Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!
Sevren Denoir
Saluamatu, the City on Stilts, was sinking.
The small Truacian city—barely even considered such because of its lower population—tried desperately to fight nature itself. The marshes made for unsteady foundations, the trees for poor lumber, and the ambient mana itself snapped at you when you pulled too hard on it. This far from most of civilization, most travel in and out relied on tempus warps and teleportation gates.
All the better for us. It would make us harder to track.
I'd heard passing tales as I meandered about the marshland city with my team, keeping my head low in the humid mid-spring air. The citizens muttered that the scaled koraks were rising up from the depths of the muck, hunting children and any mages who dared to intervene. Quick whispers said that their teeth were sharp and deadly, rising up in retribution for the loss across the sea.
I adjusted my hooded cloak, making sure the brass-colored gas mask covering my mouth was properly secured as I stared through the trees, perched on a hidden wood outcropping that strained against my weight, desperately trying to keep me from falling to the stale water far below. My asuran goggles were lowered, revealing the flow of the ambient mana about us. The deep blue of water mana clung to the bottom of the marshes like thick syrup, coasting about the tall trees. The green of wind whispered deadly threats through the air, taking its time to ruffle my hair.
The constant, deafening scream of insects and wildlife was quiet today, the mana beasts steering clear of this soon-to-be graveyard. They seemed to know what was going to happen, soon. The scaled koraks swimming deep below would claim another victim.
"It's lucky that my spellform is able to interact with practically any sort of rat," Wade Irdan said at my side, his eyes darkened from lack of sleep. His glasses were a little askew, the burnished Owl mask hanging haphazardly off to the side. "There are a surprising number of rodents of unusual size in this place. Regardless, your target usually charts a more erratic path through these swamps. Keeps most sentries off her trail, and the erratic ambient mana of this place disrupts most tracking spells."
Atop the spy's shoulder, Apple the skaunter chittered in a way that sounded distinctly like an evil laugh. I wasn't superstitious about the little mana beast in the way Toren had been, but there was something unnerving about the way it seemed to understand exactly what it was making those noises about.
"But as Apple can attest, most sentries don't use rats. Nobody bothers about the rats." The sentry's eyes narrowed as he stared somewhere into the far distance, a spotty forest of looming willows and leaning lumber obscuring us from everything that was to come. "Nobody spares the rodents a second glance."
In contrast to Naereni at my side, Wade admittedly looked very dull. Curly brown hair, tired eyes, stylish but not-too-prominent attire—the resident sentry of the Menagerie presented the only bit of normalcy in this entire group. Or whatever counted as normal. He looked like he should be placed in some mid-tier academy, studying away and practicing for Instiller's exams. Not planning an assassination in the middle of one of Alacrya's most remote regions.
That was what made him a brilliant spy.
"Hope it stays that way," I muttered, my voice distorted by my soulmetal mask. "Anything else you can tell us from Alaric's network?"
My eyes drifted to an old, jutting spire of shattered wood, thrusting from the murky swamp below like a corpse's claw as it sought the sky. With the titan's goggles, I could see the swirl of mana coating the base of that jagged spire. All of our plans were made, our traps set. Our purpose, ready.
"Don't let your guard down," he said seriously, looking like he was fighting back a yawn. "This is the most dangerous fight either of you has been in since the Plaguefire Incursion. A single slip-up could get you killed."
"We'll be fine. It's you I'm worried about," Naereni said seriously from the side. She crouched next to me like a waiting tiger, all sharp teeth and gnashing blades. She spun a dagger of graveice through her gloved hand. With her all-black attire and a matching soulmetal gas mask covering her mouth, she looked truly intimidating. "Everything's ready, and I don't want you caught in the crossfire."
"Don't worry about me, Naereni. I'm going to make sure I'm far away when your fight starts. I'm a Sentry, not a Striker," he said seriously, leaning against the back of the tree. On his shoulder, Apple chittered nervously. Wade looked at the strange rat-lizard, then back at the Rat. "Are you going to be okay?"
The dark-haired woman didn't respond, still staring down into the swamp. With her hood up, the soulmetal gas mask blanketing her mouth and chin, and her Rat half-mask covering her eyes, one could hardly see a single identifying feature about her, or anything to read expressions from.
But I got the sense she was chewing her lip, trying to think of something quirky to say to lighten the mood.
"Wade is right. This is going to be the most dangerous fight we've entered since Mardeth," I muttered, loading a special magazine into my soulmetal pistol. It settled in with a satisfying click. "We're probably not going to be okay, but we've done everything we can to prepare. We both know that our target can't be assassinated so easily; they're used to such tactics. But we have an advantage they'll never see coming."
This plan would have been far easier with my sister's help, but also much more dangerous for her. That was why I'd pushed for her to be doing something else as I worked with Wade to plan this excursion.
The only surprise is that Caera agreed, I thought, a bit of suspicion piercing my thoughts. She did say she had something else to do, though… Something assigned by Seris.
Wade spared his lover a look, then sighed. "I'll be waiting back in Saluamatu proper for when this is done, and I'll send what updates I can," he said seriously. "Don't let the scaled koraks get you."
The Sentry left after that, scaling the ladder behind us, before darting back through the swamp. Saluamatu wasn't that far away, and through the low haze of the late afternoon, I knew he'd reach it there safely. A heartbeat later, Naereni leapt from the platform, moving into the fog as well as she got into position.
Now, all that was left was to wait.
My gun felt heavy in my left hand. Polished, dutiful, efficient. But heavy. The drone of nighttime insects and bloodsucking mosquitoes fell away as I focused on my mana goggles, watching the ambient mana near-religiously by the water. They weren't accurate enough yet for combat; after abrupt movements or shifts in space, I needed to manually refocus the lenses to capture the ambient mana flow again.
Time seemed to stretch like moss being pulled apart as we both waited. Five minutes, ten. I felt treacherous sweat bead down the back of my neck, wondering if the cacophonous drone of fireflies and mana beasts was deliberately trying to snuff out the sound of my own thoughts.
And finally, something happened.
A rodent scurried up the tree I was perched on, surprisingly nimble. And when it reached me, its beady eyes a little too intelligent for a normal rat, I knew that our target had been spotted.
The little furry mammal chittered, then turned its head toward a certain direction. The northwest. Then, without a second bea,t it scampered back down the tree, disappearing like the one that bore its name had not long ago.
I let out a breath, the direction finally confirmed. I shifted on my perch, lining up my gun. Though barriers of fog, trees, and detritus barred my normal sight, the vision of my goggles displaying the flow of mana was precise. I adjusted the dials on the edge as I aimed, my breath slowing as I honed in on a specific kind of mana signature.
It didn't take me long to find it.
A dark, toxic streak of vomit-green forced its way along the blue water mana, oozing like a plague as it twisted itself into unnatural gaps. I had to forcibly quell the sick clench of my stomach as I saw the true nature of that sludge. My soulmetal arm—poised and clenched for the coming fight—felt a brief shadow of old pain as I remembered the last time I'd fought someone who used such magic.
Beneath the veil of the swamp, it continued to slither. Unseen, hidden, and thinking that it was safe. But as I lined up my left arm, aiming my gun, I knew that wouldn't last.
I pulled the trigger. Six quick shots that roared louder than the locusts and insects of the swamp. Each soulmetal bullet—forged with powdered aether crystal and designed to ignore any mana barrier—sank deeply into the water in streaks of hypersonic purple, punching through the target with ease.
And then I was moving frantically, engaging Dictate of Mass as a roiling storm of putrid decay-type mana raced up the tree towards where I was standing. The spot I'd been a moment before melted away.
I landed a moment later on another tree, mana flowing along my limbs, before a streak blurred into the place I'd just been a moment before. A contorted growl assaulted my ears, adrenaline burning in my veins as I dropped down to the murky swamp below.
My boots sank deep into the muck. On instinct, I whirled about, the sharpened edge of my soulmetal blade erupting from my right arm. It hummed audibly as I engaged the latest module I'd installed, forcing it to shear like a buzzsaw.
An amalgam of twiggish bones and wrong angles stuck together with swamp muck slipped beneath my whirring strike, her eyes dark and angry. Their claws surged upward, trying to open a wound from shoulder to hip. Too fast for me to react, unless—
My blade shot from my arm on trigger-quick reflex, trailing hairavant wire before slamming into a distant stone. A jolt of the wire sent me hurtling out of the way, but not before those claws tore along my shoulder, and then sparked off my arm.
As I blurred away, pulled by my age-old art of hairavant wire, I threaded my mana through my arm once more and engaged Bullet Time. Lightning attribute mana traveled along my arm and up my spine, slowing my perception of the world. The searing pain of the wound on my arm spiked abruptly, my nerves heightened as it was stretched along my perception of time.
I could finally see my quarry for the first time.
Bivrae, Last of the Dead Three. The Forgotten Sister, the Rising Rot. All names to describe the Vritra-blooded woman who was going to fight for Scythe Viessa Vritra's empty Retainership as a wartime appointee. Hair the color of soaked moss hung like seaweed across her malformed head, obscuring her twisted and wrong features. But critically, I could see the wounds on her body where my initial assault had landed, each weeping black blood. And beneath the dark sludge, speckles of insidious white.
I adjusted my gun's aim, moving agonizingly slowly. The throbbing wound she'd given me with her mana-laden claws pulsed angrily, the pain heightening for every second I kept Bullet Time active.
Chains of graveice were erupting from the muck below Bivrae, snapping at her limbs and trying to tie her down. And then I pulled the trigger, aiming low.
Time thundered back into motion, perception slamming into me like a hammer as I landed on the rock. I gritted my teeth, unable to spare my shoulder too much attention, but I could feel the toxins biting into my skin, seeping deeper and making it blister.
Damn, I thought, hissing through my teeth. The sound came out cold and harsh through my gas mask. Didn't expect her to be that fast, even for a Striker.
"Another fool comes to die," a ragged voice echoed through the swamps. The endless noise of mana beasts and insects was silent, now. Waiting. "No… two fools."
Bivrae had managed to blur backward in that split instant I failed to hold Bullet Time, escaping the tangle of Naereni's graveice chains. My bullet, instead of punching through her thigh, had instead only grazed the edge of her leg. The slight cut wept dark sludge.
Naereni's eyes were feverish and worried as she clung to one of the trees high above. That was the only thing of her that I could see—only her eyes.
Bivrae snorted disdainfully, moving through the swampy sludge without any sort of hindrance. Her claws gleamed red with my blood, contrasted against gray skin that seemed stretched taut over her mottled figure. "Do you have any idea how many bodies have fed the scaled koraks in this swamp after they tried to kill me?" The swamp witch scanned us both, a sneer pulling at the edges of her lips. "Assassins from Highbloods? Or maybe idiots from Saluamatu wanting to avenge their families. I killed enough like you. I hope they sent a challenge."
Not far off the mark, I thought, running through the plan again in my head. Contenders for Retainership are always targeted for assassinations before the final date.
"We're a little different than the rest," I grunted, ejecting a spent shell, before catching it and stowing it in my dimensional storage. I'd have to grab the rest of them when I was done. Make sure I didn't leave any traces. "Today's your day to die, Bivrae."
The Retainer-to-be blurred toward me, glinting claws extended. The swamp water parted around her as if she didn't exist, utterly unhampered by the movement. She smashed through a few daggers Naereni sent arcing from above, her body slowly being coated in a dark green toxin that seemed to rise from the depths.
I engaged Dictate of Mass, phasing backward. Using the old techniques I'd developed using my djinn-bone dagger, I let my soulmetal blade sing. It cut through the air, connected to me only by my hairavant wire.
But this woman was treated as one of the best contenders for Retainership for a reason. Even as my glinting weapon moved at impossible angles, darting in and out as I tugged on the wire, she raised mana-laden arms to parry it. Sparks flew in a mind-bending flurry as she dipped and wove, lurched and contorted at angles I wouldn't have thought possible.
And all the while, she was moving forward, hunting me down like a predator on the move. Her beady black eyes gleamed vindictively, and I could feel my arm start to tire as the infection in my shoulder spread. I was stepping back, pulling on the wire with a nudge of my left hand, still holding my gun. Then I was yanking it downward and to the side, creating aberrant blurs.
Black, icy chains erupted from the ground right beneath the witch, a rune Naereni had laid before the start of this battle connecting to a dagger high above. Bivrae dodged to the side, avoiding the constricting coils, before breathing out a cloud of toxic smoke. The greenish smog enveloped all of her, blocking her from my view and obscuring my mana senses.
Damn it, I thought, retracting my blade back into my arm before leaping toward a nearby branch. I caught myself with my mechanized hand, before easily hauling myself upward. My left shoulder wound pulsed with greenish decay as I struggled to keep my mana contained.
And out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Bivrae scuttling up one of the massive trees towards Naereni, her killing intent nearly suffocating. "Come down, little rat!" the last of the Dead Three mocked, seeming entirely unfazed by the blood leaking from her wounds. "I'll drown you in the waters of my home! You won't get the chance to scream before the decay fills your lungs!"
The Rat cursed, leaping toward another tree as she abandoned her hideaway. Unable to risk hitting the ground and being consumed by the toxic mists, Naereni whirled midair, throwing another flurry of daggers at our malformed opponent.
Bivrae's neck twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees, sick cracking noises echoing out. Then she breathed another stream of toxic gas toward the Rat's daggers, still clinging like a roach to the tree.
But this time, enmeshed within the stream of deep green, there were visible spots of turbulent white, tearing it apart from within.
Before, I would have expected the daggers to evaporate instantly from the swell of mana. But this time, they emerged from the cloud damaged, but still whole.
The stick-limbed witch, surprised that her attack had been so strangely weak, was caught off guard as the daggers sank into the tree around her. They glowed, dark chains surging from the rune Naereni had left behind and cinching the bug to the rotting trunk.
"Now!" the Rat howled, scurrying away as fast as she could manage. The toxic mist coating the water below was moving, lurching upward as it tried to follow the creator of the Menagerie.
I didn't need to be told twice. I engaged Dictate of Mass, phasing forward with all my speed. My blade extended, two feet of angry bronze as it hummed for blood.
I streaked toward the tree like a comet, my cloak flapping. I allowed my arm to build up speed as I swung it like a woodsman ready to fell the world's most evil tree, before increasing the force of my blow at the very last moment with Dictate of Mass.
My arm hummed as I sheared through bone and wood, blood spraying. I wasn't allowed to celebrate my victory, however, as my errant blur suddenly halted. My leg was nearly torn out of its socket from my momentum as something latched onto my foot.
I looked back, my senses heightened by mana circulation, and beheld a scarecrow from nightmares. I'd cut through half of her right hand, leaving only a stump that pumped dark mush that should have been blood, but her left was gripping my leg, crushing through my mana barrier and encroaching on my flesh.
"This place is mine," she hissed, putrid mana swelling around her mouth as she prepared to envelop me in a tide of doom. "This swamp, this city."
I didn't dignify her with a response as I hung in the air, torn between impossible forces. Through the pain, I sent a pulse of mana along my arm, engaging Bullet Time one last time. Lightning thundered along my seared nerves, cascading downward and slowing my perception. The wound on my shoulder and the crushing sensation of my ankle slowly relenting under the plague-infused grip of the near-Retainer suddenly heightened.
But as yellow light coursed along my spine, allowing my soulmetal arm to point at the Retainer's chest, I felt a swell of vindictive pride. My hand seemed to fold away, revealing the gaping void of my cannon.
"Alacrya doesn't belong to you," I muttered, feeling a bead of sweat approach my eye in agonizing slow motion.
My arm lit up with dazzling electric light, humming with contained power as a tunnel of magnetic fury formed. Bivrae stared down the barrel of my hand, her eyes widening in sudden horror.
The recoil of the shot sent me flying into a nearby tree, cratering the wood. Splinters dug through my cloak, scoring cuts along my back as my mana shroud shattered. The noise thundered around me, making my vision fuzzy as Bullet Time ended.
It took a precious few seconds for me to gather myself again, my vision swimming and my mask askew. I blinked through the haze, forcing myself to focus on my enemy.
The screams of agony only made that easier.
Bivrae had managed to angle her head to the side before I'd fired my shot, but not by enough. My bullet obliterated her arm, shoulder, and a significant portion of her upper chest cavity. The amalgam of sutured bones screamed pitifully, bleeding darkly into the muck. But that blood wasn't only black, now—there were specks of white interspersed without, inverted decay gorging on its counterpart.
I let myself fall from the tree, landing on only one foot. I winced as I loped through the water, chambering another round in my magazine. A heartbeat later, Naereni landed with a splash. A few locks of hair had managed to peer past her mask, but she looked largely unhurt.
"What is it?! It burns, it burns!" the last of the Dead Three howled, writhing in on herself like a worm. I was surprised she could move with so much of her body ripped from her, especially with the white blotches appearing along her sickly gray skin. "What—"
"You'd lost this fight before it even started," I exhaled, my shoulder aching. Bivrae's magic had sunk in deep, and I'd need treatment immediately after. "You won't get to hurt anybody else."
The initial bullets I'd fired at the Retainer-to-be had been coated in Seris Vritra's strange, deviant blood, taking in whatever it was she'd become. The hollow-point rounds had shattered within her body, lodging themselves deep within her flesh and leaving her infected, the inverted decay gnawing through her with every use of her magic.
And she didn't even have a healing factor to press it back down.
Naereni winced visibly, averting her eyes from the Vritra-blooded woman and raising a hand to where I knew her horns lingered. Every pulse and flare of inverted decay was hard for her to even look at.
"The Sovereigns want to go to war again," I muttered angrily, memories of my latest confrontation with Scythe Melzri flashing behind my eyes. Where she declared herself happy to throw herself at the Dicathians and punish them for the sins of her 'sister.' "And people like you—who so greedily hoard those Retainerships… You'll only perpetuate it."
Bivrae—sister to Bivran and Bilal—was another in a line of monsters that tormented Saluamatu. The three had been born here, then trained exclusively by Viessa Vritra in decay mana arts. Oftentimes using folk who wouldn't be missed, or preying on mages who could offer only a partial challenge.
She wasn't as powerful as Mardeth, but she was him writ small. She was a thing that feasted on the pain of others, building herself up stronger.
The late afternoon was silent as I levered my pistol at the writhing witch's head, her movements already slowing and her eyes glassy. And when I pulled the trigger, the echoing bang that rang through the swamp was a message.
Nobody could hear it now. This small city had lived in fear of the swamp witch, and as her body splashed back into the lagoon and the scaled koraks came to feast, I knew that—as I continued to put down infections like her across Alacrya in these coming months, weakening the High Sovereign's war forces—the message would one day ring loud and clear.
The rot doesn't get to continue.
Behind me, Naereni whistled. "That was… easier than expected. Kinda terrifying actually, how easy that was. I shouldn't have called you the Spider," she said, keeping a safe distance from where Bivrae's body had sunk into the sludge. I got the sense she was smirking beneath her gas mask. "Hound would have been better! How are you up for a new mask?"
Hound, I thought irritably. The exact thing Scythe Seris wanted me to be. A hound that tears out the throats of the Vritra.
"I don't care about the masks or the names," I muttered, trudging through the muck as I retraced my steps. Wade's rats would be here soon to help with cleaning up after the battle, leaving no trace that the Menagerie had been here. "You've got the medical supplies for decay-aspected wounds. I need it, now."
I winced, stowing my gun back into my dimensional storage. My right shoulder ached deeply, and I was starting to lose feeling in the arm now that the adrenaline was wearing off. The jagged cut was deeply infected with Vritra poison, old memories of Mardeth's grip skittering across my mind. This would leave scars.
"You're especially grumpy today," Naereni pouted with a huff, before shaking her head. She marched forward, withdrawing a few items from her dimension ring. "I swear to—well, not the Vritra. But I do swear that you're weird for only being personable around Toren. You're pretty boring when you don't have your bromance goggles on!"
Don't respond, I thought, feeling the urge to say something back. Don't engage. She feeds on it. Like a blood-forsaken leech, or something.
I turned and squinted at the dark-haired Striker, wondering momentarily if she somehow could feed off the bullshit she and my sister got into. It would certainly give a motive for it at last. "Just give me the injection," I muttered. "I don't want this wound to spread—"
My words caught in my throat, however, as something brushed against my mind. Something warm, like a fire in the midst of winter. The kind that one brushed close to whenever one came in from a long day of ascending, allowing oneself to relax at last. A cookfire and a hearth and a raging sun all at once, bundled into something I couldn't fully understand. And it—he—was asking permission, standing at the boundary, waiting patiently.
I stared up into the sky, my eyes wide and unfocused. "Took you long enough," I muttered lowly, emotion coiling in my chest. "You always were slower than me."
It was strange, that familiar sensation that drew on my heart, seeping lifeforce through my veins. Not long ago, I'd watched Seris Vritra laugh uproariously at my rage, dismissing the Second Dawn as something marvelously funny.
When she'd finally explained why she found it so hilarious, I had felt a wave of shock. The idea that Toren had brightened the sky, that he'd find his way back… It didn't seem funny.
But I let out a wry little chuckle as streams of orange-purple light misted across my body, banishing the wounds I'd incurred barely a few minutes ago. A smirk crawled up along my lips as the punchline finally managed to land.
Agrona had no idea what was coming for him.
"That is kinda funny," I chortled, clenching and unclenching my newly-healed arm. "Just don't take too long, smartass. You're always late."
I thought I could feel Toren flipping me the metaphorical bird as his soul-presence retreated, so strangely similar to the rune I used to interact with the Collective. I could almost imagine it in my head, that same smirk he had on whenever he shoved me out of a fucking window.
I turned, feeling refreshed at last, then paused as I found the Rat looking at me with very, very narrowed eyes.
I didn't like what I saw there. At all.
"Shut up," I grumbled, feeling my mood sour again.
"I didn't even say anything!" Naereni complained, throwing her gloved hands into the air.
"Yeah, whatever," I retorted, marching past her. A few miles away, Saluamatu waited. "Let's try and get back to the city before true nightfall. We've got some good news to spread."
—
When the war had first been lost, many cities had been immediately placed under martial law. People were asking questions—questions that needed answers. Were the asura attacking us? Were the vengeful deities of Epheotus going to drop a sun on us, too? What was the High Sovereign's response? What were we going to do next? And what of their loved ones in the army, fighting against the "Dicathian savages?"
Who was left, and who was next for the woodchipper?
Saluamatu was one such city. As I clung to the shadows of one of the tall trees growing from a central square, the lagoons simmering irritably, I imagined that was what every single citizen here was like.
Lanterns hung strewn from twine ropes between buildings, the stretching lattices of hemp and plant matter like spiderwebs as they constantly crisscrossed the strange, sloping architecture the marshlanders called home.
Naereni led the way, bounding along the rooftops and out of sight. Our mana signatures were both near-perfectly masked by our artifacts, our pace swift and cautious as we stepped along tile roofs in the late early evening light. The warm oranges from the swaying lanterns illuminated the streets below, giving us a perfect vantage point of the citizens as they finished up their days, closed shops, and rushed home as quickly as possible.
"This place is a powderkeg ready to blow," the young Rat muttered, perching on a nearby ledge and staring down at a group of guards as they approached a few unadorned. "You can smell it, can't you? On the wind?"
I ground my teeth slightly as the nonmages shied away from the bullying guards. "Smells like fear."
Naereni had taken off her Menagerie and gas masks, as well as changed into more standard ascenders' garb. But somehow, even though she wouldn't look out of place within the Relictombs, I could easily see her sliding in with the inhabitants here, blending in nearly perfectly. It wasn't about her dress, but more about how she carried herself. The set of her shoulders, the distrust in her eyes. The effervescent glow of the lanternlight seemed to avoid her at the edges, respecting that she was the sort to keep herself to obscurity.
One of the guards—dressed in the tight-fitting uniform of the Supervisory Offices—lightly pressed against a bigger man: a tall, broad-shouldered fellow with curly hair and a patchy beard. The burly man stumbled backward, forcing his gaze away from the goading stare of the bully. The nonmage—who should have been as intimidating as an ogre—instead pulled his hand away from where his cleaver was embedded in the wood of his stand, doing his best to look as submissive as possible. He'd been at the head of a stall that appeared to be selling processed mana beast meat, but whatever the guard had seen in the meat had set him off on a tirade.
But I suspected, deep inside, it was only an excuse.
My fingers twitched, and I felt the urge to drop down and punch the Supervisory man in the gut. His balding head was the kind that seemed in place among corrupt bureaucrats, and his eyes, spaced too far apart, somehow still couldn't grasp the bigger picture. He slammed a meaty fist onto the butcher's counter, making the unadorned man flinch.
My eyes roamed across his uniform, committing it to detail…
"Wait," I muttered, spotting an anomaly on the soldier's shoulder. And it was shared with every soldier, too. "Are these men from Vechor? In the heart of Truacia?"
"Scythe Dragoth has been making aggressive political plays against Truacia," a familiar voice muttered behind us. Wade loped into view, his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders slumped. "With Scythe Viessa Vritra captured, it's suspected amongst highbloods that Dragoth has smelled blood in the water. With so monumental a failure in the war, it's practically guaranteed that she'll lose her position as Scythe."
I turned an eye back to our resident spy, considering everything Alaric had been teaching him. The young man had taken terrifyingly well to politics, especially considering his humble background. "And that's what they're here doing? Supplanting Truacian guards?"
If we hadn't just assassinated Bivrae in the lagoon, I would have expected this to be a metaphorical breach of her territory. For Vechorian soldiers to so openly throw their weight around, this far from their home?
Wade's tired eyes fell to the street below us, looking suddenly tense. "This war had no winners on Alacrya so far," he muttered, fidgeting with his glasses. "But the Dominion that lost the least was Vechor. And the one that lost the most… That was either Sehz-Clar or Truacia. They're weaknow. But we need to move. Quickly."
I looked down at where Wade gestured, my anxiety suddenly rising as I recognized what had caused him momentary panic. In the short few moments since I'd turned away from the confrontation between the unadorned and the guard, more people had gathered along the streets, observing with fearful and near-rabid eyes both. Eyes so full of those unanswerable questions.
A mob was beginning to form. Each and every one of the citizens wore Saluamatu's characteristic ponchos, protecting them from the elements and the biting insects, but now it made them look like a legion, arrayed at more and more corners as the soldiers' barking orders and utter obliviousness drew more attention. They didn't crowd around in an obvious way, clambering and stretching like the Undead of a long-gone Relictombs Zone.
No, the hustle and bustle of a city going to sleep simply halted, the world freezing in time as heads turned, eyes shone, and fists clenched. People who had been walking swiftly slowed their paces, instead turning back to the confrontation. And just like Naereni, the light of the lanterns made sure to avoid casting light too directly on them.
Mages were in that crowd, too, in a vindictive sort of solidarity with their fellows. How many of their family members were unadorned? How many of their loved ones had been trampled beneath the boot of fools like that guard, still trying to assert his dominance over a simple butcher.
A blood clot formed in the heart of this city, the tension pushing towards cardiac arrest.
"We gotta go," Naereni said slowly, tensing with familiarity. Her eyes watched the guards' compatriots as they slowly turned, only now beginning to recognize that they'd been enveloped on all sides. Their 'friend' was still glaring at the singular unad, chastising him for something about his stall. "It's going to blow. Any second."
Just here, I thought, strangely enraptured by the sight, or across this entire continent?
"We need to be out of here," Wade muttered, turning on his heel and scampering toward the opposite edge of the roof. "Neither of you can afford to be sighted here or implicated at all. It throws everything in jeopardy!"
Naereni visibly forced herself to turn away from the escalating situation, her shoulders shaking with suppressed rage. "They call us the Rats," she muttered. "They say we're the bottom feeders."
But as I turned away, suppressing my own distaste, I caught sight of the spark.
A man stepped in from the side—an elderly one, from his hunched posture—and hobbled on a cane toward the guard. His dark poncho draped loosely over him like a cloak, making him look like some sort of wizened raven.
The moment the elder stepped forward, the slowly pulsing crowd seemed to pause. Seeing a man of respect and wisdom, the tension halted in its rising momentum. The men and women clinging to the edges of the shadows, watching from windows, and standing at the corners of the street all watched this newcomer, rising fever cooling slightly.
This was the only chance they had at de-escalation. The only offered olive branch.
The elder set a gentle hand across the oblivious guard's arm. And the guard, without even looking, lashed out with a fist, sending the old man flying through the air with a sickening crack.