Corvayne hurried back to the group and described the bodies he had found, after which he had 11 concerned faces pointed at him. Well, actually 10, as Lady Blood Claw just nodded.

“You should always be aware of who's around you, and unless there's a very good reason do not go near anyone you don't know.” Lady Blood Claw looked around. “It means we need to take securing places to rest or break seriously, and we need to never be alone, and never let our awareness lapse. Things we probably should have stressed anyway.”

Brines looked disappointed. “It really stinks that we have to leave.”

Corvayne folded his arms. “If there was a monster I thought could do what happened to them... I might be okay staying. But three of them had slit throats, and I think they were moved, suggesting both intelligence aiming to deceive, and there's an ambush spot rather then the group getting attacked just out of happenstance.”

Horton sniffed. “It would be near the bodies, and it would have to be something that they are sure people would come to. Like the big cable might be enough of a marker that they are watching us now.”

Corvayne shook his head. “First thing I did before coming back is check the rooftops. Nothing high near us, nothing low.”

Mosh seemed to be scratching behind his ear nervously. “Maybe we didn't get all those Argyles and he's coming back for revenge!”

Lady Blood Claw glared at Mosh. “They were shot, and had their throats slit, not turned into jelly or swiss cheese.”

The goblin visibly relaxed. “Oh thanks Lady Blood Bae, I was having a little panic attack. Tell Nyxion no hard feelings for all the times I made fun of his parade outfit, allright?”

She shrugged. “If I stop by band camp, I'll let him know.”

Corvayne waited until Mosh stopped laughing to keep going. “Whatever it is that got the other group, I don't want us walking into an ambush. There is the possiblity of very strong groups hidden in these towers, given what we know of the Collective and from the report on Argyle we read. Think of a party of five people as strong as that Monk who all have different abilities.”

People who had seen Argyle in action got it, those who didn't looked confused.

“Put it this way: We're connected to an ecosystem of rules we don't understand. It's better to walk away and find a place that we don't see signs of predators that can seriously endanger us.”

Ayame looked over at Corvayne. “I wish we were stronger, I think this is exactly the sort of thing that should be stopped though!”

Mosh rubbed his head. “Boss, I think you're right. Mostly because these guys are not just going to show themselves to us.”

Corvayne heard a cry from behind them and turned to see a man in baggy coveralls waving from a gap in the direction he had planned to go. “Lo! Hey!” he shouted.

Corvayne strode forward ten steps at the figure, blanking his face and keeping his form relaxed as he raised an arm. Some of the odder points of training came in, and he did a quick assessment. The man was armed, looked like a sidearm, and a knife. Fit the pattern of the ambush. But he didn't look strong. The outsider took a quick glance back and Corvayne did a quick sweep of the buildings behind the man for signs that he had backup. Had he missed someone on the roof?

“Hey! Thank god we found you, my friend is hurt! I've been here for a few days trying to get him back to the entrance. Can you help us?”

The man's head and eyes were moving to look over the group. Corvayne didn't look back at his companions. “Wait, before we help, what happened? I'm experienced in search and rescue, I don't want to walk into a gas leak or monster swarm that followed you.”

“There was a swarm of monsters, yes! A group of ten crabs, they hurt my friend's legs.”

Why did Corvayne need to know the number?

The man was uninjured on his hands, no signs of damage on his matching thick canvas jacket and pants nor stains of the yellowish crab blood, which even Corvayne had on the bottom part of his boots. Corvayne didn't change his expression, just nodded. “Okay. Wait there, we have to decide as a group.”

He went back to where everyone had been standing. Lady Blood Claw shifted her eyes. “Corvayne, this is very su-”

“Yep. He's lying.” Horton filed his nails a little.

Lady Blood Claw looked at him. “I didn't peg you for a people person.”

“I study tells, and his body language has him looking around, he is fidgeting.”

Corvayne thought about it. “Lady Blood Claw, I think we can take them. You and me.”

She nodded. “He's for sure a rookie.”

Brines looked between them. “How do you know that?”

Corvayne smiled. “Look at what he's wearing, compared to what I have on, or what Wick runs around in.”

Brines looked puzzled. “Well, I thought she just got a bathrobe she really liked...” he spent a moment looking at Corvayne, taking in the cloak with another hood around his neck, the wreath of stamina he was wearing on his sleeve, the chain mail over a shirt that didn't match colors at all, three visible weapons that looked extremely different from each other, and a pair of boots a shade that didn't match the same brown as his pack or sheaths or even the designs on his clothes.

“If you are not wearing a bunch of random gear, it means you don't have a good enough supply of magical items. I'm going to see if I can disrupt the ambush, maybe save someone else's lives.” Corvayne curled his fingers to crack his knuckles. Lady Blood Claw fell in beside him as they walked back up to the man, who was waving but didn't seem to be looking Corvayne in the eye.

“Oh thank you so much, hurry it's this way!” The man said, not saying the name of his friend or using a pronoun for a man or woman.

Corvayne gave the man ten paces of space and asked as they walked, “It's just you and your friend?”

“Yes!”

“Why did you go in with just two?” Corvayne didn't really care, he was looking ahead and could see that the huge metal wire arch was actually the support for a set of chains connected to a bridge over the canal. To get to the bridge, there was a long thin street between two warehouses. There were spots that the concrete looked like it had dark stains. Oh yeah, that's an ambush point.

“Less people, less need to split loot, right?” He walked and started hurrying a little, speaking a little louder. “It's right over here!”

Corvayne nodded. Lady Blood Claw waited until the man started looking away then slipped on her cloak. Corvayne used gravity and jumped to a rooftop. A pair of men near the corner of the roof overlooking the choke point startled when he landed, one of them dropping a rifle and the other falling on his side.

Corvayne had a weird sense of deja vu as he closed the distance, using [Flow Like Water] as the first man brought his rifle around and shot at Corvayne, not able to connect with Corvayne's blurring form as he appeared close enough to the man to leap at them, ruining their aim and slamming into the first man feet first, denting the sheet metal roof under him as Corvayne flexed on landing to bounce off the first sniper and barrel into the second, knocking them off the building with a wail. He saw there was a fire team on the other roof as well, two attackers with rifles. Lady Blood Claw was on that side, so he just kept moving, ignoring that the man in front of him created a shield of fire. Corvayne just used [Storm Thrust] at him, the combined force of the spear and wind blowing him off the roof, which Corvayne then emulated to get out of the line of fire, sliding off the roof and activating [Leap Strike] to flatten a man under him using his legs. There was a crunch and scream, but Corvayne didn't bother trying to figure out how much damage was done, moving away from two men with knives, one of who threw his blade clumsily at Corvayne and tried to draw a pistol. [Flow Like Water] let him weave between the two gunmen, spear jabbing through one's hand and the other man's leg. He could hear shouting from the other rooftop.

He was facing down the original man who lead them into the Ambush now, who had his hands up. “Oh my god, I didn't know!”

Corvayne saw the man's hand twitch and punched the bandit in the face before he could draw his own pistol. The man staggered back, starting a low moan as blood poured from his broken nose as he fell over.

They were so slow. Maybe it was the result of fighting Argyle, but these bandits just were so slow to draw their guns. They took forever to aim. They were weak. He saw a headless body fall off the roof, and Lady Blood Claw gave him a wave then made a zero with one arm. Corvayne looked around at the groaning forms near him, and made a wavy hand sign.

He went over to the groaning ambush lead and pulled him up by the shirt.

“I found the other bodies.” Corvayne said but saw movement from inside a warehouse and pivoted, using the man as a shield for three quick shots, two of which jerked the man. Corvayne dropped him and used his shadow hands to swap to his whip, then snapped it, hitting an arm holding a semi-automatic rifle. The venom caused the man to start shrieking as his arm melted off. Corvayne kicked him out of the way and entered the warehouse, his eyes looking for movement. He saw another gunman in the rafters lining up a shot on him and he rolled for two shots then scooped up and threw a crate, the improvised weapon knocking the man off his perch to land hard on concrete. Corvayne ignored the sounds of pain the sniper made, instead looking for other targets. He moved to the back of the warehouse where a crude partition had been made, listening for sounds aside from the twang of Lady Blood Claw's bow.

He used his spear to push the partition aside and then looked around the corner, where one of the bandits had a woman and a gun to her head with his own back against a wall.

Corvayne stopped and looked at the wide eyed man and the battered woman. Seru's allusion to 'bad goblins' for some reason came to mind, filling Corvayne with a white hot fury even as he maintained his exterior control, aside from taking a single long breath.

“If you come any closer I'm blowing her brains out!”

“How far?” Corvayne asked, moving to a position where he held his spear upright. Going to kill him. Going to kill him fast. Do not pay him back. Do not get even for the woman. Do not draw it out. A warrior fights, a warrior kills, a warrior is not cruel. Power is a tool, not a toy. Going to kill him.

“What?” The guy winced a little when Corvayne spoke.

“I asked you,” He lowered his voice from booming to quiet “...how far?”

“Any closer! If you get any closer, she's dead!”

“No. I mean, how far can you walk with that gun to her head? Because if she dies, I am going to kill you. If you drop her and hurt her, I'm going to kill you.”

The man pivoted and aimed his gun at Corvayne a moment before he put it back to her head, then as he was raising it to shoot Corvayne the woman bit his arm then dropped to the ground. Corvayne hefted his spear and in a fluid motion used [Expert Toss] to land it squarely in the mans shoulder, pinning him to the wall as the spear made a little springing sound. Very satisfying. One of Corvayne's shadow arms found the bandit's neck and there was a flush of blood as the dark limb slashed the bandit's throat. He looked around, ready for the next threat, before LBC called out she was coming into the room.

“Corvayne.” Lady Blood Claw waved. “Do you want me to kill... oh. I pegged you as nicer then me.”

“Me too, but... fuck them.”

“Three of them will live as is, the one you jumped on is going to die.” Lady Blood Claw looked at him. Corvayne felt the rush of fighting leave, draining his desire to be at this bandit camp any longer. The crunch of him landing on a person played and morphed in his mind.

Corvayne gestured to the woman, who had started sobbing. Lady Blood Claw nodded. “I'll get the story from the bandits then meet you back at where we stopped.”

“Thanks. Miss? Was there anyone else?”

The woman shook her head.

“Okay. I'm going to take you to a friend who will help patch you up, and give you something that will help you feel better for a while, then I'm going to get you to the exit.”

“They took... they took...”

Corvayne waited as she spoke.

“They took my car keys.”

Oh. He tried to use that with his compass, and felt something tug him over to a line of crates stuffed with stolen goods. He pulled out a purse.

“This one yours?”

The woman took it and clutched it, hands trembling. He decided to treat her like when Wick wasn't feeling well. “We are going back to the group I'm leading. I'm going to walk ahead of you, and I'll deal with monsters. We're going to patch you up, then I will take you to the entrance back to the park.”

It was a few minutes to camp. Corvayne went slowly and gave her space while checking to make sure he didn't go too far ahead or too close. Mosh and Varia were quick to the draw when they arrived in sight and rushed ahead to meet him.

“What happened to the other guy?” Brines asked as Mosh started invoking mending.

“I think the ten crabs he mentioned got him. Very, very tragic.” Corvayne said, glancing back.

“Uh, you got red on you.” Brines pointed to some splatter on his brown boots.

“Part of the risks when you kill monsters. I'll go clean up.”

Corvayne went away from the group to the stairs down to the water, threw up, used his towel to wipe his face, then cleaned his and boots and pants and spear off in the salt water, then sat to look at the waves lap against the concrete maze of docks for a while. He saw a few regular looking fish and something like a fish mimic with one eye and spines, thankfully only about the size of his thumb. He was mostly bothered by how little he felt. The entire fight felt like... he had done something like it a dozen dozen times, as if he had heard a thousand sob stories to try to lead him to a place where robbers waited, and killed them all over and over. He couldn't remember every fighting bandits in the desert. More memory problems? Or just, muscle memory from fighting humans to train, over and over again.

No, this was different then fighting the masters or Argyle. The fight had felt too comfortable, in a way that fighting with monsters didn't, and while a battle high when dispatching a creature was one thing, having it erase any feelings afterwards felt... wrong.

He heard Lady Blood Claw walking extra loudly so Corvayne stood and went up the steps to meet her. She had also got blood on her jumpsuit. She didn't look affected by the violence at all.

Corvayne took a deep breath then asked, “Anything I need to know?”

Lady Blood Claw lifted her hand to show off a sack she had. Despite her body language looking calm her fire engine red skin made it clear she was angry. “I gathered up the belongings that might identify people who are missing.”

“What did the survivors say?”

“All someone else's idea, all of them were really about to be hero who just they were too scared to say no to killing people to level up faster. One of them was a former Bone Dog, two of them were in a gang from South Port... that's the island across from the warehouse. Guy who tried to lure us over to their ambush spot was the leader. They did this at least three times this week, going off the stuff they had. Seems I was wrong when I said three would live, turned out all the bandits had fatal wounds.”

“Ah.” Corvayne nodded. He saw she was shifting from red to teal with waves. “It's okay. I'll be fine.”

She sat next to him. “We have some time, Mosh is helping her fix her clothes and is treating her wounds. Focus on the good: you saved one life for sure.”

“Thinking about landing on the guy and the crunching noise.” He felt a little sick. He was also thinking about his shadowy limb going into someones neck. He felt it like it was own hands plunging through a plastic bag full of warm jam.

“Do you need a hug?” Lady Blood Claw was fighting to stay charcoal, but Corvayne could see the bits of blue embarrassment seeping in.

“No. I'm a warrior, we-”

She put her arms around him and squeezed his shoulder. Something she had on her smelled a little like lemons, and her arms were not soft in the slightest, but it was still comforting. She let him go. “I know you try not to kill when you fight people, and I respect that. I also think you did no wrong today by following through. If you are still worried, trust me. I will not let you slide from doing what's needed into darkness.”

“Thanks Lady. I'm glad you came along.” Glad she was here. There was something about her that was... different from the support Hari and Wick gave him. They sat together a few minutes, just listening to the waves.

“I know you had stated before you were worried. With the threat dead do we still turn around now?”

Corvayne shook his head. “A spear goes forward. Even if it's not easy.”