“CAD, THIS ISN’T THE WAY TO SAVE BRYNN. YOU WILL LEARN NOTHING BUT HEARTBREAK HERE.”
If you’ve seen something in the Pit, tell me, Strix. Otherwise shut that daemon beak of yours and await the souls I’ll reap for you.
“FINE, PLAY THE ANTI-HERO CARD. I’LL EAT ANY SOUL YOU GIVE ME, EVEN A BELOVED DRAKE, YOU KNOW THAT. BUT DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU. I’LL GLADLY TELL YOU ‘TOLD YOU SO.’”
With Cadrianna in the lead, the small tactical team moved deeper into the manufacturing sector, heads on swivels as gunfire near the tether cantillated through the streets. Neon aethecite clock tickers rolled across street signs. Drenth, as she remembered it, was a fragmented memory from her estranged former life as the wife to the Regents Benld’s heir. Bar Stock hadn’t been a sector she was overly familiar with back in her regency days, so she was extra careful of the surrounding warehouses.
The team moved quickly, craters and debris everywhere. Blood and offal filled her nostrils in the savory scent of death as they neared the tether. Imperium-controlled drones flitted about, cameras searching and scanning. Aerescreens played Solanine’s sorrow on repeat. Bodies of Drenth-born workers littered the sidewalks. Not vagrants dying of aethecite radiation, but honest-to-goodness citizens of Drenth who worked the long shifts in the factories building transports. Up until now, the Gutter King had always found a way to avoid civilian casualties, but this attack on the factories reeked of desperation. Across the street was a ruined building, recently exploded by the look of it. Some injured Drenth-born workers huddled on the cobbled stones of the street, dabbing at their wounds.
“Seems like we missed the fight,” Captain Arhin said. “Why would the Gutter King murder his own?”
“I don’t think he did. Be alert.” Something didn’t feel right. A wrongness in the air. She scanned the high rises and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Yet, something was amiss.
Cadrianna summoned her Void Form. The fire of aetheurgy blazed about her insides. The wails from the Pit surged forth as the veil between realms was breached, her scarred runes along her breastbone and spine fulgurated intensely under her drake scale and dribbled blood.
Strix, show me.
The mist around her feet turned black-red as it swirled upward in front of her. Like an aerescreen, it brought forth a picture of what might come. Aether rippled through her and the mist.
One second across the screen of mist; a shot of Ignis striking her, her blood spraying, a burning sensation followed by pain.
Two seconds across the screen of mist; more Ignis-spelled bullets, coming fierce now, clumping and rendering her body.
Three seconds across the screen of mist; bullets of Ignis flames tearing apart her team, blood arcing with crimson, shearing and killing, all down in a puddle of their own demise.
“Ambush!” she yelled as her Void Form rushed back into normal time. A wicked unloading of Ignis-infused ammunition fracturing the eerie silence in Bar Stock.
Cadrianna dove behind a mining truck. Bullets panged against the steel chassis with sparks of Ignis. Captain Arhin and two others had found protection behind another transport, heads covered as the rounds of aether ripped across the red exterior. Two of her soldiers lay in pools of flowing garnet in the center of the street, too slow to have taken cover.
Gunfire clanked off her refuge as she stole a glance over the transport’s wheel. Four, if not five separate spouts of discharges started from a local bakery half a block down the street, one of the many small restaurants that provided much needed sustenance for the factory workers after their shifts.
Gotcha.
“AN ACTUAL FIGHT THIS TIME,” the Strix commented rudely. “NOT A MASSACRE WITHOUT REASON.”
Crouched down, Cadrianna clicked her earpiece communicator. “Captain, rebel fire from the bakery at the end of the crossroad. Cover me, I’ll handle this. Over.”
“Clear. Over.”
The captain and the surviving soldiers popped over the hood of the car and returned fire, the shots causing the rebels to take cover. With the oncoming barrage briefly halted so both sides could reload, Cadrianna bolted down an alley across from the ambush. Aetheurgy raged through her veins as she sped up, running twice the speed of a normal person. Everything scorched. Her muscles, her mind, her blood, and her soul.
Cutting a corner, she veered west, toward the bakery. Her boots splashed sandmud as she skittered to a stop parallel to the restaurant. The rebels had resumed firing, the clunk-clunk-clunk of a hand-cranked rotating cannon echoed. The bakery was nothing more than a two-story building crammed into a row of other shops and eateries. Cadrianna holstered her multi-barrel wheellock and drew the Strix from its sheath. She set her feet and peered into the store.
Surrounded by the silver halos of void aetheurgy were three poorly clothed rebels who knelt behind the bakery counter, the rotating cannon balanced upon a tripod. One stared down the sight while the other two cranked. It was a standard-issue Imperium model. Two other rebels were shoving aethecite bullets into wheellocks, laying the rifles out to be fired. Each wore Imperium-issue drake scale body armor, likely stolen.
“I DON’T LIKE THE LOOK OF THIS, CAD. SOMETHING SEEMS WRONG.”
Taking a deep breath, Cadrianna centered her thoughts and ignored the Strix’s warning. Five. Easy. “Strix, if you please.”
“FINE, DON’T LISTEN.” The sentient blade rose in her aetheurgic magic, separating into five blades. The outstretched wings of the owl-pommel reflected neon from the lights adorning the bakery.
In a fluid motion, Cadrianna stood, both hands leveled outward. In slow, agonizing heartbeats for the rebels, her aetheurgy shot the blades forward. Glass from the front bakery door shattered, bullets flying in the other direction toward Captain Arhin while the daemon blades struck their marks with accurate precision. Sprays of red, heads tossed back as they dug into flesh. Two dropped, rifles toppled from flaccid, dead hands. The man with the remaining rifle had a blade stuck in his shoulder but that didn’t stop him from trying to turn his weapon toward her, but another Strix blade cut him down an instant later. The final blade tore through one of the surprised reloaders, her wiry body crumpling to the ground as her head painted the bakery’s shelves.
The last man dropped his bounty of aetheric ammunition and took off into the back of the eatery, a half-door swung freely as he plowed through. Cadrianna swore and raced after him, urging the blades of the Strix to reform, calling the daemon blade back to her hand in a pyre of aetheurgy. Cadrianna broke into a full sprint once she hit the back alley, legs pumping in long, easy strides. She caught him within seconds, grabbing his stolen drake armor, yanking him backward. She skidded to a halt as the man fell.
Pressing her knee under the man’s chin, she clicked her comm. “Situation handled. Over.”
“Clear. Regrouping now,” the captain responded. “Over and out.”
The rebel squirmed under her, saliva and spittle spewed as he struggled. He had shaggy dark hair and a mustache. Cadrianna watched in casual amusement. His wide eyes told her everything she needed to know. He didn’t want to die, not really. All she had to do was let him go, and he’d flee Drenth, never to return. Simple as that, yes, that’s what she deduced from his pleading gaze.
A stab of the Strix, parting flesh. Then silence.
“Mistress Cadrianna,” came the voice of Captain Arhin. “Mistress?”
“What is it?”
“I don’t think these are rebels.”
“NOT A REBEL, EH? THIEF, MAYHAPS?”
Cadrianna wiped the cruor of the Strix on the man’s tunic. “I don’t know, Strix,” she answered as she reached within the tunic under the drake scale breastplate. Her fingers felt an oblong shape that hung from a chain around the rebel’s neck. She drew a breath as she pulled the object free. “This isn’t one of the Gutter King’s.”
In her fingers was an identification tag. Standard issue for all Imperium soldiers.
What is going on here?
