Baron Sathonyx

The scent of desperation carried well in Commorragh’s stagnant air tangy, bitter, rich with fear. It threaded between razorvine-tangled towers and chittering balconies, leaving a trail even the most novice Hellion could follow. But Sathonyx was no novice.

He crouched low atop Skyreaver, the guttural whine of its anti-grav engine snarling low like a predator in heat. One clawed gauntlet gripped the twisted hilt of his barbed glaive, the other dragging lazily along a passing wall as he wove through the spires at impossible angles, kicking up flares of sickly light in his wake. Around him, the lesser Hellions howled, leaping between ruins like carrion crows circling a battlefield. The prisoner a lowborn Imperial, or so the Kabalite noble had claimed had escaped during the last raid and scurried loose into the alleys like a frightened rat. An embarrassment for the noble, but also… an opportunity. Sathonyx had been promised a reward far more tempting than mere coin.

“The creature is yours if you catch it. Do with it what you will.”

He could still taste the offer on his tongue, sweetened by the desperation of a courtier hoping to curry favor. That made the chase personal.

His laughter barked out through his vox-mask, hollow and hungry.

Something shifted in the air below a flicker of movement. The shadows twitched just enough to betray panic. Ah.

There.

He dove. Skyreaver shrieked downward like a blade thrown from the heavens, Sathonyx’s coat whipping behind him as the city blurred into a strobe of agony and metal. His eyes, cold behind his leering mask, tracked the figure scurrying between the support girders of a half-collapsed arena dome. Small, fast, cleverthere was something oddly graceful in the way they moved. Too graceful for a typical mon-keigh drone.

Interesting.

He would catch them, of course. He always did. The real thrill was in seeing how long they would last. How deep into the veins of Commorragh they’d run. How hard they would fight before collapsing beneath his shadow. And once they were his… well. Then the true games could begin.