The first thing Leo did was lean against the wall, watching Abital's unconscious form slumped near the console. The kid looked half-dead, his breathing shallow and face pale under the flicker of the emergency lights. Leo blew out a stream of cigarette smoke and glanced toward the sealed door. Footsteps and muffled shouts had come within earshot.
A terrifying grin crept onto Leo's face.
"Well, that's my cue."
The chain tattoos along his arms stirred, a faint violet glow tracing their way around his skin as they began to awaken. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck until it popped, more excited than worried. It had been far too long since he'd had a proper fight. Long periods of nothing but talking in Abital's head had him itching to remind himself he was still dangerous.
He crouched beside Abital and tapped the side of his face once, even though he knew the Warforged wouldn't wake.
"You're lucky I like you," Leo said. "Because this is going to cost you a lot of essence, kid."
He stood, slipping his hands into the pockets of his black slacks. The footsteps were closer now, evidently more than a handful of them. A whole squad, by the sound of it.
Wonderful.
Leo grinned wider, the cigarette's glow flaring purple.
"Guess we're doing this the fun way."
Before he made his move, Leo closed his eyes; he liked the number three. It fit his plans.
Wipe the team. Kill the relay. Get Abital out. In that order.
He then looked down at Abital. Leo's smile softened for the barest breath. He'd been the one to make him real for a little while—at the cost of a bitter, annoyingly thin thread from the Warforged's soul reservoir—and that thought lodged in him. He rolled the idea around in his mind.
For a Warforged, Abital's reservoir was petty. That would rule out Leo's Bloody Hand technique; conjuring the signature purple flames demanded far more than Abital's reservoir could sustain. That was okay. He liked other toys.
Leo hummed aloud. "For a Warforged he's pathetic, honestly. How do you expect to fight a war with essence like that?"
While he was preoccupied complaining, the door began to move. Leo straightened, letting his smile spread.
"Chainheart!" he shouted. Leo said it loud because he liked the sound of his own voice and because it freaked people out.
It was a show. He loved shows. The ink along Leo's forearm flared. A link of violet peeled off his forearm and hammered through the sealed door, quickly finding a throat. The sound it made was short and terrible; blood mapped the frame of the door in two quick sweeps. Leo pulled his hand back, causing the chain to pop back and yawn to another link.
Someone swore. Leo clapped once as he chuckled. "How could you have guessed this would be your grave?"
He liked entrances. He threw the door wide and stepped out without hurry. The hallway's layout was simple: two people by a door, one kneeling behind a console, two stacked by the stairs. Easy enough.
An ice spear came at him without warning. Leo eyed the attack with disdain—he never liked obvious things. He snapped both forearms out in one motion. "Chainfield!" he barked; a rotating ring of chain links unfurled from both forearms. The spear hit the field and shattered, causing crystalline bits to shower the corridor in a bright hail. A few of the shards erupted upward; the nearest fluorescent strip surrendered with a long, electrical scream and detonated into a glittering death. One of the shapers staggered back, their visor frosting white.
Leo used the stagger. He would have loved to make a display—"Bloody Hand would have burned them to ashes," he thought—but the essence he had to work with was slim to none. He cursed Abital under his breath.
He hooked a chain around the shaper's knee and yanked hard. The man fell over, his weight slamming into the tile. Leo didn't bother to kill him right away: he liked to twist and break things.
It was evident to Leo that the shaper at the console wasn't built for improvisation. Leo watched him with Lion Vision, seeing threads of essence braided inside the man's throat, slowly thickening and pulsating: the man was building a resonance. A weapon made of sound, enough to take out everything in Leo's direction.
Leo scowled. He looped a chain behind his back and flicked the end with a practiced twist. The link wrapped around the man's neck. "I've got sleeping beauty in the next room over, so I can't really let you do that," Leo said quietly, and he pulled.
The sound burst into a choked, wet gag as the man's airway was crushed. His eyes went white, then glassy. The man's hands clawed at the chain, his nails trying to break apart Leo's links. Leo tightened until the echo in his throat was reduced to nothing. He let go and the body slumped.
"Three down, three to go!" Leo chuckled. The two kids by the stairs began to sweat, confused by the overwhelming threat and his strange powers. They wore black uniforms with red stripes: Novizens, the bottom rung of the GCF Peaceguard forces.
"In other words," Leo rolled his eyes, "...trainees. Cute. I can't believe they sent the runts of their forces. And this one…" A man in a Wächter uniform decorated with grey buttons stepped closer, twin axes materializing in his hands. Early 40's, Leo guessed, but his brown beard and hair already had traces of grey. Leo could see the beads of sweat dripping down his face, but the man continued to step closer, defiantly raising an axe in Leo's direction.
Leo snickered, then full on cackled. "Oh…don't…don't tell me," Leo said in between maniacal laughter, "don't tell me you're their leader! Don't kid yourself! What makes you think you have any right to threaten me?"
The man remained undeterred. He inhaled deeply, then shouted: "My name is Axel Kabberacht! These students are under my watch, and I implore you to leave them out of this! I don't know what you want, but if you have any honor, you'll respect my wish to engage in one-on-one combat!"
"What I want?" Leo scoffed. "Don't make me laugh."
Normally, Leo would have ignored the foolish proposition and simply killed them all, but the seconds were ticking by. If he slaughtered Axel quickly and ignored the students, he'd have just enough time to take out the comms relay and get Abital to safety. Leo closed his eyes, frustrated. It didn't help that he was already low on essence. Typically his chains didn't require much, but even then, the pool he had to work with was egregiously limited.
"Honor?" Leo asked, chuckling. "You think honor will buy you extra time? Sure, I can do one-on-one, and I'll even spare the kids. They should look away, though. This won't be pretty."
The air behind Leo shimmered as the glow of a tattoo seared through the back of his shirt, outlining a weapon's crescent blade in sharp lines. With a mad grin, he reached behind his back and pulled — and the scythe came free, the weapon hissing as it hit his palm.
Blackened steel kissed with an inlaid filigree of violet crystal veins. Along the sharpened edge ran hundreds of microscopic triangular etchings that caught the light. Leo's heart thumped as he held his pride and joy. "Those triangles may look like decoration, but they're actually micro-patterned facets that channel Soulforge energy, focusing it into razor-precision strikes or, when fed with essence, powering the blade's void-synthesis."
In other words, Leo was very happy.
At the haft, half of a short cross-guard sat like a broken halo. Small vents and crystalline inlays along the spine hissed faintly. The whole thing hummed very slightly, a low frequency you felt more than heard. The weapon looked terribly wrong and beautiful all at once. "Been a while since you've seen this one, huh?"
Axel recognized him then.
"Those eyes!" Axel gasped. "It– that– but it shouldn't be possible! You're a—"
"Yeah." Leo finished for him. He stepped forward just enough for the light to catch his face. The dim violet glow in his eyes was obvious now.
"I'm a Warforged."
Chills ran down the spines of the remaining shapers. Axel instinctively took a step back, much to Leo's amusement. "But what's that got to do with anything?" Leo shrugged. He motioned for Axel to come closer. "Honor and all that, right? Or would you prefer for the kids to die, regardless of your pitiful sacrifice?"
Axel grit his teeth, staring at Leo with bloodshot eyes, gripping his axes as his knuckles turned white. Leo's face was gleeful. "That's it! Yes, that look, I've missed that look! These are your final moments, and I see you've come to terms with that. Isn't that wonderful?"
Leo watched Axel's hands. Normally a man with twin axes would charge. Axel did not charge; instead, he plucked something from his mouth with a quick motion — a tooth, slick with saliva and blood. Leo's skin prickled. That's not normal.
The tooth twisted and blackened. Before Leo could think it through, Axel's fingers folded the thing into his palm and rolled it the way a gambler spins a die, then threw it into the air.
The cube tumbled end over end, catching the light as it spun. Axel's axe flashed, splitting it in a single, precise stroke. The halves barely hit the ground before three black bolts burst from the break, screaming through the hall.
Leo moved on instinct. His scythe was already in motion, a violet arc cutting across the air. Two bolts met the blade's void-sheen and shredded into harmless filaments. The third skimmed low, carving a burning line across his hip. The pain made him grin while wincing, a sharp, involuntary thing—he'd almost forgotten what it felt like to bleed.
Axel didn't wait. Another tooth was already gone, another cube already tossed. This time he struck harder, and six bolts erupted at once. Leo was able to trigger his Lion Vision, framing the moment as slow motion. For a heartbeat, Leo saw the trajectory of every bolt and their point of convergence.
Leo took a deep breath. Gripping his scythe firmly, he used the blade's concave inner curve to hook a bolt mid-flight, redirecting it into the floor where it exploded with a spray of tile fragments and dust. Without pausing, Leo spun, the blade whistling in a vicious horizontal sweep—two more bolts split apart mid-flight, vanishing into smoke.
Momentum carried him into a wall-run: boots scraping tile, he kicked off and twisted, letting another bolt glance off his chestplate. Sparks rained across the floor as the last two slammed into the wall where his head had been, leaving smoking craters.
The hallway lights flickered and buzzed overhead, half the corridor plunging into shadow.
Leo landed light, scythe over his shoulders as his grin widened. "Is that all, old man?" he asked while sticking his tongue out. "Well, I suppose you could only do so much as a Wächter."
Axel pulled another tooth, this one molar-thick. He grunted as he spat blood, axe ready to slice the dice it morphed into.
Leo tilted his head. "Ohhh, so that's the trick." The scythe spun lazily in his grip. "I thought you were a cut above the other watchdogs. But you're just some poor bastard ripping your own teeth out to stay in the fight."
Axel ignored him, slashing the die. Two bolts screamed forward.
Leo's Lion Vision pulsed again, slowing the moment down, framing Axel's movements in glaring violet outlines. "This isn't random. It's a math trick of sorts."
Jumping to gain momentum, his scythe's curve hooked both bolts as he twisted, slamming them into the ceiling.
He landed in a crouch, chuckling. "So that's it? You thought you were hiding some great trump card, but you gave it all away in two moves."
Axel's face paled under his beard.
"You've squandered your advantage already," Leo said, raising the scythe. "Every roll is just a numbers game. Three pips, three bolts. Six pips, six bolts. You have to shake the dice before cutting, so you can't choose the amount of projectiles. Powerful move, but it has a shamefully predictable setup."
Axel's hands trembled around his axes.
Leo laughed. "What's wrong? Shocked I solved your puzzle so fast? You should've saved it for someone dumber." He tapped the side of his head. "But unlucky for you, I don't play games I can't win."
Axel's jaw clenched, blood dribbling into his beard. He pulled another tooth, hands shaking now, but still raising his axe. "Goddamn, you must be a regular at the dentist," Leo teased. "Bet you've got a punch card. Ten visits, and you get one free cleaning!"
All Axel could do was throw the dice in the air. Swinging his axe as hard as he could, he grazed the die by mistake, failing to split it in half.
Leo's smirk hardened into a sneer. "Pathetic." He stepped forward, his scythe scraping the tile. "Every move you make costs you a piece of yourself, and you can't even do that right."
Axel's breathing had gone ragged. "You're slowing down," Leo taunted. He twirled his scythe lazily, letting the blade's glow paint arcs of violet on the wall.
Axel roared and hurled both axes in a cross-throw. Leo barely moved—just turned his wrist and swept the scythe in a single motion. The axes split mid-flight, clattering to pieces at his feet.
Another axe appeared in Axel's grip, but his fingers trembled. Blood streamed from his gums, dribbling down his chin and speckling the tile.
"Yeah," Leo said. "You're done."
He spun the scythe once, then drove its tip through the air. A tear opened with a sound like a lightning strike, a swirling rift yawning wide. A second rift flared open behind Axel.
Before the Wächter could react, Leo thrust the scythe through the first portal. The blade punched through the second, emerging right behind Axel's chest. For a split-second there was silence—then the tip erupted crimson from Axel's sternum. Leo leaned forward, whispering through a grin that stretched wide. "Game over, old man."
Axel gasped, axe slipping from his grip as his knees buckled.
"You fought well," Leo complimented, before yanking the blade back through the rift. Axel collapsed, body hitting the tiles with a dull thud. "At least, for what I had available to me."
A sob filled the air. One of the Novizen trainees stood frozen near the stairwell, tears streaming down her face. "Uncle!" she screamed, her voice breaking. "You…you killed him!" A boy with blue hair wrapped his arms around her, fighting to hold back tears.
Leo turned. "Then you better run before you join him." Axel's body twitched, jogging Leo's memory. "Oh, wait…right. Honor."
"Void Rift," he whispered. He reached over his shoulder, the scythe's blade carving a small sphere of crackling light from the air. The orb pulsed violently in his palm.
"Catch!" he shouted—and flicked it at the two Novizens.
The sphere touched the floor between them and detonated into a wave of purple lightning. Both were swallowed in an instant, ripped into streaks of light before vanishing completely. The air where they'd been standing buzzed.
"Randomized exit point," Leo muttered. "Hope they like surprises."
He let the rift collapse, spinning the scythe once before resting it on his shoulder. The hall was quiet now, save for the faint hum of flickering lights. Leo was able to savor the silence for a moment before doubling over.
He tasted metal when he coughed. Two or three drops of blood dripped onto his palm. His breaths came in short, jagged rasps. He pressed his fingers to the wound and felt the dull, honest heat of it. For a second he let himself be annoyed.
A mirror of cracked lab glass offered him confirmation: dark hollows under his eyes, pale skin, and the faint smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. He liked the look enough to smirk, then winced at the pain in his chest.
Movement at the corner near the stairs made the hair at his neck spike. Leo turned his head and watched carefully.
A yellow cut of a one-piece suit—bright and stupidly loud—stretched over the curve of her hips and the slope of her shoulders. Royal-blue emblems streaked the fabric. Her helmet was a strange thing: blue and oddly shaped with the visor down. She had the posture of someone accustomed to being obeyed. She also had the kind of chest that made people forget about fighting for a second; not that Leo was in the habit of being distracted.
She scanned the corridor, then fixed on him. A tone of amusement was in her voice when she spoke. "Well, aren't you pretty," she said. "You look… like a twink, honestly. You're adorable."
Leo's hand tightened on the scythe out of instinct. He hadn't expected flirtation as part of the reception committee. Flirting was messier, and messes meant time wasted.
Leo assumed he was looking at a Hochwächter—he guessed the rank at a glance; the suit and the confidence gave it away. She moved slowly, looking at the bodies with professional distaste before her gaze slid back to him. She smelled faintly of something floral that didn't fit with the corridor's stench. She eyed him closely, considering him.
"You should surrender," she said sweetly, "so I can have a little fun with you. Or I could make this quick."
Leo felt the tiny prick of being read. Maybe she had a trick. He could see the faint hum of a Field Suppressor when he ran his Lion Vision across her: a low-level dampener around her suit that would interfere with any surprise attacks. He felt the advantage slipping away.
He had to make a choice. The relay that still sat on the console could wait. Reinforcements would know the wing was fucked without it soon enough; right now, the immediate problem was moving Abital out before anyone else arrived.
Leo grinned. "Cute suit," he said. "Yellow is really your color. It's a shame we're meeting like this, but I can't really hang around."
She laughed. "Even your voice is cute. Plus, you talk big for someone who's bleeding."
"Not bleeding enough." He flicked his wrist, sending a length of chain snapping toward a loose support arm in the ceiling. The link struck with a crack, latched, and Leo gave it a yank. The scaffolding overhead shuddered and then, obedient to his pull, one of the conduit trays let go and swung. A shower of sparking insulation and hot cable fell toward the far wall with a deafening noise.
"I'll be seeing you!" he shouted.
The Hochwächter barked a curse and stepped back, her eyes tracking the falling metal. She called something into the radio built into her helmet, moving to secure the spill of wreckage instead of him. Leo had carved precious seconds from the room, frying the relay in the process.
He rushed past the fallen debris, his scythe dissipating into violet light. He did not look at the woman long enough to appreciate the way she watched him, only the way the visor reflected his shape.
Abital was where he left him, under the emergency panel's glow. Leo slid a chain under the Warforged's shoulders and hauled him up; the motion cost him a grunt and a fresh, hot flare at his side. He felt the last of his reservoir quickly disappearing. Leo concentrated: the portal had to be quick.
He set his palm to the concrete floor, closed his eyes, and let the tattoo on his back bloom into light. He felt the reservoir narrow to a thread.
The noise of a wooshing portal tore the air. It wasn't clean—he hadn't the juice for that—but it was a mouth large enough for two. On the far side he picked a patch of alleyway that would dump them under scaffolding and behind a truck; he pictured it and the portal agreed, wobbling as it held.
A cough shook him, tasting far more iron than he'd like to admit. The edges of the portal glimmered with instability. He staggered forward as Abital's shoulder hit his back. He looped a chain-sling under him, hoisted him forward, and pushed them both through.
They didn't land gracefully. Concrete and cold air smacked them as they popped out under the scaffolding; Leo's knees buckled and he dragged Abital with him between rusted beams. The portal collapsed behind them with a small final pop.
He only heard his own gasp. He let himself fall against a crate, coughing harder this time, with more blood. His hip burned like hell. "You may just be worth remembering, Axel." He closed his eyes for one breath and then another. Dizziness made his head swim. Using the last of his essence had left him light-headed, and his limbs felt like lead. He wasn't able to teleport them very far; he had bought them a sliver of time and nothing more. It would have to be enough.
Leo's cigarette was finally burning down, curling smoke into the night air. He took one long drag, letting it sear his lungs, then crushed it between two fingers until it died in a thin trail of ash. "Finally ran out," he muttered.
Abital groaned. Leo crouched down beside him, his own legs trembling from the drain of essence.
"Hey," Leo said, snapping his fingers near Abital's ear. "Rise and shine, sleeping beauty. Time to move before your fan club catches up."
Abital's eyes cracked open, enough to see the state Leo was in. His gaze flicked to the still-glowing chain marks crawling up Leo's arms.
"You're... still here," Abital rasped.
"Yeah," Leo said, grinning despite the blood at the corner of his mouth. "Turns out your essence runs out pretty fast. Might wanna cut me loose before I collapse and take you with me."
Abital blinked, then closed his eyes, focusing. The thread of essence between them pulsed before he severed it with a sharp exhale.
Leo's glow faded instantly. His body turned lighter, nearly transparent, until the light of the moon passed right through him. He looked down at his fading hands and snorted.
"Back to being imaginary," he said. "Figures."
His last smirk was lazy, almost proud. "Don't let me down next time, kid. Being real feels too damn good to waste."
Then he vanished, leaving the faint smell of smoke behind.
Abital sat there for a moment, breathing hard. His body felt heavy and drained, but alive. Thanks to Leo, he'd made it out.
He looked at the spot where Leo had been and whispered: "Thanks, Leo. I don't know what you did, but I'm alive because of it."
Then he pushed himself up, gathered what was left of his strength, and limped away before anyone else could find him.