Last week I posted the very first pages of my WIP, featuring Nyah, deposed Queen of Ryumbani - the protagonist of these adventures. Today, I'd like to introduce you to a new villain:

Torchlight glinted on silver as the skiff slid into a berth of the darkened smuggler’s cove. The bribe, like the long and circuitous route to get here, was a necessity. His quarry was cautious, and he could not afford to give even a hint of warning, lest he be eluded once again.
It had taken weeks to search all of Gotha and make certain that his prey had indeed fled the city. But Gotha was big and Elafry was thorough. He was a professional. He knew he had time. His prey would eventually make a mistake – another mistake – and he would find him. In fact, all he had had to do was follow a trail of his prey’s enemies through the city of Gotha, and one of these had finally spoken the name of this little village of degenerates on the northern fringes of the Delta.
He and his crew disembarked and took the secret path through the swampland to the south of the village after waving off the proffered guide. The useless man needed a lantern to see by night; Elafry Drakon and his kind did not. They moved through the marsh like shadows, not even disturbing the croaking frogs and chirping crickets with their passage.
Within minutes they were at the thieves’ gate; the secret entrance to the village of L’ Bo which, unlike the main gate, allowed admittance at any hour of the day or night. Provided, of course, one had the proper key. Another wordless bribe and the eleven elves entered the village with none the wiser.
The silver coins were coated with a slow-acting poison which would cause the men who had seen them and taken the bribes to choke on their own vomit within the next two to four hours. Elafry did not like to leave loose ends. He was a professional.
Minutes later, he and his ten stood in the shadows across the square from the large tavern. He watched the signboard swing slightly in the night breeze, and shook his head with a wry grin. “The Dead Dragon,” he whispered to his men, touching the black dragon tattooed along the right side of his face. “Of all the places in this town to set up shop, the stupid bastard chooses this one. I almost admire his wit.”
Once upon a time, I did, he reminded himself. The thought killed the grin and replaced it with a scowl filled with murder.
They crossed the narrow lane, empty save for sprawling bodies – either unconscious drunks or victims of violence, or both. The tavern’s heavy doors were locked, but that meant less than nothing to Elafry and his ilk.
The common room was empty; the benches and stools set atop the fresh-scrubbed tables and the stone floor already swept clean of most of the night’s filth. Only a single barmaid sang to herself as she washed down the long mahogany bar to the right of the doors. She was a curvy flame-haired Pale Man with an embroidered eyepatch over her left eye.
Elafry watched her right eye – a swirl of gold, seafoam green, and sky blue – go wide with terror when she looked up and saw him standing across the bar from her, a smile on his face. She started to scream, but strong fingers covered in black leather fell across her mouth and throat. Another pair held her hands flat on the bar; two of his men had encircled her while she worked and sang, oblivious to the danger surrounding her in the shadows.
Elafry drew one of his many sharp daggers and lay it on the bar in front of the girl’s hands; they were rough and aged beyond her years, so what he was about to do to them would not cost the world anything of beauty. “Good evening, my dear,” he said, admiring the ruby glint of his eyes reflected in the blade’s polished surface. “I am looking for one of my kinsmen. I believe you know of whom I speak.”
The hand around the girl’s mouth disappeared and she screamed, “Rastus!”
Elafry moved so quickly that the girl didn’t even feel the cut before he held the severed little finger of her left hand up to her one beautiful hazel eye. The gloved hand covered her mouth again. The one holding her left wrist tightened, slowing the flow of blood onto the wet mahogany.
Her tears flowed faster than the blood dripping from the calloused appendage. “Now,” Elafry said. “I am a patient man, and I am willing to ask you one simple question ten more times.”
The girl was shaking as if struck by a palsy. Tears and snot streamed over the black leather glove covering the lower part of her face. Elafry smelled urine and feces. In truth, he did not want to spend all night torturing this stupid girl, so he tapped her cheek with the tip of her own severed finger. “Just in case you’re not strong at arithmetic, my dear, I shall explain my statement. You now have nine fingers and one, single, solitary eye – and a lovely one, I might add. Now, at some point during our conversation, I am going to grow tired of cutting off your fingers and will instead go for that gorgeous hazel orb.
“I … haven’t … decided … when … exactly,” he said, poking her splayed fingers, one by one, with the removed pinky, “but … it … will … happen ….
“Unless you tell me right this very instant, where in this gods-forsaken hell-hole of a shit-heap village I can find Constantine Rose?”
The girl told him. Of course she did. Elafry was a professional. And what he did to her single hazel eye did cost the world a little bit of beauty.