Chapter 824: The Humanity Imposter (2)
"So the symposium has gone smoothly..." Dravis said, almost to himself.
Sylvanna stopped walking.
Her head snapped toward him. "What?"
Dravis kept moving.
Sylvanna followed, eyes narrowed now, tone less playful. "No. No, don’t do that. Don’t drop a sentence like that and then act like I didn’t hear it."
Dravis didn’t answer.
"That wasn’t guild talk. That wasn’t capital rumor," Sylvanna insisted. "That was... you. That was you knowing sothing you shouldn’t know."
Dravis kept walking.
Sylvanna scoffed. "Fine. Be mysterious. I’ll just assu you’re secretly married to the continent’s gossip network."
Vyrik huffed.
A group of adventurers near a side bench watched them pass. One muttered, "He doesn’t talk."
Another replied, "He talks. Just not to you."
Sylvanna heard and flashed them a smile that promised violence. They looked away.
Dravis didn’t care about the chatter.
He cared about the sudden tightening in the guild hall.
Not mana.
Attention.
A pair of guild security wardens had shifted their stance. One of them was looking at Dravis’ mask too long. Another was watching Sylvanna’s hands, as if trying to decide whether her laziness was a trick.
Sylvanna noticed too. "Oh, here we go," she muttered. "They’re going to try to ’verify identity’ because you got too famous. I told you. You should have let
stab one rumor-spreader just for balance."
Dravis altered course slightly, not toward the exit, but toward the appraisal aisle.
Better to et the problem on ground he chose.
The appraisal aisle was a smaller hall lined with counters and glass cases. Relics behind wards. Monster parts in sealed jars. Maps in lacquer tubes. A place where adventuring turned into coin.
A man in green robes looked up from a gem-lens and visibly hesitated when Vyrik approached.
"Relax," Sylvanna said, brushing Vyrik’s mane again. "He only bites idiots."
The appraiser swallowed. "Are... you selling?"
Dravis placed a small sack on the counter. It clinked with the dull sound of bone and tal.
The appraiser activated a reading rune. "What is this?"
"Scrap," Dravis said.
Sylvanna leaned in. "Scrap that kills people if you touch it wrong. And also scrap that you will absolutely underpay for if you think I’m in a good mood."
The appraiser’s hand shook.
Dravis’ voice stayed flat. "Appraise."
The appraiser did.
While he worked, Dravis watched the reflection in the case glass.
A man had entered the appraisal hall and stopped near the doorway, pretending to study a map.
His boots were too clean.
His eyes were too steady.
Not a thief.
Not a drunk.
A tail.
Dravis didn’t turn.
He waited.
"Your... scrap is worth more than you think," the appraiser said, voice strained. "These are warded alloy fragnts. And this—this is a demon-binding nail. Where did you get this?"
Dravis said, "Pay."
Sylvanna smiled. "He ans now. Not after you finish panicking."
The appraiser produced coin seals and a stamped credit slip.
Dravis accepted them.
He didn’t imdiately leave.
He let the tail remain in his peripheral vision.
Then he spoke, casually, to the appraiser.
"Where do couriers sleep in this city?"
The appraiser blinked. "What?"
"The cheap inns. The ones near the ssenger yards. Na one."
Sylvanna’s head tilted, interested now. "Oh. We’re doing this."
The appraiser hesitated, then nad an inn.
Dravis nodded once.
He turned.
And walked straight toward the tail.
The man with the map stiffened, then tried to smile.
Dravis didn’t let him.
He stopped close enough that the man could sll the cold tal of the mask.
"Who hired you?" Dravis asked.
The man’s smile wavered. "I... don’t know what you—"
Dravis’ hand moved.
Not to draw a blade.
Just to rest two fingers lightly on the man’s wrist.
The pressure point wasn’t mystical.
It was anatomy.
Pain snapped through the man’s body like a white line.
He gasped.
Sylvanna watched with amusent. "Oh, I like this part."
Dravis’ voice didn’t change. "Who."
The man tried to pull away.
Vyrik shifted one step.
The man stopped trying.
"House... Arvantil," he hissed.
Dravis’ eyes flicked.
A minor noble house.
Known for buying information and selling it as righteousness.
Dravis released the wrist.
The man staggered back, sweating.
"Go," Dravis said.
The tail fled.
Sylvanna clicked her tongue. "You’re letting him go? That’s generous."
"Useful," Dravis corrected.
Sylvanna smiled. "Sa thing for you."
They moved.
They didn’t go straight to the exit.
They went to buy quiet things.
Adventuring was not only killing.
It was logistics.
It was the discipline of surviving long enough to kill.
A blacksmith kiosk sold cold-iron wedges and demon-salt sealed in wax. Dravis bought both.
A healer stall offered anti-curse tinctures with warnings in small print. Dravis bought two.
A cobbler offered spike soles for ice ridges and "north wind wraps" that kept toes from dying in the first hour. Dravis bought the wraps. Sylvanna complained they were ugly and bought them too.
A mapmaker tried to upsell a "northern demon atlas." Dravis asked one question about its source data. The mapmaker stuttered. Dravis bought nothing.
Sylvanna purchased storm feed pellets for Ra??drithar, arguing loudly about price until the vendor panicked and lowered it.
She also bought a new harness strap with shock-damp runes and threw it at Dravis.
"Hold this," she said.
Dravis held it.
She brushed Vyrik’s mane again and said, "Fang-face, we’re going north. Don’t die."
Vyrik huffed like that was insulting.
Dravis visited the guild’s information board next—one that wasn’t the quest wall.
The rumor wall.
It wasn’t official.
But it was accurate in the way gossip often was when money cared.
He read it.
Trade routes shifting.
Northern patrol rotations.
A guild arbitration notice about "private security escalation."
A complaint about missing supplies that no one wanted to claim.
And then, written in a hand that tried too hard to look casual:
Drakhan Manor Auction soon.
No date.
No official stamp.
Just enough to ignite the imagination.
Sylvanna leaned in. "Auction?"
Dravis didn’t answer.
Sylvanna frowned. "You’re doing it again."
Dravis folded the notice into his mind and moved.
The city outside was colder now. Clouds had thickened. Wind carried the faint scent of rain.
Ra??drithar waited on a wide stone terrace behind the guild—a regulated landing space for mounts. He lifted his horned head as they approached, wings flexing with a crackle of static. The air tasted of ozone.
Sylvanna swung up onto his back with practiced ease, cloak snapping.
Dravis climbed behind her without ceremony.
Vyrik paced at the edge of the terrace, then settled, staring outward as if guarding the whole capital from behind.
"Co on, fang-face," Sylvanna called.
Vyrik moved.
A harness clip clicked.
The guardian chira anchored himself to a trailing support line, heavy enough that the lift runes strained. It wasn’t comfortable. Vyrik looked pleased anyway.
Sylvanna smirked. "He likes to feel useful."
Dravis said, "He is."
Ra??drithar launched.
The capital fell away beneath them. Rooftops beca patterns. Streets beca veins. The guild beca a stone tooth in a mouth of civilization.
Storm-shadowed skies waited ahead.
Ra??drithar caught an updraft and glided. His storm aura spread in a thin halo, static popping along the edges of Sylvanna’s cloak. Silver lightning crawled down his wings and vanished into cloud.
Sylvanna leaned into the wind, hair snapping.
"This is the only part of civilization I like," she shouted over the air. "Leaving it."
Dravis didn’t shout.
He didn’t need to.
His voice carried just enough.
"Stay alert," he said.
Sylvanna laughed. "Oh, yes, Master of Joy. I’ll stay alert."
The journey north was not smooth.
Not because of monsters.
Because the world was tense.
They passed over a border checkpoint where soldiers looked up too quickly and held crossbows too long.
They passed over a trade convoy that had paused in the road for no visible reason, as if the drivers were afraid to enter the next valley.
They passed a ridge where the snow didn’t settle evenly.
They passed a hillside where black birds circled, but no carcass lay below.
Dravis noted all of it.
They descended once to refuel and resupply at a cliffside outpost—a place wedged into stone like a stubborn nail. Narrow windows. Thick doors. Lanterns that burned behind warded glass.
Inside, warmth slled like soup and wet wool.
People went quiet when Dravis entered.
Not because of the mask.
Because of Ra??drithar’s storm aura still clinging to the air.
And because Vyrik’s heavy presence made the room feel smaller.
Sylvanna ordered food with a voice that dared anyone to poison it.
Dravis sat where he could see the door.
A child stared at Vyrik until her mother yanked her away.
A veteran with a scarred throat watched Dravis’ hands and decided to keep his own hands visible.
Soone tried to laugh. It ca out wrong.
A man at a nearby table tried to whisper to his companion.
"...demon..."
"...thin voice..."
"...the Thinman..."
The last word slid out like a secret that didn’t want to be spoken.
Dravis’ hand stopped mid-motion.
For the first ti that day, the mask felt too light.
His eyes lifted.
Not wide.
Not obvious.
But sothing in him sharpened so fast it was almost visible.
Sylvanna noticed the change like a beast noticing a predator.
"What?" she asked, voice low.
Dravis didn’t answer.
He stood.
Vyrik rose with him, silent and imdiate.
Sylvanna’s hand drifted toward her bow. "Dravis."
Dravis moved toward the door.
Outside, the cliff wind cut like a blade. Snow hissed sideways. The world beyond the outpost was a grey-white sar of rock and sky.
And there—on the ridge path below—was a figure walking with the wrong kind of calm.
Not a traveler.
Not a soldier.
Not soone fighting the wind.
Soone who moved like the wind belonged to him.
A man too thin in a coat too ordinary. A face that looked like it had been chosen to be forgotten. A posture that suggested he had learned the human world the way a predator learned a new hunting ground.
An undercover orc in human skin.
Disguised too well.
Moving like he belonged.
Dravis’ breath slowed.
The demon contract in his pocket beca irrelevant.
This was not the guild’s objective.
This was his.
His eyes tracked distance, witnesses, wind direction, lines of retreat, the way the outpost lanterns threw shadows that could hide a knife hand.
He catalogued every variable in the ti it took most n to blink.
Only then did his inner voice surface—cold, clean, lethal.
There you are.
Hard cut.
Reviews
All reviews (0)