Illando twisted aside in the nick of time. The armbow bolt that had been destined for his throat instead clacked harmlessly off the shoulder of his armour, splintering and spinning away into the shadows. He spun in the direction it had come from and dropped into a crouch, his golden eyes blazing as he picked out three charging, screaming figures in the half-light.

With a snarl he launched himself at them.

He might as well have been a boulder crashing through trees. He caught them off guard with his sudden counter charge, smashing a shoulder into the chest of the figure with the armbow as they tried to reload. The kin went flying backwards and hit the ground, spluttering desperately for breath.

Illando barely spared them another glance. The second of them tried to swing a long-handled axe at him, but he was already too close for them to use the weapon properly. In a single step he was inside their guard, clamping the axe haft down beneath his right arm as he plunged his clawed gauntlet clean through their sternum with the other. As the figure toppled with a dying gurgle he finally got a glimpse of just who he was fighting as the tattooed face of a female otterkin dipped back through the light as she fell.

He back-stepped as the third figure – a snarling felkin male – swung at him with what looked like a boat hook, the curved iron carving wildly through the air between them. The robed attacker reversed the swing with one paw, but Illando read the motion. As the hook swiped at him, he leaned back and down, and as the felkin's arms spread, Illando fired an armbow bolt into his assailant's chest.

The felkin let out a cough of shock, dropping the boat hook and clutching the bolt that protruded from his ribs. He staggered drunkenly, wide-eyed, but in Illando's eyes the robed thug was already dead.

He surged forward, arms outstretched, and grabbed the flailing felkin by the back of his robes. With a grunt of effort, Illando twisted and swung his attacker hard into the nearest wall head first, extracting a brutal crunch as the felkin's skull caved in from the tremendous impact. Dropping the lifeless body, he whirled around to see the melee the had erupted in the narrow spaces.

Noelle ducked the swing of a pipe from a brawny wolfkin and fired an armbow bolt point-blank into their gut. As the robed figure doubled over she shot upright, crashing an uppercut into the attacker's jaw to send him sprawling. A longclaw dagger appeared in her free paw, and in a careless motion, she spun and opened the throat of a screeching foxkin bearing down on her from the opposite side. Blood fountained across the walls and the foxkin crumpled to the floor, clasping their ruined neck with both paws as the last seconds of life gurgled away.

The attackers all bore the same ragged robes, they fought like fanatics, screaming out oaths as they hurled themselves at the wolfkin.

Fanaticism, however, was no match for the training and ferocity of Illando and his enforcers. A fourth came at him – a spindle-framed quillkin wielding a stone-headed hatchet – but he'd already reloaded his armbow and the next bolt took his foe through the eye before they got close enough to swing.

Two more already lay dead at Gensher's feet and he had his massive jaws locked around the throat of a third. A single jerk of his head ripped the fanatic's neck open and they slumped to join their comrades. Another three lay scattered around Farler, and the last of them took a gauntlet through the stomach. The enforcer lifted his adversary bodily off the ground with one arm before tossing them carelessly aside. They crashed through one of the rickety beds, sending clothes, copper etchings and tins of food clattering across the ground.

A sudden quiet engulfed them. The skirmish was over. Illando shook blood from his gauntlet and took a deep breath to steady himself, his blood pounding with the thrill of combat. He stalked out into the middle of the junction, turning slowly to examine the aftermath. Bodies were strewn across the room, clad in loose-fit robes of rust-red that mirrored the dark blood that now leaked across the rugged hardmud tiles.

"I reckon we found the folk who cut that otterkin up," Gensher rumbled, kicking one of the nearby bodies experimentally. It didn't move. "Y'think we're done here?"

"Not even close." Illando shook his head and gestured to the room with a flick of his paw. "Toss this place and check the bodies. See if we've got anything here to identify these kin."

The four enforcers dispersed around the room and began to sift through the wreckage from the fight. Illando prodded the bodies of those he'd dispatched as he passed them, but none stirred. At the body of the felkin, he dropped to his haunches, ignore the bloodied face and instead peeling open the robe to reveal the ragged auburn fur beneath.

On the felkin's scrawny chest he found an unpleasant scrawl of black ink that matched the markings they'd found on the walls here, and around the murder victim. The interlocking triangle motif seemed to be a repeating symbol, this one emblazoned right over the felkin's bony sternum. A square of spidery script was positioned up to the left, and other glyphs that made his eyes hurt dotted the felkin's fur.

"Maybe there's an inker around here we should be looking for," Farler joked as he examined another body. "Someone's shaving a lot of stamps out of these freaks. This one looks like he tried to get a book stamped on his spine."

"No accounting for taste," Noelle replied with a wry smile.

Smirking, Illando began digging through some of the detritus around the bodies. There were some half empty tins of food – meat that had been so heavily processed he couldn't even identify it – and various copper etched sheets and small bundles of bark-paper. The copper sheets looked like maps of tunnel sections, probably how the fanatics found their way around down here, but the bark-paper reams were a lot more interesting.

More writing, but this time written in the common founding script used across the continent. He stood, bringing the first page up to the light to read it properly.

Your life is the true spark.
Shun the machine and soulless glass
Your veins are the true power
Smash the wires that choke the Fire

Illando wrinkled his nose and leafed through a few more pages, finding more of the short, strange verses. They all seemed to carry the same sort of theme: you. It was all about 'you', what 'you' really were, weighted against perceived evils of machine and electricity. An odd little collection of questionable poetry, but the thing that intrigued him the most was that the words were printed rather than written by paw.

A little ironic, given the content, but it made him wonder how many pamphlets like this he might find in this dingy little hole. From where he stood he could see half a dozen little reams of bark-paper that looked identical to the one he was holding.

"Oh-oh, got a live one over here, boss," Noelle drawled dragging his attention away. He turned and saw her give her longclaw dagger a murderous twirl in one paw. "Looks like the bolt missed anything really important."

Illando loped over with the others to join her, and they gathered around the shape slumped against a pile of bedding. It was the wolfkin she'd sparred with earlier, armbow bolt sticking out of his stomach and blood leaking from his broken nose. The fanatic coughed; groaned and glowered up at them, no hint of fear on his features. His patchy coat of white and grey was inked liberally with whole paragraphs of the strange script.

"I can fix that for you," Farler muttered. Clashing the blades of his gauntlet together, he dropped down into a crouch and gripped the wolfkin by the collar of his robe. "Don't think anyone'll miss him."

"Wait!" Illando barked as Farler raised his gauntlet to strike. The other enforcer froze, looking back over his shoulder, face blanched with confusion.

"Sir?"

"We came down here for answers." He placed a paw on Farler's shoulder guard and gently eased the veteran enforcer back. "Let's see if we can get some."

Farler hesitated for a moment, but eventually nodded and released his hold on the dying wolfkin, rising back to his feet. They stood for a moment, but the fanatic seemed not to notice them, his eyes staring blankly ahead, muttering through bloody lips.

"And the Fire will cleanse... and the Fire will cleanse." He broke off with a gurgling cough that sank down into a pained groan.

"You're dying," Illando grated, which finally got the wolfkin's attention. Their captive looked up, a bleak expression on his face.

"Then I go to the Fire," he rasped.

"Not just yet you don't," Noelle growled, giving his limp footpaw a light kick. "You loosen those jaws up and maybe we can patch you up, eh?"

The fanatic let out a sputtering laugh. "You are leashed. I would rather die free than be in your debt."

"You can die if you like," Illando replied, waving the pamphlet in the wolfkin's face. "Who wrote these?"

"As if you could grasp it." The wolfkin shook his head. "They are not from any one kin. They are from history; from time. They guide us."

"Where did you get it?"

"From a friend." Another wheezing laugh filled the air and Illando clamped down his frustration. Right now this spiteful individual was their best lead.

"And how many 'friends' do you have?" he ventured.

"If you think ... I will betray ... my brothers and sisters," the wolfkin burbled. "You can kill me ... now, dog."

In reply, Illando raised a footpaw and placed it gently on the protrusion of the armbow bolt. The fanatic glared at him, but the glare vanished when Illando increased the pressure. There was a wet crunch and yowl of pain reverberated through the tunnels.

"You think you are being brave," Illando said quietly, removing his footpaw as though nothing had happened. "You're actually just being very, very stupid."

"The Fire will cleanse," the wolfkin hissed. "I will tell you ... nothing. You'll discover it for yourself ... soon enough."

"There is an otterkin dead near the canal," Illando continued, fighting to keep his outward veneer of calm. "Your work?"

"We do what must be done."

"Why?"

"To save this city ... from itself."

"Crazy," Gensher muttered uneasily. "Straight crazy. We're not gonna get anything out of this mutt, boss."

Illando shot him an angry glance before turning back to their captive. "And what do you mean by that, exactly?"

"The Fire will cleanse," the wolfkin repeated, blood seeping between his clenched teeth. "The Fire will cleanse and only the pure-burning souls will inherit the world." His eyes flashed defiantly and a deranged grin split his rugged features as he looked up at them. "You disgrace your species, enforcers. The Fire is coming and it will scour this city clean. You are all doing to die."

It happened before anyone could respond. It seemed that Gensher could contain himself no longer, and he let out a sudden, guttural snarl, reaching forward, grabbing the cultist by the head and twisting violently. A sickening crack echoed through the tunnels as he snapped the wolfkin's neck, and the light fled from their captive's eyes in an instant. The grin slackened and the head lolled forward like a puppet with its strings suddenly cut.

"Peace'n'Fire, Gensh!" Noelle yelped in surprise. "What'd you do that for?!"

"I've heard enough." Gensher straightened up unapologetically.

A low growl surged in Illando's throat and he grabbed the big enforcer by the scruff of his neck, yanking him around and pulling him close, glaring into his comrade's eyes.

"We needed to question him, you fool," Illando spat, his claws biting deep into Gensher's skin and fur.

"He wouldn't have told us anything," Gensher replied, squirming in Illando's grip but not trying to pull away. His face crumpled with discomfort as he forced out the words. "You saw him. Mongrel's brain was gone. He was crazy. Nothing we can do for him; nothing we can learn."

"You don't know that!" Illando shoved the other enforcer back, releasing his grip to send Gensher staggering back into the wall. "You kill when I say you kill, Gensher. You're supposed to be an enforcer, not a gutter scraping savage, and if you can't control yourself you won't be either for much longer."

The menace of his words hung in the air like a dangling anvil, ready to drop and crush them all. Gensher straightened up and the pair locked eyes, but after a few seconds the other enforcer dipped his head in submission. His gaze dropped to the floor. Illando could feel himself shaking with rage, but he suppressed the sensation. For all the big wolfkin's faults, he would need Gensher's muscle if he wanted to get to the bottom of this mess.

"Noelle," he rumbled, not taking his eyes from Gensher. "I want pictures of all of this – the bodies, the murals, the pamphlets, the maps – all of it."

"Aye, boss." She buttoned up her normally breezy demeanour and set to work, sensing the danger of Illando's current mood.

"What's our next move?" Farler asked quietly.

"We find whoever's been printing these," he replied, tapping the pamphlet with one claw. Then he gestured to the markings on the walls. "And while we're at it, let's find somebody in this bloody city who can tell us what in the Peace and Fire any of this means."