“Yes, I am not so distracted as to fail to notice a flying ship arriving at the immense hole in the wall behind me,” Curatio said, voice straining. “However, I fear there may be no easy way out for me here.”
“Take five steps to your left,” Alaric said.
Without questioning, Curatio did so, moving the ball of magical energy with him, it following as though attached to his hand, pursuing everywhere he moved. “Ah,” the healer said, and continued to circle.
Malpravus moved with him, though the skeletal necromancer turned his head to look at Alaric, who stayed firmly in place before the gangplank. “Do you think I will simply allow you to leave this place?” A thin eyebrow quirked upward, and the corner of his lips moved with it. “We have gone too far for this now, my old friends. I'm afraid that having passed on my offer...you must die.”
“Do you remember the founding of the Alliance, Malpravus?” Alaric asked, Aterum still firmly at his side. “Where we stood together and pledged our fidelity and sacred honor to one another?”
“An auspicious day,” Malpravus said, turning his attention back to the thrumming ball of magic, now less than an inch from Curatio's fingertips. “As this will prove to be, I think – its final end.”
“The beginning of an era, we called it at the time,” Alaric said. “If only we'd known what you were then.”
“What am I, Alaric?” Malpravus asked. “What do you see when you look at me?” His query was silky, laced with amusement.
“A warning,” Alaric said, “about what happens when you put ambition above decency and honor. And also...” The old knight smiled. “...I see a fool whom I've lulled.”
Malpravus jerked as Alaric swung Aterum up, loosing a force blast spell. The distance between them was roughly twenty feet, and magic's diminishment seemed to drain some of the strength from Alaric's spell. It lanced out of the tip of his blade and he focused it, trying to keep it narrow, not let it expand like a tidal wave.
It reached out across the distance like a punch, finding its mark on Malpravus's jaw and sending the necromancer toppling in a flash of robes. The pool of magical energy, glowing red and about to reach Curatio, suddenly turned blue, covered over and infused with the healer's magic as Malpravus lost focus—
And the fight.
The magical blast swept back toward Malpravus, flashing from blue to white as it shot over the necromancer's head. He was down, on his back. His head came up and he said, “You fools. You didn't even hit me with—”
The magical force of his battle with Curatio hit the ceiling of the Citadel, bolts of blue and crimson lighting spiking off in every direction as it struck and exploded. A flash like opening one's eyes to the sun filled the air—
“Go go go!” Curatio bumped into Alaric at a dead sprint, already running, seizing the old knight by his armor as he hurried for the gangplank.
They made it in a second or so, the wood wobbling beneath them as they exited the tower and leapt the last feet onto the deck of the airship, sunlight above almost being drowned out by the growing light from behind. “Go!” Alaric shouted as they crashed to the deck.
The dark-haired woman shouted something, and the ship lurched suddenly, moving forward and down. Alaric's stomach moved with it, and he clawed for anchorage on the deck, which was replete with the occasional curious iron knob fastened into the wood. His gauntlet found purchase on one of these and he looked up to find others doing the same, crew stooped to one knee and holding tight to these anchors.
He looked forward, to the bow – the city of Reikonos was there, rooftops straight ahead, the ship pointed toward them, moving swiftly down as though about to crash. “Ah—” he started to speak.
The ship leveled off as the top of the Citadel exploded behind them. Alaric turned to look, the bulbous head of the tower dissolving in a blue and red burst of energy that sucked back into the source as though simply vanishing in the midday.
“That...didn't kill him, did it?” Alaric asked as the crew around them burst into a frenzy of words Alaric didn't understand.
“I sincerely doubt it,” Curatio said, beads of sweat rolling down the healer's face as he clutched one of the iron knobs, lying next to Alaric. The air was not particularly warm, but he looked quite exhausted. “It is entirely possible that absent my control of that energy, he was able to reabsorb it just now, which is...” The elf sighed. “...Vexing.” A plume of smoke rose out of the top of the tower, now truncated at its neck, a decapitated structure hanging against the skyline of Reikonos.
“Indeed,” Alaric said, catching a flash of blond as Vara rose from where she'd anchored herself to the deck during the abrupt and sudden motion of the airship. They were steadily moving now, chugging over the rooftops of Reikonos, rising slightly. He took quick stock of the situation – Vaste and Birissa were here, the troll healer looking pale but not rushing blood any longer. Curatio and Hiressam were present, Dugras was speaking to his dark-haired, fire-eyed captain, who was looking at her new guests with...some emotion Alaric couldn't quite put a finger on. And Vara...
Vara was at the ship's railing, looking out over the city as it sped by beneath, her hair whipping around in the wind. Alaric's heart fell as he watched her, her eyes seeking out any sign of—
“Cyrus,” Alaric muttered, and felt Curatio's arm stiffen where it was crammed beside his armor. “We lost Cyrus, didn't we?”
The healer nodded, once. “I am afraid...it would appear so.” Then he bowed his head as the airship went onward across the city, and the Citadel smoked behind them.
Chapter 4
Guy
Five minutes.
Guy Harysan couldn't get over the fact that it'd taken less than five minutes for them fartwats to ruin his life.
That stupid Cyrus Davidon impersonator, and his blond-haired, devil-woman elven sidekick, along with that grey-haired, one-eyed old mongrel in his worn-out armor who'd disappeared in a puff of mist. They'd done a real number on him in that five minutes – threatened him, stabbed him – and Guy had folded, of course. Told them everything they'd wanted to know about the Machine.
Then they'd left him in a shack in the coal yard where he worked, and blown the whole damned place up around him with nary a word of warning. A shout of, “FIRE!” was all he'd gotten, barely managing to clear the fence and get into the vacant lot next door before a blast had blown him to his knees like a thundering kick in the arse.
And Guy Harysan definitely felt as though he'd taken a thundering kick to the arse. Among other places.
“If I see them again,” he muttered, head down, cloak covering him from shoulder to toe and his cowl taking care of the rest, “I'll show them. Damned right I will.”
But he didn't plan to meet them – any of the three – again. He'd taken shelter at an inn, using up much of his gold, and now he was going to make his way, slightly roundabout, to the airship docks. He had a line on a freighter that was leaving for Coricuanthi late today. He'd heard good things about Muratam, their capital. There was work there, maybe more for the common laborer than the thug – Muratam's royalty was rumored to be particularly tough on criminals – but hey, maybe this was the change of life Guy needed at this point.
It wasn't as though he'd covered himself in glory up to this point in his brief criminal career. Sitting around a coal yard most days, running a small crowd of Machine thugs, perpetuating some slightly malicious things?
Well, it hadn't been lucrative. Which was why Guy carried with him currently, in his pockets and in the cloth-bound makeshift bag over his shoulder, his every possession. Which weren't much.
A new start. Muratam. Yes, he was almost looking forward to it now. He'd been in Reikonos all his life anyway, stepping up only from the slums to the Mill district. It had just grown more crowded, smelly, and ash-covered as he aged.
Yeah, something new was definitely in order. But he would curse that damned Cyrus Davidon impersonator until the day he died for bringing this shit on him–
A
low whistling sounded over him, and Guy paused. A hum surged through the thin traffic on the street, as everyone looked up–
A dark, shadowy shape flew overhead, some hundred feet off the ground. Thick and rounded, it took Guy a moment to realize–
It was a man.
In armor.
Black armor.
The man flew low, shouting something. Nonsense words, it seemed to Guy as they reached his ears, and at the top of his bloody lungs–
There seemed to be a flare of bluish light, and the man skipped as though he'd hit some invisible object mid-air, dropping another twenty feet, still shouting, and he hit another, skipping as though he were a stone on the surface of the fountain in the square.
He disappeared over the top of a brick foundry on Guy's side of the street, his shouts echoing after him. There was a crash as he hit the roof of the building and bounced out of sight on the other side.
“...The hell?” Guy asked, pausing, just the same as everyone else on the street. “The hell was that?”
“Looked like another one of those damned Cyrus Davidon impersonators,” sniffed a woman in a fancy dress, rolling her eyes as she moved on down the street, thoroughly unimpressed. “I suppose there are so many they're falling from the very sky now.”
“Heh,” Guy said, frowning at the top of the foundry where the man in black armor had disappeared with an almighty crash. He looked at the road ahead; everyone else had gone back to their business, apparently uninterested in a Cyrus Davidon impersonator flying through the air as though flung from a catapult, rolling on empty air as though it were earth...
Well, Guy was at least a little interested in that, though his recent experience with a Cyrus Davidon impersonator made him think twice. He looked up at the sky; through the shrouding cover of clouds he could see the sun, still easing its way toward the noontime position.
The airship docks were twenty minutes away, even if he didn't take the cross-town train. This was a detour of...what? Ten minutes? And the ship to Muratam wouldn't leave for a bit yet, probably. They could even be hours late, depending on how much cargo they had to load and unload, and how backed up the yard was...
“Dammit,” Guy muttered. Curiosity was a vice he could seldom afford, especially working for the Machine. He'd turned a blind eye to any number of things he hadn't wanted to know more about. Dimly, he'd wanted to know, but not-so-dimly he wasn't fully aware that learning more about them put him in a position of elevated danger. Saving his own neck had been far more valuable to him than knowing the gritty minutia of what happened in the streets of Reikonos.
Still, this...he turned to the smokestack above the foundry. It piped a steady black cloud out, belching it skyward, like a perfect metaphor for this city. Dirty, dark, that crap got piped everywhere, covered everything.
“Dammit,” Guy said again, but he broke into a run, heading for the far side of the brick foundry. What was a twenty-minute delay when faced with his last day in Reikonos?
He couldn't even quite explain what drew him. He'd been so good at avoiding curiosities for all these years...
Yet the pull of seeing a man fly without an airship, tumble through the air in defiance of gravity...
Somehow it got him. Bloody curiosity.
Guy rounded the corner at a brisk run. No one was ahead of him, not a soul chasing this peculiar phenomenon. He estimated that the impersonator had come crashing down in the alley, a couple hundred feet ahead at the next left turn. He pounded past the wall surrounding the foundry yard, passing a gate where a couple workers nodded at him as he moved to give them leeway, wanting to leave no impression of intending them trouble.
When he reached the alley turn, he found it more narrow than he'd anticipated. The wall around the foundry butted up against a long warehouse that had no wall, no yard, that was simply built along the property line. It provided a canyon of brick that hemmed Guy in on both sides, and he frowned. There was a massive dumpster bin on one side, the warehouse side, at a side door, producing a tight pass in the alley.
Guy peered in; he couldn't see anything past the bin. The foundry's gutter looked badly mangled just past the throat of the alley. The impersonator must have landed somewhere down there, past the bin.
With a frown and a held breath, Guy drew a dagger from beneath his cloak. It was the last weapon he had, and it wouldn't hold a candle to a pistol, but it'd do for most troubles he could run into, especially in as tight a place as this.
He took it easy, creeping along. He couldn't see any traffic coming from the other side, at least not through the thin slit between dumpster and wall, daylight shining in from the street ahead. The overhang on the warehouse really cut down on the natural light in the alley, leaving Guy feeling like he was walking in twilight.
When he reached the bin, Guy slowed his pace to a glacial crawl. He looked carefully, carefully right, dagger clutched in his hand. He started to shuffle through the gap sideways, leading with his blade—
Something collided with him, causing Guy to let out a screech of fear, then pain as it pinched his arm hard enough to make him drop the dagger. It hit the cobblestones on the alley floor with a clatter, and something heavy slammed against Guy, driving him into the foundry wall. He thumped against it, not too hard, but enough that it stung, and he whirled—
Standing there, slumped over, almost bent double, was a Cyrus Davidon impersonator – the very same that had ruined his life. He was clutching a sword in his hand, a different sword than before. It was more rounded on one side of the blade, savage looking. The impersonator wore a look of barely disguised fury over a chin that was daubed in fresh blood, and he looked like he was having trouble standing.
“Bloody hell, not you again,” Guy said, bumping against the wall. If he could have crawled straight up it, he would have. He eyed his dagger, which was at the feet of the impersonator.
The impersonator scowled at him. “You.” He pointed the sword tip at Guy. “I know you. You're...” He frowned, brows knitting together. “Well, I don't remember your name—”
“It's Guy,” Guy said, letting out a little sigh. He was going to die in this alley, and all because of curiosity. And to a Cyrus Davidon impersonator who didn't even know his name.
The impersonator blinked. “Oh. Right. Guy.” He shifted slightly, pauldron clinking against the bin next to him as he put his weight against it. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I really don't know,” Guy said, slumping. “I saw you...” He mimed the motion of flying through the air, gestured at the ground. “...And here I am.”
“You missed a step in the middle of that process,” the impersonator said, trying to pull himself up and failing. He wore a grimace that grew every time he tried to move. “Let me fill it in: You thought you'd get a helping of revenge.”
Guy looked at him, assessing. “Well, I wasn't thinking it then, because I didn't know it was you flying through the air. Now that I do...” He shrugged and started to shuffle to his left down the wall, eyeing the mouth of the alley. “...I really just want to leave.”
“You should follow those well-honed instincts,” the impersonator said, dropping to one knee. He held his sword pointed at Guy with one hand, and slowly sagged to put his other hand on the ground, as though he had to draw strength from the earth to stay upright. “They might just save your life.”
“Yeah,” Guy said, easing down the alley toward the mouth. “That's good advice.” Once he'd made it about twenty feet or so, out of easy striking distance of the impersonator, he paused, looking back. “Say...maybe this is asking a lot, but this is not a great neighborhood, and I'm about to leave town...”
The impersonator stared back at him, then at the dagger that rested at his feet. “...You asking me for your weapon back?”
Guy made another shrug. “If you don't need it. I'm heading to a new land, Muratam. My ship leaves shortly. I'd hate to be stuck in a foreign place with only my own spit for defense.”
The impersonator's ey
es narrowed. “You got blindsided in an alley by a man who can barely stand, while you were holding that dagger. Trust someone who's fought for a living – you're better off with the spit.”
Guy just stared at him. “Great. Thanks.” He sketched a Firoban two-fingered salute. “Just when I thought you couldn't take anything more from me...”
“There's always more to lose, Guy,” the impersonator said.
“Classic advice,” Guy said, walking backward down the alley. He was well out of the reach of the impersonator now. “I'll treasure that forever, thanks.” Now he saluted with a different finger, a more classically Arkarian gesture, but it meant roughly the same thing.
The impersonator had frozen, though, watching him, head rising, and tried to push himself back to standing, but failed.
Guy let out a laugh. “That's right. Just lie there, you pathetic lug. I know you got injured in the landing. My guess is you don't have much time.”
“More than you, Guy Harysan,” came a voice from behind him, one that sent a little chill down Guy's spine.
He turned, and there at the mouth of the alley stood ten Machine thugs, their long black cloaks and armbands identifying them as his former brethren, even though he didn't recognize a one of them.
Guy didn't need to recognize them to recognize their intentions, though.
“Aw...hey, uh...guys...” Guy said. “I was just looking for–”
The lead was a big man, bulky, shoulders almost as wide as Guy was tall. Bigger even than that Davidon impersonator lurking behind him. His voice was like gravel being dumped out of a barrow. “String this one up as an example to the others,” and he pointed at Guy. “The boss wants Davidon alive – if possible.”
As they closed in, Guy was left to wonder, yet again, how things had gone so utterly, terribly wrong in his life that he was reduced to this.
And the same answer came back to him.
Call of the Hero Page 3