Waclaw dragged a sleeve across his mouth, his knuckles white against his belt. “My people…” Tadek didn’t loosen his grip. “Exactly. *Our* people. And Otylia. They’re too slow, too vulnerable to Zyta’s enforcers. Your headquarters is a death trap if they come in force.” His voice, though still hushed, carried a sharp, undeniable authority. Waclaw flinched, his jaw tightening as Tadek held his gaze. “What do you suggest, then? We run like scavengers?” “No. You lead them out. Get everyone to the old Cankerwood hollows, beyond the eastern market. There’s enough space, enough cover. Tell them to stay hidden until I send word.” Tadek released him, then pointed to the ventilation shaft. “Go. Now. Buy me an hour.” Waclaw hesitated, his gaze searching Tadek’s face. The mortician’s apprentice he’d once known, the timid boy who’d barely met his eyes, was gone. In his place was something far harder, a predator’s stillness. “An hour for what?” Tadek offered a thin, mirthless smile. “To prepare the stage.” He watched Waclaw disappear into the darkness of the shaft, the clatter of his retreat fading quickly. Then, Tadek moved. He navigated the winding maintenance tunnels with practiced ease, his path lit only by the faint, phosphorescent moss clinging to the damp bark-walls. His own small room, a cramped hollow near the base of the Perch, was just moments away. He needed to be quick. The room itself was barely more than a nook, carved into the petrified tree-trunk. A rough cot, a small table, and Otylia’s stack of drawings were all it contained. He carefully gathered her precious artwork, the vibrant, almost obsessive depictions of the rust-colored fungus, and spread them out on the table, a morbid centerpiece. He even placed a few dried, inert specimens of the fungus itself, ones he’d found weeks ago, beside them. Let Zyta see her handiwork. Then, Tadek began. He moved with a speed that belied his earlier calm, his mind racing. He remembered the arboretum, the hidden lockers of Zyta’s private stock. Not the medicine, but the iron flasks she kept secured behind bone wards, the glass shimmering with coiled lightning. Her war tonics. He shut his eyes, mapping the brass necks of the flasks, the phosphoric swirl trapped under thick glass. He did not need physical contact. His skill replicated more than external form; it seized functionality, grasping the latent charge inside. [Conceptual Echo initiated. Target: Volatile combat elixir (minor).] [Echo created: Unstable Surge Vial. Potency: Low. Duration: 60 seconds.] He did not need high grade. He only needed them present, hair-triggered and brittle. He seeded the room. Under the cot frame, behind the table legs, wedged deep into vertical seams split across the trunk wood. He charted every seam as an ignition seam, threading the room with invisible triggers. [Conceptual Echo initiated. Target: Volatile combat elixir (minor).] [Echo created: Unstable Surge Vial. Potency: Low. Duration: 60 seconds.] [Conceptual Echo initiated. Target: Volatile combat elixir (minor).] [Echo created: Unstable Surge Vial. Potency: Low. Duration: 60 seconds.] Each successful Echo sent a faint tremor through him, a subtle pull on his inner reserves. But the drain was negligible, far less than Echoing a memory. He was not uncorking them yet, merely rigging them like blasting caps until the narrow perimeter hummed under his skin. Boots crunched on timber shavings outside: heavy treads, plate clattering against leather, harsh murmurs. Zyta’s enforcers arrived on schedule. Tadek took a deep, steady breath. The mask slid back into place. A wide-eyed, slightly bewildered expression. A nervous fidgeting of his hands. He even managed a soft, almost imperceptible whimper. The plank door split down the crossbeam under an iron heel. The scar-faced brute entered first, ducking beneath the petrified lintel. Behind him, two other hulking figures, clad in the drab, patched uniforms of the Ironwood Clan, fanned out, weapons drawn. Zyta stepped in last, her presence instantly dominating the cramped space. Her fine, embroidered tunic seemed out of place in the squalor, her expression a mix of disdain and cold triumph. Her gaze, pale and flat, swept the floor before landing on Tadek. Then they drifted to Otylia’s drawings, spread like grisly trophies on the table. A flicker of something, perhaps recognition, crossed her features. “Look what the System dragged in,” she said, scanning the corners. “The mortician’s boy.” She looked aside to her lead enforcer. “Is this the one who burned your eyes with a glow-crystal?” The brute spat onto the floorboards. “Him. The sewer rat.” He took a heavy step forward, knuckledusters catching the green moss-light. “Restrain yourself,” Zyta said smoothly. “He’s far more useful intact, aren’t you, little Echoist?” Her eyes narrowed. “You have quite the knack for… replication. Tell me, where is the System Core fragment you’ve been using? The one that allows you to mimic my most valuable possessions?” Tadek trembled visibly, his head shaking. “Core… fragment? I don’t… I don’t understand, ma’am! I only copy shapes! Like… like a mirror! Just a silly glass trick!” He waved his hands uselessly, playing the terrified fool to perfection. Zyta offered a thin sneer. “Just a mirror trick? Yet you shielded Waclaw for weeks. You even disrupted my arboretum. Don’t play dumb with me, boy. That facade is wearing thin.” She took another step, her gaze fixed on the drawings. “This fungus… this is what’s killing your sister, isn’t it? And you copied *my* Sylva’s Respite to keep her alive.” Her smile grew wider, colder. “Clever. But ultimately futile. You’re trapped, surrounded. You have nowhere to run.” Tadek’s trembling ceased. His head lifted slowly, his gaze meeting hers. The ditzy fear melted away, replaced by the same icy calm Waclaw had witnessed. “Nowhere to run, you say?” His voice was no longer a whimper, but a flat, even tone that held a chilling undercurrent. Zyta paused, a subtle shift in her expression. The change in him was stark. “You were right on one count,” Tadek said, tracking the two guards by the doorway. “I replicate functions. Not only poultices and flares, but the weapons you hoard to keep this trunk terrified.” He gestured subtly around the room, a slow, deliberate sweep of his hand. “You see, Appraisal isn’t about what something *is*. It’s about what it can *become*.” Zyta stiffened. Her eyes jerked toward the shadows beneath the bunk, then to the fissures along the timber ceiling, catching the faint sulfur tang bleeding from the unseen Echoes. “You… you fool,” she whispered, her voice losing its arrogance, a thread of genuine dread entering it. “What have you done?” Tadek smiled, a genuine, unsettling baring of teeth. He snapped his fingers. And the room erupted.

A Stage of Blood and Bark