I pull my hand back. Fragments of wall cling to my forearm. My knuckles are split. Green blood wells up in the cracks and drips onto the floor, mixing with the rainwater into something that looks like pond scum.
It’s a dinner plate-sized hole.
Not enough.
I hit the wall again. Same spot. The hole doubles. Now I can see Torvin's unmade bed through the area, his collection of ceramic tankards on the shelf, the portrait of his dead wife he talks to when he's drunk enough to forget she's gone.
The pain is good. Sharp and clean and specific.
I pace. Four steps one direction, four steps back. The apartment is too small for pacing. Every turn brings me face to face with something. The cot where I haven't slept because I spent two nights in a country club bed that was also too small but smelled like vanilla and brown sugar and her. The weapons rack where my armor sits cleaned and oiled, every piece accounted for except the necktie I used to muzzle a griffin on a dark highway while she drove like a woman possessed.
My hands are shaking.
My hands do not shake. I have held a defensive line against a twelve-foot cave troll without a tremor. I have field-dressed my own wounds with a hunting knife and steady fingers. My hands are instruments of contract fulfillment, and they do not shake.
They are shaking now.
I look at the blood on my knuckles. At the hole in the wall. At the sad, wet lump of napkin on the floor.
I need violence. Real violence. The kind that fills the brain with nothing but geometry and timing. The kind that leaves no room for the memory of flour on her cheekbone or the way she laughed in the walk-in cooler or how she whisperedstayagainst my throat while the rain started on the drive home.
I cross to the weapons rack. Pull down the heavy contract board nailed above it. Dozens of postings flutter on their pins. Monster hunts. Bodyguard details. Exterminations. I scan them with the efficiency of a man drowning, looking for anything with a high enough body count to scour his skull clean.
There.
Bottom left corner, pinned under a rusted nail. Black paper. Red ink. The kind of posting that only goes up when the regular mercenaries have already died.
Sewer hydra. Northeast quadrant. Sixteen confirmed casualties. Payment upon proof of kill.
I rip it off the board.
The hydra posting crumples in my fist. Too easy. A sewer job is plumbing work. Dark water, tight corridors, predictable strike patterns. I'd be home by dinner with nothing but wet boots and a clean head for maybe an hour before the vanilla scent crept back in.
I need something worse.
I flip through the remaining postings. Goblin nest clearance. Escort duty for a merchant caravan. A haunted well in the farming district. Children's work. Party tricks. I rip them aside until my fingers find the one pinned to the very back of the board, half-hidden behind a layer of older contracts that nobody has touched because nobody has been stupid enough.
Thick vellum. Burned edges. The seal at the bottom belongs to the Slagworkers' Union, which means it's been sitting here for months because the Slagworkers' Union only posts bounties when they've exhausted every other option, including prayer.
VENOMOUS ROCK CRAWLER. Adult female. Approximately 40 feet. Nesting in Sector 7 of the Slag Wastes. Has consumed two extraction crews (14 workers), one rescue team (6 soldiers), and a mage who was reportedly "very confident." Bounty: 200 gold. Paid to next of kin if applicable.
Paid to next of kin.
I don't have next of kin.
I pull it off the board, fold it once, slide it into my vest.
The motorcycle sits chained in the alley behind the tavern. A Thunderhog Mark IV, rebuilt from a military surplus frame with reinforced axles and suspension designed for Orcish weight. Thetires are knobbed steel-core rubber rated for broken glass and lava rock. The small coffin-sized engine block I built myself over two winters, hand-forging the exhaust pipes because no manufacturer makes them wide enough for the displacement I need.
Rain hammers the seat as I swing my leg over. The leather creaks. I strap the broadsword across my back, cinch the plate tight over my vest, and kick the engine to life.
It doesn't purr. It detonates. A concussive bark that rattles windows up and down the alley, scatters a pack of feral alley cats, and shakes loose a chunk of brick from the building across the way.
Good.
I twist the throttle and the back tire screams against wet cobblestone before catching. The Thunderhog lunges forward, three hundred and eighty pounds of Orc and seven hundred pounds of machine tearing down the narrow alley at a speed that is objectively inadvisable.
The city blurs. Rain hits my face like gravel. I don't wear a helmet because they don't make helmets for heads my size with tusks, and also because caring about personal safety feels deeply beside the point right now.
