Edgewise

27

They walked a path of blood and salt.

The clean up crew had their work cut out for them, though Lady Agatha's squad of alchemists hadn't ventured into the prison itself on grounds of self preservation. They suspected, rightly so, the cause of such carnage was present within the building.

The tavern master stared up at the rough hewn rock of the squat structure. Cesario informed him much of the prison was underground. The prison had the feel of a tomb. Death tangled with his senses. He tasted it on the air, heard it in the hungering silence that hovered over the whole area, the lull where heart beats once dragged, now dissipating ghosts.

"What have you brought to this world?" Mack shook his head.

He always considered the Edgewise's grasp on concepts like life and death tenuous at best. What could a tavern of limited sentience understand about the mortal condition? The Edgewise opened its door for those who needed it. It did not answer to morality. The tavern opened to villains and saints, hearts stained by wicked deeds, and souls of pure light. As long as the rules were followed, the Edgewise remained a neutral haven. That neutrality drew a certain type. Most patrons fell into a murky in-between.

However, those rules did not exist beyond the tavern's walls, and the Edgewise had used its influence to lead a monster to the back door of a vulnerable world. As if the Inquisitors and their ilk weren't bad enough for the denizens of Arden to contend with.

"The prison is rumored to have a staff of a dozen men," the enigmatic Yosepf remarked, expression concealed behind his elongated mask. "I wonder if I have enough supplies to transmute them all."

Mack shot him a speculative glance, wondering how helpful the alchemist would be in an actual fight.

"They can't all be dead," whispered Cesario. "Can they?" The Arden native was the most affected by the copious amounts of bloodshed, face pale and sweating from viewing the numerous piles of blood soaked salt. There would be no such filter in the prison.

Secretly, Mack had hoped it wouldn't come down to this, that the blasted vampire would snap out of it long before now, but it wasn't Eugene the Edgewise brought here. The Blood Prince was at the internal wheel, in all his violent glory. Mack owed it to Cesario to prepare her, and to be clear all the patrons had secrets.

"Yosepf, could you scout the surrounding ground and deter any curious passerby?" Mack waited for the man to fade into the shadows before he turned to the shivering woman in disguise. He sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets. "We need to talk, Lady Viola."

She froze at the name, her gaze shifting to glance at him from the corner of her eyes. "Taking the gloves off, tavern master?" Despite her apparent discomfort with the carnage, her voice was cool as she spoke.

"This is too important to keep them on," said Mack. He rolled his shoulders in a futile attempt to ease the tension between them. "How much do you know about the vampiric legion of Sanguinheim?"