The very next morning, Reed made a show of his hasty departure. A mask of feigned fright, frantic glances, and a stuttering gait completed the performance. When he slammed his final payment onto the worn counter, the tavern owner smirked, grunting into his thick mustache.

  "Leaving so soon?"

  "Yeah," Reed chuckled nervously, deliberately spilling a handful of stolen coins across the wood. The owner barely suppressed an eye-roll but swept the coins into his palm nonetheless.

  "Didn't like Master Ermod's offer, I take it?"

  "Not a bit," Reed muttered, shifting his weight like a man ready to bolt.

  "Watch yourself, elf. My advice? Keep your head down for a while."

  "What do you mean?" Reed rounded his eyes, playing the part of the terrified boy to perfection.

  "Well... Master Ermod doesn't take 'no' for an answer. Nor do the men standing behind him. They’ll be looking for you."

  "Just what I needed," Reed whispered, his voice cracking.

  "Heh, yeah. You're doing the right thing, getting out while you still can."

  Reed nodded frantically, threw his threadbare bag over his shoulder, and hurried toward the exit. He squeezed between the early-morning patrons, shoulders hunched. Someone grumbled a curse as he passed; another made a crude joke about elven cowardice, while a third promised to kick his ass if they ever saw the "long-eared creature" in the bar again. Reed let the remarks slide past him like water, marveling at the kreyghars' ability to get blackout drunk before the sun had even fully crested the horizon.

  The door creaked on rusted hinges, and Reed stepped out into the street.

  The market air was a thick, cloying soup of iron-scented blood and spoiling meat. Women scurried through the mud of the alleyways while urchins and petty pickpockets wove through the crowd. Reed was always amused by the clumsy naivety with which they believed their thievery went unnoticed.

  Ahead, a boy pretended to stumble into a merchant’s wife, his small hand patting down the folds of her dress before dissolving into a flurry of awkward apologies. For a heartbeat, their eyes met. The boy’s pupils dilated in fright as he realized he’d been spotted, but Reed didn't shout. He simply smiled—a quick, sharp flash of teeth—and gave the lad a slow, knowing wink.

  Ermod’s messenger was to meet Reed after sunset at the ragged edge of the city, near a dive called the Three Swords. The bar was a wretched place, distinguished neither by its service nor the quality of its clientele. It was a haunt for miners and mud-stained peasants, with petty bandits and street thugs occasionally loitering in the shadows. The owner cared nothing for the law, selling ale even to children, but he paid his taxes with interest. In Argain, that was enough to keep the city guard from looking too closely at his business.

  Reed found the location with some difficulty, but once he arrived, he understood why it had been chosen. The bar stood on the absolute outskirts; beyond its sagging roof lay only open fields and the encroaching treeline. Even for the slums of the capital, the place looked dismal. Yet, the patrons didn't seem to care. When you have nothing to compare your misery to, a rotting floor and sour ale are simply facts of life.

  As dusk deepened into a bruised purple, Reed approached the tavern but kept his distance. He settled near an ancient, gnarled oak, keeping both the road and the entrance in his sight. He didn't want to miss the messenger, nor did he want to become an eyesore for the Three Swords regulars. Crouched behind the sturdy trunk and shielded by lush, overgrown bushes, Reed was a ghost in the shadows.

  The messenger arrived only after the last of the light had bled from the sky. He rode a bay horse, appearing out of the darkness with a quiet thud of hooves. Without a word, he tossed a small leather pouch at Reed's feet. He didn't dismount. He simply offered Reed a look of pure, unadulterated contempt before wheeling his horse around.

  The lad was young—barely a man—yet he was already well-schooled in the art of despising those he deemed beneath him. Reed didn't take it personally; he didn't consider himself "beneath" anyone, and the boy’s arrogance was too predictable to be insulting. He knew the type: here, the boy played the grand lord of the slums, but back in Ermod's manor, he would be a model of meekness, ready to lick boots for an extra copper. To Reed, all kreyghars were cut from the same cloth, regardless of the gods they knelt to or the silks they wore.

  Reed picked up the pouch. It was heavy. He untied the drawstring and found exactly what he had demanded: half the sum, shimmering in cold, honest gold. Along with the coin was a scrap of parchment.

  “Ian, aka ‘Hornet,’ of the Wasps. Western district, near the brothels and gambling dens. Each member bears a wasp mark on their neck. You have three months. Do that, or we’ll gut you and turn you into a scarecrow.”

  Reed smirked at the threat. It was a standard flourish, the kind of bark people used when they were afraid their bite wasn't enough. On the back, a hasty scrawl instructed him to burn the note.

  Reed didn't. He tucked it deep into his pocket instead.

  He knew better than to discard such a gift. The note contained no names—not his, not Ermod's—but a scrap of paper with a death warrant was a weapon. And such weapons were meant to be kept for better times.

  The gold went into his other pocket, a comforting weight against his thigh. For a moment, he considered buying new clothes, but he dismissed the thought. His battered, wretched appearance was his greatest armor; it made him invisible. He stood, stretched his stiff legs, and turned his back on the fields, heading back into the hungry heart of the city.

  ***

  Reed spent several days adrift in a sea of filth, loitering around the bars, taverns, and brothels of the slums. Each evening ended in a hollow silence. He was growing weary of the constant proximity to kreyghar gatherings, weary of their drunken, bloated faces, the vulgarity of prostitutes who could sniff out the weight of a purse through sheer instinct, and the cloying, stinking incense they used to mask the rot. Everything in their culture grated against his senses. And they felt it.

  Finally, fate, or perhaps a lack of better options, brought him back to the Three Swords. Finding company there was easy, but passing for one of them was a feat harder than crossing the Rattlesnake River. Reed burned through a significant portion of his gold on booze before the regulars began to treat him with even a shred of neutrality. Another portion went toward "friendship." In these gutters, ale was the only currency that bought trust. Truth be told, Reed didn't care what these kreyghars thought of him; he only needed their lives to serve as fuel for his plan. They drank like horses, which was exactly the advantage he required.

  Reed finally caught the scent of the Wasps after hours of wearing out his pants in the dilapidated shack they called a bar. The Three Swords reeked of every possible permutation of poverty and intoxication. The roof sagged under its own weight, threatening to crush the patrons at any moment, and the walls were so caked in grime that their original color was a lost history. The air was a thick, fetid soup.

  Constant shouting assaulted the ears, but the noise was a blessing—the louder the tavern, the less likely anyone would overhear a conspiracy. At the far end of the room, a brawl had already broken out, drawing the most of eyes in the room. In a place like this, an evening without blood on the floor was considered a failure. The fact that the staff eventually wiped the blood up was the only thing that gave the Three Swords any advantage, though the name remained a mystery; there wasn't a sword in sight.

  The Wasps were clearly a thorn in the side of the local rabble, demanding a "protection" percentage that left petty thieves with nothing. Reed listened as they complained about losing their "honest" loot. He didn't care for their misery, but he played the part of the sympathetic listener to perfection. When he spun a fabricated, tragic tale of his own run-in with the Wasps, the trio of kreyghars finally softened. A third bottle of ale on Reed's tab sealed the bond.

  When the drunkenness reached its peak, Reed slammed a seemingly unsteady hand onto the table, drawing the blurred gazes of his companions: Sketch, Harold, and Brand.

  "W-what’s with you, elf?" Harold mumbled, the words heavy and slurred.

  Reed wanted to sneer, but he forced a drunken grimace instead. He grabbed his tin mug and slammed it down again. "And d-doesn't it ann-noy you? No?"

  "What?"

  "The W-wasps. Taking everything... thinking they own the city. Doesn't it poke at ya?"

  "Like fuck," Sketch confirmed with a wet hiccup. He greedily drained his mug, his eyes already bloodshot and nearly as red as his face.

  Sketch was a mess of a man. His fiery red hair hung in disheveled mops that he irritably brushed away from his cheeks. His lips were bitten raw; Reed had watched him spend the last hour greedily gnawing on one lip and then the other, licking off the blood before starting the cycle again. He reeked of stale ale and old boots.

  "We deserve better, don't we?" Reed declared, his voice full of feigned indignation. The bait was cast.

  Harold took a vicious swig of ale. "Who cares what we deserve?"

  "U-us," Sketch chimed in, exactly where Reed needed him to be. "Us, Harold. Look at us, sitting in this shithole drinking with an elf when we could be with ladies. But they don't even look at us because of the Wasps."

  "Because the Wasps took them all," Reed added, his voice dripping with feigned bitterness. "Whatever’s left for us is just scraps. We don’t even get to see the beautiful ones anymore, just the sluts they’ve discarded."

  "The elf is right," Brand chimed in, speaking for the first time. His eyes were unfocused, but his jaw was set tight. "We work harder, we know more, but they get the spoils just because..."

  "Just because they’re Wasps!" Reed didn't need to argue; he only needed to fan the spark he’d already lit. "They think their marks make them gods."

  "Cursed bastards," Sketch muttered, shaking his head.

  "Doesn't it seem to you, gentlemen, that this has gone too far?" Reed leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Maybe it's time to show them that we aren’t pussies. Maybe it's time to take the helm ourselves."

  While Brand was occupied with his own muttered curses, Reed signaled the barmaid for another bottle, sliding more ale toward the bandits. "He who risks nothing gains nothing. We’ve stayed in the shadows too long, lads. And now? Now they demand half the loot. What’s next?"

  "Soon they'll ask for everything!" Sketch barked, his outrage fueled by the fresh ale.

  "Exactly! Soon they’ll crush you. Your efforts won't be worth a copper. What are we, cursed elves? Slaves to be ordered around?" Reed used the slur against his own kind like a whetstone, sharpening their anger.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  He watched them closely, a cold smile hidden behind his mug. "And you're just going to sit here and tolerate it? If it were me..."

  "What?!" Sketch exploded, nearly toppling his chair.

  "I wouldn't tolerate it. I’d show them who I really am."

  "And who are you?" Harold roared with a drunken, mocking laughter. "You're an elf. You probably work for scraps on some farm. You don't know the first thing about how men like us live. What did you even do when they gave you that?"

  Harold lunged forward, nearly poking his finger into the scar that slashed across the left side of Reed's pale face. The mark hadn't come from the Wasps. It was a memory of Emeron he carried long before he left, but the truth was a useless currency here. Reed had used that scar to buy sympathy and cover his tracks a thousand times before.

  "Nothing! No one would listen! I'm just an elf!" Reed spat the words with a calculated malice. "Today they did this to me. Tomorrow, they’ll do it to you. I know exactly who they are."

  "I say the elf is right," Sketch interjected, his voice thick with drunken conviction. "Fuck me if he isn't!"

  A chaotic squabble broke out as the three bandits converged on a single, violent opinion. Reed, meanwhile, allowed himself to "collapse" onto the table. He lay there, head pillowed on his arms, pretending to be dead drunk while he listened to the infection of indignation spread.

  The quarrel turned personal. Curses Reed had never heard before rang out through the stuffy air of the Three Swords. For a moment, it seemed the plan might fail—that they would simply cut each other’s throats in their stupor—but then Sketch jumped to his feet. He slammed his mug onto the table with a final, echoing crash.

  "Where to?" Brand asked, his face flushed a deep, ugly crimson.

  "If you want to live like dogs, go ahead," Sketch snarled, gathering his rusted gear. "But I won't."

  The phrase acted like a cold bucket of water. The bandits exchanged looks of dark resolve and stood up. They pitched and rolled like sloops in a gale, but they managed to stay up. Their legs were steady enough to sort out their weapons—jagged knives and heavy, notched clubs.

  Fully armed and fueled by a volatile mix of ale and wounded pride, they began to whisper about where to find the Wasps' nearest lookout. Reed remained still, his eyelids appearing heavier than a greatsword, while he took precise mental notes of every location they mentioned.

  "Coming, elf?" Brand growled, looming over him.

  "I-I'm... c-coming," Reed stammered, his voice thick with a feigned, slurred exhaustion. He made a show of struggling to his feet, only to conveniently trip over an empty bottle near the table. As he lurched forward, he threw his weight against Sketch.

  The tipsy bandit grunted, catching Reed’s shoulders to stay upright. For a few frantic moments, Sketch grappled with the elf, trying to shove him back into balance while Reed stubbornly remained a dead weight. Had Sketch been even slightly sober, or perhaps less blinded by his reflexive disgust for the "Cursed," he might have felt Reed’s fingers ghosting over his pocket.

  Reed wasn't there to steal. On the contrary, he was there to leave a gift.

  While Harold and Brand were occupied with a fresh wave of aggressive, drunken shouting, Reed finished his work. Finally, Sketch snarled and threw Reed back, dropping him unceremoniously into a chair.

  "He’s already where he has to be," Harold neighed, a cruel laugh erupting from his throat.

  "These elves can't do shit," Sketch grumbled, irritably adjusting his clothes. It never occurred to him to check his pockets; in his mind, the hierarchy was clear. Reed was the one paying for the night and once he sobered up, he’d be nothing more than a memory.

  "Leave the filth. Let’s go," Harold spat, leading the charge toward the exit.

  As soon as the heavy door slammed shut, the stumbling drunks vanished. Reed stood up with the fluid grace of a predator, rubbing his bruised side but showing no other sign of the intoxication he’d just performed. His head spun slightly from the ale, but his mind was sharp and cold. He straightened his tunic, cleared his throat, and beckoned the girl at the bar.

  When she approached, Reed didn't flinch at the stench of stale beer and sweat that clung to her; he knew he likely smelled no better. He shoved one hand into his pocket and gestured for her to come closer. When she held out her palm, Reed dropped two gold coins into it.

  It was a small fortune, far more than the last bottle of swill was worth. Before she could pull away, Reed caught her hand and pulled her close, his voice a low, dangerous silk in her ear.

  "What isn't for the ale is yours," he whispered, "provided you never saw me here."

  The girl looked at the gold, then up at the scarred, pale face of the man standing before her. "I've had a bad memory for faces since childhood."

  "Clever girl," Reed grinned, a sharp flash of genuine charm, and gave her a slow wink.

  "But that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to see you at all," she replied, her hand slipping suggestively along his forearm.

  Reed understood the offer, but his mind was already out the door. "What's your name?"

  "Eliza."

  "I will find you, Eliza."

  He offered her one last reassuring smile before turning away. Catching her languid, lingering glance in the cracked mirror behind the bar, Reed slipped out into the night. He paused on the threshold, his eyes adjusting to the dark as he searched for the direction in which his three "drinking buddies" had disappeared.

  ***

  Reed picked up the trail quickly enough. His trio of drinking buddies wasn't exactly making an effort to move like ghosts. The ale was beginning to hum in his own veins, a dull warmth he hoped wouldn't dull his focus. He hadn't been able to avoid the drinking entirely, but he had mastered the art of letting the others outpace him. After the first bottle, the kreyghars had stopped counting his gulps, leaving him far more sober than they could ever suspect.

  He caught up with Harold and the others about an hour later in the eastern district, the wealthy quarters of Argain. Exactly as Ermod’s note had specified, the Wasps were found near the high-end brothels and dubious salons. Reed didn't even have to hunt; his "friends" led him straight where he needed. Now, he only had to wait for the moment to strike.

  The opportunity didn't present itself immediately. Harold vanished behind the ornate doors of a brothel while Sketch and Brand loitered outside, looking for trouble. Reed watched them from the shadows of a heavy hedge skirting the backyard. The garden was lush with wine grapes, the thick vines offering a perfect screen. Reed already knew how to use the terrain; the rows of greenery would hide him from prying eyes and provide a tactical advantage in the coming chaos.

  His arsenal was meager but functional: a stolen bow, a dozen arrows, and his short boot-knife. As he crouched in his hiding place, a long silence stretched out. Reed began to suspect Harold had been slaughtered quietly inside. He was already mentally cycling through backup plans when the door burst open.

  Harold emerged, followed by two men with wasp marks etched into their skin. Two against three—even drunken three—wasn't a winning hand, but the Wasps didn't know Reed intended to play a card of his own. As a heated, violent argument broke out, Reed began to scale the hedge. Shooting from above offered a clearer line of sight and reduced the risk of hitting the wrong target.

  Finally, Harold drew his blade and lunged at the man on the left. Sketch and Brand swarmed the second. Reed, perched precariously atop the hedge, raised his bow. In the cacophony of the brawl, the snap of the bowstring went unheard.

  The arrow took Sketch in the neck from the left. He collapsed instantly, blood gushing in a dark, rhythmic spray. He died before he could even register the betrayal.

  Sketch’s sudden, violent fall froze the combatants. Both the Wasps and the remaining bandits turned toward the source of the arrow, but Reed was gone. He had already vanished into the thick canopy of the grapevines. One of the Wasps recovered first. With a blurred movement, his blade slipped under Harold’s arm.

  Harold’s sword clattered to the cobbles. A follow-up blow to the jaw sent him reeling; he spat blood and broken teeth but managed to stay on his feet. He couldn't reach his sword, but he unslung his shield and drew a short, jagged dagger, preparing for a final stand.

  Brand was a far more capable fighter than Harold. Even through the haze of the ale, he led his skirmish with a brutal efficiency, his blades parrying attacks with a speed that only slightly faltered due to his intoxication. Reed watched from the shifting shadows of the vines, waiting for the precise moment to dismantle the alliance he had just built.

  Brand ducked under a Wasp’s desperate swing, slashing the man across the chest. As his opponent staggered back, he tripped over Sketch’s cooling corpse. Brand didn't hesitate; he threw himself onto the fallen man, raising his dagger for the final strike.

  Nearby, Harold had managed to straddle his own opponent, hands locked around the man's throat. But Reed saw the truth: Harold was already a dead man walking, his life leaking out onto the cobbles. Help wasn't required there. Predictably, the Wasp began driving short, frantic stabs into Harold’s liver. Harold’s grip slackened, the positions reversed, and the light began to fade from his eyes.

  Brand, however, was about to claim a victory Reed couldn't allow.

  Moving like a ghost through the leaves, Reed circled to the left. He lunged from the darkness behind Brand, his boot-knife unsheathed and gleaming in the moonlight. He grabbed Brand by the hair, yanking his head back with enough force to snap his neck. In one fluid motion, Reed drew the blade across the man’s exposed throat. He held Brand firmly by the hair as he wheezed, keeping his head pinned back so the blood sprayed away, preventing the dying man from clutching at the fatal wound.

  Harold, in his final moments, managed to look up and see Reed. He opened his mouth, perhaps to curse him or plead for help, but he never found the breath. The Wasp’s shield descended like a hammer onto Harold’s skull, silencing him forever.

  Reed let go of Brand’s hair. The bandit slumped to the ground like a discarded rag doll. Sheathing his dagger, Reed stepped into the light and raised his empty hands, signaling his neutrality.

  "Who are you?" the man Reed had saved asked, gasping for air as he scrambled away from Brand’s body.

  "Reed".

  "And are you here by accident, Reed?" the second Wasp asked, his voice thick with a mocking edge.

  "No," Reed replied, his voice cold and steady. "If I were here by accident, you’d both be dead."

  "We would have managed without you," the man spat, though his trembling hands suggested otherwise.

  "If I hadn't put an arrow through the third one," Reed countered, "do you think you’d be standing here to argue?"

  The two men exchanged a glance. "What's it to you, elf?"

  "I’m looking for work."

  One of the bandits—the one Reed had pulled Brand off of—straightened up and wiped blood from his mouth. He approached Reed and extended a calloused hand. "Kyle. That bastard would have gutted me."

  Reed gripped the man’s palm, feeling the rough texture of a life lived by the blade. Kyle was of medium height with blond hair and a lean, wiry build. He had the wasp tattoo etched clearly into the skin of his neck. Jusr as Ermod had described. He was dressed in black leather armor accented with yellow insets, a single silver earring glinting in his right ear.

  Kyle’s partner, a skinny kreyghar with sharp features, offered a curt nod. "Martin."

  Martin was shorter and slighter than Kyle, but Reed knew better than to judge a man's lethality by his physique. Age had begun its slow erosion of his features, carving jaded wrinkles across his skin. A broken nose, greasy hair, and a mouth that seemed set in a permanent, crooked sneer betrayed a soul that had long since abandoned pleasantries. Reed knew he was an object of revulsion to many, but despite being roughly the same age as the man before him, his own pale, scarred face held a strange, youthful preservation.

  "How did you even know they were after us?" Kyle asked, his voice strained.

  "Overheard. I returned from Emeron recently, and with my... particular skillset, I'm not exactly looking for work in the silk trade or the fields."

  "And not with that mug, neither," Martin threw in, his tone sharp with reflexive bias.

  "What skills, exactly?"

  "I’m a mercenary," Reed replied. The short answer was enough to cover the bloody spectrum of his talents.

  "Have you heard of the Wasps?" Kyle asked, gritting his teeth as he tried to bind the deep gash Brand had left him with a strip of fouled cloth.

  "Who hasn't heard of you in this gods-forsaken city? I was at the bar when these three—" Reed gave Sketch’s cooling corpse a dismissive kick—"were plotting. They were dividing up the 'earnings' they expected for taking someone out. Someone high up in the Wasps."

  "And you decided to play the hero?" Martin asked, his eyes narrowing.

  "I decided to secure a place in a better company," Reed declared with a cold, brazen confidence. "And I’d stop the interrogation for now. Your friend is going to bleed out in the dirt if you don't move. What will you do then?"

  Martin grimaced but gave a curt nod. Before helping Kyle, he knelt to strip the bodies. His fingers soon emerged from Sketch’s pocket holding the blood-soaked note Reed had planted earlier. The parchment was stained crimson, but the ink held firm.

  "The elf is right," Martin grunted, showing the paper to Kyle. "They were aiming for Hornet. He only just left; his 'regular' girl isn't working tonight, so he changed his route."

  "Strange they didn't burn it, as instructed," Kyle mumbled, looking at the scrawled threat on the back.

  "They were drunk. I doubt they even realized there was writing on both sides," Martin replied. He turned back to Kyle, hoisting him up. "Let’s go. We’ll patch you up at home."

  They began to retreat into the shadows of the alleyway, but Martin paused, glancing back over his shoulder.

  "Hey, elf! I’ll put in a word for you with Hornet. He'll send someone for you. Don't expect a warm welcome."

  "Sure," Reed whispered to the empty air, a thin smile touching his lips.

  The first movement of his symphony was complete. Yet, the ease of the success worried him. Integrating into the Wasps as an elf would be like walking a tightrope over a pit of fire.

  Reed stood alone in the silence of the backyard, surrounded by the dead. He shifted his gaze to Brand, the man whose throat he had opened with his own hand. Brand’s eyes were glazed, fixed on some unseen horror; his mouth was frozen in a silent, jagged scream. The wound was deep. So deep that the severed larynx and shredded muscle were visible in the moonlight. Even if Brand had been sober and ready, he’d had no chance against the frenzy of Reed's strike.

  Reed felt a familiar, unsettling surprise at the sheer violence he was capable of, but the feeling vanished as quickly as it arrived. In the heat of the kill, he often lost control, carried away by a dark, surging tide of adrenaline. Standing over the corpses, a part of him felt a hollow regret that the dance had ended so soon.

  "And who’s the filth now, hm?" he asked in a soft, mocking whisper. The dead were excellent listeners.

  Reed patted Brand’s cold cheek once, then straightened his back. A victorious, predatory smile spread across his face as he turned to follow the scent of the Wasps into the dark.