Hey, it's Vicky here. Your favorite dark elf male. And yes, I recovered from sex with Nicky — I'm made tougher than that. Built different. Like, bone-density-of-an-eldritch-tree different.
After Nicky passed out — post-good-loving coma, as we call it — I stayed up. Not out of paranoia. Out of habit. I started combing through every case file we'd been handed, even the ghosted ones. I had my own suspicions and too many hunches to sleep. That's why I'm able to walk you through the intel. That's why I can explain this mess like it's a conspiracy board with flair.
See, back in the day — and by that, I mean before I joined the mainline Hasher crew — I earned my own 20 Stabs status. That's not just flair or street cred. That's years of service, solo missions, tracking Class B and C slashers without backup. It means I've seen patterns most people blink past. And when you've got that kind of clearance, you don't just read reports. You get the uncut versions. The stuff scrubbed from public logs.
Still, I hate it when she's right. I mean, she took that side gig with the Judgement Bureau for a reason — not just to poke through legal curses and spiritual subpoenas, but to learn. And she did. Every trick, every loophole, every bone-ringing silence — she picked it up like it was instinct. I used to tease her about it, back when I thought all that Bureau training was overkill.
She was right about the traitor — not about how many, but that one of them wasn't clean. And I'll give her credit, she didn't double down when the smoke cleared. She had to step back, look at the facts, and stop blaming the wrong person. That kind of self-check doesn't come easy, especially for someone who burns as hot as she does. It's almost... cute, when she gets jealous about things. Not that I'd ever say that out loud.
Sorry if the names get mixed up. Nicky and I don't always remember them right, and honestly? We didn't care enough to keep them straight in the beginning. But you, future Hasher, probably did and look — every single one of us is on the suspect board now. You thought I was joking, right? That it was just paranoia or some cursed version of team-building. But no — there's good reason each of us earned a spot on your supect board: Nicky, myself, Raven, Lupa, Briar (Blair), Knox, Sir Glimmerdoom, Sexy Bouldur, and yeah — Hex-One and Hex-Two.
Here's why you might feel like you were right to suspect every one of us — and this time, I'll back it up with a little field-grade lore and behavioral patterning. Think of it like a dossier, minus the boring font and redacted files. You don't need to be a detective to notice when something's off, but it helps when you know how to listen to the silences, too.
We don't have video. No playback. No magical CCTV. All you've got is my words.
Or do you?
Let's break it down.
Nicky? Too smart for her own good. Knows the rules well enough to break 'em without leaving footprints. Plus, she's got a rep even the slashers whisper about — especially when it comes to her kid. Yeah, her kid. Not ours. Definitely not.
I mean, we're okay. Relationship-wise. There's no pressure, no labels she didn't agree to — and I'm not trying to push her, especially not when it comes to trauma. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish I could be there more. He... I mean, the baby, needs a father. And she lets me stay. She wants me there. That means more than I think she realizes.
Anyway,There was this one group of slashers who kidnapped her son — thought they could play rough near a neutral zone. Just sitting there, drinking in a dive with the baby close enough to smell the bar soap. Nicky got permission from the higher-ups — official clearance — and paid them a visit.
By the time she walked out, the walls were howling. Not metaphorically. Literally. Spirits caught in the timbers wailed for three nights straight. One slasher ended up fused to the barstool, screaming backwards in a voice that didn't belong to him. The drinks soured to blood. The jukebox played only elegies.
And through it all? She was just rocking the baby carriage. Gentle. Calm. Humming something old and southern, something her mother probably taught her — a lullaby that didn't soothe so much as command silence from the dead. She moved like judgment in heels and hush.
The screams didn't matter. The blood didn't register. The only thing that mattered in that moment was that her baby got some rest — and the world had better break before that peace did.
That was the kind of stillness that made monsters kneel. That was the kind of mother who'd cradle you with one arm and end you with the other if you so much as breathed wrong near her child.
It was horrifying. It was beautiful. It was the kind of scene that stays in your spine forever.
The owner, Maria — one of the 20 Slashes, which is like our ranking of 20 Stabs but for slashers — just sat there, glassy-eyed, whispering, "She warned them."
That's how I found out what really happened. Maria tracked me down a week later, asking about compensation for the bar damage — like it was a parking ticket, not a scene carved into the screaming woodgrain of the realm. I told her she'd need to file a Form 87-RE: Unnatural Reconstruction Liability and three separate impact logs if she really wanted reimbursement. Gods, the paperwork.
But the weird part? She gave up the story for free. No leverage, no price. Just laid it all out like a sigh from the underworld — a cautionary tale wrapped in fine print and polite dread. Said it was mercy. I think it was a warning. Or maybe a receipt.
That bar's off-grid now. People walk five miles around it like it's cursed with something worse than death. Slashers started putting sigils on their walls to ward off her. Not her team. Just her.
Of course, Maria didn't walk away empty-handed. The higher-ups made sure she got a brand new bar — top-shelf construction, better location, double the wards. A quiet bribe, wrapped in velvet apologies. Damage control. Anything to keep Nicky's power freakout off the record and buried under plausible deniability. Can't have people knowing what happens when you push a banshee past her limit. Especially not that one.
Funny thing though — those wards? They don't work. No one's entirely sure why. On paper, they should. They're built from reinforced sigil geometry, blessed glyphs, and triple-threaded ritual wax — the kind that normally holds against blood-spirits, locust plagues, and even most S-Class whisper curses.
But around her? They burn out fast. Peel like old skin. Sometimes worse — they hum lullabies back at you, even when there's no air moving. One time, a sigil drew itself backward and started crying. I wish I was kidding.
Some scientists — the arcane-theoretical kind — say it's harmonic interference from the baby's aura. That it destabilizes structured intent. Others think Nicky's power didn't just scorch the wood or curse the walls — they think she rewrote part of the local magical frequency. Hardwired her grief and fury into the space-time of that bar.
Either way? The wards twist. The geometry fails. But the fear? That sticks just fine.
Yes, in case you didn't know — they've got their own network. What, you thought this was fiction? This is real life. Everyone's got their own network. Slashers included.
And trust me, I could go into the details — the server architecture, the blood-coded encryption, the cursed meme economy — but if I did, this story would balloon into a 900-page horror-tech manual, and nobody wants that. So let's just say: it's real, it's weird, and it's a headache waiting to happen.
Hashers can't even touch that system unless they were reform slashers themselves. Seriously — the slashers paid top-tier security contractors for that mess. It's layered like ghost-laced onions and locked behind kill-switch glyphs. Just trying to trace an IP from that network gets you flagged by three different spectral watchdogs and a very passive-aggressive firewall spirit.
You'll get the important bits. The rest? You'll thank me for skipping.
Honestly? That's part of why I hate when people assume that if this mission turns sour, it'd somehow be Nicky's fault. Like she's the built-in betrayal just waiting to happen.
She's the least likely to stab us in the back — not because she's soft, but because she's been through too much to waste her knives on people who didn't earn the cut. And if, somehow, she did flip? It wouldn't end well for anyone. Not us, not the slashers she sided with, not the realm holding the aftermath. Quietly? Efficiently? No — it'd be the kind of ending that rewrites maps and melts names.
That's why I check her off the list. Not out of bias. Out of realism.
Me? I am from the Order of the Koru'Thalas — an old dryad-dark elf battalion trained in subterranean warfare and forest breach tactics. We didn't carry blades like most units. We used shields. Not just for defense, but as battering rams, anti-curse platforms, and kinetic focus amplifiers. Every strike was calculated, every parry a statement.
The shields themselves? Grown from murshom trees — dense, aura-sensitive giants that only grow in deep caves where root systems intertwine with subterranean ley lines. These trees don't see light, only memory and pressure. When harvested during rare rootstorms, their barkbone is as strong as obsidian but alive with echo-magic.
The Order learned to shape them not as excess gear, but as weapons first — carved with defensive runes and responsive bark that reads intention. They're bonded to the wielder's aura through a sleep-chant ritual passed down since the Sundering Roots War. They don't just block — they redirect force, absorb grief, and whisper back what they've taken. Which means if I swing it at you, it remembers..
And before you ask another stupid question — no, I don't use bows. I know I'm an elf, but gods, if I had a coin for every time someone handed me a damn longbow like I'm in some third-rate fantasy sim, I'd own half the Peach Realms. Wrong elf, folks. I throw shields, I bash curses, I reroute kinetic magic with root-forged plates. I'm not out here playing woodland sniper in a tree stand. So let's retire the arrow jokes, yeah?
Also — I am the eldest son of the dark elf dryad conclave. And yes, I understand that surprises some. Too often, people glance at my complexion and blurt, "Wait, you're a dark elf?" as though I've somehow failed a test I never agreed to take.
They forget — or perhaps never knew — that our domain lies beneath the surface, cradled in rootwork and cavernlight, far from the reach of the sun. We are sculpted by stone, silence, and the memories held in the bark of ancient trees, not by daylight. Melanin is not a measurement of authenticity.
We come in every shade of dusk and bark. Elegance does not require uniformity. So yes — I am a dark elf. A child of roots and echo, not stereotypes. And I wear that truth like the forest wears its canopy — with quiet strength and no need for apology.
And don't even get me started on the dryad part. People hear that and assume I spend my weekends weeping into tree bark and planting moss gardens. Not even close. Our community manages the largest licensed regrowth system for tree-harvested magic. We sell our own trees — legally harvested, magically sustainable, and regrown with precision better than most human biotech.
And yes — Nicky's visited. She came with me a few times, even brought the baby. That's actually where the little one is now — safe beneath the root-canopied chambers of our ancestral grove. Of course, we had to build in some sky-lit illusion domes, add radiant moss clusters, and layer a couple sunfield enchantments so the kid gets a taste of surface life. You think just 'cause we're underground we don't understand balance? We dryads are nothing if not adaptive.
Still, every now and then, some earthbound idealist stumbles into our lands thinking they've found the new Eden. Back in the '60s and '70s, it got so bad we had to start issuing cease-and-desist glyphs. Hippie cults trying to 'commune with the barkspirits' without even understanding what consent means in a forest. One group actually tried to trademark a tree. I'm not joking. We had to call in a Sonter enforcement cell just to clear them out.
Point is — we're not all flower crowns and flute songs. We run a damn tight economy. And we don't tolerate trespassers, no matter how many incense sticks they burn.
That's also why you can rule me out.
Raven? Creepy quiet. Deep lore type. Already talks to dead things — how do we know one of them didn't talk back?
But to be fair, necromancers aren't usually the problem. They're actually pretty well respected. Organized, even. They've got sanctioned hunting grounds and strict codes about corpse reuse — some even grow trees from donors who gave written consent to become arboreal after death. Legal paperwork, proper rituals, everything filed.
They're scholars at heart, too. Raven especially. Always cataloging, cross-referencing, digging up lore no one even remembers how to translate. That's part of why we get along. The love of knowledge runs deep, and in our world? There's no such thing as forbidden magic. There's literally an entire realm built for practicing that stuff — structured chaos, ethically maintained. You want to raise a soulbound swarm of bonebees or test necro-sympathy sigils on animated fungi? Go for it. Just file your realm permits and keep your ethics grid clean.
Raven fits that mold. Methodical. Clean. And if she was working with a slasher — especially a W-Class, which means wide-scale ritual potential and inter-realm signature damage — it'd be a political scandal and a bureaucratic nightmare. Not a sloppy betrayal. Besides, she'd be too easy to blame. That alone makes me skeptical.
Lupa? I know, I know — you're probably surprised she's on the list. You're thinking, "Why her? She's helpful, dependable, basically the cute furred Luna from Helluva Boss." And yeah, she plays the role well. Too well. But some of you future Hashers who've been paying attention might think otherwise.
She was the first to sniff something off. Which, you'd think would clear her, right? Except when Nicky accused the group — just floated it, not even formal — Lupa reacted weird. Not defensive. Not insulted. Just... twitchy. Like she wasn't expecting to be clocked that early. And the kicker? If she'd used some kind of flora-based signal, Sir Glom and I would've felt it. We're not just trained for that — we live in the damn forest. That kind of ambient floral magic doesn't go unnoticed unless it's wrapped in something meaner than cover scent.
Then came the part that really threw me: Right before we hit the door stair, Nicky was getting dressed and talking to me about the fight in the kitchen — you know, the one where she was lucky whip cream was in her hands. She even teased about who everyone had slept with the night before. Briar cracked up and proudly named Sir Glom, bold as brass as she was blushing to saying that outloud. But Lupa? She didn't laugh. Didn't wince. Didn't even blink. Just stood there, quiet as shadow bark, like she already knew. Like she wasn't surprised at all.
What if she wasn't just extra muscle on this job? What if she was here for another reason — deeper, older, maybe even scripted from the start? Looking back, there were signs. Things I didn't write down. Things we didn't include in the logs. I started to remember her file — how she requested this mission specifically for her blog site. But when I tried to look it up? Nothing. No trace. Blog didn't exist. No cached versions, no mentions, like it vanished — or maybe it never existed in the first place.
Briar? On paper, she reads like the perfect final girl — small-town graduate, raised by two slimefolk, a mother who practiced medical witchcraft without formal training. No criminal record, no prior ties to the camp, and just enough quirky charm to look unthreatening in a casting call. Too perfect.
She claimed she joined the mission to track down a rare slasher plant — the kind collectors and dark apothecaries would pay top hex for. But something didn't sit right with me, so I started digging. Checked her socials. Buried way under the main tags, I found something... odd. An OnlyFinaladyFans account. Yeah. And before you laugh, I clicked. For research. Turns out, she'd been posting soft-focus edits and dreamy narratives — romanticizing slashers. Not just aesthetics. She wrote fanfiction with real names. Real scenes. Some of them matched old case files. She turned monsters into muses. And that ain't just creepy — that's motive.
Knox? Too charming, too unbothered. If this were a movie, he'd be the guy smiling while stabbing someone off-screen. But I couldn't figure out what got him on this mission — at first. Turns out, Briar may have brought him in. Dug around and found something that made my eyebrow twitch: she'd been running a raffle. A damn raffle to let Hashers join her on field hunts. Not technically illegal, but definitely in the moral gray fog. And some of the Hashers we tangled with during that first round? They fought like fans. Like people who'd been studying her, idolizing her. Which made me wonder — was Knox one of them? Did he win his way onto the team with luck, a charm spell, or just deep pockets?
But that theory cracked when I remembered who Knox is. His folks? Higher-up enforcement lineage. The kind of people who'd sooner gut him with a ceremonial spine hook than let him get chummy with a rogue slasher. So if he was working with one — or if he even looked like he might be — they'd hunt him down personally. Publicly. With parade-level banners and sanctioned judgment rites.
Which leaves me thinking... maybe he didn't win the raffle. Maybe it wasn't random at all. Maybe Briar brought him along for another reason.
Sir Glimmerdoom? He taught at the Hasher Academy — not some dusty adjunct gig, either. Real fieldwork veteran, known for nightmare dramaturgy and spirit-theater tactics. I didn't even know he was on the shortlist until Nicky mentioned him — turns out, she recommended him. At the time, I thought it was a Bureau ploy or maybe a nod to his weird talent for misdirection. Then I saw that post — an old dinner pic with Nicky, him, and two other agents. She must have taken this guy under her wings. I was also suripsied to see he was an ex-slasher. He must have been useful alive than dead.
That means he was on a tight leash — probation levels of strict — and if Nicky was keeping tabs on him, then yeah, he should've known better than to mess up. Especially after hearing the story I just told you. But hey, credit where it's due — his lingering stares were totally professional. Strictly handler-to-banshee business. Uh-huh. Sure. Score one for the sexy daddy elf. Take that, Sir Glom. Don't judge me — I contain multitudes.
Sexy Bouldur? Turns out he's the uncle to Hex-One and Hex-Two — which explains a lot. Back in the day, he earned his rank cracking skulls and shielding entire squads during W-class breaches. Now? He mostly lifts trucks, breaks curses with his bare hands, and babysits chaos incarnate. Those tattoo runes of his? Still a mystery. Rumor has it they're protection seals from three different realms, but no one's been brave enough to ask.
Hex-One and Hex-Two? Fresh out of college. Literally just graduated and joined hashing to pay off student debt. Their idea of "training" was speed-running a monster-summoning game in VR — which worked a little too well. They're chaos gremlins with zero filter, and somehow convinced the higher-ups to let them in by name-dropping their uncle. Unlike Knox, who was born and bred for this job, these two weren't — but they've got raw talent and the family rep to keep them alive. One hacked a containment ward for fun. The other tried to sell merch during a ghost breach. You do the math.
So yeah. Sorry if we're a little cavalier about the names. But trust me — if any of us turned out to be dirty, it wouldn't be a shock. It's not paranoia. It's process of elimination. And if you've been following the threads, really tracking the oddities, the silence, the misplaced instincts — then you already know who it is. This story doesn't hinge on a surprise. It hinges on how long you're willing to keep looking before the rot shows itself.
As Nicky stood in front of the mission board, her tone sharp and command-clear, she asked, "Where are Knox and Sir Glom?"
Brair and Lupa exchanged a brief glance — too quick, too rehearsed. When Nicky pressed again, Brair piped up with a careless shrug. "They're checking something on their phones. Said they got a call from HQ."
I nearly facepalmed. That lie wasn't even baked. Half-cooked, straight from the freezer. But I held my tongue. Timing matters. I needed confirmation, not theatrics.
Before I could press them, Raven descended the stairwell with Muscle Man at her side. The big guy was blushing — a rare sight — and that's when I noticed faint bone markings glowing along his neck and collarbone. Necromancer tattoos.
It hit me then. I remembered my own reckless flirtation days, messing around with a few necromancers. Turns out, some of them get genuinely turned on by proper bone structure. Weird, but not kink-shame-worthy. This, of course, was all before me and Nicky had our infamous will-they-won't-they entanglement.
Raven stepped up, her voice flat, gesturing just enough to punctuate her words without turning it into performance art. "Me and Muscle Man will stay back with the twins," she said, nodding toward them like ticking off a duty roster. "We've gotta get Babydoll's new body calibrated," her hand traced a half-arc through the air, "and sort through the paperwork."
Before she could finish, one of the Hex twins shouted from the back room, "Where do I file a Forum A69?!"
Muscle Man flinched like someone hit a cursed gong. Without a word, he turned and walked out of frame like he was late for a dental appointment in Hell. Just vanished. Classic Bouldur exit.
Nicky nodded. In our world, you don't just hop into a new body — even a grown one — without red tape. Rebirth comes with liability. Paperwork, soul signatures, consent trails. We've had too many black market body swaps to let anything slide.
Raven gave me a look, one that said walk with me, so I did. Meanwhile, inside, Nicky was already shifting into command mode, giving Lupa and Brair new instructions — small squad maneuvers, fallback plans, signal timings. We were down to just the four of us now, and Nicky didn't leave anything to improvisation when trust was on the line. Even when we had to fake it.
Outside, under the frost-filtered sky, Raven pulled something from her coat — a bone, but not just any. It was avian in shape, sharp and curved like a pigeon's wishbone, engraved with faint runes along its edge. Cold. Smooth. Buzzing like static in prayer.
The moment I touched it, the message burned through my senses: The higher-ups wanted Nicky to unleash — full power clearance. That part stopped me for a second. Not because of the kill order — the witch had been evading us long enough, and honestly, her execution felt inevitable. But full clearance?
That meant they wanted the job done fast, messy, and final.
Then again, someone like Nicky — her rank, her lineage, her borderline slasher status — she's exactly who you'd send when you needed a supernatural nuke to clean the board. The higher-ups were done playing subtle. They were done with ritual politics and containment.
The Babydoll paperwork? That part was legit. The rest? A smokescreen.
Raven didn't bother to whisper. She said it plain, for anyone listening from shadow or spell — or from the eerie little flock that had settled above us. A cluster of strange birds sat in the branches nearby, their eyes too still, too knowing. Not quite pigeons. Cuter, somehow. But crueler too — like they judged you and found you lacking.
Those were the higher-ups' eyes. Their scouts. The Network's messengers in feathers and claw.
"That's a witch's bone — from her bloodline," Raven said, her voice steady as ever. "Use it to bind her."
And just like that, the mission changed.
I sighed and pulled out my magical phone — best plot armor money can buy — and ordered our transport. I wasn't messing around. This wasn't the kind of terrain you tackled with a regular off-roader.
Nor did I feel like walking deeper into a dense-ass forest with the Murder Sisters of Sex. Yeah, you heard me. Lupa and Briar gave off the kind of vibes that belonged in a cursed VHS tape you find at the back of a Blockbuster run by ghosts. Think: 1983's Red Lace Massacre, where two sorority girls lured frat bros into ritual hook-ups and turned climax into final death scenes. Those kinds of legends don't stay in the screen. They walk, breathe, and apparently, ride shotgun now.
I wasn't about to be their next plot device.
But hey — I can't judge. Back in the day, I used to work my looks like a damn blade. Seduced more than a few slashers into traps, or out of murder moods entirely. Times change though. Slashers today? They don't kill for the thrill of sex like those old splatter flicks want you to believe. Not really. It's more… script-bound. Myth-tethered.
There's a theory — one I've heard floating around — that slashers evolve in tune with the horror media they were born from. Like, the Red Lace Massacre girls weren't just characters; they were rituals made flesh. But that falls apart quick. Because if that were true, then the whole system wouldn't predate cinema. And it does. We've got records back to Jack the Ripper — hell, that was the first time the Order started tracking the pattern publicly.
So yeah, theory tossed. But it still lingers. That maybe slashers don't come from movies — maybe movies come from slashers.
What I requested was the Dryad-Root Runner — imagine if a Mustang, Jeep, and a Land Rover had a baby raised in an enchanted forest commune. Metal-plated with bark-slick paneling, muscular like it could bench-press a glacier, and humming with eco-efficient purrs. It looked like a hot DILF in vehicle form: tough, protective, knows how to handle dirt roads, and still gives a damn about the planet. Yeah. That kind of car.
Dryad engineering is wild like that. These things grow in caverns, fed on mineral streams and old sunstone roots. Each one's bonded to the forest but rides like a dream. They're the Kitty Pryde of cars. Go through anything without leaving a scar. If you're not investing in one yet, fix your life.
This world's got a lot of cars to choose from — and I mean a lot. Literal monster cars you raise from a pup. Standard civilian rides with glamor enchantments. Hell, there's a line of eldritch brand cruisers like "Voidrunner" and "Shoggolux," sleek in design, powered by inkblood. Fae brands like "Liltwheel" and "Thornspire" tend to lean more on elegance and weird passive-aggressive GPS. Then there's the normal ones — yes, even Toyotas and Volvos are still kicking. Reliable, boring, and blessed by four minor road gods.
Still, Nicky? When vehicles started to boom post-Surge, she stuck with a classic. A good ol' 1979 monster-bonded Impala. Looked like chrome sin. Growled like a devil in love. It was technically a muscle car, but given how many times it saved our asses and responded like it had a soul? It deserved a permanent slot in the monster car registry.
That girl — and that car — got me through more field ops than I care to count, long before Nicky ever signed official with the Hashers. We didn't always work together, but when we did, we rode in style.
That girl — and that car — got me through more field ops than I care to count, long before Nicky ever signed official with the Hashers. We didn't always work together, but when we did, we rode in style.
Briar took the front seat. Of course she did. Sat down like she owned the whole damn operation, all sharp angles and bitchy posture. Lupa climbed in the back, quiet but oddly watchful, casting a glance at Briar like she was trying to soothe a storm before it brewed.
Nicky came out next, visibly annoyed — which wasn't new — but this time, something felt off. Too sharp. Too specific. Her performance was dead-on, and I knew the difference. That wasn't real anger — that was stagecraft. A warning, not a tantrum. I caught the tail end of her snapping at Brair and Lupa, something about mishandling gear or bad timing — didn't matter. I could tell it was fake. A scene for their benefit, not mine. Brair and Lupa bought it, of course. Huffing, defensive, throwing looks like scolded teenagers. But I'd been with Nicky too long not to see the seams in the performance. Still, I had to play the part — gave them a furrowed brow and concerned eyes, like I believed it. Even raised a hand like I was gonna say something helpful. Acting class and Improvee credits, kids — they're not just for show missions. They're how you spot when the real game's already started.
Just before we loaded in, I slipped the bone message from Raven into my back pocket. Call it ritual. Call it paranoia. Call it prepping for hell.
"Kiss?" I asked Nicky, throwing in the full dramatic puppy-eyes performance. She narrowed her eyes — not annoyed, calculating. The kind of look that assessed risk like it was muscle memory. For a second, I thought she'd brush me off. Lips curled like she was gonna roll her eyes instead. But then? She broke character just long enough to step in, hands firm on my collar, and kissed me like the battlefield was already burning.
It was real — bone-deep real. No theatrics. No script. Just us, in the pocket of a moment too dangerous to last.
Her fingers traced lower, subtle, landing on the message bone tucked in my back pocket. She gave it the tiniest tap, like a second message passed between our skin.
What looked like a cheeky grab for my ass was actually her fingers brushing over the bone. She knew. After a long, firm kiss, she pulled back and smiled. Not soft. Not sweet. Tactical.
That smile said: We're on the same page. Even if the script changes.
As we got into the Dryad-Root Runner, I started thinking about car placement — not in some casual, road trip way, but in a combat-tactic-meets-creep-show kind of way. When you're riding with potential traitors, every seat counts. Side attacks? They're the worst. It's like having a blade slide right into your ribs while you're trying to shift gears. A few seconds of delay — that's all it takes to go from 'in control' to 'bleeding out over the clutch.' I've always said: if you're gonna get ambushed, let it come from the rear. At least then you've got space, angles, mirrors. You can fight with control. Getting blindsided from the passenger seat? That shit's chaos incarnate. Ask any Hasher who's been there — car position is survival math.
Right as that thought settled, Briar reached forward and cranked the radio. The opening chords of Pocketful of Sunshine blared out like a saccharine omen. She smiled — real slow — and said, almost dreamily, "My mom used to play this for me every time I came home from school. Said it helped her forget the sound of screaming."
Lupa, deadpan but distant, added, "My mom hated this song. Said it made me sound like I was begging for the wrong kind of attention."
The air shifted. Not quite threat, not quite nostalgia. Just something crooked beneath the words. Like they were already getting cocky — leaning into a performance only they knew the lines to. A preview of a game already rigged.
Nicky and I started in on them early — casual questions, nothing too sharp at first. Just enough to get their story straight — or crooked. Briar claimed, yet again, that she was raised by slime folk, and Lupa repeated her tired line about her mom being an ex-cheerleader turned tracker. We asked three questions total. That was all we needed.
We pulled up to the cabin, the ashes of the last kill site still smoking low in the cold air. Everyone got out and began sifting through the ruins — masks of professionalism on. And then Lupa moved. First. Fast. Too fast.
She lunged — toward Nicky.
But Nicky, my girl, didn't even blink. She dodged like she was born in combat, fluid as silk through rain. Her aura flickered, the pressure in the air dropped, and for a heartbeat, the frost bit harder than it should've. The Murder Sisters — Lupa and Briar — screamed in sync, breaking rank and sprinting toward the figure standing at the edge of the ruins.
Delil. The lead slasher. The one who lit the match on this entire blood-soaked opera, carving her name into the case with the elegance of rot and obsession.
She looked like she'd crawled out of an oil painting made of grief and gasoline. Her voice cracked the silence, thick with venom and velvet. "Y'all had to ruin my plans and stuff," she hissed, her mouth curling like rot on roses. "Just a few more years, and I would've had it all lined up. A beautiful cycle of agony, stitched into generations. I was making art… and you tore the canvas."
The air around her tightened, pressing like a suffocating veil. Her eyes flicked with obsession, her movements too fluid to be human. Lupa and Briar flanked her, eyes glassy with zeal, hyping her up like she was the chorus girl of the apocalypse. They didn't just believe in her — they adored her.
And me? Nicky?
We stayed back — a safe ten feet. Didn't move. Just stretched. Limbs loose. Weapons within reach. Our eyes locked like we were already synced in motion.
One of the first rules they drill into you? Let the slasher monologue. Gives you time to read the rhythm, catch the cracks. And when you're overpowered like us, when your stats hit god-tier levels of slasherbane? You get to stretch it out. Let the scene breathe.
We didn't rush.
Because what was coming? Deserved full composure.
Nicky spoke first — her voice flat, sharp, a verbal blade slipped between ribs: "How the hell do you blame Loreen — aka Babydoll — for all of this mess?"
Briar opened her mouth, about to spit something venomous, maybe even a half-formed threat. I swear the words "you should fuck—" were on her tongue, but she never finished.
Delil raised one lazy hand and stitched Briar's mouth shut — literally. Thin, glowing threads zipped across her lips like spectral needles dancing with glee. Briar didn't even flinch.
She smiled.
It was sick. Too happy. Like getting her mouth sewn shut was a love letter from her queen. She even gestured to her lips and gave us a quick thumbs up.
Delil, meanwhile, began explaining, voice syrupy and slow like a bedtime story soaked in arsenic. "How I did it? Clean as silk on a storm night. Stitch threads made from my own aura — refined, bled, distilled. Ran 'em through illusionary nerve points until pain flipped to pleasure. That's the trick. You stitch the nerves just right, and the body forgets how to scream."
She paced as she spoke, twirling a thin silver needle between her fingers like a conductor in a one-woman orchestra of agony. "I practiced, oh yes. On dolls, at first. Then on willing mouths. Volunteers who wanted their words sewn down. Lovers who begged to lose their voices. Disciples who gave me their tongues to twist into loyalty."
Every step she took dragged something ancient behind her — not cloth, but memory. Not scent, but ritual. And all of it humming, low and cruel, with the promise of silence sewn into skin.
"This is design," Delil said, her voice gleaming with sick pride. "You think I just kill? No, no — I curate."
She continued, voice rising like a crescendo of broken lullabies. "I was going back to my first kills — the campfire ones. Not easy to find the bodies, but these two girls… bless their hearts. Their parents made fine material. My art show needed soul. They gave it."
She gestured to Briar and Lupa, who began peeling off their clothes with eerie grace, like dolls being undressed by invisible hands. With a snap of Delil's fingers, spectral threads zipped across their mouths, nipples, and lower lips — not sewn, but pulled tight with a twitching hunger, as if the thread itself wanted to feed on them.
The two began to jump — not with glee, but like puppets yanked up by unseen hooks in their tendons. Limbs jerked in unnatural rhythm, knees locked at angles that shouldn't hold. They trembled in perfect sync, mouthing muffled praise through sealed lips.
"Stitch me, bind me, thread so tight, Mother twist me in your night, Jumpin' bones in bloody grace, Thread my lips, erase my face.
Click-click, goes the needle drop, Nip-nip, stitched until we pop, Thank you, Mama, make it hurt — Puppet gospel in the dirt."
She continued, voice rising like a crescendo of broken lullabies. "I was going back to my first kills — the campfire ones. Not easy to find the bodies, but these two girls… bless their hearts. Their parents made fine material. My art show needed soul. They gave it."
She gestured to Briar and Lupa, who began peeling off their clothes with eerie grace, like dolls being undressed by invisible hands. With a snap of Delil's fingers, spectral threads zipped across their mouths, nipples, and lower lips — not sewn, but pulled tight with a twitching hunger, as if the thread itself wanted to feed on them.
The two began to jump — not with glee, but like puppets yanked up by unseen hooks in their tendons. Limbs jerked in unnatural rhythm, knees locked at angles that shouldn't hold. They trembled in perfect sync, mouthing muffled praise through sealed lips.
"Stitch me, bind me, thread so tight, Mother twist me in your night, Jumpin' bones in bloody grace, Thread my lips, erase my face.
Click-click, goes the needle drop, Nip-nip, stitched until we pop, Thank you, Mama, make it hurt — Puppet gospel in the dirt."
I watched and thought, How the hell did this fall under hasher work? I mean, sure — she's a slasher, technically. But this? This was technocult architecture. Sonster-tier psychodynamics. Obedience bonding woven like some black-market IKEA instruction manual for cursed souls. I'm talkin' eldritch startup vibes with a subscription model for agony.
You ever file paperwork under "non-consensual thread cult"? Neither had we. But that's the thing — this realm, as best we can tell, runs on a patchwork of rules, taxes, and magical ordinances. And sometimes you get cult bitches like this one who think they're above it all. Won't pay fees, won't follow doctrine. They start talkin' sovereign citizen nonsense like, 'I don't consent to your planar jurisdiction.' America, you know what I'm talkin' about. It's all good until they start stealing souls and hiding bodies in sentient embroidery hoops. Then suddenly it's our damn problem.
And yet, here we were. Fighting stitched-up joy junkies mid-rap break in what looked like a horror fairytale directed by a sadistic fashion designer on bath salts.
"I slipped Devil's Breath into Loreen's coffee — one dose at a time. Crafted jealousy like a painter smears shadow across canvas. She became my mirror — my doll."
As Delil spoke, Brair and Lupa began to move. No one gave them a cue, but their bodies responded to the words like threads pulled by an invisible hand. They mimed the scene — Brair staggering like she'd just sipped something foul, eyes fluttering like false fear, and Lupa jerking forward to cradle her like a panicked friend. But there was nothing there. No props. No setup. Just improv horror theater, and we were trapped in the front row.
Delil grinned and raised her hands like she was orchestrating it all. "You didn't notice the show? Every movement rehearsed. Every twitch sculpted in porcelain pain. Brair and Lupa, my murder marionettes. My living dolls. Betrayal made flesh — just for you."
She looked dead at us. "Theater, darling. The final act of pain."
I let out a sharp laugh — not from humor, but from that grim thrill you get when a slasher finally misreads the script. I jabbed a thumb toward Nicky like I was announcing a final boss in a fighting game.
"Let me make this formal for you. That over there — that's Nicky. She's your opponent. Not some background extra or rookie Hasher. She's the damn storm you forgot to prepare for — and your new nightmare for the next few years in Hell. You'll be begging for whatever devil was supposed to torture you, because compared to her? That bastard's a vacation."
She gave a charming little wave — followed by a low, mocking curtsy that looked more royal than polite. But as she rose, I noticed something — her shadow didn't rise with her. It stayed behind for just a moment too long, curling up like smoke. Then came the flip-off: both hands, full finger ballet of contempt. Beautiful. And unsettling.
Slashers love drama, but this one? She was a theater kid in a butcher's apron, practically gift-wrapped in theatrical chaos. I won't lie — part of me wanted to thank her. This was why I did this. Not the killing, not the glory — the clarity. The moment where monsters stop pretending and show you who they are. But this wasn't going to end in applause — only blood.
"I'll handle your doll freaks," I added, cracking my neck and rolling out my shield — a broad disc of layered mushroomwood and metal, gleaming in the dim light. Its surface shimmered with a deep teal hue, accented by veins of copper and brass that glinted like circuitry under bark. Elegant but battle-worn, it was a relic of the old Dryad orders, forged not just to defend, but to end fights fast.
The slasher scoffed, lifting her stitched-up chin with a smirk that reeked of theatrical disdain. "Oh, of course. Send the big strong man after the little dolls. Can't expect a guy like you to handle a real woman, huh? Typical testosterone logic."
I shook my head slowly, dragging my shield across the dirt like a war drum. "Nah. I chose this because she's the better weapon. Bitches love canon, and trust me — this one's got more than enough for a franchise. Your daughters are getting lucky fighting me, but you? You just pulled the short straw. And frankly, if I were you, Talo'kreni faran'dal, you stitched-up relic." Nicky snorted behind me. "That translates to: Kiss my ass, you crusty antique with stitched-up delusions and the math skills of a wet sock. You couldn't count bodies or brain cells if they lined up and screamed your name, hoe."
Before the slasher could say another word, her daughters lunged. The dolls weren't just quick — they teleported in flickers of meat and thread. I raised my shield in time to catch a twisted claw strike, the impact echoing like a church bell through my arms. I grunted, pivoted, and used the force to fling them off — smashing their stitched-up bodies into the deeper woods.
Behind me, I could already feel the forest shifting — and Nicky?
I didn't see it coming. Her monster hand, massive and gnarled like a subway claw machine, grabbed me by the back of my jacket and hurled me deeper into the woods. Not violently — no, this was practiced. Surgical. Like she was helping me skip the cutscene and jump straight into my boss battle.
Mid-flight, I twisted to glimpse her form. She'd chosen to manifest as something familiar — a city girl silhouette: crop jacket, high boots, manicured claws — but warped into a nightmare. Like if your favorite glam vlogger had a face made of shattered mirrors and mascara tears, with eyes like haunted high beams. And she was smiling. That murder-spree kind of smile.
The forest sang when I landed. Not birdsong — something else. Branches humming. Bark breathing. I hit the dirt hard in the hollow where those creepy-ass dolls were supposed to be. But they'd left only a dent, a scarring mark in the roots like the earth itself had flinched.
I whistled. A low, three-note signal. The kind we used when things went from bad to biblical.
Then I heard it — soft footsteps, giggling echoes, the brush of fabric and thread. The girls.
They started circling me, weaving in and out of the trees like children in a haunted carousel, their movements jerky and puppet-like, arms limp then snapping taut, heads tilting with unnatural rhythm. It was like watching dolls that thought they were people.
"We didn't know," one said, her voice stitched with sorrow.
"We were just kids when they brought us in," the other followed, like a prayer from a cracked record.
In my head, I wanted to feel pity. It was tragic — kids raised in blood and thread, twisted before they had a chance. But they had chances. Every step with the Hashers was a way out. Every moment we gave them mercy was another road they turned from.
My grip on the shield tightened. "Still your fault. Still your hands. You don't get to cry and kill."
They paced faster, weaving like wolves now — but wolves in ribbons, dressed in guilt, soaked in old sins.
"You don't know what we were told. You don't know what we had to be. We were just kids at the time."
That line — we were just kids — it comes up a lot when you're hunting slashers like this. But you learn quick: it only works in certain times. This wasn't one of them. As a Hasher, you gotta read between the scars. You gotta know if they mean it. Because if you guess wrong, it's not just your life that ends — it's the next victim's. That excuse? It doesn't get to wear a mask forever.
I crouched slightly, letting the edge of the shield gleam under the forest light — not raised for defense, but tilted like a blade ready to carve through lies. "No. But I know what you are now. And I know you've had years."
I wasn't planning to use my dryad abilities. No way in hell I was tapping into root-sense or commune-breathing for this mess. That stuff's sacred. This fight? This was dirty, bloody work. I just needed to draw them out, keep them talking, keep them slipping. Get them to fight long enough for the story to end properly — not with mercy, but with precision. So I held the shield like a cleaver and waited for them to stop pretending they were victims cause real victims never hide like they fairies playing an trick.
On the surface, they looked early-twenties — perfect casting for wide-eyed victims. But the case files didn't lie. Cross-referencing the first reported kills with their known associations painted a very different picture. They'd been around long enough to build a legacy of silence. They weren't new. They weren't innocent. They were veterans of this blood-drenched circuit, recruited sometime after the first bodies dropped. And in the eyes of the Order? That kind of mileage marks you as unrecoverable — a case gone cold and rotten.
Their voices rose and fell like a spell — but it wasn't working. I wasn't buying it. It wasn't just a guilt trip — it was a pity trap. They were trying to disarm me with sadness, a performance wrapped in weeping.
Then they lunged.
One came from the left, fingers like claws, while the other bent backwards in some inhuman angle and kicked off the bark like she was part squirrel, part nightmare. My shield came up — not just a wall, but a battering ram. I slammed it forward, knocking one of them back against a trunk. Her laugh rattled like bones in a drawer.
Briar screamed — but it wasn't just sound. Fire erupted from her mouth, and gods help me, her chest and lower body too. It shot toward me in flickers, like candles made from trauma. I rolled under the heat, the edge of my shield scalded but holding.
"Really?" I muttered, more to myself than them. "You breathing fire outta three holes — you might want a doctor for that STD."
The forest hissed around us. Trees groaned like they were watching and disapproving. Their movements got wilder, disjointed, possessed by something more than guilt. I backed up, shield raised, not for cover but to line the next hit. This wasn't pity anymore. This was the real face behind the crying mask — and it wanted me dead.
They tackled me — one from the side, one from behind. My back hit the roots hard, shield nearly slipping from my grasp as Briar let out another molten shriek. I barely managed to roll before a searing gout of stitched fire missed my face by inches. But it wasn't just from her mouth this time — flames tore from her chest and lower half like some cursed effigy combusting from within.
My shield caught another blast — I twisted, using it not as defense but offense, ramming it up under one of them with brutal force. It wasn't enough. They were fast, inhumanly so, and I could feel them trying to pin me, fingers clawing like silk-draped spiders.
Then — strings. Glimmering, silver-black cords snapped out of nowhere and yanked the girls upward like failed marionettes. They screamed as they dangled midair, twitching like hooked fish.
Nicky stood a few yards away, eyes black with fury, arms dripping with her own shadows. She tilted her head at me.
"Took you long enough," I muttered, brushing pine needles off my shirt as I pushed myself upright. My eyes locked on her — shadow-wrapped, humming with power, and every inch the nightmare some otherworldly city dreamed up when it wanted to scare itself. Her shadow was gone, snuffed out or hiding, and that was the tell. That was the part that always warned you something ancient had slipped its leash.
She looked like a city girl on the outside — tight leather jacket, combat heels that shouldn't work on forest ground, and lip gloss like she was ready for a club brawl — but every movement hinted at something far older and far crueler underneath. If she was fashioning herself after anything, it was what the forest feared when it dreamed of skyscrapers and steel. The kind of girl who carried switchblades in her smile and bad omens in her perfume.
I couldn't help the half-smirk. Her silhouette shimmered with the afterburn of whatever realm she'd just cracked open. If I didn't know her like I did, I might've thought she let me take the hit on purpose — just to make the entrance burn brighter. And honestly? I wouldn't even be mad.
Their mother — Delil — hovered into view, flanked by her twitching daughters like a conductor in a macabre symphony. Strings dripped from her fingers, and the air around her pulsed with the rot of long-stale power. She didn't walk — she was pulled, gliding like a puppet whose strings had forgotten gravity. Nicky had her suspended too, tangled in the same silver-black cords now tightening around the trio like a ceremonial snare. The entire wretched family — strung up like a warning to whatever dark thing thought it could still run.
"Useless girls," she hissed.
"Close your eyes," Nicky ordered.
I obeyed.
There was a sound. Not a door opening, but something deeper — a gate creaking in dimensions. Then came the sludge — thick and clinging, coating my skin, my mind, my senses. I felt everything. Emotion. Regret. Millions of tiny bugs and screaming voices that weren't mine.
The girls shrieked — high, ragged, like broken instruments straining to play one final, frantic note. Delil let out a sound that wasn't human — a gurgle of rage and unraveling magic, the kind of snarl you only hear when something ancient realizes its strings have snapped. But it was too late. The forest had already swallowed their fate, and Nicky had already rewritten the ending in blood and silence.
When Nicky told me to open my eyes, the screams had faded.
She knelt beside me, her hand trembling slightly as she wiped the grime from my face — the tender kind of motion that only monsters who remember love can make. Her tone was low, calm, but it held a dark resonance that made the trees shiver. "You left them for me."
I gave her a crooked smile, blood on my teeth, and wiped a smear of something unholy from my temple. "I knew you wouldn't take long. You never do when it's personal. Too bad, this had no recording but I words." I wish I could've recorded the moment — the way the forest stilled, the strings hissed in surrender, and she stood there like a walking curse written in vengeance and velvet. But some things are better burned into the soul than stored in files.
She exhaled — not tired, not angry, just... resolved. Her fingers tightened slightly on my jaw like she was grounding herself in my skin. "If it had been the Gate of Hell, I might've posed for the cameras. But that? That realm makes Hell look like a toddler's naptime."
Her eyes shimmered with shadow and memory, her voice dripping with quiet wrath and eerie grace. In that moment, she wasn't my partner. She was the reckoning — dressed in skin, forged in grief, and delivered by love sharp enough to tear through time.
Now, you're probably wondering what happened after that fight. We didn't just get out — we got paid, and paid well. The Order handed us a huge-ass reward, probably hush money laced with gratitude. And we took it. Every credit, every shimmering favor token, every off-the-books bonus they whispered through channels.
We're taking some time off. Right now? We're in my hometown. Peaceful little root-town buried beneath the surface. Nicky and the kid are out back, laughing while playing with the murshrooms I raised as a kid — living fungal blooms that giggle when you touch their caps. Watching them makes the hell worth it.
Everyone's still alive. Knox recovered — stubborn bastard — and Sir Glom's already writing a new damn book about it. Raven? She's still pale, still silent, but I caught her smiling once when the wind stirred the pigeon bones.
We'll see you next time, hunter. 'Cause once this break is over? We got a job lined up that'll knock your socks off, rip 'em in half, and feed 'em to something that used to be human.