[DISCLAIMER- THIS ONE GETS REALLY BAD.]

Ranov has returned to his stash-room. No amount of chocolate or whiskey could cure his current mood, however, this he knows. He releases an audible grunt of pain, crouching somewhat and gripping at his inner thigh. Just that run to the elevator dealt hell to his bruised crotch.

He wastes no time, going straight for the closet. He throws its door open, and doesn’t even bother throwing the place’s light-switch.

He grasps the throat of the half-illuminated, nude figure before him; the girl. The one who’d been his girl, ‘till she’d introduced his nuts to her knee, twice in a fucking row.

Grasping the faintly-glowing ring floating above her, and tugging it roughly down to his face, Ranov relishes her squeal.

All too many people in his life’d betrayed him. It was nice, to see one get their sudba.

The alloy composing the ring is immaculate– pleasant to the touch. It’s even slightly warm.

He was pretty sure it’d be stone cold, by the time he was done.

He forces the cracked gap in the ring further open, and brings one of its ends straight to his lips. Forgoing the whiskey altogether, he’s soon drinking from the ring as if it were a bottle itself.

The girl is groaning in agony, now. Her tears flow in an unnaturally straight pattern, right down over her cheeks and past her chin.

Ranov breaks, a visible quake going through him as he clutches his chest. 

“Nnghh! God, that shit’s spicy! Maybe it’ll stick this time, huh bitch?!”

Ranov coughs hard, traces of smoke issuing from his nose and mouth.

Ranov grasps the ring, again. She’s screaming even before he’s touched it with his lips.

Her screams intensify further, as Ranov siphons more of the halo’s filling into his throat.

Ranov draws back from the ring, wiping a droplet of the glowing white ichor from his chin into his mouth.

In an attempt to quiet her, Ranov slugs the girl in the stomach. Her screams continue to issue, and her tears continue to run, so he knuckles her straight in the bony bit of her chest.

“God, fuck! My ears! Shut up!”

Her scream fills the small closet, forcing Ranov to cup his hands over his ears as he stomps at her shins.

Downstairs, Scott finally understands what he’s been hearing. Upstairs, some woman, or girl, is screaming themselves hoarse.

It was a heart-rending sound. Why was he still here, with this old bastard laid on the wall?

Scott started helping them to their feet.

“No–” Yaga croaked to him. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t just go running in there wildly, that girl is there of her own–”

“Shut up.”

Scott lays the old– whatever they are– on the couch. They start to say something, as Scott leaves, but a sharp glance back shuts them up.

Scott starts a full sprint down the hallway, looking for stairs going up.

He kept his baton sheathed– it had run out of battery, anyways.

The hoodoo that wrinkled bag had been spewing was just that– hoodoo. As much as it’d appealed to his confused, frustrated state at the time, these screams had snapped him awake. None of that superstitious, rambling scene could have ever changed what he’d set out to do.

His machinery’d broken down– maybe he isn’t as good with electronics as he’d thought.

Maybe the guy’d planned all that shit, like the trick-hatch door, and the collapsing stair.

Or, it could all have been coincidence.

Even if it had really been some holy luck, and magic was real– Scott knows what’d worked.

His hard-plated fist.

Back up in the closet, Ranov continues to suckle from the golden ring. The girl’s voice has been almost entirely fried, now. She continues to lurch and gag as Ranov seems to be fully draining the thing. It produces, from the open end not occupied with his mouth, the sound of a straw draining the last of a cup’s contents.

Ranov, drawing back once it produces only a dry, uninterrupted rasp, pounds his chest with his entire face clenched up.

He burps in his mouth, and, opening it, unleashes a plume of pure white smoke from his mouth and ears which water-falls to the floor.

Ranov wipes at his eyes. Apparently, he’d been tearing up.

“Oh, damn, I wish I’d had something else with this. Like milk, or something.”

Ranov shakes his head, as if trying to clear his mind.

“That shit was– now that I got more of it, it tasted like– tastes like…”

As Ranov trails off, he steps out. He’s still got a thoughtful look in his eyes as he gives the girl one last glance– the door closing behind him.

The bruising on her stomach, chest and legs are the only signs she’d ever been alive.

In the meantime, Scott has moved up a floor.

It’s largely the same as that under it, if one doesn’t take the three grown men with bats into account.

They’re all facing Scott silently. Their faces are rough; they’re almost certainly some of the ex-cons he’d read about. One of them’s got a cigar lit in their mouth, but isn’t dragging from it. 

The two others are in baggy leather jackets, but one of them’s got only on a white tank-top that’s certainly a size too small. His arms are a collage of tattoos, each one depicting something drug or gang-related.

The last one looked rather clean; he checked his watch nervously, staring at the others then back at Scott.

They’re all built like lean tanks. Scott could guess their plan; they were going to to try and beat him senseless. Try and concuss him through his armor, maybe.

With those arms, they may even pull it off. He could only pray that his flash-cannons would work.

“Turn around, kiddo. Nothing more’s gonna go your way, here”, the tattooed one wheezes at Scott.

Scott steps further away from the open stairwell behind him, putting some railings between them.

He gets into a ready stance, placing one foot behind the other. 

“He’s right, and he means that literally– you’ve seen what happens around Ranov, and so have we. Save yourself the time–” the cleaner one starts, before being interrupted by tattoo-guy:

“–You’ll need the energy for what we’ve got planned for you.”

Scott clenched his fists hard. He wouldn’t be intimidated, and his fingers wouldn’t lock up this time.

Meanwhile, far, far away– the arrow can be seen still trailing its gold comet-path across the sky. It seems to have left the frigid environment around the La Cloche mountains, entering a more fertile area where pines and oaks grow in equal numbers.

 It flies past and through trees, over and into commune townships– it outspeeds bees after piercing their nests, and sends sparks flying as it grinds up the side of a stony peak.

It dips back into a pine forest, and is now skimming through a river.

Somewhere far ahead of it, through the trees and shrubbery, a wide pair of antlers can be seen.