Chapter Text
“You’re coming with me, Wemmbu.”
The words reached him through the haze of smoke and falling debris. The air still burned, thick with the smell of charred stone and iron. His ears rang from the explosion that had swallowed half the battlefield, leaving a wide crater where he now stood, or more accurately, struggled to stay standing. The heat licked at his skin. Bits of gravel and ash slid down into the hole with every step he took.
His hands trembled, but he refused to let them. He tightened his grip on the cracked handle of his gambit until his knuckles turned pale. His breathing was steady, or close enough that it looked like it. The exhaustion clawing at him would have to wait. He could not afford to look beaten.
He heard it then. The faint swoosh above. A sound like wind cutting through space. His eyes flicked upward.
Through the smoke, a figure streaked down, wings of dark elytra slicing through the haze. The glint of netherite caught the light as Lettuce swooped into the crater, grabbed the mace Wemmbu had thrown minutes before, and rose back up with practiced ease. The motion was effortless, cruelly graceful, like a taunt without words.
“You look worse for wear,” Lettuce called, landing at the crater’s edge. His voice carried easily, smug and sharp. He stood tall, fully armored, the weight of victory practically clinging to him. The mace rested against his shoulder, heavy and ready.
Wemmbu tilted his head just enough to look up at him. His face was streaked with soot and blood, but his expression was unreadable. His eyes, though tired, still burned with something fierce.
“Yeah, well,” he said, his tone calm, almost careless, “I took down your army, didn’t I?”
The words hung in the air, a challenge disguised as a joke. He made sure his voice didn’t shake. He wasn’t going to give Lettuce that satisfaction. Not a hint of the pain in his ribs, not the ache in his legs, not the way his heart hammered too fast for comfort. None of that showed.
Lettuce smirked, the kind of expression that didn’t quite reach the eyes. “With how you look now, I don’t think I’ll need an army to capture you.”
The taunt rolled off Wemmbu like dust. He didn’t even blink. Instead, he lifted the gambit a little higher, though it was barely holding together, and rested it against his shoulder in mock imitation of Lettuce’s stance. The weapon was cracked, dull, and low on durability, but it was still his. Still enough.
The two of them stared across the distance between the crater and the edge. The faint crackle of fire filled the silence. Somewhere in the distance, the world was still breaking apart, blocks shifting and burning, yet all of it felt distant compared to this moment.
Wemmbu’s breath was shallow, but his voice stayed steady. “You can try,” he said, quiet but firm.
The flicker in Lettuce’s eyes was small, but it was there. A sign that even now, even beaten and cornered, Wemmbu his shown sparks of deviance . Even if lacking , he wouldn't go down for the law men .
He adjusted his stance slightly, shoulders squared, chin raised. His whole body screamed in protest, but he looked ready. Maybe not to win, but to make sure Lettuce could back off .
And just like that, the clang of metal erupted. Sparks burst into the air, lighting up the smoke in flashes of purple and green. Each strike was heavier than the last, every impact echoing through the crater like thunder. One step forward, two steps back. The rhythm of survival.
Lettuce moved like he hadn’t even been part of the war. His armor gleamed, unscathed, each motion steady and precise. He wasn’t exhausted, not even close. He had waited for this, saving his strength for the moment Wemmbu finally began to falter.
Wemmbu could feel it. His body wasn’t keeping up anymore. The ache in his arms burned, the weight of his gambit dragged him down with every swing. His chest tightened, his lungs pulling in air that didn’t seem to reach him. He gritted his teeth and forced himself forward, each movement deliberate, each breath a battle of its own.
He had fought through worse. He had always pushed through. But now, the edges of his vision pulsed in and out, dark corners creeping closer every time he blinked. His head pounded, a deep ache that made the sound of metal crash and blur together.
A slip, splash and a smash.
That was all it took. Less than a second.
Lettuce pulled something from his inventory, something small and glowing faintly purple. Wemmbu saw it, but his mind lagged behind, too slow to piece it together. It looked like a weakness potion, but there was something wrong with it, something unfamiliar in the color.
He didn’t have time to react before the glass shattered across his face.
The liquid burned. Shards bit into his skin, tiny cuts stinging across his cheek and neck. The potion seeped into the wounds, cold and electric, like it was eating at him from the inside. He staggered, eyes blurring as his muscles locked and trembled. The ground seemed to tilt. His fingers refused to tighten on his weapon.
Through the ringing in his ears, he heard the sound of wings. The rush of air. Then the shadow fell over him.
Lettuce came down from above, mace raised high.
The impact exploded through his skull.
Bang.
Light and sound vanished in the same instant. His knees hit the ground, his weapon slipped from his hand, and the world folded in on itself. Everything became muffled. The roaring in his head drowned out thought. He tried to move, but his body no longer listened.
Something was cracking inside him. Maybe bone. Maybe will.
His vision swam with color for a moment, then everything drained to black.
“Don’t worry,” Lettuce’s voice echoed faintly, somewhere far above him, “you’ll be fixed in no time.”
The sound lingered, distant and hollow, as if coming from underwater. Wemmbu tried to lift his head, but the effort barely moved him an inch. The darkness pressed in completely, heavy and final.
…
The faint lines cracked and the black veil around his thoughts began to unravel. Sound crept back in slow and distant at first, like someone turning up a radio in another room. Wemmbu heard a voice he knew as well as his own breath. Eggchan. Memories came in quick, bright flashes: pranks under a wide sky, laughter spilling like water, the two of them crouched behind a wall waiting for the perfect moment to spring a joke. Was this what people meant by their whole life flashing before their eyes at the end? Was this it, his last reel?
No. He refused that. He could not be dead. Not like this.
A ragged gasp tore from him and he woke with a jerk. He was lying on cold stone, the floor biting through his armor, the cell ceiling a smear of shadow above him. Every part of him felt like it belonged to someone else. His muscles responded like tired puppets, thin twitches where strength used to be. His skin was a roadmap of cuts and bruises. The ache in his head had a new, insistent edge. He was still coated in blood that would not stop reminding him what had happened. The torches along the walls guttered and spat, throwing light that trembled across the blackstone and slid over iron bars.
Footsteps came close enough to count. They were casual, sure of themselves, a sound that set Wemmbu’s teeth on edge.
“Oh, Wemmbu, you are awake. It would be a shame if you died that easily.” Lettuce’s voice was syrupy with amusement, as if he were admiring a painting rather than looking down at the man he had just broken.
“We finally managed to capture you,” Lettuce continued, padding around the cell like a man making a house call. “Do you know how much power we had to spend because of your little escape fights?” He sounded proud of the math, pleased with the cost of bringing his prey back.
Wemmbu wanted to spit something cruel back. He wanted the old sharpness, the jokes that cut clean. He wanted to deny the tally of the dead, to shove every accusation back into Lettuce’s face. Instead he felt the potion’s work like a fog draped over his nerves. His mind was thick and slow, each thought dragging the next behind it. His limbs felt hollowed out, like someone had siphoned the heat and fight from him. He knew then what the potion did. It had been a weakness draught unlike any he had felt. It dulled his senses, it frayed the edges of his concentration, it left his immune systems raw and sputtering. It made every breath heavier and every step a labor.
Somewhere between awareness and numbness Lettuce had thrown a pale liquid that cracked across his face. That glass had cut him and the potion had slid into the wounds. Later, when the world had gone black, Lettuce had thrown another flask, a weak shimmer of regeneration that was not enough to heal but just enough to keep him from bleeding out. That small mercy kept him alive and helpless.
“You are lucky I did not finish you off in the crater,” Lettuce said, leaning close enough that Wemmbu could smell the clean, metallic scent of his armor. He tapped a finger against the cell’s bars as if testing their strength. “You should count yourself fortunate.”
The cell smelled of damp iron and burnt wood. Shadows pooled in corners. Outside, distant creaks of the ruined battlefield whispered like ghosts. Inside, the light from the torch nearest to Wemmbu sputtered, and his own reflection in the wet smear of his blood looked alien.
Wemmbu pushed his chin up and kept his face composed. He would not let the man rejoice in the sight of him broken. He would not give that satisfaction. Pride was thinner now, fragile as the gambit in his hand, but it flared stubborn and hot in his chest.
“Yeah,” he croaked. The word sounded like it belonged to another body. “Uh, mind letting me go now, bro.”
Lettuce laughed, the kind of laugh that ate the sound and left only malice. “That is funny, Wemmbu.” He trailed the words, taking in the scene like a man appraising a trophy. “But let us cut to the chase. I am giving you two options.”
He held up one hand and counted them off on his fingers like a businessman outlining terms. “One, you come work for me and follow my law. Two, I kill you publicly and stake your head out front for everyone to see.”
Wemmbu should have snapped back. He should have spat a refusal, promised a thousand curses, promised a death for Lettuce more creative than public humiliation. The old fights in him wanted to roar up and bite back. But the potion’s weight sat on him like chains. The wounds still wept in faint, sticky trails. Every breath carried the risk of infection, a slow, filthy death that would be more agonizing than a clean strike. His ribcage folded with each shallow inhale. His heart beat ragged and oddly patient as if it, too, were negotiating how much it could do.
His hair clung to his neck. Sweat and blood and grit made the movement of turning unbearable. The torchlight painted his face in stuttering strokes. Lettuce’s shadow hovered over him like a cloud.
“What, cat got your tongue? Choose now.” Lettuce said it like a challenge and like a verdict. His patience was finished. A thin blade kissed the skin at Wemmbu’s throat, cold and unblinking, a punctuation mark on a question that was no question at all.
Wemmbu let out a small, resigned breath. It felt like surrender even as he clenched his jaw to keep the words from trembling. “I guess working for you is better than being dead,” he said. The sentence tasted like metal.
Lettuce smiled, satisfied in a way that made the torch flames seem smaller. He stepped back and the blade slid away. For now, Wemmbu was a prisoner in a blackstone tomb, blood and soot clinging to him, alive only because an enemy had been merciful enough to throw a weak regeneration potion his way. The weakness draught still hummed in his veins. His thoughts were slow like winter molasses. His body was raw and useless for the moment.
But even sitting in the corner, curled against cold stone, a part of him pulsed with a dangerous, quiet patience. He will find a way out . On his very soul ,he promise he will get out .
“Great choice.”
Lettuce’s voice carried an easy sort of satisfaction. He stepped forward, boots clicking against the stone as he pulled a small iron key from his belt. The sound of the lock turning filled the cell, scraping and sharp.
“Training begins tomorrow,” he said, swinging the door open with a metallic creak. “Wouldn’t want you going around causing me problems now, would we?”
Something shimmered in his hand. It flickered into existence the way items do when summoned, a faint purple outline before the weight settled into reality. Wemmbu’s stomach dropped.
Before he could move, before he could even form a question, the collar snapped around his throat. A cold, sudden click. The metal tightened with mechanical precision until it pressed against his skin. The chill of it sank deep, burning where it touched.
A collar.
A fucking collar.
His mind blanked for a second, then crashed back into him with a rush of panic. “What is this? Get this off me!” His voice cracked, the panic in it too raw to hide. Something inside him twisted violently.
The world tilted. The room blurred. His thoughts stumbled over themselves as flashes of something else hit him. Yellow light. A voice too sweet, too close. Hands around his neck. Possessive words. He couldn’t see the face, but the feeling was there. Suffocating.
No. Not again.
He clawed at the metal, fingers scraping at it until his nails split. The edges bit into his skin, unyielding. He slammed it against the blackstone wall, once, twice, a dozen times. Each hit sent a sharp beeping through the air. Then came the sound. A low hum.
The collar activated.
Pain tore through him like fire. Every nerve screamed. His back arched and his hands seized midair, frozen by the current ripping through his body. His breath hitched halfway out of his throat and turned into a strangled sound. His heart slammed against his ribs hard enough to hurt. It felt like his blood itself was burning.
He could not breathe. Could not think. Only feel.
When it finally stopped, he crumpled to his knees, gasping. Drool slid from the corner of his mouth. His body kept shaking long after the current was gone, muscles twitching from phantom echoes of pain. His mind refused to catch up.
“This is just a precaution, don’t worry,” Lettuce said. His tone was steady, almost light, as if he had just flipped a switch. He leaned slightly against the doorframe, watching with that same infuriating calm. “Wouldn’t want you killing innocents now, right, killer?”
The word hit harder than another shock. Killer. Spoken so easily, so casually. Wemmbu looked up at him through half-closed eyes. His vision wavered between focus and blur. Lettuce’s figure rippled like heat above stone, almost unreal.
He wanted to say something. Anything. But the words stayed trapped behind his teeth. His throat ached where the collar dug in. The metal was warm now from his own skin, from his own fear.
Lettuce looked down at him as though he were nothing more than dirt clinging to his boots. “Rest easy now,” he said softly. “Tomorrow I’ll lay down the house rules, and we can begin your training at my side.”
He stepped out of the cell, closing the metal door with a final, heavy click. The key turned. The lock clicked back into place.
“Get some rest,” he said, voice fading down the corridor. “You’ll need it.”
Silence followed, broken only by the faint hum of torches flickering. The cell smelled of iron and ash. Wemmbu stayed where he was, slumped against the wall, staring at nothing. His heart was still racing, but the rest of him felt slow, detached. The potion’s fog still lingered in his veins, making it hard to hold onto a single thought for long.
He was alive. That fact pulsed quietly somewhere under the exhaustion, but it felt hollow.
He reached weakly for his throat again. The collar stayed cold and unyielding beneath his fingers.
He shut his eyes and tried to breathe. The flickering light painted his skin in pale, uneven color. Somewhere deep in his mind, behind the haze and the pain, the image of yellow lingered. A shape he refused to look at. A memory he wasn’t ready to touch.
So he stayed still, trembling in the dark, waiting for the world to stop spinning long enough for him to think.