Glowing green eyes widened in the dark. Gehr's mangy fur bristled as his whiskers trembled like tuning forks. After a stunned silence, the hound managed only a strangled "Yip!"
Luge remained eerily calm. He'd laughed himself hoarse over this police file days prior. "Clear?" he mouthed, gesturing at the shadows.
Gehr raised a paw – all clear.
They crept back to the lamppost where the "beggar boy" had vanished. The flickering oil lamp cast elongated shadows, its dying light revealing crumpled paper. Luge smoothed the bloodbloom-stained threat:
Observe quietly. Or your parents join the faceless.
Footsteps echoed. Three figures emerged – Fecherie flanked by a grinning psychopath and a crimson-robed gunner.
"Expensive trap," Luge noted dryly.
Bork, the "Human Butcher," licked his knife. "Your daddy's men skinned my brother. You'll scream longer."
Gehr lunged first.
BOOM! The gunner's flintlock erupted. Luge's hands blurred, slamming two obsidian shards together. A searing snap-hiss echoed as a blade of pure light erupted – two meters of ionized plasma.
Bork's smirk died mid-swing. The plasma blade cleaved through steel and flesh alike, cauterizing wounds as it passed. The gunner collapsed next, his weapon cloven in twain.
Fecherie stumbled back. "What… what are you?"
"Out of patience." Luge advanced, the dying plasma shards smoking in his grip.
The cultist hurled a lead-lined box. It cracked open, vomiting viridian light.
[Radiation Alert] flared across Luge's vision.
"Run!" He tackled Gehr as the gamma burst hit.