Bedlam

  He lay examining the stars. Stifled a yawn against the back of his hand. Crossed his ankles. Uncrossed them again.

  Whiskers rumbled in her sleep; chest rising and falling in huge, slow breaths, head resting atop her crossed forelimbs. Her powerful body wound serpentine between the trees, scales glittering like treasure in the weak moonlight.

  The fire was barely an orange pinprick in Bedlam's periphery. He had dug a pit for it to hide the light. It had gone to low embers by now. The forest around him was alive with the ambient glow of his sustained Detect [Life]. Tree crowns swaying in the nightly breeze formed a rhythmic swell of smeared light that had a certain soporific effect, like the gentle lapping of ocean waves.

  But he could not allow himself to fall sleep.

  I guess it's about time, he thought. Time to retrieve Sam Darling and take the first step toward his becoming a legend. Soon, he told himself. Soon, they will all know your name.

  The instructions from the Strategist had said recruit or capture, but Bedlam did not think he would bother attempting the former. What little intelligence he had gleaned of the girl painted her as an insufferable Goody Two-Shoes. It was likely that she would rebuff any offer he might make. No. He would take her by force, then bring her into the Delvendeep to plan his action against the Nightmare King.

  His remote surveillance of Sam Darling throughout the day had revealed that she was traveling with a fairly sizable group, but no one he would have any trouble butchering. The highest-level among them was that Caldwell fellow, a Level 12. Aside from sporting a poor copy of Bedlam's own build, there was nothing remarkable about the man. He would die easily.

  No, this would not prove a challenge. It was almost too easy. After all, a man could not enjoy a hunt that ended too quickly. There had to be a bit of cat-and-mouse, a bit of a struggle. Otherwise, what was the point? There was no glory in an eagle pouncing on an earthworm.

  Bedlam was just getting up to extinguish his fire when he heard some tiny rustling and snapping that did not belong in the ambient soundscape. He was on his feet in half a second. There was something approaching. He could not understand why Detect [Life] had not picked it up, whatever it was, but he trusted his senses enough not to discount them.

  He drew a small belt knife with a finger-length blade, not bothering to go for the unstrung bow that lay by the firepit. A knife would be more than enough to deal with anything that came his way.

  Before long he was able to identify that the sounds were those of a human. Woman. Then he began to hear the occasional click of a hard-soled shoe hitting off a rock. Not long after he caught her scent. Middle-aged. Healthy but unwashed. Moderate alcoholism. She did not appeal to him.

  When the woman stepped out of the trees into his small camp, he was waiting for her. Even though Detect [Life] refused to show her silhouette, he had no trouble seeing her in the dark. He had enough in Senses that he saw better at night than most humans did during the day.

  She might have been possessed of some aging beauty, if it hadn't been so effectively spoiled by her slovenly attire and strange wooden shoes. An exaggeratedly curvaceous figure, a good bit of body fat, generously sized tits. Level 15 Artisan-Entertainer, going by her sheet. In another, more juvenile phase of his life, he might have had some fun with her. But as he was now? She repulsed him. The reek of old sweat and stale alcohol made him want to chop her into pieces. At least then, the smell of blood would mask it. Maybe. Her stench was a strong one.

  "Ahoy, stranger," she said as she ambled over with an odd, almost stumbling swagger in her step, and gave him a mock solute that drew a putrid waft of her unwashed armpits. "Mind if I share your fire?"

  "Not at all," Bedlam replied, but the woman had already helped herself by the time he started speaking. She plopped into a low squat by his firepit and stretched out her hands to warm herself. Not that it was particularly cold.

  He remained leaned against a tree, watching her. "Mind if I ask how you came to find yourself here?"

  "I'm Freetown bound," the woman replied. "Know the place?"

  "Sure. Still, you don't get many braving these parts alone."

  "You're alone."

  "Not really."

  The woman glanced over toward the sleeping dragon. "Fair enough."

  She really was an odd creature. "Most people would be a bit more alarmed at seeing a beast that size."

  The woman gave a husky laugh. "What can I say? Animals love me." Then she stood and went over to the dragon and touched her hand to the creature's great muzzle, showing no fear whatsoever. "It's so cute! Does it have a name?"

  "Whiskers," Bedlam replied dryly.

  "Aww, how sweet. Is it a boy dragon or a girl dragon?"

  "It's a female green dragon."

  "I see, I see."

  Whiskers eventually jerked awake at the sensation of being touched, double lids peeling back from its lambent eyes. Its slitted gaze fell on the stranger, and it began to rise to its feet, already dripping venom from its jaws.

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  "Whiskers!" Bedlam barked with a sharp clap of his hands. "Stay!"

  The dragon froze in place, gaze sliding cautiously between Bedlam and the stranger, weighing its fear of him against its desire to rid the world of another human.

  "I'm Magpie," the woman said over her shoulder. "What's your name, stranger?"

  "Bedlam."

  "Hello, Bedlam. Nice to meet you." She looked toward him. "You must be one of the new ones, eh?"

  "What?"

  "One of the new paragons. On account of me never having heard of you."

  Bedlam shrugged himself straight off the tree, flipping the knife in his hand. "I'm tired of this, woman. Drop the pretense and tell me why you're here, and I'll let my cute little pet kill you quick, instead of taking my time doing it myself."

  To his displeasure, the dragon lurched into motion despite his not having ordered it. Its jaws opened wide as it lunged forward, long leathery neck dragging on the ground with a coarse hiss, and its jaws gaped wide in a double set of poison-coated teeth, poised to clamp down on the woman and bite her in half.

  Then it caught on something, struggling to bite down and worrying at empty air like it was trying to crunch down on a big unseen boulder.

  "Bad girl," Magpie said, looking straight up into the dragon's maw as its lethal bladed teeth scraped uselessly around her. "Pets should be quiet when their owners are talking." Then she raised her hand, two extended fingers making a gun. "Bang."

  With a thunderclap shout, Whiskers' head split apart from the inside and went to many wet pieces like a smashed watermelon. Broken teeth and smoking venom and dark flesh went everywhere. It spattered the small clearing, trees and all. Some even went into the fire pit, made the embers sizzle angrily and let off an acrid stench.

  A silent shudder went through the headless dragon, leathery patagia of its folded wings fluttering, and then it went limp and fell sideways. It knocked into a tree trunk and partially uprooted it with the weight, sinking the tree until it came to a rest at a forty-five degree angle with the beast's corpse leaning on it.

  "You don't have very good control of your pet," Magpie remarked. She turned toward him, and blew on the ends of her fingers as though blowing smoke from a barrel. "You should teach her a little more discipline."

  Bedlam had caught his knife by the blade, found himself frozen in place. Who the fuck is this bitch?

  "You have Incognito," he guessed. "That's why I couldn't sense you."

  "Maybe." Magpie picked her way through the bloody slop that littered the ground.

  "And if you have Incognito, that means you're not really Level 15. So who are you, exactly?"

  "Oh, fine. I suppose it would be dull to drag out the guessing game." She removed a bracelet from her left wrist and stuffed it in her pocket. Her arm shimmered, an Illusion dispersing, and when the air settled there were three SP crystals and thirty AP crystals adorning her arm.

  She was a paragon, too. Of course she was.

  But which one? There weren't many to choose from. Even if she was new, he should have at least heard her name through organization chatter.

  That hair. That name. That power. The utter confidence with which she approached him until they were close enough for an embrace. And…

  It was only now that he was really looking that he noticed there was something else about the woman that bothered him. The starburst amulet nestled between her tits. It pulled on his attention somehow; pricked him between the eyes with imaginary needles until he was forced to regard it more closely.

  A presence stirred inside that tatty little piece of tarnished silver.

  Something enormous.

  Something unfathomable.

  Something that would swallow him whole if he didn't look away.

  "Fuck me," he breathed. "It's you, isn't it?"

  Magpie smiled, head tilted like a curious bird eyeing something potentially edible. "Me who?"

  "Crow."

  She laughed and threw up her hands. "Oh, you got me! I'm that obvious, am I?"

  Bedlam ignored her posturing. "You kept it, didn't you?."

  She said nothing.

  "Didn't you?"

  She shrugged.

  "Fuck me." Bedlam shook his head. "You were supposed to be a man."

  "Yes, well, I thought if I was going to kill a goddess, it would be best to come with a disguise. And what better disguise than a mustache and a fake nose, you know? It's a classic for a reason."

  "What do you want, Crow?"

  Crow reached out to touch his chest with her fingertips, and Bedlam had to resist the urge to back away, enduring her unclean touch with clenched teeth. "I had a chat with your friend in Talltop," she said matter-of-factly. "Vadim, was it? He wasn't very nice."

  "He's dead, then?"

  "Yeah. He kind of talked himself into it, to be honest."

  "I weep for his loss."

  "The sheriff one of yours too?"

  "No."

  "Huh. Good for him."

  She hummed to herself as she let her fingers trail over him, finally letting her index finger come up and flick across his Adam's apple like a straight razor. "I couldn't help but notice that you were sitting in the way of my group. Thought you might be planning a surprise on them."

  "What group?"

  "Sam Darling and friends." Thankfully, she took her hand back. "I want you and your people to back off from her for the time being. She's a very entertaining little thing, and I don't feel like sharing her. How's that sound to you?"

  Bedlam could not have guessed that his night would take a turn like this if he'd had a thousand guesses. "Fine," he worked out. "I'll back off."

  "That's a good boy." She gave his chest a firm clap.

  Then she turned and walked away without another word, leaving Bedlam with a headless dragon and a camp full of chunks. He ground his teeth as he watched her go, bit down so hard he felt them creak.

  Crow had been actively staying under the organization's radar for years now. Official instructions were to attempt recruitment if at all possible.

  But Bedlam had never been very good with orders.

  And he had never been very good with threats, either.

  The moment she was out of his sight, Bedlam began plotting Crow's imminent and violent demise.

  He'd need to do a better job at camouflaging his presence to get the drop on an enemy of her caliber. He'd need to come up with a nasty trap to spring on her, too.

  Once he'd killed not one, but both of the two greatest lifers of all time, everyone would know his name, and speak of him in awed whispers. With Crow dead, the organization would have everything it needed to bring the crusade to a decisive end.

  It was just too good of a prospect to walk away from.