Page 5

Sidus

YVESWICH, STATE OF KER

Roman Devlin’s equivalent to counting sheep was counting rabbits. Not the kind you bought from a pet store or chased out of your vegetable garden with a broom.

These rabbits were Darkslaying messengers. According to old stories, the first person to seek out a hellseher and hire them for a job wore a rabbit mask to hide their identity. The masks had instantly caught on, and soon the tradition had spread to every corner of Terra.

Here in Yveswich, there were more messengers than the local Darkslayers could keep up with. Endless messengers touting endless Darkslaying jobs in exchange for endless money, and still the city’s crime level was at an all-time high.

While most people considered this a problem in immediate need of fixing, Darkslayers like Roman saw it as a good thing. More crime meant more money, more ways of entertaining his overactive mind. More ways of staying sane—or as close to sane as a person like Roman ‘Shadows’ Devlin could get.

“Twenty-two…,” Roman murmured. He sat on the edge of the rooftop of the Onyx Skull, a nightclub with the best strippers in the city, his eyes shining with the black of the Sight as he scanned the district far below the soles of his dangling feet. This here was a Gray Zone—a section of the city owned and operated by the members of the Hollow. “Twenty-three…”

The rabbit masks in Yveswich were black instead of the white commonly found in other cities. The masks owed their dark shade to the rare material from which they were crafted, the magic in the masks allowing them to be seen with a hellseher’s Sight. Inanimate objects didn’t typically show up in a hellseher’s vision—not unless they had some form of energy running through them, or were in contact with something that did, something that contained enough energy to spread beyond itself. Clothes were a good example; no matter how bright or strong the aura of the person who wore them, Roman never could see clothes.

He studied one of the masks now, watching the way the messenger’s aura threaded through the material in bands of dull color. This messenger moved with apprehension—new to the job, probably. She walked the shadowed streets roughly four blocks from here, hoping for a Darkslayer to seek her out and accept the job she had to offer.

A different one caught Roman’s eye, this one ducking in and out of buildings farther north. She passed under a mercury vapor street light, her mask reflecting green.

“Twenty-four…”

Roman knew it was a strange way to relax: counting rabbits on the rooftop of a nightclub, music thumping at his back. But he was strange, and so he did strange things.

The door that led into the club clanged open behind him, setting free the clamor of drunken voices, blaring song lyrics, and clinking glasses.

“There’s a messenger here to see you,” came a male voice.

How bold.

Roman kept his focus on the glimmering streets below. Twenty-five… Twenty-six…

The tangled streets of Yveswich were old and narrow, some of them seeming to meander without direction. In all its years since the city had been built, very little pavement had replaced the cobbles, and most of the buildings were so ancient they seemed to lean toward each other, gossiping about centuries past. The city had been built on sharply elevated terrain, and there was an abundance of waterfalls, the rapids draining into canals that bled into the nearby ocean. The waterfalls brought in droves of starry-eyed tourists year-round—thousands of souls foaming at the mouth for a glimpse of the unmatched beauty of the rapids.

The locals were smart enough not to fall for that trap. More waterfalls meant more Hounds—more monsters in general. And more monsters meant higher death tolls.

Tourists made up most of those deaths.

“Have Kylar take care of it,” Roman clipped.

“She said her boss asked specifically for you.”

Roman turned to look at Otto. He was a hellseher and a member of the Hollow, someone who assisted the Shadowmasters in running the Gray districts and the many businesses within. “Who is she? You seen her around before?”

Otto shook his head. “Probably another new hire.”

Not surprising. With too many messengers and not enough Darkslayers, the competition often led to an influx of turnovers. And, thanks to the turnovers, a lot of newbies toed the line of disrespect when interacting with Darkslayers, desperate to earn a job for their bosses so they could see a cut of that wealth.

No one had ever dared toe that line with Roman.

He got to his feet. The act of turning his back on the sheer drop to the street below sent a thrill of excitement up his spine. Maybe tomorrow he’d find a building to jump off of—one high enough to feed his appetite for adrenaline, but not quite high enough to kill him.

It was always the jumps that teetered on the brink of life and death that gave him the most satisfying rush.

Otto held the door open for him.

“Where?” Roman demanded as he descended the stairwell. Voices and music swelled to a cacophony, swallowing up the pounding of his charcoal combat boots.

“By the bar.” The door clanged shut as Otto followed behind him. “I told her to wait by the Hollow Eyes sign.”