“We are here for a trade…” Michael said, imitating Ellis’s voice under his breath as the trio stomped down alleyways, looking for any sort of ‘criminal’.

  Ameena said they needed to recoup the funds Ellis ‘lost’, so she was guiding them around the Crumbles, the poorer side of the city, designated by the large wall cutting through the city’s heart that kept the nobles and peasants separated. But even the poorer side had areas that were remarkably less well off than others, and her plan was to walk around one of these more unkept places while the sun set, and wait until a large group of people tried to rob them… and rob them instead.

  Ameena had said this was how they would make money, short of just assaulting the common people and taking their valuables. Ellis had tried to protest, demanding that they couldn’t do that, but a sharp look from both his companions had shut him up.

  They had just entered the area Ameena had said was ‘poor enough’.

  “Michael, look, I’m sorr—”

  “Fifteen gold each, he says!” Michael spat, speaking right over Ellis as if he weren’t even there. “Oh, Michael, it’s one gold per animal! Oh, mr bald fucker, it’s three gold each! Can’t even keep your lies straight you little shit. Oh, you got us into the city!? I love smelling like a dead animal and not bathing, it’s wonderful! My favorite activity!”

  Ellis decided to hang back, since clearly his presence was making Michael’s temper tantrum bad enough he had started to catch onto the lies. He tried not to worry about that as they trudged up and down.

  With the night descending the city had made itself even more alive. The street poles lit up the roads, casting the alleys in shadows that most citizens avoided. Some people started winding down for the night, many calls of ‘goodnight!’ and ‘see you in the morning!’ being shouted out across the roads as neighbours went into their tiny homes. But others seemed to just be waking up, walking down the street and waving at people walking past, each in groups of three to four wandering towards the Silk Road, far behind Ellis now.

  She had said this area was for the poorest of people. Designated specifically for the peasants and beggars. To Ellis, the street might as well be made of gold from how the light reflected off the buildings and clothing people wore around him. He was proud to admit he had seen purple once, but these people didn’t look far off from affording it.

  Almost none of them had holes in their clothes, many carried tools or baskets over heads that Ellis had to make way for so he didn’t topple them over. Sure, many had stains on their knees, one man looked like a butcher from the apron of blood he had strutted down the street with, holding a carcass of an animal Ellis had never seen before.

  It had a long nose and tiny little paws with a fluffy tail. It would have been cute if its smell didn’t cause his eyes to water, even though Ameena took a wide berth around the man. The butcher called it an antpisser, so he decided not to look at it, just in case its name rung true.

  They had been walking for an hour and all three of them had grown tired of it. Michael slammed his fist into a pole lighting up the road they were walking on, spooking off some children which had followed them for some reason.

  Ellis quickened his pace, catching up to Ameena as she walked after Michael’s random, angry stomping.

  “Isn’t there someone here you know?” Ellis asked her.

  Her step faltered, and then continued as if the question hadn’t bothered her.

  “And what makes you think that?”

  Besides knowing the city’s layout and ‘poor’ areas? “I don’t know, you just seem like you’ve been here before. Unless I’m wrong?”

  “You are not. But… I was young then. And it's a time I try my best to forget,” she said, her voice as even and controlled as always. But there was a hint of pain behind it.

  Ellis didn’t need his necklace to know she was telling the truth, the bitterness in her face was a dead giveaway. He didn’t push, partly because the coldness in her voice at the topic and his earlier deception meant she was probably furious with him. Mostly though, it was because he had started glancing over his shoulder ever since he had seen those children scatter, in case someone tried to follow them again. It proved to work when an alley they passed filled with hungry whispers and clinking metal.

  He was about to inform Ameena, and realized he was talking to the wrong person if he wanted to get back into his companions' good graces with this little ‘gift’. So, he ran forward and tugged on Michael’s shirt.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he snapped.

  “If we turn down this alley, I think our money problems will be solved… and so will your boredom. Temper, too, if there are as many of them as I think,” Ellis said, throwing a look over his shoulder at the alley.

  Michael squinted at Ellis like he was daft. He threw the look two more times before Michael smiled, and Ellis knew he was right to come to him with this.

  The trio stepped into a dark, dead-ended alley, almost empty except for a few wooden boxes and some old clothes. They walked to the back, Ameena and Ellis taking a seat on the boxes as Michael came to a stop half way down the alley. He threw his sword to Ameena, then rocked back and forth on his heels as he rubbed his hands together.

  It wasn’t twenty seconds later before nine men, whose shirts looked torn from scratch marks, bloodstained fingernails and twitchy eyes, stepped into the mouth of the alley and blocked off their only exit. The lights from the road extended their shadows into the dark, reaching Michael’s shoes as he continued to rock back and forth.

  They fit Ameena’s description of the area far better than anyone else they had come across, especially when they held old spades, rakes and other makeshift weapons. One even had a broken sword, licking it while he eyed Ameena up and down. But all of them had their ribs exposed, bruises and rotting teeth lining the lot of them.

  The tallest of the men stepped forward, somehow a hand taller than even Michael. His shoulders were wide enough to take up the space of three men, and he waved a broken table leg through the air as if he were menacing.

  “Hand over your money! Give us the girl! And you can go free!”

  Ameena’s scowl turned deadly, and she stood up from her seat. Ellis, not knowing what the hell was going on, unslung his bow and notched an arrow.

  Michael turned to face the men, spreading his hands wide like he wanted to give them a hug. “Friends, friends, please! Can’t we talk about this?”

  “Open your mouth one more time without offering us a copper, and we’ll make sure it’s the last time!” the tall thug roared, banging his chest like an animal as the men cheered him on.

  Michael crossed the space separating them before Ellis could blink and cracked his knuckles into the tall thug’s face. He flew backwards, all the way into the street outside of the alley. Ameena took her metal stick out of her pocket, and waved it at Michael as he loomed over all the thugs. Their smiles disappeared and their eyes grew wide, as right before them, a second Michael stepped out of the first and grinned down at the men.

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  Both Michael’s moved as if they were mirror images, his laugh echoing down the alley. Some of the men fought back at first, trying to avenge their leader. Their clubs and knives would pass through the new Michael like he wasn’t even there. The original, though, let the men hit him as he waded into the middle of their small circle.

  The closest man hit him across the back with a spade. Michael grabbed the man’s arm and brought the flat off his hand down on the man’s shoulder. It broke with a sickening crunch that had the man screaming as Michael kicked him in the chest, ripping his arm clean off. He used the severed limb as a club and swung it towards the group, spraying them with blood as he knocked a few of them down.

  He let go of the arm, grabbed two men by the hem of their shirts and smashed their heads together, leading to a mish mash of meat and bone. The men had grown weary of the new mirror Michael, and went after the original. But Michael didn’t seem to feel the pain they were trying to inflict, every sharpened end of a spade or small knife that drew a cut across his body, or lucky club that thudded against him only made him laugh harder.

  He focused on attacking each man in turn, one at a time, until there were only two remaining. They seemed to be the smartest, because they dropped their weapons and tried to run. One even managed to leave the alley, since Michael caught the first before he’d even turned around. Michael flattened his skull against the wall, then ran after the last man who had fled with a howl of excitement.

  Ellis knew he wouldn’t make it far.

  There were two men that ‘survived’ Michael’s rampage. One of them had had his arm ripped off. The other’s leg had been bent the wrong way after Michael stomped on his knee. Both men were crawling towards the light of the road, gasping from the pain as they called out for help.

  Ameena strode forward and took off a knife at her belt that Ellis had never seen before. The blade was as long as her forearm, and sharp enough to pierce right through the men’s skulls like they were made of butter. It dawned on Ellis that’s what she grabbed every time her hands drifted to her waist, hidden perfectly in the pants she wore.

  Ellis’s breathing had stopped as Ameena dealt with the robbers. When the thugs had first entered the alley, with those sick grins and that look in their eyes, they had disgusted him. Now though… he was far more disgusted with the people he traveled with. Ellis’s hands shook as Ameena cleaned the blood off of her knife on one of the man’s pants.

  He could hear the footsteps, the angry and horrified shout that barreled down the alley towards her, but he couldn’t whisper, let alone call out to Ameena in warning. The big man who Michael knocked out first barreled into the alley and tackled Ameena to the floor, scrambling up to straddle her waist while raising the club above his head.

  The moment he touched her, Ellis was snapped out of his stupor. He pulled back the string and aimed for the man’s head.

  Then hesitated.

  He was a man. Ellis could not eat him. Couldn’t use his body for anything. The taste of lizard filled his mouth as he took aim, but every part of him told him not to draw that arrow. To let that bastard raise that club and smash it down on Ameena’s face until she blended right in with the rest of the corpses littering the alleyway.

  He wanted her dead. So why stop this?

  His club rose higher and higher, before she kicked her one leg over his shoulder and wrenched it down, trapping his arm between his body and her thigh. Then she looked directly at Ellis, and screamed.

  “Help me! Please help me! Ellis! Please!”

  The man threw her leg off with a snarl and punched downward, hitting the floor inches away from her head as she jerked it out the way. She scratched him through the face, battering at his arms and legs that held her down. His arm once again lifted up, ready to bring that club down and end her life.

  …My kill. My kill!

  She! Is! Mine!

  Ellis let the arrow fly. It hit the man in his left eye, the arrow embedding itself inches into his skull. The tall thug’s whole body spasmed, the strength draining out of him. Within a second, he went still and slumped over Ameena’s head. She wriggled out from under him, crying and snarling as she did so.

  Once free, she crawled onto her hands and knees over the body, and started screaming at the man. Then she started stabbing him, over and over until his face and chest were more meat than skin.

  Ellis could only watch. Because she did not stop stabbing the corpse. And she did not stop screaming.

  Ellis barely heard the distant begging that came to an abrupt stop over the animalistic noise she was making as she butchered the man, covering herself head to toe in crimson from her disgusting work.

  Finally, her screaming died, and she sat back onto her haunches, panting like she had run a marathon. Michael’s loud humming echoed from down the street when she had finished catching her breath. She stood up, threw off her bloodied shirt, before stripping one of the dead men and put on his instead, cleaning her face with the man’s stripped pants. It got rid of most of the blood.

  Michael stepped into the alley just as Ameena finished ‘cleaning’ up, holding the last man by his crooked neck, humming to himself. The arrow sticking out a thug’s head made Michael raise an eyebrow at Ellis, before he snorted and went to Ameena and tried to put his arm around her. She pushed him off, stepped back and waved her hand at him. A blue ball of mana hit him square in the chest, much like it had to Ellis the day before. The small cuts on his face and neck started to close right in front of Ellis’s eyes.

  She started to speak, and by some miracle her voice went back to being even, controlled. As if she hadn’t been screaming for three minutes straight.

  “Collect their coin. I saw a tavern on the way here, we can eat there.” She cleaned off the knife on the big dead man's shirt, kicked him one more time and then left the alley.

  Michael seemed disappointed she blew him off, then walked out after her, throwing the man in his hand down on the pile of bodies he had made earlier, not even glancing back in Ellis direction.

  Ellis had not moved a muscle since he let the arrow fly. He hadn’t even blinked, only stared at the man on the ground.

  “..I’m… I’m sorry… No… you deserv— she's mine, okay? She’s mine! You shouldn’t have gotten in the way! Fuck you! You deserved this!” Ellis screamed.

  The corpse did not respond.

  Ellis kicked it the same way Ameena had, before he got down on his knees and patted the man’s trouser pockets. He went through each corpse like that, his hands sometimes shaking, sometimes not.

  He was used to the smell of blood. Courting a butcher's daughter made it a necessity, after all. And yet he was retching the entire time he searched through the for the coin. Once he got his gagging under control, and the feeling in his legs returned, he followed Michael’s stench.

  Ellis would have been excited to see a real life tavern. Adventuring parties and all sorts of mischief started there in the tales he had heard in his youth. But he didn’t care.

  He was walking alongside Ameena, Michael behind them and humming a tune as they walked through the streets. Ellis kept trying to take in the view of the city he had always dreamed of living in, and yet every time a person passed him, they would scrunch their faces at Ellis before running off. Reminding him exactly of what he had just done.

  Ellis gritted his teeth, and tried to think in cold hard facts. He asked Ameena how they would go anywhere without rousing suspicion because of the… liquid, covering his hands and most of her body.

  Ameena seemed to be in the exact same headspace Ellis was, because she didn’t speak. She only brought her black stick up and tapped it against Ellis’s chest, before doing the same to Michael and herself.

  Both of them walked side by side, not daring to look at the other. Her face wore an expression of someone who never wished to speak of the matter in that alley ever again. Ellis came to a silent agreement to do the same.

  They found the tavern, which they had indeed passed earlier. The door was a dirty cloth they had hung up in the entryway, next to which hung a flier, advertising a giant festival, the date a few days away. It bragged that every assortment of items in existence would be on sale for that night and day, along with city wide games and godly burnings. That was the only piece of the building that seemed even a little well kept. Each and every wall of the tavern was cracked from what Ellis could see, and despite being the early evening, people stumbled through that cloth, looking drunk, dangerous or both.

  Michael smiled at the sight of them, before he marched inside. He greeted each server like they were old friends before sitting down at the cleanest booth. If Ellis squinted, he could almost pretend he didn’t see old food and dust on the seats and floor surrounding it.

  Ellis and Ameena slid into the booth together, opposite Michael. His eyes narrowed at their shared seat, before he leaned forward while drumming his hands against the table, the blood on them splattering onto Ellis’s face as he spoke.

  “Alright then Ameena, what’s the plan?”