Chapter 4: A Redcap's Bloody Game

Chapter 4: A Redcap's Bloody Game

The Evernight docks were where steel came to die. Hulking skeletons of decommissioned freighters listed in the oily water, their rusted hulls groaning with every slap of the waves. The air, thick with the brine of the sea and the metallic tang of decay, was a welcome change from the subterranean musk of the Undermarket. Here, the rain fell with a clean, hard purpose, washing the rust into weeping orange streaks down the sides of forgotten cranes.

Griznakh’s information led me to a shipyard at the very edge of the industrial zone, a graveyard of ambition that had been rotting for decades. This wasn't Elara's world of sterile perfection, nor Griznakh's den of calculated avarice. This was a place of raw, simple entropy. A perfect home for a creature of mindless violence.

My goal was to find a monster. My obstacle was that it would be trying to find me first.

I kept my flask in my pocket. I needed a clear head for this. Instead, I let the Gloom Sight wash over me, painting the decaying world in a new layer of ugly truth. The shipyard was saturated with the lingering despair of failed businesses and broken men, a dull grey fog in my vision. But through it, a single, angry thread of energy pulsed like a infected wound. It was a trail of dried blood, spilled rage, and the same greasy goblin magic from the charm. It led me toward a vast, cavernous warehouse whose corrugated metal walls were more rust than paint.

The sound of the rain drumming on the vast roof was deafening, a constant, roaring percussion that masked my approach. I slipped through a gap where the main door had buckled off its hinges. Inside, the gloom was absolute, broken only by slivers of grey light from grime-caked skylights far above. The place smelled of saltwater, rat droppings, and something else. Something coppery and fresh. Blood.

My eyes adjusted. The warehouse was a maze of skeletal machinery and forgotten shipping containers. The psychic stench of violence was thickest here, a palpable pressure against my skull. He was close.

I didn't see him. I felt him. A sudden spike of killing intent, sharp and hot, from the shadows above. I threw myself to the side, landing hard on the concrete floor as something whistled through the air where my head had been and slammed into the ground with a shower of sparks.

Scrabbling behind a stack of rotting pallets, I risked a look. Standing there, silhouetted against a high window, was the source of my troubles. It was small, no taller than a human child, but wiry and knotted with a terrifying, unnatural strength. Its skin was a leathery green, its face a mask of feral cunning with a wide, lipless mouth full of needle-like teeth. It wore iron-shod boots that had struck the concrete, and clutched a brutal, hook-bladed scythe, its edge stained dark. But the most arresting feature was the ragged woolen cap on its head. It was dyed a deep, sickening crimson, still wet and dripping slowly onto the floor.

The Redcap.

It let out a chittering hiss, a sound of pure malice, and bounded off its perch, landing silently on the balls of its feet. It knew I was here. This was its game, its killing floor.

"You smell wrong," it rasped, its voice like scraping rust. "You smell of pretty Fae lies... and topside filth. Both!"

It moved, a blur of speed that defied its size. I barely had time to yank a length of rusted pipe from a nearby junk pile to block the scythe's first swing. The impact vibrated up my arms, a shock of raw, supernatural force that nearly tore the pipe from my grasp. This wasn't a fight I could win with strength. This had to be about grit.

I shoved it back and scrambled away, putting a hulking piece of machinery between us. It laughed, a wet, gurgling sound, and began to stalk me through the labyrinth of steel. It was toying with me.

"The shiny lady sent you?" it snarled from the shadows. "Did she offer you gold leaves? Did she promise you a smile?"

Elara. So it knew who hired me. Or at least, it knew who it had stolen from.

I used the moment of distraction to move, flanking it. My Gloom Sight cut through the physical darkness, showing me its aura—a furious, boiling red, shot through with the same sickly green of Pip's goblin charm. It was a creature running on pure, borrowed hate.

I burst from behind a container, swinging the pipe like a bat. It caught the Redcap in the ribs with a sickening crunch. A normal creature would have gone down. The Redcap just stumbled, hissed in annoyance, and swung its scythe in a low arc that forced me to leap back. The blade sliced through my trench coat and bit into my calf.

Pain, white-hot and immediate, shot up my leg. I cursed, stumbling. The smell of my own blood filled the air, and the Redcap's eyes, small and black, lit up with a feverish glee. It needed blood. That's how the cap stayed red. That's where its power came from.

It lunged, scythe raised for a killing blow. There was no time to think, only to act. I threw the heavy pipe at its face. It was a clumsy, desperate move, but it worked. The Redcap raised an arm to block, and in that split second of imbalance, I charged forward, ignoring the fire in my leg.

I slammed my shoulder into its chest, driving it backward. We crashed into a wall of metal shelving, sending a cascade of rusted bolts and tools raining down around us. The Redcap was inhumanly strong, its wiry arms like steel bands. Its needle teeth snapped inches from my face. I could feel its rage, its bloodlust, a primal force trying to overwhelm me.

My hand, scrabbling for a weapon in the debris, closed around something heavy and sharp-edged. A broken gear. With a final, desperate roar, I drove the jagged points of the gear into the Redcap's side, twisting hard.

It shrieked, a high, piercing sound that was abruptly cut off. Its body went rigid. The furious red light in its aura sputtered and died, leaving only a fading, greasy green. It slumped against me, a dead weight.

"Just... a job..." it gurgled, a trickle of black blood spilling from its mouth. "She... paid..."

Then it was gone.

I shoved the body off me and slumped against the shelves, chest heaving, leg screaming in agony. I had won. But it was a victory that tasted like blood and rust. The Redcap was a pawn. A piece of hired muscle. Elara's "unusual circumstances" were starting to look like a simple contract killing that had turned into a kidnapping.

After tearing a strip from my shirt to bind my bleeding leg, I forced myself to my feet. I had to search the creature's nest. I found it in the back of a shipping container—a foul heap of rags, bones, and stolen, shiny objects. My eyes scanned the pathetic hoard, looking for anything that connected to the boy.

And there it was.

Tucked amongst the filth was a small, exquisitely carved wooden horse. It was simple, elegant, and so profoundly out of place in this den of butchery that it felt like a spotlight was on it. It had to be Lyra's.

I reached down and picked it up. The wood was smooth and cool to the touch. It was just a toy.

Then I let the Gloom Sight focus on it.

The world dissolved into a supernova of golden light. The toy didn't just have an echo of the boy's starlight magic; it was a goddamn reservoir. A condensed, pulsating sun of raw, untamed power that dwarfed anything I had ever seen. It wasn't the elegant, structured magic of Elara's Seelie Court or the crude, angry power of the Redcap. This was something else entirely. It was the power of creation itself, pure and overwhelming, contained within a child's plaything.

I finally understood. The memory of the boy's room, the faint scent of starlight I'd perceived there—it was just a whisper of this.

This case was never about a missing child. It wasn't about a political gambit or a noble heir. It was about this. This raw, world-breaking power contained in the boy. Elara hadn't just lost her son. She had lost control of a living weapon of mass destruction. And she'd lied to me, sending me after a "kidnapper" when the truth was so much more terrifying.

Standing there, battered and bleeding in the echoing silence of the dead warehouse, I held the small wooden horse in my hand. It pulsed with a gentle, golden warmth against my skin, a beacon of impossible power in the heart of the city's decay. I finally had a piece of the truth, and it was infinitely more valuable—and dangerous—than all the Fae gold in the world. And it made my client, the beautiful, grieving mother, the most terrifying person I had ever met.