Chapter 1
It feels as if I’m carrying the weight of the world on the coin that I am balancing by its edge on my thumb. I’ve been holding it there for about a minute now. The pressure of the load has been steadily increasing. It would be even more intense if I had drunk any of the Thaum in my holster, rather than just using whatever residue has built up in my system.
My face is beaded with sweat that has started dripping down my nose and shaggy black hair, nearly falling into my eyes. The spring’s night breeze washes through the trees that stand along the cliffside I’m sitting on, as well as the edges of the valley below. The wind feels like a cool river even with my black reinforced overcoat on and my cowl wrapped around my neck. I’m grateful for the relief, even though I almost lose my composure as the coin starts to wobble in the breeze. I force myself to breathe calmly and slightly adjust the positioning of my finger so the coin is parallel to the wind, minimizing the chance it will fall.
A few seconds later, I feel like I can’t hold the load anymore.
“Heads,” I say, and flip the coin in the air.
The coin disappears into the night sky, and for a brief moment I worry about whether or not I have to catch the damn thing for this to work. Then, I see the coin shimmering in the moonlight as it falls back down to me, spinning so fast it looks like a miniature moon.
I catch it slightly to the right of where I had flipped it and slap it down onto the back of my left hand. Trembling, I move my right hand back to reveal the coin.
Tails.
“Slag me,” I curse under my breath.
“Ha!” Breth laughs as he sits next to me. My cousin is also sweating in his overcoat and cowl, the top part of his undercut brown hair plastered to his broad face. Even though he’s smiling, his brow is twisted in concentration as he holds two magnets just apart from one another. “Told you that wouldn’t work.”
“Fifty-fifty chance, boyo,” I say as I pretend to roll my tight shoulders and stretch behind me. As I do so, I partially open the switchblade clipped to the back of my belt and run my forefinger along the edge, creating a shallow cut. I quickly clean the blade on the inside of my overcoat and then reach out and touch one of the two rocks resting on the edge of the cliff in front of my cousin and me. I make sure to press my blood to the side of the stone Breth can’t see, and I immediately feel my mental connection to the stone amplified to be even greater than during my previous attempt. Once I feel my focus anchored there and have directed the stone’s potential energy out over the cliff, I sit back, re-balance the coin on my thumb, and channel a little more Thaum into it.
Breth snorts. “You must be desperate, if you’re actually bloodmarking it.”
“Hardly,” I reply. “You’ve bloodmarked your flips innumerable times. I’m just evening out the playing field.”
“Mmm. Fair enough. I still say it’s crazy to use a ‘flip’ that you actually flip,’ Breth says and narrows his brown eyes, intensifying his focus between the magnets and the rock in front of him, causing the air to almost crackle with the tension. For a few more moments, the pressure continues to build in the air, as if the world were starting to bend ever so slightly toward the line between his flip and the stone.
Then, Breth lets the magnets click together.
The stone in front of him arcs into the night, shooting out over the cliff. It takes about seven seconds before I hear it thump onto the dirt road near the middle of the valley below.
“Not bad,” I say as I continue to focus on the coin. The first attempt took a lot out of me, but that will just make the look on Breth’s face all the more satisfying when I succeed.
“Not bad,” Breth repeats. “I just shot that thing a few hundred meters, and you say ‘not bad’.”
“Cuz it wasn’t,” I reply. My hand is shaking more than last time and the wind is starting to pick up. I wait as long as I can, and just as the coin starts to tip over, I flip it and call, “Heads.”
Once again, the coin disappears out of sight until it tumbles back close enough to reflect the light of the quarter moon. I catch the coin again and flip it onto the back of my left hand.
Nothing feels different, except for a slight tingling running across my skin. But that could just be from carrying a load for too long.
“Let’s see it, then,” Breth says as he leans back on his hands.
I struggle to maintain my intention of having the rock shoot out over the cliff without releasing it, waiting until the tension is at the breaking point. Then, I lift my hand to reveal the coin.
As I see the Queen’s face shining in the moonlight, I realize the tingling is my body resisting the pressure of the heaviest load I have ever felt.
“Ha!” I yell, but in my excitement, I lose my concentration. The rock in front of me suddenly glows and explodes upward at an angle instead of going straight out as I had intended. It soon looks like a star in the sky before disappearing into the inky void.
“Slag me sideways,” I mutter as I lean backward to rest my hands on the ground. My thickly woven and multi-layered overcoat designed to disperse the force of a bullet usually makes me feel safe, but right now the multiple layers are suffocating. Steam rises from me into the air, and my button-up shirt, vest, overcoat, and holster feel like an oven. I pull the first few buttons of my shirt loose as I breathe in the rich smell of rain carried on the wind. The armpits of my shirt are soaked through, and the wind now cuts through me like winter’s chill.
“You better hope you didn’t just give away our position,” my uncle says as he monitors the road from an overhang a few meters to our right. His black overcoat, hat, and mask make him seem more a gargantuan shadow than a man. He doesn’t look at us with his eyes that glow ever so slightly from the small dose of Thaum he took to enhance his senses. “But I admit, that’s a creative way to exponentiate potential. Glad you’ve been paying attention in school. Now save your energy. You’re gonna need it.”
“I doubt we’re gonna be much use, Uncle Rawk,” I say as I pocket my coin and lay back in the damp grass to stare up at the cloudless sky. Glittering stars wink back at me. “You’re leading Father’s best and brightest. We’re just gonna get in the way.”
“Your experience, or lack thereof, isn’t the point,” my uncle says, pulling down his mask and looking at me with cold, glowing gray eyes. “We need all hands on deck.”
Father is getting too used to having his Creeps do his killing for him, I muse to myself with a smile. Though I doubt anyone here has half his body count. Except maybe Uncle Rawk. “If this smash-and-grab is so important, Father should have just come here himself instead of to that slagged party.”
“He’s being watched tonight,” Uncle Rawk says as he pulls his mask back up and continues watching the road in the valley below the cliff we wait on. “We need to at least keep the appearance of being at peace with the Pulsers. You two are only here because you’re supposed to be asleep and getting ready for finals tomorrow.”
“You better grade us on a curve, old man,” Breth says with a yawn.
“How about for every box of Thaum we loot, you spike our grade a color,” I suggest. “Ten boxes and we get gold.”
“I’m going to be just as tired as you proctoring the exam, if not more so,” Uncle Rawk replies. “Besides, we’re not just going after vials tonight.”
I groan and rub my eyes with my hands which are wet from the dew in the grass. “If we’re not lifting Thaum, then why the-”
A loud crack sounds off behind me. Breth and I bolt to our feet, and I pull out my coiler and magknife from my holster. Magnets in both handles hum apart, and coils in the barrel and blade begin to glow, casting light only slightly brighter than the moonlight falling on the grass and trees around me. The coiler only has five shots resting in the clip jutting from the bottom of the barrel, but each shot is more than enough to punch a hole through someone not wearing protective gear. Even so, it takes time for each shot to charge up with the coiler’s magnets, and I would need to drink some Thaum to make any use of the quick-charge modifications. With my knife hand, I reach into my coat to my holster and rest my hand on a row of small vials filled with the glowing blue-green liquid. All around me, men and women under my father’s payroll, all clad in shadows, appear throughout the copse of trees and raise their own coilers.
The sound only came from a few feet away, and the first step forward I take sends a chilling pulse through me.
“Raign, wait,” Uncle Rawk hisses as he quickens his pace toward me.
I continue walking, taking careful steps and scanning around with my coiler raised in front of me. Even though I can’t fire rapidly, I have to make whoever is out there believe I can fire as many rounds as it takes.
Something hisses on the ground a few feet in front of me and I point my coiler down, anticipating a slither. But instead of a scaly, serpentine, venomous insect, I see a smoldering rock crumbling apart in front of me, smoke escaping in violent gasps that smells of both sulfur and sage. Embers burn in the soil where the rock landed, and the impact has shattered the solid rock just beneath.
I exhale and lower my coiler, then inhale deeply. The cool night air helps loosen the tension building in me as I holster my weapons.
I need to remember to relax, I think to myself as I crack my neck. Too much tension in the shoulders will slag my aim.
Uncle Rawk and Breth walk up to me and stare at the disintegrating stone.
“Queen’s laces,” Breth whispers.
Uncle Rawk punches Breth in the arm, causing the young man to grunt and rub where he was hit.
“Watch your tongue, son,” Uncle Rawk says as he kneels and holsters his coiler. He holds his hand over the rock with fingertips peeking out of his gloves, but flinches back immediately. “Impressive,” he says as he turns around and walks back to the overhang. “Maybe we should start having you apprentice as a Trigger.”
Might have even gotten a reaction out of Father from this. “Still think it was a dumb idea?” I ask Breth with a smile on my face.
“I’ll take consistency over power any day,” Breth says as we walk back to the cliff edge. “You could charge a railer shot to punch through a bunker, but if it doesn’t fire every time, you’re gonna end up slagged.”
“Good thing I got you to lay down cover fire for me,” I say, punching him lightly on his well-muscled arm where his dad had hit him.
Breth growls at me and rubs his arm again. He’s only slightly shorter than me, but with thicker muscle like his father, and the anger that flickers in his eyes concerns me for a moment. But he sighs and his grumbling quickly turns into chuckles. “Bold of you to assume I’d save your bony derriere.”
“Nah, I just know you won’t pass up the chance to have yet one more story to tell the ladies,” I say as we reach the cliff edge. The wind buffets my soaked hair and clothes, chilling me and tightening my skin. I flex my muscles against the sensation as I scan the valley below us, but there’s still no sign of the Pulsers. “And there are few things ladies love more than risk-taking. Besides, I think a coin is probably one of the more practical flips. Sure, it’s not a guaranteed outcome, but when it works, the feedback is immediate.”
“I don’t know, boyo. I bet Jenza over there will still have you beat,” he says, indicating toward the woman sitting further down the edge of the cliff on the other side of Uncle Rawk.
Beneath Jenza’s black brimmed hat, her ebony face is illuminated by her glowing blue-green eyes that are half-open as she’s gazing down at the road. She’s also holding magnets close together, but they are larger than Breth’s, with small gyroscopes built into them that whistle at blurring speed.
“Yeah,” I say, “but that’s because she’s the most talented Trigger the Guardians have ever had. I haven’t even heard of anyone else being able to push Thaum deep enough into the ground to manipulate the potential energy there, and she’s been doing it for years.”
Breth snorts in acknowledgment and strokes his broad chin. “I guess she’s also got more experience than both of us combined. And who knows how much Thaum she’s drunk over the years to open her system up.”
“Not to mention she has bloodmarks set up the entire length of the road,” I say, pointing along the winding road down in the valley below us, barely visible in the scant moonlight. “And she’s been loading up for an hour longer than our intel said she would have to. Spur of the moment, a little luck goes a long way.”
“Luck’s not something you can control and is therefore not something to be relied on,” Uncle Rawk says. “But you better hope we have some with us. It’s showtime.”
My breath catches and I kneel, peering into the darkness. It’s difficult to see anything in so little light, and the trees in the valley below block most of my view. My shoulders and upper back muscles tense almost painfully. Instead of trying to relax, I roll my shoulders and tilt my head, popping the tension out of me again.
“Thaum up,” Uncle Rawk says as he pulls out the vial he had partially drunk. He pulls out the stopper and downs its contents. He places the empty vial back in his harness, and I see him hesitate as his hand brushes the full vials he has that cast a ghostly light on his face.
“One should be enough, right, Dad?” Breth asks.
“You will only take one,” Uncle Rawk says as he stares down his son. “I won’t take another if I don’t have to, but the first dose is wearing down, and less than a full dose may not be enough.”
“Better decide quickly, sir,” Jenza gasps. “They’re almost in position.”
Uncle Rawk looks at the second vial in his hands and drinks all of it. Breth and I share a look of disbelief and I feel a shiver go down my spine that’s not from the wind. I reach into my own coat and grab one of my vials. I flick off the stopper with my thumb and down the bright liquid. It tastes of iron and fire and causes my entire body to hum like a flip that has just been released. I close my eyes to the overwhelming sensation. I’ve only taken Thaum a few dozen times, so it still makes my veins feel like they are made of lightning.
When I open my eyes, I squint against the intensity of the light that is now glowing all around me as if the sun were out. No, as if everything is a sun unto itself. Everything is awash in hazy white brilliance and colors stream out of the trees, stones, ground, and people. Even my hands shine so brightly, my vision is blurred with after-images. I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on my body, which feels akin to how the world looks around me: ecstatic, burning, disintegrating into light as my heartbeat echoes out into eternity. I force my eyes open again and try to find some object to look at and anchor myself. The outlines of everything flicker and blend. Shadows are almost gone, more like the mirror reflections of what they come from, as if the ground is now a lake made of glass. The smell of rain is now suffused within me, weaving through my being with the cadence of my breath.
The cool air is the only thing that keeps me grounded for a moment as the spike hits. Then, slowly, everything begins to stabilize. Shapes become more defined, depth more distinct, and my body starts to feel solid again, rather than like it is dissolving into the world around me. At least I didn’t break down like the first dozen times I took Thaum. Some people always break down or just break altogether. I’ve heard stories of people losing themselves in that spike, either because they took too much, had done it too many times, or just couldn’t handle it. Permanent loss of senses, coma, even spontaneous hemorrhaging. We act like we understand Thaum, but we really have no clue. All of us could become screaming lunatics or burst in an instant.
But this rush, this feeling of being able to do anything, like the world has opened up to me, is entirely worth the risk.
Everyone around me is glowing, the air itself billowing like white flames around them. Uncle Rawk notices my disorientation and points down to the road. I look again and notice a caravan of three vehicles through the trees. Three rollers painted matte black course down the road’s gradual curves, their four spherical tires mounted by magnets easily bumping over the overgrown road toward the capital city, Sola. Each roller has a magcannon mounted on top and heavy plating on all sides, their long metal bodies like the carapaces of spiked beetles as they glide over the terrain.
Nearby, some of Uncle Rawk’s Creeps groan with effort as they adjust three railers mounted on tripods to better fire down on the vehicles. The heavy guns use magrails rather than coils to launch their slugs, and require so much energy that an additional person blazing on Thaum is needed to power them while another fires.
But they thresh armor like they were made for it. Which is good, because I made them with that intention in mind. I can’t help but smirk as I look at my glorious inventions. Additional Creeps grasp the batteries cabled to each of the stocks. The cables soon glow as the Triggers start channeling Thaum into the railers’ capacitors and the railers’ five-foot-long barrels begin to hum and glow as their charges get primed.
Considering a citizen can get twenty years for having a non-sanctioned coiler and be executed for having a Thaum-modified coiler, I can’t imagine what the Queen’s justice would be for me. The thought gives me pause, but then I snort in amusement. If she ever chooses to enforce the law on either us Guardians or the Pulsers, half of the able-bodied men and women in the Capital would be dead. I would probably just be killed in the most creative way.
“Ready?” Uncle Rawk asks Jenza.
“Almost there,” Jenza replies, but one of the magnets she’s holding slips. One set of the magnets’ ends clack together, and most of the Thaum in Jenza’s body coalesces there in a single point before igniting in a flash.
The road just ahead of the caravan explodes upward and glowing stone spikes erupt from the ground, but only the front of the first roller is impaled, pinning the front half into the air. The spikes don’t even come close to the other rollers, and yelling echoes up to us as the other rollers start to veer off the road, kicking up dirt as they accelerate.
“Slag!” Jenza curses. “My fingers sli-”
“Fire,” Uncle Rawk says, waving his hand outward.
The railers burst with light and their slugs blaze toward the vehicles. Ground bursts open where two slugs barely miss their mark, but the last slug slams into the back tire of the middle roller, causing it to swerve until it grinds to a stop. The other roller spins around and starts laying down fire on us with its magcannon, as does the gunner for the pinned roller.
The magcannon’s shells are heavy, and so they launch into the air in an arc and don’t have the decency to glow like my railer’s slugs. But the shells’ whine soon gives away their position, and I throw myself to the side as the railer next to me explodes. Rock and metal shrapnel cut through the first layer of my lined overcoat. The gun’s Trigger leaps out of the way in time, but the gunner screams as he is thrown backward into the air and pieces of his legs fly past me. His blood looks like stardust as it splatters across the ground and on me.
I wipe the blood off my face and nearly choke on my sudden desire to crush each Pulser’s throat with my bare hands. But I reign in my fury and channel it into my analysis of the situation as another magshell nearly takes out one of the two remaining railers.
Our position was only an advantage if we took out their ordnance, I think to myself, my mind whirling in place as I search for a strategy. And now we’re easy targets up here.
In the trees at the base of the cliff dozens of meters below us, more of Uncle Rawk’s Creeps start firing. Sparks fly off the plating near the roller’s gunners. The gunner of the crippled vehicle retaliates and fires shells that devastate the trees and bodies beneath me. There are rappels pinned into the cliff to help us get down, but I have a faster way.
“Let’s go!” I yell at Breth over the din of battle around us. Before the shuddering in my legs can stop me, I take a few steps back from the cliff to get momentum and then run forward, leaping off the cliff. Breth yells something at me, but I can’t hear him over the wind whistling past me. As I drop, I start channeling the capacitors in my boots with Thaum, and my heels start to buzz as the plates separate and build a charge. The Thaum immediately builds more potential energy inside the plates than I could generate in minutes of intense concentration. I can hear Breth yelling at me again as he jumps off the cliff above me, but his voice is muted by the sound of another shell booming into the cliffside.
The ground is only a dozen meters away from me now, and I tuck in, getting my feet beneath me. With a kick of my heels, the potential energy is released just as I’m about to crash into the ground. Instead, I flip upwards, my momentum broken for a single moment before I continue my descent from only a few meters off the ground.
This is the first time I’ve even attempted a rebound from such a height, so naturally I overflip and fall on my derriere. Luckily, I can roll out to dampen the impact, but I still hiss from the pain that shoots up from my tailbone. The numb shock makes it hard to tell if it’s just bruised or broken.
Breth screams loudly as he attempts to rebound as well, but he kicks his feet out from underneath him and sends his heels overhead. He cries out something unintelligible as he falls the last few meters, but his momentum completes the backflip for him and he lands with his feet underneath him again. His glowing face looks dumbfounded, eyes wide and terrified as he looks at the ground beneath him. Then, he looks at me.
“Easy,” he says as a hysterical smile splits his face.
A bullet whizzes by and cracks into the rock just behind Breth, and we throw ourselves down to the underbrush for cover.
“Why aren’t they leaving?” Breth yells as he pulls out his coiler and magknife. “It’s just some slagged Thaum!”
“I don’t know!” I yell back as I pull out my own weapons again. They’ll be useless against the roller’s heavy armor. Two of the rollers are laying a constant barrage with their magcannons onto the cliffs above us. The railers there are firing frantically, missing their targets through the smokescreen of dust and rock that even my enhanced senses can barely see through. Sheets of rock rise from the cliff to shield the railers, but the rock walls are being destroyed as soon as they are thrown up. Pulsers have started coming out of the rollers and are firing with smaller arms from behind the vehicles. Our Creeps in the forest are pinned behind the trees only to be obliterated by the crippled roller’s magcannon.
Another shell comes crashing through the trees next to us, rebounding off the ground and taking two more of our Creeps with it before it cracks into the rock wall behind us. Ignoring the fear quaking through me, I pull out my coin and flip it with my knife hand, but I fumble it and it falls to the ground.
“This isn’t the time for that!” Breth yells at me.
“It’s now or never!” I scream back, my voice pitching as I grab another coin from my pocket and flip it. “Heads!” I call out as I catch the coin and run over to the gore-splattered shell.
Breth follows me at a running crouch. “What are yo-? No!”
“Shock and drop,” I say as I slice the palm of my gun hand and place it on the shell’s underside while sending Thaum into both the heels of my boots and the shell.
Another bullet whizzes by, this time cutting Breth across the cheek. Suddenly, his eyes burn with cold anger and he bares his teeth. He sheathes his knife and pulls out his coupling magnets, spreading them in one hand. Immediately, tendrils of Thaum glow and crackle between them.
“This shell isn’t clearing the trees if you didn’t call it correctly,” Breth says as he wipes his bleeding cheek with his other hand before placing the bloodied hand underneath the shell.
The shell is a massive spherical ball of hollowed steel and explosives that can detonate with sufficient impact. Altogether, it weighs close to five stone, so it takes a moment for it to begin to glow with Thaum. However, the process is accelerated by the shell’s contact with our blood, and it quickly feels nearly buoyant. I can feel the potential energy circulating between Breth and me, the shell, and my boots. We slowly turn the shell, feeling its weight in our hands and draw its potential energy back like a slingshot, aiming close to horizontal toward the rollers.
“Ready?” I ask.
“On three,” Breth replies. “One… Two…”
I time the opening of my hand to coincide with Breth’s counting and exhale with relief when I see the Queen’s visage resting against the hilt of my knife.
“Three!” Breth and I yell together.
The shell flies forward and we pulse our boots so our tethered arms don’t get ripped out of our sockets as we are pulled along. Once the shell’s trajectory begins to dip, we let go and pulse our boots again so that our momentum carries us over the rollers as the shell blows through the front of the one with a broken wheel. The impact sends the vehicle flying backward, spinning like a gyroscope that consumes those who had been using it for cover.
Mid-air, I try to aim at the Pulsers below me, but it’s nearly impossible for me to stabilize myself. I pulse my boots again before being reunited with the ground and just manage to control my landing roll. Breth over-corrects and is sent tumbling back into the tall grass that surrounds us, cursing, but hopefully out of frustration rather than pain.
I pull Breth to his feet, and we start running for cover toward the fragmented remains of the roller we took out, which has finally slowed to a stop. As we run, we fire our coilers at the Pulsers hiding behind the pinned roller, though at that distance we aren’t hoping to actually hit any of them. But between the rogue shell and their being pinned in a crossfire, the Pulsers can bring themselves to do little more than fire awkwardly while cowering.
“I hit one!” Breth says behind me as he swiftly reloads a clip from his holster into his coiler with practiced hands. “Oh, Queen’s ti-”
He suddenly pulls me back by the collar of my coat and yanks me to the ground in time for a magshell to fly directly over my face and destroy what little protection the broken roller had to offer. As I crouch up, I see the last roller kick up dirt as it drifts and then speeds toward us, magcannon spinning to point at us.
I raise my coiler, and put my knife hand underneath for stability, and fire the last two rounds in my clip in quick succession. The shells flicker off the turret’s partial blast shield in flashes as the glow of the cannon’s barrel intensifies rapidly. The gunner is blazed up on an overdose of Thaum, given the crazed look on his face and his incoherent screaming. Fortunately, his mania causes him to miss his first shot. It lands just behind us and I’m thrown off my feet as the roller passes us in a blur. The gunner howls as the car pivots back toward us at ramming speed.
When the roller is almost on top of us, just as it is crossing the road, the ground bursts, launching the vehicle upward. It’s still speeding toward us, and it’s my turn to pull Breth out of the path of flying metal. We land in a puddle and I slip on the wet mud as I spring to my feet. I hear a hum and see that the cannon of the pinned roller is aimed directly at me. I lift my coiler again and pull the trigger, but I forgot I have an empty clip. I try to run away from Breth and reload my gun at the same time, but the turret is fixed on me. By the time I get my new clip in, the hum of the turret reaches its pitch.
A glowing railgun slug pierces the turret’s armor and comes out the other side. The gunner is pushed up against the turret and the shot fires wide. I still dodge backward to avoid being pulverized. The gunner groans something and then slides down, the knock of his body against the metal sounding his death knell.
I listen. I don’t hear anything except the powering down of the turret. I look around. Breth stares at me from where he lies a few meters away before falling back on the ground, his chest heaving. My coiler is clicking in my hands and I look down to see my hand shaking uncontrollably. I grasp it with my other hand, but it’s also shaking and all I manage to do is make the stress in my arms and shoulders almost unbearable. Suspended in that tension, I suddenly fall into memories of creeping in the dark of a Pulser safehouse when I had been captured five years ago. My muscles nearly rip with fear, anger, and revulsion as they remember the pulling sensations of slashing Pulsers’ throats.
I suddenly hear a man scream and turn to see the manic gunner from the flipped roller lift a coiler at me and then fire. I pivot to the side so my body is parallel to his line of fire and feel his shot dig into the lining of my coat. He is only a dozen meters away, and in that moment my mind becomes distant. He’s a target on the shooting range, and reflex takes it from there.
The man stumbles back for a moment, the Thaum blazing through him keeping his muscles taut even as blood and brains pour out the back of his head. Then, he drops forward into the grass, his face crunching where it hits rocks.
I spin around with my coiler raised, scanning everything around me once, twice, three times before I see shadowy figures walking toward me. I almost shoot them until I realize Uncle Rawk is leading them and I lower my weapon. And also I notice that my hand is no longer shaking.
Maybe killing gets easier the more you do it, I think to myself. Or maybe I’m more like Father than I thought...
“You’re bleeding,” Uncle Rawk says as he walks up to me, pointing at my jacket.
I look down and see a red gash running across the left side of my chest, ending where the inside of my coat is bunched up from the bullet. I touch the wound tenderly. It’s a shallow wound, but bleeding steadily. Pressing my right hand to my chest, I channel the last of the Thaum running through me to compress the flesh together. It’s a temporary measure, but it should hold until I can get to the medic. As I feel the flesh press back together, the fire within me almost extinguishes entirely, leaving me wobbling on my feet. But it’s better than bleeding out because I was too blazed to feel anything. The brilliance of my vision dims, though everything still sparkles with its own light.
“Care to shed some of the Queen’s light on us, Dad?” Breth says as he stumbles toward us. “You said we would be in and out.”
“That was before Jenza slagged her flip,” Uncle Rawk replies and points toward the back doors of the roller pinned by spikes of rock jutting from the ground. Two Creeps approach the pierced vehicle, coilers raised. “Could have been worse. Ready weapons.”
I feebly raise my weapon. I switch the charging mechanism to automatic, and the magnets inside the coiler begin humming as they separate. A normal shot requires about 5 seconds to charge, whereas with the manual Thaum-modifications I can empty an entire clip in the same amount of time. One more reason why Thaum use is punishable by death, at least officially.
Wonder how many deaths the Queen will sentence me to if she ever actually cracks down on the gangs rather than having us compete for her favor.
The men and women following Uncle Rawk raise their coilers too, as does Breth, grumbling all the while. Uncle Rawk raises his hand to signal us to be ready, lifts his own coiler, and then signals to the Creeps at the doors. They throw the doors open and point their guns inside while using the doors as shields.
A stream of Thaum mixed with blood pours out of the vehicle, as do two bodies, one of whom grunts as he rolls. Without blinking, Uncle Rawk silences him with a bullet, before raising his gun back toward the vehicle’s interior.
“Shipment’s threshed, sir,” a Creep says as she peers into the vehicle. “Maybe a few vials are intact, but slag me if we can salvage a whole crate.”
“Any survivors?” Rawk asks as he walks closer.
“N-,” the Creep’s words are robbed from her as she and the other scout are thrown back and crash into the Creeps behind.
My gun has finished charging, and even though I had been considering taking a nap in the grass a second ago, I crouch lower and focus down my sights at the dark silhouette staggering out of the vehicle, as does everyone else.
The young woman who emerges is dressed in rags and bound in chains. Her skin is bronze, shoulder-length hair black as the night sky above, and her eyes are radiant sapphires burning in the night. In the darkness, I can only barely see the dark serrations along her arms and bare legs where she has been bled, though the wounds look clean and precise, surgical even. She stares us down through the veil of blood dripping down her forehead. Her piercing eyes size us up with calm ferocity, even though she sways as if drunk. Then, she twists her wrists, grasps the chains links she can, and crushes them, causing the rest of the chains to slacken and fall off her. She then bunches her hands up strangely, almost in fists, and holds herself in a strange crouching posture, poised to pounce or flee.
“Holster your weapons,” Uncle Rawk says as he puts his coiler back inside his coat.
“What?” Breth demands, his wide eyes frozen on the woman.
“Do it.”
“She just-”
“Do. It.”
I stare at Uncle Rawk, but then realization dawns on me. Whoever this woman is, she’s the reason we’re here, not the Thaum. How could this slagged bitch be worth more than an entire shipment of Thaum?
Breth hesitates and mutters something but obeys, though he stays in a stance ready for a fight. Everyone else looks at one another and then follows suit before helping their thrown comrades to their feet. I holster my coiler but only pretend to sheathe my magknife and instead tuck it into my sleeve.
“Do you understand Auresh?” Rawk asks the woman slowly and takes a step forward.
The woman tightens her fists and crouches lower, but Uncle Rawk immediately backs up and raises his hands in supplication. The woman’s eyes narrow and she nods once.
“My name is Rawk Yrth,” Uncle Rawk says. “We’ve been sent to rescue you from the Pulsers.”
The woman snorts and a smile spreads across her mouth. “You are another one of them,” she says in a sharp accent, nodding toward the bodies lying all around her.
“Not exactly,” Uncle Rawk says. “They are our enemies, and we believe you can help us beat them.”
“I am not one for politics,” she sneers. “You have my thanks for the release. But nothing more.”
“We know about the moonflowers,” Uncle Rawk says, his cadence picking up. “And if you help us, we can make them obsolete.”
Uncle Rawk ignores the murmuring of his subordinates and the baffled looks Breth and I give him. He stays focused on the girl in front of him, his face fixed as a stone. But I have never heard the man speak faster than suited his comfort.
I grip my knife tighter.
For some reason, the girl’s smile becomes a grimace. “Of course you would say that. Let me pass or I will break your every bone.”
“Go ahead and try, slag,” Breth says, whipping out his coiler.
“No!” Uncle Rawk yells.
Before Breth can level his weapon at the woman, she’s a blur of movement that stops next to him. She strikes him and he flies back as if he had been hit by a roller at max speed. I flip up my knife and slice at her, dodging her other hand as she tries to strike me. The knife makes contact and gouges her cheek. She curses in her foreign tongue and lunges at me. I leap back, but she continues forward and lands on the ground with her hand and torques her wrist. She then launches at me off the ground, spinning like a corkscrew as both her feet hammer into my chest.
The ground and the sky blur together for a while before the ground wins and embraces me like an overprotective mother. Grass and mud are pulled around me like a swaddling blanket as I tumble into every single rock along the way. I finally roll to a stop and can only shudder as I stare up at the sky. The stars look so peaceful, and the clouds are rolling back in, providing a beautiful canvas for the moonlight.
Then, I remember I need to breathe.
I rip my lungs open with a forced inhalation and feel as if my chest is caving in. In part, because it somewhat is. One of my ribs presses painfully into my left side as my hungry lungs devour the air the best they can. Most of the air I take in comes out in sobs as I try to hold back the tears flowing down my face. Voices are yelling my name, but they are muted by the furious heartbeats pounding in my ears. I snarl, biting down on the acidic rage pumping through me directed both to that woman and at myself for being nearly broken from just a double kick to the chest.
One that seems to have sent me flying across the valley.
I wipe my face quickly and clutch the grass next to me with my right hand, flinching as the pain on my left side flares throughout my chest. Growling, I take the pain in stride as I pull myself to my feet, taking a fistful of ground with me and clutching it as something to distract me. Scanning the valley, the only people I see are our Creeps rushing toward me and Breth, who landed some distance ahead of me. No one is holding the girl in captivity.
“She got away?” I demand through gritted teeth as the first Creeps reach me.
The man slows his run to a cautious approach. “We couldn’t catch her. She bolted away after she… uh…”
“Punted me halfway back to the Capital,” I finish as I limp toward Uncle Rawk, swatting away the Creeps’ hands as they try to help me walk.
Uncle Rawk is among the group that went running to retrieve Breth and he is yelling Breth’s name. When he slides into the mud next to his son, his shoulders slump as he puts his fingers to Breth’s pulse.
Everything falls away for a brief moment, even the pain of my ribs, as I run the best I can toward Breth.
“Is he alive?” I ask when I reach Uncle Rawk.
“Yes,” Uncle Rawk sighs and shakes his head. “Fyr is going to kill me twice for tonight. Medic!”
I exhale the burning in my lungs, and for a single moment, I feel gratitude and thank the nameless fates that Breth still lives. Then, my rage returns with a vengeance as I glower down at Uncle Rawk.
“Care to clarify what just happened, Uncle?” I growl at him, flinching against the stabbing pain in my side as I breathe in. “Before I beat my father to the punch and put you in the ground myself?”
“Watch your tone, boy,” Uncle Rawk growls as he stands up, almost a full head taller than me. “This was a need-to-know basis. Where is the medic?!”
“He’s still with Jenza, sir,” one of the nearby Creeps says.
I stand in front of Uncle Rawk and grab his coat with my right hand. “You don’t think it would have been helpful for us to know about this beforehand?”
Uncle Rawk grabs me by the face and pulls me toward him, making the pain in my side rage anew. “I will explain later,” he hisses. “For now. Shut. Up.”
We stare each other down and I tighten my grip on his coat. But then I let go, as does he.
“Out of the way,” Uncle Rawk says as he kneels and gently pulls his son up and carries him back toward the cliffside. I follow behind, clutching my left side while trying to hold my left arm still.
As we walk, a few Creeps run up to us from the rollers they had been looting.
“Sir!” one says, holding up a bundled plant that has an indigo and white flower and is dripping with Thaum and blood. “Moonflowers! Enough to start an entire crop!”
“I couldn’t give half a slag right now,” Uncle Rawk says as he pushes past. “Get them ready for transport.”
The Creeps nod and hasten back to the vehicles. Perhaps if we hadn’t suffered such heavy casualties I would have shared in their exuberance. Or perhaps if I hadn’t been ragdolled by some malnourished woman with barely any effort. But all I can think about is smashing that sapphire-eyed woman’s cocky face into the ground repeatedly.
We find the medic near the base of the cliff, his salt-and-pepper mutton chops flecked with glowing blood. He looks up and shakes his head at Uncle Rawk before indicating for Breth to be lowered to the ground. As the medic turns his attention to Breth, I walk close enough to see Jenza lying in the grass, and all my fantasies of punishing that woman fall away. Jenza’s dark face is highlighted by glowing blood leaking from her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, soaking into her cowl and pooling on the ground beneath her head. Her chest rises and falls in spasms and she’s staring up with unfocused shining eyes. I step closer to her, a knot in my throat forming. I stop just short of coming close to her, numb and dumb as I watch her eyes flicker back and forth, seeing nothing.
“We should get him back ASAP,” the medic says behind me as he shines a maglight into Breth’s eyes and then gently presses his fingers along Breth’s abdomen. “You should have waited for me to move him properly. He likely has a concussion, and could have internal bleeding. Nothing severe is immediately apparent, however.”
Uncle Rawk nods. “Go get a stretcher,” he tells some Creeps before walking over to Jenza.
“That you… sir?” Jenza asks, her eyes darting toward Uncle Rawk’s voice.
“It’s me,” Uncle Rawk says.
“I… can’t see… anymore… I’m sorry.”
“You did your best,” Uncle Rawk says as he kneels down and takes her hand in his. “And you acquitted yourself well in the end. Your rockwalls on the cliff saved many lives. You even saved this sorry slag at the last moment,” he chuckles as he nods to me, but then grits his teeth. “Thank you.”
“Sir,” Jenza says, her body shuddering, starting to convulse as more glowing blood flows out of her. “P-please- I can’t- t-take this-”
“Rest easy,” Uncle Rawk says as he draws his coiler, places it to her temple. I know it’s a mercy killing, but I still flinch when Uncle Rawk fires. Thaum-colored tissue bursts out the other side of Jenza’s head and her movements stop.
A part of me wishes something of Jenza would remain in her corpse as the life within her is pulled into the Beyond. But the still-glowing eyes no longer hold her wisdom or determination. All that remains is an empty shell, a vacant testament of her passing through this world.
“I told her not to take the third vial,” Uncle Rawk whispers to himself, but his words sound hollow, even to me. Still, he touches his forehead reverently and whispers something quietly. Then, he closes Jenza’s eyes and after a moment stands back up and turns to the crowd of Creeps that have gathered around him. “First Squad, bring the rollers around. Second Squad, tend to the wounded and help Doc with those needing immediate help. Third Squad, make a ditch for the corpses and debris. Fourth Squad, finish getting the loot ready for transport. Fifth Squad, you’re on lookout.”
No one moves as they stare silently at Jenza’s body. The grass rustles as the wind whispers through it and the light from Jenza’s blood begins to fade.
“You all waiting for the Queen’s invitation?” Uncle Rawk barks when the Creeps stare at him with blank faces. When they finally turn to their duties, Uncle Rawk sighs and deflates, pinching the bridge of his nose. Then, he looks at me and his eyes go wide. “You’re bleeding again.”
I look down and the world tips over. As I fall, I notice that my white shirt is now half crimson.
Pretty stylish
, I think to myself as I fall into Uncle Rawk’s arms and then into nothingness.
