Flashback Blind Vengeance (Konrad)

[Sh'Ky Naes]

Summer 56, 511 AV

It was a bad day.

First off, it was raining buckets. It was like one of those 'typhoons' Sh'Ky had heard about from the Svefra down at the docks. The rain sounded like hammers against the thin wooden walls of 'Ky's house.

Second, his girlfriend had just died a day ago. So yeah. He was not happy. Sh'Ky was more numb than anything, staring up at the roof, as he laid down on the floor, feeling not much at all, and thinking about the same amount.

How... Why did this have to happen? Why was there this... pain in his chest? Why did he feel... numb? Why was his girlfriend lying on their bed inside of their house, drained of all her blood, so she didn't bleed everywhere? Why were her eyes closed, never to open again?

Blinking once, he felt... hot, angry. As if all of his rage at the cruel world he lived in was boiling in his chest, bubbling up to the surface. Standing up, 'Ky whipped hsi head around looking for something to lash out at. Stomping over to his table, he grabbed the chair, and flung it against the wall. Kicking the table over, 'Ky punched the wall, leaving the wood boards cracked and splintered, and his knuckles bloody and scraped.

Breathing heavily, Sh'Ky thought back to what Caiden had told him, before handing him a bag of golden Mizas. "Listen, man. There's a man, who goes by 'Konrad'. You'll find him usually 'round where the Daggerhands are, but I've arranged for a meeting. You give him this money, and tell him that-" Caiden continued to give Sh'Ky information about the man, some of which turned his stomach, but the fire in his gut eclipsed all feeling.

Snatching his sword up from the floor where it lay, and jamming it angrily in its' sheath, Sh'Ky grabbed the bag of money, and bundling up for his journey into the rain, left the house, locking it behind him. Trudging through puddles almost up to his knees, he made his way to the Gallows Grounds, an appropriate mid-way point, away from any people.

When he reached the meeting point, he tugged his hat down, and pulled his scarf up. The wind was picking up, causing the gallows to creak and groan under the dual pressure of the stormwinds and the bloated bodies swinging from fraying ropes. Staring up at the bodies blankly, Sh'Ky felt almost nothing as the wind blew the rain against his back.

As soon as he noticed Konrad's form walking towards him through the rain, Sh'Ky grabbed the bag of money, a hundred golden mizas in all, and held it out, for the man to take.

"I need you to help me kill some people."

[Konrad Venger]

The rat left the note on the edge of Konrad's table and left before the scarred man or his tattooed partner could pause chewing long enough to even ask about it. Konrad's jaws stopped grinding for just long enough to watch the straw-haired brat slink through the crowd of the Skinned Mage and back into fetid oblivion outside.

"Funny, that," Three Eyes said with an "urp!" and a quick slug from his stein. "Didn' even stick 'raan fer a copper."

Konrad frowned and remembered why that wasn't so odd. Properly considered anyway. Something he recalled from some conversation or another, standing around with a pair of other muscle-selling sods one night outside a bar across town. Jawing just to keep their chill of them.

A name. A man. Someone that dealt in rumors and information and the potential of profit those things could lead to. Something about how he didn't like his runners to stick around after the message was delivered. They got paid a little above average just so they wouldn't... and if Konrad heard it right, any cheeky little sod who took the pis wouldn't be running again any time soon.

So he knew the name before he unfolded the scrap and read the quick message scrawled onto it.

GALLOWS. NOON TOMORROW. COIN AND BUSINESS FOR YOU.

CAIDEN

"Wassat?"

Konrad scrunched up the paper and dropped it into the tall glass capping the oil lamp at one end of their table. It went up like fresh kindling, flaring briefly like a smaller twin to the larger flame, before crumbling into dust and ash. The scarred man kept eating, habitually dabbing the ruined side of his mouth where food oozed out. He couldn't close it all the way; hadn't been able to since his father had done the damage to him.

Three Eyes never mentioned it. Why would you?

"... so...?"

"Got some work, 'parently. You got the time?"

"Coin in it for me?"

"Would I ask otherwise?"

Konrad managed a soft snort, the closest he came to genuine mirth. Ah, Three Eyes: a man after his own heart, just not nearly as dangerous. As long as there was a handful of coins or a cut of the purse in it for him, he was your man. Just pray that the other side didn't offer more.

You're one to talk.

"S'what I thought."

But Sh'Ky wouldn't see a shorter, broader thug accompanying him when he finally laid eyes on him, strolling through the rain that was hammering on tin roofs and carousing down the cobbles and running in waterfalls from the brim of his black hat. Three Eyes was sticking to the shadows, and had been for half a bell before Konrad showed up. He'd seen the boy arrive, trudging out of the rain like a drowned rat, and take up his position.

Chimes ticked by and he didn't move. Just looked hopeful in that rubbernecking way that someone waiting on another always look like. Three Eyes flicked a glance up and down... and didn't see a problem.

If he had, Konrad would have been shouted down before he'd even crossed to the swaying bodies, and Sh'Ky would have been lucky to scurry off with his life.

"I need you to help me kill some people."

First things first, Konrad took the damn money. Practically snatched it out the kid's hand and tossed it back and forth, feeling the weight... and his eyes jerked up into the middle of his forehead. Cheva's Cunt, felt like nearly a hundred, especially if they were all-

He opened it up and a lake of gold circles winked up at him, spattered with a few errant raindrops and he studied them. He shook the bag up and down, shifted the coins around, making sure there weren't just a few dozen golds covering a bag full of coppers. He'd seen it before but... nope, it was all good.

A hundred gold mizas. There was a time he'd taken less than that to wipe out an entire family, and the men guarding them. Father, mother, eldest son, infant son. So Konrad put on the closest he could manage to a "cordial" face and pocketed the gold.

"Tell me who, an' where I can find 'em."

The boy spoke, and an itch Konrad had in his brain since the kid had opened his mouth finally found a mouth. And words. He interrupted the boy in mid-stream and held up a hand, cordial turned to suspicious and irritated. Which was, in fairness, his usual expression.

"Wait... help ya? Don't need yer help, boy. Youse paid fer corpses, an' fer what yer paid, I'll deliver 'em. But I don't need ya trotting at me fuckin' heels."

The mercenary raised a hand and raised three fingers. Out of the corner of Sh'Ky's eye, he could see the pudgy, gnarly form of Three Eyes materialize from the alley like a dumpy ghost.

"I already got back up."

[Sh'Ky Naes]

"Tell me who, an' where I can find 'em." Sh'Ky nodded, and then spoke.

"Six men. Not affiliated with any gangs. House on Slaver's Row, behind the markets, closer to the Slums than anything. Has a red door. There are two windows, and both have wooden shutters locked tight. One door, the red one. Four have short swords. Two have clubs the size of your arm." That was all the information Sh'Ky had, all the information he needed. He wanted vengeance, bloody revenge on those men who stabbed Rastia and then tossed her corpse in the street.

"Wait... help ya? Don't need yer help, boy. Youse paid fer corpses, an' fer what yer paid, I'll deliver 'em. But I don't need ya trotting at me fuckin' heels. I already got back up." Sh'Ky's outward expression didn't change from a dull face, with eyes full of rage and hate, but he felt angry at this statement, as if Konrad were attacking him personally with his words. When his backup arrived, an ugly sonovabitch with a major case of cleft lip, Sh'Ky barely noted his presence. Right now, Konrad was his focus.

"I won't be a liability. I won't expect you to watch over me. But I do want to be there when they die. I want to see them fall. I want to see them bleed, for what they did to me. You have the money already, it wouldn't be an issue of getting paid afterward. Let me come with you." Sh'Ky's eyes had become nasty-looking, full of malice and hate. The icy blue of his irises looked like fetid gray, and he stared past Konrad, like someone who had entered a rage, but his face didn't move, aside from his lips.

[Konrad Venger]

Sounds like Caiden's usual work. And embellished bullshyke, too.

Konrad listened with quiet appreciation as all the players, pieces and places were laid out for him, right up until the end. He all but rolled his eyes and held up a hand when the kid - he assumed there was a name attached to him, but really, who cared? - tried to tell him exactly what these six dead men would be armed with.

You don't know that until you lay eyes on them. Any cunt tries to tell you otherwise is just that: a cunt.

His face hardened again when Sh'Ky played off his terms like he was a player from some sodding mummer's farce. Three Eyes had strolled over and his eyebrows slowly ascended his forehead as the kid laid it on nice and thick. How he'd been wronged, how he'd been hurt, how he wouldn't get in the way, and so on and so on and so bloody on... but Konrad had to admit, he made some good points.

"Careful, boy," Konrad said, very low, very quiet, barely audible over the rain and all but screamed thanks to the living torture chamber his face resembled. He took a step forward until he looked over Sh'Ky, so close the rain from his hat was running right off the brim into the kid's scarf. "I already have the money, remember? Don't need you fer much else, do I?"

He let the implication hang there like a sword on a string, but all three of them knew it wasn't likely to go that way, and for one simple reason: reputation. Word got around that Konrad Venger was skewering more clients than targets right after he got his coin, well, see how long it would take for no-one to start hiring the man. He had his coin, his targets, and a location... and he sighed, expelling a minor cloud of foggy breath as he did.

Always a blood complication.

"Fine, yer with us. But second that door's open, you're the first one through, f'ya wanna be such a fuckin' street daemon." He was already striding away from the bodies, leaving their rags to rot off and the crows to their midday feasts of turned flesh, bad rain or not. He knew Three Eyes would fall into step; didn't much care if the boy was late. "Any bastard waiting behind it with a crossbow, s'your problem. An' we're making a stop."

The stop turned out to be, against all expectations, a small store on the edge of the Commons that sold... farming supplies. Konrad growled at the two men to stay put and went inside, leaving Three Eyes to huddle under the eaves and root around for a loose taper of Temper. He lit the thing up with a soggy match and puffed carefully at it, wary of the sheets of rain starting to lash the city.

"So, m'guessin' it was yer woman, right?"

Three Eyes was not a man for subtlety. Fortunately for him, the sheer, raw pain on Sh'Ky's face hadn't left much to even his imagination.

"Y'know... what these cunts did t'yuh an' all. Zat why we're doin' 'em?"

Sh'Ky had time for some sort of reply before the door opened again and Konrad rejoined them... tucking a heavy sledgehammer under his duster, the huge head nestled under his armpit, four-foot shaft running parallel to his right side. He heard the tail-end of Three Eyes' question and harumphed impatiently.

"Eyes, it could be his girl, his Mum or he's jus' bored an' wants to kill some cunts, fuck're we supposed to care? All I care 'bout is we know who, how many, where an' that since they ain't kickin' up to anyone, no-on'e gonna care if we do the bastards."

He patted the sledge under his coat.

"But trust me, kid, if they've set up around the Row, that door's gonna be a bastard to get through. All those houses were made t'keep slaves, either for a while or just for fuckin' an' breakin' an' sellin'. Right..."

He took the joint from Three Eyes and treated himself to a pull deep enough to nearly explode the cherry at the end. When he next spoke, he puffed smoke with every word.

"Lets get movin', aye?"

[Sh'Ky Naes]

"Careful, boy, I already have the money, remember? Don't need you fer much else, do I?" Sh'Ky said nothing, even as the water from Konrad's hat made his scarf a little more damp. He just stared into his eyes, man to man. After a few seconds, Konrad sighed, and said, "Fine, yer with us. But second that door's open, you're the first one through, f'ya wanna be such a fuckin' street daemon.Any bastard waiting behind it with a crossbow, s'your problem. An' we're making a stop." Sh'Ky nodded. It didn't matter if he got shot. As long as he saw those men die.

Following the two men, Sh'Ky was silent, thinking about Rastia. Why did they even want to take on those slavers? Was it some sort of foolish thinking that they were the 'good guys' for doing so, just because what they did wasn't slaving, murdering, or raping? That was a foolish way of thinking. There were no 'good guys'. At least not here. Here, everyone was scum, no matter who they were or what they've done.

"So, m'guessin' it was yer woman, right?" The shorter man with the cleft lip spoke up, breaking the silence of waiting. Looking him over, Sh'Ky debated speaking up before the other man spoke again. "Y'know... what these cunts did t'yuh an' all. Zat why we're doin' 'em?"

Breathing slowly, to try and control himself, Sh'Ky looked at the man with the same glare he had given Konrad, and clenched his hands into fists. "Yes... That's why we're doing this. Now please kindly shut the fuck up. I didn't hire you two for your charming demeanor." Sh'Ky closed his eyes, and brought himself under control, teeth clenched with rage. Konrad then spoke, surprising Sh'Ky who hadn't heard him exit the store.

"Eyes, it could be his girl, his Mum or he's jus' bored an' wants to kill some cunts, fuck're we supposed to care? All I care 'bout is we know who, how many, where an' that since they ain't kickin' up to anyone, no-on'e gonna care if we do the bastards. But trust me, kid, if they've set up around the Row, that door's gonna be a bastard to get through. All those houses were made t'keep slaves, either for a while or just for fuckin' an' breakin' an' sellin'. Right..." Konrad took a deep breath from the joint Three Eyes passed him. "Lets get movin', aye?" Sh'Ky nodded, eager to get moving. The rage was building, now, and he wanted to act.

Even if he was the first through that damned red door, and even if someone had a crossbow, he was going to see all of the slavers killed.

As they walked along, Sh'Ky was silent, feeling the rain fall upon his hat and shoulders, and slough off onto the ramshackle cobblestones of the Gallows Grounds. On their way to slaver's row, they passed beggars too weak to fight the others for a better place in the alleys where they lived, sleeping in gutters where water pooled around them. They passed orphans not lucky enough to live in the Orphanage, sitting on doorsteps, unwanted by the people they begged or stole from. They passed bodies, covered in dirt, not moving, making it impossible to tell if they were living or dead.

And for the first time, Sh'Ky didn't care.

When they reached the house, Sh'Ky finally spoke up. "So you'll break down the door with the sledge, and I'll dash in after that?"

[Konrad Venger]

The last thing you wanted to do in a fight was think too much. Think just enough, and let your body and its years do the rest. In Konrad's experience, you learned more without intending to when you were trapped in a whirl of steel and death. The men that thought, that agonized over every step and move and counter-move, they froze at completely the wrong tick.

In Sunberth, that only ended one way.

The walk to the house became a march, for all three men. People around them sensed it, in the same way animals sense predators moving among them. Their intent was stamped across their faces, the steps relentless and quickening minutely with every block. By the time they turned onto the right street, just behind Slaver's Row, they were a breath away from jogging.

Konrad's mind was clear. Pure. Years of murder and horror coming to the fore, so he was the hideous calm in the storm to come.

The red door. Of course.

"So you'll break down the door with the sledge, and I'll dash in after that?"

By the time Sh'Ky had finished, Konrad and Eyes were already in position: the latter braced on the right side of the doorway, a straight, thick dagger in each hand. The latter had unlimbered the sledge from his coat and gripped it firmly, raising it to the side. The street around them erupted in a brief tumult before dying away as pedestrians burst away from them. Konrad knew most would do what all true Sunberthians would in this situation.

Get to a safe distance and enjoy the show.

"Aye, pretty much. Eyes? On the right after him and stay by the door. I'll go left. No-one gets out."

A terse nod was his only reply. The two men didn't need any more elaboration on those orders. Whatever age or status or sex behind that chipped, barred door, they wouldn't leave alive.

A pause. Long enough for Konrad to meet each pair of eyes and receive a quick nod of readiness, and then-

Time to begin.

CRACK

He swung the sledge with all the force his rangy body and the fifteen-pound head could manage. Thunder boomed around the street and in the echo afterwards Konrad could hear curses and scraping feet and chair legs inside. Bollocks, it was a thick one. He felt wood crack and bend but he'd still need-

CRACK

That one did it. The head of the sledge smashed into the door just above the lock, close enough that it would break the mechanism and shatter the wood above it. The wooden entrance exploded inward with all the force man and wood and metal put behind the blow, chips and metal springs flying after it-

Konrad gave the boy credit: he didn't hesitate. Metal in his hand, he flew in before the door had even finished its swing into the wall within the house. Three Eyes was in a tick after, roaring out his guttural defiance, dagger already raised.

Sledgehammer still in his hands, Konrad followed, and his world shrunk to that sordid property in the shittier side of Sunberth.

He saw the interior in a blink. Rooms on either side of a small parlor beyond the doorway. A staircase leading upward directly in front. A kitchen in the back, probably, entranced through one or both of the rooms to the side. Probably quite a home in the long past, of a merchant or a noble, before Slaver's Row expanded and devoured the street with its squalor.

The people. He saw those, too. Men with metal to hand, disbelief still stark in their eyes, a blink away from turning to raging hatred as they turned on their attackers, ready to swarm into them-

Konrad made the point of beating them to it.

He swung the sledgehammer to the left and let it go flying into the room he'd already stated as his own. He saw four figures inside, a dress, the rest in breeches and tunics. The first man's eyes popped open and his anger turned to shock as he saw the sledgehammer-

-fly towards him-

-slam into his chest and cave in his breastbone, knocking him back and over the couch he'd been sitting on, spitting blood as he went-

Konrad unsheathed his kopis the moment the sledge left his hands, three feet of curved, razor steel flashing in the dim candlelight. The windows were stuffed and covered with cloth, paint, anything to rob the inside of the house from outside eyes. He jerked it up out of instinct-

-blocking the cutlass that swung at his chest, stopping the blow dead-

"Fucker!"

Spitting the curse into the face of his enemy as his boot swung up and caught the man between the legs. No pantaloons, just undergarments. Ah. That explained the woman and her ragged dress. The man's eyes nearly boggled out of his skull as he doubled over, balls crushed, free hand flying to them without thought-

-Konrad bought the kopis down like an executioner, sword designed specifically for hacking and slashing smashing through his neck, shattering his collar bone and biting deep into his chest. He braced a foot against the dying man's head and kicked him away as he yanked it clear-

"You fucking sh-"

The woman screamed and wailed and begged, sinking to the floor and garbling the last word of the third man in the room, who came hurtling at Konrad with a curved dagger. He twisted to the side without thinking, strike that should have skewered his kidney ripping along his stomach instead, hot, coppery blood spraying briefly from the wound.

Konrad didn't think. He just moved.

Grabbed the wrist holding the knife with his free hand and hammered his fist into the knife-man's face, still holding the kopis. The extra weight lent the punch true brutality, and he felt things snap and pulp under his knuckles. The man's yelp turned into a gurgle and Konrad didn't give him time for a follow up-

-let go of the wrist and let the man totter to the side, balance ruined by the punch, giving Konrad space, and opening to-

-swing the kopis on a flat arc that cleaved through the man's other arm. He screeched as his limb at the elbow thudded onto the ground, stream of blood exploding from it like a geyser of life-

-Konrad finished him with a jab to the nose with his free hand, sending him fling back, knife falling from his hand, still screeching, chimes away from bleeding out on the floor, squirming in his own blood.

"Please, please, I'm not with them, I'm-"

Just a whore. Konrad didn't need to be told that, but orders were orders. The kid didn't seem the type to kill women, but he'd forgone the right to be squeamish the moment he put coin in Konrad's hand. Venger did kill women, and before the woman could even finish-

-he hacked down backhanded with the kopis and laid open her breast as she begged on her knees. Blood and more blood, adding to the rest spattering and steaming on the ground. She shoved her hands into the open wound and toppled back, Konrad already striding over her-

"Geddout 'ere f'fuck's sake-!"

More coming from the kitchen. More figures crowding the opening to the rush into the fray. Konrad's mind calculated in that lightning fast way of all brawlers, seizing on any opportunity or advantage bereft of morality or forethought. Those could wait until after: survival was the sole priority in that moment.

He snatched up the oil lamp on the table by the couch and gritted his teeth as the hot glass sizzled the flesh of his palm. He welcomed the pain. He let it fuel him as he reared back and hurled the oil-filled device at the clutch of men seeking to charge into him-

Syna bloomed for a moment and then became something far more deadly. The glass and the oil container exploded into shooting, searing, greasy flames as they struck the center man's chest. The men flanking him reeled away instantly, unwilling to share their friend's fate as he started to scream, high like a woman, batting at the flames enveloping his torso.

Clamor and death all around him. Metal on metal. Crunching through flesh. Wet, ripping sounds of death in the other rooms. Konrad paid it a broken tick's mind, then blocked it out. His battle was not over, and there was still work to be done.

He screamed and the men in the kitchen glimpsed the horror of his mutilated face made obscene and unholy by the greedy, lethal flames, right before he hurled himself into their midst, kopis swinging as he went.

[Sh'Ky Naes]

Sh'Ky unsheathed his sword, ready to move.

-CRACK-

The door began to give, and Konrad pulled the sledge back. Sh'Ky inhaled, vision focusing to a pinhead, then expanding again.

-CRACK-

The door finally gave, and Sh'Ky dashed in, sword in hand. Dashing in, he saw three options. A room to the right and the left, and stairs in front. Konrad was to the left, and the other man was to the right, so there was one way left to him.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Sh'Ky reached the top in a matter of seconds, and whipped his head around quickly, to take in his surroundings.

The upper floor was simple in layout, but dangerous in design. A hallway to the back of the house ending in a window, there were four rooms, with three of the doors open. In the hallway, stood a big man, as tall as Sh'Ky, who was busy unsheating a broadsword strapped to his waist, and looked at him with surprise. Taking advantage of that surprise, 'Ky hacked downward at his neck, and he almost took his head off, blood spurting everywhere. Shoving the body out of the way, Sh'Ky ran past him, and looked in the first room, to his right. It was nothing but a filthy bedroom.

Moving on, Sh'Ky checked the room to his left, in which a man was waking up, groggily, and stared at Sh'Ky, in a daze, before shouting and grabbing a mace made of steel, jolting awake like a bolt of lightning had struck him.

Sh'Ky dashed forward, swinging down at the man's chest, but he dodged, twisting away, while swinging the mace at Sh'Ky. It hit his shoulder, hard, probably leaving a bruise, but Sh'Ky didn't pay it any mind, and thrust forward, and caught the man in the gut, driving it through him, and the tip went out the back.

Shoving into the man, and tumbling forward, and collapsing into a heap, the pair of fighters lay still for a second, before Sh'Ky moved once more, grabbing his sword and ripping it from the other man's gut with a schlork sound. Standing up, Sh'Ky had barely enough time before he got hit by something in the side of the head, causing him to fall down again, dropping his sword.

Sh'Ky tried to grab the sword, but a steel-toed boot smashed into his arm, making him grunt with pain, before he focused his gaze, seeing a bald, scarred man holding a wooden club, about the length of his arm, standing over him. Attempting to shift his arm out from under the man's leg by grabbing it with his left arm, and receiving a club to the face again for his troubles, Sh'Ky stopped, falling limp. The man leaned forward, looking him over. "Who the feck're you? What th' 'ell 're ya doin' here? Are there any more o' ya-"

The man was interrupted by a voice that came from the hallway. "Ey, Bogface! We gotta go, they took out Jongo and Lionel! We gotta run, man." The bald man, 'Bogface', apparently, looked at Sh'Ky, clearly debating what to do with him, before the urgent voice of the other man got through to him, and he began running.

Dazed from two blows to the head, Sh'Ky fought through the blackness at the edge of his blurry vision and sudden dizziness to grab his sword again. Gripping the leather-bound hilt, he forced himself to his feet, almost falling to the ground again but catching himself. Once he was on his feet, he began moving towards the stairs slowly at first, but his pace grew steadily quicker, before he started down the stairs at a run.

Running out the door after the men like a bat out of hell, Sh'Ky sported a split lip, and a massive bruise that covered the left half of his face, along with a long cut on his forehead. Following them down, Sh'Ky noted that the crowd that had gathered around the house was slowing them down a bit. Looking around as he ran, Sh'Ky tried to spot Konrad or his ally anywhere.

[Konrad Venger]

"RAAAAAWRRRRGHHHHH!!!"

Three Eyes was long past the point of using such advanced things as words and curses. With blood leaking down his face from a gash across his brow and one arm hanging limp from where a bludgeon-bat had smashed it clear from his shoulder, he was subsisting and surviving on sheer, unbridled hatred at that point.

"C'mon, yuz cunt ye-"

The last man standing in the right-hand room hadn't quite reached that point. He spat and bellowed curses as they circled each other, slashing and hacking here and there, whenever they saw an opening. But Three Eyes had little to recommend him to the word, save his skill with a blade. He could not land the mortal blow, yet every counter and riposte granted him a new slash or gash across a limb. Now the other man was slowing, bloody footprints dogging him everywhere.

They had to step careful to avoid the other bodies. Two of them. One dead before the destroyed door had even stopped swinging, one of Eyes' blades buried in his throat. The second had fought harder, longer, and still died with his head smashed through a window.

"Gods fuck no-!"

Konrad killed his men through smoke and flame and shadow. Three Eyes had to admit, it looked a lot more appealing than the slow, grinding, painstaking agony of a real knife fight.

The last two men in the kitchen backpedaled madly when Konrad lunged their way, kopis cleaving open the flaming man they'd left behind. Blood boiled and steamed even as it flew into the air; the flames were so thick on the screaming man that Konrad could hardly tell he'd made his cut. But he went down all the same, burning body casting insane shadows around the filthy kitchen with a bricked-up back door and boarded up windows.

Konrad's senses recoiled at the stench of burned metal and rotted blood. Organs and effluence. He could feel pain etched into the walls and scraped into the floor with desperate, broken finger nails.

He did not know what they'd been doing in this house, but it wasn't mere slaving.

The thoughts rushed through Konrad's mind and didn't pause or gain purchase on anything. He was still in the middle of a brawl, and drove the two men back with his weapon, swinging wide and forcing them away-

-hacking again at the man on the left, forcing him to the other side of the kitchen table and then-

-kicking out at the edge of it and sending it screeching and scraping along the tiled floor, knocking the man into the wall as it struck his stomach. The other man seized hi opportunity, coming in fast with a short sword as Konrad was focused on his partner trapped behind the table-

But he hadn't been forgotten. Not even for a moment.

Konrad lunged inside the man's reach and the blow that would have laid into his side swung behind his back instead, Konrad trapped the hand against his side-

-and bringing his knee up into the man as they crashed together. He bit out a yelp as the gouge across his stomach ground and twisted against the other man, smearing his own blood against him. But he kept slamming his knee up, once, twice, one last time-

-before throwing his hips to the side and hurling the man to the ground, hacking down at him with his kopis before he'd even landed properly. The man behind the table watched in horror as Govani's back was laid open even as he lay, blood-bubbling pleas for mercy lost in the wet suck and smack of sharpened metal through blood and bone.

"Fuck this-!"

Konrad's head snapped around like a snake's when he heard the table screech. The last man was running for Three Eyes' room, sword still in hand and he roared at his fucking presumption, that he could escape and when the man turned, flailing madly-

CLANG

-metal screamed and crashed together, both men pushing against each other, glaring eyes brimming with hate as they stared across the crossed swords-

Fucking idiot.

And in all that glaring, the last man wasn't looking at Konrad's other hand. How it had snapped to the small of his back and gripped his kukri and while he was so busy with their test of strength-

-Konrad ripped the curved knife free and jammed it into his stomach.

He always noticed something, in that last second of a brawl. When the blade sunk in and realization with it. After the hate had melted to shock and even after pain had become a memory. Then there were only two ways things went. Only two, in all Konrad's years of ending men.

Acceptance and desperation. Showing your belly or clawing like an animal. Embracing the gods and spitting in their faces.

The man did the former. He drew back his cutlass again and readied it for a chop and Konrad-

-yanked up with his kukri and split the man's stomach open from his navel to the bottom of his breastbone. Squirming, wriggling, stinking things blossomed from the gaping wound and that desperation dimmed but did not die. The man went down to his knees, cutlass falling from nerveless fingers, clawing at Konrad's stomach the whole way down.

"Shyke!"

Three Eyes' opponent cursed at the sight of Konrad's last blow, a sweeping arc of bloody steel that took the kneeling man's head off. Three Eyes didn't need a sodding invitation: he knew an advantage when he saw it. Just a beat of hesitation, a moment of distraction, that was enough-

-for him to dart forward faster than his girth would suggest he was capable of, just as the knife man turned again-

-howled as Eyes' deep slash across his wrist robbed him of his weapon-

-and was robbed of sound and blood and life when his backhand opened up his throat and sent him gurgling to the ground, blood spurting over Three Eyes' legs as he went.

"That all?" Pounding from upstairs, drawing both their eyes. "Dun' look-"

An avalanche of panicked flesh hurtled down the stairs and two desperate figures flew through the door. Konrad cursed savagely and started to move-

-and sent crashing into Eyes' room as the broken-chested man he'd first nailed with the sledgehammer entering the building finally caught up with him.

"Youse... fuckin'... bassard!"

Konrad staggered and grunted but did not fall. The man was dying. Shards of bone had pierced his lungs, mayhap even his heart, but sheer, raging hatred was keping him going for one final kill. As he staggered he saw another figure rush out the doorway. Slighter, younger, blood streaming and eyes blazing-

"Fuck, s'the kid-"

"After 'im! NOW!"

Three Eyes didn't argue. One dying man wouldn't slow Konrad down for long. As he ran to follow Sh'Ky, Konrad bellowed like an animal and backpedaled at almost a full run. The man gripped his tight around the throat but that changed once he-

-was slammed into the wall by Konrad, taller man crouching down, bowing his head forward-

-then slamming it back to break the man's nose with the back of his head, and the man's hands lowered-

But he was not done yet. Desperate, sadistic fingers found the weeping gash in Konrad's stomach and plunged into it. Pain, white-hot and shrieking through every fiber of Konrad brought him down to his knees and he screamed like a dying man, squirming and wriggling in mindless agony, animal instincts taking over as they pushed, pushed, trying to pull out his fucking guts-

Konrad squirmed and craned his head around until he could see through red-tinted eyes-

-the man's head, his hair, his-

Now the man screamed again as Konrad clamped his mouth around his ear. His teeth bit down hard, grinding until his jaw ached and blood filled his mouth and he could feel the enamel meet and he ripped it clear-

-the man's hands going to his ruined ear, withdrawing from Konrad's stomach-

-and Venger hammered backward with an elbow from his knees, smashing it into the gigantic, splintered bruise where his sledgehammer had landed the first time. Unharmed, the blow could have cracked the bone there; at least winded the man. Already shattered, Konrad could feel the sickening mass of broken bone and pumped cartilage give way under his elbow, pushed deeper into the flesh mass of vital organs beyond, and the doomed man clutched at both breast and ear, unable to breath.

Konrad rose and it felt like he was holding his very soul from spilling out of the wound in his stomach. He looked down and...

"Ah, you fucking-" He swept down with the kopis. Laid open the man's face. "-fucking-" Again, even harder, splitting his chest open like a pig's at the butcher's. "-CUNT!"

The last parted cranium and brain and everything else on the man's skull. Eyes burst, teeth scattered everywhere like nuts from a bowl, his tongue was left twitching in the fresh cave of a mouth without any roof... and he slumped to the side as if to sleep.

Konrad gasped and growled and forced himself to stagger, just to see if... yes... he could still move. He lurched through the corpses, gait unsteady with a fresh spasm of pain hitting him with every step. But he was used to pain. His life revolved around it, either dealing out or taking it. He snarled at the crowd and at the mere sight of him they split like minnows before a pike-

-and he could see Three Eyes' pudgy form whirling around a corner-

"Fucking move!"

So he followed, a strange jerking run almost like an ape's. One hand clutched over his stomach, growing slicker by the moment, the other holding tight to his kopis so his knuckles whitened. The job wasn't done yet.

[Sh'Ky Naes]

Dashing through the crowd after the men like a man possessed, Sh'Ky followed them into an alleyway, banking left, hard. The alleyway was a dead end, piles of shit and refuse heaped everywhere, leaving one single pathway to the back, where garbage piled up, in a heap almost as tall as the buildings it stood between. The two men turned around, frantically, looking for another way out. When they saw only Sh'Ky there, his face bruised and bleeding, and his deathgrip on the sword slipping, they grinned and ran towards him, expecting to curb-stomp him, like the last time.

Unlike the last time, however, Sh'Ky was prepared, dizziness aside. When the balding man with the long club charged him, and swung down at him, Sh'Ky stepped to the side, and rammed his shoulder squarely into his chest, slamming him against the wall, causing him to drop his club. Turning around, he barely raised his blade in time to block a downward cut from a longsword.

The second man reacted quicker than Sh'Ky, though, and disengaged, kicking at his knee, causing 'Ky to fall down on one knee, hissing in pain. As the man swung back down at his head a second time, Sh'Ky made a leap forward, crashing into his chest, plunging a shortsword into his gut. Ripping the blade out, Sh'Ky let the body fall, and turned to the other man, with a hateful look. Even though the man was bulkier than Sh'Ky, and held a longer weapon, he backed into the alley, holding the club in a warding stance, nervous.

"Y-You don't want to kill me! I can tell you who did this!" Sh'Ky's face grew dark at this statement, and he shook his head, waiting for the two others to arrive. He was no longer listening to the man, and looked for Konrad, looking at the entrance to the alley out of the corner of his eye.

[Konrad Venger]

"Well... dat was... lucky..."

Three Eyes was grateful to whatever gods would smile on such as him that there was no prolonged chase. Though yes, he was quick in a brawl and had the stolid, stocky build of a fighting man, he was sure not constructed for running, especially through the meandering, obstacle-riddled course of Sunberth. Breath ragged and chest heaving, he rounded the corner and beheld a scene that had him leaning against the wall in exhaustion.

The massive mound of refuse that blocked off the alley. One man crawling along the cobbles trailing blood and shit as he went. Another backed up to the far wall, longsword held more like a talisman than a weapon, as if he could ward off-

The kid. Indignation and fury stamped across his young face as sure and real as the blood. Closing for the kill.

More feet. Pounding but erratic. Three Eyes was alert in a tick, blade braced, waiting for those feet to get closer, closer-

-arm raised to strike-

"Fuck!"

"Shyke, Eyes?!"

Konrad jerked his kopis up out of instinct and kept it raised until Three Eyes lowered his blade with a huff. Wouldn't be the first time a partner had turned on him. But once that moment of confusion was dealt with, he joined the man against the wall, breathing hard into the sky and clutching his stomach.

"How bad?"

"Not... bad as it could be. Fucker got... his fuckin' hand in there." He moved his hand. Stained crimson. Dared a look and grimaced. "Some lucky bastard's gonna... gonna make some coin with a... needle n'... n' thread."

Then he took in the rest of the alley. The dying, the soon to be and the living. The last man's babbling washed over him as he walked unsteadily over to the crawler. Brought his kopis up and down with the smooth, stoic efficiency of a man crushing a roach, then turned to Sh'Ky.

"Hurry the f... fuck up, will ya?!" He panted, exhaustion starting to creep up on him as yet more blood oozed from his wound. "Ain't got all... all day."

They begged. They all did, if they had the time and the wit. Always promising something that only a few more chimes or bells of life could give, something greater than the purse that had been paid for their deaths. Konrad barely paid attention to it. Instead he peeked around the entrance to the alley, watching for pursuers and praying to the gods he hated he'd see none.

Cmon, boy. Finish the sodding job.