His eyes shone with golden light. The dagger fell to the ground. He kicked the figure's stomach and kicked off the ground, making both people apprehending him tumble to the ground where the dagger was lodged upside down. The blade impaled the neck of the person that had been holding him.
Pilt twisted at the back of his feet. Little time to move. Suddenly the remaining attackers came closing in, ready for the finishing blow. He fell on his heels, his hands holding something. Sand. He threw sand over their eyes.
He snapped his fingers.
A briefcase came from the air. It was checkmate by then. He threw the briefcase and the explosion blew them to bits. An arm flew past him. He turned.
An intestine-like limb slithered across the ground and wrapped around his ankle. It pulled him. He slammed to the ground repeatedly, his body dragged toward something massive and waiting. His coat came off, remaining on the ground as the limb pulled him closer toward whatever this creature had become.
He looked with mild discomfiture at the massive opening ahead. The limb was drawing him toward it like bait being reeled in. The head resembled the woman who had been here before, though she had become something hideous. Her eyes remained human but the bottom of her head was something entirely different. Sharp teeth opened and closed. A tongue slithered like a serpent inside lips that hung slack and open. The sight was uncanny and wrong.
It was about to eat him.
He saw countless futures branch out before him. They were horrible. The creature crushing his head and brain matter. His body being slowly digested inside whatever organ this thing had become. His consciousness fading as acid melted through his skin.
He tried to summon another briefcase. It came. He reached for it. It fell by the ground instead of to his hand.
He cursed internally.
Inch by inch, his body was slowly drawn upside down toward that massive gaping mouth. He twisted his body and shoved his arm into its mouth. It closed its teeth around his triceps.
It hurt.
But pain was nothing to Pilt. He had trained past it. He had transcended it. He blew it up by the inside, using fate essence to direct the explosion everywhere at once, tearing the creature apart from within.
Both he and the creature were blown back. Pilt landed hard on the sand. He stood up despite the pain, breathing heavily. His arm was beyond mangled at that point.
Small intestine-like worm things crept over the sand, sliding over each other, trying to reassemble or reconfigure into what they had once been. He breathed in deeply. With a grin, two briefcases materialized in the air and fell down. He led both of them and threw them one by one.
Orange explosions lit over the shoreline and beach. The light illuminated his face, reflecting off his eyes and turning them into something orange as well. One by one he threw. The creature tried to reassemble. He threw another. It blew up where it had been attempting to reform.
Shards started to break around the beach. Sand and flesh scattered in all directions. Blood mixed with seawater created pink waves that washed up on the shore.
"Begone..." he said indifferently.
He threw and he threw. Suddenly everything shattered like glass. What lay in front of him was nothing but a dark glob of intestines and mess, shriveled up and charred beyond recognition.
Pilt walked closer to the carnage. Eight robed individuals were arrayed around him, scattered like lifeless dolls. He looked around and uncovered the veil of one. The face was pale, slightly purple. Dark lipstick smeared across pale lips. Purple hair.
He unveiled another. His eyes shot up with mild intrigue. The face was pale, fake lips stick, purple hair. Same facial structure. Same soft contours of the face.
They were the same people. Duplicates or clones or some manipulation of fate essence that allowed the same individual to occupy multiple bodies simultaneously.
He walked his way toward the glob he had incinerated. He looked down at it with brief indifference. He turned away.
'They were camped at the location, waiting for me,' he thought, his mind processing the tactical implications. 'Why try to kill me though.'
Then it settled on him. She had been abducted. His best guess was inside the domain of Mercyros itself. Why, he had no idea. But the pieces aligned.
He sat on the wet sand observing the shoreline. The water was relatively calm now that the chaos had stopped. Seagulls circled overhead, attracted by the smell of blood and carnage.
'Hmm. Yeah,' he thought, understanding crystallizing in his mind.
He stood up. He understood everything already. He calculated everything in his head while making his way toward his rugged up coat.
'They came out for her. They threw her in that domain. Then, thinking she had very little to their name, they came out to see her value.'
He reached for his pocket and took out a glass of alcohol.
'Turn out the value was not the company she owned but me.'
He scoffed.
'Brings a tear to my eye.'
He started pouring alcohol on his bloodied arm. The alcohol mixed with the blood, creating rivulets that ran down his forearm toward his wrist. He wore no expression of discomfort. Pain to him was nothing. It was information, feedback, data to be processed and filed away.
He tore his dark shirt and wrapped it around his forearm slowly, creating a makeshift bandage. He put on his coat over his shoulder and looked up at the destroyed place they had rented.
He sighed.
"What a pain," he muttered aloud, his voice carrying resignation rather than anger.
He started walking back toward town, leaving the bodies and the wreckage behind. The domain would reset eventually. The creatures would respawn. The blood would fade. Everything would return to its default state as if nothing had happened. That was the nature of these spaces. They were temporary playgrounds for temporary deaths.
But what wasn't temporary was the fact that she had been abducted. That someone had deemed her valuable enough to use as leverage. That whoever was running this operation had miscalculated his own value in the equation.
He would need to find out who had taken her. He would need to understand why they thought kidnapping her would give them any leverage over him. And then he would need to decide what to do about it.
***
The town was loud tonight.
He heard it before he reached the main street, voices and laughter and the smell of roasted bread and fried fish drifting from the direction of the tavern where they had been staying before the proprietor had reconsidered.
Every person he had accumulated over the past several weeks occupied various positions across the tavern's main floor. Lucid sat near the center with a cup of something that was visibly not wine. Arthur was at the far end of the bar engaged in what appeared to be a drinking contest with Fenwick, both of them with enough empty cups in front of them to suggest the contest had been running for some time. Ayame sat beside Lucid with nothing in front of her, watching the room with the careful attention of someone cataloguing exits and threats simultaneously, which for her was probably just how she experienced social gatherings. Celeste stood near the window talking to a few locals, her posture carrying more ease when Pilt wasn't around her. Some children from what looked like the local orphanage occupied a corner table with a baker from the lower districts who was cutting something into small pieces and distributing them with the efficient generosity of someone who had been doing this long enough that it required no thought. Even two of the corrupt nobles had appeared, sitting at a side table with accompanying guards, sipping wine with the cautious expressions of people who were not entirely sure they were welcome but had decided to risk it anyway.
The tavern owner appeared at his elbow with an expression that had moved some distance from its previous hostility.
"Back again," the owner said.
"Apparently," Lucid replied, and took a seat.
Across the room, Arthur slammed an empty cup down and Fenwick matched it without visible effort. Arthur's face carried the particular brightness of someone several cups in who had not yet acknowledged that information to themselves. Fenwick looked entirely normal, which was more impressive.
Lucid made a move toward the bar.
Arthur's hand appeared on his shoulder and redirected him back to his seat with the smooth efficiency of someone who had anticipated this and pre-positioned accordingly.
"Let me have one," Lucid said.
"Grape juice," Arthur replied, and returned to his contest.
From somewhere inside Lucid's chest, Alice's voice arrived with characteristic precision. 'My vessel cannot consume it. The interaction between alcohol and the current equilibrium of fate essence within this body would produce effects neither of us would enjoy.'
'Right,' Lucid thought back. 'And if you had a body of your own you would absolutely maintain that same principled position and not immediately find the nearest wine.'
There was a pause of exactly the length required to confirm she had considered the question seriously.
'That is an entirely different circumstance,' she replied.
'Six glasses,' Lucid said internally. 'Minimum. You would have six glasses.'
'I would have,' Alice said, with a dignity that did not quite conceal the implication underneath it, 'conducted myself with appropriate restraint.'
Lucid looked at Ayame, who had somehow acquired a full cup despite having nothing in front of her sixty seconds ago, and was drinking from it with the calm efficiency of someone completing a routine task.
He watched her for a moment.
She did not acknowledge him.
He looked back at his grape juice and resumed drinking it without comment.
Celeste broke from her conversation near the window and crossed toward their table, sitting down across from Lucid with a transition in her expression that moved from the ease of the previous conversation to something more considered.
"When do you depart," she asked.