As usual, the sun cast jaundiced light through the stained-glass window of the manor's highest office, spilling green and amber shadows across Lorcawn's desk.

His chair creaked as he leaned back, human elbows resting on the armrests. Outside the window and below him, through the warped colors of leaded glass, the Repossessor Bazaar churned like a slow boil. Merchants hawked wares, apprentices sprinted with heavy satchels behind them, and Repossessors shouted instructions from raised crates.

After all, a crowd had gathered in the square directly beneath his office. The Repossessors were overseeing the final adjustments to the new water fountain with brass piping arching up from the stones, and he watched, with great anticipation alongside the crowd, as one of his men ducked into an alley to twist a hidden valve.

With a violent sputter, the pipes beneath the fountain roared to life. A stream of greenish-blue water hissed out of the fountain's spout and caught the light before splashing into the basin, glimmers scattering like alchemical fire.

Cheers immediately exploded from the crowd. Three dozen men of his jumped up and down like children, and some of them took off their leather patchwork masks to splash their face in the fountain, shouting about how having access to Gulch water from now on would give their skin the glow of Saintess' hand.

Lorcawn cracked the barest smile seeing the water fountain come to life.

A year of work. A year of tussling with the Gulchers. The Repossessors had done what no other gang in Blightmarch ever managed to do: they'd carved out a path to the pipelines' central command chamber and taken it for themselves, and the Gulchers, for whatever mad reason, hadn't come crawling back for it.

Perhaps they were afraid of him and his men.

His smile lingered as his gaze lifted, drifting beyond the streets, the buildings, and past the roofs of the Repossessor Bazaar.

There, framed between plumes of industrial smoke in the distance, floated the shimmering spires of the City of Splendors.

He stared at the floating city long and hard.

The Repossessors were on the path of victory. One day, they'd be able to rival Vharnveil's big three, but before that, they'd first have to rival the big gangs of the other three wards first: the Fishermen of Wraithpier in the northern ward, the Three-Faces of Bleakheart in the western ward, and the Steelborn of Ironwych in the eastern ward.

As of right now, the Repossessors may be the gang with the strongest fighting force in Blightmarch, the southern ward, but the Rot Merchants still had deeper coffers. The Merchants stayed out of wars, sold to all sides across Bharncair, and kept a stranglehold on every black market from here to Umbracross. Without their level of financial power, the Repossessors wouldn't be able to sustain a drawn-out war against any of the big gangs in the other wards. Try as he might, they'd bleed out in months.

And then there were the Gulchers.

Cursed vermin.

The Repossessors may control the central command chamber now, but the Gulchers still controlled a significant chunk of the traversal pipelines beneath Blightmarch. Until they had full and total control of the pipelines, they wouldn't be able to invade the other wards reliably.

Because only the mad would try to invade the other wards through the central ward.

The northern, western, eastern, and southern wards were all connected via the central ward: Umbracross. Considering it was the sunless ward directly beneath Vharnveil, it was the only ward in Bharncair the Mortifera Enforcers actually bothered enforcing, so if the Repossessors wanted to cut into either the western or eastern ward on the surface, they'd have to go through the Mortifera Enforcers—and right now, they weren't nearly strong enough to run an army through the Mortifera Enforcers' territory.

So without the pipelines that'd let them bypass the central cross, and without the financial power to sustain an invasion, the Repossessors would remain a mere local gang, unable to take up arms against Vharnveil.

… And then there's also him.

The Raven.

His teeth ground slowly behind his mask.

Word on the street got out quickly that the Raven of Heartcord Clinic managed to walk out of a standoff with the Repossessors last week with dominance, prestige, and their heads held high. Word on the street was, the Repossessors had been tamed by that mad drunk of a Plagueplain Doctor from a barely-functioning back-alley clinic.

He may have gotten what he wanted from that standoff—access to all Gulch water beneath Blightmarch—but at the same time, he'd also lost something much, much more important.

He still tasted the ash of that humiliation.

Gael Halloway.

Gael Halloway.

Gael… 'Halloway'?

He frowned. He felt like he was on the verge of remembering something with that household name, but then the Raven half-concealed in the shadowy corner of his office coughed softly behind his mask.

Lorcawn's eye twitched as he swivelled around in his chair.

He'd almost forgotten about the Raven who was just leaning against his wall, scribbling into a shoddy journal.

"... You smell uncharacteristically irritated," the Raven said, light and mellow. "Is the Great Palm of the Repossessors, perhaps, bothered by a little something insignificant?"

Lorcawn tilted his head just slightly, just enough to glance sideways at the Raven without fully facing him. "I am not."

"But you are." The Raven's quill scratched faintly in his journal. "That is no good. The purpose of my experiment is to confirm my hypothesis that, contrary to their preferences at first glance, they do grow stronger faster in a Host with a temperament like still water. In short, my experiment hinges on emotional stability in a physically powerful Host. If you are agitated constantly…" A pause. "The results may become warped. I do not desire warped results."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Lorcawn gave a dry snort.

"You are a Raven, alright," he muttered. "How in the great hells did you even manage to tell I was irritated?"

"I smelled it," the Raven repeated plainly, unamused. "It is in both of our best interests that you remain calm and steady at all times. Is there anything you can do to regain that temperament like still water?"

That gave Lorcawn pause.

Calm.

What made him calm?

The first thing that swam to mind was beauty. Limbs, in particular. He thought of that pearlescent left arm he used to have grafted on his back—soft and slender—but then his mouth curled bitterly before he could stop himself.

He'd given that one back to Fergal, and the new left arm he'd replaced its spot with—making for a total of twelve arms on his back right now, including the four spider limbs he'd gotten from his Spider Class—wasn't half as pretty as that one.

But…

That woman.

The Raven's wife.

Pale skin. Fine bones. Delicate fingers. He cracked his knuckles absently, and then he asked, "What is her name again, doctor?"

"Whose?"

"The wife of that Raven in the Heartcord Clinic. Mel? Maria?"

The Raven turned a page in his journal absentmindedly. "Maeve," he said. "Maeve Valcieran."

Lorcawn's fingers drummed slowly against the desk.

"... Valcieran?"

"Yes. Does the household name mean something to you?"

Lorcawn sat still for a beat, fingers tapping against the edge of his desk. Unlike the emptiness that followed the name 'Halloway,' this one—'Valcieran'—dug its nails in immediately.

A slow grin spread beneath his mask.

He rose wordlessly, chair scraping back, and immediately swept across his office for the front door.

"Thank you, doctor," he said as he passed by. "There is, in fact, a way for me to unwind from recent events."

The basement beneath the Repossessors' headquarters stank of iron and mildew. Fungal rot curled up the corners of the stone walls, and torchlight guttered in glass sconces, throwing crooked shadows over the slick floor.

Chains rattled faintly as Lorcawn passed through the hallway. Row after row of cells lined either side of the corridor, and in each lay some husk of a person. Starved. Scarred. Unwhole. Most had at least one of their limbs amputated, if not multiple, so muffled sobs drifted through the dark, rasping against stone like wind through graveyard teeth.

"Great Palm," one voice whimpered. "F… Forgive the interest. I'll pay. I'll pay by next week, I promise."

"Not the knife again. Not again, please—"

"Please, Great Palm, just two more days. Two more days. My brother—he'll come, I swear it—"

"Let me do it again. I need it. I need it. If I don't, I—"

He didn't stop to listen to any one of them.

Past the debtors, past the dismembered, he eventually reached a cell near the very end of the corridor. There, curled like a piece of trash on wet flagstones, lay a woman in rags. Her left arm was gone and wrapped in gauze. Her long, dirt-muddled hair stuck to her face in dirty clumps. Her skin was the color of unglazed porcelain, streaked with rot and bruising, while the cuff on her ankle remained without a partner on the other end.

She was utterly motionless until he stopped right in front of her cell, at which point she looked up slowly, squinted through her air, and like everyone else—she began begging.

"…Great Palm?"

He didn't speak.

She forced herself upright on her knees, both hands trembling. "Please," she begged, already reaching weakly through the bars. "Please, let me… let me drain again. You said I could. I need to—if I… if I don't—if I don't—"

"I have a use for you," Lorcawn said plainly.

Her mouth immediately snapped shut as he reached into his coat and pulled out a folded paper slip, flicking it through the bars.

She stared at it, dazed for a good moment, before she slowly unfolded it.

Her eyes traced the instructions.

Then she froze.

The tremble began in her hands. Then it reached her shoulders. Her jaw. She looked up at him, eyes wide and bloodshot.

"How…" she whispered, "how did you find her? How did you know—"

"That does not concern you, Miss debtor." He knelt slowly and leaned in closer, nearly pressing his face against the bars. "You are going to do as per the instructions you have been given. If not, I will leave you down here to rot. I have been thinking of removing your left arm from my back recently, so I may not need your fresh blood for much longer."

"No," she said quickly. She flinched away from her own voice. "No, I… can't. I can't. Please, anything but this, I'll… I'll fight for you. I'll kill for you, but—"

He snapped one of his grafted hands through the bars and clamped it around her throat like a vise, lifting her off the ground.

She gagged, feet scrabbling helplessly.

"How long has it been since I last gave you the blood-draining blade? One month and one week? One month and two weeks?" he said evenly, tightening his grip around her throat. "If I recall correctly, even the strongest of your kind can only survive two months without draining the poison from your blood. You must be approaching your limit."

Her eyes bulged.

"Are you feeling it yet?" he whispered. "That sick heat under your ribs? That sourness crawling up your spine? That is your blood going bad. Do you remember what happened last time when I kept the blade from you for just an extra week?"

A wheezing sob slipped from her mouth.

"I remember you screaming. Writhing. Your own body turning on you like a nest of worms." He leaned in even closer, his breath hissing through the brass tubes on his mask. "Maybe this time, I will keep the blade from you for two extra weeks. I do want to see the kind of face you will make for me."

She twitched once more, her legs kicking faintly against the stone, so he finally loosened his grip and let her go.

Retching and coughing, she crumpled and immediately curled into a ball, her right arm wrapped around her stomach like she could hold herself together like that.

"... You will do as you have been told," he said, dusting mud off his grafted hand as he stood back up. "Three weeks. I will give you three weeks to eat, heal, and look the part. In three weeks, I want the Heartcord Clinic torn apart."

With that, he reached into the back of his coat and drew a thin black blade glinting with a dull sheen, tossing it through the bars.

But instead of immediately lunging for her relief, the woman raised her head and spoke in a small voice:

"One… condition."

He paused just as he was about to turn and walk away.

"If… you'll accept my one condition," she wheezed, the fear of the devil in her voice, "I'll do it, no questions asked."

Lorcawn glared down at her.

Foolish and defiant was this woman who believed she was in any position to negotiate with him—to haggle like that Raven boy had—but then he reminded himself he was standing, and she was not.

So he smiled and knelt before the bars once again, stooping to meet her on her level.

"Of course," he said wryly. "I will listen to your condition, at least."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.