Chương 80: Chapter 79 — Family Is Fair Game

The room hadn't changed since they'd thrown him into it. No windows, nothing to mark day from night — just the same mineral seams running through the stone like dark veins, the same smell, damp rock and old rust, and underneath it, faint now but never quite gone, the memory of whatever the last prisoner in here had bled onto the floor. Ant had counted the seams more times than he could admit to anyone. He knew every one of them by feel in the dark.

"You." He didn't move. Whatever else this cell had taught him, it was that — moving first never got him anywhere.

"Why?" The figure standing between him and the door didn't answer straight away. They took their time before answering, unhurried, like the delay itself was worth something.

"The pay was good." A shrug, easy, like they were discussing the weather.

"But that's not the only reason." Their shoulders dropped a fraction, and the next words came out slower than the last, spaced apart like each one had to be set down carefully before the next could follow.

"I had a little brother." Ant said nothing. Waited. He'd checked his system twice in the last hour already, out of habit more than hope, and gotten the same reading both times — Mahkir alive, Level 6, HP climbing back toward full. The guards had told him otherwise when they'd first thrown him in here, laid it out plain and confident, expecting it to break something in him. It hadn't.

The system had never lied to him before, not once, not even when the truth was ugly, and he wasn't about to start doubting it now because a stranger with a sword wanted him to.

"Completely obnoxious little twerp. Always getting himself into trouble and expecting me to bail him out of it." The sword came up between them, unhurried, the point finding a line straight at Ant's chest. Not a swing. Just a fact, laid out in steel.

"Then I find out — after he goes on some raid — that he's dead. And I swear, right then, that he might have been useless, might have been a pain in my ass every day of his life, but he was still family. So when I found out who killed him, I made myself a promise. He would suffer." The name landed a half-second before they said it, the way a stone drops before the splash reaches you.

"You knew him as Calvin." Ant took a second before he answered, working through it plainly, refusing to let it turn into anything worse in his head than it actually was in the room.

"You do know Calvin attacked me. It was self-defense." He kept his voice level. Level cost him effort, but he paid it without letting it show.

"If you had a problem with that — why come after the whole clan? Why not just come for me?"

"Did you not hear a word I said?" Their voice thinned out, sharp for the first time since they'd started talking.

"He was family. The only fair response is to kill yours. Let you stand there completely helpless while it happens. And only once you understand that it's your fault — that you're the reason they're dead — only then do I let you have peace." Ant smiled at that. It cost him nothing, because it wasn't real.

"And how's that going for you so far?" He let the words sit loose, easy, like he had all the time in the world to spend them.

"I imagine Kalsar's been causing you no end of problems." He watched for it — the flicker, the tell, anything that would hand him something he could use later. He got a laugh instead, low and unbothered, the kind that came too easily to be entirely for his benefit.

"I'll admit it." They tilted their head, considering him like a puzzle taking longer than expected.

"Your clan's held up better than I planned for. Resilience, or luck — either way, do you think they'll come for you once they know we've got you? They took a beating tonight. Your scout took a couple of nasty hits — I don't think she'll die, but she won't be fit to hold a blade for days." A pause, timed to land.

"And then, of course, there's your Kithren." Ant kept his face still. Stone-still. He'd had plenty of practice at it since they'd thrown him in here.

"Surely you felt it." Softer now, almost gentle, which made it worse.

"When he died. The bond going quiet." They laughed. The others in the room laughed with them — three voices Ant hadn't bothered turning to look at yet, because none of them mattered as much as the one in front of him. The laughter thinned out fast, though, once whoever was paying attention noticed the problem, uncertain glances passing between them that nobody wanted to be the first to explain.

"What — no shouting?" A step closer.

"No threats? No creative names for what I am?"

"Why would I do that?" Ant kept it flat, calm, almost bored.

"Mahkir says you're full of shit." It was a lie. It came out of him smoother than he expected.

"Impossible." The word left them fast, too fast, and their eyes went to the walls before they could stop themselves — checking, counting, some instinct they hadn't planned on showing him.

"Did you really think those minerals in here were strong enough to block me?" Ant let the moment stretch, pushing his advantage before it could close back up.

"I know exactly what's happening out there. Just like I know Kalsar's brought forty of his old students to take this camp apart. You think last time was hard? Just wait." Silence. The kind that isn't empty — the kind that's full of people doing math they don't like the answer to. A hand closed around Ant's collar before he saw it move.

"You think you're clever." Whatever had been playful in their voice a minute ago was gone now, replaced by a flatness that didn't need volume to be dangerous.

"The man who leads this camp is stronger than you understand. Forty of your friends wouldn't be enough to touch him." They threw him back against the wall. His skull cracked stone hard enough to blur the room for a second, and by the time it steadied, the door was already slamming open — not blasted, not yet, just a woman shoving through it with her face gone the wrong color, panic riding every word out of her mouth. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"We're under attack! They're everywhere!" The captor spared Ant one more look — unreadable, or close enough — before turning to the three remaining in the room.

"Guard him. Don't let him out of your sight." Already moving.

"I'm going to help." The three guards spread out around him, flanking, blades up. None of them looked comfortable holding the position — one kept glancing at the door instead of at Ant, and the youngest of the three had his sword gripped too tight, knuckles pale around the hilt, like he was more afraid of dropping it than using it.

Somewhere beyond the walls the fighting was climbing, layered now with a smell Ant's nose caught before his ears did — scorch and ozone, the residue a Kithren attack leaves behind, seeping in under the door like it had somewhere better to be. A single knock landed against the wood. One of the guards moved to answer it. The door didn't open so much as stop existing.

It went through the guard behind it in a spray of splinters and fire, both of them slamming into the back wall together, and the wave of heat that followed carried a smell Ant knew better than his own name — smoke, singed fur, underneath it, unmistakably, him.

"Mahkir," Ant said. His Kithren was already moving before the dust settled, low and fast, eyes gone past dark red into something closer to black, and the second guard didn't even get his sword all the way up before Mahkir was past his guard and through him. The third one dropped his blade outright and bolted for the corridor without waiting to see if Mahkir would let him. Ant didn't wait to be handed a weapon.

He dropped to the guard already on the floor, wrenched the blade from dead fingers, and came up with it just as the smoke cleared enough to let him see the room properly again — scorched wood, the door in three pieces, Mahkir turning toward him with something in his stance that hadn't been there when they'd split up at the treeline. Older. Sharper at the edges.

"You're late," Ant said. You're alive. We'll call it even. Mahkir's voice came through clean — no static, no distance, nothing left of whatever the minerals had been doing to muffle it before. Kalsar wasn't going to wait past tonight either way. Xylock had to talk him down twice. I told him if he made me wait a full day longer I'd break his legs myself and save the enemy the trouble. Ant let his eyes close for one second, just one, and made himself breathe out slow before he opened them again.

All that not knowing, and now he had it in front of him, solid, real, standing close enough to bleed on his boots if either of them took the wrong hit in the next minute.

"How's Kalsar? Raven?" Kalsar's still standing, far as I know. Took a spear meant for Ray a few nights back and didn't slow down for it, which is either brave or stupid and I haven't decided which yet. Raven's out of the fight — head wound, arm wound, both from that same night, and Shrike wouldn't leave her even unconscious. A pause, Mahkir's ears flicking toward the corridor and back. The rest of it, I couldn't tell you. Kalsar pulled together whoever would come and we hit the wall together.

My job was finding you. I broke off the second we were through and didn't look back to see how it's going out there. He said it fast, almost annoyed, the words tumbling over each other the way they only did when he'd been frightened and didn't want it noticed — then he pressed his flank against Ant's leg for half a second, solid and warm and real, before turning back toward the corridor. Move. I'm not doing this again.

They'd made it three steps past the doorway when Mahkir stopped short, nose dropping toward a plain wooden crate shoved into the corner where the corridor bent. Nothing marked it. Nothing about it should have caught his attention at all, except Ant recognized the toe of his own boot through a gap in the slats and stopped walking before he'd finished deciding to.

"That's mine." Mahkir didn't answer. He drove both front claws into the seam where the lid met the frame and tore it back in one motion, wood splitting loud enough that the guard still scrambling for the far door flinched at the sound without turning to see what caused it. Inside: Ant's own blade, his chest piece, the gauntlets he hadn't had on since the ambush, all of it thrown in together with none of the care any of it deserved. Ant didn't waste time being grateful for it.

He let the dead guard's sword drop, buckled the chest piece on with hands that fumbled the straps twice before they caught, and took up his own blade last, the weight of it settling into his palm the way only a weapon that's actually yours ever does. A chime sounded somewhere behind his eyes, faint and easy to ignore, the way it had been for the last few minutes while he'd had better things to look at than a screen. He hadn't checked it once since the door came down. He checked it now. Level up. Kithren: Mahkir.

Level: 7. Evolution Stage: 1. New Trait unlocked: Experience Track.

"You're about to be insufferable about this," Ant said. I'm always insufferable. This is just going to come with numbers attached now. His voice dropped half a register on the last word, quick, unguarded, gone again before Ant could ask about it. Seven. Took long enough. Ant pulled the screen up properly despite himself, however many hours he'd just spent locked in a box, apparently not enough to break the habit of checking everything twice.

A bar sat under Mahkir's level now that hadn't been there before — 460 / 16, 000 — and beside it, when he thought to look, a second one under his own name, his own progress, visible for the first time in eight levels of never once knowing how close he actually was to anything. 2, 735 / 4, 800. His own bar sat further from full than he expected. Whatever that fight outside was earning him, it hadn't been enough yet to tip him over.

"Since when do I get one of these too?" No idea. Wasn't expecting it either. A pause, ears flicking toward the corridor again. Ask questions later. Preferably after the part where we're not still standing in a room somebody just tried to keep you dead in. They went together, smoke thick enough to sting, the sound of fighting no longer muffled but close, real, spilling out of the next room and the one past that.

Ant kept the sword low, following the noise rather than away from it, legs unsteady under him in a way hours standing still in one cell hadn't prepared him for, but they held, and that was enough for now. The corridor spilled into a wider room — storage, half of it already burning, sacks split open and smoldering along one wall.

Past the far door, in the strip of yard beyond it, firelight threw long shapes across the ground, and somewhere off to the right a voice Ant didn't recognize was shouting something about a grade, Epic, over and over like the word itself needed saying twice to be believed. It clicked a second later — Andy's voice. Ant didn't slow down for it. Andy meant Hexa, and Hexa meant the rest of them wouldn't be far behind her.

He came out of the storage room into open air thick with smoke, and the yard opened up in front of him all at once — bodies down in the dirt, weapons scattered where hands had let go of them, firelight throwing everything long and orange across the ground. Andy stood near the center of it, lenses lit from within, Hexa coiled at his back like something built rather than hatched. Kalsar was there.

And past him, bow up, tracking a target Ant couldn't see yet — Rebekah, days and miles from where he'd last left her deciding whether to trust any of them at all. He didn't have room to ask how. He kept it next to everything else he'd need answers for later and pushed forward. Duncan's shield took a hit meant for Sam's back without either of them looking to check it had landed.

Past all of it, at the far end of the yard, three men already stood in the firelight, the doors of the central building swinging slower now behind them than whatever urgency had first pushed them open. Two flanking. One a pace ahead, spine straight, hands loose at his sides, the kind of stillness that had never once needed raising its voice to be obeyed. Their Kithren stood at their heels, calm in a way nothing else in that yard had managed all night. Ant didn't wait for an invitation.

He was already moving toward them, sword low, legs unsteady but holding, all those hours standing in one cell finally with somewhere to go.