This was because, at the same time Vale had begun approaching, Sisyphus had disconnected from Evelyn. He had lurked into the shadow of the man who had been scanning her emotions, the one his senses told him was weakest. The other subordinate had followed the movement with a frown, sensing the valuable items leave Evelyn and appear on his ally. By the time Vale committed himself to reaching for Eve, Sisyphus was already positioned behind the Spectator.
‘I’m the Marauder, not him. How did he just steal those items?’ the man thought. His ally, a Spectator adept at reading emotions, noticed this. He looked to the Marauder, trying to determine why he had turned to face him. The shift in attention lasted little more than an instant, but it was enough.
The Spectator saw horror suddenly appear on his ally’s face. The Marauder’s posture shifted as he stepped toward him while drawing a knife. Out of the corner of the Spectator’s eye, he saw a baseball-sized black sphere fly from behind him, cackling, until it connected with the back of Vale’s left knee. The wet impact sounded almost harmless compared with the laughter coming from the thing now clinging to him.
The Spectator spun around to see who had thrown the orb, only to be met with the dark hood of Sisyphus, who had already plunged a knife made of dripping black shadow into the Spectator’s neck. The blade entered before the man could raise either hand. His attempted warning became a wet gasp instead.
Vale looked down at his knee; there was a sticky black blob attached to it. It was covered in a dozen small slits that looked like moving mouths, cackling with obscene, quiet laughter. Their mouths suddenly turned circular as one-inch-long obsidian spikes sprouted from them like porcupine quills, impaling his knee with freezing pain. The limb seized under him as cold spread outward from every puncture.
Evelyn took this chance to fall back, doing everything she could to stay out of reach of Edwin Vale, her past tormentor and observer. Her heart thumped heavily in her chest as she jumped backward, making sure to put distance between them.
Vale’s leg buckled beneath him as the spikes pierced his knee, forcing him down onto one hand with a sharp, strangled breath. He looked up just in time to see Evelyn widening the distance between them.
“No.”
Ignoring the freezing pain, Vale drove himself forward from his uninjured leg and snatched at the hem of her clothing. His fingers closed on empty air as she slipped beyond his reach. His palm struck the tile instead, leaving him forced to catch his weight before he could pursue her again.
“Stop moving, Eve,” the man snarled, lunging for her again and missing as she somehow danced out of his way. His control had already begun to fray, the clinical calm from moments earlier replaced by anger sharpened by disbelief. Every failed attempt pushed more weight onto the injured leg.
Sisyphus stood eye to eye with the Marauder, just a dozen feet apart. The Spectator between them fell to his knees, eyes wide, as he clutched his throat. Blood sprayed through his fingers, coating the dim area in a layer of bright red. The metallic smell spread quickly through the already chemical-heavy morgue.
‘Just one more.’
‘Just one more,’ Sisyphus thought, taking a step forward. His spirituality suddenly flared as it detected another opponent to his side. The warning arrived sharply enough that instinct moved him before his eyes found the source.
Sisyphus jumped sideways as a slashing blade ripped through his robe and cloak. The blade struck just below his right armpit, drawing blood. It landed a mere couple of inches below the tendons of his arm and a mere couple of inches shallower than a fatal wound. Warmth immediately spread beneath the rough layers of cloth.
Sisyphus turned to face the new man, identifying him as an Assassin due to his proficiency in stealth. He was dressed the same as the others, with a steel knife in hand. Sisyphus attacked with his own black shadow blade. They stabbed, slashed, and dodged each other’s strikes, with footwork that kept Sisyphus backpedaling. The Assassin landed small cuts on Sisyphus’ arm, then his side, then his face.
The Marauder, seeing the flow of the fight thus far, dashed to the Spectator on his knees. He intended to assist if possible. The Spectator's hands still covered the injury, but the blood loss was immense. He looked up at the Marauder who stood over him. Whatever help he expected was already arriving too late.
He did not need Spectator powers to know his ally was terrified of his imminent death. The Marauder shook his head and looked toward the culprit of this murder, dashing forward with his own blade in hand. The Spectator’s hands slowly fell, revealing that the flesh around the injury was writhing as if alive. He then slumped onto the floor. The movement beneath the wound continued briefly even after the rest of him went still.
The smaller woman continued to dodge, weave, and bob away as if she were expertly trained in the art of the game of 'don't touch me'. The feeling came naturally from her experience with Vale and from trying to get away from him, though this body, now healthier, helped. It was not just that, though. There was something else.
It took her a moment, but she quickly realized that she was reading him flawlessly, his movements and where he would be next as his body moved. Was this a part of her abilities? It had to be.
Vale lunged again, adjusting for the direction he expected her to take. Evelyn moved before his hand arrived. His expression tightened.
“You were never capable of this.”
He feinted toward her shoulder, then abruptly reached low for her waist. Again, his fingers swept through empty air.
“Stand still.”
The potion digests further.
The Marauder joined the duel with a stab toward Sisyphus’ side. The blow was blocked but left him open to a strike from the Assassin. He brought the hilt of his dagger across Sisyphus’ jaw, causing him to take a few sprawling steps backward into a corner of the room. The duo quickly pressed forward. Steel flashed from two directions while the wall eliminated most of the space Sisyphus could have used to retreat.
Sisyphus steadied his mind, knowing that blow would have rendered him unconscious if he were a single Sequence lower. Fighting two Beyonders on combat-focused pathways was difficult, even if they were lower Sequences. But this current situation was planned. The apparent disadvantage of the corner mattered considerably less to someone capable of entering the darkness itself.
The duo stabbed forward, certain that Sisyphus could not dodge within the corner. Sisyphus stepped backward into the wall. Victory showed in the Assassin’s eyes, eager to land the killing blow. But Sisyphus’ entire form splattered into black blood on the wall. The pair hesitated, unsure what had just occurred.
The blackened blood sank into the dimly lit wall, and a moment later, Sisyphus arose from beneath the central operating table. His form pulled itself upward from the darkness pooled beneath the steel frame. By the time the two men turned toward the movement, his hands were already free.
The Assassin turned to face him, the Marauder only a fraction behind. Sisyphus reached into his cloak and launched his arm in a sweeping motion. A dozen black needles flew across the room. The Assassin immediately dropped to the floor beneath the needles. The Marauder, now stuck in the corner and slower, could only bring his forearms up to his face.
Three needles plunged into them, sending freezing pain through his body. The cold spread inward with enough force to make his fingers twitch around the knife. He backed farther into the corner while smoke-like darkness curled from the embedded projectiles.
The woman took a gamble, breaking eye contact with Edwin for a moment to snatch up a jar of what appeared to be pickled organs… eyes in particular. With all her might, she chucked it across the room so it would land at the Assassin’s feet, splattering the floor and causing the rolling orbs to slide all over the ground in a graphic sight.
She turned and was nearly caught by Edwin, but interrupted him by grabbing another object, a metal bin, and throwing it into his face with a loud clatter.
The metal bin struck Vale across the face with a sharp clang, snapping his head aside. He staggered, one hand flying to his mouth as blood appeared across his lower lip. The container bounced from his shoulder and struck the floor hard enough to send the sound echoing through the morgue.
His composure finally cracked.
“You little...”
He surged forward again, reaching blindly for her shoulder, but the injured knee failed beneath him before he could secure a grip. His weight pitched sideways, forcing him to catch himself against the edge of the examination table before he fell completely.
The Assassin stopped his pursuit, glancing at the floor to identify what had been thrown. The contents of the jar made him hesitate. Preserved eyes rolled between his boots and beneath the nearby furniture, glass and fluid spreading over the tile. His attention dropped toward his footing for one moment longer than the fight allowed.
The Marauder, however, had lagged a few steps behind. His injury was freezing. He glanced at the needles in his forearm and saw them melt, hitting the ground in a smoky splatter. Thoughts invaded his mind; they told him that this was hopeless, that he was weak, that he would never be significant. He recognized the foreign thoughts, attributing them to some kind of Beyonder poison.
Capitalizing on this, Sisyphus ran to the side, placing the Assassin between himself and the Marauder. He opened his robe wide and ordered another Gossiper to strike. The black orb launched forward toward the Assassin. The Assassin simply stepped to the side, laughing at the woman’s attempt to distract him and the slow projectile, until he heard the whack behind him.
The Gossiper had attached to the Marauder’s left chest, just above the heart. He had not seen the orb thrown with the Assassin between himself and Sisyphus. Its mouths began opening across the black surface before the Marauder had enough time to decide whether to tear it away.
The Marauder braced himself for the pain, only to see the Assassin’s blade strike the laughing black blob of mouths. It popped like a water balloon, and thick, viscous liquid covered his chest, slowly sinking into it. The Marauder blinked once, looking up to realize that the Assassin had already jumped over the puddle of eyes and was engaged in a knife fight at the other end of the room.
The Marauder hesitated to join the fight, realizing his skill did not match his ally’s and that he would have died there without his ally’s quick thinking. The negative thoughts continued to spiral in his mind as he tried to think of a plan… and then it struck him. The valuable items on the shadow man, perhaps they were mystical items enhancing his combat ability? He resolved to steal one the next chance he got.
The chance came suddenly as Sisyphus Lurked behind the Marauder. The Marauder whipped around, blocking a would-be lethal strike. His knife skills and physicality still surpassed the shadow man. It was the shadow man’s mystic abilities that made the fight unwinnable alone. Their blades scraped together close enough to the Marauder's chest that sparks briefly caught the light.
After a brief exchange of knife blows, the Marauder shoved Sisyphus away. He then held up an item in his previously empty hand with a smile. He had just swiped one of his opponent’s mystical items with Theft. He looked at it, and his thoughts froze.
In his hand was a human eye in a small glass tube. A strange calmness emanated from it, so peaceful that the Marauder forgot he was in a fight for a moment… His shoulders relaxed despite the blood, screaming, and movement around him. The knife in his other hand dipped slightly toward the floor.
Sisyphus plunged his shadow knife into the Marauder’s chest. This snapped him back to reality, but it was too late, as Sisyphus pulled the blade back and plunged it in again. With his other hand, he pried the glass tube out of the Marauder’s hand. The Assassin attempted to close the distance, jumping over the table, then over the puddle of eyes, but arrived too late.
Sisyphus plunged the knife in again and again in a brutal display of gore. He radiated lunacy and madness. The Assassin stopped and drew three hidden knives from within his coat, fearing that the shadow man had lost control and was about to become a monster. With an angry huff, Sisyphus pushed the dead Marauder aside and pocketed the glass tube containing the eye.
He did not dodge the three throwing knives that plunged into his bicep, side, and thigh with sickening slaps. Each impact twisted cloth inward before the blades remained lodged in his body. The Assassin did not approach immediately, uncertain whether pain would slow the figure in front of him or provoke something worse.
The pain, combined with the eye’s return, brought Sisyphus back to reason as he turned to stare daggers at the Assassin. Confidence was draining from Sisyphus’ opponent despite his having just landed three good blows. The difference between injuring the shadow man and actually stopping him had become increasingly difficult to judge.
Despite her constant movement and intricate footwork just to stay out of the grasp of this now half-blinded, limping man, Evelyn was keeping tabs not just on Edwin Vale but on the rest of the fight as well.
Her eyes flitted over to Sisyphus and the Assassin every once in a while. She sensed the radiation of madness, then immediately suppressed both her own emotions and those pressing in from around her with a thick rope of certainty wrapped around her mind, or at least that was how she imagined it.
There was no use in panicking now.
She could not help but monitor the entire fight, persistently gauging everyone within the room. Lucien might have scolded her for being unable to focus on one thing at a time, but she would have ignored him, telling the Sequence Three that this entire event relied on the person she had hired to protect her.
More emotions flooded into her, and she continued to suppress them all, whether they belonged to her or were the brief thoughts and rage of battle.
The potion digested further, almost startling her out of her trance.
Vale lunged as her attention shifted and caught her wrist, wrenching her sharply toward him. His other arm hooked around her waist before she could fully turn away.
“Look at me.” For one brief moment, he held her against him until his injured knee buckled and his grip began to loosen. “You do not get to ignore me!”
Reflexively, she looked down, then kicked upwards as hard as she could, her boot catching the spot that men treasured and protected the most.
The kick landed cleanly. Vale’s grip vanished at once. His body folded around the impact as a strangled sound escaped him, all clinical composure erased by sudden agony. Whatever he had intended to say next disappeared with it.
He released Evelyn and stumbled backward before collapsing onto his injured knee, one hand braced against the floor. His breathing came through clenched teeth while the other hand moved instinctively toward the source of the pain.
“You...” The accusation died behind clenched teeth a moment before something heavy hit him across the temple, knocking him to the ground with a thud.
Evelyn had ripped one of the lamps from a nearby table and clocked him over the head in the hope of knocking the man out.
The lamp struck Vale across the temple with a dull, metallic crack. The base dented slightly from the force of the impact before slipping from Evelyn's grip. It struck the tile beside him and rolled once.
His eyes lost focus immediately. Already folded by the kick and unable to brace himself, he collapsed onto the tiled floor beside the fallen lamp. His cheek struck first, followed by the rest of his weight.
Vale did not rise again that day. A thin line of blood began to trail from beneath his hair.
A dozen thoughts went through the Assassin’s mind. A four-versus-one fight had now turned into a two-versus-one against him. His shadow opponent had a higher Sequence and a collection of powers he did not understand. He needed to even the board… the same way his opponent had at the start of the fight.
The shadow man had three blades sticking out of him and should be slow to respond. Evelyn was the easier target, and injuring her might force Sisyphus to split his attention. The choice took less than a second.
The instant he had this thought, the Assassin turned and threw his knife at Evelyn. He aimed for a nonlethal injury to remove her from the fight and distract her ally. The steel blade sailed through the air in a cartwheeling blur. Its rotation carried it directly toward the center of her chest.
As it neared Evelyn's chest, a hand reached over her shoulder. It was black, lacked detail, and bent up from her own shadow. The shadow hand trembled as the knife plunged into it, the blade tip striking through it and stopping mere inches in front of Evelyn. The impact pulled the black limb forward but failed to break through completely.
As fast as the hand appeared, it lost its structure; the hand and blade fell to the ground. The blade clattered while the hand splattered into a pool of black blood that seeped into the floor. Within seconds, only the weapon remained.
Evelyn blinked, looking down, then looked back up at the Assassin, bitter amusement crawling across her face, a look that screamed failure at the Assassin. The same look promised death to someone inferior.
Without further hesitation, Evelyn dropped down, pulling a smaller table with her as she crouched beside Edwin’s unconscious body, then began doing something out of sight of both Sisyphus and the Assassin.
The Assassin began to panic, turning back to Sisyphus, WHACK.
The third Gossiper of the fight had attached itself to his right arm. The Assassin cursed himself; the shadow man did not need full control of his limbs to launch the giggling black orbs. Mouths sprouted on the ball, laughing at the Assassin and his imminent death. The thing clung too tightly to simply shake away.
The Assassin did not have a blade drawn, he had just thrown it. So he grabbed the orb with his left hand. The hand stuck, and in panic, he channeled a ‘Mighty Blow’ to squeeze the sphere. It popped in his hand, but not before the protruding spikes pricked his palm. A couple of drops of crimson fell to the floor.
After launching the Gossiper, Sisyphus plucked the three throwing knives from his body, letting no pain show in a continued display of madness. But this time it was artificial, meant to intimidate. Blood darkened the robe beneath each wound as he discarded the blades one by one. He growled.
"Run, I won't chase."
Evelyn could tell Sisyphus’ words were true, but some kind of trap had been laid. The Assassin, meanwhile, was deeply considering the offer to be let free.
Behind the table, adding influence to Sisyphus’ words, she began mock-chanting. Although the words were no ritual, the way she spoke them would tell anyone that she was certainly performing one. She had noted before how this other language she spoke had frightened, if not disturbed, Sisyphus. There was no harm in convincing the Assassin that something unknown was at work. Besides, humans were terrified of the unknown.
"Cur mallaght da'n ionnsagh shoh ta goaill aggle dy hoilshaghey e veeal raad ta'n dooinney er ghra…."
The Assassin bolted at the words of a language unlike anything he had heard before. Moving through the door into the hall, he rolled, jumped, went prone, and kicked off the wall as he ran, all in an attempt to dodge anything thrown at him, no matter how mystical. His retreat rapidly became louder as caution gave way to speed.
"Well done, I hope my magic won't interfere with yours." Sisyphus approached where the Assassin had stood before he bolted. He let out a quiet chuckle and spoke in a low voice. The distant crashes from the hallway made his amusement sharper.
To the background noise of the Assassin taking an unorthodox trip down a long hallway, Sisyphus took a white cloth from within his cloak. He swiped two drops of crimson blood from the floor, the Assassin’s only wound during the fight. The small stains spread quickly across the fabric.
He laid the cloth on top of his open left palm and spoke in Ancient Hermes.
"Blood substitution."
The flesh and blood of a target could be used as though it were the target directly. Sisyphus summoned another blade made of shadow and plunged it into the bloodstained cloth and through his own left hand. The knife passed through flesh and fabric together, forcing fresh blood down his wrist.
There was a yelp of pain from the hallway as someone crashed to the ground, only to immediately start running again. The sound carried clearly through the basement corridor, followed by hurried impacts from someone trying desperately to regain speed.
The woman stayed silent only for as long as it seemed that Sisyphus needed time and concentration.
Crouching down, she rummaged through the coat pockets of the man before her. She smiled lightly as her fingers brushed exactly what she wanted to find and much more.
Within the pocket sat Vale's wallet, an envelope, a key, and a vial that Evelyn only recognized as a sedative. She laid out the items upon the floor then began flipping through the money in the wallet.
Hearing the cry of pain from the hall, Sisyphus retracted the blade. Blood dripped from the fresh wound onto the floor. Then he plunged the knife into his hand and the cloth again. Another yelp of pain came from the hall. He did it again and again, his hand becoming increasingly crimson.
The sound of running in the hall had ceased. Sisyphus plunged the knife into his own hand one more time… There was no yelp of pain from the hall in response. The silence beyond the room continued.
Sisyphus let the shadow blade dissipate beneath the folds of his coat. He turned to Evelyn, his left forearm bright crimson and dripping heavily onto the ground, and spoke:
"Are you alright?"
"I was briefly manhandled. You were stabbed multiple times. Take care of your injuries." She frowned, looking up at him from the ground. "And for the record, I wasn’t performing any spells or rituals. I just found it amusing that I was able to psyche out the one you were fighting with a bunch of gibberish."
Evelyn sighed then pocketed the money and evidence.
"We’ll go through the spoils somewhere other than here." A deep sigh escaped her lips. "We need to get him out of here and into a carriage." She stood, walked toward the other bodies, then snatched money and other things from them too.
Sisyphus gave a quiet “hmph.” The language Evelyn spoke sounded mystical, but rambling in a fake manner like that would be extraordinarily dangerous. It must not be… he thought. His attention lingered on her for another second before returning to his own injuries.
He spoke another word in Ancient Hermes.
"Coagulate."
The flesh near his open wounds began to wiggle and writhe until it stitched itself shut, stopping the bleeding. The injuries still very much remained, however. He was overcome by sudden light-headedness. Rest would be needed before he could fight like that again. The blood already soaked into his clothing did nothing to disguise how much he had lost.
“How much time do we have? Ideally, we need five to ten minutes.” His words were hopeful but not serious. His thoughts revealed that such time would be required to retrieve all the valuables. The connection between the words and thoughts, however, was unclear.
He took a few steps across the blood-splattered floor, arriving nearer to Evelyn. Glass crunched beneath one boot as he crossed the remains of the earlier jar. The floor around them had become a mixture of blood, preservative fluid, broken glass, and displaced equipment.
"I told him to go… never mind that. I’m not sure how much time we have, but it’s certainly not much since he made it up the stairs… did he make it up the stairs?" She turned, looking over her shoulder as she pocketed the rest of the cash from the Beyonders Sisyphus had killed. She spent no time looking for every little thing on these men that might be useful.
Sisyphus shook his head.
"He didn't make it through the door at the top of the stairs."
How Sisyphus knew that was not obvious, as he had not left the room. Was he that proficient at echolocating people in pain?
The woman found very little of worth as she searched, at least when it came to physical objects and tools.
"There is nothing except what I would imagine each of these people to have carried, and none of it is useful." She stood fully, then looked toward Edwin Vale, who still lay crumpled on the ground. "Now to get him up and out without being detected."
She walked around the room, found what appeared to be a cord, then began tying the man’s hands behind his back.
"Tell me, Sisyphus, if a hospital nurse suddenly finds multiple freshly murdered bodies within one of their lesser-used spaces, how quickly would they contact the police?" She moved her arms under Vale’s armpits, attempting to drag him toward a different door from the stairs.
Sisyphus chuckled, seeing the attempt. Vale's limp weight shifted only awkwardly beneath Evelyn's efforts, his shoes dragging over the tile. The difference in size made the problem immediately obvious.
“I can move one body out of here easily. The other three can be hidden long enough to buy us time.” Sisyphus gestured to the long horizontal cabinets of the morgue. Rows of metal handles stretched along the wall behind him. Several drawers appeared unused.
"I'm sure they won't mind a few temporary neighbors."
"Good idea." She frowned. "I suppose I should ask you to do all the heavy lifting then." Immediately, she dropped Vale with little care, letting his limp body hit the ground.
"The one on the stairs first," she said quietly, though her gaze wandered for a moment. Her face scrunched slightly, then she stepped away, walking toward the room Vale and the others had supposedly come out of.
Sisyphus got to work, moving the body off the stairs with some difficulty. He had many arm wounds after all. The Assassin was heavier than his appearance suggested, and carrying him strained injuries that had only been crudely closed rather than healed. By the time Sisyphus returned to the morgue proper, fresh discomfort had begun radiating through both arms.
As he left the stairs, he spoke a word in Ancient Hermes.
"Sacrifice."
The blood trail of the Assassin’s final sprint blackened and sank into the dark crevices in the room. No evidence remained. Even the droplets farther along the corridor vanished into the surrounding shadow until the stone looked untouched.
He slotted the body into an unlabeled rack of the morgue, repeating the complete process with the other two bodies. This took but moments of his time as the grinding of metal filled the room. One by one, the drawers slid shut until nothing visible remained of the three dead Beyonders.