The Spire of Silk echoed with the sound of impact. Thud. Thud. Crack.
Elara struck the heavy training dummy, her fists wrapped in raw bandages that were already soaking through with fresh blood. She didn't feel the pain in her knuckles. She only felt the memory of the ballroom.
Why couldn't I move?
She had been paralyzed. Not by venom, not by magic, but by a primal instinct she didn't know she possessed. When Valerius had kissed her ring-kissed the very mechanism designed to kill him-she had felt small. For the first time in her life, she wasn't the predator. She was the rabbit wondering why the wolf was playing with its food.
"You are overextending," Krixis's voice drifted down from the shadows. "Your anger makes you sloppy."
Elara delivered a spinning kick that snapped the wooden neck of the dummy. "I hesitated, Krixis. I had him."
"You had nothing," the spider-lord corrected. "I told you, little one. Valerius is not a target. He is a force of nature. You cannot stab a hurricane. You cannot poison an earthquake."
Elara ripped the bandages off her hands, exposing the bruised skin. She grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat from her face.
"He bleeds," Elara snarled. "I saw the cut on his hand. If it bleeds, it can die. I just need to hit it hard enough that it can't put itself back together."
She walked to her workbench. It was covered in new blueprints. Incendiary rounds. White phosphorus. A blade coated in acid strong enough to melt tank armor.
"I'm not going to dance with him next time," she whispered. "I'm going to obliterate him."
She tracked him for three days.
Valerius didn't hide. That was the most insulting part. He walked the city like he owned the cobblestones. He visited old libraries that were half-collapsed. He sat on the edge of the ruined bridge, watching the toxic sludge of the river flow by for hours.
Elara waited. She needed isolation. She needed a place where she could unleash enough firepower to level a city block without the Highborn Guard interfering.
Her opportunity came on a Tuesday night.
Valerius entered the "Dead Zone"-Sector 9. It was a graveyard of old industrial factories, a maze of rusting pipes and crumbling concrete. No patrols came here. The radiation levels were slightly elevated, keeping the scavengers away.
He walked into a massive, hollowed-out foundry. The moonlight filtered through the holes in the roof, illuminating the rusting gantries.
Elara was already there.
She was perched on a crane, fifty feet above him. She adjusted the scope of her anti-material rifle. The bullets were custom-made: explosive tips filled with holy water (a myth, but worth a try) and liquid silver.
She lined up the crosshairs with the back of his skull.
"Goodbye, Prince," she whispered.
BANG.
The sound was deafening. The recoil bruised her shoulder.
The bullet flew true. It struck Valerius in the back of the head.
The impact should have vaporized his skull. Instead, Valerius merely stumbled forward a step.
He turned around slowly. There was a hole in his head, yes. But Elara watched through the scope in horror as grey matter and bone knit themselves back together in seconds. The skin zipped shut over the wound, leaving not even a scar.
He looked up at the crane. He smiled.
Elara didn't freeze this time. She dropped the rifle and dove.
She free-fell fifty feet, firing two grappling hooks mid-air. They latched onto a beam, swinging her down with immense speed. She unlatched, flipping in the air, and landed in a crouch ten feet from him.
She drew her twin swords-blades of serrated tungsten coated in acid.
"A dramatic entrance," Valerius noted, brushing dust off his shoulder. "But the noise was unnecessary."
Elara didn't speak. She launched herself at him.
She was a blur of violence. She slashed at his throat, his heart, his femoral arteries.
Slash. Stab. Parry.
Valerius moved with lazy elegance. He dodged her strikes by millimeters. When she managed to land a hit-slicing his forearm open to the bone-he didn't flinch. He just looked at the wound as the acid sizzled, then watched the flesh purge the poison and heal instantly.
"Faster," he critiqued.
Elara screamed, a sound of pure frustration. She dropped a smoke bomb, vanishing into the grey cloud.
She appeared behind him, driving both swords through his back, aiming to sever the spine.
Shunk.
The blades went all the way through, emerging from his chest.
Valerius looked down at the metal spikes protruding from his sternum. He sighed.
"My favorite vest," he murmured.
He grabbed the blades with his bare hands. The sharp edges cut into his palms, but he didn't care. He pulled them forward, dragging Elara with them until she was pressed against his back.
Then, he spun around, shattering the blades with a flex of his chest muscles.
He backhanded her.
It wasn't a punch; it was a collision with a freight train.
Elara flew across the foundry. She smashed into a concrete pillar, the impact cracking the stone. She fell to the ground, gasping.
Ribs broken. Lung punctured. Left arm dislocated.
She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn't obey. She coughed, and blood splattered onto the concrete.
Valerius walked toward her. He didn't rush. The click-clack of his boots on the floor was the countdown to her death.
He stood over her. He looked immense, a god of death in a ruined temple.
"Disappointing," Valerius said softly. "You fight with rage. Rage is finite. Endurance... endurance is eternal."
Elara looked up at him. Her vision was swimming. She was dying. She knew it.
But she didn't beg. She didn't look away. She spat a mouthful of blood onto his polished boot.
"Go to hell," she wheezed, her grey eyes burning with a defiance that outshone the pain. "And take your... shitty poetry... with you."
Valerius paused.
He looked at the blood on his boot. Then he looked at her eyes. He saw the broken body, the shattered ribs, the death creeping in... and the absolute refusal to accept it.
Something sparked in his ancient, dead chest. It wasn't pity. It was entertainment.
"Interesting," he whispered.
He crouched down, ignoring the blood. He reached out and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him.
"You are broken," he said. "You are dying. And yet, you are still trying to figure out how to kill me with your remaining hand."
"I'll... figure it out," Elara rasped, her hand fumbling for a hidden knife in her boot.
Valerius chuckled. It was a genuine sound.
"You cannot kill me, Little Hunter," he said. "I have tried. I have jumped into volcanoes. I have stood at the center of nuclear blasts. I have starved myself for a century. The universe... refuses to let me leave."
He released her chin and stood up.
"But," he continued, "you have something I lack. Creativity. And a relentless, beautiful stupidity."
Elara blinked, confused. "Are you... mocking me?"
"I am hiring you."
Elara froze. "What?"
"I am bored, Elara," Valerius said, his voice dropping, the weight of centuries crashing down. "Do you know what it is like to live for eight hundred years? To know exactly what someone will say before they say it? To see empires rise and fall and realize it is all the same circle? I have tasted every wine, killed every beast, loved every type of woman. It is all... ash."
He gestured to his healed chest.
"I want to die," he confessed. "I crave the silence. But I am cursed with this perfection. This immortality."
He looked at her.
"If you can find a way to kill me-truly kill me-I will give you everything. The keys to the High Council. The vaults of the Ancients. Enough power to wipe the monsters from this earth. I will make you a Queen."
Elara stared at him. The pain in her ribs was screaming, but her mind was racing.
He wanted to die?
He was hiring her to kill him?
It was madness. It was a trap.
But then she looked at his eyes. For the first time, she saw past the predator. She saw the exhaustion. The deep, endless fatigue of a being who had been awake for too long.
"You're serious," she whispered.
"Deadly," he replied.
Elara didn't say yes. She didn't shake his hand.
She moved faster than a broken human should be able to move.
She snatched the heavy-caliber pistol from her holster-the one loaded with the last explosive round.
She raised it.
BANG.
She shot him directly between the eyes. Point blank range.
The back of Valerius's head exploded. Blood, brain matter, and bone sprayed across the foundry floor in a gruesome fan of red.
His head snapped back. His body went rigid.
Elara lowered the gun, panting. "Contract accepted."
She waited for him to fall.
He didn't.
Slowly, horrifyingly, the mist began to form. The blood on the floor seemed to reverse gravity, floating back up to him. The bone fragments reassembled. The skin wove itself back together.
Within ten seconds, Valerius tilted his head forward. He was whole again.
He wiped a speck of blood from his cheek. He didn't look angry. He looked impressed.
"Rude," Valerius said dryly. "But efficient. I didn't even finish my speech."
Elara stared, the gun shaking in her hand. "Even the brain?" she whispered in horror. "How?"
"I told you," Valerius said, turning to walk away. "Do better, Elara. Be more creative. Next time, try decapitation. Or fire. Surprise me."
He walked into the shadows, leaving her broken on the floor.
"I'll see you around, Little Hunter. Don't die on the way home. That would be a breach of contract."
And then he was gone.
Elara sat in the silence of the foundry. The pain washed over her.
Click. Click. Click.
The sound of skittering claws. Scavengers. Corpse-Rats and feral Ghouls. They smelled the blood-her blood.
Elara gritted her teeth. She forced herself to stand, screaming internally as her ribs shifted. She grabbed a piece of rebar to use as a crutch.
"Not today," she hissed at the darkness.
She limped out of the foundry, leaving a trail of blood behind her. She had to get back to the Spire. She had to survive.
She had a job to do. And for the first time in her life, the target wanted to be caught.