Valen hid his silent panic behind a frowning poker face. His red gloved right hand slipped behind his back to touch the handles of his butterfly swords while his eyes remained fixed on the man he thought he’d killed. He would’ve thought that he’d really gone mad if Keiko didn’t see Cyril too.

“Did you follow us here?!” Keiko scowled at her unwelcomed partner. “How’d you even know we’d be here?”

“You really should be careful about where you leave your phone charging.” Cyril took a step forward with both hands buried in the grey trench coat he wore, causing Valen to tighten his grip on his weapon. “I planted an app on it while you were using the loo.”

The orange hairs Keiko’s bushy fox tail bristled in rage.

“Makes sense, but you must be an idiot to admit that,” she said. “Did you really think that you can do whatever you want just because you're my senior? There’s no way HR isn’t going to fire your arse now.”

“I doubt I’ll have to worry about that,” said Cyril coldly.

It was at that moment that it occurred to Valen how odd it was that no one was reacting to the scene Cyril was making. Hand still gripping the handles of his butterfly swords, his eyes scanned the room to see what the hell everyone else was doing.

His heart fell when he realised that every patron at the cafe was staring at him right alongside Cyril.

The only person seemingly not on the same page as them was the portly man behind the barista counter. Sweat caked his brow as he looked between the bar patrons and Cyril standing in the middle of the cafe like he owned the place.

“S-sir,” the portly man stammered. “I-I’m going to have to ask you to leave-”

The soft splat of something sharp slamming against flesh cut him off, followed by the now all too familiar sound of crackling electricity. Valen spun his head in the man’s direction and saw an electrified wire sticking out of his neck moments before his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he slumped to the ground unconscious. A few feet away from him was the waitress, holding the taser gun that knocked him out in trembling hands that dropped it to the ground as soon as its one shot was spent.

“What’s going on?” Keiko moved her hand behind her, presumably to grab a weapon hidden in her back pocket. “Who are these people?”

“You want me, is that it?” Valen looked Cyril in the eye, his already butterfly swords half drawn behind him. “Then you and your goons can fight me all you’d like but let Keiko go. She has no part in this and no one will believe her anyways.”

Cyril raised his hand and each finger split off from each other down the palm like the spines of a fan before growing into long tendrils covered in sharp yellowed teeth.

“What the fuck?!” Keiko took a step back and drew her knife.

Cyril ignored her, instead addressing Valen directly with bloodshot green eyes burning in silent rage.

“She’s a part of this now, thanks to you,” he said. “Her death is on you.”

Every patron in the tiny cafe rose to their feet, gaze fixed on Valen and Keiko.

A chill at the back of Valen’s skull spurned him to draw his butterfly swords, and not a second too soon.

The nearest patron, an orc man who’d been sitting with an elven woman, drew a long machete from a shopping bag he’d kept at his side and charged with the speed of a rampaging bull. He swung his machete right at Valen’s neck.

Valen brought up both butterfly swords side-by-side in a single reverse grip just in time for the heavy machete blade to slam into the flat of the blade. Shockwaves reverberated through the swords, up his arms, and into his bones. He ignored it all and used his free left hand to sock his orcish attacker in the mouth. 

Teeth dislodged from the orc’s gums upon impact and flew from his flapping lips in a violet spurt of bloody spittle. Then, with a flick of the wrist, Valen made his coupled butterfly swords slice open a sensitive tendon in the orc’s wrist.

The orc screamed in pain and dropped his machete to cradle his injured wrist. Severed white tendons flared out from the bloody red wound he desperately tried to staunch.

Capitalising on his distraction, Valen proceeded to kick him in the shin with the blade of his own foot, forcing the already surprised and injured orc to his knees where he was promptly greeted with a knee to the face that knocked out what few teeth he had left.

Everyone in the cafe save for Cyril took a step back in surprise. The elven woman who the incapacitated orc had been sitting with furrowed her brow into an angry scowl that surprisingly wasn’t directed at Valen.

“You idiot!” she shouted at the downed orc. “You could’ve killed him!”

A wave of confusion spread throughout the cafe. Even Cyril seemed taken aback by the comment and the disguised cultists shared unsure looks with each other.

Finally, one bold werewolf spoke up. 

“Isn’t that the idea…?”

“What?” A man one table away from the werewolf looked at him like he had three heads. “Did we have the same dream?”

“The guy got stabbed in the heart!” shouted a woman holding a long knife she’d hidden in her purse. “The fuck else is that supposed to mean?!”

“It was at an altar during the new moon!” cried another woman holding a handheld taser. “We need to take him alive for this year’s sacrifice!”

“We need to kill him now!” An eager man shouted while waving a handaxe in the air. “The Unborn God will be angry otherwise!”

“They’ll be even more angry if we take a sacrifice from them!” cried a fearful woman gripping a baton with shaky hands. “We must take him alive!”

“No, we must kill him now!”

The cultists started arguing with each other about what they should do with Valen. Team Kill and Team Sacrifice seemed to be about even. Many of them flip flopped between teams depending on who was the loudest voice at the time.

Cyril looked between all of them with furrowed brow. His tendril hand lowered like pacified snakes while he struggled to comprehend the overlapping shouting matches around him. Looks like he was starting to question his own vision as well.

Keiko stepped closer to Valen during the confusion, gripping her tanto point knife with an unsure look on her face.

“I am so confused,” she muttered softly to herself.

“Just roll with it and be ready for a fight,” whispered Valen. He only had slightly more information than she did, but it was enough to make things click in his head.

The whole reason the Unborn God offered to make him its prophet was his ability to understand its words. Which means that most if not all the cultists serving it must not have the ability to understand its orders. 

Instead it has to resort to giving orders through compulsive thoughts and vague dreams that could be interpreted a number of ways. Its most recent one must’ve meant either that Valen should die as soon as possible or that he should be kept alive for a sacrifice later on. Luckily for Valen, the cultists can’t seem to figure out which one was the right order.

When the noise of the zealous cultists speaking over each other reached its crescendo, a single word booming from Cyril with a bone shaking timbre shut them all up.

“ENOUGH!”

The squabbling cultists obeyed the dark paladin’s order, every single one lowering their gaze from his exasperated glare with pursed lips.

Cyril sucked in a deep breath and spoke again, no longer shouting but sounding just as loud with an unnatural cadence that made every word rattle in the back of Valen's skull.

“I am a paladin of the Unborn God,” he said, the yellow teeth covering his raw red tendrils elongating into spear-like spikes. “I shall speak for our master, and they demand this man’s death!”

The cultists nodded solemnly. They raised their weapons one by one, though the ones who brought less-lethal weapons like clubs and tasers still looked uneasy.

Keiko raised her own knife up as well, ready to cut up the first cultist to get too close. But then, an idea lit up in Valen’s mind. One that might get them out of there without a fight if all went well.

Valen shouted at the top of his lungs, trying to project as much authority as he could to the weak-willed lot around him.

“Then why am I still alive?!” He stood a step forward and slid one butterfly sword over to his left hand, causing the nearest cultists to take a step back with eyes locked onto its sharpened blades. “Your paladin here had me dead to rights while I was in prison. It should’ve been a cakewalk for him with the Unborn God’s powers, and yet I survived. Wouldn’t this mean the Unborn God has other plans for my death?”

The cultists began muttering softly to themselves again. Those on Team Sacrifice started casting doubtful glances at Cyril, who clenched his teeth in anger.

“Enough of this!” Cyril shouted. “You die tonight!”

Five spiky tendrils lashed out from his wrist, stretching all the way across towards the corner where Valen and Keiko stood.

But Valen was ready. He’d already been observing the fleshy tendrils since they sprouted from Cyril’s fingers, and the killing intent that chilled the back of his skull told him exactly when they were about to make contact.

Cyril had swung the tendrils down at him, like one would use a whip. He did not seem to have as much control over them as the larger tentacles he’d use in their last fight, and their trajectory seemed to be mostly dictated by gravity. Maybe he couldn’t use the larger tentacles without hurting the allies around him. Maybe he was just still weak after coming back from the dead.

Either way, Valen was going to use it to his advantage.

He slashed at the tendrils with his right sword. The force of gravity propelling the tendrils downwards allowed Valen’s blade to easily cut through three of them in one swing, and the remaining two he promptly dealt with a quick swipe of his left sword.

The severed tendrils dropped onto the floor and shrivelled up like dried worms, but Valen didn’t stop there. Last time fought Cyril he was unarmed and hampered by a hesitation to kill. Now that he had his swords and knew that Cyril could just come back to life after being killed, he had no such reservations.

Valen pressed the advantage and continued slashing away at the tendrils while his legs made a breakneck sprint towards Cyril. Every swing of his blades lopped off more and more of the tendrils in feet and inches. He reached Cyril within seconds and looked him straight in his stunned face with murderous intent burning behind his cold red eyes.

Cyril stumbled back in a desperate scramble to get away but Valen was faster. He brought down his left sword on Cyril’s wrist, severing it and what little tendrils remained. Then, before he could mutate his body any further, Valen thrusted his right sword up into his chest.

The tip of the blade slid in right through his tensed-up muscles, bypassing the ribcage by entering right below its sternum. Valen could’ve sword he felt his blade touch Cyril’s heart. But just to be sure, he spun his left sword into a reverse grip and stabbed it down in between his shoulder blade, aiming for the aorta of his heart.

Valen didn’t stop forcing the blades in until he felt the hilt of his swords crash against flesh. When both butterfly swords had sunk as far as they could go, he pulled them out of Cyril, allowing deep scarlet streams of blood to shoot out of his stab wounds.

If left at that, Cyril should bleed out in a matter of seconds. Even immediate medical intervention had little chance of saving him now. But in case he could regenerate, Valen slashed his right sword at him again, this time aimed at his throat. The blade ripped halfway through Cyril’s throat, and a consecutive slash from Valen’s left sword severed it completely.

Cyril’s head, its face still frozen in a look of shock, fell onto the ground with a loud thud that made every cultist in the cafe shudder. The head rolled over to a nearby woman. The flesh melted off the skull into a puddle of blood right before the woman’s eyes, causing her to let out a shrill scream and drop the axe she’d been holding.

“See the power of your god?!” Valen shouted for everyone to hear. “If they did not save their paladin from me, what chance do the rest of you have?!”

Doubt and disagreements were already rife among the cultists. They were all deathly afraid of displeasing the Unborn God but couldn’t agree on what the Unborn God actually wanted. At this point Valen really wasn’t sure what the bloody thing wanted to do with him either, but as long as the cultists weren’t sure as well, he still had a chance of getting out in more or less one piece.

“H-he’s right!” cried a man clutching a baton in his hand so tight his dark knuckles turned white. “The Unborn God wants him alive! We can’t kill him!”

“He’s bluffing!” shouted a woman with a cracking voice while waving a knife in the air at him. “We need to kill him now to avenge the paladin!”

“Killing him will only anger the Unborn God!” argued another man holding a can of pepper spray. “We need him alive!”

“We need him dead!”

“Alive!”

“Dead!”

The cultists continued to argue back and forth. Amusingly enough, they all seemed more content to verbally fight each other instead of actually fighting Valen despite their very adamant opinions on how to handle him. After seeing their mighty paladin get demolished in just a few seconds they probably weren’t eager to challenge Valen without the full backing of their allies.

Good thing too, because as confident as he was in his fighting abilities, Valen didn’t fancy his chances against so many enemies. He would definitely take at least four or five of them down before being overwhelmed-maybe more with Keiko’s help. They might even be able to fend the mob off long enough to make an escape, but realistically speaking they were fucked beyond belief if they tried to take them all on.

At the height of the cultists’ shouting match, the already high tension reached its zenith. In a fit of high emotion, a red-faced werebear swung his baton at a knife-wielding human he’d been arguing with. Forgetting his own strength, the shaft of his baton completely caved in the human man’s head, splitting it open with a squelchy crack.

The human’s body dropped onto the ground and continued to spasm there on the cold cafe tiles as his destroyed brain sent out one last burst of electric signals through its dying body before going silent. His entire being went limp in an instant, no longer a person, but a fresh corpse lying on its side with blood and brains pouring from its caved in head.

The horrified werebear took a step backwards in shock at what he’d done to his own ally.

“I-I didn’t mean to.” He dropped his baton and it clattered onto the ground. “It was an acci-”

Before he could finish saying ‘accident’, an elven woman who’d been sitting at the same table as the now dead man shoved a knife into the middle of his back, severing his spine.

“You bastard!” cried the woman in a grief-stricken scream. 

Things escalated from there.

An orc man tried to restrain the frenzied woman by grabbing her shoulders. A mage from across the room then chucked a fireball at the orc, burning him and forcing him to let go of the woman, who proceeded to stab him in the gut. Another human then hit the mage who’d chucked the fireball over the head with a coffee glass that shattered into pieces against his skull.

More spells were slung, more glasses were broken, and more blood was shed as the cultists’ angry arguing turned into a full-blown brawl where nobody was sure who was on who’s side when they really should all be on the same side.

Valen ducked through the hurled projectile spells and flying coffee glasses back to the corner of the cafe.

He threw the coat he'd left on his chair back on and grabbed Keiko by the wrist, gently tugging her close to him.

“We have to leave!” he whisper-shouted, looking right at her bewildered face to make sure she could read his lips over the noise around them. “Now!”

The confusion melted away from Keiko’s face, replaced by serious resolve.

“Right!” she said with a nod.

They kept their heads below eye level of the brawling cultists around them. None of them seemed to notice in all the confusion. The idiots were all too busy beating and killing each other to see their quarry slipping away under their literal noses.

It’d be almost morbidly comedic if it wasn’t all so gorey.

Valen pushed open the cafe door and scrambled outside with Keiko in tow. As soon as they slid through the door, they stood up and started running.

They kept moving until the noise of the cafe brawl was far behind them, then kept going until they reached an entirely different street. It must’ve been a pretty odd sight, a vampire and a kitsune covered in coffee and bits of glass running down the sidewalk holding each other’s hand, though luckily for the people of the Nocturnal District knew well enough to keep to themselves.

Keiko was the first to stop running, tapping Valen in the shoulder to tell him to slow down.

“I think…we lost them…” she said in between pants.

“We should still get out of sight,” said Valen before pulling her into one of the Nocturnal District’s many dark alleyways. “Let’s catch our breath here.”

“Right…” Keiko sucked in a deep breath through her nostrils, held it for a moment, then let it out through puckered lips. She repeated the process a couple of times before she regained the strength to speak again. “How come you aren’t tired?”

“I do a lot of cardio,” said Valen. “Are you okay? Injured anywhere?”

“I don’t think so.” Keiko straightened her back and tried to unsuccessfully shake the bits of glass out of her hair. “Got cut a few times but my healing factor took care of it.”

“You still have a bit of glass on your head,” he said. 

“Hmm? Where?”

“Just stay still,” he said. “I have gloves, I’ll brush it off for you.”

“Oh, um, thank you.”

Valen picked the glass piece away from her hair between his red-gloved fingers. When he was done he gently brushed the top of her head to remove any remaining bits. As he did so, he felt a soft, furry lump protruding from the top of her head, hidden underneath her sleek black hair.

Curious, he pinched the lump and lifted it. To his surprise, it was a little black fox ear. 

“You have fox ears on your head?” he asked, letting go of the furry ear.

Keiko’s face flushed red.

“Um, yeah.” Two furry black fox ears unfurled from underneath her hair, drooping to either side from the top of her head. Seeing how big they were now, it was a wonder how she ever hid them in the first place. “They pop up sometimes whenever I get stressed.”

Valen guessed she must’ve hidden them for a reason, and that reason was probably because they made her look too adorable to take seriously. Seeing them did wonders to lighten his mood after the narrow escape.

“...Will you punch me if I told you they were cute?” he asked, hoping to help ease her spirit too, even if it really did get him punched.

Keiko chuckled and leaned against the alleyway wall, her fox ears twitching away any bits of glass might be left on it.

“With you I’ll take it as a compliment,” she said with a playful smile that slowly melted away. “So, I guess this is where you say ‘I told you so.’”

“I’m not a child, Keiko,” said Valen. “But yeah, I told you so.”