Chapter 92: Killer
Tyler walked toward Bernardo slowly, each step measured and unhurried, watching the man drag himself backward across the churned dirt, his fingers clawing shallow furrows into the earth as he went, tears cutting clean tracks down through the blood and grime already smeared across his face.
"No, please, I don't want to die," Bernardo said, the words breaking apart halfway through, half swallowed by his own ragged breathing.
Tyler's stride caught, if only for the length of a single step. Something in the sight of it reached back through him all the way to another stretch of ground entirely, the same low, cornered scrape of someone crawling across cold stone, begging whoever might be listening, anyone at all, just to make it stop.
He'd been that same man once, in an alley, reaching for help.
He wanted no part of ever standing in that place again, and some deeper, more stubborn part of him recoiled just as hard from the thought of anyone else being made to crawl through it either.
Something small and sharp twisted low behind his ribs at the sight of Bernardo dragging himself backward through the dirt, a flicker of something softer threatening to surface beneath it, but it lasted only a moment before something hotter rose up and buried it whole, driven by the sight of the very man now crawling in front of him.
"You didn't have to stab me back then," Tyler muttered, closing the last of the distance between them. "You could have just pushed me and ran. But instead, you decided to end my life, as simple as that." He drove his foot hard into the side of Bernardo's stomach, the impact folding him half over before the momentum of it threw him rolling across the dirt, each rotation dragging fresh grit and stone into the open cuts along his arms, until he came to rest flat on his back.
He starred straight up at the pale stretch of sky above him, his whole midsection screaming with the certainty that something in there had come close to giving way.
From where he lay, Bernardo found Tyler's shape blotting out most of the sky above him, staring down at him without a trace of hurry to it. Tyler's eyes rolled with open contempt as he looked him over. "It was so easy for you as well, almost like you've done it before."
The Tearra Dagger shimmered into existence in Tyler's open hand; the sight of it alone was enough to drag Bernardo's eyes wide with a fresh jolt of alarm. "You didn't even hesitate back then, so why the hell should I?"
Bernardo dragged every last scrap of strength left in his battered body into motion, forcing himself up despite the way each small shift sent fresh pain lancing through him, until he'd gotten himself upright onto his knees in front of Tyler.
"Please, I'm begging you. I— let's make a deal. All that money I stole," Bernardo said, both hands coming up in a pleading, open-palmed gesture between them. "I'll give it all to you."
"Money?" Tyler's eyes narrowed, something in his posture going very still and very focused all at once.
"Yes," Bernardo said. "My partners, they have the money with them. I can help you find them, and you can have all the ten gold coins for yourself." Tyler's eyes went wide. "Ten gold coins." The number rolled slow and heavy through him, drawing his weight forward half a step before he'd even decided to move. "You guys sure stole a lot of money."
"Yes, it's a lot, and it can all be yours," Bernardo said, a small, cowardly smile pulling thin and relieved across his battered face. Tyler paused for a second. "Your partners, what do they look like?" Bernardo hesitated before answering.
"They are two twins with blonde hair. They look exactly the same, except one of them has a missing piece of his left ear. They're still in the monster zones right now. I'm sure of it. They haven't arrived at the base yet."
*Judging by how he sounds, it's almost like his partners in crime left him out here on purpose, probably hoping the monsters would finish what they couldn't do themselves.*
"There really is no honor among thieves, huh?" The words left Tyler low, barely carrying far enough to reach Bernardo at all. "What?" Bernardo asked, still trying to catch the shape of what he'd missed, right before the flat, rough sole of Tyler's boot caught him full across the face, snapping his head sideways and sending him rolling hard across the packed dirt, over and over, until his body finally skidded to a stop.
"Please, why won't you listen to me?" he said, dragging himself back up onto his forearms.
It was only then that Bernardo realized where he'd landed.
The same patch of churned ground he'd been driven back to again and again since this had started, close enough now that the dark heap of his own discarded cloak lay just within reach.
The small brown hilt of a dagger sat half exposed beneath its folds, and his hand closed around it before he'd fully decided to move, pulling it in tight against his chest and angling his whole body just enough to keep the blade hidden from Tyler's line of sight.
"I'm sorry," Bernardo said, his voice cracking apart around the words. "I'm sorry for what I did. I know I don't deserve forgiveness, but please... please don't kill me." Tyler paused for a second, something in the way it landed catching at him, a thread of it that felt almost genuine, threading through everything else.
He closed a few more steps of the distance between them.
But the instant Tyler came within reach, Bernardo surged up off the ground and drove the hidden blade hard toward his abdomen. Tyler's hand closed around his wrist the moment the tip so much as grazed the surface of his armor, stopping it dead.
Bernardo strained against the grip with everything he had left, the blade trembling in place, unable to close another inch of distance. Tyler's eyes narrowed down at him.
"I saw you taking that dagger off the ground. I wanted to see if you would do it. If you would try to do it all over again. You're not sorry. Filthy scum like you feel no such thing."
Tyler's fist caught him square across the mouth, and as Bernardo staggered back from the force of it, Tyler kept his grip locked tight around the wrist still holding the dagger, hauling him back into range before he could fall clear.
He hit him again. The same mirrored agony tore back through his own jaw the instant his knuckles connected, sharp and total the way it always was, and yet this time his footing held under him without so much as a stumble, some new and unfamiliar steadiness carrying him straight through it.
He dragged Bernardo back in and hit him again, and again, the rhythm of it settling into something automatic.
Then he drew his fist back further than he had for any of the blows before it, the motion alone enough to make Bernardo's heart slam hard and fast against his ribs, some animal certainty in him already screaming out exactly what was coming next.
But there was something Tyler hadn't known, something moving unseen beneath everything else happening in that clearing.
Bernardo's skill had already run its course. Whatever quiet ledger kept count of it somewhere beneath his skin had finally closed itself out for the day, its limit spent hit after hit after hit, though nothing on the surface marked the moment it happened.
Tyler carried no plan to end this man's life, only a hard, settled resolve to beat him down until there was nothing left standing in him, and there was some twisted comfort even in the ache spreading slow through his own body with every blow, using it, in some dark corner of himself, as its own proof of exactly how much damage he was dealing out in turn.
"Wait—!" Bernardo's voice tore off mid-word, cut clean through by the fist that landed square in the center of his chest. Tyler felt the whole of his own force travel through the point of impact and keep going, no resistance left in it to stop against, and somewhere beneath the sound of the hit itself came a low, heavy rupture, felt as much as heard, his knuckles sinking into softness far past where they should have met resistance, something deep inside giving way beneath them.
Bernardo's whole body left the ground under the force of it, thrown backward across the clearing, striking the earth twice before his face caught hard against the trunk of a tree standing at the clearing's edge, the impact spinning him off it and down onto his back, his body finally coming still against the dirt.
Tyler remained exactly where he stood, his arm still extended out in front of him from the punch he'd just thrown, his eyes wide and fixed on nothing at all.
*Why didn't I feel that?*
The question sat there in him, cold and unanswered, before the truth of it finally caught up to him all at once.
Bernardo had taken the entire force of that punch alone, undivided, unreturned, and some sick, immediate certainty settled into Tyler with the realization that there was no surviving a hit like that.
"No." Tyler was already moving before the word had fully left him, closing the distance at a dead sprint and dropping to his knees beside the man, who was still breathing, each ragged pull of air dragging wet and thick through something broken deep in his chest.
A cough tore up out of him, spraying blood in a fine mist across his own ruined face. *If I don't heal him, he's going to die.* The thought had barely finished forming before a vial materialized into Tyler's hand, and in the same instant, Bernardo went still beneath him, the last ragged breath he'd drawn never quite finishing its way back out. Tyler tipped the vial against his slack mouth anyway, pouring the potion past his lips.
The system panel rose in front of him, the text rendered in red: [BASIC HEALING POTION DOES NOT WORK ON DEAD CREATURES]
Tyler's whole chest caved in around the words. "Oh God." His legs gave out from under him entirely, dropping him backward onto the dirt in a graceless heap, the empty vial slipping loose from his fingers.
"He's dead." Tyler's hands flew up and dug hard into his own scalp, fingers curling in tight against his skull.
That blow was only ever supposed to be the last one, the one that ended the fight, not the man. He'd meant to drag him back to the base afterward, battered and broken, and hand him over to be taken in properly.
He'd only ever planned to beat him to the very edge of it, close enough to nearly dying, never past it. *What have I done?* Tyler thought. He forced himself back up onto his feet, staring down at the lifeless stare still fixed in Bernardo's open eyes, the pain still frozen somewhere across every line of his face.
A tremor ran through him at the sight of it, and whatever had been burning hot through his chest only minutes before drained out of him all at once, leaving nothing behind but the cold, hollow weight of exactly what he was looking at. Another system panel rose in front of him:
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: KILLER. THE USER HAS KILLED ANOTHER HUMAN: +10 EXTRA POINTS]