The smile faded.
For a single moment, the vice leader said nothing.
The burning village answered for him.
Wood cracked. Flames breathed. Somewhere behind the tied villagers, a child whimpered, only for a bandit to pull her closer and press cold steel near her cheek.
"Careful," the vice leader finally said, his voice lower now. "You speak like a man who forgot where he is."
Reason looked at the villagers again. He recognised the little girl... Alice...
Mrs. Mortimer knelt near the front, her hands tied behind her back, face dirtied by smoke. Berric was beside her, one eye swollen, jaw clenched so hard it looked like his teeth might crack. Elira leaned against him, trying to keep a younger girl from sobbing too loudly.
He knew them... he knew all of them... but names meant nothing here.
'Twenty-eight.' Every face was counted.
Every weapon.
Every distance.
Every fear.
"No," Reason answered as his calculations concluded in seconds. "I know exactly where I am."
The vice leader's fingers twitched, then he made a small movement.
A signal.
Three bandits stepped forward.
One held an axe. One carried a curved knife. The last had a spear, likely stolen from someone's wall, not properly balanced, but long enough to force space.
Reason's eyes moved once.
Axe first.
Knife second.
Spear last.
The vice leader smiled again, but it no longer reached his eyes. "You killed our leader... my friend."
"Yes."
"You killed and burned more than a dozen of us."
"Yes."
A strange silence fell.
Even some of the bandits looked toward the smoke behind Reason, where the man's screams had already stopped.
The vice leader's jaw tightened. "You think this is a joke?"
"No."
"Then why are you so calm?"
Reason tilted his head slightly. "Because you all are predictable." Reason raised his hand, beckoning to the three.
The three bandits rushed him.
The axe came first, swinging wide, full of anger and little form.
Reason stepped in, not away.
His stolen sword moved once.
Not a grand swing. Not a heroic strike.
Just a clean line through motion.
The axe dropped from the man's hands before the man himself understood he had fallen.
The knife wielder's eyes widened.
He tried to stop his advance.
Too late.
Reason's foot slid over ash and wet mud, his shoulder turning just enough for the knife to pass beside him. His elbow struck the bandit's throat, his hand caught the man's wrist, and the knife changed owners before the bandit's knees touched the ground.
The spear thrust came from behind the second man.
Better timing.
Worse angle.
A soft move and Reason caught the shaft beneath his arm, pulled once, and the spear wielder stumbled forward into the knife now held in Reason's hand.
Three bodies hit the ground in the same breath.
The bandits froze.
To the gasps and loud tuhds, the villagers looked up.
"Liam!?" The old man from the forge, Berric, called out, and so did everyone in their mind.
Reason stood among the three fallen, one sword in his right hand, one knife in his left, his face unchanged.
The vice leader stared.
Then slowly, very slowly, his lips curled upward.
"Hah…"
A laugh.
Not joyful.
Not sane either.
"Hahaha… So it's true. You really are a monster."
Reason looked up at him.
"..." His face was still unprovoked.
"Arrogant!" The vice leader lifted his hand.
Every bandit holding a villager moved at once, blades tightening.
Reason's eyes narrowed.
"Don't move," the vice leader said. "I wasn't joking."
"I know."
"Then drop the weapons."
Reason did not.
The vice leader's face twisted. "Drop them, or I'll have them open every throat here!"
Some villagers began to cry.
A few tried to speak, but fear stole their voices.
Old man Berric looked at Reason and shook his head once.
Not begging.
Warning.
Don't risk it.
Reason saw him.
Ignored him.
"Let's see if you still act so arrogantly. Ben!" The vice leader called a name.
The bandit holding the dagger at old man Berric's neck reacted.
As his hands began to move, the old man closed his eyes.
But the next moment...
It was not pain but the sound of a thud that reached him.
Berric opened his eyes to see a bandit lying beside him, a dagger through his eye.
Old man ... stunned just like all the bandits. "It is true I might not be able to save everyone..." Reason glanced over everyone.
"But the next one of you that moves will die the same way."
The vice leader's expression went stiff.
He knew he had almost no real control over his men, even the leader only ruled over them by fear... and they are certainly more scared of the thing in front, even if he ordered, no one would move, even if someone did, they would die the same way, which is bound to make some of them flee...
In this moment, as the vice leader got immersed in thinking, Reason glanced at Berric.
The pircing gaze was enough to wake the old man up... once upon a time, he was an adventurer too, even in his old age, he fought 2 bandits to a standstill before getting captured.
His hands moved strangely swiftly and silently, retrieving the dagger from the bandit's neck.
The ropes were almost loose when, "I don't believe it!!" A bandit screamed, his sword moving with his scream.
Both Reason and the vice leader glanced at it, their thoughts racing.
An interesting thing... Reason wasn't simply smart... calculating something utterly ignorant and foolish is difficult even for the smart... but this wasn't a problem for Reason... it is only reasonable...
"Ugh!" Before the man could move, Reason's thrown swords already split his skull open.
The body fumbled back, pushing down another bandit, and only this one's scream was heard by everyone.
The vice leader's reaction was fast. "He has no weapon! Attack him. Charge!!!" His order hit the air before the echo of the falling body faded.
He couldn't let his men's morale plummet so much that they would flee.
A few obeyed.
The rest didn't move. Not just cowardice, but also something closer to animal instinct, an understanding that certain things are not meant to be touched.
Six men charged. The remaining bandits held their positions around the villagers.
Reason had no weapon in hand. A spear lay three steps to his left where its wielder had dropped it.
He didn't reach for it yet.
The first two came shoulder to shoulder. Reason stepped left. They corrected.
In that correction, one stepped into the other's path — half a second of tangled footing, and the man's own knife from his belt found the gap between his ribs by Reason's hand.
Reason twisted the blade. As the man screamed up and fainted, his sword sicthed owners-
Reason took the falling man's sword before, and before the other one could react, his head went flying.
Two down.
The next four reached him together.
Before they could engage, Reason threw the sword, taking down one.
A step, the spear at his feet, he didn't bend down, but rather kicked the spear up into his hand.
One-two moves to create distance, as the three backed up into an arched line, Reason stepped to the side.
The spear sifted in his hand before he flung it in an arch, a speed and strength incomparable to any move before.
When the bandits finally reacted, it was too late. Two men's bodies were torn through completely, and even the third fell as the spear was lodged in him.
One toss and three fell...
Reason stood still.
He looked at Berric, still among the kneeling villagers. The old man was moving through the stunned crowd of bandits. He killed two who noticed him, but he was still moving, cutting rope after rope.
Though he avoided most notice on the ground, he heard a sound *Fush* his head didn't even turn fully when something intervened *Ping* a thrown sword stopped a crossbow bolt just before it reached him.
Following the direction, he saw Reason retrieve two daggers and already send them on a job.
The bandit on the roof who fired the crossbow and the one beside him, who was preparing another shot, fell back as each got a dagger of their own in their chest.
"The next one to fire will die!" Reason's word wasn't meant as a threat, but certainty.
The few bow and crossbow men on the roofs lowered their weapons... the moment their brains connected shooting with death, they didn't know what to do.
Something was not right. They were a bandit group, one of the three great gangs in the region. Why were they so afraid that they couldn't think straight...
They were so scared they didn't even recognize the difference between going around killing and raping villagers and actually fighting death.
Fighting the other gangs, hunting monsters and beasts was the closest they came to danger, but they always had people around. Rarely did one really die amongst them.
Now that they were falling one after the other like flies, they couldn't even move as they wanted anymore.
"Vice..." A bowman whispered, looking across the roofs to the grain house, searching for ease in following orders, but as he did, he saw why the vice leader didn't bark new orders for a while now.
...
Right after the vice leader gave the order to charge Reason.
The vice leader's eyes were on the square below when the man at his back spoke.
"Vice." Not a shout. Just a name. But the tone was enough.
He turned.
A dark elven woman, Mercy came from the shadows at the roof's edge, already committed, her dagger angled for his throat with the kind of precision that didn't come from anger but from practice. She had closed half the distance before he registered she was there.
He twisted. Fast. The curved blade came up on instinct more than thought, sweeping clean through her.
She dissolved into dark smoke.
The vice leader straightened and said nothing for a moment. Below him, the fight continued. He looked at where she had been.
"An illusion. And if that was an illusion — then the one who walked that villager away earlier..." He didn't finish the thought aloud.
A second shape came from his left. Another her, this one lower, the dagger already too close to track cleanly. He moved again, the blade passing through smoke a second time, and in the same breath, he heard it.
*Ping*
Metal catching metal beside his ear.
He glanced sideways. Another guard's outstretched sword had met a third dagger — a real one this time — mid-air. The real Mercy was already past the illusion's dispersing smoke, using the confusion of three attacks in rapid succession to close the distance he hadn't given her.
She was fast.
Not fast enough.
His man's block had bought a single second, and the vice used it, stepping into her path before she could reach him.
She read it, pulled back just in time, and while doing so, her blade found the guard's throat on the way out.
Clean. Deliberate. The payment for the block.
She and the vice faced each other.
He looked at her properly for the first time. The dark elf stood still, breathing even, eyes calculating.
Three attacks, two illusions, one real — layered and sequenced and nearly silent.
Nearly.
"You almost had me," he said. Not mockingly. Just accurately.
She said nothing.
The other guard, the one who called Mercy's first attack, came forward.
Mercy was quick, keeping the distance open, making him work, but the rooftop was narrow.
Not to forget, it was two on one.
The vice's strike came down, missing Mercy by a hair. He had thirty years of fights in worse places than this. The problem was that Mercy was too elusive.
He pressed her toward the edge once, twice, and on the third, she had one direction left.
She took it.
The surprise attack failed, so retreat was the only option. She backflipped off the grain house's roof, reaching for her belt in the motion.
Four small pouches flew across to each corner of the square, hitting the ground almost at the same time as her.
She landed, rolling once, coming up already throwing
another one at her own feet.
Instantly, a thick black smokescreen swallowed the square whole, the villagers, the bandits, the fire at the edges reduced to orange smears behind a moving wall of dark.
Only the rooftops and some bandits in the back were out of its reach.
"Black powder smoke bombs, those thieving bastards, those were ours!" The man beside the vice called out, looking at him for new orders.
The vice leader looked down at the choking man, "Thank you." He said as he ended his pain.
"Should we shoot into the smoke?" The man asked.
"No, our men are still inside." The vice answered before he shouted his orders.
"Retreat, get out of the smoke!"
Coughing. Shouting. Screams of dearth and the particular confusion of people who cannot see and do not know which direction danger is coming from.
And inside it, Berric's voice — low, rough, carrying just far enough.
"This way. Stay together and low. Don't stop."
He had three villagers moving before the smoke finished spreading. Then six. Then more hands finding more hands in the dark, Elira pulling the younger girl by the wrist, Mrs. Mortimer gripping someone's sleeve without knowing whose it was, yet not letting go.
Inside the smoke, Reason moved without hurry. A shape, a sound, a direction — that was enough.
One man heard him too late. Another saw him not at all.
A third thought distance would save him; none of them were right.
By the time the smoke began thinning at the edges, the numbers had changed considerably.
Some of them got out, but as the voices died inside the smoke faster, the vice leader's men couldn't help but ask again. "Should we shoot now?"
The vice raised his hand before he ordered. "Aim for the edges, the first to show shall be rained upon."
Inside Reason heard the vice's call. "Monster, I don't care for the villagers. If you willingly walk out first in a moment, only you will die."
But Reason didn't seem affected; he only called a name. "Mercy."
The dark elven beauty stood behind him. "Reason, are you-"
Before she could ask if he really was going to walk out, Reason gave instructions. "You help the villagers get out, protect them from the back, and do not think of coming back until they are a safe distance."
"Reason..." Mercy didn't want this... the villagers are safe, they can run away... together...
"You didn't listen two times." He turned his head to look at her. "I will not allow a third time!"
"..." He sounded even more serious than ever before.
"Understood..." A reluctant nod, but it was enough to let Reason move forward.