# Chapter 2: First Blood

  *Two days later.*

  The rain in the Roots of Orynth finally stopped, leaving behind a cold that cracked lips and froze the black puddles of sewage.

  In the tiny apartment, the loudest sound wasn't the wind rattling the resin-glued shards of window glass. It was Nasir's cough.

  With every ten-year-old spasm, the boy's chest caved in as if crushed by an invisible hand. Malik, sitting on the edge of the straw mattress, held a clay mug with boiled water, waiting for the attack to pass.

  When Nasir finally managed to breathe, his brown eyes were teary, but he forced a smile for his brother.

  "See? It's already getting better," Nasir lied, his voice like coarse sandpaper.

  Malik swallowed hard. He was fifteen, and the calluses on his hands proved he worked sixteen hours a day killing rats and unloading wagons for the minor guilds. And yet, the mug only held hot water with some crushed mint leaves.

  He stared at the rusted butcher's cleaver resting on the floorboards next to his patched boots.

  "Hot water doesn't clear the channels, Nas," Malik said, his voice low. "What you read... about the Aether not being able to flow and inflaming the tissue. The apothecary on Copper Street said *Moon-Thistle Extract* clears the inflammation."

  Nasir's eyes widened, coughing weakly.

  "Malik, no. Moon-Thistle costs twenty silver coins. You spend a whole week in the sewers to earn three."

  "Rats pay poorly." Malik picked up the heavy cleaver and tied it to his worn leather belt. He put on his thick canvas coat. "But South Rim Purge contracts pay half up front. It's for today."

  Nasir threw the covers aside, panic seizing his pale little face. From under the mattress, he hurriedly pulled out the discarded journal with oil-stained edges that Malik had brought him days ago.

  "The South Rim isn't for you! That's a magical waste dump from the refineries. The rats there mutate. They get aggressive... Poisonous!" Nasir quickly flipped through the loose pages. "The apprentice who threw this away wrote in the margins: *'Second-order mutation creates a bony beak. Piercing the dermis requires tempered steel at minimum'*. Your cleaver barely cuts stale bread, Malik!"

  Malik placed his hand over the book, stopping his brother's frantic search. The gesture was gentle, but firm.

  "Nas. Look at me." Malik forced a toothy smile that tried to convey confidence, though his eyes revealed the true fear of an orphan thrown to the wolves. "I will be back before the bread goes hard. And I will bring the Extract. Just... stay in bed. And try not to read in the dark, it ruins your sight."

  He turned his back and left before Nasir could argue, closing the door with a soft thud.

  Minutes later, in the silence of the room, Nasir stared at the stained pages of the journal, his chest throbbing.

  " *'The spasms of the mutated beasts respond to light'*," the boy reread, whispering. "He's going to attack in the dark. Stupid. He is so stupid."

  ***

  The tunnel reeked of sulfur and rotting meat. The water flowed in a sickly yellow hue, thick as syrup. Malik tightened his grip on the improvised handle of the cleaver, already slippery with his sweat.

  Nasir was right. Like always.

  It wasn't just a "big rat." What Malik was facing looked like a nightmare ripped from a horror book. The Mutated-Rodent was the size of a fully grown hunting hound, but hairless. Its skin was a bubbling, pale mass, and its jaw was flanked by two bony fangs leaking a black acid that smelled sickeningly of bitter almonds.

  Malik attacked first. The cleaver struck the monster's flank, but the mutated skin absorbed the blow perfectly. The aberration grunted and whipped its scaly tail, striking Malik's ribs.

  The impact threw Malik against the stone wall. The air fled his lungs.

  He fell to his knees in the foul water, a sharp pain in his side indicating at least two cracked ribs. The rat advanced, its open jaws dripping acid.

  Light. Nasir had said something about light. But Malik was in the dark, breathless.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  *Sorry, Nas,* was his only instinctive thought.

  Then the world exploded in metal and sparks.

  A heavy rectangular shield, pitted with dents like a bank vault door, came scraping along the curved wall of the tunnel. The deafening screech of tearing metal and a shower of white sparks blinded the mutated rat. The monster hissed, recoiling in panic.

  From behind the steel, a broad figure emerged. A dwarf in filthy chainmail and a braided beard stepped forward, sinking the flat back of a gigantic hammer perfectly into the rat's exposed spine.

  The wet crunch of breaking bone preceded the monster's fall, sinking dead into the toxic mud.

  Leaning against the darkness of the foul sewer on the other side, in no rush to descend the tunnel stairs, a slender woman wrapped in a long gray coat struck a match against the damp stone. The spark illuminated the thin smoke of a crumpled cigarette.

  "Overkill, Brog," Miren's monochromatic voice echoed from above, heavy with fatigue and boredom. "A clean cut to the neck would have saved the hide. We could've sold it."

  The dwarf spat into the floating toxic waste.

  "And would you rather clean guts or pay for this miserable wretch's funeral? He's lucky my shield is pure iron, or that beast's drool would have eaten through my monthly quota." Brog rested his hammer on his shoulder and turned his beady eyes toward Malik.

  The boy gasped for air, his side protesting in sharp agony, still trying to understand what the hell had just invaded the swamp. Nobody looked like this in the South Rim.

  Brog kicked the rat's body.

  "A butcher's cleaver? Are you insane, boy? Or are you just in a hurry to become a corpse? Have you been smoking rotten roots?"

  Miren took a drag and exhaled a column of smoke through the tiny sliver of light between the fetid sewers.

  "His rib is fractured, I can hear the splintering from here. Give the beggar an apothecary's paracetamol and let's get out of here before we stink."

  Malik stared at Miren's smoke, his gasps fighting the shock.

  The Moon-Thistle. Nasir's coins... the bounty of the aberration was right there, dead by someone else's hands. The contract was gone.

  He swallowed the pain in his side and forced his trembling knees to straighten, leaning on the cleaver. The foul water dripped from his clothes.

  "Half the silver," Malik rasped, coughing scraping his throat. "I... I found it first. Give me the fangs for the bounty."

  The healer froze with the cigarette between her lips.

  Brog and the rings in his beard dropped into a silent laugh that sounded like a choking bear.

  "Boy, I could swallow your dull knife and still use you to shine my shield... But your audacity is ugly to look at." The dwarf extended a massive hand clad in thick leather and hauled Malik up by the collar, ignoring the boy's groans of pain. "Where does hell spit out stubborn fools like you?"

  "Keep quiet before I crack your whole body in thirty pieces, Brog." Miren stepped down the stairs and approached, looking at Malik's hunched shoulder with profound indifference. She kicked three silver coins and the poisoned rat's fangs into the water near the boy's boots. "The hide pays for our trip down. The extra life is on credit."

  The rat's fangs felt heavy in Malik's injured hand, snatched from the sewer with desperate speed. Three silver coins and the fangs. Five, if the alchemist was generous. Barely enough for the syrup.

  He heard the veterans' boots walking away, Brog's laughter muffled by the curve of the tunnel, and the final hiss of Miren's cigarette hitting the water.

  *Laugh*, Malik thought. *Laugh while you can.*

  He squeezed the mutated fangs in his fist until the rigid bony edge tore into his palm. The hot blood ran, mixing with the foul water.

  It wasn't enough. It was never enough.

  But as he dragged his broken body out of the South Rim, one thing stuck in his bones, much deeper than the pain in his ribs: the absolute certainty that, one day, he would be upstairs. Standing right beside them.