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159. Warpath
🕑 Added 2025-07-05 14:00:04 +0000 UTCLira, Mouse, and Sable caught up with him halfway to the nearest criminal-run farm. Rhys was so lost in his thoughts, working out his plans, that he barely noticed, even with the clatter of Sable’s bone-limbs and the pitter-patter of Lira’s umbrella. He glanced up as they approached. “If the criminal element isn’t going to ignore us, this is going to escalate. I think we’ll end up at full-on crime war.”
“Is that bad?” Lira asked.
Rhys shrugged. “It means the Empire will know there’s a new criminal group. That’s survivable, I think. What I’m thinking about, is exploiting this opportunity.”
“Oh, yeah?”
He nodded. “We launch a crime war, create unrest in their back yard. When they go to keep the peace, we strike.”
“Strike what?” Lira asked.
“It’s been too long. I should’ve done this right away. We’re going to hit the camps. All the ones I know about, all at once.”
Lira raised her brows. “Assuming we’ll win the crime war already?”
“We don’t need to win it. We just need to cause enough trouble that the Empire has to pull their men back. In fact, it’s better if we don’t win. It’s better if it’s a prolonged battle.” Rhys paused, looking at the girls. “But we’re going to win. I need to win, if we’re going to take down the Empire.”
“C-can’t go losing to some crim-criminals and then take on the Empire,” Mouse said, only wavering a little bit.
Rhys’s eyes narrowed from focus. He shook his head. “No. We can’t.”
They approached the farm. Rhys stepped out in front of the other three, looking around the farm. The criminals stilled, setting down their tools and looking over as Rhys approached with a stormy expression. He lifted a hand, asking for their silence and attention, though he already had it. “Who here knows where your previous boss’s headquarters is?”
A few of the criminals glanced among one another. “Already flattened it, didn’t you?” “Nothing left. What do you mean, previous boss? The one before that?” “Camp’s gone.”
Rhys waited, glancing from one criminal to the next. One of them would know. One of them had to know.
At last, an older female mage stepped forward. “You mean the ones who ordered around the Water Syndicate,” she guessed.
Rhys nodded. “Yes.”
“They’re in the capital. I know where their base is. I can point you at it, but I won’t fight. That’s a battle I can’t win.”
“What Tier? Three? Four?” Rhys asked.
She shook her head. “I never met the bosses myself. The missus… the old Water Syndicate’s leader, pointed it out to me once at a distance when we were visiting the capital for… a deal. I can’t say. But I’d guess at least four.”
Rhys wrinkled his nose. It might end up being a drawn-out battle whether I want it to or not. That was fine, though. He wanted a drawn-out battle, so a tough opponent suited him. He’d lacked someone to sharpen himself against for a while, and he was feeling the lack. There was no Bast, no Straw, no Ev or Cynog, just him all alone, struggling on his own. If he could fight a truly strong opponent over and over, he could accelerate his growth to Tier 4, which he needed now more than ever. The Empress was at least Tier 4, if not 5… or even higher than that. He might be able to injure a Tier 4 enough to make them retreat, but he couldn’t defeat one for sure, and a high-rank Tier 4 was likely outright too powerful than him. A Tier 5 was so powerful that he might as well fight a wall, for how far he’d get against them. He was an ant before a Tier 5. Nothing.
A memory welled up, and he snorted. Maybe not as much an ant as I was against that huge being in the void. He was glad it had gone somewhere else, instead of lurking around outside his core. There was no reason for it to lurk outside his core, and, in fact, he didn’t even know if it had left, or if his core had moved; everything looked the same in the void. There was so much nothing that Rhys couldn’t fathom it, and he didn’t understand how the void worked at all. Maybe he was like a planet, hurtling through endless empty space. Maybe it was stagnant and still, like a dead swamp, and the giant void being was a crocodile that had swam away. Either way, he was grateful it had left. He wouldn’t be strong enough to battle that thing for a long, long time, if he ever got there at all.
He nodded at her. “Can you lead us there?”
The woman glanced at Rhys and the girls, hesitating. “You know they’re no joke. The primary syndicate is many times more powerful and many times larger than the Water Syndicate. If you attack…”
“They beheaded Leonard. As a warning.”
She fell silent. Her lips pursed, and she thought for a second, then let out a sigh. “Nothing you can do, then. They’ve already declared war on you. I suppose they cared more about the Waters than we ever thought they did.”
“Or they’re mad that I’m expanding, and they want to claw back the Water Syndicate’s land for themselves,” Rhys suggested.
“Either way, you can’t ignore that kind of provocation. I’ll show you to their head base, though I can’t recommend a direct assault. You might want to take down some of the smaller bases first. The outposts.”
“Can you point those out to me?” Rhys suggested. He had no strong feelings about it one way or another, except that he wanted to attack in the best format available. If they could attack little bases, he’d be just as happy. He was in this to cause trouble and kick up a fuss, not to behead the snake. He’d be glad to see it thrash and struggle flashily in the grass, flashily enough that the Empire came by and attacked for itself.
And then…
He smiled to himself. The woman gave him a weird look, so he bit it back quickly. It had to be an unpleasant smile. He was thinking unpleasant things, after all. Trashy, filthy, horrifically unpleasant things. Things that no one was going to enjoy very much at all, except for him.
“…I can point those out to you,” she said at last. “I’ve got no loyalty to them. Wouldn’t rat ‘em out to the Empire if I was at swordpoint, but you’re the new boss, so I’ll point ‘em out for you. Don’t let anyone know, though.”
Rhys glanced around at the farmers all around them. They all knew. There was no taking that back. Still, he shrugged and nodded. If she wanted ‘no one to know,’ then he was happy to ensure that, to the best of his limited abilities. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She snorted, then waved her hand, gesturing for him to follow. “Come on. Light’s a-wasting.”
They hit the path, leaving the farm behind. The woman led, and Rhys followed closely behind, careful to slow his speed so that he didn’t pressure her too much. He wanted to get there as soon as possible, and he was way faster than she was, so it was frustrating to run at her pace. He could pull out the curse and scoop them all up, but one, he didn’t want everyone to know he had curses at his beck and call, two, he didn’t want to de-mystify and de-terrify curses for people, and three, he wanted to save the skeleton curse’s quick movement technique for use against the camps or to reach things and people who absolutely could not track him or his movement techniques. If the Empire learned the snack shack had access to a quick movement technique like the skeleton, then he lost the element of surprise and the ability to startle them with his speed when it mattered, aka when he was freeing mages from camps. Now wasn’t the time, and he didn’t trust the woman enough, either. Which meant he was capped at the woman’s speed, and that just made him more and more frustrated.
“We’ll get there soon enough,” Lira reassured him.
He tossed her a glance. Was his annoyance that obvious?
She snorted and touched the space between her brows. “Your furrows are so deep right now.”
Rhys touched his own forehead, then sighed and forced himself to relax. Being annoyed wouldn’t make this take any less time. Honestly, he didn’t even know why he was so annoyed. He’d almost killed Leonard himself. He’d barely known the guy. Sure, Leonard seemed like a reasonable guy, and they’d shared a hobby, but they hadn’t said more than a dozen lines between them. The more he thought about it, the less he understood his own reaction.
It's not about Leonard, is it, he realized at last. It wasn’t about Leonard, and it never had been. It was about his people. His people, and the fact that this meant the people he did care about, Lira, Sable, Mouse, Korii, and the others, were all vulnerable, far too vulnerable. Some force he barely even knew about could come out of nowhere and take them away from him. It wasn’t Leonard. Leonard wasn’t the point at all. The point was that it could happen to anyone, and he couldn’t stop it.
He was still too weak. He needed to be stronger. Even this… he couldn’t be sure that this was the right decision. After all, he was no stronger today than he’d been yesterday, save that he had more trash. But he wouldn’t get stronger from hiding away and running from fights. He could only get stronger by seeking out growth and charging into challenges, and he was determined to do it today, as ever.
The trash cans are a good start, but they’re too slow. I need something faster. I need… Rhys paused. It wasn’t like he had no new attacks. He had the mental attack, which he still hadn’t tested on a live subject, and he had the void. He didn’t need to bind the void into trash cans. He had a large array of trashy shapes he could bend the void into.
Rhys drew out some trash, choosing a bendy strip of wood with good elasticity that had once been part of some structure or another, perhaps a decoration. As he ran, he focused, shaping it into a long stick with a hoop on the end. When he pulled a ribbon, the hoop opened like a gripper, and when he released it, the hoop snapped shut.
A trash picker. A grippy tool. One of the things people would use to pick up trash from the side of the road, and stuff it into bags.
Bags, Rhys thought, and a second later, he drew out some cloth and shaped a simple bag. Still running, he called forth the void and bound it into the ‘mouth’ of the grippy tool and the opening of the bag.
“What’s that?” Mouse asked, peering at the bag.
“A trash bag. You put trash in it,” Rhys informed her.
“Like the baskets?”
“Like the baskets,” he confirmed. He looked at her. “Do you want to try?”
“Try what?” Mouse asked.
Rhys tucked the gripper into the back of his belt and opened the bag, letting its mouth gape wide. He pointed it at a tree, then thought better of it and knelt, scooping up some leaf mould instead; most people considered leaf mould trash, even if it was essential to the forest. He wasn’t sure his imperfect control of the void would work on anything but garbage, but he could still use it to great effect against some criminal trash.
He lifted the bag. A circular shape of leaf mould, perfectly defined by the edges of the bag. The bag remained light. Nothing had entered it, but in the void, just outside his core, some leaves rained down.
“O-oh,” Mouse said.
“It’s a great assassination tool, but I think it’ll only work against garbage human beings. What do you think?” he asked her.
“I-I think you know your path better than I do,” Mouse demurred.
“No, I mean… you. You’re as assassin, aren’t you? What do you think of it as a weapon?”
Mouse jolted. “I’m, I’m not—”
Lira broke out laughing. She shook her head. “Rhys, you can’t just say that to an assassin. She’s going to cry.”
“What? Is it wrong to say that? I didn’t mean anything by it, though,” Rhys said, turning back to Mouse. They were all friends here. It wasn’t like he didn’t know she was an assassin. She’d followed him around Purple Dawn. Sure, that was just following him, but the difference between following and assassination was a blade, and he knew she knew how to use blades. Everyone at Purple Dawn did. It was a basic requirement of magehood, for goodness’ sakes. She specialized in stealth, not outright combat, so it was obvious that she was training to be an assassin. Clearly this was some kind of faux pas, but he didn’t think it was so bad it was worth the blush spreading up Mouse’s neck.
“I’m not an assassin!” Mouse squeaked at last.
Rhys looked at her, then nodded. Why not let her have it? It hurt nothing. “Sure. You’re not an assassin. Do you want the killy-bag-of-death?”
Mouse looked at the bag like she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She hesitated, then took it. “Is it dangerous to touch?”
“I wouldn’t stick my arm in it, but it shouldn’t be dangerous to you, as long as you aren’t trash,” Rhys told her.
Mouse gave it one last uncertain look, then delicately gripped it by the outside.
“What about that hoop thing on your back? What’s that do?” Lira asked, curious.
“That’s for me,” Rhys told her. He could make another one, but he wasn’t sure if this one would work, and he didn’t want to load up his competent fighters with experimental weapons he wasn’t even sure functioned. He had no problem with using a piece of shit weapon that was as likely to malfunction as work, and Mouse used stealth and surprise, so they were both fine, but Lira and Sable would be fighting earnestly. He didn’t want to have them rely on something they couldn’t rely on, and risk them getting injured, or worse, killed.
“Aww, spoilsport. How come only Mouse gets nice weapons? You’re going to make Sable jealous,” Lira said, pouting.
“I’m not jealous,” Sable said, only a little too fast.
Rhys sighed. “I gave her the weapon because I’m not sure it’s going to work, and I don’t want one of you two to get yourselves killed, fighting on the frontlines with a weapon that might just be a cloth bag.”
Mouse glanced at him, then the bag in increasing alarm.
“Use it as a sneak attack, Mouse. Worst case, you’ve just pulled a bag over someone’s head, and you can stab them to death while they’re blinded,” Rhys told her as gently as it was possible to instruct someone on how to kill another person.
“Uh, uh, of course!” Mouse said, unable to bite back a nervous giggle.
“If they work, I can always make more for you two,” Rhys finished, glancing at Sable and Lira.
Lira smiled, never bothered in the first place. Sable glanced at him, then looked away, her face unreadable and expressionless as always.
The woman cleared her throat. “We’re almost to the first outpost. If you’re ready?”
“We’re ready.” Rhys faced forward, more than ready to fight. He needed to get some of this tension out, and he only knew how to do it the trashy way: by throwing it at someone else. Violently.
Comments
Old white haired guy
Stabby stabby in to bag. No body no crime ( assassination) no problem
Jumure
Shoving people into the void next to his core, while awesome, seems dangerous when he doesn’t know if they’ll die. I remember he was conflicted (😏) about that earlier.
