MORLEY!!!!

Probably a lot less bad ass ways to go after a target then riding the bus. Don't get me wrong I like that mass transit has become a thing now other than trains, but bus's by their nature of being a lowly travel option considerably less bad ass. I also kept feeling like someone would see that I was carrying a pistol. Which isn't illegal or anything, but still I feared Morley would know I was coming and account for that fact. I mean I was sure he already did know I was coming, but I didn't want him know knowing I was coming, you know? Right anyway moving on!

Arriving at the building Morley was staying at I didn't see any guards, or people for that matter. Alarmed would be putting it mildly. Still once I commit to a stupid task I'm all in till I'm dead or its solved so I headed through the doors the hand of the fire god at the ready. The lobby was also empty, not even a receptionist even though there was a desk for one. There was a bank of elevators, but having almost been killed falling down one building I decided to take the stairs. Twenty freaking flights of stairs, by the time I got to the top floor I wanted to kill myself.

"Mor," big gasp of air hunched over feeling light headed, "Leeeeey!" I meant to shout it but it really came out like the dying gasp of an old man, and I had just taken a life by necromancy that day. Morley himself was seated on a throne in the room past the elevators, he was alone. No guards, no one, he seemingly was waiting for me.

"Trezlan, you look terrible." As patronizing as ever from that dick.

"Yeah well," took another breath and just collapsed at this point the hand fell to the ground almost useless in a way it was mocking me, "You look terrible." I didn't have much left, twenty flights of stairs running up them was just too much.

"I'm glad you brought that, I was hoping you would." He came down from his throne and looked at the hand briefly and then left it there, "We have an elevator."

"I didn't want to fall down the shaft." He smirked.

"Wise move I actually did trap one of them."

"Where is everyone?" He stood there looking me over, seeing his enemy (well he's my enemy I've always assumed I'm just that annoying cut in your mouth that never heals to him).

"I sent them home, no need for them to be here for this, they might have ruined my elevator trap."

"Right." I started to gain my breath and ability to think without seeing stars in my eyes, but that only just made me feel all the weaker on the ground at the mercy of Morley and his necromancy, the Hand of the Fire God slightly out of grip.

"Times like this are how I wonder how you've lived and killed as many things as you have, you have to be the luckiest idiot to have ever managed to make it through life."

"I'm a plucky kind of guy." I made a lunge for the Hand and he stepped on my hand, I felt a bone in the hand break under his boot heel.

"Nope, not today Trezlan, good try though." He kicked the hand to the side of the room where it came to a rest next to a big picture window overlooking the city. He continued stepping on my hand with his other foot and ground the heel causing me more pain.

"Can you at least not crush my hand before you kill me?"'

"Kill you? Oh no Trezlan that's not what I'm going to do to you, at least not right away, I'm going to turn you into a bomb, next time you meet Hanlon, and you will meet Hanlon, you'll blow up in a bit of necromancy and magic that is to be damn sure to kill him." I tried to use some fire or anything on Morley but it bounced harmlessly off of him, he had some anti magical aura I couldn't see, but my magic couldn't penetrate.

"I hate you so much Morley." And then he got to work using a lot of blood magic and ritual, by the time he was done I felt odd. Like everything inside of me was bundled up and ready to burst (because magically it was). He was about to contact his men to have me hauled down stairs when Hanlon showed up. And that's when I worried for the first time since I got blown up earlier that day, if I was about to die. The oddest thing I've written in a while.