Thereafter Chapter 23: The Heist Part III (Black Blood in Fake Moonlight)
The heist comes to a bloody conclusion.
Michael spun around, but his nominal attacker was nowhere to be seen, which was expected, or felt, which was decidedly less so. The study was huge and dark around him, and gave no hint as to where his assailant was hiding.
“Nih-Ka, this isn’t what you think,” Michael said out into the darkness. “We are here to retrieve the sword.”
Something flew past Michael’s head, leaving a hot streak of pain. Michael struck out after the something, but whatever it was, was already gone.
“I don’t want to hurt you, man,” Michael said through gritted teeth, it felt every bit the admonishment to the universe that it was an appeal to Nih-Ka.
Michael spun around. For a second he thought he swung his cane at nothing, until the shock of impact confirmed the hit.
Something slumped on the ground. Possibly a moleboar, or a sack of flour, which Michael conceded was more unlikely given the situation.
Michael took a tentative step towards the fallen form. He didn’t want to check if it indeed was Nih-Ka’s fallen body, or if the crime lord had pulled some sort of trick on him, but he did not feel comfortable turning his back on whatever it was until he could be sure. He hadn’t hit Nih-Ka hard, in fact he wasn’t entirely convinced he had hit him at all, but surely it couldn’t be this easy. Then again, a deep dark part of Michael thought, humans were bigger and stronger than molekin by a good margin, and it didn’t take too much force to kill a human if it was correctly applied or, as would be the case here, got very lucky.
Michael was halfway through bending down to more closely examine the fallen form when he realized his error and the form sprung into motion. Something sharp, three sharp somethings, jabbed into where Michael’s armor protected his solar plexus and slashed upward. A shrill sound of chitin against metal screamed through the room, making Michael’s tremorsense fuzzy, and his ears ring. Michael jabbed at where the form had been with his sword, but hit only wooden floor.
The shape, Michael had no doubt it was Nih-Ka now, crouched just outside of lunging distance. Michael took a step back. If he could only get into the hallway, or even better the dining room, there’d be more light, his odds would even out. Even if he wasn’t sure they’d increase by much, it would be easier to stall for time. Once his friends arrived, Michael thought, once they arrived he would surely be able to resolve this situation in a way he found bearable.
Nih-Ka was on the move, scurrying at Michael, sharp claws clattering against the hardwood floor. Michael knew there was deep taboo against using ones claws for violence in the culture of the molekin, and that they were kept in a state of at least mostly sharp to help with digging, but he also knew that this was back when he went there, twenty years and centuries ago, and he knew that Nih-Ka lived on the outskirts of social acceptability and the law, back when such a thing existed. Nih-Ka’s claws were sharp, and they were kept sharp despite the obvious lack of diggable soil in Thereafter. While Michael couldn’t be sure, he started to become pretty sure the gash in his cheek that drew first blood in this nasty, treacherous fight, had been made with Nih-Ka’s claw, and he wasn’t keen on gaining another wound to compare.
Michael fled. It wasn’t the shattered retreat of a coward, he told himself, but that was mostly because it wasn’t all that fast. Tremorsense or no, navigating the study and hitting door rather than wall took some care.
He almost thought he was out of the worst of it as something hit him low and hard. A tackle this time, not a claw, but despite lacking puncture power, the momentum of it all was enough to send Michael falling flat on his face.
The world went dark, only for a second. Michael kicked wildly behind him, his panic rising from the Severe it already was to new heights.
“You disappoint me, Daysh—“ Nih-Ka’s voice imploded on itself as one of the wild kicks hit home. Michael did not waste the millisecond of thought it’d take to wonder exactly where he had hit his opponent, and instead made a mad scrambling dash for the door to the dining room. He hit the wall first, a graceless stumble into unforgiving wood as he scratched desperately for a door handle that wasn’t there.
Behind him, something groaned. Michael had to assume it was Nih-Ka, but could spare it no more thought as his hand, after what felt like years of desperate scratching searching, found the handle. He fell more than he entered through a door that thankfully opened into the room.
Michael stumbled out into the pale moonless moonlight of the dining room. After a few hasty steps, he stopped and turned towards the door, sword and cane at the ready. The weapon and the mobility aid he could use to beat someone senseless both shook. He was tired, exhausted, he was afraid, panicking. It wasn’t an ideal situation to be in, but he was breathing and thinking still, so it could quite easily be worse.
The doorway towered like a hole in reality itself. The scant moonlight that was available did nothing to illuminate the obelisk of emptiness. The sheer bottomless blackness of where the door had once been had a gravity of its own, and Michael felt like it was all he could do to defy it and not fall in.
Nih-Ka’s entry was not grand, nor was it particularly aggressive. There was, or so Michael’s amped perceptions told him, a casualness to the way in which the moleboar crime boss entered the room, his sharp claws held to the sides to show open palms. It’d be a disarming gesture, were it not for how much of a brazen display of the claws it was. The claws, Michael came to recognize, were long as daggers, and although a couple of the tips were chipped, they looked more than capable of slashing an artery to absolute tatters. They’d do nothing good against Michael’s armor, but a strike against a joint or other weak spot would be a problem. Then there was Michael’s entirely too exposed throat. He could feel his skin prickle as he realized that if Nih-Ka could reach his throat, the fight would be all but over. Granted, Nih-Ka would need a stepladder.
“So, it’s come to this.” Nih-Ka said. His voice was not boisterous nor threatening, but the casual ease with which he spoke of this battle to the death was disarming in an entirely different way. “I suspected it would eventually…”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. It’s the cycle of things, eventually the rounding errors in how you live your life add up. Didn’t think it would be you, though.”
Michael didn’t know what to say to that, so he tried an old track, anything to stall safely just a little bit longer. “This doesn’t have to end in tears Nih-Ka,”
“That’s where you’re wrong, young pup,” Nih-Ka said, there was some sort of grandfatherly condescension just bordering on friendly in his voice. “It always ends in tears. All that remains is to see if it’s yours, or that of my lieutenants.”
“Your Lieutenants?” Michael spoke before he had processed whether it was a good idea or not. He was pretty sure it wasn’t.
“Oh, so it wasn’t one of them that put you up to this? Well that shortens the list of suspects considerably.” Nih-Ka’s brows knit in an angry frown. This felt like a reveal to Michael, like some important information was imparted to him, but he was unable to see the totality of it. In part because he was tired and Nih-Ka was being a bit cryptic about things, and in part because Nih-Ka leapt into action, his claws all but flashing in the pale moonlight.
Michael stepped back, out of the sweep of Nih-Ka’s claws, swatting at the moleboar’s snout with his cane. Undaunted, Nih-Ka rushed ahead again, but it hardly took much effort to step out of the way. Compared to the desperate scrabble in the dark, this was easy.
The thought only occurred to Michael then, that it was too easy. Nih-Ka was no fighter, but he also was not a fool. Anyone could see the disadvantage a molekin was under when fighting a human. Reach, weight, muscle mass. One would be a fool to bet on a molekin in close quarters combat, no matter how sharp they kept their claws. Out of the corner of his eye, Michael spotted the large dinner table that Nih-Ka had been driving him, herding him really, toward since he came into the room.
Nih-Ka leapt onto the table, a feat Michael could say with some security he had never considered whether a molekin could do, or even would think to do. Gravity was seen as a moral imperative moreso than a force of nature among the Molekin. Gravity collapsed burrows or tunnels that were dug improperly, gravity allowed the fastidious worker to move as they pleased through the soil, but only as long as they followed the rules.
Nih-Ka’s next attacks came fast and heavy, a furious storm of claws that pushed through Michael’s guard. This was no longer a carefully considered thing of moves and countermoves, this was fury and desperation and animal aggression. Michael registered that his hands were covered in blood, he had no idea whose or how it had got there, and he had no time to figure out. The exchange ended with a shout of frustration as Michael knocked Nih-Ka’s claws out of the way. For a brief part of a second Michael felt a roar of triumph until a medium-sized furred missile launched into him at high speed.
Michael tumbled to the ground, propelled by Nih-Ka’s body check. At some point his sword slipped out of his hands, his grip failing to contain the slippery hilt. Once he came to enough of a stop for his world to start spinning dizzily, he saw Nih-Ka stand over him, one hind paw at each side of his hips finishing the motion to snap his cane in two. Michael found himself thinking “Now that’s just rude,” before he realized the breaking wasn’t the point as much as the sharp point. It seemed Nih-Ka didn’t want to get his claws dirty. Michael’s limbs didn’t quite want to obey him, even when one clumsily grasping hand came into contact with what he believed to be his fallen sword. It didn’t matter, though, the angle was awkward, no way he’d manage to reach it in time.
“I want you to know this isn’t personal, Dayshadow,” Nih-Ka’s voice was rough. Michael wouldn’t say he had given up entirely yet, but he found some grim finality to the satisfaction to realizing the moleboar had been put through his paces. “If someone comes at you, you gotta make an example of them, or you’ll have every thug with ambition nipping at your heels.”
Michael’s brain flared into furious action. He wasn’t done yet, it was not time to rest yet. Striking at any part of Nih-Ka that could conceivably stop him from raising the shattered cane above his head for the killing blow would be impossible. That couldn’t be helped, but no matter how advantageous Nih-Ka’s position seemed, there was one quirk of molekin physiology that was open to exploitation. Molekin feet, such as the naked hindpaws placed on either side of his waist, were incredibly sensitive.
Michael jammed an elbow into Nih-Ka’s foot, driving as much of his weight into the blow as he could. Nih-Ka yelped in pain, but Michael had no time to dwell on it as he threw himself around to grab for his sword. Nih-Ka grabbed his shoulder. Michael spun around. They were both screaming, Nih-Ka in rage, Michael in exertion.
The sword penetrated Nih-Ka’s chest with disturbing ease, sliding in between two ribs like the flesh was soft loamy earth. It was true as Alicia said. Short swords were made for thrusting.
In the distance. Somewhere downstairs and a world away, someone broke down the doors. Michael couldn’t care about that, not now. As he pushed himself away from Nih-Ka, another quirk of Molekin biology made itself apparent.
Molefolk were adapted to lives in much narrower tunnels than they currently used. Back before the rise of shared burrows, a molekin would spend the majority of their lives in tunnels not much wider than them and burrows only barely big enough to turn around in. In order to thrive in these conditions, the molekin has adapted to need very little oxygen. As a result, their blood was thicker and darker than human blood. It was because of this that in the pale cold light of the fake moon, Nih-Ka’s blood looked like thick black bile, oozing from the hole the short sword had made in his chest.
Michael reached out a hand for the hilt of his perforating blade, like he wanted to undo the stabbing somehow, but a beastly snarl halted his hand.
“You’re hesitating. Regretting. Chickening out!” Nih-Ka’s voice was rough, phlegmy with what Michael suspected was blood. “Can’t have you doing that Dayshadow, not in your moment… of triumph.” With that, Nih-Ka grasped the sword himself and ripped it free, slicing a gash from his sternum to his side, from which more bilious blood gushed.
With nothing more that could be gone, Michael watched the light leave Nih-Ka’s eyes. As Michael did so, it felt like time became unstuck around him.
Later, he had no idea how much later. Someone, the other Exalted probably, was helping him to his feet. Hustle and bustle was going on. Whoever it was told him not to worry, that they were taking care of everything. Someone apologized, the same someone? Michael couldn’t be sure, it was like he didn’t even see faces or heard voices. He floated in an ocean of ideas and concepts of people and communications. Someone told him this didn’t make sense. He agreed, although he had no concept of what it was that didn’t make sense.
They didn’t stay in Nih-Ka’s mansion all that long, or at least Michael thought the visit was puny compared to the eternity he had spent in it. The streets of Thereafter passed in a blur. The Exalted were with him, but no sword that he could see. Even in his dazed state, Michael recognized the tension in the group, it could be because of the sword, or his current mental state, or perhaps a mix of both. Michael had no way of knowing.
There was, Michael realized as he was tucked into bed in the bedroom he had been assigned but never got around to using, efforts made to shield him from the ongoing tensions. They told him to rest, and left him to this task. While Michael was sure his head would never stop spinning in a slow-motion fast forward, a thick, amnesic sleep eventually overtook him.
Author’s Note: This chapter is a bit of a self-contradiction to how it felt to write. On one hand, this chapter contains the moment I’ve been building to from the beginning, Nih-Ka’s demise, and the inherent tragedy to it. On the other, I’m not sure how I manage to convince myself a fight scene in complete darkness was a good idea to write. Seeing as I have decided that, I have tried to make it exciting and at least mostly readable. There’s a lot going on in this chapter, and as much as I want to yap about it, I feel it would spoil the next two chapters and their efforts to dig into reveals and implications in this one, so I’ll say nothing further about this matter right this instant.
Catch you next time, when things, somehow, continue happening.
VSD