[KILL COUNT: 3]
Fellen smelled like smoke and animal fat and something underneath both of those that Kyon couldn't name but that his brain filed under "too many people living too close together without proper plumbing."
The walls came first. Wooden. Tall. Made from logs the size of telephone poles lashed together with iron bands and driven into the earth at angles that suggested they'd been built in a hurry by people who expected to be attacked before the mortar dried. Guard towers sat at each corner, manned by men in leather armor holding crossbows with the casual disinterest of people who'd been watching an empty road for six hours and were thinking about lunch.
A gate. Open. Two guards at the base, leaning on spears.
Maren walked up to them like she owned the road.
"Maren of Galwick," she said. "Registered with the guild. Returning from contract."
One guard looked at her. Looked at Kyon. Looked at the blood on Kyon's sleeve and the sword on his hip and the fact that he was a stranger with no badge, no papers, and no introduction.
"Who's he?"
"With me."
"He got a name?"
"Kyon," Kyon said.
"Kyon what?"
"Just Kyon."
The guard waited for more. Didn't get it. He exchanged a look with his partner that said they didn't get paid enough to argue with armed people, and waved them through.
Fellen opened up behind the gate like a wound.
It was bigger than Kyon expected. Not a village. A town. Real streets, if narrow and unpaved. Buildings made from timber and stone packed tight on either side, two and three stories tall, leaning toward each other like drunk friends trying to stay upright. Smoke poured from chimneys. People moved in every direction. Men carrying crates. Women selling food from carts. Children running between legs and wagons and stray dogs.
Noise everywhere. Haggling. Hammering. Someone screaming at someone else in a language Kyon's brain was still calibrating. The clang of metal on metal from a smithy down the street. A woman singing from an open window above a tavern. A horse stamping and snorting as a man tried to shoe it.
Life.
After two days in the Graymark's dead expanse, Fellen felt like a slap. Too much stimulus. Too many bodies. Too many sounds and smells and movements competing for attention. Kyon's senses had been sharpened by the Vital Force coursing through him and now everything was louder than it needed to be. Brighter. More detailed. He could see the grain of the wood on a door thirty feet away. Could smell the onions cooking in a pot two buildings over. Could hear the specific note of the blacksmith's hammer and the difference between it striking iron and it striking the anvil beneath.
It was overwhelming.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, walking between two men carrying a rolled carpet, a kid bumped into him.
Light contact. Shoulder to elbow. The kind of collision that happens a thousand times a day in a crowded place and you don't think about it because there's nothing to think about.
Except Kyon felt the fingers.
Quick. Professional. A hand slipping into the gap between his belt and his waist, reaching for the coin pouch Maren had given him from Drek's supplies. The fingers found it, closed around it, and started pulling.
Kyon caught the wrist.
Not gently. His hand moved before his brain engaged, a reflex that belonged to the body's old owner, and his grip was tighter than he intended. The kid made a sound like a stepped on cat and tried to pull away.
Kyon held on.
He looked down.
The kid was maybe fifteen. Maybe younger. Hard to tell with the dirt and the too big clothes and the lean, hollow look that came from not eating enough for a long time. Brown skin a shade lighter than Kyon's. Sharp eyes. Quick face. The kind of face that was built for talking its way out of trouble, which was what it was trying to do right now.
"Let go let go let go I wasn't doing anything let go—"
"You had your hand in my belt."
"I tripped! I was falling and I grabbed your belt so I wouldn't fall. That's not stealing that's physics."
"That's not physics."
"It's close to physics."
Maren had stopped a few steps ahead. She looked back, saw the scene, and sighed the sigh of someone who'd seen this exact thing happen a hundred times.
"Pickpocket," she said flatly.
"I'm not a pickpocket! I'm a freelance acquisitions specialist."
"You're about to be a kid with a broken wrist if you don't drop what's in your hand," Kyon said.
The kid opened his fingers. The coin pouch fell and Kyon caught it with his free hand. He looked at the kid. The kid looked at him. Up close, the sharpness in the boy's eyes wasn't just cleverness. There was something harder underneath. Something that had learned too early that the world doesn't give and so you have to take.
Kyon let go of his wrist.
The kid stumbled back, rubbing the red marks on his arm, and looked at Kyon with an expression that was part fear, part anger, and part something else. Something that looked weirdly like respect.
"How did you feel that?" the kid said. "I'm the best dipper in Fellen. Nobody feels it."
"Then you're not as good as you think."
"No, I am. I'm exactly as good as I think. You're just faster than you should be." He tilted his head. "Are you new? You're new. Nobody walks into Fellen with that much blood on their shirt unless they just got here or they just killed someone inside the walls, and if you'd killed someone inside the walls there'd be militia on you already."
"We're leaving," Maren said. "Stop talking to the pickpocket."
"Freelance acquisitions—"
"Stop."
The kid raised his hands in surrender but didn't leave. He fell into step behind them at a distance of about ten feet, like a stray dog that had found something interesting and wasn't ready to let it go.
"He's following us," Kyon said.
"He'll stop when he gets bored."
"What if he doesn't?"
"Then he's your problem."
They turned down a wider street. Better maintained. Fewer people. The buildings here were sturdier. Stone foundations instead of bare timber. Signs hung above doors with pictures on them instead of words, which told Kyon that literacy wasn't universal here. A sword crossed with a shield. A bed. A mug of beer. A set of scales.
Maren stopped in front of the one with the sword and shield.
"Mercenary guild," she said. "Ready?"
Kyon looked at the building. Two stories. Stone walls. Iron reinforced door standing open. From inside came the sounds of conversation, laughter, the clink of cups, and the distinct thud of something heavy hitting something padded.
"What happens in there?" he asked.
"You register. They test you. If you pass, you get a badge and access to the board. If you don't pass, you leave and try again in thirty days."
"And the test?"
"Combat evaluation against a guild proctor. Non lethal. They want to see if you can fight, not if you can kill. There's a difference."
46:11:28.
The clock pulsed. Kyon ignored it.
"Let's go," he said.
The inside of the mercenary guild was exactly what Kyon would have imagined if someone had asked him to picture a fantasy tavern crossed with a job center.
The ground floor was a single large room. Tables and chairs on the left, occupied by men and women in various states of armored, drinking, eating, talking, and in one case sleeping face down in what looked like a bowl of stew. The right side of the room was a counter, long and wooden, staffed by a woman with short red hair and the look of someone who had been dealing with armed idiots all day and had stopped pretending to enjoy it.
Behind the counter, the entire back wall was a board. Wooden. Floor to ceiling. Covered in papers. Dozens of them, pinned and tacked and nailed in rows, some yellowed and old, some fresh and white. Each one had writing. Names. Locations. Descriptions. And at the bottom of each sheet, a number.
The bounty board.
Maren walked to the counter. The red haired woman looked up.
"Maren. You look like hell."
"Bandits. I'm fine. I have a new registration."
The woman looked at Kyon. Same evaluation he'd been getting from everyone. Eyes moving from his face to his sword to his build to his hands to the blood on his clothes.
"Name?"
"Kyon."
"Surname?"
"None."
She didn't react to that. Just wrote something on a piece of parchment. "Combat experience?"
Kyon hesitated. "Some."
Maren cut in. "He dropped Drek of the Ash Ridge crew in ten seconds. Solo. First engagement I've seen from him. He's raw but he's fast and he hits like he means it."
The red haired woman's pen stopped. "Drek?"
"Dead. Kyon did it."
Something shifted in the woman's expression. Not surprise exactly. More like recalculation. Drek was apparently a name that carried weight.
"Assessment room is downstairs," she said. "Proctor's name is Voss. I'll let him know you're coming. Five silver registration fee."
Kyon looked at Maren. She pulled five coins from her own pouch and put them on the counter.
"You're lending me money now?" Kyon said.
"I'm investing. You pass the test, you take a contract, you pay me back with interest."
"And if I don't pass?"
"You'll pass."
The red haired woman pointed to a staircase at the back of the room. "Down. Turn left. Don't break anything that isn't Voss."
The assessment room was underground.
A cellar converted into a fighting pit. Dirt floor. Stone walls. Torches in brackets throwing orange light that bounced and shivered. The ceiling was low enough that Kyon could have touched it if he reached up. The space was maybe forty feet long and thirty wide. Just enough room to move.
Voss was already there.
He was not what Kyon expected.
The man was old. Fifty at least, maybe sixty, with a bald head covered in scars and a body that looked like it had been carved from something harder than wood. Not tall. Not wide. Just compact and dense, like every ounce of him was muscle or bone and nothing was wasted. He wore a sleeveless training shirt and loose pants and he held a wooden practice sword in one hand the way most people hold a pencil. Casual. Natural. Part of his body.
His eyes were the problem.
Calm. Patient. Completely empty of anything except attention. The eyes of a man who had seen everything at least twice and was waiting to see if this time would be different.
"You Kyon?" Voss said. His voice was flat. No warmth. No hostility. Just information moving from one person to another.
"Yeah."
Voss tossed a second wooden practice sword. Kyon caught it. It was heavier than it looked. Solid wood. Not padded. A hit from this would bruise bone.
"Rules," Voss said. "First to three clean hits. A clean hit is any strike that would cause significant damage with a real blade. Head, torso, arms, legs. I decide what's clean. You disagree with my count, you keep it to yourself. Understood?"
"Understood."
"You can use whatever style you have. Dirty fighting is fine. Grappling is fine. Only thing that'll fail you automatically is if you freeze up or quit. I don't care if you lose. I care if you stop." He shifted his weight. The practice sword came up. "Ready?"
Kyon mirrored the stance. Or rather, his body mirrored it. The same ghost reflexes from the ditch. The same muscle memory. His feet spread. His knees bent. His grip adjusted without thought, sliding two inches down the handle to a position that felt natural even though he'd never held a wooden sword in his life.
Voss noticed. Those empty eyes tracked the grip adjustment and something flickered in them. Interest, maybe.
"Go," Voss said.
He moved first.
Fast. Faster than a man his age had any right to be. The practice sword came in low, angled at Kyon's leading knee, a strike designed to test reactions rather than deal damage. A probe.
Kyon stepped back. The blade missed.
Voss followed. Another strike. Higher. Aimed at the ribs. Kyon blocked it. The impact rattled through the wooden sword and into his wrists and he realized immediately that Voss was stronger than he looked. Much stronger. The compact body wasn't just muscle. It was Vital Force. Decades of it. Packed into every fiber.
Voss pressed. Three more strikes in quick succession. Left, right, center. Fast and technical and precise. Each one a different angle. Each one forcing Kyon to adjust. Testing his range. His footwork. His ability to read a pattern and adapt.
Kyon blocked the first two and dodged the third. But the dodge put him off balance and Voss was already there, stepping into the gap, the wooden sword snapping out in a horizontal cut that caught Kyon across the forearm.
Hard.
The pain was immediate and bright and it woke something up.
"One," Voss said.
Not gloating. Not apologizing. Just counting.
Kyon reset. Breathed. His forearm throbbed but the Vital Force was already working on it, dulling the pain, feeding warmth into the bruised muscle. He could feel the 20 units he'd accumulated spreading through his body like a low current, humming in his tendons, sharpening his reflexes by fractions that added up to something real.
Voss came again.
Same speed. Same control. Another probing combination. Left, left, feint high, go low. Textbook. Clean. The kind of technique that came from forty years of doing nothing but this.
But this time Kyon saw it coming.
Not because he was smarter. Not because the body remembered a counter. Because the Vital Force in his system was doing something to his perception. Slowing things down. Not literally, not some magical bullet time, but his brain was processing faster. Reading Voss's shoulders before the strike. Seeing the angle in the elbow. Predicting the trajectory from the hip rotation.
Voss feinted high.
Kyon didn't bite.
The low strike came and Kyon was already moving. He sidestepped left, let the blade pass his hip by two inches, and swung the practice sword in a tight arc that connected with Voss's exposed shoulder.
The crack echoed off the stone walls.
Voss didn't flinch. Didn't grunt. Didn't acknowledge the hit at all except to nod once and say "One" in the exact same tone.
Tied.
They circled. Voss's expression hadn't changed. Still calm. Still patient. But his posture was different now. Tighter. More deliberate. He'd been testing before. Now he was taking it seriously.
He came in hard.
No probing this time. A committed attack. Three strikes that came so fast Kyon barely saw the sword between positions. He blocked the first. Dodged the second. The third caught him in the ribs and he felt something shift inside his chest, not break, but flex in a way ribs shouldn't flex.
"Two," Voss said.
Kyon staggered back. Breathed through the pain. The Vital Force was already flooding the area, numbing it, patching it. But Voss wasn't waiting. He closed the distance in one step and swung for Kyon's head.
And the body took over.
Not Kyon's brain. Not his decisions. The ghost reflexes. The dead man's training. Whatever combat instincts had been hardwired into this body's muscles and nerves and synapses before Kyon moved in. They erupted like a switch had been flipped.
He ducked the head strike. Pivoted on his back foot. Brought the practice sword around in a rising slash that came from below his waist and traveled up at an angle that shouldn't have been possible from a ducking position. The blade caught Voss under the chin.
Not hard enough to hurt. But hard enough.
Voss's head snapped up. He stepped back. Touched his chin. Looked at the practice sword in Kyon's hand.
"Two," he said. Something in his voice was different now. Not surprise. Voss didn't seem like a man who got surprised. More like confirmation. Like he'd suspected something and just had it proved.
2-2.
They stood five feet apart. Both breathing. Both watching. The torchlight made their shadows jump and twist on the walls like they were fighting their own separate battle.
Voss reset his stance.
Kyon reset his.
And for a long, stretching second, neither of them moved.
Voss's eyes narrowed. The first expression Kyon had seen on his face other than nothing. He shifted forward. One step. Two. The practice sword came up in a guard position, high and tight, offering no openings. Conservative. Careful. The stance of a man who'd decided to stop testing and start winning.
He struck.
One move. A straight thrust aimed at Kyon's sternum. No wind up. No telegraph. Just pure intent translated into motion. The fastest thing Kyon had seen in this world.
Kyon moved.
He didn't know where it came from. Not the body's memory. Not the Vital Force. Something between the two. Something that took the ghost reflexes and the stolen energy and mixed them into a single action that was faster than anything either source could have produced alone.
He turned sideways. The thrust passed his chest by a margin so thin he felt the wind of it on his shirt. His free hand grabbed Voss's wrist. His sword hand came over the top and pressed the practice blade against Voss's throat.
Gentle.
Firm.
Clean.
The room was silent.
Voss looked down at the wooden edge touching his neck. Then up at Kyon. Those calm, patient, empty eyes. But not empty anymore. Something was in them now. Something that Kyon couldn't read and didn't want to.
"Three," Voss said.
He stepped back. Lowered his sword. Rolled his wrist where Kyon had grabbed it.
"You said this was your first fight?" he said.
"Second."
"Second." Voss repeated the word like he was chewing it. "Your body fights like it's got twenty years of training. Your timing fights like it's got five. And your instincts fight like something I haven't seen before." He set his practice sword on a rack against the wall. "What are you, Kyon?"
"I don't know yet."
Voss looked at him for a long time.
"You pass," he said. "Obviously."
The badge was iron. Small. Circular. Stamped with the guild's mark on one side and a number on the other. The red haired woman, whose name turned out to be Sable, pinned it to a leather cord and handed it to Kyon.
"Category C," she said. "Standard combat rating. Gives you access to contracts up to moderate threat level. You want higher tier work, you build a record."
"What's the highest category?"
"S. There are six S ranked mercenaries in the Graymark. You'll probably never meet any of them unless something very bad is happening."
Kyon hung the badge around his neck and turned to the bounty board.
Up close it was even bigger than he'd thought. Papers everywhere. Layered and overlapping. Some were written in clean script with official seals at the bottom. Others were barely legible, scrawled in shaky handwriting by people who'd paid their last coin to put a name on the wall.
Maren appeared beside him. She'd been upstairs handling her own guild business while he tested.
"Welcome to the menu," she said.
Kyon read.
WANTED: ASHWOLF ALPHA — Spotted north of Fellen. Responsible for livestock kills across three farms. Threat level: D. Reward: 30 silver.
BOUNTY: CRELL THE BONECUTTER — Bandit leader. Last seen in the Blackridge caves east of Fellen. Crimes: murder, robbery, kidnapping. Threat level: C. Reward: 100 silver. Dead or alive.
CONTRACT: CARAVAN ESCORT — Merchant convoy departing Fellen for Sovereignty border. 12 day round trip. Threat level: D. Reward: 80 silver + provisions.
BOUNTY: THE RED MARKS — Bandit crew. Six members. Operating on the south road between Fellen and Hargate. Threat level: C+. Reward: 200 silver. Dead only.
URGENT: BEAST SIGHTING — Unknown creature reported in the Graymire Marsh two days east. Livestock disappearances. Three hunters missing. Threat level: B. Reward: 300 silver. Guild members only.
Kyon's eyes lingered on the last one. Threat level B. Three hundred silver. Three missing hunters. And the word "unknown" where the creature's name should be.
[SYSTEM ANALYSIS: BOUNTY TARGETS DETECTED. MULTIPLE OPPORTUNITIES FOR VITAL FORCE ACCUMULATION. RECOMMENDED TARGET: CRELL THE BONECUTTER. CATEGORY D HUMAN. ESTIMATED VITAL FORCE: 18 TO 25 UNITS. SECONDARY RECOMMENDATION: RED MARKS BANDIT CREW. SIX CATEGORY E HUMANS. ESTIMATED TOTAL VITAL FORCE: 50 TO 70 UNITS.]
The numbers floated in his vision. Calm. Precise. Already doing the math that Kyon was trying not to do.
Fifty to seventy units from the Red Marks crew. That would put him at seventy to ninety total. Enough to rank alongside elite warriors. From six kills.
Six people.
Kyon blinked the notifications away.
"What are you looking at?" Maren said.
"The Red Marks. Six bandits on the south road."
"Hard contract. Six targets, C plus threat level. That's a team job, minimum three swords."
"What if it's two?"
She looked at him. "Two?"
"Me and you."
"I wasn't planning on teaming up long term."
"It's not long term. It's one job. Two hundred silver split even. You get your horse money and then some. I get my start."
Maren chewed her lip. Thinking. Running the calculation the same way she ran everything. Cost, benefit, risk, reward. He could see the gears turning behind her eyes.
"The Red Marks aren't like Drek's crew," she said. "Drek was a thug with a scar. The Red Marks are organized. They hit caravans with precision. Set ambushes. Use terrain. Their leader, a woman called Senna, used to be guild registered before she went independent and then went worse."
"So they're smart."
"They're competent. Which is more dangerous than smart."
"And between the two of us?"
She looked at him again. That evaluation. Weighing his body, his sword, his speed, that thing she couldn't explain about the way he healed and moved and fought.
"Between the two of us, we'd need a plan. A good one."
"Is that a yes?"
"It's a 'convince me over a drink and we'll see.'"
She turned and headed for the tavern side of the guild. Kyon started to follow, then stopped.
The kid was there.
Leaning against the wall near the entrance, arms crossed, watching Kyon with the same sharp eyes from the street. He'd followed them all the way to the guild and waited outside and was now standing there like he had every right to be.
"You're still here," Kyon said.
"Free country. Free town. Free wall to lean on."
"What do you want?"
The kid pushed off the wall. Straightened up. He was taller than Kyon had initially thought. Not tall, but not the scrawny child he'd seemed on the street. Up close and standing straight, he looked more like sixteen or seventeen. Lean but not weak. Quick but not fragile.
"I want to know how you caught me," the kid said.
"I felt your hand."
"Nobody feels my hand. I've been dipping pockets in Fellen since I was eleven. Soldiers. Merchants. Even guild mercenaries. Nobody catches me. You caught me before I got the draw." He stepped closer. "That means you're either the luckiest man in the Graymark or you're something else. And you don't look lucky."
"What do I look like?"
The kid grinned. It transformed his face. Turned it from sharp and guarded into something almost warm. Almost.
"You look like the kind of person I should know before everyone else does."
Kyon stared at him. There was something disarming about the honesty. No pretense. No strategy. Just a kid who'd grown up fast in a hard place and had learned to spot value when he saw it. Kyon was valuable. The kid knew it. And he was being upfront about wanting to be close to that value.
It was smart. Maybe too smart.
"What's your name?" Kyon said.
"Dael."
"Dael what?"
"Dael nothing. Same as you. Names with last names belong to people with families. I've got neither."
Kyon looked at him for a long moment. This kid was going to be trouble. He knew it the way he knew the sun wasn't coming out in this world. Instinctively and without proof.
But trouble was a relative term now. Everything was relative now. Morality. Safety. The value of a human life. All of it sliding on a scale that the system kept tilting.
"Come inside," Kyon said. "Don't steal anything."
Dael's grin widened. "No promises."
The tavern side of the guild was loud and warm and smelled like roasted meat and cheap ale. Maren had already claimed a table in the corner with a clear view of both exits, because of course she had. Kyon sat across from her. Dael pulled up a chair without being invited and sat at the end like he belonged there.
Maren looked at Dael. Looked at Kyon.
"No," she said.
"He followed me."
"He's a child."
"I'm seventeen," Dael said.
"You're a child who's seventeen."
"And you're a woman who drinks alone at a corner table with her back to the wall. We've all got problems."
Maren's eye twitched. Just barely. Kyon caught it and filed it away. Dael had a mouth. Maren didn't tolerate mouths. This was going to be an ongoing issue.
"He stays at the table," Kyon said. "That's it. We're just talking."
Maren exhaled through her nose. Let it go. She pulled the map from Drek's supplies and unfolded it on the table. The parchment was old and creased and the ink was faded, but it showed the area around Fellen clearly enough. Roads. Rivers. Terrain markers. A few settlements marked with dots.
"The Red Marks operate here," Maren said, pointing to a stretch of road south of Fellen that ran between two ridges. "It's a natural chokepoint. Caravans have to pass through single file. The Marks hit from the ridges. Crossbows first, then the ground team moves in for cleanup."
"How many crossbows?"
"Two. Maybe three. The rest are melee fighters. Senna leads from the ground. She carries a short spear and fights with a shield. Former guild, remember. She knows tactics."
Kyon studied the map. His brain was doing two things at once. The first was tactical. Analyzing the terrain, the chokepoint, the lines of sight, looking for approaches that would negate the high ground advantage. The second thing his brain was doing was worse.
It was counting.
Six targets. Eighteen to twenty five units each according to the system's estimate of Crell, and the Red Marks were rated higher. Call it fifteen to twenty per target. Maybe more for Senna. That was ninety to a hundred and twenty units total if he killed all six.
Plus his current twenty.
He'd walk out of that canyon with over a hundred units of Vital Force. More than double what an elite warrior carried. In his third day of existence.
[SYSTEM NOTE: RED MARKS ELIMINATION ALIGNS WITH KILL THRESHOLD MAINTENANCE. CURRENT THRESHOLD: 44:02:17. ESTIMATED ENGAGEMENT WINDOW: OPTIMAL.]
The system was practically wagging its tail.
"What if we don't go through the chokepoint?" Kyon said.
Maren raised an eyebrow. "Explain."
"They set ambushes for caravans. They're positioned for targets coming down the road. What if we come from above? Circle around. Get on the ridges before they do. Turn their own position against them."
Maren looked at the map. Traced the ridge lines with her finger. "It's possible. The eastern ridge has a goat path that connects to the main trail about a mile north. If we approach from the east and move south along the top, we'd be above their camp before they knew we were there."
"Then we pick them off."
"You say that like it's simple."
"Is it complicated?"
She leaned back. "Two against six. Even with surprise, even with high ground, that's bad math. We take out two with the first strike. Maybe three if we're perfect. That leaves three or four armed fighters who know they're under attack and have terrain they know better than us."
"I can handle three."
"You've killed one person."
"I've killed three things."
"Two of those were wolves."
Dael, who had been listening with the quiet attention of someone who understood that the adults were planning something that involved bodies, raised his hand.
"I know where their camp is," he said.
Both Maren and Kyon looked at him.
"How?" Maren said.
"Because I've robbed them."
Silence.
"You robbed a C plus rated bandit crew," Maren said. The disbelief in her voice was so thick you could have spread it on bread.
"Not their camp. Their supply cache. They keep a secondary stash off the main road in case they need to move fast. I found it two months ago. Took a few things. Small things. Things they wouldn't miss." He shrugged. "Point is, I've been in the area. I know the terrain. And I know where Senna posts her scouts because I had to dodge them twice."
Maren looked at Kyon.
Kyon looked at Dael.
"You're not coming on the job," Kyon said.
"Didn't say I wanted to. I'm saying I'll sell you the information for ten silver and a meal."
"Five silver."
"Eight."
"Five silver and two meals."
"Deal." Dael stuck his hand out. Kyon shook it. The kid's grip was strong for his size and his palm was calloused in the places you'd expect from someone who climbed walls and picked locks for a living.
Maren pinched the bridge of her nose. "I can't believe I'm planning a combat operation with a pickpocket."
"Freelance acquisitions specialist."
"Say that again and I'll cut your tongue out."
Dael grinned and leaned forward and started drawing on the map with his finger, tracing paths and positions with the confidence of someone who'd memorized every rock and tree in a five mile radius because his survival depended on it.
Kyon watched him talk.
Watched Maren listen despite herself.
Watched the two of them lean over the map and argue about approach angles while the noise of the tavern washed over them and the firelight made the bounty board glow on the far wall.
Three people at a table making plans.
42:38:19.
The clock pulsed.
Forty two hours.
Six targets.
A hundred units of Vital Force waiting in a canyon south of Fellen.
Kyon picked up his drink. Some dark, bitter ale that tasted like it had been brewed by someone who hated their customers. He drank it anyway. Let it burn. Let the warmth spread.
Tomorrow he was going to walk into a canyon and kill six people he'd never met. And the thing in his head was going to reward him for it. And the guild was going to pay him for it. And the town was going to thank him for it.
And some part of him, the part that was growing louder by the hour, the part that hummed with stolen energy and counted bodies like coins, was already looking forward to it.
He drank again.
Deeper.
The ale tasted like nothing.
The rush would taste like everything.
[KILL COUNT: 3]
[NEXT THRESHOLD: 42:38:19]
[ACTIVE BOUNTY: RED MARKS BANDIT CREW — 6 TARGETS — 200 SILVER]
[STATUS: ALIVE]
End of Chapter 3