Page 3361 -- CCLXXXIII.

Such conversations were quite rare, these days. Not many within the Vanguard were both capable enough to seek him out and also willing enough to actually speak with him. It was usually one or the other.

However, he then sensed something he had not been expecting. At least, not here and now.

He sensed the assassin’s full presence. Yes. Assassin. Singular. It was not a group, as was typically the case. It was only one man.

And it was an all too familiar one, at that.

He turned to see the enormous figure there, one with a profile so unique that it identified him instantly without need of any other information.

His supposed right-hand man. The Black Scourge. The Monster of the East.

Gohvis was here.


Chapter Two Hundred Eighty-Three: ‘The Melody in Black...’
Click to display entire chapter at once -- (mobile link)

“...Why would you appear before me in this manner?” said Dozer. “You, of all people, should know how I would perceive it.”

Gohvis made no response.

Dozer clenched his jaw. What was this, now?

The Scourge was admittedly not among those he’d been expecting to see, but it did make an unfortunate degree of sense.

For over two centuries, he and Gohvis had not been on the best of terms. The Scourge was a far cry from the little lost creature that Dozer had once rescued and decided to raise as his own child. Too much had happened. Those memories were of a different life entirely. Or maybe they’d grown distorted by time and nostalgia.

“...If you’ve come to kill me,” said Dozer, “then why do you hesitate? I and many others taught you better than that, no?”

“I am still undecided,” said Gohvis.

Dozer exhaled half a laugh through his nose. “At this late stage? It seems to me that you should have sorted through your feeling before showing yourself.” But then, that had always been the lad’s weakness, hadn’t it? Ruled by emotion, no matter how hard he tried to protest otherwise.

Saying as much aloud would not have been productive, however.

“No,” said Gohvis, rather unsurprisingly. “I am thinking that we may yet be able to find common ground again. Before it is too late.”

Too late for whom, exactly? The lad had a knack for making veiled threats that were not so veiled. Pointing that out, too, would not have been productive. Dozer had to control himself.