From the Ashes: Kindling (ch. 14) (Patreon)

“I don’t know about this,” the prospective Rabbit muttered under his breath, looking down at the knife in his hands. One shorter than his palm. An intentional choice -- it was to show the recruits that even if the blade was small, we could kill with them. “What if someone sees me?” He asked, his gaze going to Soris. The tall, lanky, awkward elf had vanished at some point. Soris was still tall, still lanky, but there was a weight to his gaze that hadn’t been there before. And after a number of decent meals, he wasn’t so lanky anymore either.

“Then they see you,” Soris answered, his tone curt and even. “If you’re having second thoughts, then don’t go through with it. This won’t be something you can take back. You’re going to murder someone in cold blood. Before you do anything, you have to ask yourself if you want this. If you really want this,” Soris stressed, his arms crossed over his chest.

“I don’t want to dangle from a rope,” the recruit voiced, clutching the knife a little harder. He had the will, but he was afraid of the consequences. He turned to look down the back alley he and Soris stood in, his target standing guard in front of a building, completely oblivious that he had been picked out for the Rabbit initiation ritual.

Soris nodded, understanding the concern that he had. They were concerns that most recruits had. There were precious few that were able to kill a human with no hesitation or thought of the consequences. “You won’t dangle. You just to need to run up, get him -- going for the neck and throat is usually best -- and run away. Your hood will be up. He’ll just be another shem that got knifed in an alley.”

The recruit nodded his head slowly, wrapping his head around the idea with a swiftness that only those that came to us out of anger could. He was on the younger side, though it was odd to consider him young. He was only about a year younger than us, putting him at fifteen to our sixteen now. Auburn-colored hair, green eyes, a handsome face but one marked with bruises around his eyes.

“Can you do it? There's no shame in not wanting to get your hands bloody. If you want to help, then we can find something else-” Soris began to offer, but the recruit shook his head.

“No. No, I can do it,” he spoke, a hand going up to the hoods that all Rabbits wore to cover his ears. Clutching the knife, the recruit strode forward, marching with purpose. Just not soundlessly as it turned out when the human turned around, glancing over his shoulder at the last second to see the Recruit just as he lunged with his knife. It caught the human in the throat, stunning him, but the recruit began shiving the human again and again and again in his neck, face, and chest.

The human’s back slammed into the wood wall, trying to shove the recruit away as he gargled on his own blood, but the recruit was relentless. His knife work was messy, but it was fast. He stabbed the human a good thirty times in about fifteen seconds. The human fell to the ground, dead, and the recruit stabbed him another dozen times to make sure that he was dead, his entire sleeve soaked with blood that covered his short knife and hand.

The recruit took a step back, looking at Soris, who gave a serious nod. It was then that the rest of the Rabbits, who had been arranged around the house began to move in. The recruit seemed like he just about lept out of his skin, but when he realized that they were there to grab the body, and break into the building he was guarding, he visibly relaxed.

I dropped my invisibility, revealing myself as I stood in the shadows, leaning against a wall. “You’re good at that,” I remarked, and I saw a hint of old Soris in the new one because Soris looked like he also about jumped out his skin at the sudden sound of my voice.

“Maker’s breath,” Soris swore, a hand going to his chest like his heart was about to bust its way out through his ribs. “Azoth? When'd you get here?” He questioned, glancing around to see if anyone else had managed to sneak up on him.

I gave him a small smile, not answering the question. “Looks like we have a new recruit,” I remarked, nodding at the recruit, who was watching the body be escorted to a disposal site. A pig farm outside of the city.

Soris glanced at him and nodded, “Yeah, seems so. How many is that?” He asked me, an odd note in his voice.

“Four hundred,” I answered, earning another muttered swear from Soris. I couldn’t blame him there. The number of Rabbits had shot up in recent times and every single one of them had been bloodied. They weren’t recruits, they were Rabbits. Soldiers. In terms of sheer numbers now, we were the second largest gang in Denerim. In theory.

“Should we slow down recruitment?” Soris asked me as the Rabbits kicked in the front door to the building, making a ruckus go up from those inside when the Rabbits went to work. There was a note of fear in his voice. I also couldn’t blame him for that. With four hundred Rabbits, it meant that four hundred humans had been murdered. Most of which took place over the past six months.

“There's no need. The Carta are making a good excuse for the bodies. Might as well take advantage of it while we can,” I remarked, earning a nod from Soris. I had completely underestimated the thoroughness of the Carta’s revenge for the longstanding theft. Or, perhaps, Darviks. Over the past six months, the Carta had been exterminating the Blighters everywhere they could.

The Carta had no fear of the guard or reprisals. They murdered Blighters in their homes, in their places of business, out in the streets, or brazenly out in the market square. The situation got so bad that the guard was forced to step in on a number of occasions, a very rare thing outside of the Landsmeet. The Blighters, in return, started murdering dwarves throughout the city, innocent and guilty alike.

The entire city had turned into a madhouse in ways that I hadn’t expected when I gave Darvik that book. The Blighters were still hanging on despite all the difficulties they were facing. More than hanging on, they were thriving depending on how you looked at it. The Hounds merged into the Blighters, or the Blighters merged with the Hounds depending on who you asked, and with that move they had boosted their numbers and power so much that even having over a hundred members blatantly murdered hadn’t devastated the gang.

Meaning that the Blighters now more or less controlled the docks after they had forced the Raggers out of the territory, both the newly acquired and the long-held. Which meant that all smuggling in or out of Denerim had to go through them, which made the war the Carta waged upon them… inconvenient. I really had no idea how it would shake out. Between the original Blighters and the Hounds, the Blighters now had over six hundred members. A true force to be reckoned with.

“You have that look, Azoth. What are you planning now?” Soris asked me as the shouts in the house quickly quieted down under threat of extreme violence. I wasn’t surprised that he could see my mind turning over what the Rabbit’s next move would be. Things were going well. As well as they could, at any rate. The Rabbits were expanding by picking up the territory that no one else wanted. Despite our size, we haven’t had a confrontation with a gang of equal or larger size compared to us.

For the most part, that was because we couldn’t. It was one thing to murder humans in the dead of night with our hoods up, and it was another thing entirely for an elven gang to fight a human one. Not only would we be at war with another gang, but it could mean a purge on the alienage. Already, there were rumblings that the elves were getting too uppity. Nothing had come of it yet, but starting a gang war would tip things against us.

“I’m thinking about how we’re going to take down the Raggers,” I told him. The Raggers were the Blighters rival now. They had swelled their numbers in preparation to put the Hounds down, only for them to be subsumed by the Blighters. In doing so, they claimed a lot of territory and press-ganged a lot of people into the Raggers. They had three hundred people in total, half of what the Blighters did, but the Blighters were very hesitant on opening up a second front of the gang war.

“I thought it might be something stupid,” Soris remarked, earning a shrug from me. “Why would you want to fight them? Don’t we have enough problems?”

“Because they’re sitting on territory that I want,” I admitted. When the Blighters kicked the Raggers off of the docks, strangling the smuggling routes out of the city with white knuckles, the Raggers had been forced to go into the city. They snatched streets up, threatening gangs to join them, and killing those that refused and taking their territory anyway. A number of those gangs and streets were ones that I wanted.

“We won’t win,” Soris muttered to me, his tone quiet. He saw the same problem that I did. Even if we did win, we would still lose. Our hands were tied in ways that the Raggers weren’t.

“I don’t know about that,” I told him, watching the Rabbits drag some unfortunate sods out of the building. “The Raggers stopped at our border,” I pointed out. I had been prepared for a confrontation with them when they began to eat up smaller gangs and territory, but they stopped on our official border. “I’m thinking… a single decisive blow to ‘em. What do you think?”

“I think you’re right mad,” Soris didn’t hesitate to tell me, the echoing of shouts from the Rabbits beating down a handful of grown men in the streets. Kicking and stomping on them from every angle, forcing them to curl up into a ball to avoid anything too painful. “But, I know you, Azoth. You were always the cautious one. You wouldn’t suggest this unless you had a plan.”

My gaze flickered to Soris to see that he meant the words. It occurred to me that he and Shianni were the only ones who really knew me. The me from before. They had walked this path with me since the beginning, and in the past year, all of us had changed. Me most of all. “I’m not sure you can call me cautious anymore,” I remarked, earning a chuckle from Soris.

“Maybe not, but you’re still careful. I say we start picking a fight with the Blighters,” he said, making me cock an eyebrow. “Don’t give me that. I know you’ve been eying them up. You just said the Raggers because you know I’d have an easier time swallowing it,” he said, rightly so. “The Blighters are already at war with the Carta. I say we make a friend with a mutual enemy. Like you said, a big decisive blow.”

I had underestimated Soris. “And afterward?” I asked him, watching at the Rabbits pissed on the battered men to add insult to injury. I imagine that they wouldn’t be forgetting to pay their protection money any time soon. After all, a single guard wasn’t much of a deterrent against determined thugs and the city was very dangerous at night.

“I think…” Soris began, searching for the words, his jaw tightening in displeasure, “that no matter what… there’s going to be a purge. We’ve gotten too big. People have noticed. The only reason the guard hasn’t been noseying around us is that they’ve been too busy picking up after the Carta.”

There was a beat of silence. “And if I said that I have a plan?” I asked him, earning a look from Soris.

“Then I’ll trust you. You got us this far, after all,” Soris said, giving me an easy smile. I held his gaze for a moment before inclining my head to him, pushing off of the wall while the Rabbits began to lead the recruit down the alley, patting him on the back for a job well done. As was tradition, he would be brought to the Blushing Maid for drinks and girls, or boys if that was his preference, to help ease him into the fact that he was a killer.

“I’m going to remind you of that when you hear what I have planned,” I told him, walking away from the scene. I felt his gaze on my back the entire way until I vanished from sight.

…

“The numbers are good,” Garen, a scrawny elf told me, passing me a ledger. “Healthy. The investments have been paying off nicely.” I hefted the heavy book, looking over the entries with interest. I had a plan floating around in my head, but it was disjointed. I needed to put the pieces together. And, as far as I could tell, Garen was right. The numbers were good.

Tanya continued on buying businesses and land wherever she could. Our relationship could almost be described as symbiotic, in a way. As of late, whenever she needed a building or plot of land for a good price, I would send the Rabbits to shake people down or rough them up to lower the price in line with what she wanted. I had no doubt that she would betray us the moment she felt that she safely could, but I would make sure she never felt safe enough to try.

The hundred sovereigns I stole from the Blighters went into profitable ventures -- a gambling den that caught the attention of noblemen and merchants. Another brothel. And sponsoring a handful of merchants, who all turned a nice profit each month. The profits were extraordinary, but of that hundred sovereigns I spent, I saw a return of a hundred fifteen -- which wasn’t a bad turnover, if… slow.

“I am worried about expenditure, as you know,” Garen voiced, pressing his lips together. “I understand that the alienage is a passion project of yours, but the need of operating in secrecy has greatly inflated costs. Smuggling lumber into the city has been awful as of late,” he voiced, taking every lost copper as a personal insult.

Garen was once the bookkeeper for the Arl of Denerim, Urien Kendell. He was fired when the Arl fired everyone from his estate -- human and elf alike. His loss was my gain.

“Garen,” I spoke, running over the numbers as I turned to look at the model of the city that I had shaped over the course of six months. The noble district had been fleshed out and detailed, as well as the Royal Palace itself. I’m sure I could sell the model to the King for at least a sovereign. Even the holes in the road were accurate. Arranged on the buildings and streets were various tokens to help me keep track of who owned what. “How much money do we have to spend? Right now?”

Garen seemed a little disturbed by the question, sensing that it didn’t bode well. “As of right now…? I would say… eighty sovereigns,” He sounded rather proud of that fact. Not an incredible sum, but for an organization our size, it was a nice amount of liquidity. “Dare I ask what you will need it for?”

My gaze was on the model of the city, specifically the part of the slums that the Blighters used to house the members of their family. The vault had changed buildings according to my intel, but it was still located within that area. Given the loss of the Carta contracts, I doubt it would be as full as it had been, but free money was free money. “How much,” I began, gesturing to the cluster of buildings, a dozen or so, “would it cost to buy this property?”

“A great deal more than eighty sovereigns, I assure you,” Garen stated, a frown in his voice.

“And if it happened to suffer a terrible fire?” I asked him, my tone flat. I saw his face pale ever so slightly at that, blinking owlishly at me.

“I… in most cases… the value of the property, as it has no… housing or holdings, would… decrease in value substantially,” Garen answered me. He was good with numbers. Really good with numbers. It for that was reason I had him on the books, not because he had a spine. “A good offer to the current holders, as well as the Arl, would likely be accepted.” Hm. That was an issue.

Arl Urien was in his estate and he refused to leave or do any of his duties. From what I heard, he was taking the… death of his son rather hard. It was difficult to not laugh at the idea that Vaughan was dead. Every time I heard someone mention it, I had to swallow a chuckle.

Regardless, it was an issue I could solve easily enough.

“And if the Arl was in no position to deal with such matters?” I asked, and Garen seemed to completely misunderstand what I meant.

“As Arl Urien is suffering a depressive episode, the table will likely be brought to the King and Queen,” he told me, earning a nod from me as I started to put the pieces together.

“Excellent,” I decided, snapping the book close and handing it back to Garen. “I want you to start discreetly sponsoring lumbermills. Large ones. I’ll secure the funds,” I told him, earning a small and meek nod from Garen. He seemed to put the pieces together himself. He would be expecting the fire…

But I highly doubt that he would be expecting what I intended for Arl Urien.

…

The Arl of Denerim’s estate had changed a great deal in the past six months, I thought. Before, it had been meticulously cleaned and brightly lit. Given I had a body slung over my shoulder at the time, I wouldn’t exactly call it inviting, but it had seemed cozy. Exactly what poor elves thought of when they imagined what a palace would look like. Now, cobwebs gathered in the corners, there wasn’t a single lit candle in the entirety of the estate, and a fine layer of dust covered everything.

I strode through the halls with a confident gait, one born of practice. For me, in recent times, it was as normal to be invisible as it was to be seen. The Estate was dead silent, not a sound to be heard, not even my own footsteps. The Arl kept the guards outside of the estate, though he had them posted at every single door. The only proof that he was still alive was the fact that he had meals brought to the door and they vanished inside.

And everyone thought that the balconies were safe. Not so when you had the spell Rope Trick, which allowed me to control sixty feet of rope well enough that I can tie one end off on the balcony and climb up on the invisible rope while invisible.

I found the Arl where I thought I might. He was inside his son's bedroom, sitting on a chair with a bottle in his hand. The Arl, I imagine, looked a lot like his son. Same colored hair, same colored eyes, just older with lines around his eyes and mouth. He seemed unkempt. In all, it was perfect for me.

Magic danced across my fingers as I cast the Sleep spell. In the past six months, with a great deal of ‘help’ from others, I had improved by leaps and bounds with my magic. Of the spells I had learned, Sleep was one I was developing a special fondness for. It struggled a fair bit against alert people, but against those that were inebriated or already asleep? It put them into a deep slumber.

I felt the magic take hold of Arl Urien, making him slump in his seat. Once he did, I took out a rope, used Rope Trick to make a noose, tied it around his neck, and hauled him up by it using a convenient rafter overhead. “Urghk!” He gasped, his hands clawing at his throat, a bottle of wine smashing upon the ground, as he kicked over the chair in a wild bid to gain some footing.

“There,” I said, arranging the Arl’s murder to look like a suicide. One that was unlikely anyone would doubt. Tying the rope off to keep him hanging above, I gave the room a once over before I began to search it, and it truly was disgusting how much money the Arl had just lying around. Absolutely disgusting. It made my stomach clench, in all honesty.

“Forty bloody sovereigns,” I muttered, tossing the gold into my bag of holding. In this room alone. It was absolute madness. Truly, it was. I damn near doubled what I had in the bank in about five minutes compared to what I gathered over six months. How easy it was to get really rubbed me the wrong way too. I was shaking my head as I left the scene of the crime behind, realizing that the entire house was probably filled with obscene amounts of wealth. Wealth that I imagine would soon be claimed when they realized that the Arl wasn’t taking his meals any longer.

A sigh escaped me as I went about looting, collecting the money out of a sense of obligation rather than desire. Free money was free money, and I couldn’t wait to see how people would twist and turn when they realized everything that glittered and gleamed in the estate was missing, but it was a hard pill to swallow just how much wealth was in the estate when I really started to look. Forty sovereigns became fifty. Fifty became eighty. Eighty became a hundred.

I swept through the rooms, liberating jewelry, gems, and hidden caches of silver and gold. Inside the Arls office I found another batch of treasures -- both money and, far more importantly, deeds. The Arl was an effective administrator and he liked to know who owned what as much as I did. I took them all, mostly for reference. I would be prepared if their going missing created an opportunity, but I couldn’t imagine that the Royal Palace wouldn’t also have copies.

Folding them into my pack, I searched the office for a key that the rats had mentioned, but I couldn’t find it. Not even in the false bottom in the desk. I wasn’t willing to tear the entire estate apart looking for it, so I decided to open up the false bookcase that revealed a staircase leading down to the vault. The same rat told me about it. I was going to make him the fattest rat in Denerim and, since the rats started working for me, all the rats were getting fat.

I came face to face with a vault door, far more sturdy than the one that the Blighters had. I dropped my invisibility as well as Pass Without Trace. I had to. Magic swirled at my fingers, the Fade singing at the idea of doing as I bid -- I cast Silence as well as Knock upon the vault door. Knock was a peculiar spell. It could open any door, in theory, both magical or non-magical. However, it came at the cost of a loud knock that could be heard hundreds of feet away.

Silence, however, ensured that no sound could be made within twenty feet of the object that I cast it upon. Another favorite combination that I was rapidly growing fond of.

Soundlessly, the vault door swung open…

“Fuck me,” I breathed, stepping into the vault and seeing… gold. So much damn gold. So much of it, it was held in bleeding bags simply marked 100g, presumably filled with a hundred gold pieces each. And there were a lot of bags. So many. The math honestly caused me physical pain to do, but I did it. The vault was a rather cramped room with thick shelves arranged to hold a number of bags that were separated by denomination -- gold and silver. No copper.

There were fifty-three bags of gold, of which the fifty-third was only a quarter filled. Meaning, in gold alone, the vault contained five thousand, two hundred and twenty-five gold sovereigns. However… However, the vault did not only contain gold. It also contained one hundred bags of silver that each housed two hundred silvers each, so the true total of the vault was eight thousand sovereigns worth of value.

It was then that I learned that my bag of holding did, in fact, have a limit. As I began to dump gold and silver into it, slowly, the bag began to fill out. First as if it wasn’t completely empty, then like it was getting full. As it began to fill up, the flow of silver that it took slowed. Then, upon the final bag of silver, the bag of holding refused to take so much as a silver more. I looked down at the bag of silver that was left before I shrugged my shoulders and tossed it to the side.

Then, with a mighty heave… I lifted the bag of holding to find that it felt like I was carrying a heavy man all over again.

All the same, I made my way out of the Arl’s estate, richer than I had ever conceived, and with everything snapping into place.

…

“Azoth… Surana,” Darvik stated my name, leaning into his chair in a tavern called the Paragon’s Virtue. It was run by a dwarf. Not a casteless, but he had Carta connections. I was seated across from him, flanked by four guards that I could see and two that I couldn’t. The guards were well armored with thick plate and weapons that were bigger than they were. Behind me were two archers wielding crossbows. “To what do I owe the unexpected pleasure? I do hope you don’t have more bad news. For your sake.”

He sounded angry with me. I kept my face calm as I met his gaze, noting his rougher appearance -- his beard wasn’t quite groomed, his hair was growing out to reveal a receding hairline, and it seemed like he had been missing sleep. That could be because of the gang war, but I suspected that wasn’t the case.

“I take it that the information I provided wasn’t welcomed in hindsight?” I asked him, earning a dismissive scoff while his hands curled into fists, leather creaking from his gloves as he glowered at me.

“You could say that, you sodding nughumper,” Darvik growled, pinning a sharp glare at me. “Do you have any idea what you did to me? What you cost me?! Beraht damn near had my head when he learned how much was being stolen from the Carta! You should have left things alone, Azoth.” He snarled at me and I suppose, in some cases, ignorance really was bliss. Darvik was fine with being robbed, just so long as he didn’t know about it. “Now I have to deal with those darkspawn wannabes with no damn resources. No damn backup. Damn it. Damn it all!”

His fists thumped on the table in front of him as he glared at me. I had misread the entire situation in Denerim. I thought that the Carta was slaughtering the Blighters out of principle, but it was Darvik trying to earn back favor with whoever Beraht was. A failing endeavor, I saw, because the Blighters were stronger than ever.

“I see,” I muttered, shifting tactics. “In that case, allow me to make amends. I gave you that information because I had hoped to impress you -- the Carta. But, I see I only gave you trouble. It only makes sense to me that I clean up the mess that I made,” I said, and I saw that Darvik was interested. He tried to keep his expression blank, but his body betrayed him. I had it completely backward. The Blighters had the Carta on the ropes -- or, rather, Darvik.

“Huh? And how are you going to do that?” Darvik questioned me and I met his gaze unflinchingly when the guards took a threatening step forward.

“Very shortly,” I began, “there will be a fire. This fire will affect the families of the Blighters most severely as they are all grouped in the same part of the city for protection.” I spoke and I didn’t expect it but Darvik flinched back ever so slightly, blinking as the words registered. “They believe that it is for protection of their families, but that is not the case. It's to protect the Blighter’s vault. Shortly before the fire, I will be robbing it and, as an apology for stuffing caused, I will return what I find to you, the rightful owner of the money there.”

Darvik didn’t say anything, just watching me like a snake he found in his boot. Leaving me free to continue, “At the same time, I will have targeted strikes upon the Blighters members, those that are not with their families of course. While this is happening, I would ask a favor of you,” I told him. I could see him thinking it over with a frown on his face, weighing the options.

“Aye, that sounds mighty fine to me if you can actually pull it off. What favor are you asking?” He questioned and my lips curled upwards.

I told him.

His lips thinned ever so slightly, but that was his only real response. His bodyguards shared a look, neither of them seemingly taken back. That was good. It seemed that the stories about the Carta weren’t just stories.

“I did my research on you after your little disappearing act,” Darvik told me, leaning back into his chair, anger bleeding from his face. “You made an impression, alright. On me and others. I heard about your family and the story about why your hair is white. Tears of blood and all that. Bad business. Most people seem to think you’re insane,” he told me outright.

My smile grew a fraction, “I’ve also heard that,” I told him, grabbing hold of a small silver goblet, and looking into the blood-red wine to see my reflection in the low light. “There’s more truth to it than I would like if I’m being perfectly honest.”

My gaze flickered to Darvik after taking a small sip, “Do we have an accord?” I asked him and Darvik had already made his decision.

“Aye. We do.”