Chapter 98: Surviving the Serpent's Coil
I pushed open the familiar, heavy door, and the sound of the city faded, replaced by the low hum of the inn. The smell of polished wood and stale ale washed over me like a blanket.
I was back.
I'd taken maybe two steps across the threshold when a shadow fell over me. It was a long, thin shadow, like a telephone pole at sunset.
I looked up. Way up.
Erik stood there, his head nearly brushing the ceiling beams. All eight feet of him, skinny as a rail but with a presence that could quiet a bar fight just by blinking. He was holding a clean tankard in one hand and a rag in the other, but he'd frozen mid-wipe, his eyes locked on me.
His bushy eyebrows did a slow climb up his forehead. He looked me up and down, from my mud-caked boots to my torn and bloodstained tunic, to the exhaustion I knew was carved into my face.
A long, silent moment stretched out.
Then, he spoke, his voice a low rumble.
"Well," he said, the single word dripping with a mixture of disbelief and dry humor. "Look what the cat dragged in. And then the cat got scared and ran away, leaving you looking like that."
He tossed the rag over his shoulder and set the tankard down with a soft thud. "I've seen corpses with more color, boy. And they generally smell better."
I just stood there, too tired to even muster a smart reply. My shoulders slumped.
Erik's expression softened from dry wit to genuine concern. He moved with a quiet efficiency that defied his lanky frame, coming around the bar and steering me towards my usual corner table with a gentle but firm hand on my shoulder.
"Sit," he commanded, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Before you fall over and I have to mop the floor and scrape you off it."
I collapsed into the chair, the solid wood feeling like a throne.
He was back behind the bar in an instant. I didn't have to order. He pulled out a bottle of the good stuff, the amber whiskey he saved for special occasions or, apparently, for patrons who looked one step away from becoming a special occasion themselves. He poured two generous fingers into a glass and slid it across the table to me. It stopped perfectly in front of my hand.
"Drink that," he said, leaning his bony elbows on the bar and watching me. "Then you're going to tell me what fresh layer of hell you've just crawled out of. And then you're going upstairs and soaking in a bath until you stop scaring my other customers."
I wrapped my hand around the glass. The warmth of the whiskey seeped into my cold fingers. I didn't drink it right away. I just held it, feeling the solid weight of it, the familiar smell of the inn, the unwavering presence of the eight-foot-tall scarecrow who was, for now, the closest thing I had to a home in this world.
For the first time in days, I felt my body begin to unclench.
I held the glass, the amber liquid catching the dim light of the inn. I finally brought it to my lips and took a slow sip. It burned, a clean, familiar fire that cut through the grime and fatigue coating my insides. I closed my eyes for a second, just letting the sensation anchor me.
When I opened them, Erik was still there, his massive, lanky frame leaning on the bar, his gaze patient but unwavering. He wasn't going anywhere.
"So," he rumbled, his voice low enough that it wouldn't carry. "You left here a week ago with a rabbit and a… spirited blonde. You come back looking like you lost a war with a landslid. I'm assuming the blonde isn't waiting outside with the luggage."
I shook my head, staring into my glass. "She's hurt. Not… not dead. But it's bad. We got her to a safe place."
Erik nodded slowly, absorbing that. "The job went sour?"
It wasn't a question. I let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped in my chest for days.
"The job was fine," I said, my voice hollow. "The escort part, anyway. Got the merchant to his client. A patron. A big one. Seemed legit. We even… we even started talking business. A partnership. Me, the merchant, the patron. Had this idea for… picture books." The concept sounded absurd now, a childish dream spoken in a tomb.
Erik's eyebrow twitched, but he didn't interrupt.
"The patron invested. He saw the potential. We hired an artist and everything. We were going to call it 'Dragon Ball'." I took another, longer drink, the whiskey doing little to dull the sharp edges of the memory. "Turns out, not everyone in this city likes new ideas. Especially not when those new ideas might pull crowds away from… other forms of entertainment."
I looked up and met his eyes. "The Serpent's Coil."
A flicker of understanding, followed by a deep, grim shadow, passed over Erik's face. He knew the name. Of course he did. Everyone in Silveridge knew the name, even if they never set foot in the place. The city's most infamous underground fight club. A place where fortunes were won and lost, and bodies were sometimes part of the payout.
"Silas Vane," Erik said, the name a statement, not a question. His voice was even lower now, a conspiratorial rumble.
I just nodded, the motion feeling heavy. "He didn't send a polite letter asking us to cease and desist." The images flashed behind my eyes, unbidden. Jax, a mountain of violet-lit muscle, shrugging off everything we threw at him. Evander's clever feint, the brilliant, perfect move that had given us an opening. The triumph on the Patron's face.
And then Silas. A red blur. The silent, impossible speed. The line of crimson. The head…
I squeezed the glass until my knuckles turned white, forcing the memory down. "He made his point. Personally. The partnership is dissolved. Permanently."
I didn't need to say more. Erik could fill in the gaps. A man like Silas Vane didn't send a warning shot. He sent a message written in blood. The fact that I was sitting here, and not in a gutter, was the message being incomplete.
Erik was silent for a long time, his gaze distant, seeing things I probably couldn't imagine. He finally pushed himself off the bar with a sigh that seemed to come from the bottom of his long, skinny frame.
"You picked a fight with a snake, boy," he said, but there was no judgment in his tone. It was just a fact, stated plainly. "And you lived to tell the tale. That's something. Not many can say that."
He reached for the bottle and refilled my glass without asking.
"The bath's still hot," he said, his tone shifting back to practical, grounding authority. "You stink of blood, fear, and bad decisions. Go. Soak. Try not to fall asleep and drown. When you come down, there'll be food. Then… then we'll talk about what comes next."
What comes next. The words hung in the air, heavy with unspoken threats and a single, glowing number in my vision: 25.4%.
But for now, there was a hot bath, a full glass, and the solid, unmovable presence of an eight-foot-tall innkeeper who seemed to think I wasn't a lost cause just yet. It wasn't much. But after the last week, it felt like everything. I drained the second glass, the fire spreading through my chest, and pushed myself to my feet. The path to the stairs felt longer than the road back to Torak.