Slip through the headquarters of the Sump Dogs from the inside. This was as insane as stealing from Garrick's facility, perhaps a little less, but as deadly. Yet Kael didn't linger on danger. He couldn't.
Instead, he pressed his lips into a tight line as the shadows of the dozen thugs surrounded Riccardo. Long swords rested at his neck like a spiked collar, and hands pressed him forward. Fragments of threats and curses echoed through the tunnels, disturbing the sewer rats around Kael. With strident squeaks, they scrambled.
"Riccardo, danger!" Tonio bent his legs, his dark nails ready to strike.
Kael grabbed the rat-man's shoulder. The tense muscles beneath his palm made him blurt out. "Wait. I know you don't trust me, but trust Riccardo. He's doing it to help us leave. Don't waste his effort."
Beneath his makeshift hood and glasses, Tonio's red eyes softened. Exhaling heavily, he lowered his nails. "New home. Leave. Listen Riccardo. Listen Kael. Together later."
"Yes... later." Kael's mutter was heavier than a sigh. "You hunt rats for food, right?"
"Rats good."
For a moment, the words slipped from Kael's mind. A rat-man eating rats felt... wrong. The guards' shadows vanished in the distant torchlight, and he waved the thought away. "You need to be silent when you hunt, or the rats will escape. Can you be that silent until we're out?"
Tonio pressed a finger on his lips, then Kael gently grabbed his hand. Slowly, he pulled the rat-man toward the Sump Dogs' headquarters, always looking at him, trying to smile but knowing his lips twisted instead.
For each step toward the light, his heart pounded against his chest faster. It wasn't like the facility—no clear visual of the thugs or the layout. He just knew they were there, like anyone from the slums. Their leader would be, too. Could Riccardo distract them all long enough? If they had truths and relics... He forced himself not to think about it.
The outline of the arched passage grew clearer. Torches flickered above empty guard posts. On the makeshift tables, half-filled mugs and burning cigs. The smell struck Kael harder than when he went to the Black Cask bar. Cheap goods of doubtful quality. Nothing else, not even an overlooked coin pouch or neglected weapon.
The passage opened into a broad lounge. Silk suspended over tables and sofas broke the grime of the sewers with deep crimsons or ocean blues. Air became breathable, albeit heavy with cheap tobacco, without stinging Kael's lungs.
Though the thugs seemed gone, Kael scrutinised every shadow down to the most inconspicuous lacework of spiderwebs on random corners. Even the dust beneath the sofas screamed danger. Or rather, it was the thugs who could hide there for reasons he knew absurd but refused to ignore.
Ahead, past corridors and stairs, a rusted double door. His way out. If Riccardo kept the thugs busy. How did he get them all to leave their living space? Perhaps the Sump Dogs hated him as much as Tonio hated them. Other reasons didn't matter for now.
Tonio growled behind him, but Kael blocked him with his arm. Only after a full minute passed and not even a dust particle moved, did he gesture for Tonio to follow. Not through the center, but walking along the wall, pressed to the stones.
Whenever he could, he found cover behind the silk, his eyes never leaving the closest doors, his chest as tight as if he expected them to fling open and thugs to pour on him.
They didn't, but something else made his stomach sink just a couple of steps in front of the doors.
"Come back!" His whisper sounded like a hiss. And Tonio strolled to a nearby table.
Items Kael had chosen to ignore littered the lounge. Clothes hung on chairs, uncorked bottles, coins glistening in the center of cards abandoned mid-game, and piles of scavenged junk rose here and there. Anything would help. He just didn't want to leave tracks that would help the Sump Dogs realise Tonio was gone.
Of course... You'll be the death of me in less than half an hour!
"Tonio. Please!"
But Tonio glanced at Kael, then shrugged as he picked up a long coat. His furry arms blurred with experience when he shoved whatever sparkled in its pockets. A glass split from the bulge.
Kael dug his finger in his scalp when shattered glass replaced the silence. Tonio would get him killed!
Without wasting a second, he rushed at the rat-man and, by the wrist, dragged him to the doors. At least, Tonio allowed himself to be dragged with a "did I do something wrong" frown.
This time, Kael didn't bother hiding—the broken glass already exposed him—and ran to the door. He slammed his hand on the handle, lowering it.
RATLE
Locked... By the ashes of the slums, why was everything locked? Do I search for a mechanism hiding the keys again?
As he began to race for a solution, Tonio freed himself from his loose grasp and moved to the coats hung from hooks beside the door. Before he could bring Tonio back, the icy sound of wind displaced by a door flung open froze his blood.
They had to hide. The silk! He pushed Tonio behind the closest, wrapping his hand around the rat-man's mouth, and the other around his own, muffling both breaths. Tonio lifted his hand, and he shook his head, hoping the pleading in his eyes would do the rest.
Footsteps stopped. Close.
"Dude, why us?" The voice came from inches away, on the other side of the silk.
Kael stopped breathing. Tonio's chest heaved against his arm.
"Well, we're unlucky, I guess?" A second voice echoed the disgruntlement of the first.
"Someone has to confirm whether the other two shitty monsters died or if the last one bullshited the boss. The more you complain, the longer we'll actually take." A third, older voice commanded.
Then, the footsteps pulled away, slowly, torturously. Each second stretched longer than it should, and the silence choked Kael. For a moment, he thought the thug had heard the broken glass, or that they'd at least see it on their way out. It had been close. Way too close.
"You're not helping, Tonio." He removed his sweaty hand from his mouth. "Just follow me. Please."
Tonio tilted his head sideways until Kael could see the corner of his smirk. From his ragged shirt, he lifted something that clinked.
Kael's eyes widened at a key ring. Is it? No way!
"Key, door, open," Tonio whispered. "Dogs bad. Leave now."
"How—" Kael's eyes darted to the hooks beside the door. That simple? Really? Well, it was just a door, not a secret room concealing a relic. It made so much sense that he huffed when he took the key. Thugs came and went, and stored the key behind a few clothes close enough not to waste time.
Grumbling, he put the key in the keyhole.
CLICK
The lock spun with a satisfying sound. Kael pulled. The door followed, letting the soft light of the slum's lamppost filter inside.
He opened it just enough to peer out. Broken machinery and discarded furniture formed a mound five times his size. A couple of thugs wearing leather gloves and aprons dumped rotten food out into several smaller mounds.
Kael's hand tightened on the handle. He knew this place. He'd found his most precious treasure here just two weeks ago: two inches of scrap paper squeezed between grease-darkened towels and a pair of severed fingers, the same paper he had placed at the center of his mother's altar before Sister Harrow sold it.
Great! The industrial district is thirty minutes away. We can spend the rest of the night there.
Before anything, he placed the key back on its hook, then opened the door enough to slip out. Tonio squeezed behind him, but they both paused before closing it, their eyes looking for the man who wouldn't come.
Riccardo... I hope you'll mutate your truth.
With a pat on Tonio's shoulder, they walked away, hiding behind junk. He didn't take more than thirty steps before his ledger opened on its own and a new entry wove itself in sky-blue ink beneath Giovanni's.
────────────────────────────
Anchor break recorded. Definition: I survive no matter what, lost.
Mutation: failed. New definition lacks substance.
Anchor break: Not violent enough for the formation of an anchor-ghast. The subject died.
────────────────────────────
His shoulders slumped, but his steps quickened. He wouldn't let Riccardo's death be meaningless. For Tonio, for himself. For his peaceful future out of this hell.
***
As he hurried to the industrial district, the three thugs frowned inside the room they had abandoned. The commanding one glared at a stone corner, as if the scaly wall whispered to him. In fact, it didn't just whisper; it spoke with words etched in blood over a corrupted puddle. What they meant, he didn't know and therefore dismissed the message. The other monsters were gone. Mission accomplished.
If he couldn't read, the next visitor was different. Marek arrived from the other side of the room with a dozen thugs, swords drawn, and arrows nocked. Yet, no one. Just the same words in a corner of the room. Words that turned his face red, then ashen.
The Sump Dogs attacked us. Tonio's dead. I'm next. Thought you would have liked to know. By the way, fuck you and Garrick.
And inside a room surrounded by thugs, lying on the ground, Riccardo's glassy eyes reflected the torchlight. He couldn't recall who he was or what he did after failing to mutate his truth, yet the grin on his lips, even as his consciousness fragmented, remembered. The bastards would suspect each other, while Tonio escaped with Kael.
He died in peace.