[b]The Blight: Miner's Street[/b]

After the last of the wretched working fae departed the Blight, Klade and Jaden met at the center of the deserted street. The Iron Police looked like a pair of golems in their heavy metal armor. Klade stood at ease, but his partner still eyed the creeping dark of the tight alleyways with his remaining eye. Perhaps, Klade considered, it was the thought of that pixie, still out there somewhere that kept him alert. Maybe it [b]was[/b] out there somewhere, waiting for its chance to 'collect' his other eye. Silently, Klade cursed himself for letting the little monster squirm out from his gauntlets. He should have crushed it to paste that night.

“Quiet morning,” commented the senior officer skeptically. 

“It won’t be quiet for long if the proposition doesn’t pass.”

Jaden’s single eye smoldered, “if that law passes it’ll be worse than just a riot, faeries crawling all over the Commons, goblins roving the Merchant Quarter, wyldings selling their enchanted junk to children, elf sluts…” His voice trailed off, as his eyes hooked onto something wandering drunkenly up the street. “Is that… by Dagon it is.” Jaden ran surprisingly fast in his armor, iron heels digging into the gritty thoroughfare. He gripped the unsuspecting drunk by the shoulders and turned him around. Klade expected to see just another pitiful enchanted wandering home after spending all his coin on glam. Instead he saw a fellow officer, his familiar face torn and still freshly bleeding. “Garret, what in the hell are you doing in the Blight on off hours?” The veteran officer inhaled deeply before wrinkling his nose in disgust. “You smell like cheap perfume and fairies, you’ve been in the brothels haven’t you!!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Garret stammered. Klade recalled the young man from his cadet training. A natural swordsman, but weak on discipline…

“You disgrace,” Jaden growled, “you know regulation. No fraternizing with fae.” He pushed back the man’s matted hair roughly with his ironclad fingers exposing the fresh scratches. “You’ve been doing more than fraternizing, it looks like.”

“Elf bitch attacked me, sir, we need to raid that brothel, those fae bitches think they can give a man orders...”

Jaden’s anger only burned hotter, “the Iron Brigade does not exist to serve your personal vendettas! Now here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get your worthless ass back home and clean yourself up. You'll spend the rest of the day coming up with a funny story about how you spooked a fae cat. Then when you report for duty tomorrow, you’re going to tell that story, and everyone’s going to laugh and forget this ever happened. Is that understood?”

“...yes… I mean, yes sir.” 

Jaden shoved the young policeman so hard in the direction of the commons that his shoes practically left the grimy cobblestones. “And, Garret,” he called, stopping the man in his tracks, “if I ever catch you fucking elf whores again, I’ll treat your dick like a glam addict and toss it in the dungeons, after cutting it off.”

Klade just barely reined in his laughter while he watched the disgraced officer stumble/sprint away. The look of deadly seriousness on Jaden’s scarred face, however, stole the humor from his breath. He followed the older man’s one eye to its target, the glowing green lanterns of the vice district, visible through the dark corridor of a nearby alley. “You know what we have to do, don’t you?”

“Sir?”

“If word gets out that a common elf whore attacked an Iron Policeman and got away with it, we all lose respect, the fae grow bolder and we all face more daggers from the shadows.” He pounded his gauntlets together in frustration with a sharp metallic clank. “Gods knows that piece of trash asked for it, but that doesn’t matter.” He locked eyes with his partner. “Remember when I told you the Greenlight District was off limits?” Klayde nodded, suddenly disliking where this was going. “Well it isn’t today. We need to make sure they know attacking an officer, any officer, carries serious consequences… We have to kill that elf.”