The Patch Man

by Adam Heine

Chapter One: Warm Bodies

Seven silvers and a copper. Pesh, grit, and other drugs tossed like bread flour. One dead body, bled out on the floor of the abandoned hostel. Blit sighed. The Banshees hadn't even tried to hide this mess. They relied on him too much lately. Blit set down his pack and got to work.

The disreputable knew Blit as the Patch Man—an ugly demonspawn with a gift for cleaning up after folks. The guilds of the Puddles hired him to patch up their problems and keep the city watch off their backs. Eighty percent of the time, that required only towels, soap, and a meticulous attention to detail (though to be fair, the criminals who made their home in the Puddles frequently lacked all three).

The rest of the time, though, even the most fastidious murderer needed someone with Blit's unique skills.

He pocketed the money (he considered it a tip) and swept the brown grit powder into a bag. The blood was more difficult, but Blit had devised a few formulae over the years for just this sort of work. He pulled a flask from his coat and sprinkled its contents on the floor where a gallon or two of blood had soaked into the wood. The dark stain bubbled and hissed until it became an oily, translucent substance, which Blit wiped up with an old rag.

What had happened here? It looked like a business transaction gone wrong. Probably the poor bastard on the floor couldn't pay up, or else he upset someone he shouldn't have. Gedrak, most likely; that son of an orc couldn't take an insult if you paid him, and his face was eminently insultable. Not that Blit was one to talk.

Regardless, it was unusually sloppy for the Banshees to leave all of this to Blit. He should be glad—sloppy guilds meant steady work for him—but every time they pulled him on a job, he was keenly aware of what would happen if he missed something. If it meant saving their own skins, nobody would hesitate to patch up the Patch Man.

Blit slid his hands underneath the corpse's arms and hefted the torso experimentally. It weighed about two hundred forty, maybe two hundred fifty pounds. Far more than Blit could carry. He reached into his coat again and fingered an array of vials. Dozens of them. His extracts. None of them were labeled, but even if Blit didn't have a strict organizational system, he could identify each one by color, smell, viscosity.

He selected a bronze liquid with the consistency (though hardly the flavor) of red wine. It went down his throat like axle grease, and within moments, he could feel the change within him. He put on his pack, which now felt as light as though it were empty. Then he grabbed the body by the armpits and hefted it onto his back. The arms fell across his chest and he held the wrists in front of him, so it looked like he carried a very large, sleeping child. It weighed him down, but with the bronze fluid in his system he could walk for miles before the burden even tired him.

Taking one last look at the scene—clean, but not so clean that it might raise suspicion—he turned and walked out of the hostel's double doors.

The goon outside sneered. They always sneered. It had become annoyingly predictable. "Patch Man."

"Odim," Blit said in return. He pointed his chin toward the doors. "Job's done."

Odim grunted and went inside. He probably thought he was performing a necessary task, checking up on Blit's work. But if that thug were capable of the necessary level of scrutiny to supervise Blit's work, then he would have pocketed the silvers before Blit had even gotten there. No, getting inspected by the Banshees wasn't what motivated Blit to do his job well.

Now getting killed by the Banshees...

Odim returned after a minute—not nearly long enough to determine whether Blit had done a good job. "Looks good," he said and handed Blit a small jingling pouch.

Blit knew without opening it that it wasn't enough. "I get ten. Twelve if there's a body." He shifted the corpse on his back to emphasize the point.

Odim shook his fat head. "Gedrak says eight. Says you're getting lazy. You missed something last week."

Lying ratsack. Blit never missed anything. "What, exactly, did he say I missed?"

Odim shrugged. "Ask him. I just do what I'm told."

Blit let out a weary sigh. If he'd missed something, then Odim was a wizard-in-training. But was Gedrak holding out on him or just Odim? "Tell you what. Give me two more, and I won't tell Gedrak you pocketed the rest."

Odim rubbed his chin between thumb and fat forefinger. "No dice, pinhead." He referred, of course, to the copious horns spiking out of Blit's skull. "No reason both of us need to be in trouble with the boss."

Not acting on his own, then. But he'd had to think about it, which meant he had the whole pay with him.

So, Gedrak was afraid of how the Patch Man would react to getting stiffed. "How's this?" Blit unfolded his legs to their full height, putting him eye to eye with the goon. He rested one of his toe claws ever so noticeably on Odim's boot and—just for that extra dramatic effect—hissed a phrase in the demonic tongue that turned the air around them pitch black. "You give me all the rest, and I let you—"

"Get off me, imp-cricket." Odim lifted his foot so suddenly that it threw Blit off balance. He stumbled back. Odim shoved him in the chest, knocking him the rest of the way down, causing the dead body to flop to the ground next to him.

Odim shivered and pulled up his jacket collar, though the night was warm enough. He turned his back on Blit and hustled up the cobbled alley without another word.

Disgusted, but not scared. Blit pushed himself off the ground and picked up the body. What an idiot he was—probably the only half-demon in all of Avistan who couldn't frighten anyone older than six. He still had a corpse to deal with. He produced two more vials from his inner pockets and downed them one at a time. Immediately, he disappeared (literally—that's the beauty of alchemy) and ran with inhuman speed to Wallow Lane.

Nobody came to Wallow Lane, so it didn't matter that his invisibility wore off by the time he got there. He climbed an old bridge, half of which had collapsed into the waves years ago. The ocean lapped at the pillars below. Even at low tide, the water was deeper here than anywhere else accessible by land. The perfect place to dump a corpse—or dozens of corpses, in Blit's case.

He lugged the body off his back and began tying loose rubble around its waist to weigh it down. All the while, he muttered ineffectual curses at Odim, at his boss, Gedrak, at all the damn Banshees. Those torble-pods needed him, certainly more than he needed them. Why did he play janitor for them and let them cheat him at the same time?

He knew the answer, of course. He'd tried the straight route, many times. It always ended in betrayal. At least the Banshees cheated him to his face.

He got ready to push the corpse off the bridge's broken edge when he caught a glint of something inside the man's jacket. Another tip, he thought. Maybe it would make up for what he'd lost.

He reached in, but instead of coins he found a silver crest. He hissed through his teeth. This man wasn't some grit addict who wouldn't pay up.

He was city watch.

∗ ∗ ∗

Odim doesn't need to be the Banshees' brains—just their muscle.

A couple hours later, Blit was face first in his third mug at a place called the Puddleglut. The beer tasted like rotten lemon juice, but at least the barkeep didn't sneer at him when he ordered, and the only other folks who were here at dawn weren't conscious enough to give him dirty looks.

The watch. What the hell was Gedrak thinking? The Banshees were more of a gang than a guild. They couldn't handle this kind of heat. They were good enough at what they did, although smuggling drugs and slaves through the Puddles wasn't exactly difficult (and considering how often they called upon Blit, maybe they weren't even very good at that). What would they do when twenty members of the city guard came through the district like drunken hill giants?

"No." Blit shook his head, aware that he was muttering aloud, but too fuzzed out to decide whether or not he should. "They can get themselves hanged all they want. Ain't my job to care."

Blit was inculpable, at least as much as anyone else in the Puddles. He just cleaned things up, didn't ask questions, didn't make trouble (not even when he tried to, apparently). If the watch came, he'd just hide out for a while and then work for the next guild to emerge from the depths.

Unless the Banshees scapegoated him. Shax's knives, that's exactly what they'd do.

"Blitterton!" said a cheerful voice behind him.

Blit groaned. "Would someone actually name their child that?"

"Well, I know Blit's short for something." Allyra took the stool next to Blit and leaned back against the bar. Her chestnut hair fell off bare, muscular shoulders and into a puddle of ale. She didn't seem to care. "Damn, Blit, you look worse than usual."

He grunted in annoyance. "Thanks."

She laughed. "You know what I mean, Blitskin."

"Not it either."

"Damn." She pounded the bar. "I'll figure it out eventually. So what the hell's wrong?"

Blit stared into his drink. He was going to tell her, of course. That's why he came here. Not for her looks, of course—human beauty was... odd. No, Blit talked to Allyra because he'd never met another soul in his life who would willingly start a conversation with him that didn't begin with: "Get out."

"Something happened at work tonight. I'm not sure what to do about it."

"Tell me." She refilled his mug as though she were the waitress—which she was, but you couldn't tell since Blit was the only customer with his head upright.

"It's that one gang."

She nodded. "The smugglers." Allyra knew about Blit's work—not the details, of course, but enough to know what kind of person Blit really was. He had started telling her to disgust her, honestly. To make her go away. She never did.

In a way, he felt like it absolved him—so long as Allyra listened to him, he couldn't be that bad.

"They're in over their heads, I think." And he told her as much of the story as he could get away with: about the drugs, the body, the argument he'd had with Odim. Always as vague as possible, never naming names and never saying the words "city watch."

Allyra listened intently, with compassion. "You're afraid someone's going to come after you."

"Maybe. I guess it's always a danger, but..."

She touched him lightly. Not on his human arm, but on his scaled leg. "I won't say you're safe, Blit, 'cause I don't know that. But it seems to me your gang has more to worry about than you right now. Maybe stay out of it for a while." She chuckled. "Besides, your boss will forget in a week. You know how short half-orc memories are."

Blit looked up sharply. He'd never told Allyra that Gedrak was a half-orc. Or had he? He couldn't remember now, and the drink wasn't helping. It didn't matter. If she knew that much, then Blit was in danger.

He slammed the mug onto the bar, splattering it. "I gotta go," he slurred and stumbled out into the dark predawn.

∗ ∗ ∗

He was so scared after that, he didn't leave his house for five days. ("House" was probably a strong term. It was essentially three and a half walls on the roof of a rowhouse whose neighbors had collapsed years ago.)

How much did Allyra know? Who had she told? Probably nobody. She was just a waitress, for Aroden's sake. Blit had probably just drunk too much and let slip something he shouldn't have.

Anyway, Allyra wasn't the real problem. It was Gedrak and the watch he was worried about. He should leave town, or at least move, but some naive, stupid part of him wouldn't let him until he knew he had no choice.

His corner of the Puddles stayed quiet until late that Oathday. Someone knocked on his door ("door" also being a strong term). He peeked over the lip of the flat roof to see Odim and another Banshee named Kip in the street. They were breathing heavily, as though they'd run halfway across town. Kip rubbed a bandaged wound on his arm.

"What do you want?"

"Patch Man?" Odim peered up at him, squinting. Humans couldn't see as clearly in the dark as Blit could. "We got... trouble," he said between breaths. "Need you... now."

Blit did nothing for a moment. Odim looked pale. He must have known about the dead guard, but that hadn't fazed him at all. Had something worse happened?

He sighed. He wouldn't refuse them. If he did, he'd have to run again, leaving Absalom for good. So long as there was a chance he could stay, he'd take it. "I'll be right down."

Odim and Kip led him a couple miles away, to an old wooden warehouse near the Foreign Quarter. They said nothing the whole way, walking faster than Blit would have liked.

Odim waved for him to go in and then sat down at the entrance like it was a normal job, like he and Kip hadn't shown up at his door with sheet-white faces.

"That's it?" Blit said. "What happened to you two?"

"Nothing. Just do your job," Odim said, pulling out a cigar. Blit turned away, and Odim grabbed his arm. "But do it fast, yeah? We don't know how much time we got."

Blit nodded and walked into the dark warehouse. Signs of struggle were everywhere. Fresh blood, shattered woodwork—recently shattered, as evidenced by the splinters dusting the floor and the warhammer near the dead body. There were two bodies this time, one of them Gedrak's goon. Blit set his pack down to work.

As soon as he did, he heard a faint cry. He stiffened. The noise had come from inside the warehouse, right next to him, in fact. He turned slowly.

It didn't take him long to find the source. One of the bodies was still alive.

Coming Soon: Deep trouble for Blit in Chapter Two of Adam Heine's "The Patch Man."

Adam Heine is the Design Lead for the computer RPG Torment: Tides of Numenéra. His fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Thaumatrope. Find him online at adamheine.com.

Illustration by Kuba Witowski.

The Patch Man

by Adam Heine

Chapter Two: Trine Treachery

Blit crept toward the body, fingering two vials which, when mixed, would create an explosive powerful enough to separate a person from their more important appendages.

Just in case.

The body was a woman, unconscious but still very much alive. She must have gasped in pain and then passed out again. No wonder—her leather armor bore a gash the length of Blit's forearm. How had she survived at all? Blit leaned in to see the woman's face.

He nearly dropped his vials. Allyra! He could even smell the Puddleglut's "famous ale" on her skin.

She still breathed, but barely. A trickle of blood had dried at the corner of her mouth. Trying very hard not to think about how she'd gotten there (in leather armor? And was that her warhammer?), Blit unstrapped the armor to get at her wound.

She had a ragged cut from her left hip to her lower ribs on the right. A serrated blade, like the kind Gedrak typically carried. Blit grabbed some rags from his pack. He cleaned the wound as best he could and wrapped it tight until the bleeding stopped. She was still breathing when he finished, which was something, but she wasn't waking up, and for all of Blit's tricks, he had nothing that could wake her. Ironically, patching up people wasn't in his job description.

What the hell could he do? He should kill her and pretend he'd never seen her alive, or tell Odim and have him do the job. Just the thought of that made him sick, though. No, he had to finish his work and get her the hell out of there. Somehow.

That night may not have been his best work. Every two minutes, he looked back to make sure Allyra still breathed, and every other minute to make sure Odim or Kip hadn't come in early.

What had happened? From the mess, it was clear most of the Banshees had been present, Gedrak included. Blit found what looked like an adamantine ring from a mail shirt. Gedrak certainly didn't own anything like that, nor was Allyra wearing anything so expensive. So who else had been here? Someone from outside the Puddles, certainly—and not the watch either.

And where did Allyra come in? She was a damned waitress!

With two bodies to cart, he'd need more than his bronze liquid. He drank the bronze and then added another extract that tasted like leather. His muscles bulged with the added strength the second elixir gave him, and he put one body on each shoulder like they were rolls of carpet.

As he shifted Allyra's weight, she cried out again. Blit's breath caught in his throat. What would Odim and Kip do if they saw her alive? And bandaged! Cayden's breath, what was Blit thinking? At best, they'd kill her immediately. More likely, they'd kill Blit too.

What he wanted to do was run past the goons and disappear, but that would make them more suspicious, not less. He'd just have to hope they didn't notice her. He shifted Allyra to better hide her bandage and then stepped outside.

"Job's done," he muttered, facing the street rather than the goons so his head would block any view of Allyra's stomach.

Odim grunted and left to check on Blit's work. Kip remained outside. He still rubbed his arm. He winced whenever he moved it too much, but the bandage wasn't very bloody—a blunt wound.

"What are you looking at?" Kip growled.

Blit looked away. Allyra breathed raggedly against his ear. Even with his extra strength, he felt like her breaths were rocking his whole body. Gods, he needed to get out of there.

"Looks good," Odim said behind them.

"Great," Blit said, relieved. "I'm gone."

He was several steps away when Odim said, "Hold it!"

Blit turned around slowly, expecting knives out and an inevitable chase—one he would almost certainly lose, even with his vials. When he saw Odim holding only a coin pouch, he let out the breath he'd been holding.

"You're jumpy tonight, Patch Man."

Allyra's job at the Puddlegut is more complicated than it seems.

"Can you blame me?" Blit managed. "You two are spooked as hell."

Odim and Kip gave each other a look. "But why are you skittish? You don't know nothing about it. Do you?"

A hundred lies darted through Blit's head, each one worse than the last. Anything he said would make them question him more, make them doubt.

So he didn't say anything. He grabbed several vials, downed all of them at once, and then walked toward the goons.

Odim and Kip stepped back involuntarily. "What do you know, pinhead?" Odim said, a familiar look of disgust on his face. "Did you see something in there?"

"Nothing." The extracts began taking effect. He no longer walked toward them, but floated. Impressively, they stood their ground (though probably Blit was just less intimidating than he thought he was). He reached out for the coin pouch. As he touched it, the pouch melted into his hand and disappeared—the best kind of magic trick, what with it being actual magic.

Odim and Kip gasped and jumped back (finally—what did it take to frighten some people?).

Blit said, "Just doing my job," and before they could ask any more questions, he flew up over the rooftops and into the night.

∗ ∗ ∗

He was shaking when he got home. He'd dumped the Banshee corpse on Wallow Lane, then carried Allyra inside his crumbling hovel—all invisibly of course, but his nerves couldn't take much more of this. He was an alchemist, dammit. He shouldn't even have to spell "skullduggery."

The night was using up his extracts faster than most, and he wasn't finished yet. Allyra was still unconscious. He'd thought about taking her to the Puddleglut and leaving her there, but if they didn't already know about her secret life as a goon-hammer, then he might be betraying her. Besides, he was too low on extracts to get her there safely. Instead, he decided to go to the Puddleglut himself and ask for help.

He downed a vial that scratched his throat and filled his nose with the scent of lemongrass. In the mirror—a shattered, grubby thing that he kept only for this purpose—he watched as his hellish features disappeared. His horns sank into his head. His feet became smaller, with five pink toes, while his digitigrade heels sank to the ground and his scales became a pair of woolen breeches. His skin kept its amber cast (nothing's perfect), but he looked more human than most people. Good enough for what he needed to do, at least.

He walked to the Puddleglut—couldn't afford using his faster formulae, in case his night with the Banshees wasn't over yet. The pub door hung open as usual, but inside was dark and quiet. Blit sniffed the air detecting nothing unusual. He patted his cloak to reassure himself that he had vials to spare, and stepped inside.

Of course, the dark didn't hinder a hellspawn. To him, the bar looked exactly as it had when he'd been there last, sans people. No sign of a struggle even. Everyone was just... gone.

He searched behind the bar. Everything was there, even the cashbox and a half-empty bottle of Qadiran cider. The shrine to Cayden Cailean on the back wall smelled of melted paraffin, but the wicks were cool to the touch. They'd left some time ago, then—but why? And why in such a hurry that they didn't even close the door?

The door to the back room stood open a crack. Maybe he'd find some clues in there. He pushed his way inside and hissed through his teeth. He'd expected some kind of office, or a small bedroom for the barkeep. Instead he found a gods-damned Caydenite cleric revival tent. Much had been removed, but there were still stoles, tunics, and a single greave, most of which bore the religion's distinctive ale mug. No less than three Placards of Wisdom hung on the walls, two of them with texts Blit had never seen.

"Who the hell are these people?" The room had been emptied in a hurry, but there were loose pieces of paper lying around. Notes. Most made no sense, but a couple of them were enlightening. The first of these was a sketched-out organizational chart with Gedrak's name near the top, a question mark above him, and names Blit knew all too well beneath: Odim, Kip, Sidro, Alver, and half a dozen other Banshees.

The other note bore no names, but the dates and times on it matched Blit's visits to the Puddleglut exactly. If he had any doubts they were about him, the most recent date was the previous Starday—the last time he'd been there—and next to it the words: "Scared him off?"

He crushed the note in his hand. All this time, Allyra had used him. The Puddleglut was some kind of Caydenite spy house, and Blit was one of their sources. Gods, he was such a fool!

He patted his pockets, looking for something that would destroy the whole place, when he caught a whiff of oil and smoke and realized someone else had the same idea.

While he was still inside.

Blit bolted out of the back room, and a wave of heat blasted him in the face. Smoke poured into his lungs until he couldn't stop coughing.

In between coughs, he caught the scent of alchemist's fire mixed with the smoke. Whoever had done this wanted it done fast and right. There was no time. He ran to the back, a pair of vials already in his hands. He swallowed the extracts by the time the first explosion rocked the pub. He burst out of the door at supernatural speed, not caring whether anyone could see him or if the arsonists were still around. He guzzled his last invisibility extract and ran straight home.

∗ ∗ ∗

Blit slammed the door behind him and leaned against it. His hands wouldn't stop trembling. He felt like he couldn't get enough oxygen.

What the hell was happening? First the dead guard, then Allyra, now the whole Puddleglut had gone up in flames. The incidents were related—they had to be. Think, Blit, think!

The Banshees had killed a member of the city watch. But that hadn't scared them as much as whatever had happened with Allyra. Had they been meeting with their boss, the mysterious question mark above Gedrak's name on the Caydenites' notes? Had Allyra stumbled onto something?

And then who had burned down the Puddleglut? Were the Caydenites covering their tracks or the Banshees? Or someone else?

"Who the hell are you?" said a voice.

Blit squinted in a sudden glare. Allyra stood ten feet away from him, lantern in one hand and warhammer brandished in the other. "Where am I? Why am I here?"

Blit cocked his head to the side. "Allyra, it's me."

Her eyebrows knit in confusion. "I don't know you. How do you know my name?"

Right. His alchemical disguise was still in effect. "I'm Blit," he said, as he looked for a formula that would cancel the extract's effect.

"Blit?" She lowered the hammer and stepped forward. "You look... wrong."

That wasn't the word he would have used. "It's a disguise. Watch." He drank the vial he'd found. He knew it was working by the way her lips turned upward.

"Oh, thank the Drunk. How did you...?"

"Become more human?"

She nodded.

"Alchemy." He could tell by her expression that this surprised her, but only briefly. No doubt she was piecing together other clues she knew about him. Well, at least she didn't know everything. "Wait." He looked her up and down. "How are you okay? When I left, you were half dead."

She put a hand on her stomach. "I'm not great, but yeah, okay. Blit, I'm... not a waitress. I mean, I am, but I'm also a—"

"Caydenite." Blit snarled. Of course, she'd healed herself. All the revelations of the last hour came rushing back. "How long have you been using me to spy on the Banshees for you?"

Allyra's face turned to utter shock. "Blit, I haven't been using you!"

"Oh, no?" He marched toward her, taking joy in the fact that she seemed afraid of him. "What about the notes I found in the Puddleglut? ‘Scared him off?' one said. Was that your handwriting or did you dictate that one?"

"The Puddleglut? What were you...?" Her face became serious. "Blit, you don't understand."

"Ha! If there's one thing I understand, it's betrayal. It's my fault, really. Suspicion should be my normal response to someone actually wanting to listen to me, you know? I can't believe I bought your act."

"Gods, Blit, no!" She dropped the hammer with a crash and put her head to her hand. "I'm so sorry. That's not at all—"

"Really, I should thank whoever burned down the Puddleglut. It would've been a waste of materials for me to do it. You know, I—"

"Blit, shut up!" She put a hand on his cheek. The shock of human touch was the only reason he obeyed, really. "Someone torched the Puddleglut?"

He nodded. "While I was in it, no less."

She moved quickly, dousing the lantern and grabbing her hammer and a cloak. "We have to get out of here. Now!"

"What? Nobody knows you're here, and who would bother with me?" A quiet voice nagged that he'd been afraid of just that a short while ago, but he brushed it away. "I want to know how long you've been playing me."

"Blit, really, I—"

She was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was so heavy that paint chips leapt off the doorframe and dust fell from cracks in the wall.

"Patch man!" shouted a gruff and all-too-familiar voice. "It's Gedrak. Open up!"

Coming Soon: Tying up loose ends in Chapter Three of Adam Heine's "The Patch Man."

Adam Heine is the Design Lead for the computer RPG Torment: Tides of Numenéra. His fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Thaumatrope. Find him online at adamheine.com.

Illustration by Kuba Witowski.

The Patch Man

by Adam Heine

Chapter Three: Human Problems

"Don't answer," Allyra hissed. "Where's the back entrance?"

Before Blit could reply, the worm-eaten door crashed open. An enormous green man with incisors the size of tent spikes ducked and stepped inside. Odim and two other Banshees walked in behind him. Gedrak carried nothing—he didn't really need to—but the other three held clubs and torches.

"Well." Gedrak looked over at Allyra with a frown. "That's unexpected."

"It's not what it looks like." Blit stepped forward, open hands pleading.

Gedrak glowered at him like he was a cockroach. "It looks like you're cheating me, Patch Man. I pay you to get rid of evidence, not take it home."

"She wasn't dead, Gedrak!" Blit clenched his fists. "I'm not paid to do your murders for you. If your men are too sloppy—"

Gedrak cut him off with one massive hand. "Save it, Blit. We're through with you anyway. Nothing personal. We're just tying up loose ends, and that includes patching up the Patch Man." He looked at Allyra, chuckling at his own stupid joke.

Allyra was already halfway to him, though, warhammer in the air. Gedrak's surprise lasted only a moment. He lurched into the attack, taking most of it on his leathery hide. Then he threw a fist like a battering ram into her stomach and knocked her down.

She coughed, a small amount of blood trickling down her chin. "Don't worry, Blit. I'll get us out of here."

"Are you kidding?" Blit said. "Just stay close and don't... don't do that again."

Gedrak snapped his fingers, and the other thugs rushed toward Blit. But you didn't live your whole life as a demonspawn without learning how to dodge a pitchfork (or club, in this case, but the principle was the same). Blit ducked and rolled. Then he snatched an extract, popped it open, and drank it one smooth motion.

Immediately, he felt a rush of speed in his legs. He grabbed Allyra and ran at superhuman speed toward the room's back door.

Odim cut him off. Blit shot a hand into his coat, but before he could decide which extract would help him, Allyra—who wasn't nearly as injured as she'd looked—slammed her hammer into Odim's chest, knocking the wind out of him.

Gedrak marched toward them, drawing his jagged blade. "Where you gonna run to? We'll just hunt you, you know. We have to clean up all our messes."

Blit laughed, snapping a fingerful of pine dust into a vial behind his back. "When have you ever cleaned up your own mess, Gedrak?" Then he tossed the vial at the half-orc's feet. It exploded in a burst of flame and light. Gedrak howled. Pieces of the wall cracked and crumbled, and the whole building groaned ominously.

Blit grabbed Allyra's hand and dashed past the wounded Odim. The other Banshees ran after them, but they were too slow to keep up now. The building's back entrance was locked, but Allyra smashed it open with no trouble. Then Blit whipped together another incendiary cocktail and, when they were well into the street, tossed it back into the building where it detonated on impact. The doorframe and most of the stones around it collapsed immediately.

They ran down the street, Blit tugging, half-dragging Allyra forward with his artificial speed, when suddenly the ground beneath them shook and the air rumbled. Blit turned around. The old townhouse—what had been his home for the past several months—collapsed into a gigantic pillar of smoke and rubble.

He stared, hardly able to breathe. The Puddles was his home; it was supposed to be his last home—really, who can't find a niche in the City at the Center of the World? Well, Blit couldn't. He was hunted now, dispossessed, just like in every other place he'd tried to live.

Something tugged his arm. It took him some time to realize it was Allyra. "Look," she said.

He blinked and tried to see past the disaster that was his last chance at a normal life. Nothing came out of the rubble, but in the dust he distinctly saw the shadow of a half-orc making his way around.

"Right." He swallowed. Then he took Allyra's hand again and led her at a jog (for him—for her it was more like a sprint) to Plashet Alley.

∗ ∗ ∗

Blit was completely out of extracts by the time they reached Plashet. He untied a string around one of the under-barbs on his leg, extracted a small key, and used it to unlock a door slapped together from old cargo pallets.

Allyra stumbled into the dark room and collapsed on the floor. Blit took a little more care to lock the door behind them and cover the gaps in it with a darkcloth. Then he fell onto the padding in the corner and fell asleep.

He woke first and lit a candle for Allyra's sake. The hideout was a small stone room, barely big enough for the desk in it and two people to stretch out on the floor. He sat down and began replenishing the extracts he'd used the night before. He had much to prepare if he was going to leave Absalom forever.

He didn't know what time it was when Allyra finally stirred. "What is this place?" she said groggily.

"Backup lab."

Gedrak only cares about the bottom line.

Allyra pulled herself up, looking in wonder at the chemicals, flasks, and other odd materials collected in various drawers on the desk. Of course, she hadn't seen what he'd had in the rowhouse. This was nothing. Still, it felt nice to impress her.

"Why do you have a backup lab?"

He snorted. "You think this is the first time I've been run out of my home? Look at me, Allyra. I'm an aberration. A beast."

"No, you're not! You're a—"

"What? Human?" He stared at his hands, his bulging gut. They were pretty much the only human parts about him. Then just inches down it all turned to hell. "Not hardly. Not ever. That's why I became an alchemist. I wanted to find something that would make me human permanently." He poked a vial of greenish fluid, eliciting a variety of angry, black swirls. "I've gotten nowhere. My greatest achievements are the disguise you saw me in and this damn mutagen, which does the opposite. It makes me more me—hideous and feral. That's the last thing I want."

"You're not the only fiend-blooded man in the world, you know. You're not even the only one I've met. It doesn't define you." She reached up a hand to touch him.

Blit batted it away. "You know why I came to the Puddles?" he barked. "Why I didn't set up shop in the Coins or the Foreign Quarter like a human alchemist? I've lived in a dozen villages. I helped people, you know? Love brews, healing potions, whatever they needed, if I knew how to make it.

"But no matter how helpful I was, no matter how long I lived in a place, I was never a part of the place. Nobody trusts the hellspawn. Something bad happens—crop fails, some gaffer bites it, a member of the city guard gets killed—guess who gets blamed? Doesn't matter that I saved their skins a hundred times, oh no! It's a worldview thing, see? Once you dehumanize someone, they become the source of every bad thing. Doesn't matter what you do, it's what you are, and eventually they always turn on you."

Allyra had the good sense to turn away when he said that. Good. He was afraid he'd been too subtle.

"I'm sorry, Blit. I—"

He waved it off. "Eh. I'm sorry I let my guard down. By now you'd think I'd know better than to trust anyone."

"What? But you can... God, for someone so nice, you're pretty self-absorbed, you know that? I like you, Blit."

That stopped him. After a moment, he remembered to close his mouth.

"I..." She tossed her hands into the air. "I was a swamp hag, okay? There's no excuse for how I used you. I mean, it was a greater good thing—you were our best source for most of the guilds—but that doesn't make it right. I'm truly sorry, and if I ever lie to you again, you have my permission to burn down my house after you take whatever looks good to you. Can we square that?"

He stared at her for a while, still caught on the words "I like you." Nobody had ever said that to him before—not even lying. Eventually, he nodded.

"Okay." She tucked a lock of hair behind one ear. "Okay. So can I tell you who I am? What I know? Because there are some really important things happening—I'm sorry, okay, I know it was your home and it was the latest tragedy in a tragic life—but even more important than that. People are in danger, and I'm not going back out there to face the bad guys unless I trust the person I'm with and he can trust me, okay?"

He nodded again, not because he knew what she was talking about, but mostly because he wanted the truth and she seemed more than willing to offer it.

She nodded, staring at a spot on the wall to her right. "So, we—most of the Puddleglut, I mean—aren't just Caydenites. We've been spying on the guilds in the Puddles for a long time now, passing our information on to Caydenite cells in the other districts so they can stop the worst of the guilds' activities.

"You were kind of my main source of info about the Banshees." She finally looked him in the eye. She had the good sense to look embarrassed. "We knew about Gedrak and Hollis already, and then I used—"

"Wait, who?"

"Hollis. The guard you found last week. He's a Token Guard from the Coins and a grit addict. I used what I knew to fill the gaps in your story, then did a little investigating of my own. Apparently, Hollis tried to blackmail Gedrak for some free grit, and Gedrak didn't take kindly to that."

Blit chuckled. He'd guessed right about that first meeting after all. "So what the hell happened last night? Gedrak met with someone important, I know that much. Was it about Hollis? The Puddleglut?"

Allyra took a deep breath. "Her name is Talish."

Her tone implied much. The question mark above Gedrak's name came to Blit's mind again.

"We didn't know enough about her. We thought she was just a middleman for the Banshees' smuggling operations, but apparently she's more important than that. I spied on them last night—alone, which I shouldn't have been—and heard enough. The watch is putting pressure on her because of the missing guard, so she ordered Gedrak to destroy it all, everything that could possibly tie their operations to her."

"Their loose ends," Blit said, remembering Gedrak's words.

Allyra nodded. "You. Me. The Puddleglut. They're folding up their whole operation, and leaving nothing to chance."

"That's good, though, right? The Banshees are done. No more smuggling. You and I just need to get out of Absalom."

She looked him in the eye, a pained expression on her face. "No, they're destroying everything, Blit. Grit, weapons, pesh... even the slaves."

It bothered Blit that Allyra knew more about his employers than he did, but that didn't change anything. "That's got nothing to do with me."

"Slaves, Blit! They're going to kill them! Stuff them in a warehouse and burn it down like the Puddleglut. We have to do something."

Blit laughed. "No, we definitely don't. We were nearly killed last night—you twice."

She sulked at that.

"Maybe you need to find out what happened to the other Caydenites, but I need to leave Absalom for good before Gedrak and his goons find out where I've gone. I can't risk my life for a bunch of slaves."

"They're people, Blit."

"So am I!"

Allyra did the last thing he expected then: she slapped him hard in his bony face. It hurt more than he cared to admit. "You just finished telling me how dehumanized you are, how outcast. Well think about this, Blit: they can't leave Absalom. They can't just go to another town or village and pretend everything's okay. They. Are. Slaves. However hard your life has been, you have your freedom. You're still alive."

Blit fell onto his stool (he wasn't sure when he'd stood up), and for a long time, neither of them said anything. He looked away and exhaled slowly. "I'm not saying I've got it worse," he said finally. "But we're all in danger here, and I can't... I can't help them. I'll be lucky if I can help myself."

Many minutes of silence stood between them. Eventually, Blit turned back to his work, eminently conscious of her gaze on his back, her staccato breaths.

"I was wrong, Blit," she finally said. "I would've sworn you were good underneath, too."

Blit winced when she slammed the door.

He pounded a fist into the desk. "Fine," he growled at no one. "Go and die!"

At least he would live. And if Allyra didn't, well, that's what she wanted, right? A worthy sacrifice for Cayden's glory. Either that or the slaves would be free. Everybody got what they wanted.

He looked over his makeshift lab, at the potions and mutagens he'd spent years perfecting, all in pursuit of the discovery that would make him permanently human. Then his personal hell would be over. He'd be like everyone else.

Except he wouldn't, would he? He'd still be Blit, no matter what he did to his body.

He dug his nails into his palms. Then he pounded the desk again once, twice, thrice. Beakers rattled. Jars fell over. He pounded and pounded until finally his hands flew to his cloak, tucked a dozen vials into the pockets, and he ran outside shouting, "Allyra! Wait!"

Coming Soon: Mopping up in the Puddles in Chapter Four of Adam Heine's "The Patch Man."

Adam Heine is the Design Lead for the computer RPG Torment: Tides of Numenéra. His fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Thaumatrope. Find him online at adamheine.com.

Illustration by Kuba Witowski.

The Patch Man

by Adam Heine

Chapter Four: Not Some Hero

"So where do we go?" Blit pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. He wasn't used to being out at sunset. He felt exposed.

"Green warehouse at the old pier," Allyra said. "We've known about it for a while, but our cell isn't equipped for large-scale rescue, so we never moved on it."

"So the two of us are going to do what you and all your friends couldn't pull off."

She lowered her chin with a smirk. "Yup."

Blit sighed. She was enjoying this far more than he was.

The green warehouse lay in one of the lowest parts of the Puddles. The bottom of it was perpetually wet, covered in barnacles and algae—that's why they called it the green warehouse, apparently.

There were no guards going in. Blit and Allyra dashed up the stairs to a long corridor with rooms on either side. There were no guards here either—the Banshees were busy with the slaves imprisoned in each of the rooms. Blit and Allyra entered the first room on the right.

Thwack! Allyra's hammer sang. A Banshee fell to the floor.

Blit winced. "That was Alver!"

"I know. Will you get the key?"

He poked Alver in the chest. "I think you killed him!"

"Blit." She put a hand on his shoulder. "We don't have much time. Are we helping the slaves or the bad guys?"

Blit wasn't sure—just a couple days ago, he was one of the bad guys.

"The key, Blit."

He nodded in spite of himself.

While he was digging around in Alver's pockets (a disgusting thought, whether Alver was dead or not), she gave the slaves directions to a place in the Foreign Quarter where other Caydenites could keep them safe for a while. The slaves were a mishmash of races and cultures, and not all of them spoke the common tongue, but those that did translated quickly for the others.

"Got it," Blit said. He tossed the key to Allyra, who unlocked the first slave—man, not slave. That man began unlocking the rest.

While they set themselves free, Allyra turned to Blit. "We have to split up."

"What? But I thought—"

"I said there's no time. Listen, I'll try to make noise about it. Hopefully they'll all come after me."

"No, Allyra!"

"Then you help the ones who are left." She leaned forward and—to Blit's simultaneous surprise, joy, and disgust—kissed him on the cheek. "Be careful."

Then she was gone. A couple of the prisoners who hadn't been freed yet stared at him.

"Shut up," he said. Realizing they hadn't said anything, and maybe didn't understand Taldane anyway, he added, "Get yourselves out of here."

Blit poked his head into the hall, ducking back quickly as a handful of thugs chased Allyra out of one room and down the dark corridor. Blit stepped into the room she'd vacated.

Kip and two other Banshees were still there. One of them, whose name Blit couldn't remember, slashed a knife across a halfling slave's throat. The halfling fell to the ground, choking on his own blood. Blit gagged. He'd seen the aftermath of murder, but he'd never thought about how it happened. This is what the guilds did—killed for their own gain.

And Blit was absolutely complicit.

Five other prisoners—men and women—lay on the ground dead, while another dozen trembled, waiting their turns. Blit didn't think at all. He mixed and tossed two bombs before anyone knew he was there. The entire building shook with the blasts (so much for Allyra's distraction). When the smoke cleared, Kip and Sidro were lying on the ground—most of them, anyway.

The other Banshee (Nye! That was his name) charged. Blit slipped a vial quickly to his mouth, giving himself a burst of speed, and he ducked easily. He dashed to where part of Kip lay and grabbed his club, then drank the vial that tasted like leather.

Nye attacked again, clipping Blit on the arm, but he barely felt it. He moved so fast now that he was able to get behind Nye and whack him on the back of the head, dropping him easily.

A slow, heavy clap sounded behind him. "Well, well," Gedrak said. "I didn't—"

He only stopped because Blit had smashed the club into the half-orc's face.

Sometimes Blit's job as the Patch Man gets a little intense.

He hadn't really meant to. Normally Gedrak's voice would have frozen him still, but something about the adrenaline or the extracts he'd drunk or the fact that several dozen prisoners were counting on him to not die (not yet, anyway), again drove him to act without thinking.

He hadn't expected the club to splinter on Gedrak's jaw, though.

Gedrak staggered to one side but didn't fall down (also somewhat unexpected). With a feral growl, he drew his serrated blade and attacked.

Blit rolled away, grabbing Nye's short sword on the way. Unfortunately, Blit had no idea how to use a sword, but he was fast enough that Gedrak had trouble fending off all of his pathetic attacks.

He needed more firepower. He led Gedrak out into the corridor where his bombs wouldn't accidentally hurt anyone. Then with his extra speed, he leapt backward and tossed a bomb at Gedrak's feet.

The half-orc howled in fury. But when the smoke cleared, instead of Gedrak pieces, the guild boss's ugly face snarled only inches away. Reflexively, Blit reached for another vial, but Gedrak slashed at his cloak. The jagged blade missed Blit's mortally important parts, for which he was grateful to no god in particular (all of them equally, really), but it ripped an enormous gash through his pockets. Chemicals splattered all over Blit. Glass vials sprinkled on the floor, many of them shattering, none of them mixing into some fortuitous cocktail that blew up the whole building (alas).

He still had his strength and speed, but not forever. Without any more alchemy, he'd be dead for sure.

"This isn't you, Blit." Gedrak breathed heavily. He was at least as wounded as Blit himself. Blit had done more damage than he thought. "You're the Patch Man, not some hero."

"Yeah, well." Blit found he was panting himself. "Someone was short-shrifting me."

Gedrak laughed at that. "You think your bar wench isn't doing the same? She's using you, Blit. She wants one thing. I want another. Nobody cares about what you want, do they?"

Blit blinked. Allyra had used him and, to be honest, was continuing to use him for this rescue.

"Walk away, Blit." Gedrak put his blade back in its sheath. "Really. If you walk away now, I'll forget I ever saw you here. You can leave the Puddles and start again, just like you want."

That was Gedrak's mistake, really. Blit did want to walk away, to forget he'd ever come to Absalom in the first place. But the last thing he wanted to do was start over somewhere else.

Gedrak's other mistake was putting away his blade while a supernaturally fast alchemist stood in front of him. Before Gedrak could blink, Blit dove forward and grabbed one of the vials that hadn't broken. Not just any vial—he knew his extracts by sight, even scattered across the floor—but his mutagen.

By the time Gedrak had his blade out again, Blit had swallowed the green liquid. He grew a foot in height. His hands became claws. His teeth stretched into tusks every bit as ugly as Gedrak's. His entire body became monstrous and foul—even more so than before.

Gedrak charged. Blit punched the half-orc in the chest, knocking him backward and sending his blade spinning across the floor. Then he stretched out his claws and released a demonic roar.

Gedrak stood and roared back. He leapt forward and grabbed Blit by his now enormously strangle-proof throat. They tore and bit and clawed at each other. Blit tossed Gedrak through a wall and rushed in after him. Gedrak ripped a board up from the floor and belted Blit in the head, sending him staggering back.

While Blit recovered, Gedrak tossed a smokestick at Blit's feet. Thick smoke filled the hall and his lungs. He coughed violently. Then through his tears, he saw Gedrak emerge through the smoke, driving a blade at Blit's gut.

There was a shout and a gurgling thud, but neither came from Blit. He opened his eyes. Between Gedrak and him stood Allyra, with the point of the half-orc's blade sticking out of her back.

She'd saved him.

Allyra spat up blood. Gedrak blinked. And Blit, still under the effects of his speed extract, did what any unthinking, feral half-demon who had just seen his friend impaled would do. He grabbed Nye's sword from the floor of the hall and drove it straight through Gedrak's misshapen head.

The half-orc slumped to the floor. With no one holding the blade, Allyra fell too, unconscious and breathing raggedly. Blit dropped to his knees, cold ice gripping his heart. His thoughts were fuzzed from the mutagen, but he knew there was nothing he could do for her. He had no extracts that could save someone's life.

The sound of footsteps strolled toward him. A mysterious wind dissipated all of the smoke at once, and Blit found himself looking up at a tall, imperious-looking woman dressed in a noblewoman's finery. A glint of adamantine mail peeked out from her shirt. She was so out of place in the Puddles that he knew immediately who it must be. "Talish."

The woman looked down her nose at Blit, at Allyra, at the dead Gedrak. She peered into each of the rooms where the other dead Banshees were and where some of the slaves were still locked up.

Blit flexed his claws, but he was trembling. He didn't know whether he could defeat her in his current state—a woman whom even Gedrak served, who had a whiff of magic about her.

Finally, Talish nodded. "It would seem you've patched up my loose ends." She nudged Nye's blade, turning Gedrak's head back and forth. Then she turned around and left as calmly as she had arrived.

An unnerving silence filled the corridor, broken only by Blit's heaving breaths.

"Allyra!" He spun around, unsure what he would do, when suddenly more unexpected visitors burst into the corridor. Men and women in brigandines, wearing red scarfs with an ale mug embroidered on them.

Two of them rushed to Allyra and knelt at her side. One muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a prayer while the other wrenched Gedrak's blade from her belly.

"What are you doing?" Blit growled.

"She'll be all right, Blit," said one. Blit blinked. It was the barkeep from the Puddleglut.

Allyra gasped, then fell back down, breathing.

The barkeep smiled in relief and said again, "She'll be all right."

Blit's heart became ten times lighter. He didn't know what means the Caydenites had to save her from a wound like that, but he didn't much care either. She was alive!

He stood, bumping his head on the ceiling, and felt suddenly self-conscious. He didn't want her to see him like this. He looked around at Gedrak, at Sidro and Kip, at the slaves making their way out into the night. He shouldn't be here either. He hunted for an invisibility extract in the tattered pieces of his cloak and found one still unbroken.

The next moment, the Caydenites were alone.

∗ ∗ ∗

It took him until sunrise to pack what remained of his equipment. He would've finished sooner, but (one) he was hurt and (two) his claws had kept getting in the way until his mutagen finally wore off. Packing up was bitter but familiar work. Even bitterer would be the work of finding a new home.

"What are you doing, Blittervy?"

He hadn't heard Allyra open the door. She hunched over, one arm wrapped over her stomach in an enormous bandage. Had she walked here like that?

"Blittervy? Really?" Blit sneered, then shook his head. "Town's run me out again. Time to move on."

"Run you out?" She slammed the door behind her. "What the hell are you talking about? You're a hero!"

"Well I can't work as a Patch Man anymore, can I? Gedrak's gone, sure, but he's not the only guild boss that used to hire me. They'll all hear of this, maybe come after me just to make sure I don't turn on one of them, too."

"Oh." She looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I forget, you've been on your own for so long."

He snorted. "I gotta say, being a hero's even less practical than a fiend-blooded alchemist."

She came up behind him and touched his shoulder. Softly, she said, "I saw you, you know, when you were fighting Gedrak."

He froze. "You saw...?" He never wanted her to see, never wanted anyone to see, what he truly was.

"It was amazing." She squeezed his shoulder, once again making him feel awkward as hell. "But it wasn't you, any more than those human masks you wear."

Blit didn't know what to say to that.

Examining the paraphernalia in his pack, she said, "Have you considered the clergy? The Lucky Drunk could use someone like you."

He laughed loudly, then found he couldn't stop laughing until long after his chest started hurting. "No," he finally said, wiping a tear. "No, I don't think the Drunk wants someone like me at all."

"You never know." She took a deep breath. "Anyway, listen. I'm not supposed to tell you this, but my order has this potion—a great secret, mind you—that's said to reveal one's true self. If you wanted—"

He rolled his eyes. "It's beer. You're talking about beer."

She laughed. "Yeah, want some?"

Blit looked at his pack, at his tiny room that he couldn't stay in any longer, and smiled. "You know what? I really do."

Coming Soon: A mission to the island of Veedesha in Chapter One of Evey Brett's "Diamond in the Rought."

Adam Heine is the Design Lead for the computer RPG Torment: Tides of Numenéra. His fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Thaumatrope. Find him online at adamheine.com.

Illustration by Kuba Witowski.