Ashe ran headlong into Marketside, one of two main bazar sectors in Drenth. She barged into the meandering horde of flesh that was hunkered down within the giant rectangle of colored tents, long glass counters of goods, and shops which sold trinkets, seeking protection from the bombings. Aerescreens affixed to the surrounding buildings encroached the market like watchers. One of Gargantua’s tethers was at the far end of the southern sector, its giant chain links swaying. Despite the late hour, the forum was packed to the brim with people, their auras every color imaginable. So bright, it almost blinded her, their fear the brightest.
“Citizens of Drenth, fear not,” a message beamed across the aerescreens. It was Solanine, face twenty feet wide, those onyx eyes dead, but Ashe felt as if they were on her regardless. “We are working tirelessly to end this threat. Citizens of Drenth…”
Reluctantly, she dove into the crowd, and tried to ignore the queer feeling of being watched by a screen-version of Solanine. She glanced behind to see that the vicars had slowed as the rush of people pressed upon them. Sensing their slightest hesitation, Ashe sucked in the mist that covered the forum’s paving stones like it was the most precious thing in the world.
Breathing the fog, she burned the last vestiges within her to use it for the last thing she could think to do: to hide herself.
To all, she was simply not there. The mist wrapped around her like a cloak, a smudge in reality. A blank spot where once a girl had been, now nothing. Pure aether enveloping. Just her and the wails of the dead.
She quickly moved through the crowd using her new and unpracticed spell, winding her way through the masses, squeezing between the moving people filling Marketside. Away from the vicars. The people couldn’t see her, but she still danced away. Within heartbeats, she was across and behind a tent.
Ashe let go of the misted cloak as she snuffed her burn and put her back against a column. In the bazar, the vicars dovetailed through the throng, their mist-enhanced bodies glided like sapphiric water away from her as they searched but not finding her.
Her relief was brief as the onslaught of hurt from the mist seeped in. Her stomach clenched. But she pushed on anyway, gliding away from the market and the untainted warriors of the Scattered Shards.
When all was relatively silent behind her, Ashe stopped at the southern edge of the mega-city, miles from the satyr mask job, and the exact opposite side of the city from The Colosseum where Elian and the rest of the Slag’s End gang would be. Where Wren would be.
The bombs still lingered in the background, but the only sound that hummed in her ears was the mist vacuums. Ashe violently coughed burgundy tar onto the sandy stones. The density in the air was heavier closer to the city’s outer walls as the stink of the vapid mist outside filled her nostrils. It reeked of rot.
For a normal person, the scant inch of mist that layered the cobblestones of the mega-city wasn’t lethal, even over the course of one’s life. But outside, in the Sea of Mist, it was different. If not for the vacuums spaced along the walls, the city would be swallowed by the poisonous fog. The vacuums pulled in the haze and barfed it back outward into the Sea. Inside Drenth, the world was safe, free from the virulent disease permeating the Mistlands.
Except Ashe, for she had been cursed with the pulmo since she was but a babe.
To keep from hacking up more blood (not to mention keeping her from keeling over in what Ashe assumed a kick to the seedpods might feel like) she withdrew the golden flask. The spirits soothed her aching throat and cleared her wandering mind with a trickle of comfort as she looked skyward, cursing the Pentax for buggering her over with her consumption.
As she took another drink, she noticed the bangle on her left hand. She’d forgotten about it during her escape from the vicars.
The braided chain wrapped around her wrist was perfectly fitted and didn’t appear to have a clasp of any type. The same braided gold ran in a single row of links from wrist to the diamond eye in the center of her palm, then fanned out to the four auric rings on each finger. The diamond and the gemstones on each ring were unblemished, flawless, and unmarred. The runes inked upon her arm matched those on each ring. Ignis on her forefinger. Aquis on her longest. Aere on the third. Terris on her smallest. Each stone facet and rune glimmered, while the diamond eye was warm against her palm.
The entire thing had to be worth a fortune in quadrans.
“What in Zenith’s…” she said around her askew tongue as she tried digging her fingers into the diamond, pulling with all her might. The stone didn’t budge. “Bah! What the void?”
She found a pointed rock and tried that, only to be rewarded with a jab into the meat of her hand for her efforts. Next, she tried to pull the rings off her fingers, but they didn’t move a fraction, as if they were melded into her skin.
“Fine! Be stuck, you stupid thing.” She took a drink from her flask in irritation. “Now what am I supposed to do with this?”
The mist railed against her legs, and she didn’t have time to think, only react as a fist aimed for her gut. She dropped the flask as she contorted sideways, narrowly avoiding the blow, but the wall behind her was not so lucky.
“O shit!”
Ashe burned. From under her sleeve, up on her outer bicep, the semi-circle with a high tailed contrasted by a low tailed rune of Ignis synapsed brightly as it suffused her body with its fiery strength. The Aere rune—two vertical zigzag lines, one longer than the other—on her outer forearm pulsed as the three horizontal, wavy lines of the Aquis rune on her inner forearm bloomed, the link between thoughts and speed now connected with that of strength. The encircling connector runes glowing brightly.
One of the vicars—a short thing of a similar height and with red curls above the breather—swung at her again, but Ashe caught the punch in her mist-enhanced palm. The woman’s green-grey eyes widened behind the tinted shield of her mask, her yellow pupils reflected surprise, her aura glimmered ruby.
And Red most certainly hadn’t expected her to fight back.
Ashe brought up her other arm and shoved it brutally into Red’s unprotected elbow, shattering the bone with her enhanced strength. Any other person would’ve recoiled immediately, but under the sway of aetheurgy, the vicar barely flinched.
“Godsdamn,” Ashe mewled as she spied a second vicar in her peripheral vision.
The second vicar’s attack struck Red in the back of the head, as Ashe ducked and pulled on the red-haired bitty’s broken limb, using her as a shield. Using the other’s momentum, Ashe bulled the downed vicar with her shoulder into the blue-cassocked middle, then flung the wounded bint into her curvier companion with the strength of five men. Red and Curves flew into the opposite wall.
“That wasn’t very nice,” she said to the vicars as the mist around her feet turned a crackling black.
Her freedom was short-lived as the third vicar joined the fray, leaping over his comrades in a single bound of aether-strengthened legs. This was the leader with the crest of dyed horsehair.
With only one heartbeat, Ashe burned a giant gust of Aere and caught the vicar in mid-jump. She brought both her arms around in a vicious yanking motion. Bristletop crashed into the apartment complex opposite, pummeling through brick and timber alike. Two crimson-shaded lowborn screamed in alarm as the untainted warrior got to his feet within their unfortunately destroyed home.
“HA! Take that!”
A fire burned within a brazier, so Ashe tapped its Ignis, drawing a gout of flame in a sudden burst of wicked heat to create a wall between her and the other two vicars, who were now untangled from each other. Twenty-foot-high flames rose and licked the walls of the buildings around her.
“Now, as I was say—” Pain blossomed and stars exploded in her sight. Her slippers were no longer touching cobblestone as Ashe found herself saying an unwanted greeting to the ground. Her hand rubbed her chin where someone had punched her with aether-enhanced strength. Head pounding, her vision fuzzy, a ring in her skull. How’d that…?
Three Bristletops stalked toward her as she struggled to her feet, hand against the warehouse wall for support as her head felt like kneaded dough.
A shadow stepped between her and the three versions of Bristletop. A dark cloak, hood raised over a broad head. “Leave this girl,” the newcomer said commandingly. Male, voice abrasive like two skeletons fornicating. And huge. Like eight-feet-tall huge. “She’s not yours to claim.”
“I’m not…” Ashe started but her jaw was stiff, already bruising from the bone-crunching blow. “The fu…”
“The Scattered Shards has designs on this thief,” Bristletop said, voice laboring behind tinted glass. More than slightly memorable, that voice. One she knew all too well. O Zenith, not him… “Crimes punishable to the Pentax. The Unfettered has called for her arrest.” The shielded head cocked to the side; dark irises with red pupils glared at her. “Leave now and this thief to us.”
“Her tithe is to Eminence, not your hallowed leader up in Kalderim.” The newcomer was defiant and confident. The cloak rustled down by its feet and Ashe realized, with shock, that it was a tail. Zenith’s cock, only one creature’s that tall and has a tail. “Go back to your beloved Icterine the Unfettered and tell her Eminence’s rise shall be fulfilled.”
Ashe leaned against the building, the ringing in her ears died as the stars disappeared and her vision cleared. Tired though, really bloody tired. And thirsty. Where’s that flask?
