Chapter 7, The Vel’Rasa Order
The wooden doors thudded shut behind us, the noise rolling through the plaza like a dying heartbeat. The torches outside spat sparks against the cavern draft, their light carving harsh amber lines across the boards of the barn and the faces of the guards posted around it. They stood stiffly at their posts, pretending not to have heard a single word spoken inside, pretending none of their tails had twitched when Master had walked past them, pretending they were made of discipline instead of instinct.
Master stepped a few paces into the open space, the murmur of the Maw Market drifting toward us like a half-drunk lullaby of danger and commerce. I watched the way his shoulders rose and fell, controlled, deliberate, the rhythm of a man who’d already put Kaelenna behind him the moment he crossed the doorway.
Then he sighed.
He leaned one hand against the barn wall, boots set wide on the packed cavern soil, head angled low in that noir way he slipped into like it was a second skin made of disappointment. The posted guard beside us stiffened, eyes darting to him, tail curling down as if she sensed the weight of whatever was about to come out of his mouth.
Master spoke without looking at her. Without looking at me. Without needing to look at anything. “She knows nothing,” he muttered, voice low and dry as dust on a corpse. “Everyone in there is sniffing around in the dark, hoping the shadows answer back. But shadows don’t talk. They just swallow fools whole.” He exhaled once, slow, bitter. “Animals are useless in this sort of game. They react. They don’t think. They wait to be told where the danger is, and by the time they see it, it’s already got its teeth in their throat.”
The guard swallowed hard.
My tail slid instantly back around Master’s thigh, tightening like a living chain, muscles coiling with possessive electricity that hissed up my spine. I stepped closer, brushing my shoulder against his arm, claws scraping the barn wall behind him with a long, deliberate drag. I wanted the guard to hear it. To feel it in her bones. To understand the difference between what he meant and what I would allow.
Master’s cynicism curled through the air like cold smoke, bitter and sharp, and it made something in my chest grow hot and hungry. I turned my gaze toward the guard, pupils narrowing to predatory slits. “Careful,” I purred, voice low, dripping with the kind of threat that sounded like affection only if you’d lost your mind the way I did. “He wasn’t talking about me.”
The guard’s ears flattened so quickly she nearly lost balance. Good. The cavern around us breathed with tension, distant Ren voices arguing, dwarfs haggling over metal scraps in Embercrack green, merchants shouting half-heartedly across the stalls, everyone pretending this was a marketplace instead of a battlefield waiting for the wrong whisper.
I curled closer to Master, pressing my forehead briefly against his arm, tail tightening enough to make my muscles shiver. “She doesn’t know anything,” I said quietly, voice shifting into something darker, velvet-thin and razor-backed. “Kaelenna’s blind in her own den."
I inhaled through my nose, scenting the market, the guards, the barn, the trails of stress and fear still clinging to the wood. “We’ll find who,” I whispered. “And then I’ll tear out their spine for making Master waste his time".
The words then slipped from his mouth, “Good kitten.” Good Kitten ?
It hit me harder than any spearpoint. My spine arched in a sharp pulse, ears flicking up before I could stop them, tail tightening round his thigh like instinct had hijacked muscle. A warm, electric shiver crawled beneath my skin as if every nerve had been waiting for that single scrap of praise. I leaned closer, chasing his scent, ready to coil myself entirely around him and never let him move again.
But he didn’t stay still. He didn’t linger. He didn’t give me direction or explanation or even the grace of a backward glance. He just turned. And walked. Straight past the guard, past the market noise, past the torches spitting against cavern wind, his boots striking the stone with that cold, noir certainty that said he’d made up his mind three steps before anyone else even realised there was a choice to make. No inn. No discussion. No warning. Just motion.
The guard beside us stiffened as he brushed past her, her ears shooting straight up, tail curling forward with startled instinct. She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was watching me. She should. Because for half a heartbeat… I froze. Not out of fear. Not out of confusion. Out of something deeper. Something primal.
The bond tugged hard as he crossed the plaza, dragging me with it like a hook lodged deep inside my ribs. Panic flickered at the edges of my vision. Not panic that he’d leave me. Never that. Panic that the distance grew, inch by inch, enough to light that instinct of abandonment that lived in my bones like a disease.
He didn’t tell me where he was going. He didn’t have to. But he didn’t look at me. And that, that BURNED. My claws dragged a long line down the wooden wall, not even trying to hide the snarl curling up my throat. The guard jumped back so fast she nearly dropped her spear.
“Move,” I hissed, stepping off the wall, tail already snapping behind me like a whip made of wire. “Unless you want to explain to your High Watcher why you were the last thing between me and him.”
The market stretched ahead, torches reflecting off damp stone, voices rising in cautious tension as Ren and Embercrack traders eyed each other across crude stalls. Smoke drifted low. Fish stench coiled with hot metal. Old hunting rites from the Vel’Rasa Order echoed faintly from deeper tunnels, the scent of blood-offerings still lingering like iron incense.
He walked straight into it. Into their territory within the fishing district. He didn’t even check if I followed. He didn’t need to. I launched after him with a burst of movement sharp enough to startle two passing travellers, my tail slicing the air as I closed the distance in rapid, hungry strides. My claws clicked every few steps, a warning, a promise, a declaration.
He didn’t tell me where he was going. But I knew. I always knew...
Master moved like a man walking toward a crime scene he’d already solved, pacing the same path he once carved in blood and smoke. He moved toward the scent of old violence, toward the district where he’d broken a gang leader in front of his own men, toward the memory of the massacre we’d wrought together. And I followed, the eternal shadow at his heel, breath syncing with his, heart pounding in that familiar, obsessive rhythm.
If he wanted the fishing district, I would burn the entire Maw Mine to escort him. If he wanted the Crimson Swarm, I would tear through every Vel’Rasa zealot and Ren butcher until he had his answer. If he wanted nothing but a walk through blood-soaked streets, then I would walk behind him like ruin incarnate.
The fishing district’s church still smelled like blood even though the stone had been scrubbed until it nearly bled itself. The Maw never forgets violence. It absorbs it. Stores it. Whispers it back through the cracks.
Master stepped in first, boots brushing dust from the old ritual floor tiles. The Vel’Rasa church had always been a bastard thing, half shrine, half slaughterhouse. Rusted chains hung from beams where initiates once dangled in the dark to “confront fear.” Deep pits in the floor still held old scorch marks from the oil-soaked offerings flung into the abyss. Candles were lit in uneven rows, offering flickering light to a deity who valued pain more than prayer.
The air carried the coppery tang of sacrifices long gone, soaked into the grain of the wood. The worshippers had scurried deeper into Embercrack tunnels when rumours spread that he had returned. They feared Master in a ceremonial, respectful way.
They feared me in a holy way. One of the altar drapes still bore claw marks. Mine. Deep, parallel, vicious. A reminder of the night their priest made the mistake of laying a hand near Master’s jawline as if he had the right to touch a god’s chosen.
The moment we stepped inside, my lungs tightened around a memory. My portrait waited on the wall. It was larger than I remembered. A painted mural spanning nearly the full height of the church’s right side, lit by oil lamps that haloed it in amber glow. They called it "The Beast". They had painted my ears up, tail coiled in an arc of violence, eyes wide with that manic, cold devotion I’d felt the moment I saw the priest reach for Master. The painter had captured the exact second the spear thrust through his throat, my grin, stretched sharp and cruel, my claws dripping, the priest’s expression frozen between shock and reverence.
The congregation had screamed. Then they had bowed. Vel’Rasa teaches one truth, the strong hunt, the weak are blessed in death. When I killed him, they didn’t mourn. They elevated me. A new beast in their pantheon. A living proof of Vel’Rasa’s law.
My tail coiled itself round Master’s thigh before I even realised I’d moved. Not in fear. In pride. In possessiveness. In the deep animal certainty that this building was mine because he had walked into it. The mural stared back at me in the half-light, and something inside me shivered, a darker echo of memory. I stepped closer to him, claws clicking softly against the stone. “They worshipped me after that day,” I murmured, voice low, humming with a twisted joy. “They saw me spill his blood for daring to touch you. In their faith, that made me divine.”
Master remained silent, gaze sweeping the church with that noir detective calm that made even holy places feel like crime scenes he’d already solved. Dust motes drifted through the shafts of lamplight crossing his face.
The moment Master moved, the air in the church snapped tight like a snare trap closing. He crossed the floor in that cold, efficient stride of his, the kind that made everyone in the room either freeze or flinch. The faint shuffle I’d heard hiding behind a pillar became a trembling silhouette, trying to melt into the shadows.
Master didn’t give him the chance. He lunged, hand already reaching to seize the stranger by the collar and slam him into the wall with that brutal, noir certainty that turned violence into punctuation.
Master’s Attack Roll, NATURAL 1
The world held its breath. And the entire scene shattered. Master’s boot slipped on the thin layer of soot and old wax lining the church floor. The man jerked sideways in panic. Master’s hand missed his collar by inches, pure chaos, no grace, the kind of failure that never belonged to him but decided to strike now, in the most insultingly inconvenient fashion possible.
He stumbled a half-step forward. His shoulder bumped the wall instead of the man’s skull. A tiny cloud of dust puffed off the wood where he hit it. And the terrified Vel’Rasa worshipper squeaked, tripped over his own feet, and fell backwards onto the floor in a messy heap of limbs and fear.
Silence rang. Then my entire spine arched. A laugh ripped out of me, manic, high, wicked, so sharp it echoed off the rafters like a blade scraping stone. My tail snapped with such force it thumped Master’s thigh, wrapping him tighter, claws digging into the boards as I doubled over in feral delight. “Master,” I gasped between wheezing, hysterical breaths, “you tried to throw him at the wall and you threw yourself instead…” My ears went flat then forward then flat again, laughing so hard my tail fluffed itself out like a mad creature.
His words slipped into me like a command carved into bone. “Be a good pet and pounce.” Calm. Effortless. As if he hadn’t just slipped, as if the world hadn’t just watched him miss the man by a hair. As if I was the one who needed to make the universe remember who owned this place.
Everything inside me snapped taut. My tail tightened around his thigh with a sharp, involuntary jerk, muscles humming, claws flexing against the stone as every instinct roared awake at once. My ears flicked forward, pupils narrowing to predatory slits, breath catching in that hot, trembling way that always hit when he used that tone. Not mocking. Not irritated. Just certain. Certain that I would obey. Certain that I would kill for him. Certain that I was his.
The terrified worshipper hadn’t even made it fully to his feet. He was scrambling backward, hands slipping on old wax, eyes wide in the half light as he looked between Master and me like he’d walked into the maw of something with too many teeth.
I didn’t give him time to scream.
Aliza's Attack Roll, 17 + 6 = 23
I didn’t need to think. I just moved. One heartbeat I was coiled around Master’s thigh, the next I exploded forward with all the violent grace of a huntress who’d tasted blood once and never forgot the flavour. My claws dug into the stone as I launched off, tail slicing the air behind me like a whip.
The man yelped Too slow. Too weak. Too prey. I slammed into him mid-scramble with a snarl that tore itself out of my throat in a manic, delighted rasp, sending him crashing back into the prayer rail with a wooden crack that echoed through the hollow church. My knees pinned his arms. My claws pinned his shirt. My breath hit his face in hot, wild bursts.
He whimpered. I leaned down, fangs grazing the shell of his ear. He shook his head violently, words spilling out in panicked, broken pieces. I pressed a claw to his cheek, just enough to let a thin bead of blood bloom. A mark. A reminder. “Master told me to pounce.”
My head snapped back toward the doorway where Master stood framed in the dim light, his coat still settling from the movement, his silhouette carved in noir shadows across the wall. My tail curled, twitching once, a proud little flare of obedience. “I AM A VERY GOOD PET” I purred, voice dripping with equal parts devotion and threat.
Master’s footsteps crossed the stone like a slow, inevitable execution drum. The man beneath me felt them too, his trembling changed shape, from prey-panic to something deeper. Something closer to despair. He didn’t even try to fight. Didn’t try to speak. He just lay there pinned under my claws, shaking like a creature already halfway dead.
Master came to stand over us. No words. No questions. No lecture. He just raised his fist and brought it down.
The first punch cracked across the man’s cheek with the sound of bone remembering it was breakable. His head snapped sideways against the prayer rail, blood spraying in a thin arc across the old Vel’Rasa carvings.
The second punch hit harder, a dull, wet thud, and his mouth split open, teeth clattering against stone. My claws flexed, pinning him in place for Master, tail tightening round my own thigh in a trembling shiver at the raw inevitability of it.
The third punch was slower, but crueler. A deliberate drive straight into the man’s nose. Cartilage crunched. Blood poured in a widening bloom across the floor. His breath wheezed through shattered passages, half-gurgling, half-pleading.
Master didn’t stop.
He didn’t even breathe differently. His knuckles rose and fell with that same noir rhythm the cold precision of someone who’d walked through far worse scenes and left colder bodies behind. Every strike said the same thing:
You don’t get a reason. You don’t get an explanation. You get pain because I decided you will.
The man choked something like a word, or maybe just a sob, but Master didn’t give him space to form it.
I felt heat blooming inside my chest, pulsing through my tail until it writhed behind me like a living thing. My breath grew short, sharp, hungry at the sight of Master’s fist descending again and again, chewing the man’s face into something unrecognisable.
No questions. No demands. Just punishment. Just him. By the fifth or sixth punch, the man’s arms had stopped twitching under me. His breath hitched in thin, whimpering bursts that sounded more like a frightened animal than anything human.
Master’s fist rose again, blood dripping from his knuckles, and I leaned forward, nose brushing his wrist as it passed. My voice came out a soft, trembling purr with an edge of razor wire. “You haven’t even told him what he did wrong, Master,” I whispered, licking a speck of blood off my lip. “And that’s the part that scares him the most.” I tilted my head, smiling with a manic gleam as Master’s fist came down once more. “And I adore you for it.”
Suddenly Masters nose touched mine... a simple contact, soft, almost gentle, absurdly intimate in a place meant for worship and slaughter, and my entire body reacted as if struck by lightning. My tail slammed the ground. Once. Twice. Three times.
Each thump echoed through the church’s hollow ribs, vibrating the floorboards, rattling old offering bowls, making dust shiver from the rafters. It wasn’t controlled. It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t even remotely civilised. It was instinct fired straight from my bones. Possession. Heat. Pleasure. A violent, wordless declaration.
MINE, MINE, MINE
My breath hitched against his mouth, sharp and trembling, and my claws dug deeper into the stone on either side of the half-conscious man’s shoulders. My body arched toward his, tail smacking the ground harder each pulse of the bond, each heartbeat syncing with his, each inch of fur standing on end like the entire world narrowed to the point where his nose touched mine.
The man beneath me whimpered, not at pain now, but at the terrifying intimacy he was witnessing. The way a wild creature melts under its master’s touch. The way my eyes locked onto his with a feverish, feral devotion that burned hotter than any torch in the room.
His scent wrapped around me, thick and electric. My ears folded forward, desperate. My tail thrashed again, a violent rhythm tapping the floor like a war drum beating from inside my chest. I didn’t blink. I didn’t breathe right. I didn’t think.
I just leaned harder into his nose, inhaling his scent like it was the only thing I needed, pressing it against him like some wild, feral thing.
“MINE”
Master pulled away from me so abruptly it felt like claws raked through my chest from the inside out. The warmth, the contact, the dizzy hot pulse of him against me, all snapped like a rope cut mid-tension. My tail froze mid-beat. My breath hitched. My ears twitched forward in a startled jolt. And suddenly the church felt colder than any cavern.
I blinked once, pupils narrowing as he straightened and stepped back, that noir quiet of his wrapping around him like smoke and distance. The man under me wheezed, half-dead, half-forgotten, blood smeared under his cheek.
But all I saw was Master stepping away. The bond tugged hard. Hard enough to make my claws scrape stone. I rose slowly from the pinned man, breath trembling, body still humming with heat and frustration and territorial violence. My tail lashed once behind me. “Master…” My voice cracked. Barely.
He turned his attention back to the trembling, broken thing on the floor. The man tried to crawl sideways, but Master seized him by the shirt and dragged him upright against the prayer rail, his face a ruin of blood and swelling. Master’s voice came out low, steel dragged over gravel.
“Crimson Swarm. Start talking.” The man gurgled something wet and useless. Master hit him again. “Crimson Swarm.” Again. Again. Relentless. Clinical. Cold as a detective interrogating a corpse to see if it would blink. The man sobbed. “I, I don’t, I don’t know, please, I don’t...” Master slammed him into the wall. “Crimson. Swarm.”
The blood smeared in a thick arc behind the man’s head. His eyes rolled back, panic spilling from them like a cracked jug. His words were barely coherent anymore. “I don’t know anything, nothing, nothing, nothing about outside, please, ” Master slammed him again. And again. And again. Each hit less a strike and more an accusation carved into flesh. Each repetition of the question more cruel in its certainty. You don’t know. You don’t know. You don’t know. But you’re going to give me something anyway.
My tail twitched, ears flicking with each wet impact, each rasp of breath from Master, each useless cry from the man. I watched with fascination, curiosity, hunger. The bond buzzed like static beneath my skin, telling me everything I needed: the man was empty. No lies to uncover. No secrets left inside the bruised sack of bones.
He knew nothing. Master kept hitting him because that was the only thing that still made sense. I stepped forward, sliding a hand along Master’s forearm with a gentle, unnatural ease, the way a cat places its paw on a kill to mark the moment the hunt is done. “Master,” I murmured, wild softness leaking into my voice, “he doesn’t know. There’s nothing left to hit.”
Master froze mid-swing. The man was barely conscious. His breath rattled like a dying ember. Master lowered his fist. All at once, his rage contracted into something smaller. Something colder. Something… disappointed. Not in the man. In the lack of answers. In the dead ends and false trails and wasted time.
He released the man’s shirt. The body slumped to the floor in a folded, broken heap. For a moment, I thought Master might spare him. But he didn’t. He drew his sword with one smooth, unbothered movement and stabbed the man through the gut, a quick, precise kill, nothing dramatic, just quiet removal. Efficient. Noir. The kind of ending found in alleyways where names don’t matter.
Blood pooled slowly beneath him, sinking into the ancient cracks of the church floor. Master wiped the blade once on the man’s shirt and sheathed it. Then he sighed. That heavy, tired, world-worn exhale that rattled my ribs through the bond. He stepped back, leaning against the wall just outside the altar shadows, the light catching on his pale eyes, sharpening the lines of his jaw in a way that made the whole scene feel like the aftermath of a case that didn’t give him the justice he wanted.
I tilted my head at him, curious, ears perking. Tail curling loosely around my ankle. Watching him the way predators watch the only thing in the world they don’t know how to devour. “You’re disappointed,” I whispered, stepping closer, claws tapping the stone softly. “You didn’t get what you wanted.” I stopped just beside him, shoulder brushing his, gaze flicking to the corpse on the floor. “And yet,” I purred softly, “you still look like the only man in the Maw worth following.”
The church smelled of blood and burnt oil. The mural of me killing my last priest glowed warmly from the wall. And Master leaned there, exhausted and dangerous, while I curled into him like the creature built to haunt his shadow forever.
