Far from the Lantern Shrooms, I slammed Veyrith against a large, flat stone.

  The man, too shocked to process that he’d been manhandled, raised his arms to defend himself. “H-Hey, stop! What’s wrong? I don’t know you! Did I do some—fwing—”

  The slap echoed. I followed up, my metal hand whipping across his face again, and again.

  “Don’t know me?” I pulled my cover back and stared into his swelling eyes. “You know me.”

  His gaze widened in horror. “Sneakrat Set?!”

  My jaw dropped. I slapped him, my hand like lightning. He hollered, his voice cracking into a high-pitched curse.

  “Seriously? You calling me names now?”

  Veyrith’s head wobbled, eyes swimming and dazed.

  “I went out on the hunt that day because I wanted to get some extra food for Selma… And you took that, and you twisted it into me being so desperate for food that I went mad? You couldn’t even leave a dead man a shred of dignity?”

  I gripped him by the throat, pinning him to the rock, and pommeled him with my right hand repeatedly. “What’s wrong with you!? You killed me! And you still had to spew more shit than your asshole ever could?”

  I delivered an uppercut and watched him lean against the stone even more than before. The wounds on my right hand’s knuckles healed as I shook off the pain.

  His panting turned frantic. I saw the confusion in his eyes when he realized he wasn’t regenerating.

  “You’re not going to heal.”

  He looked at me with stunned eyes. I grinned.

  “I severely wounded you at least 11 times over. You’re out of ‘HP’ Veyrith.”

  “W-What?”

  “Your Blessing has run dry.”

  He shook his head, refusing to believe it. “No. I’m chosen.”

  “‘Chosen’ has a limit.”

  I seized his right hand, raising it between us. Then, I gripped his fingers with my metal hand.

  “Set?” he said, his eyes pleading for me to reconsider.

  I smiled—and crushed his fingers. Then I bent them backward.

  He let out the first of many blood-curdling screams. But he was too loud and too distracted by the pain. I slapped him a few times, sneaking a gut punch or two in. When he finally calmed down, I propped his head back and showed him his mangled fingers.

  “See? Regeneration’s over.”

  “I’m sho-wry, Shet,” he sobbed, eyes almost swollen shut, cheeks inflated like he had stuffed them with mushrooms.

  “Sorry? You’re sorry?” I scoffed and slapped him hard enough to make his head jerk and his eyes spin. “You know… even if you hadn’t spread those lies—even if you’d told the honest truth—this?” I gestured around us. “What’s happening right here? Right now? This wouldn’t change. I was a naive fool, but no more. When I woke up to the Mauler dragging me off, I woke up to the truth. This thing between you and I was always going to end in one of two ways.”

  I poked my temple with my metal finger, again and again, hard enough that it would’ve bruised.

  “I’ve got this memory in my head that I just can’t get rid of. This cursed memory at the core of all of this. Every single time I hurt, every single time I got beat, this damn memory kept coming back.” I grabbed the idiot by the collar and held him up so that we could look at each other. “Even when I go to sleep, I have to go to sleep with that shit seared into my eyelids. I can ignore it, I can try not to acknowledge it, but it’s there! Runica’s there, scared out of her mind, hugging herself, trying to cover her chest, sitting in her own piss, and you!”

  Veyrith struggled for air, his breath ragged and harsh. “I’m shooo-reeey.”

  I shook him and yelled into his face. “I should have killed you!”

  I inhaled sharply. My jaw locked. The frustration behind my bare teeth burned, threatening to spill as tears.

  “But I couldn’t! I was scared of you! Terrified! I bludgeoned you over the head with a club, and you still got up! Blessed? Bull! You were a roach, crawled out of the deepest Hell! You came back!”

  His eyes could barely stay open, blood still pouring from every gash and orifice.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “And then the shit you said and people said. ‘He was just drunk. It was just Veyrith joking around.”

  I let him go. He landed on his wobbly feet.

  “‘Runica shouldn’t have been giving him eyes. Runica shouldn’t have teased him.’”

  I kicked him back into the stone.

  “What the fuck?!” I yelled. “Runica was almost always with me or her cousins! When the hell did she have time to do any of that shit you and your sycophants spread?!”

  I stared at him, trying to restrain my breathing and calm my heart. He panted, too. But then, a chuckle escaped him.

  His voice was weak, but the malice in it cut through the pain.

  “Where were you then?”

  I looked at him. Even at death’s door, he managed a smirk. And it was the ugliest, cockiest smirk he was trying to form. When all things were going wrong, count on his malice to pierce through whatever misery he was experiencing. I could already see it in my mind–that same cocky smile he wore that day, when he healed from the club to the head.

  I nodded. “Yeah. I learned my lesson that day… You’re right. I should have been there. Runica’s a treasure. Of course, every son of a bitch wants to put their hands on her.” I futilely shrugged. “I was the bitch-bastard that didn’t see that–didn’t really see that.”

  I grabbed his left wrist and held it between us.

  “But, almost dying has a real way of making a lost cause reflect.”

  I slowly, with my eyes locked on his swollen ones, pressed New Arm’s palm against his fingers and slowly bent them backward.

  “Pweashe, Sheth,” he whimpered. “Have Merchy–”

  “No,” I replied, disgusted.

  His bones cracked. His scream shook the air. His flesh tore. His fingers achieved backward perpendicularity with his palm.

  I stepped back, and before his scream faded, I smashed his left knee with a metal fist.

  He cried, wailed, sobbed, as he fell onto his bleeding asscheeks. And might as well do it–I kicked him in the testes for good measure. He puked all over himself.

  “There are a lot of Maulers in this area.” I sneered at him as I moved away. “They’re just waiting for someone to step out of their safe zone–just waiting for the unlucky fool.”

  “No, Shet,” he feebly said, crying.

  “You’re as good as dead if a Mauler shows up.”

  “Pweashe, Shef. Don’t weave me.”

  “Do you believe in fate, Veyrith?”

  He cried softly.

  “I don’t either. All of this?” I pointed at a space above us. “I made it happen with my own effort.”

  The laughing abyss opened, and out fell the traumatized Mauler that I personally sought out before coming back for these people.

  It landed a few paces from Veyrith, still shaking from its time in banishment.

  Veyrith’s eyes cracked open by an extra centimeter. “Shet… Pweashe–”

  I shook my head. “No. Dumbass. You’ve cheated death enough.”

  I turned away as the Mauler shook off its trauma.

  “Sheth!”

  I walked back toward the hunting grounds as the Mauler started growling.

  “SHETH!” Veyrith cried, his voice carrying through the cavern.

  I crossed the boundary as his girlish screams erupted far behind me.

  I wish I could savor it, but I still had something to do. I walked with purpose, covering my face once more, and getting further and further from the source of screams, until I came back across Saela.

  Saela was sitting against a gnarled tree, holding her head, still dazed from the assault, but with all her wounds closed. She looked at me when my kick was an inch from connecting with her face.

  Saela barely had time to flinch before my boot connected with her jaw. The impact sent her sprawling onto her back, a pained gasp escaping her lips as her hands instinctively scrambled against the dirt.

  Her body twitched, still sluggish from what I’d done to her earlier. But her eyes—wild and desperate—snapped to me as I stepped over her.

  “W-Wait—!”

  I didn’t.

  I dropped down onto her, one knee pressing into her stomach, knocking whatever air she had left from her lungs. Fingers clawing at my cloak, I slapped her and then caught her wrists with my right hand, Levels on, and slammed them down, pinning her beneath me.

  It was nostalgic, having to pin someone down like this again. Who would’ve thought it would be Saela I did this to…

  She gasped, chest rising and falling in frantic heaves.

  “Please, wait, I–I didn’t do anything–”

  “I know.”

  I grabbed her face with my metal hand. Her words expired in her throat as I forced cold, metal fingers between her lips.

  She gagged instantly, her body jerking, trembling beneath me. Her jaw stretched wide, trying to twist away, but I pressed harder—forcing my fingers against her tongue, past her teeth, deeper.

  Her breath faltered. A sharp, wet choke followed.

  Tears welled in her eyes as she thrashed her legs about, struggling against my hold, but she couldn’t escape. I shoved my hand deeper and stunned her into submission.

  I leaned in.

  “This is mercy.” My voice was calm. “I am an agent of justice,” I said. “My arm is righteousness taken form.”

  She shuddered violently.

  You let a coward make you his mouthpiece, and now your mouth owes something to the truth.”

  I pushed deeper.

  A choked sob echoed from her as her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

  “Speak the truth. Refuse, and be assured–you will choke on metal again.”

  Her body bucked beneath me, as her legs kicked uselessly against the dirt. Her eyes—wide, brimming with horror—stared up at me.

  Then I yanked my fingers out.

  She gasped desperately, coughing, with saliva trailing from her lips.

  I grabbed her jaw, and forced her to look at me.

  “You’ve been given your choice.”

  I slammed her head back into the dirt. She let out her pained cry. I released her, standing slowly, my cloak shifting as I loomed over her. She curled in on herself, shaking and breathing in weak, gasping shudders.

  Then, I walked away, confident she still had a few points of HP left.

  My journey inched a little bit closer to being complete.