Master’s voice cut through the church’s lingering heat and blood-haze. “Come on,” he murmured, the noir dryness threading through the words, “it’s been a long day. And I know you need feeding. Let’s head to the inn.”
Just like that. No drama. No lingering on the corpse cooling on the stone. No look back at the mural that made a goddess of me. Just his voice, pulling my instincts tight like a leash carved from his breath alone. My tail wrapped round his thigh without me deciding it. My ears flattened, then perked. My whole body found him again like a compass snapping straight north.
Master stepped out of the Vel’Rasa church, and I fell into place beside him with a soft, compulsive glide, the eternal shadow reclaiming its rightful position. We passed through the fishing district first, the place where we’d carved history into the stone with spear and blood. Old boards creaked underfoot; nets hung frozen in the cavern drift; lanterns swung low on rusted chains. Some faces ducked away when they recognised us. Others watched with reverence.
I stayed close. Too close of course. Tail wrapped tight. Hip brushing his. Eyes scanning every rooftop, every alley. The market district opened ahead, a narrow throat of makeshift stalls and battered crates. Smoke from cook-fires curled up into the cavern air, mixing with the sharp tang of metal and fish. Ren lounged near their stolen booths like wolves pretending to be vendors. Embercrack dwarfs bartered loudly, their voices echoing off the stone. Travellers wove between factions with carefully neutral expressions, clutching their coin pouches like lifelines.
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Tension hung like wire across the throat of the market. But with Master walking through it, long shadow, sharp jaw, coat swaying like a story no one dared interrupt, paths opened. Violence inhaled and held its breath. Instincts shifted. And I kept everyone aware of the silent promise trailing behind him. My claws clicked. My tail twitched like a live fuse. My eyes dared anyone to think too loudly about him. No one did.
We left the marketplace by the eastern cut, where the cavern widened into a collapsed fairway once meant to hold a proper road. Now it was a broken slope of stone and old timber bracing, still unstable, still avoided by anyone with sense. But Master’s stride never changed. He walked as though the Maw itself bent out of his way.
We followed the curve of the old roadway until the tunnels opened into the outskirts of the Maw Mine entrance district. The air felt different here, cooler, cleaner, drifting in faintly from the outside world. A reminder that beyond this hole in the earth lay forests, roads, politics, and wars waiting to be sparked.
To the east of the inn sprawled the Maw Lake. The border checkpoint sat along the lake’s northern ledge watching all who came from the east.
Master paused at the overlook near the lake’s edge, the inn lamps flickering faintly behind us, the checkpoint torches burning ahead, the whole Maw stretched out beneath the cavern ceiling like a map only he could read.
I moved to his side. Tail sliding slow around his thigh again. Claws lightly grazing the rock beside his boot. He looked tired in that noir way of his, not weak, never that, but worn down by the weight of answers that kept refusing to surface. My ears tilted toward him. My voice barely a whisper. “Master…” But he’d already made his decision hours ago. Home, tonight, was the inn.
Food for me. A bed for him. And whatever unsolved pieces of the Crimson Swarm still lingered in the back of his mind like cigarette smoke curling over closed case files… could wait until morning.
