Two daggers whirled down at him. He side-stepped one and smacked away the other. Hoping to provoke him further, Haern kicked the crate. With no other option, the thief turned and fled back down the wall. Disappointed, Haern sheathed a sword and used the other to pry open the crate. With a loud creak the top came off, revealing three burlap sacks within. He dipped a hand in one, and it came out dripping with gold coins, each one clearly marked by the sigil of the Gemcroft family.

Interesting.

“Please,” he heard the young thief beg. He bled from cuts on his arms and legs, most certainly painful, but nothing life-threatening. The worst he’d done was hamstring him to prevent him from fleeing. “Please, don’t kill me. I can’t, I can’t…”

Haern slung all three bags over his shoulder. With his free hand he pressed the tip of his sword against the young man’s throat.

“They’ll want to know why you lived,” he said.

The man had no response to that, only a pathetic sniffle. Haern shook his head. How far the Serpent Guild had fallen…but all the guilds had fallen since that bloody night five years ago. Thren Felhorn, the legend, had failed in his coup, bringing doom upon the underworld. Thren…his father…

“Tell them you have a message,” Haern said. “Tell them I’m watching.”

“Who?”

In response, Haern took his sword and dipped it in the man’s blood.

“They’ll know who,” he said before vanishing, leaving only a single eye drawn in the dirt as his message, blood for its ink, a sword its quill.

He didn’t go far. He had to lug the bags to the rooftops one at a time, but once up high, he slowed. The rooftops were his home, had been for years. Following the main road west, he reached the inner markets, still silent and empty. Plunking down the bags, he laid with his eyes closed and waited.

He woke to the sounds of trade. Hunger stirred in his belly, but he ignored it. Hunger, like loneliness and pain, had become a constant companion. He wouldn’t call it friend, though.