I’d expected the escape tunnel to be dank, with guttering torches and either cobwebs or mushrooms growing here and there. It wasn’t like that at all. As it turns out, a well-made tunnel stays dry. A sealed escape tunnel has no need for torches either, and no spiders or food for spiders would bother with this place, so there weren’t any cobwebs either.

It was dark and dry. The tunnel weaved quite a bit, although I wasn’t sure why. Considering how it was relatively narrow, it probably had some defensive purpose. Considering the look on Mun-gi’s face, it wasn’t going to be nearly enough.

Past the entrance, there was almost no light. Neither of us minded. Both of us had pretty awesome night vision, and both of us were confident that our quarry wouldn’t be able to see as well as we could. We made our way down the tunnel, moving at a fair clip. Mun-gi looked like he was moments away from sprinting. He was holding himself back in case of ambushes, but it was obviously a strain. The guy was really enthusiastic.

The dark got so bad that eventually, I started using sound as a guide, letting the echoes of my footsteps as a sort of improvised echolocation. I didn’t know how Mun-gi was coping, but he seemed to be fine in the pitch blackness as well.

Finally, we saw a trace of our quarry. The flickering of torchlight slowly brought light back. We slowed down and I gave Mun-gi a look and whispered quietly.

“Do you wanna do this sneaky or scary?”

The perpetual grin on his face widened into something predatory. He leaned back and muttered back in a low voice.

“Scary sounds fun. What do you have in mind?”

It took a second to explain my idea. Apparently, he liked the idea since Mun-gi’s smile got wide enough to show off his molars. The guy could be really unnerving sometimes. I was aware of the irony of me saying that, but really that just showed how I knew what I was talking about.

…

We walked heavily, making sure our footsteps echoed loudly down the tunnel. Mun-gi held out a kukri and let the tip slowly scrape against the wall. The sounds resonated oddly down the escape tunnel. Mun-gi’s noises swelled till he sounded like some hulking man dragging his blade, while the stone walls multiplied my footsteps till I sounded more like a monstrous centipede than a mantis.

We rounded a corner and slowly stepped out of the shadows into the torchlight. I was standing behind Mun-gi, but I just knew the light must have reflected off his teeth as he grinned. For my part I stayed at the edge, having turned my exoskeleton black and letting it shine subtly in the flickering light. We got a good look at our targets as they saw us.

The one in front was a scrawny, middle-aged man that looked like he sucked lemons in his spare time. He was sweating as he tried his best to keep the fear off his face. He had a completely unconvincing sneer and was holding his hands up in an odd-looking guard. Aside from the gauntlets, he was unarmed.

The second man looked just like a younger version of Axios’s statue had, so it was obvious he was his son. He had a spear and everything. He was obviously furious as well. The cold look of laser focus on his face showed his intense willpower. It was pretty impressive, especially considering how everyone else in this city seemed to have been ruled by their emotions. That wasn’t to say he didn’t hate our guts; he just didn’t let that rage influence him.

The final man in the back was ...a sweaty dough ball in the shape of a man?

It took me a few seconds to realize that this was the king of Macedor. Mun-gi was right, the statue I used to knock on the door to the palace was modeled after him, but he looked nothing like it. The king was fat and saggy where the statue had a large, muscular frame. The statue held itself in a way that made it look taller than it was while the man himself was slightly above average and had a posture that made him look shorter. His features were similar to the statue but lacked any of its regality and handsomeness.

It was odd. Every part of him had a bit of similarity to the statue in some way, but they were the complete opposites. It was like a before and after picture. He was also quietly whimpering and looked to me like he was seconds from wetting himself. Then I twitched my antenna and smelled something that made me correct myself. He was seconds away from wetting himself again.

Mun-gi pulled out his other kukri and began spinning them idly. His head tilted in a nonchalant but unnerving way. If his grin grew any larger it was going to touch his ears. Before he could say anything the king squealed like a pig before managing to actually speak.

“Why are you here!? You work for me! I’m the king! I hired you!”

Even from behind, it was obvious that Mun-gi was rolling his eyes. I don’t know if this twit of a king was actually a competent ruler, but he certainly wasn’t showing any sign of the ability necessary right now. Mun-gi replied in a clipped tone.

“You hired me to do a job. I finished the job. This is my new job. End of story.

The king squealed something unintelligible at his guards. Nobody really reacted to him anymore, especially Mun-gi. He’d lost patience with the annoying man three words into their exchange. The king of Macedor really knew how to spoil the mood. Eventually, Peithon flexed his fingers and stepped forward, interrupting the ranting behind him. He looked Mun-gi in the eyes, although they still flicked to me from time to time.

“Is that ...thing fighting as well.”

I cut in before Mun-gi could speak for me.

“Oh, I’d love to, but mister Mun-gi here called ‘dibs’. We are paying him to fight, so we may as well get our money’s worth. Plus, it seems that his previous opponent was a bit of a disappointment.”

I added that last bit for Axios jr’s sake. It definitely got to him too; it looked like he was seconds from dropping the torch and charging. It was funny watching him change colors. I felt a bit bad that it was over his dad’s death, but all’s fair in love and war and all that.

Peithon was still sweating like he was in a sauna, but he managed to wave his hand dismissively. Something caught the light for a second, but I think it was my imagination.

“Hmmph. Just because you beat them doesn’t mean you’ll survive me. You should have cut your losses and-”

Mun-gi whipped a kukri around in the air, and Peithon’s hand jerked out suddenly. The light of the torch ran down four invisible lines of spider silk stretched between Peithon’s gauntlets and Mun-gi’s blade. Mun-gi raised an eyebrow and twisted his kukri, letting the razor edge take the weight of the lines and snap them.

“Really? An assassin, and worse, a gimmick weapon user. That alone would be disappointing, but you just tried to kill me while making a pun. I’m not sure I can forgive that.”

His injured tone was strangely hilarious. He wasn’t making a joke or saying that to mock the guy at all. Mun-gi honestly was offended that some weakling had made wordplay while using a gimmick to try to kill him. Peithon flinched and manipulated his odd gauntlets to release the cut wires and tried to replace them. I stepped past Mun-gi who gave me a look, but I had to make sure of something.

It wasn’t easy to find the wires in the dark, but I did manage to locate one and use my shapeshifting to stick the end of a claw to it and pick it up. It was about as thick as a human hair and made of some sort of metal. It was plenty stiff too. I was right.

“Wait… This guy fights with glorified cheese wire?”

“Razor wire!”

Peithon snapped at me while Mun-gi snickered quietly behind me. Meanwhile, ‘his majesty’ was cowering on the ground with his hands over his head. Mitron was… not really reacting. Aside from the white knuckles he had from squeezing the shaft of his spear and the handle of the torch, he didn’t show any signs of emotion at all. It was kind of creepy how he’d hid his anger and gotten so much control over himself.

Peithon, on the other hand, seemed to be a lot less emotional than he was acting. I hadn’t caught it at first, but his expressions and body language were calculated to disguise the gestures he made to send those wires at his target. I watched him closer now, and it looked like he was setting up to do it again.

“You think you can mock me you stupid animal!?”

Peithon swung a hand around to point a finger at me. It was grandiose, a little hammy, almost completely unthreatening. If I didn’t know what to look for I would have missed the glint of floating wire drifting towards me. Now that I had seen it twice I agreed with Mun-gi. Expecting a gimmick like this to work on an actual fighter was downright insulting. At least he wasn’t smug enough to try to make a pun.

I let the wire loop over me and slowly drift down into place. Mun-gi gave me a concerned look but I smirked confidently back. Peithon couldn’t read my insectile face, so he missed our exchange. He grinned in triumph and hooked the fingers of his other hand on the wire and tugged it tight with one smooth motion.

“Gotcha!”

The wires made a high pitched squealing noise against my exoskeleton. The noise they made was surprisingly grating and made my antenna itch. Other than that, nothing happened. Peithon and I stood stock still, staring at each other. Sweat slowly built up on his rapidly paling face as my mouth parts twisted into an evil grin.

“Hey, no poaching.”

Mun-gi’s annoyed voice interrupted us. He had let me show off a bit but was getting impatient, so I shrugged. I grew a set of tiny blades where the wires were as I moved, and it cut the wires. The sweat on Peithon’s face started running freely when he saw how easily I broke his attack. I stepped back and Mun-gi moved forward.

He wasn’t going to wait any longer.

Peithon started flicking his hands out over and over. He had abandoned the theatrics and was obviously trying to overwhelm Mun-gi with lots of wires from odd angles. It was a good idea, but the wires were too light and floaty. Plus, this was Mun-gi he was up against. Trying to overpower the king of mercenaries like that was like trying to beat Superman at arm wrestling.

Mun-gi waved his blades around, seemingly at random. In moments he had the wires tangled up and held between his blades If it wasn’t for the torch backlighting the wires I would have missed it. He lunged forward and flicked his kukris. I got a glimpse of Peithon panicking and reaching upwards as the wires settled around his neck. Then Mun-gi swung his kukris out and blood sprayed from Peithon’s neck as he was decapitated by his own weapon.

Mitron dropped the torch and leveled his spear with both hands while Mun-gi turned his kukris to cut through the loops of super-thin garrote wire wrapped around them. Both of them ignored the thud of Peithon’s corpse as they sized each other up.

It was weird, watching a high-level fight from an outsider’s perspective. I hadn’t realized how it looks without the laser focus on the enemy acting as a ‘distraction’ from all the unimportant details.

The first thing I noticed was the body language. Mun-gi and Mitron were watching each other like hawks and ‘listening’ to every twitch and shift the other made. They were lying to one another as well by pretending to make unconscious movements or deliberately having a certain posture. It was like they were playing poker.

It was so incredibly cool that I had trouble figuring out why I felt slightly guilty.

I couldn’t do that. I didn’t have the skills to play those sorts of crazy mind games with an opponent and I doubted I would be able to pick up on those signals in a fight. Sure, I could think a few moves ahead, but Mun-gi and Mitron hadn’t even moved yet. I just made up for it with pure speed and inhuman reaction time.

That meant that my fight with Mun-gi had been missing something to Mun-gi. That also explained why Mun-gi was able to read my facial expressions and body language now.

The two interrupted my thought process by exploding at each other. They went from barely moving to suddenly attacking each other at breakneck speeds with almost no warning. They weren’t stopping either. The sound of crashing metal was deafening in the small confines of the tunnel. It was like a team of giant woodpeckers trying to drill their way through aluminum siding.

And woodpecker really did describe Mitron’s attacks surprisingly well. He stabbed like a jackhammer. It was so fast that he barely left any openings. With the feints he used, Mun-gi wasn’t able to go on the offensive at all.

Mun-gi reminded me more of a swarm of silver piranhas, oddly enough. The boneless way he moved made it hard to pin him down and drew my eyes towards his glittering kukris. They swooped about, swiping in to deflect a stab or test a vulnerability. I could see the parries and near misses messing with Mitron’s rhythm and slowly drew him into Mun-gi’s multi-layered trap. Mun-gi fought like a calculated feeding frenzy.

And he looked positively giddy while doing so.

Mitron was definitely the real deal. Unlike Peithon who had been a joke in a straight fight, the spearman was actually able to keep up with Mun-gi. Sure, he was slowly losing ground, but he hadn’t lost his head in the first couple seconds.

The king squealed and ran, well waddled quickly, further down the tunnel. It was funny, there were plenty of people who were fatter than him who could run faster and more gracefully. He was just so embarrassing to watch. Mun-gi and Mitron didn’t notice though, they were too busy with their fight.

Mitron had a spear. That gave him plenty of reach and power. Of course, I knew from experience that Mun-gi’s kukris always reached a little farther than you’d expect and hit harder than they should. Between that and the weird angles, the sheer speed, and the inhuman grace he swung his blades with, well, Mitron didn’t have a single advantage.

He wasn’t going down without a fight though.

Mitron had become a machine. It was like his brain had been replaced by one of those supercomputers for playing chess. His spears were always on point, aiming for any vital point in reach. Every time Mun-gi pulled the spear or shifted it off course Mitron forced it back into place before Mun-gi could take advantage of the opening. It was really impressive, especially since he had been practically frothing with rage earlier.

It couldn’t last forever though. It only took one slip for Mungi to get a cut in. That barely slowed down Mitron, but the cuts started adding up. Mun-gi slowly but steadily overpowered him.

It was beautiful, in a horrible way. The droplets of blood that spattered off Mitron’s body and Mun-gi’s blades caught the light of the torch as they flew through the air. Mitron and Mun-gi’s body were silhouetted by the same torchlight while the metal of their weapons sparkled.

Eventually Mun-gi gave his opponent a deep cut across the chest. Mitron took a while to fall. He tried his best to keep attacking, even though he had been cut to shreds. The hate he had finally rose to the surface for a moment before he died and slumped to the stone floor.

Mun-gi stood there quietly for a moment before turning to me and speaking softly.

“He was a proper powerhouse. His father wasn’t, but he qualified, if barely.”

He wasn’t really grinning. He seemed satisfied, but I had gotten used to his unnervingly wide smiles.

“You alright?”

“It’s never as nice fighting people who can’t enjoy the fight as it is with those who do.”

There wasn’t anything I could say to that. We headed down the tunnel after the king. I grabbed the torch and created a holder for it on my back. It let me cast ominous shadows of myself, like a really scary shadow puppet.

The king hadn’t gotten very far. It turns out that the pasty, out of shape, borderline asthmatic coward didn’t have great night-vision either. I could smell him not too far ahead. That wasn’t really an impressive feat though; the guy could really use a new pair of pants.

He whimpered quietly as the light ran over him. Then my shadow eclipsed his face and the noise turned into the wheezing squeak of a soundless scream.

“Giniligan. Little king. Little man. Little... maggot. You sit in your little chair and yell your little commands to little people, pretending you’re important… You’ve been quite naughty haven’t you? You’ve gotten a little arrogant, thinking you can do things without consequence. Well, I am here now. Your little scheme has made me very angry.”

His eyes were wide as saucers. I leaned closer and closer at a glacially close pace.

“I am here to warn you. The next time you get a silly little idea like attacking Honeywood? I will come for you. Nothing will stop me. Not your little walls, not your little army, and not your pretend powerhouses. I will crack your palace open like an egg, drag you out into the streets, and tear you to pieces. Do you understand?”

He didn’t nod, but the breathy squealing scream was good enough for me. My razor-sharp mouthparts worked slowly. I placed them right next to his ear, letting the edge brush past his cheek, and whispered quietly.

“Make sure you don’t forget.”

Then I dropped the torch and disappeared into the darkness. Mun-gi had hung back to let me do my thing, so it was about as dramatic as I could manage.

That had gone perfectly.

Of course, Mun-gi had to ruin it. He snickered quietly in the dark, turning towards me.

“Did you think you used the word ‘little’ enough? You can always go back and say it a few more times.”

“Dude, let me enjoy the moment.”