Runeblade

"How the fuck did this happen?! Not only did you utterly fail in your duty to protect my compound against a pack of simple beasts, but you let a group of fucking children abscond with the contents of my vault?!"

Torin watched the vein on Old Yon's forehead throb in time with his tirade, on the verge of bursting. Shadowed by the low wardlights of the boss's bunker of ancient stone, it seemed to almost leap out of the man's head.

They were in one of Yon's backup bunkers, deep beneath Deadacre. The office was a meagre place, even by the standards of a man who was used to lurking in the shadows. A blocky room with a low hanging ceiling, fashioned by masonry blocks that had been weathered under the weight of millenia. It had been made…moderately habitable: wardlights had been secured to the ceiling, and it had been furnished serviceably — hells, someone had even made an attempt to sweep out the dust that had built up over the years of disuse.

Things must have gotten bad up top if they were down here — below even the sewers and waterways.

An explanation for the extent of Old Yon's fury — though it made it no less bearable.

Torin went back to eying the throbbing vein on Yon's forehead. If he was lucky, the boss's heart might just give out — it certainly would make his life a lot simpler.

Ignoring the pained throb in his ears, Torin eyed the overdressed fool next to him — hoping the man had the sense to let Yon's accusations lie. After a week of racing their way across the frontier, Conte no longer looked so put together: his silks were ruffled, stained, and torn, while his once perfectly manicured blonde hair hung in greasy streaks.

He suppressed a frown as Conte straightened — the idiot was going to respond. Did he not know that keeping quiet would end this whole charade a lot quicker?

Every day that passed he grew more and more tempted to leave: to vanish in the night and disappear into some eastern Dukedom city. Signing up to this shitshow had been the right call two years back, when it came with easy resources and safe jobs. It had been an easy decision — once he'd hit Silver, the opportunities for experience had become few and far between without committing to a delve. Only having the time to pursue a Silver beast once or twice a year wasn't so bad when leads came even less frequently. Now? Playing pet tracker to an Onyx reject was holding him back. He was a hunter, and with the phase-change his quarry had grown plentiful.

Right before his eyes, the final scraps of Conte's brain engaged — and came to the wrong decision. He bit his tongue. Sighing would only worsen what came next.

"Yon, those beasts were practically an army — there was no feasible way for us to defend the base!"

Old Yon stood perfectly still, his back straightening as he stared the former compound leader in the eye. Conte seemed to take the silence as an invitation to continue.

"As for that team…they must have had inside help. I can't think of any other explanation for how they escaped — they were under ward at all times. Besides that, we were given bad information — that kid and his pet killed half of the Silver retrieval team, and fought me and Torin to a standstill!"

Bastard needed to keep his name out of his damn mouth. Old Yon's focus shifted to him — he kept silent.

Everything the man said was true, but it was obvious that Yon did not care. Not right now.

The boss lost interest when he failed to rise to the bait, switching back to Conte.

"I do not care about how many beasts there were — I care that you are incompetent! They escaped under your watch; under your guard. If they were truly under a resource lock like you say, they would still be there. Those brats have my fucking vault! They've — you've — made an utter mockery of me!"

Old Yon seethed — his eyes flashing with an internal purple fire as one of his skills went to work. A moment later, the boss's mask returned — bulging eyes and tense jaw disappearing as he ran a hand through his thin hair.

Walking away from them, Yon took a seat behind his desk, calmly lying his hands atop it.

Torin knew he was still furious, the man looked ready to kill. Thankfully, his narrowed eyes weren't directed at him.

He tired of this song and dance. Yes, they had fucked up, they all knew it — but by the same hand both he and Conte were far too valuable to discard. They were also too strong to risk open confrontation with. Yon might have been a higher level, but he was still Silver, and his class was far less suited to open confrontation compared to their own.

"You do understand the position this puts me in — puts both of you in?"

Of course he did.

Men in their kind of work smelled weakness better than a hound on the trail of game. With the current turmoil, if a catastrophic failure like this got out, the boss was finished. Connections would cut ties, jobs would dry up, and any dream Yon might have had of working his way deeper into the web of favours and alliances that was the Onyx would vanish — let alone getting deep enough to catch a glimpse of the core powers looming at the centre of it.

Stolen story; please report.

Plus, they'd have a lot of people trying to kill the boss and anyone loyal to him. A man like him didn't end up in a city like this unless they were stepping out of the limelight to recover from some kind of catastrophic fuck up. No doubt another set-back would lead to all sorts of enemies crawling out of the shadows.

Yet another reason to go back to hunting — as if that freakish kid and his team wasn't enough. You didn't survive being a hunter unless you developed the instincts to pick out which beasts had bark and which had bite.

That kid had bite, and he'd bet his ass that both Conte and Old Yon were thoroughly underestimating the danger he represented. Especially with the guild backing him so thoroughly.

He really didn't get it. The whole reason that team had come to their attention in the first place was how fast they were growing! Did they really think that the Wall would slow them down all that much? No doubt they were already pushing as high as they could — it was the only thing that would save them from a repeat of the fate that had almost befallen them.

Conte, in his infinite wisdom, chose to keep talking. Unbelievable.

"One of them was hit by your tracking curse, I'm almost certain of it. This is still solvable — all we need are enough men."

The boss looked like he was going to choke — hopefully he did.

"You mean this?" Old Yon reached into his coat and slammed a disk of gold-wrapped crystal on the table. It pulsed an even white.

Fantastic — the brats had fled into a delve. Probably the hill entrance a league north of the compound. It was the easiest to stumble across, and they were more than strong enough to survive the fifteenth layer. No doubt they were pushing down as fast as they could, snatching levels all the while — it's what he would do.

Old Yon stared at Conte like he was half a second from diving over his desk and throttling the Silver with both hands, "Do you see a bearing?!"

The boss cut Conte off before he could respond. "No! You don't! Do you want to know why? Because they're in the Depths, and tracking a mana signature through that dimensional warren is all but fucking impossible! Thanks to the fact my own resident pair of cowards failed to even track them to the entrance they took, we can't even follow them physically!"

Gods, he needed a drink. He really should have killed Conte and fled when he had the chance. Returning back here was stupid — especially because the slimy bastard next to him was no doubt going to mention his lapse of judgement the second he had some time alone.

This was going nowhere — he needed to step in.

"They probably took the hillside entrance — it's visible for a league and a straight shot from the compound," he offered, drawing a glare from his audience. "It's also the closest by far that is a reasonable level of safety for them. If the guildmaster has been asking around the guard like you say, it's likely they're trying to get as close to the city as possible. No doubt they think they'll be safe under Rieker's protection — a correct assumption."

"We're fucked if this gets out, so you may as well pull on the favours and network you have to pull in as many Silvers as you can — as soon as we get a signal, we jump them."

And he would hopefully be long gone by that point, though he left that part out.

Old Yon still looked like he was on the verge of physically bursting, but he didn't look any more pissed off, so that was a good sign.

"You think I don't know that? I already have men in mind. You best hope we succeed, because if my enemies don't kill you? I will."

Well, the boss could certainly fucking try. He smiled.

"Of course, sir." Conte replied.

Coward.

"Sir! Sir!" someone yelled, racing straight into the office without knocking.

Gods' scorn, that wasn't good. Torin spun, finding a pale faced grunt bent over sweating as he tried to marshal the breath to speak under the glares of three Silvers. A gaggle of men stood out in the hall, not daring to step forwards as they lurked with their weapons drawn — waiting for direction.

Ah fuck.

"What!"

The grunt withered under Old Yon's fury.

"I…It's the Guild! They've got Iron and Steel teams surrounding every entrance to the tunnels! We're trying to hold them off, but the Steels are pushing through — here and the other two safe houses!"

A sharp crack filled the room as Old Yon slammed his fist onto his desk, cracking the thick hardwood. "Fuck!"

Torin tapped his hands over his sheathed short-swords and belt pouches, everything was still there — he was good to go.

The boss met his and Conte's eyes. "We kill our way out and go to ground — this is still salvageable if we kill those bloody bastard kids when they leave that delve!"

"Sir!" The grunt somehow found the balls to interject.

"What?!" Old Yon was already moving around the room, emptying his desk and shelves into his storage ring.

"I wasn't finished — Rieker and Ro are here too! They've got Bronwyn and his team with them, they've already hit the middle checkpoint — it's like they've got a bloody map! What do we do?"

A map? Bloody demon balls, they'd been had. No way was he fighting those psychotic bastards — he'd be pasted. Should have fucking bailed — teach him to ignore his gut.

He watched the boss closely, hoping that the paranoid bastard had yet another trick up his sleeve.

Old Yon froze. A moment later he lashed towards the grunt who was still waiting for direction by the door. A razor thin wire of purple energy brushed the man from crown to groin. The grunt stiffened, a line of blood welling up on his skin as his clothes split cleanly. Curling to Yon's direction, the wire snaked around the lip of the door.

The boss clenched his fist, slamming the door on the bisected corpse. Torin only caught a glimpse of the other men fleeing in confused terror.

"Bit much, wasn't it?" he could help but ask, cocking a brow.

Old Yon scowled, his eyes glowing purple as a hundred different cost calculations and judgements were weighed up in his mind. He blinked, the light disappearing.

"We're leaving, this network is burned."

Hurrying to the wall behind him, the boss pressed on a block in the masonry wall. A low grind filled the room as a section of wall turned inwards.

Torin grinned — 'course the bastard found a hidden door and built an office around it.

"Come — I've a bunker to the south, we can gather the men we need there."