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[b][color=silver]“A Crescent Moon”[/color][/b]
Prologue

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[b][color=silver]“I warned you.”[/color][/b]

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The crescent darts find their target. I can hear the screaming.

[b][color=silver]“And now, you're stuck in a room with a lunatic who is about to break you into tiny little pieces.”[/color][/b]

While the grunts are pulling the darts out of their hands their friends are taking aim at me. Just like always. Just how I like it.

A quick roll sends me underneath a line of bullets before I launch upward and send the first gunmen out the nearest window. Three story drop. He’s going to break his legs, that is, if he survives the fall. Not my priority to help them. I tried helping them last week when I gave them full warning that I wasn’t going to tolerate them anymore. 

It feels like after over a decade dealing with every inch of the freakshow I’m back at square one. I stomp out one laundering operation and a racketeering outfit moves in ready to pony up to the Maggia the next day. The Maggia. Like a twisted, shadow mafia lying in the shadows pulling the strings of everything that smells rotten in New York. Maybe I’m just not sane enough to see the answer. Maybe everything I’ve lost to fighting morons and freaks has never been enough. Sometimes it feels like we create our own problems. People start calling you a phantom, a spectre, or whatever and eventually there are ghost hunters aiming down at you. Marlene used to tell me it made sense. Remove all the hustlers and creeps and the weird and wicked were going to come out of the shadows looking for a fight. After all, once you make what this is normal there’s no turning back.

[color=white]“It’s Moon Knight, kill the bastard!”[/color]

They've tried for over a decade. Gotta love their moxie, though.

There’s another one rushing behind me, but I’m out the window before he can make contact. A quick trigger of my grappling hook and I’m swinging around and through another window.

There’s cursing as they scramble, but I toss a flashbang before they readjust. The sound of their bones cracking under the pressure of my fingers feels good. It’s probably one of the few things that can bring me some degree of happiness anymore. Not a good thing for them, either. I despise feeling that way. What right do I have to feel joy after everything I've done? All the consequences I've reaped? It makes me angry so I break them further. Before long, I've taken all of them down. It feels like a haze to me. A dirty, rotten haze. 

[b][color=silver]“Like I said. I warned you.”[/color][/b] I mutter as I shuffle through their pockets. 

For a bunch of people smuggling in drugs from the wayside, there's not a whole lot I can do. The Maggia will probably have the warehouse scrubbed and the bodies replaced. I need to send a message, one that is better. Gets the point across that Khonshu's guardian, the protector of the night travelers, is coming after them with a fervor that they have never seen before.

There’s a story about Albimelech who sowed his own capital and salted the earth to purify the rebellion that plagued the heart of Israel. The belief that the only way to stomp something out was consecrating the remains so that such a thing would not taint the land no longer. The Romans liked this idea so much they did it to Carthage and it is something I must do to the Maggia. They may have disposable bodies, but their resources are not infinite. I have to follow every breadcrumb. Every stench. I have to follow them and consecrate the bones of their operation. The Maggia will be like Carthage and when I find them, they will be exposed for the whole of their bodies.

And I will start by burning down this warehouse to its bones and blood.
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