Chương 44: Chapter 45: Teeth

I woke tasting blood, not the sharp clean taste of a split lip or bitten tongue after a fight, but something thicker, copper-heavy and warm in my mouth despite the cold air moving through the ruined street around me. For several slow breaths I lay beneath it with my eyes half-open against the pale morning, while the world returned by fragments: stone slick with rainwater, smoke hanging low between broken roofs, burned timber, trampled mud, bodies. My body hurt in ways too deep to separate cleanly.

Every joint felt bruised from the inside. My throat burned. One shoulder throbbed where old bite wounds and newer strain had been layered so closely that pain could no longer tell its own history. The black veins beneath my skin remained faintly visible even at rest now, thin shadows branching around wrists and collarbone like cracks trapped under flesh, and something lay beneath my hand, still warm. I looked down and saw the Crimson Elf corpse staring upward with its throat torn open. Not cut. Torn.

For several seconds my mind refused the shape of it, refused the silver-white hair spread dark with blood against the cobblestones, the arm bent wrong beneath the body, the chest and shoulders scored with deep wounds, and the ruined throat where flesh had been ripped away unevenly enough that teeth marks remained visible through the mess. Human teeth. I recoiled so violently I nearly slipped in the blood beneath me.

"Well," a voice said nearby, calm and conversational, "usually people use swords for that part." I turned sharply. Talia Kirra sat atop a collapsed wagon near the centre of Dunmere's main street with one boot resting against the wheel hub and a half-cleaned sword balanced across her knees. She looked perhaps a few years older than me, though the ease in her posture carried the weight of someone who had seen enough violence to stop performing fear for anyone else's comfort. Dark hair tied back badly.

Rain-dark travelling leathers. No heavy armour. No visible concern whatsoever about the blood-soaked man waking beside a mutilated Crimson Elf corpse. She watched me with open curiosity rather than alarm, wiping the sword edge with a cloth as though the morning had given her ordinary work.

"That expression," she said, "is generally how most people react after realising they've bitten an elf to death." I stared at her, then back at the corpse, then at my own hands. Blood covered them almost to the elbows. My stomach turned hard enough that I nearly vomited beside the body. Talia considered this thoughtfully.

"Reasonable response."

"What…" My voice cracked badly. I swallowed and tried again.

"What happened?"

"You tell me."

"I don't remember."

"That," she said lightly, "is less encouraging." I pushed myself upright slowly. Every movement felt wrong, not weak exactly, but worse, as though my body had been forced beyond its natural shape and then only partially returned afterward. The cracked heartwood bird still hung against my chest, one wing split near the carving edge. I touched it instinctively. Talia noticed.

"Pretty charm."

"It broke."

"So did half the town." Only then did I properly see Dunmere around us. The main street looked as though a storm had chosen violence over weather. Barricades lay shattered across the road beside burned wagons and collapsed roofs. Dead beasts covered the cobbles in tangled heaps where cleanup crews already moved between them with hooks, carts, and ash cloths tied over their faces.

Marsh predators, scavengers, barkbacks, and stranger things I did not recognise had been dragged into rough piles beside the gutter channels, and everywhere among them lay bodies of the enemy. Dozens. More than dozens. Many had been cut down cleanly by blades or spears during the night fighting. Others had died harder, burned through the torso, broken across walls, skulls crushed into the stone, limbs twisted under collapsed timber.

Steam still rose faintly from parts of the street where Ember Blade had carved through clustered attacks hard enough to scorch the cobbles beneath, and near the centre crossing one entire section of road had cracked black-red from heat. I stared at it too long. Talia slid from the wagon and landed beside the Crimson Elf corpse with the casual balance of someone entirely at home around danger.

"You Copper?" The question dragged my attention back to her.

"I… I think so."

"That's also less encouraging." She crouched beside the dead elf and tilted its head slightly with the tip of her boot.

"Copper (early) maybe. Hard to tell. Your rank-up looked wrong from the outside."

"You saw it?"

"Oh yes." One corner of her mouth twitched faintly.

"Hard to miss the screaming man covered in glowing veins sprinting through burning streets." Heat rose unpleasantly behind my ribs.

"I didn't mean to—""Lose control?" I stopped. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Talia shrugged lightly.

"Everyone loses control eventually. Most people just have the decency not to do it while biting members of ancient bloodline races to death." Despite everything, despite the shame crawling cold through my stomach and the horror of the corpse at my feet, I almost laughed. The absurdity of the sentence struck some exhausted, broken place inside me hard enough that a rough sound escaped before I could stop it. Talia pointed at me immediately.

"There it is. Good sign."

"What?"

"Still human enough to realise this is embarrassing." I rubbed one hand across my face and discovered dried blood along my jawline. I stopped moving entirely after that. Talia pretended not to notice, and for a while the only sound between us was the rainwater dripping from wagon spokes, the scrape of hooks against stone, and the low voices of workers carrying bodies toward the burn pits beyond the eastern wall.

A few militia glanced toward me with expressions ranging from relief to unease, but none approached directly. That unsettled me almost as much as the corpse.

"What happened after…" I looked again at the elf.

"After I changed."

"You killed a great many things."

"That doesn't answer anything."

"No," she agreed.

"But it does summarise events efficiently." She stood and slid the cleaned sword back into its sheath with smooth, practised motion.

"Your captain nearly died. The old bridge engineer collapsed half the lower flood route. Some loud ferryman spent an hour screaming at people twice his rank until they organised civilians properly. The inn girl hit a scavenger with a shovel hard enough that I briefly considered recruiting her." Talia tilted her head slightly.

"And you disappeared into the lower streets chasing this one." She nudged the Crimson Elf corpse again.

"I followed eventually because the screaming stopped suddenly, which usually means either everyone died or something interesting happened." My throat felt dry.

"And?" She looked down at the body for several quiet seconds.

"You were eating him." The words landed gently, which somehow made them worse. I looked away toward the shattered eastern lane where cleanup crews worked among the smoke. Shame crawled hot beneath my skin now, heavier than the pain, heavier even than confusion. I remembered flashes only: crimson eyes through smoke, heat bursting through my veins, the taste of rain and blood, and a feeling less like anger than hunger tearing through me from somewhere old and buried. Talia leaned against the ruined wagon beside me.

"For what it's worth, I've seen worse Bronze breakthroughs."

"I'm not Bronze."

"No," she replied.

"That's the concerning part." Silence settled between us while Dunmere cleaned itself around the dead, not peacefully, not even efficiently, but with the dull persistence of a town that had survived too narrowly to stop moving. Eventually I managed, "Who are you?"

"Talia."

"That's it?"

"That's usually enough." I waited. After several moments she sighed dramatically.

"Talia Kirra. Bronze (early). Wandering disaster tourist. Occasional beast killer."

"You're Bronze?"

"Mm." The simple confirmation carried more weight than boasting ever could have. I looked at her again with that knowledge in place and understood the unsettling ease she moved with. Not arrogance. Certainty. The kind built from surviving enough battles that fear became something sorted afterward rather than beforehand.

"You're young." Talia snorted softly.

"And you bite elves. We all have hobbies." A cleanup cart rolled past carrying bodies toward the eastern pits. One worker paused beside the Crimson Elf corpse before glancing uncertainly toward me. Talia waved him over.

"Take this one too." The worker hesitated.

"That's the elf from the breach?"

"Most of him." His eyes shifted toward the torn throat and then quickly away again.

"Yes, miss." After the cart moved on, I stared after it.

"I don't remember killing him."

"You probably won't." Talia stretched one arm lazily over her shoulder.

"People talk about rank advancement like it's neat. It isn't. Especially under combat pressure."

"Merris said some evolutions happen wrong."

"That old trader?" She looked amused.

"Good. Means someone around here knows enough to be frightened." I touched the cracked bird again beneath my shirt. Talia noticed that too.

"You should probably stop doing that."

"Why?"

"Because every time you touch it, your eyes go somewhere else." I lowered my hand slowly. The morning brightened by degrees through the smoke while Dunmere continued dragging itself back from the edge of collapse. Somewhere farther down the main street, Jory's voice rose in exhausted argument with a healer. Wade lived then, or at least still breathed loudly enough to insult people, and that mattered.

Talvek too, though I had heard fragments already from passing guards about the captain's leg and the way he kept trying to turn injury into orders. Bren remained missing beneath the buried river. That thought darkened everything again immediately. Talia watched the change cross my face.

"Someone important?"

"Bren."

"The guard?" I looked at her sharply.

"You think Bronze ranks arrive late to battles because we dislike gossip?" She shrugged.

"Town's been talking all morning."

"He's trapped below the Cataract."

"Maybe."

"That's not helpful."

"No," she agreed.

"But honest." We walked slowly after that through the centre of Dunmere's ruined main street while cleanup crews worked around us. I noticed how people reacted differently to Talia. Not fear exactly. Space. Men unconsciously moved aside before she reached them. Guards straightened when she passed. Workers watched her sword with the same wary respect frontier towns usually reserved for floodwater, loaded crossbows, and debts that had come due. Bronze. The rank suddenly felt much larger than it had before.

Talia stepped over a dead barkback and glanced sideways at me.

"You're abnormal." I said nothing.

"Don't worry," she continued.

"So am I. Just differently."

"That's comforting."

"It shouldn't be." We reached the old market crossing where the road bent toward the Greywash docks. Smoke drifted low over the river beyond the rooftops while damaged barricades still smouldered from the night fighting. Men hauled carcasses toward burn trenches near the waterline, and somewhere in the distance a child cried briefly before being hushed. Talia rested both hands atop the pommel of her sword and looked out across the ruined town.

"You held better than most frontier settlements."

"We nearly died."

"Yes," she said calmly.

"That is what holding usually looks like." I opened my mouth to answer, and Hunter's Eye prickled. The sensation came sharp and immediate behind my eyes, not danger exactly but attention, the same cold pressure from the Greywash fog, the same impossible certainty I had felt when the watcher stood silent between the reeds while the heartwood core hummed in answer. Watching. I turned instantly toward the rooftops above the lower eastern lane.

Nothing waited there except smoke drifting across broken chimneys and rain-dark timber, yet my pulse sharpened and the pressure lingered for one heartbeat longer before vanishing so completely that the absence felt deliberate. Talia noticed.

"What?"

"I thought…" I stopped. No movement remained when I searched again. No figure. No crimson eyes. No hooded silhouette hidden among the ruins. Only Dunmere rebuilding itself around the dead while somewhere beneath the streets the buried river still carried its secrets south through the dark. Talia studied me quietly for several seconds before looking back toward the river.

"Well," she said lightly, "that expression means your problems are definitely not finished."