Grin turned the page expecting the story to continue, but it was blank. Who knew what would happen to Rayne beneath Haag's cruel hand? Would he be a slave forever or would he get his revenge? Grin thought he seemed like a dumb pussy and would probably have remained a slave. Glancing down, the next page started a new yarn, this one even had a title of it's own, "The REAL Bastard's Last Stand", evidently not to be confused with any other bastard's last stands. He frowned and looked over at Al.

"Er, that appears to be all there was of that one." He held up the book, showing his co-editor the blank page. "Seems the author didn't take a RichardWad Horoscope style approach. Short and sweet, I guess. There's another here," Grin said flicking a page or two ahead. "It is a little longer, do you want to try that?" 

With Al's nod, Grin launched into another story.

"Aven looked up at the darkening sky and breathed in through his nose. He pulled in as much air as he could manage, filling his lungs and holding it in, counting to himself as he did, trying to stop his heart from breaking out of his chest. Fucking thing was pounding so hard he could feel it humming in his ears and he needed to be able to hear when they came for him."

"The sun was going down, but the hill was still alight with the orange flicker from the circle of fires burning all around him, cascading the landscape in half-bright, half-gloom, choking the grass in ash and dust. Aven figured they would have been hoping for darkness before they came again to improve their chances, but he’d denied them that. He’d set the torches to the faggots hours before, back when he wasn’t alone on the top of the mound, back when he still had a squad around him. He allowed himself a small sigh at that as his eyes fixed on Modred’s back. He had watched helplessly as three of them had surrounded his brother and poked him full of holes. He’d been a fighter though Mod, even with an arrow in his knee, he had taken the head off the first fucker who had stabbed him."

Stood outside the Fat People building, confused and outraged, Ood turns to face the world. He'd forgotten there was life outside of this building, beyond the flowery stories and pretty characters - an actual entire fucking world! Looking down at the book in his hands, he remembers the overwhelming beauty within it and how perfect being lost inside felt. Swivelling his head, peering back at the door, his frown grew across his face. Muttering to himself and holding the book firmly in his grip as he sulks off to another corner of the Streets to finish reading the book alone.

Grin was pretty confused. Seemed like Aven was getting a little more backstory in this tale and had even had a brother. 

"He’d been a fighter?  What fucking difference did that make? He was still dead, lying face down in a squalid puddle of his own piss and his own blood. Maybe if Aven was a better brother he would have found the strength to bury his younger sibling, rather than just watching from his seat on the back of the ginger twat who had finally finished him off. Maybe if he was a better man he wouldn’t have let Mod be there in the first place. Maybe’s didn’t mean shit though, because Aven wasn’t a better man, he was a bastard and he knew it. That was why he was there, sat on a dead man’s back, on the summit of a shitty little hill in the highlands of Kalambria, alone, stoking the flames of his little fires, giving him light to see by and, more likely still, light to finally die by.  

That seemed to explain who the bastard was, then.

“What a fucking mess,” Aven grunted aloud, to nobody, climbing off Ginger’s back and slumping down next to his pack. He had trudged the little sack of supplies on his back all the way from the village in Nasacur, and it had proved time well spent. The caltrops had nullified the powerful warhorses that the Kalambrian raiders favoured. The fire powder had made a hole in the earth deep enough for a man to stand in and destroyed the line of swordsmen."

"He was engulfed by bodies on all sides, so much carnage and loss of life that it weighed on him; Aven was a tiny resistance of life amidst all the bleakness of death. He could feel it pressing against him, threatening to overwhelm him if he let it, but he just took another long breath and slowly clenched and unclenched his fists seeking control of himself.  His legs felt wooden and he could feel the lick of pain across his knuckles from scores of tiny cuts dotted across them as he let the breath out."

"It wouldn’t be long before the others came and there was nowhere left for him to run. They would make their way up the hill, toiling through the mud and the blood and the flesh and some would lose their nerve as they saw the price he had wrought for his death. But he knew; he knew and it broke a part of his determination; he knew that some would climb on regardless."

"He waited for them to come and it was a terrible wait amongst the dead; some put there by his hand, the rest by someone else. It didn’t matter, they were dead and he wasn’t and they hated him for it. Their eyes bored into him, accusingly, and their mouths were open and angry, shouting at him. A lot of men would have forgotten themselves up there, alone with the slaughtered, but not Aven. He ignored their stares and their hatred and their chastisement. He just waited, clenching and unclenching his fists, in silence, alone."

Grin looked up as he thought he heard a knock at the door. He set the book down and wandered over to the door, whilst Al watched on. Grin wasn't certain whether this type of door-checking was within his job description, seemed more like intern work, but he was halfway there now so he may as well finish it. He peered through the glass and saw Ood slumped in the doorway, clutching the book. He looked a little upset, so Grin quickly lurched back out of view, making a shushing gesture to Capone with a finger on his lip, waiting for Ood to scuttle off. 

Ood had made it 30 paces down the road before the excitement was too much - what was to be the fate of Lightbringer?! He couldn't ignore it, he had to find out.

Stopping immediately in his track, Ood parks on the kerb of the sidewalk, negotiating the huge book into his lap and flipping it open at around-the-right page. Confused, Ood flicks through the pages back-and-forth. He scurries through the pages in desperate search but finds nothing - literally nothing. Ood cannot believe, the entire book is blank - it's all a scam! The stories aren't real, that fuck was just making it all up!

Absolutely appalled, Ood growls at the thought that someone would have the audacity to just MAKE STORIES UP?! Gaining a boost of strength, he rises to his feet, marching back towards the door with the heavy book of emptiness in tow. He begins to furiously scream at the office building,

"You faker! They're all stories!! None of it's even fucking real!!" Ood launches the book at the doorway, clearly upset. "That guy tells fucking tales!" He exclaims to everyone in the surrounding streets.

Grin peaks from behind the curtain as a very upset Ood launches the book at their doorway. He thinks is probably an opportune moment to return to his story and Al_Capone, who was starting to look a little CLOronoaery now Grin looked at him, still seemed eager. Keeping his distance, he edged around his desk and resumed reading.

“Look at the fucking state of you,” Hestad rasped as he took in the damage that marred the hilltop."

"Aven spread his arms. “I don’t come cheap, Hestad.” He said with a smile, only it wasn’t his smile, this was a face he’d been forced to wear before and it was a cold and dead thing that cloyed at him. It was joyless, a snarl more than a grin and it had turned men, strong men too, to piss before him."

“No.” Hestad answered, either not appreciating Aven’s dangerous smirk or more likely not caring about it. Strong men may have turned before it, but none as strong as Hestad. And they both knew it. “No, you don’t.” He said again, the words stuffed full of anger and pity in equal measure."

Al_Capone gave a little cough and Grin cast his investigative journalist's eye on him. Saliva looked like it was starting to drip from his mouth and was that....was that a burning cross symbol he was making with his hands? Oh no, he was just looking at his nails. Phew.

"You ok, man?" Grin asked, still giving Al_Capone a once over. 

"I'm fine, you gonna keep reading the black, I mean...the book?" Al said, looking a little surprised at himself. Grin frowned but carried on reading. Perhaps it was an innocent slip of the tongue. 

“Grant and Shilling.” Said Aven, pointing towards the lifeless forms of the eponymous brothers with his sword “they were fast, Hestad, faster than I thought.” He spat, remembering. “Grant nearly split me in half with that fucking axe of his.” He tried to make it sound a laugh but it felt hollow and the smile he thought would be caked onto his face hadn’t quite made it there. It hadn’t been a laugh thinking about it, in fact, it had been pretty fucking serious and if Grant hadn’t lost his balance in the mud he wasn’t entirely sure he would be stood there pretending it had been.

“He didn’t though, aye.” Hestad said, not rising to the bait as he drew his sword with a scrape. It was a dull blade, notched and marked. No ornamental piece this; this was used to carve chunks out of whichever unlucky bastard was on the receiving end of it, Aven knew. He watched as Hestad gave it a few practised swings, getting the weight right in his hand, getting a feel for the blade as an extension of his arm."

“So that’s it then?” Aven asked, feeling the sand slipping through his fingers as he tried to keep it from tumbling away. “Not going to fuck off back down that hill, no?” He added as he brought his shield around in front of him.

“No.” Hestad snarled “Fuck your last stand, bastard. I’ll fuck off down there on your back when you’re dead.” And he charged forward."

"Aven put his foot on Hestad’s chest and used it to lever his blade from between the dead man’s ribs. When he finally managed to wrench it free, he fell on his arse. His body was chopped to pieces and his mind hadn’t fared much better. Grant and Shilling had hurt him; Shilling had left a gash in his hip that was making every movement feel like his skin was being grated away and Grant had almost certainly broken a rib with his fat knee, but that was nothing to the damage Hestad had done. Aven spat out a bloody tooth as he wondered which of his friends the King would send next. He slipped his tongue into the gap where his incisor had been with a grimace. 'Fguck'"

"Fguck!" Roared Al_Capone catching Grin by surprise. He jumped and the book flew out of his hands, clattering into a cup of coffee on his desk. The coffee spilled over the book, drenching it.

"Ah shit!" Grin yelled, quickly trying to move the book, but only succeeding in spreading more coffee all over the place. He hated coffee too, always a tea man and this just further reinforced his dislike. "Well that's ruined now," he said to Al as he decided it would be easier to just drop the book straight in the bin than try to dry it off. 

"What are we gonna read now?"

"I don't know!" Grin snapped. "I'll have a look on the shelf in a minute, once I've got this shitty drink from my desk."