1Wurdar, 37th Shehelm, 651, Cinderian Standardized Calendar
A pool of cold, rusty water had formed in the bottom of a black crete basin that was placed at the paws of a young lagomorph, its polished sheen long rubbed away from exposure to the elements. Hidden beneath a deep cloud of red within the water were the few silver petals that had been earned through a hard days work of begging. Now, however, with the sun ebbing and the city of Ouruin once more finding itself falling into darkness, the streets and alleyways that were mere hours before populated with all manner of merchants, waifs, and all manner of cutpurses had now disappeared as if the candle of life had been snuffed out.
The mans ear flopped uncontrollably, about the sides of his muzzle, for the muscles that would have held them in place had long ago been slashed by a depraved thug, one of the ones who liked to watch their victims suffer. He took a deep breath, afraid to fish to the bottom of his basin and find the prize that he knew was too meagre to afford him even a small pawful of grain, let alone a proper bed with a roof for the night. And yet, he knew that the longer he stalled for time the more easily he could be taken unawares by another creature of the night, one with even less to lose than himself, and so he slowly edged the stiff bones in his legs upright with a groan, and turned the water out into the street, not that the cold cobblestones needed any more nourishment.
The Drowned Streets. Before he had found himself at their mercy on a long night, he had laughed at the name given to the vast series of alleyways and alcoves that made up the slum district of Ouruin. They were in a part of Preuwyn that rarely saw rain even during the planting seasons, let alone enough that could choke the life out of a man underneath the crushing weight of a river. And yet, on his first night, the beggar had nearly been drowned in his sleep as the streets transformed into a torrent of contaminated, tepid water. The next morning he had inquired with a fellow beggar - one whose sanity had been retained - and discovered that every night at midnight, the upper tiers of Ouruin were drained of their sewage, and that every sewage in the city led to somewhere within the Drowned Streets. It was a practical, yet disgusting solution to the problems of homelessness that the nobles claimed to care so deeply about.
The beggar righted the bowl, and stared unblinking at the coins he had procured for the day. Three silver petals. A meagre sum, and yet until his fortunes miraculously changed it was the most he could hope for sitting in the muck. He scraped them up with his paw, picked up the basin, and started on the path to the small hollow he had carved out as his own in the eastern sector of the slums. He was weak with exhaustion, not from hard work but from the empty belly he had been cursed with for months. The cookhouses that had fed the city's poor had been shutdown almost as quickly as they had sprung up, though not from lack of funds, but instead from the gang of thieves and murderers that had claimed the Streets as their own - The Red Paws. If the beggars no longer had to worry about food, they no longer had to beg, and if they no longer had to beg, their income - no matter how small it was - was no longer flowing into the purse of One-Eye Argin, and it was whispered among the denizens of the Streets that the only thing Argin loved more than a good murder was the clink of coins as they fell into his treasury.
Further into the east of the slums, the buildings began to show worse and worse signs of disrepair, with walls on many of the battered hovels half-fallen apart, or in some cases crumbled into dust. The beggar mumbled to himself as he walked, an unintelligible yet strangely rhythmic hum of blank sound that aided in keeping his pace. The hum served a dual purpose for the man, however, as it drowned out the quiet sobbing of the children hungry for more, and the cries of the many unfortunates caught unawares by a Red Paw cutthroat.
Unfortunately for the beggar, the hum also served in muffling the padding of the many paws that stalked behind him, their presence concealed by the choking shadows.
Edsel prided himself on the excellent condition of his arms and armour. He had been taught from a young age that one of the most important - and often overlooked - aspects of combat mastery was achieved not through a rigorous training regimen, or the dutiful studying of a particular martial art, but rather the mundane upkeep of his various weapons and pieces of armour. That was why before and every battle or mission he was sent into, Edsel methodically cleaned and polished his daggers, wiped the blood and muck from his sword and ensured that every piece of his black crete armour had been buffed free of scratches or chips. A prepared warrior is a successful warrior, his father always used to say.
For the better half of the last month, Edsel had been tasked with the interrogation and assassination of the leader of the Red Paw gang that ran the Drowned Streets, One-Eye Argin, but had gained almost no ground in the investigation. None of the beggars he had found thus far had been coherent enough to point him in the right direction, and the Red Paw members he had chanced across so far were too terrified of retribution from Argin to give him any useful information. They died quickly, in the least, but because of these setbacks Edsel was now forced once again to roam the slums of Ouruin in search of his prey.
Another hour and these streets will be flooded with lagomorph waste, Edsel thought to himself. There was precious little time to spare for him, both on that night and in regards to his mission - he had heard briefly from the last thug that Argin was beginning to become nervous about the disappearances of his crew. It was only a matter of time until the Red Paws moved on from Ouruin and their throne of beggar kings of the Drowned Streets.
"Oi, Rawu, me and the crew have cornered the mangy tramp that Boss wanted sent south," a disembodied voice echoed from below Edsel's perch atop one of the many disintegrating buildings of the slums. His sharp eyes flitted quickly, targeting two obscure shapes huddled in secrecy. Judging by the height of the ears, at least one of them was a fellow rabbit, but Edsel could have sworn that the second shape was that of a feline nature - a feat that was almost impossible north of the Arkatain Parallel, let alone in the Capitol of the Cinderbreathe Empire itself.
"Caire dui lo vie," the cat-like visage purred back. Bring me to him. Edsel's Arlissian was broken, but he could understand the basics. The two men slinked down the alleyway towards their own prey, leaving Edsel to contemplate his next move. Edsel sighed, knowing there was only one choice he could make, regardless of the risks it entailed.
He set off after the rogues.
"You lost your way, friend?" A brown spotted, short-eared cottontail wearing black crete plated mail armour drawled to the beggar as she stepped out from under the cover of a shattered awning. "Ol' One-Eye's been looking for you for a long time. Who knew he could have found you in the gutter surrounded by the rest of the trash of this city?" She pulled the lips on her too-long muzzle back in a grimace, showing yellowed teeth long-ago filed to needlepoints. She wasn't a beautiful creature by any means, but the poor man couldn't see her as an ugly one either. What she was to him in that moment though, with the moon illuminating her sneering countenance, was terrifying.
Only a few long strides separated the space between the beggar and his new adversary. He had never seen her before, but he recognized the markings that had been etched along the left breast of her armour, and knew that his time spent hiding from the Red Paws within the slums was quickly drawing to a close. The shadows around the thug receded to reveal three more members of the Red Paw gang, all of them wearing various forms of leather or black crete armour, and all armed with dangerous looking weaponry. The musk of fear flowed freely from the glands underneath the beggars jaw, and his breathing became shallow, speeding up in time with the heartbeat that thundered in his drooping ears.
"H-how did you find me here?" The beggar asked timidly. His teeth had begun to chatter uncontrollably, though from cold or anxiety he couldn't tell.
"Once ya kick over enough warrens, the rats start to scurry out on their own," a voice called out from behind the cornered rabbit. He spun around to face this newest intruder, to find himself face to face with a jet black hare, one who towered more than a head taller over him. Unlike the rest of the unfamiliar criminals, however, he recognized this one all too well. Olek, the chief enforcer for the Red Paws, was infamous not just for his sheer size and power, but his unmatched cruelty among the denizens of the Drowned Streets. It was because of him that the beggar no longer had use of the muscles in his ears. Despite this renewed confrontation, it was who was standing just past Olek that gave the man his real shock - a smoke gray cat with white and orange stripes criss-crossing his snout leaned against what was once a door. Even from where he stood he could tell that this cat stood a foot taller still than Olek, already a true giant among lagomorphs.
"Ron u vie? Orumli ve westat thein duim paimon, Olek." A whirlwind of silken words poured from the tongue of the cat, far too quickly for anyone but those perfectly fluent in Arlissian to understand. His tone was soft, belying the anger in the glare he had fixed upon the back of Olek's head.
Olek replied sharply, "Do you think me a fool, Rawu? The uniform of humble trash that this one wears as his second skin is no more true to his nature than an Arlissian is to peace." He grinned at this last comment, congratulating himself internally on his humour. "Our mutual contacts in the city proper have assured me that the rabbit standing before us is none other than Harald Petticoat, the sole heir to an unclaimed fortune that has resided in the Empry for nearly a decade now. We take him, and you'll get your 'payment'".
"Harald" began, "No please, you are mista-"
"Shut your maw!" The black hare silenced the buck with a swift backhand that laid the lagomorph flat upon his back in a cold pool of mud. Olek gestured casually to the blond cotton-tailed coney that stood till now farthest to the left of the confrontation. He stepped forward with a hobble, moonlight shining upon the aged and thick scar tissue on his mangled knee. The enforcer finished, "Shackle him with the other captives of Lortha's Corner, Zhelat. Argin's got a special plan to get those gold petals from the Empry."
Zhelat ambled towards "Harald's" sprawled form, unmoving in the mud except for the faintest of twitches. He angled a hind leg to prod the rigid beggar, but still he wouldn't move. "So you think you're clever, do ya?" Zhelat's tone rose with the ire that filled him from being ignored. He unsheathed the wooden cudgel that rested at his side and lifted it high. "You must be one of the ones that need some teaching, then," He proclaimed before he swung his cudgel towards the ground.
A shockwave of kinetic force pushed the thug backwards, causing him to drop his cudgel in bewilderment. The other rabbits surrounding the beggar gasped collectively, taking in sharp breaths as they stared with wide eyes at Zhelat. His throat tickled slightly, a mild pain forming between his chest and his head. His eyes quirked in confusion, as he did not know why his companions seemed so surprised. Zhelat opened his mouth to speak out, but no sound would take shape save that of a wet gurgle in the bottom of his gullet. The thug peered downwards to his throat, and realized that the matted crimson fur of his neck now encompassed a black crete dagger that had buried itself in the scruff underneath his jaw.
With a sigh, Zhelat collapsed first to his knees, and then fell forward to rest his head on the moist soil of the Drowned Streets.
There was little time to spare to admire the flawless execution of his knife throw, even as the world seemed to slow to a fraction of its normal speed for Edsel. The gang members on the streets below him seemed now to be posed in mock caricatures of their former selves, their faces framed as if in clay and their bodies moving through molasses. Edsel picked his targets in the crowd carefully, methodically, counting them out in sequence within his mind. Brown, short, right, scared, one. Mottled, average, left, confused, two. Spotted, average, center, confident, three.
He leaped from his perch atop a second story house with most of its walls still intact, a swan-dive to the cobblestones below. Barrelling towards his target - a brown rabbit with a white nose and short stature, the look of fear and impending dread on his face - Edsel's passage was as resonant as a whisper, yet as subdued as a howling windstorm. He flipped himself at the last possible moment, just as the thug realized the shape hurtling towards him wasn't a what, but a who. Edsel contracted the muscles in his legs, then sprung them forward like a cannon blast. The lower ribs in his opponents chest concaved at unnatural angles, the force of the impact surely shattering his internal organs.
The warrior landed on his feet, crouched low and prepared as always for what he must do. The adrenaline in his body beat an uncertain rhythm, his pupils narrow to slits as everything in the world appeared focused on these next quick but brutal moments. As he predicted, the rabbit closest to his left with the mottled coat of fur skittered forward first, confused at Edsel's arrival but no more scared than the others were. The scoundrel unsheathed his sword, the bare crete kissing the air with its loving sigh. He lifted it high above his ears, and a battle-cry thundered into Edsel's ears, a roar that drowned the alley with its intensity.
Edsel wasted no time as the blade began its descent. With his left paw, he seized hold of his enemy's wrist in a vice-grip. His right paw flashed forward in the blink of an eye, and his enemy's wind pipe collapsed with a choked sigh. He struggled to receive his oxygen in terrified gasps, the sound hoarse. Edsel was fastidious in the application of his skill as he ducked underneath the arm he still gripped, and he slid his paw down to the joint connecting the forearm with the humerus. He retightened the grip he had on the wrist with his right paw now instead of his left, and gritted his teeth with exertion, preparing for the grisly task at hand. A fraction of a second later, Edsel pulled backwards with his right paw sharply as he slammed his left forwards, and a sickening crack greeted his ears warmly. The entire exchange between the two had lasted merely ten seconds, and the expert warrior finished his second combat with a flourish of his leg, sweeping the thug to the ground as well as silencing his mute cries of pain with a rapid kick to the side of his head before he touched the ground.
Olek watched first with eager amusement, with his humour draining into anger as first one and then two of the Red Paw's best were dispatched with ease. "Kill him now, Anya!" He barked to the final member of his crew, a spotted female who had been stunned by how quickly events had turned against them in the alleyway. Anya exposed her shark teeth once again, Olek's command jolting her back to the present and invigorating her fighting spirit.
Anya stepped forward with a fighters caution, resolved to outlast the fate of her comrades. She had no weapon close at hand for herself, save for her teeth, and had no wish to leave this fight with limbs made useless by their assailant. She prepared an orthodox stance and feigned a strike towards Edsel with her dominant paw.
He ignored the feint and kicked straight into her stomach. The blow met only with her iron-corded abdominal muscles, but it was enough to break her guard. Edsel stepped inside and clubbed her head once, twice, three times with his forepaws. Grim determination washed over his face as these blows landed. He knew that this day he would be the victor, not these craven criminals.
Anya rabbit punched him in the chest, attempting to wind him before she wrapped her arms about his torso in a clinch to protect herself from his blows.
Edsel was confused at her tactic, as it should have been obvious to her that he would be an experienced grappler, but as she opened her mouth wide and her pointed teeth flashed briefly before his eyes it was apparent what she had in mind.
Not one to resign himself to failure, Edsel instead butted his head against Anya's with as much force as he could muster, dazing Anya into confusion and causing her to release her hold around his body. He took three steps backwards away from Anya, and in culmination of his third fight he spun to roundhouse her with his left leg, a hit that connected perfectly upon her jaw. Anya sailed sideways, her body knocked off her paws and her mind knocked for the moment out of this world.
Breathing heavily with exertion, Edsel glanced at mud-caked form of the beggar on the ground. He noted the steady rise and fall of his chest to signify his breathing, but otherwise the man hadn't moved an inch since being thrown onto his back. Only two now remained to hinder Edsel's progress, Olek and Rawu. As he turned to face the pair of them, a sharp pain extended outwards from the back of his right shoulder, sending needles of pain throughout his nervous system.
"This is what I get for sending gnats to do a warriors job", Olek breathed into Edsel's ear. He pulled his dagger out of the soft and meaty flesh of Edsel's back, blood draining from the wound to stain his fur. Olek raised his dagger to deliver the killing blow, but it would never come for his opponent.
Edsel pushed his elbow deep into Olek's solar plexus, sapping the wind from his lungs, and drove the back of his head into Olek's nose as he leaned forward from the blow. Backing up, Olek cried out in pain, and Edsel turned 180 degrees to kick the dagger out of his deadly enemies hands.
Edsel spat, "That's funny, all I see before me is an overgrown gnat." He stepped into Olek's guard just as easily as he had Anya's, slamming his closed paws into Olek's ribs with viper strikes, a tactic designed to cloud his mind with pain and rage rather than fully incapacitate him. It worked, but Edsel had miscalculated just how powerful his opponent really was.
Olek howled his anger at Edsel, catching one of the strikes just as quickly as it had barrelled towards him, squeezing as hard as he could in an attempt to crush the bone underneath.
Edsel was surprised at the raw strength he possessed, but nonetheless he knew he had to adapt quickly. He rammed his right knee upwards into Olek's ribs. As he did so, he placed his right forepaw around the back of his opponents head for leverage. Before Olek had time to react, Edsel pulled himself upwards and then slammed his left knee into Olek's eye socket. There was a nauseating crack as the bone of Olek's socket splintered into bleeding shards. Indifferent, Edsel wrapped his legs around Olek's exposed throat and slipped his paw from Olek's loosening vice-grip.
Olek moaned and reached desperately to grab hold of Edsel in a clumsy attempt to throw him off, but he was too late.
Edsel pummelled his skull over and over in successive and timed combos, one two three, one two three, ejecting what little sense Olek retained far from his mind. To finish, Edsel gripped tightly with his thighs and flipped himself backwards towards the ground. He utilized the extra leverage of his flip along with every aching muscle to raise Olek's body above his own in a wide arc. Even the air appeared at a standstill as Edsel jackhammered Olek's skull into the adamantine and cobbled crete.
The force of this impact was so severe that Edsel was shocked the black hare's cranium hadn't fractured in two. Truth be told, Edsel was surprised he hadn't cracked any of his own bones during the battle. He attempted to lift his head in regards to his final adversary, but found that he possessed barely enough energy even to breathe now that his life-force spilled out in a flood upon the ground.
Rawu clapped his clawed paws together vigorously. "That was a marvelous showing, absolutely spectacular." He widened his maw into a grin that displayed his own set of sharp incisors - far more deadly than those Anya had possessed. "Truly, it is not every day this far north of the Arkatain Parallel that I see such raw and accomplished expertise, such artistry. Why, fighting you, I might even break out into a sweat for once."
The words were spoken in perfect Cinderian, to Edsel's surprise, with only the barest hint of the Arlissian lilt that was so commonly heard in the cats' foreign vernacular.
The cat sighed deeply, disappointment clouding his demure amusement, "Alas, despite the injury you have caused my allies, and the regrettable loss of our personal contacts here within the district, I am still expected to conduct myself and my mission with grace. In the face of so clearly skilled a combatant, it is distressing, and it is necessary, for there could be nothing less graceful or honourable than rolling about in the mud with gutter trash. No matter."
Rawu's feline form receded into the shadows and his voice became barely a murmur over the groans of the fallen criminals as he swapped the Cinderian for his native Arlissian, "Aulianu, duim courion on rairllel eilendarl. Pairon var ovem khairon."
Within moments, all that remained of Rawu's presence was the light spice of northern Ouranian perfume common among the gentry and merchant lords of the Arlissian Collective. Edsel had attempted to regain his feet throughout the lengthy and comprehensive speech, but had managed only to climb to a kneeling position before Rawu had finished and disappeared into the shadows from whence he had arrived. All that was left for the warrior to do now was to catch his breath and tie up the captives he was now required to extract information from. The ones that still breathed, that is.
Edsel twisted his back to look upon the still form of the black hare. He reached out to press a paw against the thin arteries of Olek's outstretched throat, and felt a faint pulse beat in a fragmented and frantic rhythm. He was severely weakened, like himself, but alive at the least. You almost got too carried away there, Edsel, he thought to himself, This hare will likely have the most useful information out of them all. He straightened himself out, rising to an upright and hunched position as he did so. His back shoulder had begun to turn numb, adrenaline siphoning the pain from the too-deep stab wound. Regardless, there were no vital organs damaged in the short fight Edsel had participated in, and he knew there were more important things currently at stake than the comfort of his shoulder.
The warrior perked his ears at the sound of rushing water, and realized that the winding path he had traversed as the shadow to the two cloaked figures earlier in the night must have taken longer than he had anticipated. He would have to seek out higher ground for his new charges, lest they all choke to death in the Drowned Streets that had claimed so many half-frozen and sleeping victims before. A splash sounded to Edsel's left, as the sewers of the upper districts of Ouruin emptied themselves of sludge with timid curiosity at first, and then wild abandon.
Right on time.