Latham moved first.

  Which, to be fair, was exactly what you wanted from a man of his Class and Level. There was no hesitation, no warning, just pure, unfiltered, surround-sound violence as he lunged at the Shimmerskin with all the enthusiasm of a battering ram introduced to a particularly offensive door.

  Unfortunately, the door in question turned out to, apparently, be made of liquid mercury. And malice. Lots and lots of malice.

  Lowe barely had time to register the blur of movement before a foot—a perfectly normal foot, except it belonged to a man who, up until a second ago, had been Morholt and appeared from within that figure’s backside—connected with him and launched him bodily across the room. He heard the initial crunch. And, boy, was it a wet one. Which was then followed by a much louder thwack as he hit the wall with very little grace at all.

  Now, Lowe had always been the sort of person who tried to find the silver lining in a situation (lie). The problem was, that lining was currently being stretched painfully thin over the absolutely catastrophic amount of information his new Perception was providing about what had just happened to his spine. For one thing, he now knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that backs were not supposed to bend in that direction. For another, he was now explicitly aware that there were an astonishing number of nerves apparently involved in the whole staying upright process, and they had all decided, as one, to go on strike.

  Also, as it turned out, he was intimately aware of the exact moment Roll With The Punches kicked in because suddenly, his vertebrae were knitting themselves back together in real time, and that was not an experience he ever wanted to be conscious for again. In fact, he was looking back on the times that a solid, if unspectacular, right hand would send him off to the land of Nod as a golden age. There was a lot to be said for blessed unconsciousness while Roll with the Punches did its thing.

  Meanwhile, Latham and Rook were getting into it with the Shimmerskin and, disappointingly, it did not seem that was as much one-way traffic as might have been hoped.

  Rook moved with that smooth, effortless grace that only came with being both very dead and also post Level 50. He didn’t dodge so much as wasn’t there when fists tried to meet his face, flowing around blows like he’d been poured into the air rather than walking through it. Latham, by contrast, fought like someone who had absolutely no intention of avoiding damage. Because what kind of Level ?? wuss tried to avoided damage? He took hits, shrugged them off, and kept coming, all raw, overwhelming force pressing upon the Shimmerskin with the relentless inevitability of a collapsing star.

  And yet, despite the fact that between them they had the speed, skill, and sheer unreasonableness to put most threats down in under a minute, their target was more than holding his own.

  More than that, Lowe thought from his semi-recumbent position, he actually appeared to be keeping them at bay.

  Every time Rook tried to grab him, the assassin’s arms just weren’t there anymore. Instead, they were replaced by something thinner, longer and eminently ungraspable. Every time Latham was poised to land a blow, his target was already morphing, muscle and bone shifting into something that could absorb the impact, and redirect the force of the strike away. And always just enough to stop it from doing any real damage.

  It looked to Lowe like his friends were fighting someone made of smoke, mirrors and silly putty.

  Latham, clearly fed up, activated something dramatic, and glowing alarmingly, drove a haymaker towards the Shimmerskin’s head. Lowe shuddered to think what would have happened should the blow have connected - they really did need this guy alive, after all. Instead, though, the man’s face just wasn’t there anymore as a thickly muscled arm, now twice the size it should have been, caught Latham’s wrist mid-swing and twisted. The crack of bone was enough to make Lowe wince. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone properly hurt Latham.

  At the same time, Rook—who had evidently decided that fair fights were for suckers—went for the legs, aiming to take their opponent off balance. Except, at that precise moment, the Shimmerskin didn’t have legs anymore. Not human ones, at least. And then he’d pivoted to move Latham in the way of the assault.

  There was a blur of movement, a thump, and then—

  Lowe blinked.

  Latham and Rook were sitting on the floor, both looking considerably worse for wear.

  And the Shimmerskin was still standing.

  Then he sighed. Clapped his hands together and then said. “Look, guys, shall we just take a beat for a moment? I think we’ve probably got some things to talk about.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  There were a few moments of silence.

  Lowe, still half-convinced that every single bone in his body was more of a suggestion than a working framework, looked at Latham. Latham looked at Rook. Rook looked back at Lowe. They all gave the smallest of nods. Finally, Lowe sighed, stood and dusted himself off.

  "I mean, sure," he said. "I think I speak for us all when I say we're open to a brief chat."

  ***

  Considering this was the second time in not really all that long at all that Drefleck had smashed Lowe to pieces against a wall, it was probably unsurprising he was finding it hard to warm to the assassin. Of course, as it looked like the Shimmerskin could probably kill them all if he had wanted, he didn’t think his personal seal of approval was going to be all that important in the grand scheme of things.

  “First things first, it’s important you know that none of this has been anything personal,” the Shimmerskin said.

  “Oh, that’s okay then. Sorry for taking offence at the, you know, consistent murder attempts. Now you’ve said ‘sorry’, I don’t know what I was thinking getting pissed about the whole thing!” Lowe really wasn’t feeling the love towards this guy.

  “Look, you can be as sniffy as you want, but a job’s a job. One of the first things you learn in this game is that you have to leave your morals at the door. Come on! It’s not like I’m the only one of us who sometimes gets given orders he’s not wild about. Your missus-” he jerked his head at Latham- “she’ll tell you the score.” he said to Latham.

  The Temple Warder was still sitting on the floor, looking more than usually furious. Lowe made a private note never to do anything to make Latham look at him like that. It wasn’t so much that he was giving a look that could kill as much as one that Lowe assumed would achieve a sizeable bloodline genocide. “You mention Hel again, and it’ll be the last thing you ever say.”

  Drefleck shrugged - which was weird as it wasn’t so much as his shoulders moved as the whole of his torso transformed until it was just a touch higher. This did not endear him to anyone else in the room. “As you wish. I’m just saying. Orders are orders. And contracts and contracts. I don’t want us to get off on the wrong foot, here. Everything that has happened has been strictly business.”

  “Well, while we’re being all magnanimous and shit,” Rook said, “I’m assuming we’re also ‘no harm, no fouling’ all of your mates we’ve fucked up over the last few days. Because, let me tell you, some of those bitches squealed as they died.”

  If Drefleck was bothered to hear about the violent demise of his squadmates, he didn’t show it. “No skin off my nose. And when a Shimmerskin says that, you can take it to the bank,” he smiled at that. “Which, now I think of it, is quite an unfortunate phrase considering how all this started. Look, right now, I’m up for a truce. My boys made our move, and it didn’t stick. As far as I’m concerned, turnaround is fair play. We took our shot, we missed, and you gave my guys a shellacking. That’s the way it goes.”

  “Well, that’s very fucking philanthropic of you,” Latham said.

  Drefleck made the strange shrugging gesture again. “It is what it is. Incidentally, the only body I’ve not been able to recover is Synchler. I don’t suppose . . .”

  “Dead,” Rook said.

  “You sure? You’d be surprised what a Shimmerskin can bounce back from.”

  “Trust us. That guy’s bouncing days are well and truly over.”

  There was a beat. “Fair enough. Shame, he was good.” Then his expression stuttered, flickering through a range of emotions like a deck of cards shuffled too fast - amusement, irritation, something like sorrow - Each belonged to a slightly different face, as if he hadn’t quite decided which version of himself was supposed to be here.

  “Okay, so here’s where we’re at,” Drefleck said, rocking back on his heels. “I’ve been paid a considerable sum of money to kill you.” He aimed a finger at Lowe, like a magician setting up the prestige. “Me and my boys have given it the old college try, but you’ve proved more than a little . . . resistant. Now, after I heard you’d walked away from being burned alive, I checked our contract, and I reckon you having some sort of bullshit resurrection Skill goes beyond the scope of the agreement. I did kill you, didn’t I?”

  Lowe couldn’t help but feel this was one of the strangest conversations he had ever been in. And he’d recently been in discussion with a god. “You did. Sorry it didn’t stick.”

  Drefleck waved the comment away. “Hey, not your fault. We each plough our own furrow, don’t we? But it is an interesting ethical point, is it not? At what stage can it be said we’ve fulfilled our professional responsibilities? We were paid to kill you, and you died. Some may consider that ‘job done.’”

  Latham stood, slowly, and Lowe could tell he activated all sorts of Skills as he did so. Apparently, Drefleck noticed it too as he triggered a bunch of his own in response. “Yeah, I’m not too interested in discussing the finer points of ethics. We done with all the chat, yet?”

  “Dial it down a notch, big guy. I said I wanted to talk, and I do.”

  “How about we restart the conversation with you spilling who paid you to kill Lowe?”

  “Nah, not that kind of chat,” Drefleck waggled a finger back and forth. The fact that it grew out of the centre of his forehead was neither here nor there. “My reputation can take the hit for not keeping you dead - as I say, I think as case can we made we’re owed 100% of our fee there - but not from telling tales out of school. I might not have much of a squad left right now, but considering how much we’ve been paid. I’m sure I can pick myself up and start again somewhere else. It’s not like my set of Skills are ever going out of fashion., is it? And, I’ll tell you what, it’s going to be a cold day in Arkola’s basement before we’re lured to work in Soar again.”

  “Okay. So if you’re not planning on telling us that, what is it you’re all so keen to share?”

  “Well, first of all, I’d like to share some thoughts I have over a certain job that went very, very south. And, in particular,” Drefleck looked down on the body of Morholt, “the wankers who apparently think we fucked the whole thing up and have witheld the final installment.”

  “Okay,” Rook said, also standing and taking - Lowe noticed - a position opposite Latham with Drefleck in between them. Lowe could be wrong, but he didn’t think Round 2 was going to go quite as well for the Shimmerskin as the first bout. “Well, that all sounds very interesting. And the second thing?”

  “Well, this is where I think you’re really going to want to chinwag. You see, I was wondering if either of you two had spoken to your . . . little ladies recently?”