Mercy.

No, that wasn’t what our captives cried as Kiril had us line them up on their knees, shoulder to shoulder. It wasn’t what any of us suggested to him while we discussed what information we wanted to get from them.

It was the name of his sword. Mercy.

Yeah, edge lord to the max. I bit my tongue to stop myself from asking if he named his dagger “Forgiveness.”

He proudly announced the name as he pulled her (because of course it’s a she) from her scabbard and levelled the steel in the slant of orange light. He turned her, letting the sun sparkle off her curves, her edges, displaying her like she was on the red carpet and one of us was going to ask “who are you wearing?”

I imagined he had a line prepared for when he plunged his darling into flesh, something like: “don’t worry (adjusts glasses), I’m going to show you Mercy.” Maybe he’d pose it as a question, such as: “would you like me to show you Mercy?” His kill, on their knees, would beg and say that yes, of course they would, setting up Kiril’s line perfectly: “Okay then, you can have Mercy.” Cue sword through throat.

That was assuming he’d ever used the thing. Watching the blade glint revealed there was no blood on the steel and no cracks or scratches marring its surface. It was either all for show, as was the rest of his act, or he was obsessively diligent in sponging it down any time he removed his lithe lass from its sheath.

Knowing Kiril, I couldn’t decide which option was more likely.

“What the hell happened?” I whispered to Jade, my voice hoarse from the thorn pricks along my throat. My side was on fire, throbbing with every breath. Jade had given me a healing potion to dull the pain while my vitality gradually regenerated, and I used the cloak of the dead man Michael as a temporary bandage.

The two of us stood with Patrick in a corner of the cave away from Kiril. Jade put a hand on Patrick’s wrist. He smiled weakly at her. “I’m sorry,” she said, then turned to me and began to explain.

All three of them had gone to the caravan, but when they got there the bodies had been moved. There were dead gnomes, but none that had been burned. No Keith, either. As she described the scene I became aware of the used cigarette in my pocket. I wondered about the kind of person who had lit it while moving Keith’s days old body to our death trap. Drop the body, take a drag. Make a wound, another drag. Sprinkle some spores, drag. Psychos.

Patrick split off from the other two to harvest some nearby plants when The Purple Hearts, waiting in the wings, grabbed him. He had already established the Telepathic Link to talk to Jade, but was too far away to communicate. The party already knew about the cave, he’d said, and saw it as prime real estate.

“Did they say which party took their rock?” I interjected, remembering the dirt on Roland’s boot as he informed me of my mugging. What was their name? The Ruby Wankers?

“After the knife was at my throat, questions like that didn’t exactly cross my mind,” he said.

“Fair enough. Are you okay?”

Patrick made a feeble attempt at a smile. “You took more of a beating than I did. That was a good play, though.”

I shrugged. “Couldn’t have done it without my Stranger Things accomplice.”

A scream pulled our attention to the front of the cave, where Angie stood, both hands clasped over her mouth. Kiril was hunched, legs wide, holding Mercy at the end of a diagonal sweep. Blood coated the blade’s edge.

In front of him, Lyle gurgled, and collapsed onto his side.

Jesus Christ. “I thought the plan was to get information out of them,” I hissed, before the three of us ran to the other surviving captors. The other girl was shaking while Brie had passed out from her wound. I didn’t know if it was the name that brought it out in me or not, but I signalled for Patrick to slip something soft underneath her head. Damien babbled incoherently as Kiril strode slowly over to him, holding Mercy with delicate grace.

The blood began to seep into the blade, vanishing within seconds and leaving the steel perfectly clean.

Oh, that’s why. Vampire sword. Who woulda thunk?

“Kiril, what are you doing?” Jade demanded.

“Waitwaitwaitwaitwait,” mumbled Damien, his words forming out of intermittent sobs. “Let us go, please. We didn’t…I didn’t want… I didn’t mean… I tried…”

“You tried what?” Kiril said, ignoring Jade. He stopped in front of the man kneeling before him, bringing Mercy up against his chest like some silly Soulcalibur pose. “Tried taking our Anchor? You failed.”

He was unreasonably calm. He wasn’t shaking, he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t excited. He was stating a fact in his awkwardly stilted gamespeak. Lyle was dead, blood seeping out of his throat, and to Kiril nothing could be more mundane. To him the encounter was over and he was collecting his EXP.

“No… I mean, yes, I know, I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… I’m… I just… please don’t kill me… please…”

Kiril lowered the point of Mercy to the ground. He turned his nose up at Damien, eyes concealed behind his shimmering glasses, and asked the question I was afraid he would. “You want me to show you Mercy?”

I fucking hated that I was right.

Damien nodded vigorously. “Yes! Yes… mercy, please… please let me go.”

No you idiot, the answer is no.

The faintest hint of what you might generously call a smile touched Kiril’s lips. “Then you can have Mercy,” he said. He turned and walked away several paces before pausing. What was on his mind I couldn’t be sure, and before I could hazard a guess he was spinning on his heel, cloak billowing behind him as he brought Mercy around with two hands. Damien squealed.

“Kiril!” I yelled. Both of them turned their heads, Kiril frozen mid-swing and looking at me as if he’d just remembered where he was, and Damien like I was the second coming of Jesus. “Lyle and Michael were the ones who were trouble, and both of them are dead. Damien was the one who was willing to talk about an alliance, and let’s be honest, he’s kind of a shit leader. No offence.” Damien gawked. “What’s the point in an execution? You’ve already won. They’re terrified.”

Kiril stepped back from his swing. “You want me to let them go?” He asked plainly. Damn this guy’s hard to read.

“Hold them as prisoners for now. Maybe they can tell us things about this island we don’t know. Secret locations, magic items, other parties to look out for. Or maybe send them off with warnings about fucking with the Completionists and let them put your name out there. No one is going to want to cross your path,” I said.

I was hesitant about my second sally at Kiril’s ego after the last go around, but Damien was besieged by so much fear I imagined his pants were getting a little warmer in the crotch region.

Kiril looked at me for a long time. I realized I was holding my breath, and forced myself to breathe as calmly as I could manage. Jade stood on the other side of the captives, watching us both.

She stepped forward. “I think that’s a good idea,” said my wingwoman, coming in from the flank. “You have complete control. We can get anything we want out of them. Wouldn’t the biggest power play be not killing them?”

Kiril’s shoulders relaxed with a heavy sigh. Maybe that’s all it took. All I needed was some backup. With a whisper of steel against leather, Mercy fell into its sheath. “You’re right,” he said and fell to his haunches, his face uncomfortably close to Damien’s. The leader of the Purple Hearts recoiled with a whimper. “It’s alright, I’m letting you go.” Even when his words brought good news, you might mistake Kiril’s tone for a death sentence.

“Thank…thank you, I mean it… I’ll never—“

“But I want you to deliver my message.” Kiril’s face tightened. He cupped Damien’s chin in one hand, then turned to the rest of us. “Look away,” he commanded. Mutual confusion passed in silence between Jade and I. Look away? What?

“What’s…what message?” Damien asked.

With his free hand Kiril removed his glasses, folded them, and slipped them gingerly into a pouch. “This.” His voice had dropped several octaves. Thin wisps of smoke drifted out of the corners of his eyes as they slowly filled with blood and the irises became black as tar. His mouth opened, jaw dropping far more than it should have, black cracks breaking out along his skin. I wanted to look away—tried to look away, but I was transfixed.

What the fuck?

The screech that followed the plume of smoke out of Kiril’s throat shook my skull. I steadied myself against the cavern wall and watched Jade and Patrick stagger back. Angie was the only one to look away.

Status Received

- Major Break -

Holyshitholtshitholyshitholyshitholyshit! I have no idea what’s got you to jump out of your socks, I’m just vocalizing what’s probably going through your head. You’re absolutely TERRIFIED. Your sanity is decreasing at a rate of 1%/min. Better not let that meter run out.

I slid to the floor after the sound abated and barely noticed Damien collapse in silence. My gaze fell to the ground. Everything was blurry. I blinked. Where am I?

I didn’t hear the footfalls, but I saw the boots stop in front of me. Was that a leaf stuck to the sole of one of them?

“Training’s over,” said a voice. I followed the boots up to the fuzzy shape standing before me. “Welcome to the Completionists.” It sounded like there was a pane of glass between us. They walked away before I could ask why they sounded so funny.

I blinked again. Someone else was kneeling between my legs. They put a hand to my shoulder. Don’t touch me, I tried to say, turning away, but my words came out a slur of sound. They leaned in and put something to my lips.

No, I’m not thirsty. I swatted weakly. Fighting was hard, like running in a dream. They insisted, pressing the bottle to my mouth. Fine. I opened wide. Choo-choo...

It was well past sunset when I came to.

The fire crackled next to me. Jade and Patrick sat on the other side of it, she staring stone-faced into the leaping flames and he massaging her shoulders. He noticed the grunt that followed my rousing and warned me not to get up too fast. “Your vitality should be tip top, but your sanity might not be,” he warned. “Don’t accidentally run into a mouse or you might go insane.”

I smiled, but it quickly died when I remembered everything that happened. Shit. The face. The smoke. The eyes. What the fuck was all that? Blood stained the ground where the captives had been, but the bodies and survivors—if there were any—had been cleared away. Patrick must have known the words forming in my throat because when I motioned to speak, he shook his head and mouthed "not yet".

I sat up and peeled away the makeshift bandage on my side. The potion had done its job, leaving nothing but a jagged scar.

“Kiril wants to see you,” Patrick said in that voice a sibling might use when mum would like to have a word or two. “He wants to distribute your favour and go over your party role.”

I rolled my eyes. It sounded like Patrick wanted to just skip over the whole fucked up transformation and banshee yell that just occurred, at least while Jade was still recovering.

But I didn’t. I really didn’t.

Instead of heading to the back of the cave to complete my assimilation, I went outside and found Angie dangling her feet over the cliff in the narrow spear of firelight. She turned at the disturbance of my shadow, gave me a knowing nod, and waved me over.

She had been here the longest of all of us, longer even than Kiril. It had been three weeks for her as of yesterday, and only two for the Dear Leader. If anyone had any idea who Kiril really was, it was her.

And she was the only one to look away.