I immediately knew that something was wrong that morning. The sixth sense I had trained over years of criminal activity was itching. Familiar faces were following me, appearing in convenient locations and doing a very poor job of trying to look inconspicuous. I had managed to shake them easily on several occasions, they didn’t know the city’s layout well enough to follow without completely blowing their cover.

Were they adoring fans or long knives in the dark? I had to assume the latter. Part of me was surprised that this had not happened earlier. I had gotten away with a lot more than most – helped by the cover of war and plausible deniability. With the borders locked down tight thanks to the fighting, Inquisitors could not easily pass through and track down targets. A lot of them were simply too stubborn to ditch their antiquated ways and act under subterfuge.

I counted four. Two men and two women. One of the women was not assisted by the demographics of the city. Dalston was primarily populated by people from the local area, or the ‘midcounties.’ People with darker skin tended to come from the South, places like Tal Fer or Marside. There was little incentive for people to move around. Transport was expensive and slow, and most valued local family connections above anything else. Those who did were big shots. Traders, nobles, or rich folks looking for a change of scenery.

That is to say, it was easy to recognize her at a distance. Or maybe I was just connecting dots that weren’t there to make myself feel smart. One of the two men I had seen was biting his lip and scowling at me the entire time. He was totally incapable of masking his emotions. The death glare attracted my attention like a lighthouse at sea. When my gaze brushed over them, they’d quickly look casual or duck behind something. Amateurs.

This cat and mouse game continued for almost a week. I did my usual, taking evasive routes through busy areas to keep them on their toes. I knew that at the end of it would be a fight with some number of them. But with Stigma’s power the threat was blunted. There was a high probability that I could slaughter all of them without much effort at all.

In case I was mistaken, I avoided confronting them.

I was conducting a few rote chores. Getting ready for the next misadventure. Things were quiet, and as much as I had desired a break from all of the drama I still felt restless. I wasn’t used to having money or time. Every day was meant to be an immense struggle, filling every waking minute with back breaking labour or highly risky criminal endeavours – capped off with an hour in the tavern if I had some bars to spare.

In truth, I was waiting for the moment when the penny dropped. When my adoring fans would finally decide to step out of the shadows and try to do away with me. My brain entered autopilot and I started walking one of my usual routes. I had a natural talent for planning and executing escapes in urban areas, one that was further refined through decades of practice. But on this occasion, it turned out to be a wasted effort. As I slipped through the alleyway and into a small residential courtyard, I discovered that someone was already blocking the narrow exit out onto the main road.

There were three of them. One of the pairs that had been following me and someone I hadn’t seen in a while.

“What’s this about?” I asked – giving them one last chance to think twice and back away.

The older man spoke, “You already came this way once. All we needed to do was force you to do your routine and box you in.” I laughed in response. There was another big step missing in their cute little plan. They needed to actually kill me.

“Let me guess, Inquisitors?”

None of them were wearing their usual garb, that being the red tinged armour that had become so closely associated with them over the years. They would have been stopped at the border if they had – and that didn’t preclude the trouble they’d face within the Federation for acting outside of their jurisdiction. The Federal Court didn’t want them anywhere near the towns and cities and took great pains to keep them away.

I immediately clocked onto who was at my back. It was Petty-King John himself, though it was a very different impression from when he was wearing his armour. I had to give them credit for being smart enough to ditch the attention-grabbing gear to go undercover. Instead they wore a hodgepodge of different light pieces acquired from other places. They understood that getting hit was game over, no matter what they used – so they had built themselves for speed and stamina.

It was plain to see that they had planned this carefully. They had chosen a time and place where Cali and Tahar weren’t around to help me. Regardless of the care they had put into trying to intercept me, there were still only three of them.

John preened, “Scared?”

Not much tended to scare me anymore. “No. I was wondering what took you so long.”

“The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they do turn. You’ll answer for your crimes – here and now.”

“Is that how it is? For fighting in the same war that you’ve been supporting from the shadows all this time?”

“We are in the right, as in all things.”

“You know, I used to be scared of you guys – but now I relish every chance to put a few of you in the dirt. That nasty reputation of yours is looking pretty thin from where I’m standing. I’m gonna’ give you one last chance to turn tail and run.”

“Run?” the youngest knight cawed, “We have you surrounded!”

“Indeed. But it isn’t enough to turn this into a fair fight.”

He was a complete hothead. Dedicated to the cause but too stupid to know what was good for it. A simple jab like that left him snapping at me like a rabid dog. John had to get in his way so that his carefully constructed plan didn’t fall to pieces on the spot. John stepped in again, “We will free your mind from the influence of that cursed blade and return your mortal soul to the embrace of the other side. The taint of evil shall no longer threaten the lives of those who surround you.”

“I’ve got news for you, I was always a dick.”

The dog barked; “Not that those who assist you are free to go.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your friends – they’ve been touched too. After we’re done here…”

He let the implication hang in the air in an attempt to intimidate me. I took a deep breath and exhaled through my nose. A snot nosed punk like him was never going to get under my skin with talk like that. I cared about both of them in my own personal way, but my emotional front refused to fly into a blind fury at his empty threats. I had lived my entire life disconnecting myself from other people.

Beyond that, Cali and Tahar were not a pair of women to be taken lightly. If they earnestly believed that they were simply another pair of sacrifices for their strange obsessions, they were dead wrong. Cali would chew them up and spit them back out again, or in a more literal way, blow them into a pile of shattered bone and meaty chunks.

“Pft. You’re really touched in the head if you think that you can kill those two, never mind killing me.”

“If you have nothing more to say, then we shall do just that!”

I reached back and drew Stigma; “There’s no point talking with zealots like you. Close your eyes and ears and die for nothing like the dogs you are.”

The hothead flinched as the full, brutal length of the sword was revealed for the first time. Stigma was nondescript enough to avoid scrutiny from the uneducated, but when it had built such a reputation amongst the Inquisitors, they feared the mere sight of it. They believed it would corrupt them without making contact. It was not true - and even that depended on whether the wielder wanted to corrupt them in the first place.

I had no intention of wasting my precious life force enslaving or brainwashing them. Killing some experienced knights and eating their skills sounded like a much better deal to me. John reached into his cloak and retrieved a short sword. This was not the burnished steel that the Inquisitors were used to. Weapon supplies had been constricted by the war, and controls on civilian buyers made the issue even more apparent.

“Maria, Joseph!”

The now named combatants drew their own weapons. Joseph with a longer cavalry sword, and Maria using a lightweight rapier. Joseph charged at me from the front as John and Maria attacked from the rear, sensing that I was in a bad position, I ducked down and moved away from the point of contact before they could reach me. They skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, turning to face me in a small huddle.

“Be careful!” John ordered, “He’s familiar with combat.”

“How can a dreg like him…” Joseph trailed off. The wondrous powers of skill stealing. That officer I chowed down on in Blackwake had filled me in on a lot of things, like the kind of footwork that these Inquisitors used to get the upper hand. It was trivial to implement some of those lessons into my own two-handed style.

Maria let loose a probing stab, plunging herself down onto one knee to achieve maximum extension. I easily batted it away with the edge of my sword. I couldn’t close in and punish her for it without injuring myself on the other two’s outstretched blades. I could sense the wall of the nearest home closing in on my back. Hit points are just another resource to spend, I reminded myself. A low-level weapon like that couldn’t take me down so easily. I had the HP pool of a monster, not a human.

John followed up with some attacks of his own. They were delivered with precision that defied anything else I had seen until then. I could barely keep up with him, and every time the point of the sword moved I had to calculate whether it was worth protecting my critical areas over the less important ones. I let loose a hefty upswing and forced him away to give myself a second to breathe.

But Joseph leapt at me, forcing me to move to the left. His sword clattered against the plaster and wood, releasing a spray of debris into the air. He swiped at me again and again, forcing me further back from my original position. I caught one of the swings and held it against my cross guard, forcing him into close contact. I leaned back and battered him with a bone crunching headbutt. Bloodied nose and split brow, but he refused to move his feet. That was some thick-headed stuff.

My eyes moved. John was already on top of me, swinging down with a vertical slice that threatened to splay my head in two. I stepped back, releasing the pressure from Joseph’s blade and allowing him to reposition. These three had clearly trained together for this kind of fight. I couldn’t take them lightly and expect my stats to win the day.

I smirked and wiped some of his blood from my forehead, “Not bad. This should actually be interesting.”