“You may refer to me as Charlemagne.” The rat said, stepping down from his ramshackle throne. He held a powerful, regal glare that gave him the impression of a real king.

  Paracelsus, and Tariq for that matter, bit their tongues to hold back the collective thought And he speaks?, and instead just held their mouths agape like fish that were unceremoniously removed from the water. As the more tactful one, the captain first recovered and shook the king’s hand, though not without a healthy spoonful of trepidation.

  “Apologies, mate, it’s just - I’ve never seen someone quite like you.” He replied.

  Then, with a great bellowing laugh and a powerful clap on the sailor’s back, he let the glare and grimace go with the wind, which in their current environment was really more of a stale, malodorous draft. In its place his teeth, yellow and haggard though they were, stretched into a smile a mile wide.

  “I’m just joking, my good fellow! Prithee tell, what doth a handsome pair of gentlemen such as yourself seek in these catacombs?”

  “I’m Paracelsus, and this is Tariq,” He coughed into his hand to try and regain some lost sense of normalcy, as though he wasn’t talking to an eloquent, strangely well dressed rat, “We seek only friendship, good fellow. Lonceré here tells us you’re quite lonely in these bleak, dreary halls.”

  “Paracelsus, hm?” The king rat gripped his chin, “Well, I make do. The rats speak, and more to the point, they never judge my appearance like humans. Or any of those other assorted sort you surface-dwellers consort with.”

  “Well, not to discredit you, but I’ve had my fair share of difficulties with that ‘assorted sort’,” Paracelsus smiled, “And my crew are similarly outcasts.”

  “A delightful invitation - ” There was no such implication “ - But I fear, friend, that I must decline, though that is to say not that it doesn’t pain mine heart. Unfortunately, the same curse which gives me mine grim guise locks me to this city.”

  “You never mentioned a curse!” Lonceré interjected, offended at having been left out of the loop.

  “On several occasions, actually,” Charlemagne rebuked, “Thou simply possesses the listening skills of a lesser ape. The scepter?”

  Lonceré then put his hands on his hips, and made a grand show of exclaiming in recognition. He even went as far as to walk over to the throne and attempt to lift it, before his hand was caught by the king.

  “Tut tut, foolish fellow,” He chided the cook, “Truly, thou art not as evolved as thy comely compatriot. Whosoever wields it must fully accept the curse - form and prison in tow.”

  “Wait!” Tariq was now the one to speak up, “I think you were right, Captain. Something is following us.”

  “Three someones.” Charlemagne replied, tilting his head in confusion, “They aren’t with you?”

  As if on cue, Graave, Peeares, and Taylor all jumped out, without the foresight of removing their tops having soiled the garments, and stood at the ready, guns primed.

  “Damn, you are persistent.” Paracelsus marvelled, subtly scanning around the room for any quirk that might give them the advantage.

  “I prefer the term driven.” The Lieutenant responded, “And you have proven quite the tiresome quarry.”

  “What can I say?” He joked, tapping his foot. It seemed like a nervous habit at first, but Lonceré knew better. It was a rhythmic, patterned tapping that repeated, and each sequence bore a letter: W - E - T - G - U - N - S was the message, “I’ve never been one to be tied down.”

  Immediately recognizing the signal, Lonceré used his gift to grab a length of rope in the corner before sending it toward Taylor, who tried to fire her gun, but found it inoperable. A second later, the pistol was dragged from her hands and thrown across the room.

  “No you don’t!” As Paracelsus tried to create a gun to swing the fight in his favor, Graave dove at him, knocking it out of his hands and knocking the Captain’s breath out of him.

  “By Paace, just give up!” He shouted back, slipping out from under the bearman’s grip and managing to make himself a small whip. It was most likely a mistake, given the thick skin of the Lieutenant, but he nonetheless persisted.

  Meanwhile, Tariq stood behind his shield, taking blow after blow upon it from Peeares’ spear, which came down with a rhythmic tunk tunk tunk. Being rather inexperienced in melee combat, the lad was rather on the backfoot as he clumsily reached for his knife and disgracefully swiped at his opponent.

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  “It was you, you know,” The angel said, “You were the one who ultimately led us here!”

  He followed up his words with a low sweep of his polearm which knocked Tariq onto his back. The helmsman first rolled right, over his shoulder, and then back again to dodge a pair of stabs directed to his torso. A third one seemed to be ready to gore him, but a spillover from whatever Lonceré was currently engaged with slowed him just enough to allow Tariq to shield himself. Due to the strong recoil of the weapon against metal, Tariq was able to sloppily, but undeniably able to turn the tides in his favor by kicking the Marine’s shin and sending him reeling.

  With a quick, spritely jump to his feet, Tariq responded with a great blow to the head from his shield, having dropped his blade too far away to be of use. With that stun, Peeares dropped his spear, using his hunched-over form to retaliate and knock the younger man’s shield out of his hand. They both assumed a fighting stance, low and wide like they were about to get into a wrestling match.

  “I don’t remember you.” Taylor said, in the meanwhile.

  “I don’t remember you either -” Lonceré said, summoning his double and ducking under a horizontal slash from her saber, “Are we supposed to remember each other?”

  “I don’t particularly care -” She swung, slicing his double apart, receiving for her efforts a loose stone across the jaw, “- I just thought maybe I missed you back in Bataine.” Then, in her own retaliatory manner, she socked him clean in the face with her off hand, slashing him across the chest while he was stunned.

  “Never been.” He hissed in pain, using his gift to fight with his sword from afar.

  While it was nothing new to him, the remote duelling afforded to the cook was sufficiently off-kilter to throw off Taylor’s normally impeccable swordplay. An opponent with no weight, whose footwork you can’t read is a unique brand of torture, but luckily for her, it also meant that when his double, with loud thunderous footsteps, came charging, she was able to easily redirect the unheld weapon to attack his clone.

  What she was unable to foresee, however, was Lonceré diving and grabbing the gun Paracelsus had earlier dropped. He held the double-pistol triumphantly, assured that they had now won the fight. No sooner had he started relishing in his victory, however, than had one of the Lieutenant’s claws come flying from his paw and pierced the cook’s hand, causing him to fire the gun - hitting Taylor in the knee - before dropping it again.

  “Dammit!” He shouted, “You just wait there a second.” He began the arduous process of wresting the claw from his hand.

  “No - you wait!” Taylor said, gripping her knee and writhing on the ground, “Bastard!”

  Meanwhile, having long since abandoned their weapons, Tariq and Peeares set upon grappling each other. Both being somewhat on the lanky side, and both equally alike in their inexperience in such fields as hand-to-hand combat, it was rather unimpressive. It quickly devolved into a tangle of limbs with no real coordination or purpose, hair and limbs being pulled and lame attempts at submission holds being executed. Eventually though, mostly by sheer coincidence, Tariq’s elbow found its way into his opponent’s face, whereupon he was stunned for some thirty seconds, more than enough for him to straddle the angel’s chest and pin him to the floor, and knock him out with a blow across the chin.

  “Don’t take your eyes off of me!” A short few minutes ago, we return to Graave delivering a square uppercut to Paracelsus’ stomach, which was only exacerbated by the difference in size and weight between the two.

  Paracelsus, for all his wit, was rendered speechless, albeit mostly due to the breathlessness the blow upon his torso delivered unto him. Before he could even recover, Graave kicked him in the shin, knocking him to his knee, before finishing the combo with a brutal smack to the temple, knocking the Captain on his side.

  Still, not one to be outwitted by brute strength, he returned with a slap on the ground, raising the floor to hit the Lieutenant in the jaw, which did very little, all things considered. In fact, it was so poor in efficacy, all it really caused was the bearman getting enraged and raising his saber above his head.

  “Don’t move.” Tariq said. He’d regained the pistol and had it pointed at the marine.

  “You aren’t gonna shoot me, son.” Graave said over his shoulder, “You don’t have it in you.”

  “Don’t shoot,” Paracelsus wheezed, “That’s - that’s an order.”

  “What other choice do I have?” Tariq asked. His body language was clear, his hands were shaking, his breaths were short and erratic, he was nervous.

  “Listen to Parace,” Tariq advised, still on his back, “It’s not worth it.”

  “You haven’t done anything too far, son,” Graave said, “You can’t come back from killing a marine.”

  “We’ll get arrested if I don’t do this!” He shouted, trying to convince himself more than anything.

  “He can’t,” Paracelsus pleaded. He saw the look in Tariq’s eyes, a look he was all too familiar with. He absolutely refused to allow his friend to make the same mistake he did, “I’m the only one who can patch his soldiers up. He’ll have no choice but to let us walk.”

  “You will never escape me, Paracelsus,” Graave argued, “Now or in the future.”

  With that, the Lieutenant signed his death warrant. Shortly after, a shot rang out, and Graave’s lifeless body, with a new hole in the head, fell to the ground with a heavy thud. Immediately after, the shooter dropped the gun, his whole body now shaking.

  —

  “What are we doing here?” Gareland asked, observing the decrepit house.

  “Personal business,” Serpacinno replied, “Stand guard.”

  Immediately after delegating that task, the swordswoman kicked the door in, looking at the abandoned abode and scanning for any signs of habitation. She heard a familiar voice groaning from the other room, and upon investigating, her suspicions were confirmed - there sat Silver, packing and dressing the wound she’d sustained on the head.

  At that moment, she had a million emotions she wanted to convey. Rage, disgust, even a fleeting sense of guilt, but all that came out was a choked, gargling growl.

  “You again?!” Silver asked, searching desperately for a weapon to defend herself.

  Just as she was about to grab one, Serpacinno stabbed the responsible hand, pinning it to the floor before kicking the gun away. Then, she knelt down, gripped Silver by the hair and forced her to look her in the eye, “Me again.”

  “What does he even mean to you?” The sheepwoman tried in vain to break free from her iron grip, but a warrior’s hands are useless without serious strength.

  “I don’t owe you an explanation,” Serpacinno spat back, lowering her gaze into a powerful glare, which combined with the snakes on her head standing on edge to give her a menacing, almost demonic gaze, “What matters now is what to do with you.”

  “What do you expect me to do? Beg for my life? You’ll either kill me or not.”

  Serpacinno gave a heavy sigh at that, she was right, after all. “Parace doesn’t believe in killing. You’ll find I have no such problems.”

  And in an instant, Silver’s head was removed from her body, and Serpacinno simply cleaned the blood from her sword as she left.