The Exorcist Doctor

Chapter 122 - Forged in Panic // Tempered in Panic

“I-I followed procedure,” the man stammered beneath her. “I swear, I followed it. I’m sorry I didn’t inject it earlier, but I just— I was running out. I couldn’t afford more, so I… I didn’t take it, and that’s why you saw me. That’s all. I’m not— I’m not out of control, I promise.”

His ribs rose and fell too fast under her palm, dragging air through his teeth. His muscles trembled, but not with the feral twitch of a Myrmur Host about to break. It was more like… a man shivering on the edge of a fever. A sick man, yes, but not a dying man.

Maeve blinked, still half-listening to the echo of the crowd roaring around the Bellowing Pit. The sound came up through the spectator’s stands like the city itself was shouting.

“You’re… following procedure?” she echoed. “What procedure?”

“The stabilizers,” he babbled. “The metallic stabilizers. The pit-physicians say if you get parasitized, you inject them on schedule, and they’ll keep the Myrmur down. And I was doing that. I was. But I ran out, and my foreman cut my wages, and I couldn’t buy more, so… that’s why I’m here, alright? I’m gonna bet on a winning fight, win big, buy more stabilizers— and then you won’t see any red at all. By the end of the day, I swear you won’t see even a flicker looking at me, so just… just let me up, please. Please don’t kill me.”

He was breathing so hard his words kept breaking, and the syringe was still stuck half-cocked out of his neck, metal gleaming.

Maeve stared at it, then down at him. She understood maybe three percent of what he’d just said. Stabilizers? Procedure? Pit-physicians?

“You’re… going to gamble on fights?” she repeated slowly. “To buy medicine?”

“Yes!” he wheezed. “I… I know, I know, stupid, but what else do I have? There’s no more shifts. No more overtime. I’m trying to do the right thing, I swear it!”

Her Vharnish instinct was to tell him gambling on stabilizers was idiotic.

Her Bharnish instinct was to remember the weight of her own coin pouch, and to remind herself, once again, that lives were less valuable down here than up there.

… Gael didn’t give me enough to buy all of the materials on his list, either.

If we’re going to be traveling, I’ll need to build up my personal savings somehow.

And if the fights were already throwing money around…

She exhaled slowly, feeling the hot, thick air scrape her throat.

“Okay,” she murmured. “I’m going to let you up. Promise me you won’t run.”

The man choked on his own breath. “Got it. I won’t. And you… you are—”

“Slowly and carefully,” she added, because she wasn’t completely stupid. “Don’t make me regret this.”

She yanked him up by the collar, and as he stabilized himself on his feet, she watched him like a hawk—or like Gael watching a patient about to sneeze blood in his face. She cared for every twitch of his muscle and every hitch in his breathing, but… no Myrmur emerged.

No chitin plates erupted from his skin, no mandibles split the air, and no insect-shadow uncoiled from his spine.

He simply looked a little pale and a little sick.

That’s not how it’s supposed to go, right?

Except for Lorcawn, every Myrmur Host so far has been unable to suppress their Myrmur from manifesting. This kind of control from a seemingly normal man wasn’t normal.

Still, she released the man and took a step back, umbrella still propped in her hand just in case.

“Sorry for the rough handling,” she said, and meant it. “I’m Maeve, by the way.”

He stared at her like she’d introduced herself as a thunderbolt in human form. “A-Arnell,” he managed. “Arnell Runnel. I work a small forge around these parts.” His eyes narrowed as he looked her over. “I… don’t recognize you. Are you the new Exorcist they said was getting assigned to Ironwych? But you don’t have golden hair, so you can’t be her, I… think.”

She decided the fastest path through that nonsense was straight through it.

“I’m not whoever you’re thinking of,” she said simply, “and I wasn’t lying earlier. I really can remove your Myrmur permanently without killing you, but you have to not run away from me again. You have to trust me. Can you do that?”

Arnell’s gaze flicked anxiously towards the fighting pit, where the crowd roared as someone hit the floor hard enough to rattle the seats. His hands shook. “I… I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I want to. I’m just… it’s dangerous either way.”

Maeve followed his line of sight downward, then asked, almost casually, “Can anyone enter the fight?”

He jerked. “What?”

“The fights,” she repeated. “Are there rules about who can enter?”

“Oh.” His brow furrowed, caught off guard by the question. “Uh… no. Not really. Every two hours, they start a new bracket, and this one’s almost over. When the bell rings, anyone who wants to fight just walks down to registration. You put your name down, declare whatever equipment you’re using so they can make sure it’s not—y’know—explosive or poisoned, and then they assign you opponents.” He gestured vaguely at the arena. “If you win, you and anyone who bet on you makes good money. If you lose early… you lose a lot.”

“And the fights themselves?” she asked, leaning in. “Any rules I should know?”

He shook his head. “Just don’t kill the other person. Everything else is fair game. Why? What are you planning?”

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Maeve smiled.

“Honestly? I’m just feeling a little punchy today.”

Arnell blinked at her like she’d just claimed to be the queen of Ironwych.

“I want a bit of exercise,” she continued lightly. “So you—stay right here. Don’t move. I’ll enter the next bracket, win you your stabilizer money, and then we’ll talk.”

Gael had, in his defense, been very productive.

By his own account, anyway.

The third-floor balcony where he’d chosen to wait for Maeve had an excellent view of the Furnace Warrens, which meant it had an excellent view of all the people he’d angered with his shoving and bargaining. He ignored those people. Instead, he lounged on the railing like a gargoyle, coat stuffed with clanking, chiming, and faintly glowing metal parts. The satchel at his hip was heavier, his purse was lighter, and his hangover from last night had finally decided to negotiate a ceasefire.

The only thing that bothered him was the ankle chain. It rattled faintly when Maeve first moved a bit too far away, but over the past few hours, the rattling had become… more persistent.

Every once in a while, there’d be a sharp, annoyed tug—one-one-two, then another one-one-two, which was technically their signal for ‘I found a Host’ and ‘get your ass over here now’, but he’d been a little busy arguing over the price of a small steam condenser to give a response. Now those signals weren’t being transferred through the ankle chain, and he had to admit, he was just a little bit worried about her.

He swung one leg over the railing and squinted down at the bustling street.

Maybe leaving a naive Exorcist alone in a city built out of knives isn’t the best idea.

The chain rattled again angrily, vibrating through his bones.

He stared at it, then back at the city.

… Alright.

He stepped up fully onto the railing, balancing there with one arm outstretched, coat flapping slightly in the furnace-breeze. Someone in the street below saw the Raven silhouette and shrieked. He flashed them a lazy two-finger salute and hopped off.

Lead on, ankle chain.

Show me what trouble she’s got herself into this time.

He landed in a three-meter drop on a lower platform with a clang that made nearby pigeons—metal-augmented pigeons with rusted wings—erupt into the air.

Then he ran.

The chain pulled him like a very annoyed leash, dragging him through Ironwych’s arteries. He bounded down staircases, cut across footbridges, and shoulder-checked his way through crowds bristling with rivets and bad tempers. The path was absurd: through a tannery that smelled like something had died twice, over a conveyor belt hauling crates, and under a low-hanging line of drying work-gloves.

At one point, the chain veered around a corner and up a line of strung rope. He skidded to a stop. Three street brats stared back at him from a second-floor ledge where they’d looped the ankle chain up like a clothesline, wet shirts and stained socks fluttering from it.

“Fuck off!” he shouted, waving his cane at them. “Get your socks off my chain!:

The oldest boy squinted. “We found it dangling, mister. Finders keepers.”

Five minutes later, he was jogging away again, one new bruise on his cheekbone and three children nursing sore knuckles behind him.

Eventually, the pull changed. It stopped dragging him sideways across the ward and began pulling him down into the darker, stuffier throats of the city. The streets grew narrower. The light turned dim and sour, coming from dangling lamps rather than the grey-tinted sun.

He came to a nondescript doorway half-swallowed by grime. The chain led straight through it, disappearing into the dark like a trail of iron crumbs.

Gael stared at the threshold, then looked up at the faded paint above the doorway.

“Fantastic,” he murmured. “Illegal fighting pits.”

He ducked inside, and while the hallway beyond was long and dark, lit only by a few erratic bulbs, it wasn’t quiet by any means. The further he went, the louder the noise grew. Shouts layered over chants layered over deep metallic chants, all of it punctuated by bone-rattling thuds in the distance, so he prepared himself for a fun sight as he emerged from the end of the hallway—straight onto a high metal gallery.

Heat hit his face. The sound hit him harder.

The arena was a vast, circular pit carved into the earth, ringed by rising tiers of metal benches. Hundreds of spectators packed the stands: miners still in half-armor, smiths with tools hanging from their belts, and even a few well-dressed middlemen with ledgers clutched in sweaty hands. The air tasted like rust and old blood. Banners hung from the ceiling, and one of them read ‘THE BELLOWING PIT, WHERE MEN ARE FORGED AND MEN ARE BROKEN’, flanked by more strange symbols hammered in sheet metal.

Right now, everyone was furious, and Gael’s first impression of the arena was ‘projectile’. Bottles, chunks of slag, crumpled betting slips, and the occasional unlucky shoe were arcing through the air towards the center of the pit. Booing rolled across the arena like thunder.

His second impression was the commentary.

“This bracket has been destroyed, ladies and gentlemen!” one commentator howled from a raised stand, leaning so hard over his brass speaking-horn he might fall in. “No contestant has forced her past the one-minute mark! None! I repeat, none!”

“Every last gambler who bet she’d be knocked out in the second round—ruined!” the other commentator shrieked. “Those of you who wagered she’d get her pretty little head smashed in? Consider yourselves educated! A new challenger reigns!”

“And the only man who bet on a clean sweep,” the first commentator roared, “has just walked away with enough coin to buy his own foundry! This is unprecedented! A miracle! A—”

Gael didn’t care about the miracle.

He cared about the girl in the pit.

Maeve stood alone in the sand-and-metal floor of the fighting ring, umbrella opened like a shield above her head as junk rained down around her. A dented helmet bounced off Mistrender’s canopy. A bottle shattered at her feet, splashing her boots. She looked… sweaty. A little scuffed. But mostly irritated.

“Go shove your own heads into a blast furnace!” she bellowed at the booing crowd, turning around slowly. “If you can’t afford to lose, then don’t bet in the first place, you sore losers!”

Gael blinked.

There she is.

Then their eyes met.

And the crowd, realizing she was staring at someone, turned their heads in one great rustling wave.

A heartbeat later—

“Raven!”

Panic detonated. The stands erupted. Miners vaulted over benches. Bookies trampled their own ledgers. Someone threw an entire toolbox at the wall and fled in the opposite direction while people scrambled toward exits, climbing, clawing, tripping, swearing, all of them determined to get at least three buildings away from a Plagueplain Doctor before he decided to start purging the whole arena.

“...Alright,” Gael muttered. “Bit dramatic.”

Maeve jabbed a finger directly up at him as his vision pulsed briefly red.

He frowned. Tilted his head. Then he reached out and grabbed a man by the collar, who was trying to sprint past him.

The man looked back at him with hollow eyes and immediate regret, as though the man—and everyone here—were fully convinced he was about to peel the entire arena open like a specimen jar.

… What the fuck is going on in Ironwych?