Chapter 51 – Unexpected Events

The sensation of wet, muddy ground pressing against his back, just in front of the cracked door, was one of the most unpleasant things Cassius had felt recently.

His eyes were hazy, his mind lagging, as a quiet crawl of anger stirring inside him.

It just had to happen, he thought irritably, to the one shirt he had come to love. The shirt that held a memory dear to him for it celebrated the day Isolde accepted him as her husband.

At that thought, an anger he rarely felt surged inside him like molten lava. He blinked, driving away the haziness, already prepared to burn the culprit to smouldering ash.

But the first sight his eyes found was an old man. Grey, dirty hair, black eyes nearly swallowed by the folds of his eyelids, shaking and coughing from the impact of the fall...and uselessly trying to clean the stain on Cassius’s shirt with his handless arms.

Cassius stilled at the sight of the stumps, and simultaneously heard heavy thundering footsteps approaching from inside the store.

"What... what is this?" He whispered, staring at the healed flesh, while the old man continued muttering under his breath.

"Oh my, oh my! Dear lad, sorry, I am! Truly, truly, truly!" He trembled, voice frantic. "Clean it, I shall, lad!" He cont then paused suddenly, looking at Cassius’s face.

He cocked his head, "Familiar, lad! You look familiar! Who are—!"

"You!" Océane leapt to her feet, fixing the old man with blazing fury. "Get off the Young Master!" She bellowed, and shoved him away.

But her reckless urgency only made it worse. The shirt dirtied further in the scuffle and rode up as the old man was pushed aside, baring Cassius’s chest for a brief moment.

That was when the store manager came out.

A huge, fat man, sweat all over his face from running just a few metres, belly straining against his tight shirt. He emerged with the expression of a man who had already realised his enormous mistake.

"Oh, dear customers—!"

The words died on his tongue. His face went pale. He had seen the Birthright Mark of Cassius before the shirt fell back into place.

And as if that weren’t enough, the black glasses slipped down Cassius’s nose, revealing his striking red eyes, glowing with an ominous light.

The store manager’s dark brown eyes locked onto Cassius’s red ones.

A heavy silence swallowed the surrounding, broken only by the old man’s continuous muttering of ’Familiar, lad!’

Océane was on her feet again, her clothes soaked with mud, her mind frozen in the dread of what she had just done.

Her body was shaking.

’Red eyes!’ The store manager screamed inside his own head. ’The Hood or the Desdemona!’

Only those two families had red eyes in the entire Badur Kingdom. And with the Snake-Eating Birthright Mark of the Desdemona rather than the Scythe of Hood, the young man’s identity was unmistakable.

The store manager made his decision without wasting another second.

There were many virtues an assassin needed. But the most important of them all was decisiveness.

He pivoted his massive frame and bolted back inside the squalid store — faster than his size had any right to allow — his thoughts spinning in a dizzying spiral.

[Cassius, your necklac—!]

"Damn it!" Cassius’s mind snapped back to full awareness, ignoring Ananke’s words. He launched to his feet; and before his feet even properly found the ground, crimson fire rippled beneath them and shot him into the store in a single red streak.

Océane followed, heart hammering. And behind her, the old man followed too at a speed that had no business coming from bones that ancient.

Inside, Cassius found himself in what looked like a wide reception area. Weathered wooden furniture scattered here and there, everything old and worn.

"Where is—!"

He stopped.

The fat store manager stood on the other side of the room, one thick hand — flowing with black essence — hovering just in front of a red runic circle etched into the wall.

Cassius’s chest tightened. ’Bloody hell.’

"How do you know this place exists?" The fat man asked bluntly, his voice like nails dragged across rock, eyes merciless.

Océane and the old man had both made it inside, standing not far behind Cassius, unsure what to do.

"That’s not what matters right now." Cassius said, trying to control the spike of his nervousness as he realised the Tier Five Mind Barrier necklace was no longer around his neck. "I’ve heard you’re an exceptional alchemist. I came because—!"

"Don’t take me for a fool, boy!" The fat man snarled. "You think I don’t know who you are? Why would someone like you come here when you can afford the finest alchemist in the whole Kingdom?"

"Because I’d lose confidentiality." Cassius replied, subtly routing his essence toward his feet. "And what I need isn’t something any alchemist with a reputation to protect would be willing to attempt. Hear me out. I’ll pay you gen—!"

"You—!" The manager began, then stopped as Cassius vanished into a streak of fire and shot toward him like an arrow.

The fat man laughed coldly and pressed both hands against the runes on the wall.

The air inside the room shifted instantly.

Cassius cursed and skidded to a halt, his mind feeling like someone was splitting his skull from the inside.

The sensation was horrific.

"Young Master!" Océane screamed. Earth gathered around her into a massive hammer, as she watched Cassius’s knees buckle and hit the ground, her own face going through the same agonising pain.

The old man rolled on the floor, clutching his head with his stumps of flesh and shrieking.

"Oh, this is going to bring me enormous trouble." The fat man muttered, his face tightly drawn as he weighed his options, entirely unbothered by the rune’s effect on himself.

It didn’t take him long to decide. He clenched his teeth and cursed under his breath.

"Vorn’s breath. I’ll be punished for this, but better punished than finished. I need to erase every trace."

Mind made up, he activated three more runes. The floor beneath Cassius and the others simply ceased to exist as if swallowed by some invisible force, and they dropped into a dark pit.

[Cassius!] Ananke shouted inside his mind.

"Young Master!"

"Argh!!! My head!"

Three voices. Three different directions. All swallowed by the plunge.

But Cassius heard something beneath all of them.

Instinctively, he twisted his body mid-fall, looked down and saw darkness interrupted only by almost hundreds of pairs of red eyes blinking up at them.

"Oh, Queen above..." He cursed, and immediately reached into his space ring and summoned his cane. "Océane! Prepare yourself!"

"What is this?!" The old man wailed.

"Shut your fucking mouth before I silence you myself, old man!" Cassius snapped, his anger flaring white-hot as the full scope of his failed mission settled on him.

His fire burned hotter and hotter, pushing back the darkness clinging to that pit, lighting up what waited for them below.

"Ravagers!" Océane identified them.

The old man screamed louder.

Cassius said nothing. He held his sheath-staff in one hand and his sword in the other, the mud still on his beloved shirt, his last coherent thought before hitting the ground a cold promise directed at the fleeing fat man above.

’I will find you.’

He hardened his heart, hit the ground in a detonation of fire, and the battle began.

...

Above, the fat store manager glanced at the pit for barely a second, then bolted out of the building.

The moment he cleared the door, a barrier flared and sealed the building behind him, folding it into an unreachable pocket of glass invisible to ordinary eyes.

"I must warn the Lord!" He muttered frantically, running through the dark alley, his body beginning to shift and change — the shape of a fat man falling away, replaced by something lean, fast and powerful.

His wide clothes could no longer contain the new frame. They fell away, leaving the man running naked, a blur of raw speed.

On the lower end of his back, etched beautifully into the skin was a tattoo...

A tattoo of a fang, long and sharp.

—End of Chapter 51—