The Rustwight shrieked without a mouth, and Fergal ducked low beneath its wide, scraping lunge. The thing's fingers—tipped with scrap-blades and fused joints—missed him by half an inch. Close. But not close enough. He darted sideways with a burst of speed, his coat snapping behind him, and leapt to the next girder jutting out from the sewage pond like a broken vertebra.

Another Rustwight staggered toward him from the right. This one had four legs, two arms, and an entire water tank where its head should've been.

Good. Less vision.

He pivoted and launched himself off the girder. His punch connected with its side, sending a resonant clang through its armor. It wasn't enough to crack it, but it was enough to throw off its balance.

"Left!" he barked.

Flay responded instantly, leaping to flank the thing from its blind side. Gloam soared over him to strike the joint in the tank's rusted neck. The rest scattered into coordinated flanks, blades out and feet sure.

Fergal ducked a second strike and rolled through a splash of brackish sludge. As he sprang back up to his feet, he caught sight of another Rustwight's mismatched body. One arm was clearly from a construction automaton, the other from some old cathedral statue still etched with a chipped saint's face.

Such ugly patchwork things.

They almost reminded him of…

…

He exhaled slowly.

Playing tag with his little sister.

He could still picture it. The soot-covered alleys. Rust bridges. Dusty concrete rooftops crumbling at the edges. He was three years older than her, but she'd always laugh at him whenever he intentionally slipped on broken pipe moss to make her feel a little better about not being able to catch him. He was always the better runner and fighter. She was always the better thinker. They may have lost their parents when they were only three and six—hell, just like most kids in Bharncair—but they made do. They stole food, kept warm under wooden boxes, and stuck together no matter what.

'Never pick a fight you can't win'.

That was their rule. And he lived by it like scripture. Bharncair wasn't one to reward heroes. Heroes were buried. To that end, he'd only ever fought kids smaller than him, bullies that looked weaker than him, and whenever real gangsters came around, he'd grab his little sister and bolt the other way. That was how he'd stayed alive. That was how they'd both stayed alive for the longest, longest time.

Until the Repossessors came, of course.

Back then, it was just a rising name. One of many gangs on the make after the failed 'Great Myrmur Purge' from the City of Splendors. The Repossessors had needed muscle for hire, so Fergal—lean, angry, already fast with his fists—joined up. He was maybe thirteen. Or fourteen. A young boy. But the Palm, the old boss, treated him more than fair. The old boss made sure he and his sister ate properly, and in exchange, Fergal beat up debtors, enforced orders in the Repossessors' territories, and nothing more cruel than that.

It really wasn't the worst job for how well it paid, and he even became the strongest of the Five Fingers really soon, but his sister had hated it.

She'd beg him to quit every week. Said it'd rot him from the inside. Said she wanted to leave the city one day and go somewhere green, somewhere with clean air. He told her he'd stop once they had enough money to escape.

Just a few more jobs.

A few more months.

Then, the night everything changed came.

It was raining hard that night a year ago when Lorcawn stabbed the old boss in the back. One minute, the Palm and his Five Fingers were all drinking cheap boilbeer on a couch in the old mansion hall after a long day of work, and in the next, the lights were cut out. When they came back on, the old boss' throat was slit, three of the Five Fingers were dead, and Fergal had caught Lorcawn's knife going for his heart.

The memory still pulsed like rot under his ribs.

Guts were spilled across the floor. Heads were cracked like pots. The Palm staggered and rasped for a bit, clutching his throat, and before Fergal even knew what was going on, Lorcawn had managed to sweep him off his feet and throw him onto the ground.

Oh, when the new Repossessors walked into the old mansion right there and then to swear their fealty to the new Palm, Fergal had thought about killing all of them—but then Lorcawn knelt in front of him, grinning from ear to ear while pointing at one of the grafted arms on his back.

It was a pale arm with unblemished skin, so pure and pretty that it could belong to none other than his little sister.

Fergal remembered freezing up.

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He remembered it like it was just yesterday while the new Fingers held him down.

"... Pretty, isn't it?" Lorcawn had said, flexing the grafted arm like it was a glove. "She didn't scream much when I got it off her. Like brother, like sister, hm?"

In hindsight, Fergal should've seen Lorcawn's betrayal coming. The man had always had a sick obsession with limbs for only the Saintess knows why, and he'd frequently argue with the old boss about how the Repossessors should be run. They were different men with different eyes, but Fergal was too blind to see that he should've gouged out Lorcawn's before the man could ruin everything good they had going.

He never forgot that moment when he saw his little sister's arm on Lorcawn's back. He didn't cry. He didn't rage. After all, Lorcawn gave him an offer: continue on as a Finger under the new Repossessors, or lose the very last piece of his sister.

The air that night had smelled like wet blood and mildew. Rain streaked through the broken window. The Palm was dead. The old Repossessors were already dead.

Fergal had grit his teeth and bowed his head.

"I'll serve."

It was the last part of her that still existed. He couldn't protect her while she was alive, so he'd protect what little was left and bide time for his revenge—even if it meant serving the bastard who killed her until he found an opening.

But was today that day?

Was today the great day he'd strike out at the master who held his leash, get his sister's arm back, and avenge her death?

The Rustwight lurched forward again, its clawed arm sweeping wide. Pipes groaned beneath the strain of its footsteps. Fergal ducked low, felt the wind of its strike split the air above his head, and sprinted along the iron catwalk without hesitation. His boots clanged hard against the rusted grating, and he leapt to a lower platform slick with damp, never once looking back.

His bloodied knuckles throbbed from the last strike he'd thrown, but the ache kept him grounded.

This wasn't his kind of fight.

He shouldn't even be here.

Somewhere high above, Lorcawn was watching, waiting for him to retrieve the command key currently in Gael's hands. That was his order. Retrieve the key and return. Don't get involved in the fight with the Rustwights.

And here he was, fighting giants and breaking his own damn rule.

'Never pick a fight you can't win'.

He'd lived by that decree since he was six years old, so why was he here?

What had changed?

He launched himself forward again, fists clenching tighter, jaw locked. His punch landed square against the Rustwight's face, right between two armored plates. The impact rang like a church bell, jarring his bones, and he felt the skin on his knuckles split again as he landed back on the grated platform.

Behind him, Cara stared up at the approaching giant with a glare so composed it could've been carved from marble.

But her legs trembled—just barely—and it was enough movement that he took notice.

Something ugly twisted inside his chest.

What had his little sister looked like when she died?

Did her knees tremble, too?

Did she scream his name when Lorcawn's men dragged her into some dark room?

Did she think—naively, hopefully—that her brother would come?

And of all the scab-skinned souls Bharncair had ever spat into the world, Fergal had never seen skin like Cara's. Not on a street orphan, not on a noble, not even on the marble statues of the Saintess left to rot in her clinic. Her skin was pale, unblemished, and soft as smoke. It was the exact kind of skin his sister had.

So maybe he was just projecting.

Hell, he probably was.

She was about the right age, too. Sharp-tongued. Sharp-eyed. Smarter than she let on, even when surrounded by geniuses.

…

He owed the Heartcord Clinic a great deal. They'd saved his boys in Division Two from the fire a few months ago—his own handpicked bastards, free from the influence of Lorcawn—and if it weren't for them, he would've lost even more of his boys when Lorcawn executed half of them in the pipes a month ago.

He'd be nothing but a stain on the ground if he didn't repay his debts now.

As the Rustwight in front of him let out a metallic shriek, steel limbs hissing with tension as it began its charge, a grin slowly crept across his face.

He'd never known this feeling as well, this… razor-fine thrill just before a fight he knew he had no business picking.

So this is what it feels like, huh?

The pond quaked as the Rustwight closed the gap—

And then one more explosive thud split the air as the center platform, circular and grimy, shuddered under the sudden impact of two descending figures.

Fergal raised his arms against the wave of mist and sewage kicked up from their landing, bracing for both him and Cara.

… You guys are late.

When the steam thinned, he saw the Symbiote Exorcist gripping her umbrella with both hands like a cannon barrel, its shaft lengthened with welded, jointed steel. The Plagueplain Doctor braced behind her, his hands gripping the metallic extension, because this new firing mode was apparently too difficult to control for one person alone.

It was a weapon built for two, and they were already pointing it straight at the closest Rustwight's chest.

Fergal couldn't help but smile a little now.

He remembered this morning, walking into the clinic and wondering why they'd all slept in the prayer hall instead of in their usual rooms.

Then he'd looked upstairs, past the usual stairs leading to the second floor surgical chamber, and saw that there was nothing beyond the doorway.

Just open air. A hole where the surgical chamber used to be.

They'd blown the entire surgical chamber up somehow.

Whatever they'd done the night before, they'd created enough firepower to destroy an entire floor in their clinic—which meant they had enough firepower to destroy a Rustwight, too.

Given they'd also ignored his advice to pick fights they could only win over and over again ever since he met them…

If there was anyone in this city who could kill a Rustwight without Gulcher skills, it'd be those two.

Harbingers of miracles.

Show me how you defy Bharncair once again.

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