Finn smiled a perfect set of pearl. “Sure thing, Em. I’ll play nice… for now.” Which could mean any number of things where Finnus Dunleith was concerned.
Outside of the complex, in the derelict alleys of piss-yellowed lamplight and sloshing sandmud, was a burnt-out crossroads. The area used to be prosperous before the appearance of Gargantua. Four mega-roads had been built upon enlarged trusses suspended in the air of man-made mountains, but now only broken portions of pavement littered the emptiness below, the mist clawing over top. A stone portrait of decay and forgotten times.
“How did Ness get such a large shipment of first grade parch? That’s stuff’s been harder to get than getting Keph to bathe.”
“Go bugger yourself, Finn.” Kephren skipped a step to catch up. “Told you, he’s been working with Bar Stock.”
“Nobody gets in with Bar Stock, Keph. Tevun’s been trying to get someone inside for months now. Solanine’s getting smart on us.”
There were eighteen aethecite factories in Drenth’s nine sectors, all in the lowborn districts. All with their own standing armies. It had made getting parch for the rebellion nigh on impossible.
“That’s only the tip of the iceberg,” Keph continued, “hear he’s got somethin’ else brewin’. Ness that is.”
“You ever see an iceberg, Keph?”
“I ain’t never been to the VVinter Expanse, Finn, but word is they are huge underneath. Like a certain someone we all know and love.” Finn choked on a cough. “But I still wouldn’t trust Killian Ness as far as you could toss him full burn. He’ll turn on us, mark my words.”
A chorus of boots smacked wet, sandy mud in the crossroads, and moments later, five shadows emerged from under the broken mega-road, four men and one woman. Two of the men carried wooden crates upon their shoulders. The woman and the other wiry man skulked behind, heads on swivels. The glint of knives in the belts of all. At the lead was a tall, Drenth-born man, lanky and gruff. Dark hair pulled back into a tail, beard pointed and dyed green, a stark comparison to his emerald pupils. A man with Burn Form. Killian Ness and his crew stopped opposite the crossroads from them. Ness’ crew was one of the larger gangs in Drenth, claiming Stanktown as their base of operations.
Emre burned his aetheurgy.
All it took was a fraction of a heartbeat and the dam holding his parch reserves exploded into his veins. Like a bubble that held the aetheric serum, the wave crushed under the weight of his Burn Form, a flare in his mind, a sear of instant inferno within.
Mind, body, and soul aflame in aetheurgy.
The air around the crossroads shimmered light silver as his sensitivity to his surroundings increased under his Burn Form. Or as the Scattered Shards called them: the Four Enhancements. They were: sense, speed, strength, and stamina.
Coated in the sterling shine, the world magnified. Shadows were pushed back into nothingness; the morbid warmth of the desert chilled his skin. Emre could feel the heartbeats of the seven others within the crossroads, pulsing in time with his own thrumming beat. Their breathing matched his, and he could taste the sands of the dunes on their tongues along with them.
Clarity now, he sensed others. Three scattered throughout the rundown buildings. Three beacons high up, spying down on the Stanktown gang and the leader of the rebellion. Lookouts who’d burned aetheurgy to find him watching back, no doubt agents of the Fallen. A leak of intel. The expectation. Spies all around him.
But he felt another presence, these ones not men but draconem. Drakken, to be more precise. A pair hiding atop an old residence. He smiled at knowing they were there. Tevun had been right.
The war begins, he thought.
Now knowing where the Fallen’s eyes were, he snuffed his aetheurgy, leaving some reserves left in the tank, but having mortgaged thirty seconds of his future. Unlike the four branches of the Scattered Shards, those who burned parch traded their lifeforce for the gift of aetheurgy. Seconds at a time, that was the tithe of Burn Form. A husk he’d eventually become.
Ready he was, satisfied to begin what he’d worked so hard with Tevun to achieve. What he’d set out to do the moment his parents were murdered, Brynn orphaned, and Cadrianna turned.
To give the Fallen a well-deserved ‘fuck you.’
“When I heard the Gutter King was willing to meet me in person,” Killian Ness spoke like rocks tumbling down a mountainside, gravelly and booming, “I couldn’t resist.”
“When scourges know your face, Ness, meetings like this aren’t a luxury.”
“Unless you’re desperate.” Killian Ness surveyed Emre from head to foot. “Man’s gotta do, right? You know, I thought you’d be bigger. Heard you had the seedpods to fill a wine barrel.”
“Never heard that one before. Guess opinions vary,” Emre said flatly. “We all have to do with what we’ve been given by Zenith.” We all have to do what’s demanded of us, right, Tevun? “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get home before breakfast.”
“That’s why I like doing biz with you. The Gutter King is no—”
“When my crutch is the token of the deal, I like to keep it short.”
“Spoken like a true man of the streets.” Killian’s lips curled upward at the corners. “Does the Gutter King got what I asked for?”
Emre reached under his tunic and pulled out a pair of thin cylinders of wrapped paper, holding them for Ness to see. “Two stretches of gravy. Gold. You got my crutch?”
Ness cocked his head and the men with the crates came forward, placing them on the ground a few feet away before backing away. Emre nodded toward Kephren, who stepped up to lift one of the lids. He drew forth a tiny vial and tossed it to Emre.
It was a vial of first grade parch.
Parch. The wonder serum made from aethecite. For any regular dreg, parch stopped the torrid radiation poisoning that aethecite wreaked upon human flesh. Blisters, boils, skin melting, bones crushing inward. They may be protected from the Sea of Mist by the vacuums on the walls, but every person who went into the mines had to inject themselves every six hours. Fitting that only injecting aethecite shielded death from aethecite.
But for some, parch did more than shield the radiation, it gave them Burn Form aetheurgy. A means to fight back with aether. Something the ingeniator scientists of the Scattered Shards could never have foreseen when they created the wonder serum.
“All here,” Keph said, counting the vials.
“There’s more where that came from.” Killian Ness had a penchant for trying to squeeze every last quadran out of a negotiation in his favor. “Hundred more, if you want.”
“I wonder,” Emre started as he held the vial between his fingers, “how does a gang from Stanktown get a cache so deep? Especially of this quality?”
Keph tensed. “Um…”
Ness nervously looked toward the surrounding buildings. “What’s going on here?”
The gang grunts put hands to belt knives, tapping parch injectors on their wrists. Each were ready to burn should the leader give the word. Killian Ness appeared ready to give it, too.
Emre absently looked up toward Gargantua, his face grew hard. “Heard some rumors.” You will pay, Solanine, for this betrayal. And the Fallen will burn with you. “What’d you say earlier, Keph? Something about Ness and Bar Stock?”
