Chapter 7: The Bread Man

Although the sky was bright and sunny, nothing was beautiful.

The town street Ronan had landed on through the portal was damp, cold, and smelled of horse droppings. Nearby, gray brick and mortar houses looked as though they were on their last legs. Each door and window shutter was hanging on by loose screws and covered in cheap, chipped paint. The chimney on one home at the edge of the street had long since collapsed, leaving ashy rubble in the road. Ronan sat up in great pain over his still bleeding wound. Disoriented, he rummaged for his sword.

It was nowhere to be found, and he determined that he had dropped it when traveling through the Serpent Sorceress' portal. The portal too had disappeared, and Ronan realized he was on his own and weaponless. For the first time in over a decade, he was outside of the temple.

Ronan fought his way to his feet, then felt a faint and nervous smile creep its way on his face. He was in rough shape, but he was alive, and he would fulfill his objective of warning the other Nightblades of the attack. He felt honored that Yvette would leave such a task to him, and he intended on completing it. The destruction of the Temple of the Serpent was catching up to him, and it fueled him all the more to hunt down the other Nightblades and explain what he saw.

The crossbow bolt lodged in his stomach throbbed.

He was terrified that the same magical poison that had consumed Titanoboa and Yvette would soon make his veins go black and turn his blood to sludge. But for so long as there was breath in his body, he would battle to complete his dying goal as a Nightblade.

Gritting his teeth, Ronan began trudging down the streets, searching for a sign of where he was and where the closest Nightblade temple might be. The world looked so different than it did on a map, but as he winded around a cobblestone corner in the road, he saw it.

The Nightblade temple stood mightily atop a luscious green hill. Bright purple banners waved, displaying detailed butterflies that were composed of flamboyant blues, reds, and yellows.

"There it is," Ronan grumbled to himself, his left hand pressed to his stomach to help keep his blood inside him. "The Nightblade Temple of the Butterfly. I must be in Augustate."

Ronan pressed a bloody hand to a bakery wall, then tried to muster some strength to move fast.

Above him on the bakery's tiled roof, an auburn rooster spread its wing. It had a sapphire feathered stomach that rumbled as it loudly crowed. The rooster leapt off the tiled roof and fluttered to the ground, leaving Ronan in a flurry of colorful feathers. As it scurried away, Ronan thought that it looked as though it were running for its life.

"Oye!" shouted a lofty and old voice behind Ronan. "Get your filthy hand off my shop!"

Ronan spun around to greet a tall yet hunched bald man in a stained gray shirt. The man's face was spotted and he was missing several of his uppermost teeth. He had thick, bushy brown eyebrows on his otherwise shaved face. Freshly milled flour clung to his white apron.

"Are you slow?" The man asked, pointing to the battered wooden sign dangling near Ronan's hand on the wall. "You see that there? The bakery sign. It's got my name on it, Habbot, so you do as I say when you mess up my property."

"Sir, I'm very sorry," Ronan said meaningfully. Just talking was sending shockwaves of pain through his ribs, and he clutched both hands around his stomach.

Habbot pulled a rag out from the back pocket of his trousers and clacked his index finger against the sign. "Do you not get it? I'm Habbot. And it says 'Habbot's Bred.'"

"I think you misspelled bread," Ronan muttered, trying to remain respectful, but also demonstrating that he didn't have time for this conversation. "I'm sorry about your wall, but I really need to get to that Nightblade Temple."

"Oye!" Habbot repeated, swinging his hands up dramatically. "We got another one of you pretentious Nightblade bunch. Always too busy for the common folk, aren't you? Well, you can take your fancy words and spellings and head back to your rich temple after you've cleaned my wall!"

Habbot threw the rag at Ronan. Ronan caught it, and when he lifted both his arms to do so, Habbot noticed the blood sticking to Ronan's wool shirt.

"That's a nasty wound you've got there, lad!" Habbot remarked. "Why didn't you say you'd almost been split in two?"

Ronan coughed and flinched from the aching at his side.

"Oye, you're a royal headache, you know that?" Habbot said, whipping off his apron. He bundled it like a rope and tied it around Ronan's stomach. Habbot had stopped the bleeding, but Ronan could feel the shard from the crossbow bolt wedge itself deeper inside of him.

"I was attacked at the Temple of the Serpent," Ronan grunted. "I've got to warn the others."

Habbot slung Ronan's right arm around his shoulder. He helped the young Nightblade briskly walk towards the Temple of the Butterfly.

Habbot looked at the snake tattoo on Ronan's left forearm swaying at his side. "You're a long way from home, lad. Oye! Don't know how you made it so far while being gutted and all. You look like a twig but you must be made of some tough stuff now, eh?"

A determined smile darted on Ronan's face, and he appreciated the baker's kind words.

Together, Habbot and Ronan thumped down the town streets, kicking up mud and dust behind them. Ronan prayed that the Nightblades in the Temple of the Butterfly would have a cure to the poison inside him. As he and Habbot made their way towards the temple, Ronan routinely checked his patched wound for any signs of infection or black veins.

After all this time, he still seemed okay.

Habbot paused in front of a house that wreaked like a combination of hot swamp and rotten fish.

"My ex-wife lives here," Habbot said, shaking his head. "We've got to be careful now. Keep yourself hushed. We don't want to wake the basement dweller."

"The what?" Ronan asked, studying the stinky house. There was a tiny window to the basement where Ronan watched murky green water bubble and boil. His Mark of Serpent started to sizzle, and his abdomen pulsated, as if the crossbow shard was trying to break free from under his skin.

"Some curse my ex-wife cast on the bakery invited some filthy monster to the basement," Habbot explained. "She couldn't be happy just taking what few coins I made from selling bread! She had to try and hex me too."

Ronan wrinkled his nose and whispered, "It smells like death around here. I'm not familiar with curses but whatever she cast brought something horrid."

"You're telling me," Habbot mumbled sarcastically, guiding Ronan around the house. The two heard a big bubble in the basement pop.

"I've been telling the patrolling Nightblades that whatever dwells in the basement has been killing mangy dogs on the streets, and nibbling at people's ankles when they leave the bar drunk. But you know them Nightblades. You're one of them. They don't give a piss about us little people."

"That's not right," Ronan muttered, astonished. "The Nightblades should be helping you with monsters. That's why we exist."

A little louder and with some resentment behind it, Habbot said, "Well maybe that's what they do across the globe in your temple, but in these parts, if you ain't a noble or royalty, you ain't getting any protection."

Ronan's stomach twisted, and this time not from the crossbow bolt shard.

"No. That's impossible," Ronan replied. "Nightblades should be helping everybody."

Before Habbot could get off another sarcastic remark, the glass from the basement shattered and the foundation of the house crumbled. From around the corner, the two saw putrid green mud slap onto the cobblestone street with a chunky wallop. Whatever had come out from the basement was much larger than Ronan had been expecting.

"Oye! We've done it now!" Habbot exclaimed. "We've woken the basement dweller. Best get running now laddy!"

A huge and ferocious shadow was cast on the side of another house. The shape had an eerie familiarity to Ronan, as if he'd seen it before.

"I think that thing must've grown up overnight, it did!" Habbot said with a chill to his voice. "It was a wee thing before! The size of a cat!"

"It's as big as a horse," Ronan said with a furrowed brow. He stood his ground and ran through what it might be. The swampy smell, the size, he knew this creature all too well.

A green Slaug with muscular arms and long, sharp claws turned the corner. It resembled a massive toad that could walk on two bulky, webbed feet. Its beady yellow eyes scrunched together as it hissed at Ronan. It was the same type of monster that had attacked him when he was young and was saved by the Nightblades. This Slaug, however, had black veins like Titanoboa after being attacked in the siege, and sludge dripped from the Slaug's teeth.

Despite all the suffering from his injury, Ronan did not feel compelled to run. He didn't care that he did not have a weapon. He sneered at the Slaug as it rushed towards him on all fours. Ronan was furious that the Nightblades of Augustate were not helping people when they needed it.

"Time to move lad!" Habbot shouted quickly, running away.

But Ronan remained in place, fearless.

He felt like a new person, like he was channeling the vision of himself that he'd seen in Yvette's crystal ball. The Mark of Serpent began to steam. His skin burned and he raised his left hand in front of him. As Titanoboa had instructed him at the training grounds, Ronan thought of what angered him the most— the death of the people who had raised him at the Temple of the Serpent, and the injustice that the Nightblades of Augustate were ignoring Habbot's pleas.

If the Butterfly Nightblades wouldn't kill the Slaug, then Ronan would.

His raggedy hair blasted back as the veins around his wrist turned black. The Slaug continued towards him unrelentlessly, but Ronan shouted out in anger. The Mark of Serpent glowed a fierce black, and the same white flames he'd seen overtake his temple shot from his hand, incinerating the Slaug.

Only a pile of ash remained.

Ronan collapsed to the filthy ground. Panting, he grabbed his Mark of Serpent. It was scalding to touch, and the veins lining his arm had all turned black. He was succumbing to the poison from the crossbow bolt shard.

"Oye, lad!" Habbot yelled, hobbling over to Ronan's side. "You blasted that beast good, you did! Hey, why're your eyes closing? Don't die on me now!"

But Ronan's eyes were becoming too heavy to keep open. He saw a pair of well-dressed and regal looking figures out from his peripheral.

"You there!" Habbot called out with a wave. "You two Nightblades need to help your friend here! He's bleeding out and turning all sorts of black, he is!"

Ronan's eyes flittered. He heard bootsteps around him, but his head fell back and the last thing he saw was his Mark of Serpent.

An assortment of ancient Runes appeared underneath his snake's belly. Even in his haze, Ronan could decipher that the runes said, "Shroud System Unlocked."

Ronan sensed an intense power from the confusing message.

"We'll take it from here," one of the Nightblades said with a serious and refined voice.

Then Ronan, weakened and exhausted, passed out.