Black Rose Ch. 03

Kira

The Academy is gone.

I spent years of my life in the sprawling campus, the magical fortress where mages were molded and trained. I knew every one of them, every girl and every boy I grew up with. I knew the sorcerers, the wizards, the mages. I knew the students and the teachers and everything I knew is gone.

I wear my robes, the red ones that denote my status. For the first time I walk through a city that hates me. I see the side glances, the furtive whispers and the fearful looks. Guards dig through the rubble, volunteers sift through the destruction, more simply gather to watch the unfolding horror.

Rourke leads the way. Dressed in his armor he is a moving wall. He must be nearly seven feet tall, a giant of a man in steel plate. If he told me that his father was a giant, it wouldn't surprise me. Sera is behind me, smaller and lithe. The elf has sharp eyes that watch every movement.

"This might sound suggestive, but we should get you out of those robes." Sera whispers to me.

"They hate me." I tell her.

"No." Rourke turns his head as we make a turn to a clear street, one I recognize. This will take us to the smithy, to Matrick's master. I ran through this street with Moira.

There are fewer people here now, more space, more privacy.

"No?" I ask the big Paladin.

"No." He says, walking steadily. "They don't hate you. They don't trust magic, they never did. This is just proof, proof of instability. The danger of magic. They fear it and that makes them hate it."

"You're a Paladin." I say. He shakes his head.

"I was. People are afraid of Paladins too, they just...they understand it. They understand the gods, they can pray to the gods. They can't pray to magic."

"Big man, you surprise me." Sera says. Rourke grunts his reply, shrugging under his armor.

We hear the sound of hammers on metal, approaching the smithy building. I do everything I can to avoid looking at the bookstore, focusing on the smithy, the sounds. The only thing I have left. Rourke's huge hand touches my shoulder as we get closer.

"Kira...I know it might be hard to, but try to remain calm." He says.

I nod.

Then I flick my hand toward the shop door and tear it from it's iron hinges, throw it across the room, drawing yelps and screams from everyone inside. Rourke sighs and his head drops, then he rolls his neck and flexes his fingers.

"Alright, we'll do it your way." He says, stalking into the shop.

Sera has already produced her knives and grins, ear to ear, following the big Paladin. Matrick doesn't look so eager but he trudges ahead too. We enter the shop, waves of heat washing over us. There are a handful of burly types in here, just like Matrick. One of them is older, a barrel of a man on thick legs, holding a heavy smith's hammer in his hand. The others are younger, apprentices and assistants, just like Matrick.

"A mage!" The older man says, his lips curling into a sneer for just a fraction of a moment. He hides it quickly, trying to cover it with a genial smile. I hate it, I hate his lies. Rourke holds up a hand and I look into his steely eyes, his set jaw. I roll my eyes and let him try his way.

"Gelen." Rourke says. "It's been a while, thank you for holding on to my armor."

"I made it, seemed right to keep it for you, we serve the same goddess as you surely remember." Gelen says, licking his lips. He emanates nervous energy.

"Right. Matrick here tells us you might know something about what happened to the Academy. Poor girl here lost everyone, everything, then she was attacked in the street. Thugs, trying to kill a novice mage. Can you imagine?"

Gelen's eyes dart to me. Sera moves around the shop, knives dancing through her fingers as she winks at the others in the shop. I see knuckles whitening on hammer handles, a hundred half finished implements of war wait to be used on us, nearly as many are completed.

"I'm sorry to hear it but I wouldn't know anything about that. I was as horrified as the rest of the city when it happened."

He isn't even putting energy into the lies now. Hate burns behind his eyes, he hates me. He doesn't even know me.

"I lost everyone I loved." I say, taking a step toward Gelen. He tries to step away but is blocked by an anvil. "Everyone. I held her body in my arms. I held her. Magebreakers took everything. Are you one of them?"

He doesn't answer. He won't even look me in the eyes.

"He is." One of the assistants says, suddenly. Sera is beside him a moment later, the tip of one of her knives tracing his cheek.

"Is he now? Do go on." She purrs the words. The boy swallows the lump in his throat.

"Shut up!" Gelen spits the words, rising from the anvil. I lift a hand and he stops, held firmly in place by the air around him, his mouth too.

"No. Don't shut up." I say.

"They call themselves the Magebreakers because they think magic is unnatural, shouldn't exist in the world. When he drinks he rants about it, it's been getting worse. There's a group of them, from all over the city. They talked about destroying the Academy but it should have been impossible. He's no one of power to them, he's just a tool for them to use. That's what mother always said."

Ah. A son then.

"Where do they meet?" Rourke asks.

"In the sewers! There's offshoot tunnels near the Academy that were never used, that's how they destroyed it. Please, don't kill him. Don't kill any of us. Please. Matrick, don't let them kill us."

Matrick shifts uncomfortably in place. I feel...guilt. I want this man to die for what he's done to me. Rourke's hand is on my shoulder once more, this time his face is more somber.

"Kid, it won't help. Trust me. It never helps."

"It would prove what he thinks of me." I say. Rourke nods, a sad smile on his face.

"Yeah. It would."

"Gelen, you can take us to where you meet these Magebreakers." I say, releasing him. He gasps for air, falls to his knees, tears coursing as he chokes in each breath.

He has no time to hate his son, not right now. "Tie the others up."

"Matty." Sera says, winking. "Help me find some rope."

"You filthy mage bitch!" Gelen finally manages to spit. Rourke's hand moves so quickly I hardly see it, a closed fist striking the blacksmith in the face. Gelen yelps, the skin of his nose breaks open and blood pours out, the bone broken and his nose crooked.

"You greasy, sweaty fuck." Rourke growls, using one massive hand to lift the blacksmith clear off the ground. "She's better than I am. Don't push your luck with me."

He lets the blacksmith fall to the ground, roughly. Gelen picks himself up and coughs, struggling for air around the already darkening bruises. This is not Gelen's day.

"Isn't this exciting." Sera says. "Let's go to the sewers, then. I've always wanted to visit, I hear wonderful things. This city has the fanciest rats."

Rourke

We leave the kids from the smithy behind, tied up and gagged. Someone will find them, hopefully after we finish what we have to do.

I lead the way into the darkness, following Gelen's steps. The smith clutches at his shattered nose and spares hateful glances at me as we travel through the tunnels. I couldn't give two shits how Gelen feels about me.

Down here in the dank sewers, following Gelen, I feel for the girl. Gifted with magic, lost everything, all in a moment like that. Shouldn't have happened. She's holding up well enough. Probably just living off rage right now. I know the feeling.

Darkness reaches out to us, dozens of offshoot tunnels that lace underneath the sprawling city. This is the true city. It smells, it is damp, it is disgusting. Gelen walks, shuffles more like.

"It could be a trap." The little elf whispers, as if that helps. I grunt a reply.

She has stayed longer than I expected, it is curious. Maybe she has a fondness for the mage, maybe she has a curiosity.

"How would they know we were coming?" I ask her.

"Spies. You are enormous, big man, it would not be hard to spot the moving wall of armor."

"You could just walk away." Gelen mutters. "Just leave the city, find somewhere else. You're not wanted here. Take the boy, or leave him if you don't care."

"You're getting bold, smith." I say, gripping the smith's shoulder and squeezing my hand tight. The smith winces but keeps talking.

"We'll kill him, you know. Traitor to his own kind. At least the elf I understand, they're little better than mages. And you, a Paladin, a man of the gods. You all disgust me."

He turns left, then right, we follow into the depths of the sewer tunnels.

"Why do you hate me so much?" Kira asks, quietly. Gelen whirls on her and I put myself between them, all the smith does is point a finger and snarl.

"You're an abomination that thinks itself better than the rest of us! You and your kind lord over us with unnatural powers, we're tired of it! Your experiments have destroyed houses and businesses, taken lives! Mages have summoned demons into our city, or raised the dead, or swept fire down streets!"

"We protected you!" Kira says, fire in her eyes.

"We didn't need you to protect us, we needed to be protected from you! Your kind killed my son!" Gelen says.

"So you killed thousands of them?" I ask.

"I'd do it again!" Gelen hisses at me, pointing his finger at my chest.

I take that finger and break it with a loud snap. Gelen screams, the sound echoing in the tunnels behind the sound of breaking bones.

"Keep walking." I say. Gelen does, clutching his hand with the finger that's pointing the wrong direction now. He shuffles ahead.

"They probably heard that." Sera says.

"You're a nuisance." I tell her. She smiles, bounces both her eyebrows at me, but doesn't say anything else.

"You shouldn't have done that." Kira says to me. "You don't owe me anything, none of you do. You don't have to be here."

"Got nowhere else to be." I say with a shrug.

"I haven't had this much fun in years." Sera says, on the edge of cheerful.

"They'll kill me if I leave you." Matrick is less enthusiastic but somehow the most correct. We're in it now.

Gelen stops at an arch, beyond it a larger space with wooden chairs and torches scattered about, not a soul in sight. He grimaces and points with his good hand.

"Here. This is where we meet." He says.

"Fitting place for rats to gather." I say. "Look around, we need evidence of these Magebreakers."

Sera

"We need evidence of these Magebreakers." The big man says, beginning to search the cavern. There are some chairs scattered around, a small table in the center of the room, a half dozen offshoot tunnels. Not much down here but moisture and the smell of a city worth of shit.

"What evidence?" I say, going for the table. There's nothing on it. "What would they even leave down here? And who do we take it to? The guards? Bet they're paid off."

"There are other schools for mages." Kira says. "The Academy was one, the others will want answers. We can take the evidence to them, maybe warn them."

I nod. That's a good answer.

I'm not an overly compassionate person but blowing up a building full of mages just for being mages seems...cruel. I'd hate to see that happen elsewhere. Plus it makes finding a safe city to run my cons in all sorts of difficult. Matrick is a few steps behind me, looking lost, poor boy. Not sure he's the sharpest tool from the smithy but he seems genuine enough, for this city at least.

"You doing alright there?" I ask, resting a hand on his forearm. He looks down and then up at me, confused.

"Are you being sarcastic?" He asks. I sigh.

"No. It just sounds that way." I say. He opens his mouth to say something else but I see his eyes dart to something behind me. It all happens in the barest of moments. His eyes narrow with confusion, go wide with fear, then he gurgles a warning cry of some kind. He pushes me aside and turns his body, putting himself between me and whatever it is he saw.

Then his eyes go wider, if that was even possible, and he looks confused.

We both look down and see the crossbow bolt sticking out, a bloody tip pushed out through his abdomen and hardly more than a hair's breadth away from me. He grunts and falls to his knees, hands touching the bolt like he's making sure it's there.

I have a knife in my hand and my eyes have locked onto the asshole holding the crossbow, I throw it and the tip sinks into the bastard's throat. I have better aim, apparently.

The whole place explodes with activity and sound. More of these Magebreaker dipshits pour out, carrying all sorts of weapons and wearing masks. They charge down, some of them trip on the chairs and some trip on their own two feet. Soldiers, these are not.

Rourke still doesn't have a weapon but that doesn't mean he isn't dangerous.

I parry a few clumsy strikes and swipe my knives through delicate flesh but I can't help watching the big, armored Paladin wade through the fight. With a single punch he collapses a man's face in, like it was a rotting pumpkin. He blocks blows with his armor, pretty sure that shit is enchanted, and bodily tosses his foes into falls or each other without breaking a sweat. He picks up a chair and shatters it over some Magebreaker thug, breaking the chair into pieces along with the asshole's bones.

Amazing.

Kira, she's something else entirely. She can't use fire down here, it'd eat up all our air and leave us dead. She she's using the air itself, I think. I'm not a mage or anything but she just holds up a hand and people stop moving in mid stride or attack, then she flicks her wrist and tosses them away like Rourke does. She does the same thing to block attacks, holding up a hand and stopping a Magebreaker's sword in mid-strike, then kicking him right in the balls and punching him in the face.

Delightful! I wasn't lying about having this much fun.

I protect Matrick, kid saved my life, seems right to do right by him for that. I slash out, ducking under clubs and feeling the wind of another crossbow bolt pass just over my back. It punches through Rourke's armor and disappears into his thigh. He hardly seems to notice.

"Rourke!" I shout. He glances and sees Matrick on the ground, nods at me.

There are too many, a lucky swing grazes my leg and draws blood but not enough to put my down. I slam my knife into someone's face, up to the hilt.

"Kill the mage!" Gelen shouts, shrieks more like. I throw another knife and Gelen the smith has a brand new, shiny blade to show off, buried all the way in his neck. We have killed a good dozen of these idiots when someone starts shouting to retreat, to run away. Cowards.

"Don't let them all get away!" Rourke shouts, heaving Matrick onto his shoulder. I watch Matrick's head bounce off Rourke's armor and wonder if he's still conscious after that. I throw a knife and catch one of the runners in the calf, sending her spinning to the floor with a scream of pain.

"Got one." I say, collecting the other two knifes.

"What are you doing?" Kira asks as I kneel down beside the dying Gelen.

"I don't like to leave knives laying around." I say, gripping the handle and smiling at the smith. "Someone could get hurt."

I yank the blade free and the light in Gelen's eyes fades.

"We need to go." Rourke says, now carrying Matrick and the wounded Magebreaker.

She thumps her fists against his back and he doesn't seem to notice that either. I see blood pouring from his leg though, that isn't good.

"Want to tell us who is running this and save us all some time?" I ask the woman, lifting her head up. She spits a gob of blood at me. I take her hair and slam her head into Rourke's armor and she doesn't spit again, she just goes limp.

"Gods. What a mess." Rourke trundles off into the sewer. "Come on. I remember the way."

"That's impressive, though I do recall that elephants never forget." I say. Rourke laughs, just one loud bark of laughter.

"You are both very strange." Kira says, watching behind us for any more attacks. Then she jogs across the room and pulls a piece of parchment from one of the Magebreakers corpses, tucked into a cloth pouch that I should have seen. Coins are coins, don't care where they came from.

"There's a seal on this." She shows it to Rourke and he shrugs, even with two bodies slung over his shoulders he still manages it. Kira shows it to me next. I wince. Two crossed swords over an intricate K.

"The House of Kellias." I say, feeling the first real nervousness over all this. I watched a huge chunk of the city explode and I'm nervous now, at the mention of that family.

Kira breaks the seal and begins to read the letter, growing quiet and nearly trembling with obvious rage. So Kellias has his hand in this, of course he would.

"Kellias?"

"House of Kellias. They're a new money family, made their wealth in weapons and armor during the war, dealt with both sides. Violent smugglers, thieves, bastards."

"Who is Jann Kellias?" Kira asks me, showing me his name signed at the bottom of the letter. Instructions to the Magebreakers.

"Patriarch." I answer. Jann Kellias, of fucking course it would be, wouldn't it?

"Matrick needs help, we have to go." Rourke urges us on and we head back into the tunnels. "What else do you know, Sera?"

"I know that Jann Kellias and his whole brood have a fortress villa in the mountains, couldn't be more than a week from the city. I know that they run most of the criminal enterprises through the city and have put coin in the right pockets. I know a lot about Jann Kellias and his House of Cocksuckers."

"Run in dangerous circles, do you, elf?" Rourke asks me.

"Yes, big man, I do." I say, jogging to keep up with him and Kira. "Luckily for us, I also run in circles with discreet physicians."

I'll tell them the rest of the story later. I can feel Kira's eyes, she knows I haven't said something else. They burn into me.

I sigh. I guess I can tell them now. It's a short story, summed up in two sentences.

"Jann Kellias is a son of a bitch. And he's my father."

Kira

Sera wasn't lying. She does know discreet physicians. She knocked on a door three times in a unique pattern, it opened and there was an angry goblin behind it. He shook his head when he saw Sera.

"No-no!" He squeaks, making to slam the door. Rourke's hand stopped that. I hold up a pouch of coins. He eyes them, looks Rourke up and down, then narrows his eyes at Sera.

"Stitcher, come on, you have to let it go. It was ages ago." She says.

"Two-two weeks! It-It been two weeks!"

"Stitcher. Buddy."

"Fuck-fuck you!" He says, opening his door. "Come in."

"Love you too, Stitcher." Sera says, sidling into the house with the two of us following. Rourke has to duck, a long way down, just to squeeze through the door frame. Stitcher grumbles and leads us through his house, mumbling curses and sneering at Sera. His house is a mess, haphazard furniture and scattered trash.

I hope this isn't our doctor.

He leads us down a set of stairs, to a hallway, ending in a heavy wooden door. I wonder if Sera has brought us here to be murdered by this goblin. Is it a trap? If this Kellias is behind this and he is her father...I look to Rourke. He nods at me, just barely. I clench my fist and draw energy to me, ready to fight.

"Put-put them here!" Stitcher says, opening the door to a row of surgical tables, tools hanging in perfect rows on the wall above the head of the surgical tables. It is a pristine room, large and well-stocked. Stitcher pulls a leather apron from the wall and ties it behind his neck then takes tools from the wall.

"Which-which one is yours?"

"Him." Rourke says, pointing to Matrick. The poor blacksmith's assistant just sort of tagged along and now he's got a crossbow bolt through his abdomen, that's hardly fair. I find myself hoping that he lives. Stitcher peers down at the bolt and prods it with a bony finger.