“Which of them survived?” He asked, his voice filled with pure ice.

Codek shifted in reply, his jaw clenched as he stared off to the side, a mixture of shame and anger in his eyes wreathed by the shadows of a candle. The manacles around his wrists clinked softly as he squirmed, brushing against the wooden back of his chair.

The man’s spine was still solid, it seemed. He used to like that, a long time ago. Now, it just showed how much he struggled in reading people, his greatest shortcoming.

Ruling through fear was far, far, far more reliable.

If Codek were afraid of him before he fucked everything even further, he might not have pulled that stunt.

His metal fingers tapped at the armrest.

“Trapper, Mirdin, Swiftshot and Gailo. Sermon got his head ripped off, Flasher got disemboweled. Mirdin got Trapper and Swiftshot out. Gailo played dead until we got to him. He needs a conjurative healer. He’ll live, but he can’t even fight a rat right now… Look, Ironheart-”

The chair’s wood burst to splinters in his fingers with a sharp crack, making Codek flinch, dust and chunks dancing in the air between them like embers in a flame for a tense moment, before retreating to the darkness at their feet.

His gaze nailed the incompetent idiot on his chair. He did not blink, nor sneer, nor even make an expression, letting the contempt behind his eyes speak for him. Codek’s eyes lowered.

With a slow, deliberate movement, he moved his hand to the side, and unclenched it, allowing frayed wood chunks to drop to the stone floor of the cellar, moving his fingers down his palm as if sprinkling salt on food to clean the crap off his glove.

Then he shifted a little, lowering his brows.

“I don’t care about your excuses, Codek. You sent The Butchers, our main strike force for Snake Eyes, as well as thirty greens, to hunt down two random bastards. Because they… what, hurt your feelings? Killed your old drinking buddy? Because we lost rep?” He asked rhetorically, lowering his voice to a metallic, mocking croon, allowing a sneer to curl his lip as he leaned forward.

Codek tried in vain to fuse with his chair, grimacing.

“The Syndicate had agreed with me that I’d station that team up to the top of the third floor to keep the red peacocks out now that they retreated. They were to be there, ready for when the kingdom sent the army, any day now. And not even a day after I make that agreement and tell you, you decide to cash in the favor we had with the witch without asking me, and send them in the complete opposite direction. Because you got arrogant. Because you thought ‘oh, but its just two people, I can deal with them before sending them up to do the real work’. Isn’t that right? Did you stop to think of consequences? You made me look incompetent. Not in control of one of my own gangs. My position in the Syndicate was weakened, because of your fucking stupidity.” He snarled.

Of course, that wasn’t the sole reason he was furious. But that could wait a little. Those thoughts had their time. Now was not it.

“I’m not here to hear excuses. I’m here to make an example of you. I’m tired of people just not quite listening right when I tell them things.” He rumbled, and glanced to the side. Kolak’s eyes met his, and he nodded, opening the door and stepping through it.

He didn’t bother to close it. Codek would be hard pressed to run without the tendons in his feet.

Besides, there was no point in doing this if nobody saw it.

He could see murmuring people outside, ranging from idle curiosity to grim faced understanding.

Codek’s eyes flit to the door as his breaths grew deeper.

“I swear-”

“Do you know…” He cut him off in a low tone. “About Tillenhall? I assume you know something. Everyone does. They own the hospitals, they own the few healers that live in our little shithole. They own almost every alchemist, all the bio-labs, and the sole high security prison the third floor has is theirs to do with as they please. The Cauldron. Nigh impenetrable, discounting Seven-Six-Two’s team of freaks. But if you must know one more thing about Tillenhall that isn’t as widely known…” He trailed off.

Kolak shoved through the crowd outside and walked in, a naked tattoo-covered woman slung under his arm, limp and moaning strangely, her hair dragging on the floor.

Faces on the outskirts twisted, naked horror for some, disgust for others, fear in most.

Good.

Codek’s eyes jerked to his guard, then to the woman, and widened in horror, in despair.

Had he thought he’d forgotten her? What an unflattering assumption.

“M-Mia?” Codek croaked, going to rise from his chair as if in a daze.

In a flash, he was above him, and a fist made of steel slammed into his gut, slamming him back into the chair, through it into the floor.

He took one languid step, then reached down, one hand crushing the man's shoulder, the other fisted in his hair as he hauled his heaving, gasping form off the broken wood, clean off the floor, then pushed him down to his knees. One quick movement had the manacles in his own hand behind the man’s back, and he pulled them up, ignoring the strangled grunt the man let out.

He lowered himself until he was crouching behind him as Kolak made the woman assume a similar position across from them, kneeling, but too limp to show anything of her front, a mass of long hair like a curtain between them, patchy and dropping.

Codek’s breaths deepened.

His lips were almost to the man’s ear.

“Please, Manos, don’t kill her, please. You know me. I know you, y-your story. We’ve saved each other in The Factory half a dozen times, one- one fucking mistake-”

“But if you must know one more thing about Tillenhall that isn’t as widely known… Is that Tillenhall is more inventive with agony than I ever could be.” He repeated and finished, ignoring the inane chatter.

He nodded to Kolak, and the man’s meaty paw grabbed the woman’s hair, pulled back.

Codek choked, his breaths growing hysteric at the horrific sight.

“Mia- Mia, no no no no no NO-!”

The man choked down a sob, thrashing uselessly with legs that didn’t quite work, arms behind his back, before devolving into hysterical screaming about how he was going to kill them all.

He drank it in like fine wine, a cruel, sneering smile on his face.

Shame about Mia. Decent woman, really. Bit of a whore, but a fun lass.

Unfortunate that she chose to love this fucking idiot.

Her face was gone, replaced by a deep furrow of melting flesh and chitin teeth, a long, thin V shape not unlike a wound that ran from her stomach to the back of her skull. Teeth and tongues and inhuman eyes wriggled and struggled to gargle and speak through the mess. Maggots crawled along the exposed flesh, curled around dead pupils blown wide in agony. Clicking centipede legs twitched and scraped at their own flesh, misfiring nerves and broken instincts.

A thousand mouths tore at their own flesh, fused into her undying body, each bleeding wound left behind replaced by another mouth to feast.

Maybe Mia was still in there somewhere.

He honestly hoped not.

But he’d been too soft for too long. He’d been taking it cautious for too long.

With the wolf, the plan, and the gangs he controlled as well.

He would consider giving his men some real incentives not to displease him, only to reason that he might get deserters if he scared them too much.

He’d consider hiring some of those big shot hunter specialists, only to say to himself how that might draw some eyes, make people question what on earth he needed so much muscle for.

He’d consider pushing harder to find the damn wolf, only to reason to himself that there was only so many things to eat in an oversized factory like this, only so strong the stupid mutt could get, that it wasn’t worth the attention because it would inevitably run out of creatures to steal from.

Of course it wasn’t like he could have ever predicted how absurdly fast the damn thing would become such a menace, nor how on Ergos it learned fucking magic, but the point remained. He was done playing nice.

“Now, Codek!” He exclaimed, a savage growl in his voice, yanking at the man’s hair, his hysterical thrashing all too satisfying.

“How about a kiss!?” He yelled, mostly to be heard over the commotion and the screaming, and dragged the man forward by the hair as he began to recoil and scream gibberish, spittle flying everywhere.

Blood dripped down Codek’s scalp from the thrashing, the skin of his scalp splitting.

Mia’s arms twitched, clicks and gurgles intensifying, things squelching and cracking as her torso split open even further, flesh parting, blood dripping from the wounds before turning to sludge and hardening to form brown chitin and clicking mandibles in its path, some eating their own flesh in the endless cycle of self-consumption.

One injection and an axe to the face to form this.

His admiration of Tillenhall and their insanity continued to rise.

He dragged the man forward as Kolak stepped back.

Mia jerked, legs twisting with horrific cracks as she launched forward, the flaps of her head snapping shut around Codek’s.

He let go of Codek’s hair to let the man drop to the floor with his wife, and jumped back in disgust, checking his coat briefly, before stepping back to enjoy his handiwork, drinking in Codek’s muffled, shrieking cries of agony as his former wife latched on with a hundred teeth and a thousand mandibles to slowly chew through him, jerking and twisting on top of his form.

Without much care, he stepped aside, and walked away without looking back. He had so much work to do.

The snakes parted before him like a sea of frightened pups.

As they should.

“Ramina, you’re the new boss now. Anyone try to fuck with you gets the same treatment as dear old Codek. Got it?” He barked, his eyes roving the crowd to find nothing but nodding heads.

Bunch of fucking bobbleheads, the lot of them.

At least Ramina had a solid head on her shoulders, knew how to follow clear-cut orders and pass any ideas by him before going through with them. Codek had been loyal, but opportunistic, backhanded, egotistical and unimaginably fucking stupid.

Ramina shouldered through the crowd, looking genuinely surprised for a moment, her scarred brows raising, before she thumped her fist on her chest and nodded.

“Good. I’m off, got work to do. Get someone to heal Gailo and get The Butchers to The Grate. Take the funds out of Codek’s stuff to do it. Burn the bodies once they’re done wriggling back there.”

Ramina looked puzzled, but nodded deferentially.

The Grate was where the second floor slowly melted into the third, into the true sewers of the Dungeon. A fitting name, and a fitting new station for the strike team’s disgraced idiots. If it weren’t for their reduced number, they’d be holding the fucking frontline.

Maybe he should have made something more painfully creative for Codek.

Now, to pay off every damn newspaper and person he could to try and brush away the scream incident.

He knew he couldn’t quite do it, but he’d be damned if he didn’t try.

The kingdom could not know about the wolf.

So even if his coffers ran dry, he’d try to make sure nobody would reach that conclusion. It worked to some extent when it got on that lift. People took it at face value, some kind of demon hound. He could work with that or just spread as much bullshit as possible to make conclusions impossible.

Whatever other conclusion the public muppets reached, he did not particularly care, as long as nobody began to whisper about a wolf prowling around. He had to find it.

Nothing else mattered when compared to that.

He dug his communication crystal out of his pocket, pressing the sound bubble button and tugging his scarf up his nose just in case someone was watching his lips from somewhere unseen.

Another few presses of buttons and a prod of lifeforce to swap it to the correct connection. It took nearly thirty seconds for the man to pick up.

“Stranger. How bad is it?” He asked simply.

“Depends on what front.” The man’s inhuman voice replied in a rasping series of hisses and clicks overlapping with eachother, an ear grating sound that he quite liked.

“What are the people saying on street level?”

“Most reached the same conclusion as last time. A demonic hound of some sort. It’s got quite the reputation by now, you know? The Black Hound, they whisper. It’s quite amusing what stories people will tell when times of strife and poverty pull them to the edge. Of course, information and narratives are as varied as people, so besides sightings of it running towards your men, and assuming it to be some kind of otherworldly presence, the narrative is fractured. Some cite the lift and curse it, some cite the scream and the Snake Eyes getting slaughtered and praise it as some kind of monster of cleansing flame, or such drivel. The charred corpses certainly make them think they’re right. The Dove might send warrior priests to deal with it if the narrative continues in that direction. Demons are quite frightening, after all.”

He worked his jaw, letting out a low, long sigh. The Stranger wasn’t wrong. If the whispers kept moving in that direction, the Dove would inevitably try to come down and kill the damn thing.

“Won’t the Crow object to that?” He asked, already suspecting the answer.

“Oh, they will. They’ll either politely shove them out, or finally decide to throw their spears into the theater of war. It all depends on how hard the Dove pushes. The Crow’s been building strength for decades. The third floor is their domain. So I doubt your… wayward pet will be in trouble from the whitecloaks. But it will make things ramp up even more, I expect. Additionally, those claiming it's a demon of the void have been getting beaten or executed by The Gatekeeper’s wards for blasphemy. So, do be careful on all fronts. I won’t do your scheming for you.” The Stranger clicked.

He made an affirmative yet thoughtful sound as he wracked his brain.

The way The Stranger said “wayward pet” might have held an implications in it, if it weren’t for his monotone clicks and hisses. As it was, he couldn’t tell.

Regardless of that, he was, as usual, correct. The Dove were famously zealous for hunting down demons, and The Crow were infamous for being overly tolerant of them. He could drive some kind of spike there, some conflict, but he could also try to dodge it by misinforming the public to some other direction.

But the idea seemed to have picked up steam now. It would be very difficult to make them think it was something else going on, and it was too risky to make them move off a safe train of assumptions into an unknown one.

With the wrong tugs and pushes, they could be whispering of a wolf instead. Not worth it.

“I see. Any idea on what the connection between the two women and the dog are? Who they are? Where they went?”

He wasn’t going to rely on The Stranger, of course. Tracer was doing an admirable job of mapping out where the hell the trio were going, along what paths and where. It just hadn’t been quite enough before, and he doubted it would be enough this time either.

After all, ‘somewhere around this six mile wide area’ was not exactly fucking accurate. Figuring out that they were trying to get to the bottom of the third floor was much more helpful, but still too big and vague. Too many holes to patch, too many paths to make a trap. All he could do was cast an absurdly wide net, and track for anyone else the wolf picked off and killed to try and map its trajectory.

An expense he was willing to afford.

The Stranger let out some kind of noise, perhaps his version of a sigh. It just sounded like a snake’s crumpled hiss.

“None, I’m afraid. I may have a billion eyes and ears, but you reached for my assistance too late, with too wide a possible area. Haven’t seen a glimpse of them, besides some rumors of laughing ghosts moving through the factories. Feel free to check there, but I haven’t seen anything there either so far. And you know I cannot reach into the sewers, so if they’ve gone there, I am afraid you’ll need another man entirely.”

“I see. I’ll deposit the usual check to your bank account. I’ll ring you later if I have another task.” He said quietly, the anger slowly having seeped out of him as he continued walking.

“And I’ll be sure to name my price for that as well. Farewell, Ironheart.”

A small flash of mana, and the call ended, the sound bubble dissipating. He pulled the scarf down, and brought his left hand up, where an uncharacteristically bright and flashy ring rested on his pinkie.

He pressed a button on the outer side, and cupped his hand around the ring as he brought it close. With a series of tiny clicks and the faint strain of tiny mechanical joints, the golden ring’s flat top extended outwards and unraveled like an umbrella, revealing a three-dimensional rendition of a spinning carousel, hidden from the world behind his scarred fingers.

Faded pink paper mixed with the yellow of age, drafted onto tiny metallic frills unfolding from its tiny cap. Unicorns and flowers filled the gaps, discolored, holding together by nothing but enchantments. A distorted, off-key jingle played as the tiny carousel spun, almost too low to hear, and for a moment, a mere few seconds, he let himself drift off to another time, a different place.

He let himself feel that familiar pain, to let her know he hadn’t forgotten her. That he never would. That this was all for her.

Maybe he merely did so to brush away the guilt of what he’d done. Maybe this was his way of apologizing to her, for what he had become, a man he doubted she would ever be proud to call a father.

Even so, he allowed himself that small moment, knowing that in times to come, he could, and would, do so much worse.

With a deep breath, a weight on his chest, and a faint sting behind his eyes, he clicked the little button again, and watched the carousel’s aging corpse descent into its little crypt with a little click.

His hands dropped, and he pushed the emotions out of his mind, to be dug up in a late night with an escort in his bed and alcohol in his veins.

He still had work to do.

He always would, unless that mutt was in a cage.

-

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