The Bodyhunter’s child squirmed in his grip. Arcos ignored his pathetic whimpering.

  He took another running leap across the rooftops of the city, his boots dashing by windows and chimneys. His strength had grown at a rate that he did not expect. His grip was iron, and the child cried out in terror as he flew through the air with him, legs and arm flailing. Arcos was able to leap clear over the alleys with his burden, without sacrificing any of his speed. He was fast. He was light. He was powerful.

  It had been so easy to dispatch the guards at the Northern Gate. They were children playing at swords compared to him. Had it always been that easy to kill people? Had he been holding himself back all this time?

  Arcos never truly considered that. Had he been pulling back his punches, too scared to hurt or kill with extreme brutality? Was the strength really there this entire time?

  And how had he just accessed it properly? With a reason. With a very good reason.

  And they all died for that good reason. The Bodyhunters, Markus, the Fist, the guards, all the worms that stood against him… All of them.

  That reason which he held in his hand, crying and sobbing for his poor, poor mother. Arcos was surprised to find no twinge of guilt in his heart at the thought of slashing down the boy’s mother.

  She got in his way, just like the rest of them.

  She had to be stopped, and she deserved it.

  She deserved it for marrying that monster. For rutting with that monster. For birthing his spawn.

  She was culpable, like all of the rest. Maybe she succumbed to her wounds.

  Maybe the Bodyhunter found her like that, dead and gone forever… Good.

  Arcos smiled. He hoped that was the case. He wanted that man to suffer. He wanted him to experience loss, grief, sorrow, pain… everything that Arcos felt. Everything that Arcos suffered through alone. Only then would he feel something akin to peace.

  The wall to the south came to them as they landed on the final row of houses. Arcos sent a moon-filled glare at the boy to be silent.

  The boy shut his mouth, though he continued to cry in silence. Arcos picked him up with his free hand, wrapping his arm under the child’s torso like a rug. Arcos held his friend carefully in his right hand.

  He jumped down towards the ground and landed with a thud amongst the rubbish of the alley that opened towards the expanse of the road that separated house and wall. After checking up and down the encircling road for any sign of activity, Arcos and his quarry darted across and reached the stairway that snaked up the wall to the battlements. Arcos rushed upon these steps without breaking stride nor pace.

  Reaching the top, Arcos was confronted by three guards playing cards by a candle.

  Foolish men. Unfortunate, foolish men.

  Arcos threw the child to the ground, stunning the boy. He then leapt at the three guards who had no chance to draw their weapons. Alaintiqam spun through the air and sliced, cut, stabbed, and plunged. Within a matter of moments, all three guards lay dead amongst the overturned table with the cards and a dead candle splayed out on the stone floor.

  The boy watched at all in silent terror as the spilled blood spread across the stone.

  “Stand.” Arcos barked at him.

  The boy stood up on shaky legs and then collapsed to his knees.

  “Please…” he whined. “I want my daddy. I want my mummy.”

  “Another word from you and I shall cut off your hand.” Arcos snapped back before grabbing the boy by the wrist and jerking him up to his feet. The boy squeaked out in pain as Arcos felt something crack in the boy’s forearm.

  Damn, he didn't know his own newfound strength.

  The boy began to cry harder than before. Arcos sighed with anger. He cuffed the boy across the face, silencing his incessant babbling.

  Then he dragged the whiny brat to the edge of the wall. Climbing onto the edge, he glanced down, spying for any sign of patrols. Seeing none, he dragged the boy under his arm and kicked himself away from the battlements.

  As they flew down to the ground, Arcos knew he would land and it would not hurt him. He knew that his knees would not buckle nor break. He knew that he was different now. He was truly beyond his own limits. He liked that.

  He slammed onto the ground with as much impact as jumping onto a feathered mattress.

  They sped across the plains of the South, keeping clear of the Southern Road that led to the ports of Tarney and Tigerstone and the farming towns closer to the Great Thicket. Under the great light of the full moon, Arcos spied the caravans of merchants queued and travelling in their convoys on the road. They were heading towards the city.

  He could hear the laughter of children and merchants, blissfully ignorant to the horrors of the world. Arcos snarled at that laughter. They had no idea. They had no fucking idea how lucky they were.

  It did not take long till they reached the Salt Pit.

  Last time Arcos saw it, the pit was home to a towering plume of green fire that leapt up into the night sky, destroying all trace of the slave prison. Now that fire was long dead, leaving a charred and brutalised mass grave, opening to the sky like the blackened maw of a desiccated giant. Pieces of broken, burnt scaffolding remained fixed to the inner walls, some steps still stretched down into the gloom. It yawned open, inviting any curious soul to step down into its black, shadowy depths. Odd, the moon’s light could not fully penetrate that abyss.

  Arcos felt his stomach turn with a degree of fear, anger, and bitterness.

  He never thought in all his years that he would ever come back to this place. This evil place was the source of all his woe and rage. How many years did he lose here? Seven or eight? All for a bag of silver for his father and the loveless heart of a Bodyhunter.

  Arcos glanced down at Snowhair’s spawn. The boy was tired, hurt, and terrified. Judging that the boy would not run for fear of death or mutilation, Arcos dropped the boy to the ground. The boy fell like a lame cat and remained there, curling into a ball and nursing his broken wrist.

  Arcos checked on Alaintiqam, still held true to his right hand. Locked into place. His grip on the blade was so tight, he started to lose feeling in his fingers… But he didn’t mind. The sword was still in pristine condition. Truly, enchanted blades like these were in a class of their own.

  “It is not my pleasure to do this.” Arcos said softly to the boy as he checked for any other damage to the sword, not once looking to the boy. The boy had ceased his whimpers and began to listen quietly.

  “I want to kill your father. That is all.” Arcos admitted.

  The boy stared up at him.

  “I want to kill him for what he did to me. What he did to my friends. For what he did to my… to my woman.”

  Arcos looked down at him.

  “Then you came along. I heard of you and your mother. Tell me, what sort of woman would ever love a man like your father?”

  The boy pulled himself onto his knees. He tenderly held onto his wrist as he looked back at Arcos. “Daddy… Daddy is a good man. Mummy loves him so much. I love him so much.”

  Arcos sneered. “Really?”

  “Yes.” The boy replied with a glint of defiance in his eyes.

  Arcos threw back his head and barked out a laugh. “HA! I doubt that… No matter. It won’t matter soon anyhow… You will be used to getting what I want. And I want you to know this… if you weren’t his son, and your mum wasn’t his wife… you’d be left alone. Understand this: your father had this coming for a long time. And all of this is his fault.”

  After a few minutes of waiting, Arcos rested on his knees and closed his eyes. He breathed in and out slowly. He was trying to regain his calmness. Trying to centre his turbulent soul. But try as he could… he couldn’t get the images that Alaintiqam had revealed to him from his mind.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Nerisity screaming and crying.

  The hanged Silverstreakers.

  Markus laughing.

  The slaves in the Pit dead and tortured. The slaves. The manacles.

  The rapes. The chains. The whips. The cells. The blood. The dead.

  The baby that should have been his to love, protect and raise. Nerisity, tear-stricken and broken, holding onto the bundle of bloody clothes…

  Arcos snarled under his breath, leapt to his feet and then let out a roar of anger. He screamed out into the night.

  After that and all that panting anger, he turned his head towards his bait.

  The boy had his hands tied together with twine and was also on his knees. He was also gagged, a rag tied roughly into and around his mouth to cease his incessant whimpering. He was staring at Arcos with stricken terror.

  Alaintiqam quivered in his hand. Arcos glanced at his sword. Ah, yes… Alaintiqam, always there for him at his darkest moments. They were there for him when he needed them most. And this was such a moment.

  Arcos paced around the Salt Pit, he completed two laps of walking in that time. He was about to make a third lap when Alaintiqam sent a shiver up his arm.

  An alert. He wasn’t alone.

  He dashed towards the boy and stood behind him, sword readied and stance prepared.

  His pale eyes cut through the darkness. This further surprised him. The night was thick with black, but that mattered not to Arcos. It was as clear as a summer’s evening. A figure was rushing through the grasslands, running at a sprint. And the figure was not alone; a group of four people followed.

  The first figure came close enough, fifty metres or so.

  Arcos glowered. It was the Bodyhunter, Snowhair. His face was pale with exhaustion, fear, and worry. He wielded a shield in his left and one of his iron sickles in his right.

  The group of four that came up behind him also stopped in their tracks. They stared at him. He stared back. It was them. His friends…

  “So…” Arcos stated coolly. “You all stand with this monster?”

  “Arcos!” Boras shouted. He held his axes at the ready as he glared at Arcos. “What the hells are you doing?”

  Arcos regarded Boras with little emotion. “What needs to be done.”

  “Blade.” Tilda snapped. “Drop that sword at once. Step away from the boy.”

  Arcos spat at the ground. “No, mentor. That will not happen.” He spat out the word mentor with such vitriol.

  Torrance looked towards the others. “He’s too far gone.”

  Arcos raised an eyebrow and snapped out a laugh. He looked around himself, at the ridiculous scenario he was in. Maybe he was too far gone. Maybe he had lost his mind. After all, who could blame him after everything he had suffered?

  “Snowhair.” Arcos pointed at him with his sword. “You have come. Not alone, it seems. But you have come all the same. Good.”

  “Because you have my son.” Snowhair strained his voice.

  His eyes watered and his body shook with rage. “You broke into my home. You attacked my wife. You stole our son!” He made a few more running steps towards him, but Arcos raised his sword over the boy. That stopped the Bodyhunter in his tracks.

  “Please.” Snowhair begged. “Just let my boy go. Let Thaddeus go…”

  “WHY!?” Arcos found himself screaming suddenly. His anger lashed out with the speed and viciousness of a cobra. Confronted by the monster of his childhood, he was losing his control. “Why do you, you of all the people in this world, have such a perfect life?!”

  Snowhair looked taken aback by the question. “What-?”

  “I’ve seen it all!” Arcos shouted, tears streaming down his face. "You have the beautiful wife! The perfect son! The quaint home! All begotten from the blood, sweat, tears, and lives of slaves like me!”

  Snowhair threw down his sickle and shield and raised his hands in a clamouring act of begging. “I just want my boy back. You can do whatever you like to me. But let me take my son back. Please. Please, please. Gods damn it, get that fucking sword away from my son!!”

  Arcos lowered his sword, but only for it to rest its sharp edge against Thaddeus’s neck. The boy froze. Snowhair froze. No one moved.

  Arcos applied just the smallest level of pressure against the boy’s neck. Just one jerk and his blood would run out into the grass.

  “Arcos! Don’t!” Came a shout from behind Snowhair. The running of feet came next and Nerisity herself rushed out from the gloom and stopped halfway between Snowhair and Arcos.

  Nerisity. It was Nerisity.

  She was dressed in clean clothes, though it did little to hide the harrowed look in her eyes. She was nearly broken by the events of this night. But she was here. Standing strong and staring down Arcos with a reproachful look. Reproachful? Reproachful?

  Arcos’s breathing became haggard and fast. “Why are you here?” He asked her. “Why are you standing with him? He ruined everything! You should be killing him! You should be killing him with me!”

  Nerisity shook her head. “No. No! That won’t make anything better. You’ll just make it more of the same. The same bullshit that’s been hurting us for all these years. And gods know, I want Darius punished. But he’s been punished enough by the guilt he has. I’ve seen it.”

  “Guilt?!” Arcos scoffed. “Monsters don’t have guilt!”

  “Monsters like Markus. They have no guilt. Darius only worked for him. What happened to Silverstreak… to me… to you… You know it wasn’t Darius’s fault. He had no choice. You know that. And you know it wasn’t Thaddeus’s fault either. So why are you doing this?”

  Arcos shook with so much misplaced anger. “But— But— But he could have set me free!” He pointed his free hand at Snowhair. “He took me from my dad! From my home! He could have saved me from this place, but he didn’t! Why? Because he was only following orders? No. No! I will not accept that! Never!”

  “And your answer for that is to kill an innocent child?” Nerisity snapped back. Her neck was taut with strained muscles from her raised voice. The fire in her chest was slowly building back to its full height. “The Arcos I know… The Arcos I love… he would never harm a child. I’m not talking to Arcos anymore… I’m talking to that sword, am I?”

  Arcos’s face suddenly slackened. His contorted features relaxed into a placid expression that belied the ageing emotions within. His eyes seemed to shine with bright light as he replied.

  Arcos……? No…. That was not Arcos. It was Alaintiqam who responded.

  Arcos's voice came out from Arcos's mouth and tongue. But there was a detached tenor in the words that followed and confirmed her assumption.

  You are the lover of Arcos. Alaintiqam smiled. Arcos's teeth shone in the darkness like stars. You speak to me now.

  “I thought so. Arcos is kind. You aren’t.” Nerisity took another step. “We want you to let Arcos go. Let them both go. You’ve given what you wanted to give to Arcos. Markus and the Bodyhunters have been destroyed. What else is there?”

  Oh, there is so much more out in the world to be cleansed. Alaintiqam said soothingly. I have seen corruption in the many decades I have been passed around like a common harlot. I have been used for evil more times than I can count. Occasionally, there has been a good soul amongst the detritus of humanity that seemed of worth to my power… but they only last for so long against the dregs that envy my silver skin. They never had the potential to truly utilise my strength. Until Arcos… Now here is a man who can pave the future towards a cleaner world.

  “This isn’t how you go about making a cleaner world!” Nerisity protested. “You do this, you’ll be no better than Markus.”

  Alaintiqam scowled at Nerisity. Don’t you turn on me as well? Arcos gave everything he had to save you. You should be grateful for what he did. You should be on your knees in thanks.

  “I’m not grateful.” Nerisity said. “Not for this…”

  That… is a pity. Alaintiqam raised the sword.

  “STOP!” Darius ran past Nerisity and then dropped to his knees. “Just stop!”

  Alaintiqam paused as they regarded the Bodyhunter.

  Darius clasped his hands together. “Please…. My life wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t. It still isn’t. I will never forgive myself for what I have done.”

  Are you saying these things… to elicit sympathy? Forgiveness? Alaintiqam sneered with Arcos’s raised eyebrow. Why is it always after the evil is committed that the penitence follows? Wouldn’t it have been better for us all if you had not committed these sins in the first place? Or perhaps… if you weren’t born to begin with? Maybe, if I kill this child… I can stop the cycle…

  “Arcos!” Darius screamed. Tears streamed from his eyes. He was lost to panic. That sword was too close to his son. “I’m sorry!” He howled. “For everything! You didn’t deserve this! None of you did! It was my fault! You are right! It was! It was! Punish me. Please. Don’t hurt the boy. Hurt me. Kill me! Kill me!”

  I will. Alaintiqam replied coldly. Thaddeus is your spirit. Your strength. Killing him is as much as killing you. You deserve to suffer in life as much as in death… Maybe, when you have suffered so much, maybe then you can look Arcos in the eyes and tell him you are sorry…

  “Alaintiqam!” Tilda commanded. She strode towards the scene, fists clenched and jaw set. She stood by Nerisity and stared down Alaintiqam with indignant eyes. “In the name of the Guild and that of the Black, I command you to stand down!”

  With a raised eyebrow, Alaintiqam laughed. You command me? You command NOTHING, Shadow-Killer. Nothing but the steel you wield in your hand and the bandying words on your tongue. The misconception is that you think you have power over this dominion because you respect death and serve the Enemy of my Progenitor… Foolish woman. Broken and alone, just like this boy.

  “We are broken.” Tilda replied. “All of us. As well as you. And like you, we share the same pain. And the blame…. Arcos? I’m speaking to you now, boy. This child has nothing to do with you. If it weren’t for Torrance, you’d never escaped the pit. If it weren’t for me, you’d never have come to Silverstreak. And if it weren’t for Boras, you’d have never met this girl. You want to blame everyone, Arcos? You hold the sword. You have that power. So point it at the ones you think are responsible.”

  A fine speech, Foxhunter. But tis for naught. Arcos is lost to you. Darius will die. But only after he witnesses the consequence of his actions.

  Alaintiqam swung the blade up high. Their eyes focused on the five people standing before them.

  Foxhunter and Snowhair broke into a run and charged for him. Carpenter and Cutter leapt forward too.

  And dearest Nerisity remained in her spot… Her eyes filled with bitter disappointment.

  No matter, she couldn’t understand what had to be done.

  Oh the pain. The memories of those they could see, those who mattered to Arcos in their own little ways. Foxhunter, Carpenter, Cutter, Snowhair, Braider-

  Braider. Braider? Wait. Where was she? Reeva Braider was not with them, where was she-?

  A whistling fist of metal affixed to a chain sailed through the air and slammed into the small of Arcos's back. Alaintiqam cited out, feeling Arcos's pain as his body buckled to the ground.

  Alaintiqam whipped their head around and saw Reeva rushing for them, closely followed by the damned Sarku Courageous as it leapt from the shadows of the Pit. They must have snuck in whilst he was distracted!

  Damn you! Alaintiqam whirled about with the blade ready to kill.

  “RUN, THADDEUS!” Snowhair howled.

  And Thaddeus, small and frightened, found a spark of courage. His legs were not tied. He struggled to his feet and ran towards the outstretched arms of his father who sprinted for him.

  Alaintiqam hissed, dug into Arcos's clothes and brought out two swallowblades.

  “Don’t!” Torrance snapped.

  Little worms should know their place and DIE! Alaintiqam shouted before flinging the shining daggers at Thaddeus’s back.

  “NO!” Darius Snowhair howled.

  And the daggers spun through the air, whistling a promise of death… and found flesh.