling the box out to pull off the lid. At first, what was inside looked like the typical sorts of things skritt wore in one of the few decencies their feeble rodent minds allowed them. But the closer he looked, the more he realized these were not artifacts simply picked up willy nilly. They were the belongings of children. Little tool kits, toys, dolls, ribbons and bangles undoubtedly given by doting parents.

Almost all of them were stained with blood.

His breath caught in his throat. This couldn’t be true, could it? This was all coincidental. But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Zaige needed “smarter” subjects. Innovation in the minds of progeny. Figuring out how to unlock it. As an awful dread began to coil up his spine, he shoved the box aside, starting to rummage through the table it was stuffed away under. There were further notes here, more detailed. Outlining experiments, lethal ones, performed not on skritt or the odd hapless fool that came here with a mind to be a hero, but instead on progeny.

On helpless, innocent progeny.

He had no idea how many had been here. How many Zaige had terrorized, poked and prodded at. How many had lost their lives to whatever in the name of the Alchemy he thought he was doing here.

Vezz did not have many lines. He looked the other way when adult asura stumbled in and were kicked into test rooms. It made him uncomfortable at times, but he had never done any of the experiments, and it was their own fault for trying to kill people here. An eye for an eye. But to harm, to murder, children?

His hands clenched, claws dragging through wrinkled parchment, and his ears only lifted when he heard a sound nearby. “Hey- the boss said no one’s supposed to be in here!”

All his fury at this indecency seemed to bubble force and Vezz spun. It was Mhitt, a young apprentice, who stepped back uneasily at the sight of the sheer rage on the necromancer’s face. Vezz’s lip was curled back, needle sharp teeth bared, and he managed to school himself enough to hiss out just one thing: “If you value your life… you’ll run and never look back.”

To Mhitt’s credit, he did at first make as if he was going to run. But the guardian was not so easily dissuaded, and he reached for his hammer, never taking his eyes off the other asura. “I don’t know what you’re doing, Vezz, but I can’t let you do it.”

“Mhitt,” came the low reply, “you won’t have a chance to stop me.”

----------

For the first part of his rage, he swore he remembered very little. Mhitt was the first to fall, as Vezz had his minions at his side almost immediately, a small bone minion he often called Mindless screeching along at his heels. The fires were accidental, the result of interrupted experiments and burners knocked over as their owners attempted to protect themselves from a necromancer armed with fury, a blood fiend, a bone fiend, and a flesh golem.

If he had been somewhat more in control of himself, he may have recognized people he knew refusing to back down, even in the face of such wrath. Many tried to shout him down. Convince him they could bounce back from this. Smooth it over with Zaige. But Vezz no longer had time for such arguments. He had been young, foolish, naive. He’d listened to everyone but the voices with his best interests at heart, and here he was. He had been aiding and abetting child killers!

As another former comrade fell, a voice in the back of his mind reminded him: this was the end of his time with the Inquest. They would hunt him, surely. They would try to kill him, and may even succeed. But he had ceased to care.

The people here deserved to die. And maybe he did too, for refusing to pay attention to the warning signs.

He only stopped when he found himself in front of his own old lab space, and inside stood… Zaige. The mesmer was smiling faintly, just staring out the door as if nothing was wrong, but he was holding something. Cautiously, Vezz moved closer, and once he was within spitting distance, he realized what the something was: a little progeny, with wide, terrified blue eyes and thick red hair tied up tightly. Her ears, too big for her head, were pulled back sharply, and dark speckles covered her pale skin.

He knew this girl. He knew her parents. Dhass, Pheazza, his old krewemates… it was their daughter. Kinna.

Still Zaige smiled.

“Quite a number you’ve done, Vezz. And here I thought you would be more amicable to my ideas. Ah well, not everyone can be a winner. But as you can see, I have found a perfect test subject. I was going to ask your help working her into the golem design, but… well, I’m starting to think you aren’t as interested as I’d originally assumed.”

Vezz immediately drew his ears back, red eyes bright, rage written in every move, dripping from every word. “If you touch one hair on her head, Zaige…!”

The mesmer just laughed, and it was then Vezz recognized the faint ripple of magic. Zaige wasn’t here at all. This was just another illusion. “Why don’t you come and find us, then, Vezz. We’ll have a little heart to heart over this. See if we can’t put this whole messy business behind us. Everyone here is replaceable, besides. But you… you’re something special.”

Beside him, Mindless chittered, and Vezz sneered. “Where are you? I’m going to come and find you, and I will make you pay-!”

“Will you? Well. I suppose you’ll have to find me first, won’t you? Good luck, Vezz. I look forward to the outcome!”

As the last words came from the illusion before him, it began to dissipate, fading into delicate pink moths that floated away and burst into harmless nothingness. Vezz’s hands tightened on his staff. He was going to end this. Now.

----------

When Vezz finally located his once supervisor, he was standing in the middle of one of the golem testing labs on the bottom floor. He stood amidst ruin and flames from where Vezz had torn through here much earlier, hands folded behind him, eyes like molten amber, a thin smile carved into his angular features.

“I must admit I’m shocked, Vezz. You’re far more powerful than I had suspected. Pity it took all this to realize it, but we can always find new flunkies. You really are something special.”

Vezz didn’t want to hear it. He was bristling, panting faintly with the sheer level of magic he had done in the scant hour since his rampage had started. And yet Zaige had the nerve to stand there, not ten paces from him, as if this was just some minor setback. Was he a fool? Mad? Whatever he was, he wasn’t having it. Not anymore.

“Where’s Kinna, Zaige?” When the supervisor’s grin only widened, he took a step forward, and his voice came out louder. Shaking. “Where is she?!”

Now Zaige shrugged, gliding across the room toward a nearby console, completely ignoring the chaos reigning around him. “Somewhere. I don’t need her just yet, and I’ll need you to calm down before we begin the procedure anyway.”

Vezz drew his ears back tightly, lips curled back into a snarl. “Procedure? You won’t be doing any procedure! I’m taking Kinna home!”

“Please, like you care. You never got on with her father, and you’ll forget having “wronged” that addle-brained burner within a day. Now come, let’s to work-”

Whatever he’d been about to say was cut short when all at once, abandoning his staff, the necromancer flung himself into him, a sound tearing from his throat that was very nearly primal. The two rolled, scuffling for a moment until Vezz wound up on top, eyes burning like bloodstone as he scowled down at Zaige. And Zaige...

He couldn’t believe it. Zaige was laughing, despite where he lay, despite the fact that Vezz had him pinned, hands closed around the taller asura’s throat. The mesmer’s gold eyes were wide and wild as he stared up at the necromancer, a wicked grin cutting across his features, sharp and vivid.

“Ohoho, this is brilliant! Look at you, Blightcaller. What are you going to do? Kill me?” He laughed again, and Vezz winced, his ears drawing back. The sound was so high and clear, like glass breaking, every repetition like daggers. It echoed through the empty room, above the roaring fires in nearby labs. “You? You wouldn’t even kill the skritt you were researching! Face it, Vezz: you’re not a killer. You’re barely cut out to be a scientist! All of this, everything you’ve done here? It’s all emotion, and you’ll make yourself sick every time you remember it. You might be brilliant, but do you know what you are? You’re weak. You’re weak! Only I can bring out your true potential. Without me? You’re nothing!”

Vezz drew in a ragged breath, tight as anger bubbled up in his chest. He had not come in here to kill Zaige. He had come in here to get Kinna and take her home. If that had meant leaving the Inquest, if that had meant their haunting his every move, then so be it.

But Zaige was taunting him! Dangling his own life as if testing Vezz’s resolve. This was not the plan… it had never been in the plan.

“I’m not here to kill you. I was never here to kill you.” It was a struggle to keep his voice level and even, and his hands shook as his grip tightened, like a reflex. The leathery skin under the pads of his fingers gave, and he felt more than heard Zaige wheeze as he struggled to keep breathing. “But I am here to take a little girl back to her family. And to make sure you never hurt another child again.”

Despite the determination and conviction in his voice, all he earned was another peel of laughter from Zaige, though the supervisor had to stop to drag in choked breaths when he did. “Stop me? This is progress, Vezz! Thanks to the research I've done into understanding the minds of our young, our end goal is even closer than it ever has been. So what if a few of the stupider progeny get weeded out of the ranks? One or two smart ones won't be missed, and Dhass and Pheazza's precious little Kinna is just the subject we've needed to crack this whole thing wide open. Think with your head, Vezz. Not with that shriveled old grape you call a heart.”

Quietly, as calmly as he could manage, Vezz swallowed, pushing down a lump in his throat. “Where is Kinna, Zaige. I’m not going to ask again.”

Zaige only grinned at him, eyes flashing amber in the blaring red light. “That’s a surprise, isn’t it? You’re going to have to kill me. You know that. But you can’t, because you’re a soft-hearted knuckle-sucker who doesn’t have the ears to pull that proverbial trigger. I’m right here, Vezz! You could shove down with all your might and end it now! But you won’t. Because you’re a coward. And you always will be.”

That did it.

All of his rage, his frustration, his anger… all of his sorrow at seeing the bones and bodies of children he never knew were in danger. His disbelief when poor little Kinna was dragged before him. If this monster had killed her, he would do this anyway. He had killed so many already. Why wait?

His fingers tightened as Zaige cackled, and a murmured chant passed through gritted shark-like teeth. He wondered how different this would feel, had he been mesmer or elementalist. How the magic of life flowed into him, sickly green glow tracing up into Zaige’s face and down past the collar of his ornate robes, following patterns of veins and blood through the rest of his body.

This was different, though, wasn’t it? Mesmers used trickery. Elementalists harnessed the forces of nature. He was a merchant in death. The sensation was like fire, flaring across his palms and to his fingertips, slowly up his arms. It pooled like lava in his belly and stretched further down, winding its way around his reanimated leg. There was no feeling there - the limb had been dead for far too long for that - but he could feel the sick heat at the stump where the limb was attached through very old magicks.

It was agonizing. Sacrificing rats and birds to keep his reanimated leg functioning was always a faint sting, a pinprick, like stubbing your toe or putting your hand too close to an open flame. This was like a searing, the heat of a funeral pyre burning from the inside out. And up until the end, as ragged desperate coughs and wheezing took over Zaige’s mad laughter, until the sounds died out with a whispered rush of breath, Vezz had ceased to care.

He swore he was screaming… that he tasted blood. Neither of those things mattered.

It wasn’t until the magic faded, faint green lines withdrawing into his hands and fading as they retreated into his leg, which glowed with new life, that his senses reclaimed him. And he stared in silence down at the corpse that had been Supervisor Zaige, completely drained of life, more a mummy than anything.

He couldn’t make a sound, recoiling violently from Zaige’s remains, chest heaving. His leg felt so powerful, too powerful, and the burning sensation in his gut left behind from the immense drain of pulling all that into himself was making him light-headed. He had to drag himself up with the side of an upturned table, and the instant his feet were under him, he weaved, retching violently. By the time his body had finished reacting, forcing him through adrenaline and overexertion to empty the contents of his stomach, he was gasping for air, his whole body trembling.

“K-Kinna… oh… oh no… no, I need… I have to find Kinna. Kinna?!” He whipped his head around, ears up and alert as his eyes flashed in the dying flames. “Kinna, can you hear me? Answer me!”

His answer was not the cry of a tiny progeny, but instead his bone minion Mindless, who slammed bodily into his good leg before screeching and scrabbling, biting at his robe with its little fangs, trying to draw him toward what looked like an old broom closet on the far side of the room. The little minion may not have had a brain in its fat little body, but he wasn’t going to brush it off that easily.

Shaking out his arms to try to settle his fears, he hurried over to yank the door open. There on the floor, tucked as close into the corner as she could get, was Kinna, her messy locks of thick red hair doing nothing to obscure the tears rolling down her cheeks. The relief Vezz felt was palpable, and he sighed as he knelt, reaching out his hands to her. “Come on, Kinna. Let’s get you home to your mom and dad. Pheazza and Dhass are probably beside themselves with worry.”

She hesitated briefly, but amidst all the chaos, he was the only friendly face she’d seen. And as soon as she bolted to him, he scooped her up, pulling off his hood to put over her head.

“Keep this over your eyes, Kinna. And hold tight to me. We’ll be home soon. I promise.”

----------

It was late when he finally reached their old krewe space, and he was dreading at first what he would find there. Dhass was the one who worked late, and Dhass was the last person he wanted to see. But who he found instead was Pheazza, sitting silently near one of the viewing walls, gently rubbing the head of her lynx Nego. The feline had its head in her lap, but it turned when Vezz slipped silently in, and that drew Pheazza’s attention as well.

She probably would have decked him on sight had he not quietly pulled the hood away from Kinna’s head, slinging it over his shoulder in silence. The girl blinked a few times, her bright blue eyes adjusting to the light, before she caught sight of the red-haired ranger nearby. “Momma!”

Pheazza didn’t hesitate a second longer, rushing over to all but tear Kinna from Vezz’s arms, choking on a sob as she curled the progeny close. She stood like that for several moments, sobbing along with her terrified daughter, her grip almost too tight as she convinced herself she wasn’t actually dreaming.

Once she had finally composed herself again, she sniffed and lifted her head, though she didn’t put Kinna down. Vezz couldn’t blame her.

“Vezz, where- how did you find her? What happened?”

“I can’t tell you, Pheazza. As much as I’d love to give you the whole story, I’d rather just leave this whole affair behind me. It will only upset you and Kinna, besides. Just suffice to say I’m no longer with the Inquest, and the people who stole Kinna will no longer be an issue going forward.”

As he spoke, Pheazza’s eyes grew wider, until finally her brow furrowed and her short ears pulled back. “You don’t just leave the Inquest. They’ll… you’re a walking target.”

He just nodded, solemn, resigned. “I know that. Believe me. That’s why I’m not staying. Besides, I doubt Dhass will have any friendly words for me, and I’d rather not try to go into hiding by being thrown in a peacemaker cell to “cool off” after a public fistfight.”

“I shouldn’t let you just walk away, Vezz. But I know you. You’ve cut your own path ever since this started, and I have to trust you know how to follow where it takes you.” She paused, shifting Kinna to one hip before reaching into a pouch at her belt. She held out her hand when she found what she was looking for, and when Vezz put his hand out after a moment of hesitation, she dropped something into his palm: a simple arrowhead. “It’s the first one I made when Caessenia started training me on the bow. She said I needed to learn by doing, if I was going to be so bullheaded. Maybe it’s sentimental on my part, but I’ve kept it ever since that day. I want you to have it.”

He frowned, his fingers curling around the small chunk of stone. It felt cool and soothing against his still aching palms. “But why?”

“Because you were my friend once. Because despite everything that’s happened, you brought my Kinna back home to me. Because I think despite everything you’ve done, you’re a good person at heart. But more importantly than anything else, because you need this now more than ever: you need a little something to always remind you that you don’t always have to fly straight. You just need to fly true.”

There was a long moment after she spoke, and when Vezz swallowed, it was past a tight lump in his throat. She had always been a strange one, but he supposed that made sense. She had been born to a merchant father and a seafaring mother in Lion’s Arch, and had spent her childhood there before coming here to attend college at her father’s behest. Zaige had called her burner, hadn’t he? A coarse way to refer to someone whose youth was spent cavorting among open walkways and sea-sprayed docks instead of solid stone and crystal. But she was too good for that. He hesitated only a moment longer, then reached out with a free arm to pull his old friend into a hug. One she returned with her own free arm. “Thank you, Phee. I’m just glad I could help get Kinna home safe.”

“Just that means more than you’ll ever know, gory. Here, you’d better go.” Smiling, she leaned back, shifting so she was holding Kinna with both arms. “Dhass will be back with the search party soon. Izza made me stay here this time since I’ve been running myself ragged… her sister Pyrria’s orders, you know. Now I’m glad they did. Won’t he be surprised when he gets home and our little spark is home all safe and sound.”

“Ah, it’s a shame I’ll miss the look on his face. You take care, Phee. And you too, Kinna. Don’t you go wandering off from your mother, all right? She worries.”