“Bitch’s got spunk, eh?” Quick Fingers snorted as Ashe swung at Red Tulio again, aiming for that broken nose of his. She snarled at the wiry shrewkin, who was fingering a black crystal pendant around his neck with those rodent-like fingers of his.
“Knock it off, girl,” Red Tulio said as he caught Ashe’s wrist in a fist the size of her head.
Her eyes went wide. “How?” Her aetheurgy should’ve rended his greenish flesh like a knife through warm lard, and yet, he countered each punch, untouched. He didn’t use any Form, always drinking parch to counter the radiation of the desert every six hours like all the rest of Drenth.
And yet, somehow, he fought her aetheurgy off without breaking a sweat.
All her anger fled from her and weakness seeped in. All her gifts and she was useless as a newborn pup during a bear hunt. Her pulmo exploded as she tried to free her arm, but he held her strong in a grip of yellowed and cracked nails.
“Sorry, girl, Elian’s looking for you.” His breath was unbearably fetid.
“Elian? Bugger him.”
With that, Ashe summoned the mist and channeled it into a quake of Terris. The ground rumbled under their feet, throwing all three to the muddy streets of Slag’s End. She was up in an instant and ran, spelling the mist to hide her as she did with the vicars in the market, creating only an empty space of invisibility.
Quick Fingers yelled something, but she turned a corner and booked it.
Halfway across Slag’s End, she finally slowed to a crawl and slid down against a brick wall. Ashe pulled her knees under her chin, arms wrapped tightly about them. Out of breath, she felt numb. She didn’t care that she was in full view of those around, she didn’t care that people passed by the alley mere feet away. It didn’t matter that her face was streaked with tears and dried pulmo tar.
All that mattered was that she was lost.
Brynn. Father. Mother. Benld. Benld. Benld. Brynn Benld. Me.
Like a child who had wandered away from an open door and no parent around to keep her from walking out, she was prey to her inner daemons. They hounded her, circled within a storm of doubt, of self-loathing, of denial and repulse. A cacophony of tumult.
“I was a child! A baby. Damn you, Cyan!”
She screamed into her knees, clenching her fists tight, her knuckles white with animosity. The mist vortexed around her, mimicking her anger. A nearby vagrant glanced at her but then lay back down.
“You lied to me. All these years, you lied!”
The tears welled anew; the mist softly poking her in soothing touch. How could she have been so blind? A path she’d walked was one so fated. No choice had she all these years. Only to be led down one already written by the Pentax for her.
No, she’d make her own choices from now on. Godsblood be godsdamned.
Getting to her feet, Ashe wiped away the tears and composed herself, not to be some broken-hearted, weepy girl. Judging by the sun in the sky beyond Gargantua, it was nearing midday. Her mind was set. If Solanine wanted her, then she was going to step up to the wench. The vision showed them locked in battle.
Hard to argue with fate, better to meet it with a fist.
Ashe came to the base of the northern tether some twenty minutes later.
Each link of the chain was thrice the size of her height and four times as wide. The steel, itself, was greater in circumference than any of the enormous trees in Calibrath. The links were welded and riveted into fifty-foot stakes with unbroken eye-rings attached at the top. Along each chain was a gondola line. Shaped like a glass bowl with an oblong roof, the gondola rode along a pair of steel cables, motorized by a small aethecite engine. At every tether, two such gondolas rode the lines, one going up while the other came down. A chain-link fence surrounded the gondola entrance, along with six armed Imperium soldiers at all times.
However, today the guard was tripled because of Lu Har’s party.
There was a line already. Scores of Drenth nobles wearing gaudy stolae and tailored suits with intricate masks or veils. She was surprised by the number of guests waiting. Scattered amongst the nobles were servants and workers. All were dressed in tight, yet loose fitting sleeved overcoats of black-and-red, while others wore simpler tunics. There was a handful of lapin within the crowd, a few hobgoblins, and a scattering of Kanja and Drenth lowborn.
A costume party?That’s what the Gutter King meant when he said I’d know him by his cracked marble mask.
It was just like Solanine to have chosen a less suitable form of ostentation.
As she neared the back of the line, a tall elfir with long, silverish hair standing next to a lapin with what appeared to be ears that had been shredded like cheese winked at her. She scowled at the man, but his smile never faded.
Bugger this.
Pushing through the crowd, and accompanied by more than a few unsavory words, she made a straight line toward the gondola. An Imperium soldier muttered phrases not meant for children’s ears as she approached. His face was pockmarked and tanned. Brown eyes narrowed under thin, well-manicured eyebrows, and there was a ring of kohl around his lids.
“I need to see Solanine,” she said as she stopped.
He appraised her from head to toe, apparently not liking what he saw. His aura was a sickly emerald shade. “I’m sorry, young mistress, but unless you’ve an invitation, I can’t let you board. Especially looking like you took a bath in a pile of manure.”
Some of the nobles chuckled.
“Bugger your orders, you prick-sucking asshole.” She stepped closer to him, the venom in her voice unmistakable. The mist echoed her by crawling up her back in dark grey fingers. “I’ve had a trying morning. Solanine is expecting me. Don’t want to keep the Fallen’s bitch waiting.”
The man flinched but held his ground, uneasily glancing to the armored soldiers surrounding him, the nobles had all backed away a handful of steps. “I can send a message to the gate up top, but that’ll take a few minutes.”
“I don’t have time to waste.” Ashe brushed past the blathering idiot and boarded the gondola, taking a seat farthest away from the entrance, in the corner. “Tell her Brynn Benld is on her way up. Wouldn’t want her vaunted guest to wait.”
Both workers and Drenth nobles climbed aboard shortly after, taking seats away from her. There was enough room in the gondola for upwards of thirty people, but only a dozen or so decided to board with her, the rest willing to wait for the next ride. That winking elfir and his lapin buddy amongst them.
The aethecite engine hummed as it began to rev, and the gondola started to rise along the cables. Eyes behind masks made furtive glances her way, but Ashe ignored them as she put an elbow on the sill and stared out the window. The gondola rose slowly compared to the speeds in which gliders and transports were concerned, but the Fallen wanted his guests to enjoy the slow ascent to the mighty fortress in the sky, almost a full thirty-minute ride to the top. There was mild talk amongst the party guests, a few giggles behind gloved hands, shielded in obscurity behind ornate masks.
Like sheep you are. A name from the dead and all you can do is bleat.
