Down in the infirmary, the walls shook from artillery slamming into the fortress above. Guards had abandoned their posts. The wounded walked around aimlessly, and a scarce few nurses toiled with stained bandages scavenged from the dead.
In the turmoil, two Blazes stared at one another. Kattla and her previous underling she'd just ordered to take their own life. But he was not bound by such vows no longer.
A Blessed name flooded through the room. A promise to kill so thick it made the shadows quiver and dance. For a moment, the hall quieted.
Wretch, Omen of Misfortune
Wretch lunged with his claws toward Kattla’s exposed neck, leaning into the surprise he hoped to gain. But she had been prepared, perhaps expecting him to launch one final desperate attack. The five swords strapped to her back screeched out of their sheaths by some invisible force. She jumped backward, narrowly escaping his extended claws. Her swords levitated in the air around her, then shot toward him.
Wretch darted to the side, dodging the strike but sending several tent beds and infantrymen tumbling to the ground.
Kattla stared at him, projecting her own full killing intent. It was hard and cold, making the steel of the beds glimmer.
Kattla, Prefect Armorum
“You really found a way to break the vows then,” Kattla said, her swords spinning around her. Each was some artifact of old, unique in color and form. “Good. Then I won’t go against my—”
Wretch shot toward her with a howl. He wasn’t about to let her take in the situation for free. This wasn’t a good place for him to fight. The vast hall was free of vermin, and of the ones bound to him, only five were close.
From his forearms, blades of bone burst forward, drawing his own blood. Kattla grinned, charging him head-on with her many swords dancing around her form.
Wretch deflected two with sharpened bone, dodged beneath another two, and reached for her throat with his free hand. If he caught her, he could tear her to shreds in seconds. Her blades swung wide, levitating through the air. One severed the head of an infantryman who had not been quick enough to flee. The last of her five swords dug into his hand, stopping his onslaught, but his attack had only been a feint.
From behind Kattla, a tiny furred body launched itself toward her. Wretch’s eyes lit with fire, and his power flowed through the connection to the rat.
He pulled back a moment before the five swords would have impaled him. But he no longer needed to reach his enemies to hurt them.
He flooded the squealing rat with his power. In the heat of battle, he didn’t have the mental finesse to change it into something dangerous enough to survive and still hurt her. But it did not need to.
The rat latched onto Kattla’s coat, its skin roiling and a squeak escaping its throat. He forced its bones to grow with a pulse of his power that it could never sustain. It tore the tiny vermin to shreds, bloody bones piercing outward in every direction.
Kattla’s eyes widened, and her swords retreated as she spun. The spikes of bone tore through her clothing, grazing her skin before a sword pierced through what remained of his vermin.
Wretch pulled back, chuckling. The wound in his impaled hand squirted blood onto the floor. With a shred of power, it squirmed, but his laugh quieted quickly. He couldn’t regenerate the wound. The sword that had caused it, a curved and jagged blade, had revealed its power.
He pulled the hand beneath his veil and ripped off the entire thing with his teeth. Spitting it out, he pushed more flame into the stump. This time, his hand regenerated without issue, the flesh bubbling as a new claw formed in seconds.
They both paused amid the chaos. All around them, the Unblessed fled. Their killing intent instilled fear in the unworthy.
“I have more of those hidden all around us, you know!” Wretch said from beneath his veil.
“Don’t grow cocky. I’m armed to the teeth and have been a Blaze far longer than you. You might be hideous and sharp-clawed, but you’re not my match.”
Wretch pulled the four remaining rats closer, hiding them around the room until he would order them to attack. Kattla’s power was clear to him now. Telekinetic control over several Blessed weapons, more than the three one could typically carry. But there was one power he had not seen her use yet. The one that had once turned him into bait. That had required his blood.
With his gaze, he followed the dripping blood from his elbow to the severed hand on the floor.
Perhaps I shouldn’t let her touch that.
“You’re a spiteful hunter through and through,” he said, kicking an overturned bed aside. “I might not be bound by any vows, but I promise you, if you let me leave, I’ll only hunt our enemies.”
A rat darted out from between the beds, catching the clawed hand in its maw before disappearing again.
Kattla sneered.
“You’re a beast. And I’m a hunter. There is nothing to discuss, but the position of your cured hide on my wall.”
As if Kattla had read his mind, her five swords shot toward him in a flurry of attacks meant to cut rather than kill. The assault pushed him back across the unstable footing of the infirmary.
A rat launched itself toward Kattla’s foot, bone piercing through its flesh. She kicked it away mid-transformation, suffering only a scratch along her shin.
Meanwhile, Wretch dodged left and right, deflecting swipe after swipe from the flying blades.
Damn, not enough rats here. I need to change the field of battle.
The onslaught stopped suddenly, and all the swords pulled back, circling Kattla’s form. She stood over a puddle of blood with a grim smile.
His blood.
Wretch tilted his head. But he did not dare turn and run. The swords were quick and their reach unknown to him. “Let me guess. You have the power to bestow not only the positive effects of Blessed weapons, but the drawbacks onto your enemies too?”
She clicked her tongue. “You’re smart. For a beast, anyway.”
The first of her swords, the jagged, curved blade that had cut him, sank into the bloodstained floor.
“But I’m the chosen hunter of Maria the Impaler. Left hand of the Saint, and her weapons are mine to use.”
The jagged sword drank from his blood, pulling the liquid up into its metal. “And this blade has quite the downside. Why don’t you see for yourself?”
Wretch hissed, and a tremor rocked the room, the lights flickering above.
His vision of the infirmary blurred. The abandoned beds, those too sick or injured to flee, still moaning where they lay, the others fleeing from their battle, all of it fell into darkness.
Blind.
She had blinded him with nothing more than a pool of his blood.
This hunter truly was a Blaze.
Wretch struggled with the loss of sight. But he too possessed powers beyond the mundane. He saw through the eyes of the vermin bound to him. The three rats he had positioned for hidden strikes all pivoted their tiny heads toward him.
Kattla seized the opportunity, just as he knew she would. She dashed forward, manipulating her swords to slash around her. Wretch backpedaled, piecing together where the strikes were coming from through sound and the sight of his spies.
His skin roiled while the bone scythes protruding from his forearms deflected what strikes they could.
If he turned and ran, she would strike him down.
No.
He had to move carefully.
But at least he had a destination in mind, one that would turn the tide of battle. Assuming Kattla didn’t kill him first.
From his skin burst plates of chitin, forming a defensive shell. Kattla’s swords cut with increased speed.
“Where is all that confidence now, beast?” her voice called. Wretch sidestepped a swipe from a flying sword and deflected another with the natural armor covering his shoulder.
But he had misjudged.
The sight granted to him by his spies wasn’t enough.
A blade caught his abdomen. A spurt of blood escaped his gut. Wretch growled, stumbled backward into a tunnel, and healed the wound within moments.
Kattla continued her assault, but one of her swords sank into his blood, drawing it into the steel. “This is how you hunt a monster. Cripple it slowly, one sense at a time. You all panic so beautifully when I’m—”
Wretch’s hearing vanished.
The spies were too far away for him to hear her finish the sentence.
He moved down the tunnel. The only senses that were still completely his were the perception of his own body and the thick stench filling his nose.
Almost there.
Part of him wanted to turn and run. Flee like a wounded beast would.
But that was exactly what she wanted. He had to be shrewd. His chance would come.
Another blade cut into his arm. The downside attached to it was quickly transferred onto him by Kattla’s power. A ravenous hunger that fought for his attention.
She followed him into the dark tunnel. And the sight of his spies out in the main hall was no longer of any use.
Another slash, this time aimed at his leg.
She’s toying with me, he thought through the gnawing hunger.
This time, Kattla transferred something truly vile.
A curse of mutating flesh. Tumors grew on his skin. Intestines twisted with uncontrolled growth. He could regenerate it, of course. He was adept at changing flesh, but he had little concentration to spare.
He felt it then.
Vermin entering the range of his command.
He opened his mouth and spat viscous acid from a gland in his throat. That should buy him the second he needed.
He turned and threw himself into nothingness.
Another cut struck his back, finding its way between the plates of chitin. Kattla must have transferred the final drawback of her five swords onto him.
Visions of failure.
The memory of his captain ravaged by wounds. Waddles dying before him. The Professor descending an elevator.
Five cuts he had taken, and five curses she had bestowed upon him. But finally, they were where he needed them to be.
He fell for several breaths before slamming into something below.
Left with only his senses of smell and touch, he felt the cold bodies beneath him. Things moved among them, crawling up his legs.
Rats.
Quickly, he bound one to himself and positioned it around his neck. Its sight was refreshing amid the blurry visions, gnawing pain, and mutating flesh.
He had never been here personally, but there were few corners of the fortress his spies had not reached, and this place had always held a particular interest for him.
The corpse pit.
In ages past, this place had likely been designed as a cistern for rainwater caught upon the ancient bridge that formed Voska’s heart.
Now, with the bridge half sunken into the earth, it had been relegated to something else. The dead soldiers from the infirmary had been dumped here. A steady trickle of bodies had been thrown into the dark pit at the very bottom of the fortress. At first, they had been laid to rest in neat rows, but such trivialities had quickly faded.
Now, twisting limbs lay haphazardly in a mound several stories high and a hundred yards wide. Above, the light from the infirmary shone, and a figure stepped forward.
Five swords circled her form. “You think to hide here among the discarded? There is nothing here but the dead.”
She jumped after him. “Pathetic!”
Wretch couldn’t help but smile. “You’re wrong, Kattla. There are more than just the dead here.”
Her feet thumped against the frozen corpses. From a pocket, she pulled a stone that glimmered with white light.
They saw each other clearly now. Wretch's flesh, bubbling in a constant war between mutations and regeneration.
There was nowhere to hide unless one was prepared to dig.
“Let’s finish this, Beast Flame!” she said with a smile, her breath steaming in the cold air.
Wretch reached out with both hands and gestured upward. “Yes, let’s do just that.”
He reached out with his consciousness, pushing away hunger and visions of past misfortunes to the rats nestled among the frozen corpses.
Uncountable in number. This place had been a haven for their kind since the very start of the war. Now it was time for them to join it.
He pulled them all toward him with a simple command.
In the white light, a gray horde crawled to the surface between the frozen limbs. Chattering teeth and tiny claws rushed like a tide to envelop their master. The grey fur surrounding his burning eyes. So numerous were they that he completely disappeared in their midst.
Kattla’s smile faded.
She had allowed herself to be lured here by the promise of a kill already in grasp.
And now it was his turn to show how much he had changed.