Ace scoffed, nudging the groaning form of Reulog with her foot. "Pathetic. All that talk, and he goes down like a sack of rocks." She turned her full attention back to Maya, her harsh expression melting away into one of gruff's concerns. "Alright, bunny, up you get."
She extended a hand, her grip surprisingly firm as she hauled Maya to her feet. Maya stumbled slightly, but Ace steadied her with a hand on her shoulder.
"You're not hurt, are you?" Ace asked, her voice low.
Maya shook her head, wincing as she touched the tender skin on her chin. "Just my pride. And my glasses... I think they got bent." She took them off, frowning at the crooked frame.
Without a word, Ace took the glasses from her. With delicate, unexpected precision, her fingers—moments ago, a weapon of brutal efficiency—gently manipulated the thin metal. A few expert twists and a slight bend, and she handed them back. "There. Good as new."
Maya put them on, the world snapping back into perfect focus. "Thanks, Ace." She quickly scurried over to where her staff had fallen, snatching it up and clutching it like a lifeline. But her eyes were drawn to the other object on the ground—the deactivated Aurora Lance. Hesitantly, she reached down and picked it up. The weapon was surprisingly light, the crystal-laced alloy cool and smooth against her palms.
"I've been reading Master's books about the Aurora weapons," Maya breathed, her voice filled with academic awe as she turned the rifle over in her hands. Her fingers traced the seamless design, the synthetic leather grip, and the series of quartz focusing rings that made up the barrel. "But to think I get to see one of them in person... Master's gonna love this!"
Ace's head snapped up, her ears twitching. "Wait, you've been sneaking into her room and reading those forbidden books?" A slow, wicked grin spread across her face. "Oh, she's definitely going to kick your ass."
Maya's cheeks flushed. "They're not 'forbidden'! They're 'restricted! There's a difference! And it's for research! How else am I supposed to learn about advanced energy manipulation and crystalline focusing matrices?"
"By not getting your head blown off by a grumpy bandit, for starters," Ace retorted, but her tone was more amused than angry. She gestured with her chin towards the still-moaning Reulog, who was now propping himself up against a nearby tree. "Let's see what this loser has to say."
As they approached, Reulog's eyes, narrowed with pain and hatred, darted between them. He saw Maya holding his precious lance, and a fresh wave of rage seemed to give him a surge of strength. With a guttural roar, he pushed himself off the tree, lunging not at Maya, but at Ace, his hands clawed and aiming for her throat.
He didn't get two inches.
There was a blur of motion, a steely shiiing of metal leaving a sheath, and then the world froze. Reulog found himself staring down the length of a razor-sharp katana, its tip pressed firmly against the cartilage of his throat. Ace hadn't even moved her feet; she'd simply drawn and extended her arm in one fluid, terrifyingly fast motion.
"Try that again," she whispered, her voice dangerously low, "and I'll add a second smile to your neck."
Reulog froze, his hands slowly raising in surrender. He swallowed hard, the movement of his throat pressing against the cold steel. "You... you wouldn't."
"I've already kicked you into next week," Ace said, her red auroral energy beginning to flicker around her again. "Don't test my patience. Talk. Who are you working for?"
His eyes flickered to Maya, then back to Ace, and a spiteful, defiant sneer twisted his lips. "Working for? I don't answer to a pair of females. A pointy-eared fox and a fluffy-tailed bunny. Go back to the kitchen where you belong."
Ace's katana tip pressed a fraction deeper, drawing a single bead of blood. "I can make this very, very painful. Your choice."
But Maya stepped forward, her brow furrowed in thought, completely ignoring his sexist taunts. She held up the Aurora Lance. "No, wait. Ace, look at this." She pointed to the emblem on the weapon. "The eight-pointed star... it's not just a design. It's the Astral Port, the focal point. This is master-crafted work."
She turned her sharp, analytical gaze back to Reulog. "My question is, how does a low-life bandit like you get possession of one of the most powerful weapons ever forged? These aren't sold on the black market. They're issued exclusively to high-ranking military officers, noble houses, or royal guards. You're none of those things. So who gave it to you?"
A slow, disgusting smirk spread across Reulog's face, a flicker of cruel pride in his eyes despite the katana at his throat. He seemed to draw strength from their confusion. "A gift," he sneered, his voice a low, guttural rasp. "From a king. His Majesty, King Astambert himself. He gives these out to men who can get a job done. A job like hunting down filthy demi-humans and bringing them in."
As the words left his mouth, something inside Ace snapped. The world around her seemed to fall away, the rocky ground and the wounded bandit dissolving into a haze of red. The smell of smoke filled her nostrils—the acrid scent of burning wood and thatch. She heard screams, the clash of steel, and the cruel, triumphant shouts of knights in polished armor. She saw it all again: her village in flames, the homes of her friends and family collapsing into embers. She saw them being dragged away in chains—men, women, children... her own mother and father, their faces masks of terror, calling her name as she hid, frozen with fear.
The katana in her hand trembled, not with weakness, but with a barely contained, volcanic rage. The red auroral energy around her exploded from a faint shimmer into a violent, crackling aura.
"You're one of those bastards," she snarled, her voice no longer just angry but filled with a raw, seething hatred that made Reulog's smirk falter. "Just where are you taking them?!"
Reulog flinched back from the sheer force of her aura, his bravado finally cracking. "Hey, back off! I don't know much!" he stammered, his eyes wide with a new kind of fear. "I'm just a hired sword! A bandit! They pay me to capture the demi-humans I find and deliver them to a drop-off point. That's all I know!"
Maya, clutching her staff, stepped closer, her mind racing. "What? Why? Why would the king do this?" Her voice was sharp, demanding answers. "And you're talking as if he isn't the only one. Who else is involved in this... operation?"
"I don't know their names!" Reulog insisted, sweating profusely. "I just heard whispers from one of the nobles who hired me. He said... he said the king's in debt. Deep. This is how he's paying it back. He's allowing some powerful faction to forcefully capture demi-humans from his own lands."
Maya's blood ran cold. "Experimented on? Turning them into their 'actual form'? What does that even mean?"
"How should I know?" Reulog spat, though there was a tremor in his voice. "Something about a mad scientist... a sicko who gets a kick out of it. He takes them, breaks them, and turns them into mindless, rampaging beasts. Full-on monsters. That's the rumor, anyway." He looked between the two of them, a flicker of his old cruelty returning. "And if you're thinking of playing hero and saving them, you're next. They'll capture you, too. Who knows what they'll do to a smart-ass bunny and a fox girl with a temper. It's probably worse than death."
The threat hung in the air, but it was like throwing oil on a fire. Ace's rage condensed into something cold, hard, and deadly. The crackling energy around her stabilized, becoming a silent, ominous halo of crimson light. A humorless, terrifying smile touched her lips.
"We've been trained by one of the strongest demi-humans to ever walk this continent," Ace said, her voice dropping to a low, chilling whisper. She leaned in slightly, the tip of her katana still kissing his throat. "Our Master taught us how to fight monsters, how to hunt beasts, and how to make men like you beg for a mercy you'll never receive."
Her eyes burned into his, promising a world of pain. "So let me be perfectly clear. You, Dhaangø is going to tell us everything. Every name, every location, every detail you've overheard. Because if you don't, I won't kill you. I'll hurt you. I'll break you piece by piece until you're begging me to end it. And then... then I'll deliver what's left of you to this 'mad scientist' as a gift. Do you understand me?"
The sheer, unadulterated malice in Ace's voice was a physical force. Reulog's bravado evaporated like mist in a gale. A violent shudder wracked his body, and he audibly gulped, the sound loud in the tense silence. The cold steel at his throat and the promise in the kitsune's eyes broke him completely.
"Okay! Okay, I'll talk!" he babbled, his words tumbling over each other in a panicked rush. "The king! King Astambert, the 32nd! He's in deep debt to another kingdom, I don't know which one! He's selling his own people to pay it off! That's all I know, I swear!"
Ace's katana didn't waver. "Where. Are. They. Taking them?"
"West!" he cried out, tears of terror and pain welling in his eyes. "They're taking them west! I don't know the exact location, just the general direction! The drop-off is always west of here! The king is in his castle at Shenthari, that's the capital city! We're in Astambert's country, in the Mystshire forest. Shenthari is at least a week's hard ride from here, maybe more through this terrain!"
Maya's mind worked furiously, processing the information. A week's ride... they were deep within the king's territory, and he was cleansing it of their kind right under their noses.
Ace's gaze remained locked on Reulog, but she addressed Maya without looking away. "Shenthari. We have a destination."
But Maya's attention had shifted back to the weapon in her hands and then to Reulog himself. A frown creased her brow. "Wait a minute. There's a problem here." She looked from the inert Aurora Lance to the trembling bandit. "Earlier, you mentioned someone craved your core open and wired this straight into you. These weapons don't work for just anyone. They require a user's own Auroral Energy to power them. You... you clearly don't have any." She gestured with her staff at his pathetic form. "You're just a brute, a reject."
Reulog, seeing a chance to regain a sliver of pride, managed a weak, bloody smirk. He shifted, and for the first time, they saw it. Beneath his torn shirt, his skin was a canvas of horror. Faint, sickly green veins spiderwebbed across his chest and neck, pulsing with a faint, unnatural light. His flesh looked necrotic, dead, yet he was moving, breathing.
"The mad scientist... he fixed me," Reulog rasped, a twisted sense of accomplishment in his voice. "He said I was a perfect specimen. He gave me a... a modification. Now I can use it. I don't need your fancy 'energy'." His eyes gleamed with a disturbing light. "I used it, too. One of those furry cat-demi's tried to fight back. Put up a real struggle. I turned the lance on full power and... poof. Nothing but ash and a scream. It was beautiful."
The casual, boastful cruelty of his words landed like a physical blow. The last vestiges of pity or restraint in both Ace and Maya curdled into pure disgust. He wasn't just a bandit or a thug; he was a corrupted abomination, a walking corpse who reveled in the power given to him by the very people destroying his own kind. He enjoyed killing. He was proud of it.
Maya looked down at him, her expression cold and hard as stone. "He's a monster."
Ace's voice was a low growl. "Less than a monster. He's what's left when you gut a man and leave nothing but rot."
Maya turned to her friend, and her staff held loosely at her side. "Well... we have everything we need from him. So what should we do with him?"
A slow, sharp, predatory smile spread across Ace's face. It was not a friendly smile. "Oh, I know just the thing."
A few minutes later, the situation had changed dramatically. Reulog was no longer leaning against the tree; he was tied securely to it, ropes binding his wrists and ankles to the rough bark. His clothes lay in tattered strips on the grass around him. All that remained were his dirty, worn-out panties. He shivered, less from cold and more from utter humiliation and rage.
Ace stood back, admiring her handiwork with her arms crossed. "And that," she declared, "is what you get for being a sexist, perverted sack of shit."
Maya stepped forward, a curious, analytical look on her face. She leaned down, peering intently at Reulog's exposed crotch. She tilted her head, her glasses sliding down her nose slightly. After a long, silent moment of scrutiny, she stood back up and looked at Ace, her expression perfectly deadpan.
"You know," Maya said conversationally, "for all his big talk and that big weapon... it's surprisingly... proportional."
Ace barked out a laugh, a genuine, sharp sound that broke the tension. "Maya! That's cold!"
"What?" Maya replied with an innocent shrug, though a mischievous glint in her eye betrayed her. "I'm just making a scientific observation. It's a wonder he could even stand up straight with so little to work with."
Reulog let out a muffled, furious scream against his gag, thrashing uselessly against the ropes.
Ace shook her head, her smile fading as she looked towards the west towards Shenthari. "You know," she said quietly, "your father is going to have a heart attack when he finds out we went after this."
Maya sighed, leaning her staff against her shoulder. "He's such an overprotective worrywart. He acts like he wants to keep us in a cage at home, as if we're helpless."
Ace snorted, kicking a loose stone. "He knows damn well we're capable. He's seen us train. He knows we can handle ourselves, that we're stronger together. He just hates that there's a world out there that needs us to fight."
Maya nodded, her own gaze turning hard and determined as she looked west. "Then let's go show that world, and that debt-ridden king, just what we can handle."