B3 Chapter 416: Argent clash, pt. 6

Puppeteer’s Strings erupted from his hands, a constant tangle that stretched for handholds he could use to move ever faster. Each violet wire whipped through the air; in twos and threes, they wrapped around the thick trunks of the forest, biting deep into soft bark. He barely touched the ground, hells, he was practically flying.

Old Yon knew for a fact that it wasn’t fast enough.

How! How could it all have gone so wrong? What he had seen was simply impossible. The team was young, in their mid-twenties at most — they had to be. They’d only just barely been about to hit the Wall when he captured them.

Yet the evidence stared him in the face — his team of ten fucking Silvers had been annihilated in a minute at most. It should have been impossible. What kind of class rarity would they have to do that so fresh to the second tier? The legacy?

They knew something, and knowing he’d narrowly missed out on the knowledge burned almost as much as his quickly approaching demise.

Fucking Kront and Torrin, the cowards. He never should have trusted them after their failure. They must have known; noticed the second they’d spotted the team — but neither had said a damned thing, choosing to secure their own hides.

He tore his way across the forest, gritting his teeth. Multiple full squads of Silvers gone just like that. It was like pitting a classroom of toddlers against a pack of wolves.

The talent he’d been able to pull upon on short notice wasn’t the best, but they were bloody Silver! Seasoned, with decades of experience underneath every single one of their belts!

And they’d been slaughtered. Crushed utterly. In an instant.

His breaths came hard and fast. He was fucking dead, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

With the thought, came hatred. If that rat bastard Morton had just told him what he was really after — if those two bloody cowards had properly warned him — none of this would have happened.

That bloody meles! He’d known the dens knew much, but for such a young one to possess enough knowledge to raise three unnotable people into such demons? Monstrous.

Gods’ Scorn, fuck his return to Wight’s End. He just needed to live — and if that was too much, he wasn’t going alone.

Old Yon held his arm forward, reaching for another cluster of trees.

He only felt a boiling explosion of pain as a metallic streak shot through his elbow, ripping the limb off. Blood and gore erupted, splattering the summer grass beneath him. Thrown off balance by the sudden assault, he reeled, the threads of his right arm yanking him to the side.

Even that mild corrective force was gone a moment later as a streak of blue hit him in the shoulder.

Another needle hit him in the back of his knee.

Screaming, he hit the ground in a rough tumble. His chest heaved as he desperately tried to pull in air, his lifeblood pumping as his wounds closed ever so slowly. He had potions, but they were in a ring on one of his missing arms.

He had to crawl!

Eking his way slowly forward, Old Yon kicked at the ground with his one remaining leg.

All the while, he heard the stampeding feet of the delvers behind him.

…

Kaius stomped forward, his blood hot and his heart full of rage.

Old Yon lay before him, scrambling in the dirt, red gushing from his stumps as the ground churned into a thick mud.

This? This was a member of the Onyx Temple? The crime lord behind their imprisonment, who had tracked them for so long? This was who he had been worried about?

He looked pathetic. A nondescript man, with a nondescript build, wearing nondescript clothes, well into the latter years of his middle age. He was…forgettable.

Porkchop stomped forward beside him, a deep, bassy growl rumbling through his chest. Metallic claws flexed, punching into the forest floor with casual ease. Kaius reached up to rest a hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“Not yet,” Kaius said, before turning to Ianmus in the back. “Heal him. We don’t want him bleeding out.”

Ianmus nodded, a ray erupting from the tip of his staff a moment later, washing over the crippled criminal. New flesh crawled over ruined limbs, pale skin sealing stumps into permanency.

Old Yon slumped for a moment, before heaving with his good leg to roll onto his back. A sneer was painted on his face, though it didn’t reach his eyes. Oddly, Kaius didn’t see fear there. Rage, yes — hatred and frustration, certainly; there was more than a fair share of disgust and anger. But no fear.

“A hundred years of work, just to be done in by a pack of brats and the incompetency of others. Bloody terrific.”

The Onyx crime lord spat, something more blood than spittle landing onto the forest floor.

“You aren’t going to beg?” Porkchop asked, simmering anger driving a hard edge to his words.

For a moment, Old Yon’s eyes widened in shock — then he started to laugh. It was a manic thing, but genuine in its own way.

“Me, beg? Please. I’ve been doing this since before your parents were a twinkle in your grandparents’ eyes. There is no begging — not after what I did to you. This only ends one way.”

Kaius tilted his head, crouching down. He planted his sword face-first in the dirt, its honed edge sliding down with ease until it was buried half way. He rested his hands lightly on its pommel.

“You were so certain that I would kill an unarmed man?”

Old Yon grinned, fresh blood showing on his teeth. Whatever Ianmus had done to his healing had only stopped the man bleeding out — his internal injuries were untouched.

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“I’m certain you already have, boy.”

Kaius steeled himself to stop from flinching.

Old Yon cackled, trailing off into a wet cough. “You’re half a century too young to hide it from me, kid. Torrin and Cronte said you were strong. They were right, even if they’re cowards — and too stupid to notice the extent. What they didn’t mention is that you’re hard. I can see it: none of you care for the eight people you just slaughtered, or the dozens you cut your way through to escape my prison.”

Old Yon sneered, “So no, I will not beg.”

Kaius scowled, attempting to bore a hole in the Onyx man’s head with his gaze.

“You will answer our questions.”

“Maybe. If it serves to amuse or advantage me. But you will not let me live, no matter what I say, and even if you would, I don’t think you’re quite hard enough to torture it out of me.”

“Oh, you fuck!” Kenva roared. Kaius had seen the simmering anger within the ranger since they’d first spotted their ambushers. He knew what was coming, he didn’t try to stop her.

She stomped forward. Drawing her bow in a single fluid motion, she loosed — her arrow punching straight through Old Yon’s groin. The man screamed.

“Ianmus, heal him,” Kaius said, nodding at the wound. The mage did so wordlessly, leaving the arrow in place.