Chapter 1: Extraneous Worlding Exercise
Chapter Text
Professor Jin Hzedel waded through the knee deep water of the swamp, trying to keep his eyes on the woman in front of him. She cut swiftly through the murky water and foliage, like some swamp-borne predator. The woman was his guide through this swamp, and he knew her only as the Captain. She hadn’t offered him her real name, if she even had one. He supposed that was smart enough; the fae had been capturing humans more and more these days.
Jin had half a mind to set this entire swamp on fire, burn it all to the ground and pave it over with nice roads and concrete like they had up North. Despite his best efforts, he’d been leech-bitten, nearly eaten alive from the inside by insects (wicker beetles the Captain had called them), and the pace of this march was far more vigorous than he was used to. His legs were itchy and sore, and the small holes the beetles had dug in his flesh burned. They were halfway through the journey, so he couldn’t even distract himself by fantasizing about giving up and turning around.
Suddenly, the Captain stopped. She pivoted back to Jin, her eyes searching him. Or searching behind him.
“Smile,” she said.
“What?”
“Smile,” she repeated, “Think happy thoughts.”
She had put her index fingers in the corners of her mouth and pulled her lips apart into a mockery of a smile. As if he didn’t know what the expression looked like. He mimicked her gesture, partly to mock her, partly because listening to her had kept him alive so far.
“Alright,” she dropped the fake smile, “Now what’s your happiest memory?”
Successfully performing an alchemical transmutation for the first time, he supposed. Not only because it had taken months of study to get it right, but also because it meant he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life living in the body he was born with. He could, through his own power, change the form he’d been given. The relief had nearly brought him to tears.
A noise behind him pulled him from his reminiscing. He turned and came face-to-face with something . It was tall and gangly; made from melting wood-flesh and what looked like woven reeds. Its eyes were burning white holes. The creature's hand was outstretched towards his head.
Jin blinked and it was gone. Was it even there?
“Did you see-” he started.
“Yes, hush a moment,” the Captain replied.
She stepped next to him and drew her revolver. Slowly, she swept it across the trees in front of them until she settled on one. She pulled the trigger.
The tree shrieked as the bullet struck it. It folded in on itself and Jin suddenly recognized the form of the monster he’d seen just a moment ago. It bolted away on all fours like a gangly wooden spider.
Distantly, some part of Jin’s mind politely noted that this should have terrified him, but after the beetles he was having trouble feeling much in the way of horror. Maybe he was in shock. Or maybe one of those beetles had dug its way into the part of his brain that processed terror. Who could say.
“What in all the hells above was that?” he asked.
“Tall Man,” the Captain turned and began walking again.
“Yes, I noticed it’s stature, I have eyes,” he quickly followed after “Would you care to elaborate?”
“They’re monsters. Hide in the swamps and eat bad feelings.”
“Why does that make them monsters? Getting rid of negative emotions sounds positive.”
“Mmm, it’s more like they eat your soul. They just only go after people that are feeling sad or angry.”
“They eat souls ?”
“Yep.”
Now that was interesting. The prevailing scientific theory was that humans had souls, but since humans lacked any way to see them, there was no way to confirm or conclusively deny the theory. Fae could supposedly see souls, and claimed that humans had them, but trusting the fae on anything was a recipe for disaster.
“I’m skeptical,” Jin said finally.
“Dunno what to tell you,” the Captain said with a shrug, “When a Tall Man gets someone they just stop thinking. Bodies still alive but there's no one behind the eyes, you know?”
“That sounds more akin to brain death than anything to do with souls.”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t know anything about that,” the Captain said with a wry smile, “Never really bothered with medicine. Healing tonic’s solved all my problems so far.”
Jin had to stop himself from launching into his usual rant that while healing tonic could indeed solve most physical injuries, there were a whole range of issues it had no effect on. Not to mention that being able to fix an injury the old fashioned way was still a very useful skill thank you very much! Lords above, for such a talented alchemist he was far too wary of people who bet their lives on healing tonics. Maybe that was hypocritical, given he’d relied on alchemy to save himself many, many times.
Regardless, he had something new to chew on. Were these Tall Men capable of inflicting brain death? He supposed it was possible. Inducing brain death was doable with human alchemy, if difficult, and it was almost certainly trivial with fae magic. That raised some new questions…
“Are they related to the fae? Do they have their own form of magic? Actually, are they even sentient?”
“No idea on all fronts,” the Captain muttered. She seemed focused on something in the distance.
“Why do they only target people with negative emotions?”
“How would I know? Maybe bad feelings are the only thing they can grab onto.”
“Is there anything you do know?” Jin said with a huff.
“I know how to break half the bones in your body.”
Jin took that as his cue to shut up. Good timing too, because just then he heard a faint scuttling sound behind him. The Captain sighed, drew her gun, spun, and fired. Jin heard the telltale shriek of a direct hit and the sound of the creature’s panicked retreat.
“That’s why they say it’s bad luck to argue in the wilds,” she said as she turned and continued walking.
They walked without speaking for a time. The Captain seemed to like her silence and Jin didn’t want to risk another argument. Especially given that Tall Man was seemingly still alive after taking two revolver rounds. He found himself eyeing every tree subconsciously. Maybe the encounter had started to get to him after all.
Much to Jin’s surprise, it was the Captain who broke the silence, several hours later.
“Where are you from?”
The sudden question almost caused him to trip on a root submerged beneath the water. He steadied himself on a nearby tree.
“A town carved into the side of Throne; that’s the big mountain up Northwest,” he jabbed his thumb in its direction, not that it could be seen through all the damn trees, “It’s part of the Atmos clan’s land.”
“I’m familiar,” she said, “You don’t get Tall Men up there?”
“Not that I’ve heard. Although I suppose they might go unnoticed, if they hid as trees and only killed lone travelers in the snow. Most of us would just think they died of cold or the fae.”
“They can hide as more than just trees you know.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, saw one that was pretending to be a street lamp down in Port Sulphur,” she chuckled, “Was a pain in the ass trying to explain to the guards why I was chasing a lamp post across the city.”
The conversation petered out there as they negotiated a patch of particularly difficult terrain. Jin wondered if perhaps he had seen a Tall Man before, without realizing. How many signposts had he passed that weren’t signposts at all?
“What kind of monsters do you get up where you live?” the Captain asked once they were on easier ground.
“Ever seen a moose?” Jin asked with a smile.
The Captain barked a laugh.
“Yes, I have,” she said, “Terrifying animal, I’ll admit. Though not what I’d call a monster.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer. My homeland is rather quaint compared to yours.”
“Untrue,” the Captain said with a snort, “I’ve visited your homeland. Cold probably killed more people than all the Tall Men in the world.”
“A thick enough parka can prevent that easily enough though.”
“Sure, and proper pants stop leeches, smoke wards off wicker beetles, and Tall Men can be scared away with a gun, even if you’re miserable. This place only feels hostile to you because you came here unprepared.”
“I…supposed that’s not untrue.”
“You can buy some proper clothes in the next town. You’ll feel better after. Promise.”
“Thanks. I do appreciate your help in all this.”
“You’re paying me,” the Captain said with a shrug, “Least I can do is be helpful.”
Chapter 2: Narrative Work
Chapter Text
Chapter 1: A Funeral
It was a matter of some difficulty to kill a fairy, but it was possible. A mob of angry peasants or a trio of fey-hunters could often get the job done, with some losses. Killing an archfey, however, was another matter entirely. Archfey were negotiated with, appeased, offered tribute, but never killed. An archfey had not died for the entirety of human history.
So it was with some surprise that the Captain of the Wild Hands Company found a letter on her desk from the archfey Walker-Among-Leaves, cordially inviting her and her company to Walker’s funeral.
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The Captain stood at the edge of an open grave, surrounded by a perfect ring of small stones. At the bottom of the hole was a coffin, closed and roughly human-sized. Her Lieutenant, a tall woman with long blond hair, was crouched at the edge of the grave, examining the coffin. The alchemy professor, Jin Hzedel, stood a few paces behind her, keeping his distance from the grave. The Captain supposed that made him the smartest of the three by default.
Her airship, the Last Dawn , was anchored at the edge of the clearing they stood in; its gangway lowered to just above the clearing floor. The noon sun shone lazily on its lowered, fin-like sails, and glinted off the massive exhaust pipes that fed from the ship’s alchemical heart. Some of the crew had jumped off and were milling about the edge of the forest.
They had been coasting along the southern shoreline when Captain had gotten the letter. Pivoting north against the headwind had cost them a lot of fuel. She hoped this was worth it.
“Fey don’t hold funerals,” Jin’s voice broke her out of her thoughts, “This is some kind of trick.”
“Obviously,” the Lieutenant had taken to poking the coffin with a stick she found.
“If it’s so obvious,” the sun glinted off of his glasses, “Why did we waste so much time coming here?”
“Because dodging an invitation from an archfey is a nice way to get yourself killed,” The Captain said, “Walker’s instructions were clear: come to this clearing and open the coffin. Can’t wiggle out of an order that direct.”
“So why haven’t you opened it yet?” he said.
Because I’m terrified, she wanted to say. Because I need to know if she’s really dead. Because I’m scared that she’s dead and even more scared that she’s not. Because I don’t know if I loved her or if she just bent me into a shape that would love her. Because I don’t know what will be left of me if she’s gone.
Instead of saying anything, she motioned to her Lieutenant to open the coffin.
Shereached down into the grave and flipped the coffin’s latch.
The lid flew open.
A figure in the coffin bolted upright as soon as the lid was clear. The Captain’s revolver was in her hand and leveled at the figure’s head before she could even think. That she managed to stop herself from pulling the trigger was nothing short of a miracle.
The figure appeared to be a young man. He was dressed in a jacket, vest, pants, and boots, along with a small felt cap. He looked like he’d simply been plucked from the streets of Port Sulphur and dropped into this box. Clutched to his chest, in shaking hands, was an envelope.
“Oh thanks, it was getting stuffy in there,” the man said, looking up at the Captain “Are you the captain of the Wild Hands?”
The Captain nodded. The man’s tone was uncannily casual, especially considering how hard his hands were shaking. And that he had a gun pointed at him.
“I was told to pass this letter on to you,” he said, holding the letter up to her.
She holstered her gun and took it. The envelope was plain, emboldened only with a wax seal. Walker’s seal. The exact same one that had been on the funeral invitation. She broke the seal and opened the envelope. Inside was another letter. She read it aloud:
My Captain,
It is with great sorrow that I must inform you of my murder.
Please consider this letter to be my final, binding order.
I hereby order you and your crew to protect the man who gave you this letter at all costs.
Additionally, I order you and your crew to track down and kill the archfey responsible for my death by sunset of next Sorrow’s End.
Should you fail either of these tasks, I hereby order you and your crew to take your own lives.
Should you succeed in both of these tasks, I declare that you and your company will be free from my will. You may take new names for yourselves, and do as you please.
I have no doubt that you will approach this final assignment with all the conviction and cunning of which I know you are capable.
With love,
Walker-Among-Leaves
The Captain wanted to scream. She wasn’t free. She wasn’t free and Walker was gone. And now there was a deadline on her life. She was supposed to kill an archfey? How? Which one? Was this some fey joke? She half expected Walker to appear from thin air. My sweet, gullible Captain , she might have said, did you really think anything in this world could kill me?
She felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up to find her Lieutenant in front of her, with an uncharacteristically concerned look on her face. The Captain looked down at the letter to find that she had crumpled it into a ball without noticing.
She stuffed the crumpled letter in her jacket pocket and gestured to the stranger in the grave:
“Get him to the brig,” she said, “I’ll deal with him later.”
“The brig? Ma’am, I really don’t thi—,” the stranger began.
Whatever he was about to say was cut off as the Lieutenant hauled him out of the grave by the back of his jacket. She marched him, at gunpoint, back across the clearing towards the Last Dawn . The Captain and Jin watched them go in silence.
After a minute, the Captain pulled the letter from her pocket and unfolded it. After skimming it one more time she turned to Jin.
“What’s Sorrow’s End?” she asked him.
It felt like something she knew, but her mind was too fogged to recall what it meant.
“It’s a fey holiday, I think. Celebrates the end of the Harvest War. It happens every hundred years or so, if I recall,” he replied.
Ah, right; now she remembered. It was one of the few times all the fey courts gathered in one location. Walker had talked about taking her to it. There would have been dancing, lantern making, food humans could only dream of. The way Walker had described the event made it sound like a slice out of heaven. If she couldn’t get into heaven when she died, she at least wanted to see it while she lived.
She was suddenly aware of a hand waving in front of her face. It was Jin’s. His expression was even more concerned than the Lieutenant’s had been. The Captain realized she’d been lost in her own head again. She really needed to pull herself together.
“Are you alright, Captain?” Jin asked.
“I’m fine,” she lied, “How long till next Sorrow’s End?”
Jin’s face scrunched up in the way it always did when he was trying to calculate something in his head.
“Should be…exactly six months from today.”
“Of course it is.”
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The stranger was uncomfortable. The chair he sat on was lumpy and cut into his back at weird angles. The ceiling of the room was too low, and the whole place was damp and smelled of wet animals. The only light was a dim electric lamp crudely attached to the ceiling. The door was locked too, so he couldn’t even leave.
Said door unlocked and swung inwards. In stepped a woman, the Captain of Walker’s pet mercenary company. She was stocky, with short, curly brown hair. She pulled a chair from the dark recesses of the room and sat down a few feet away from him.
She stared at him silently for a moment, before she spoke.
“Alright, who the hell are you?”
“My name is Arks,” he began slowly, “I’m a newspaper hawker in Port Sulfur. Some weird lady grabbed me a few days ago. She gave me that letter I gave you and told me to give it to the Captain of the Wild Hands. Then she put me in a coffin.”
He kept his voice nervous, but polite. This part he had rehearsed, down to a script. All he needed to do was say the words. It was, in short, boring.
“The woman who took you, what did she look like?” the Captain asked.
“I’m not sure, didn’t get a good look at her. Long brown hair maybe?”
Walker’s hair wasn’t quite brown. Technically, it wasn’t even hair. Humans had a fascinating habit of not seeing the world as it really was. Their eyes took in raw information, then their brains mangled it down into a form they were familiar with. So, something that looked almost like long brown hair became just “long brown hair”. Walker had once described humans as blind, defenseless things, flailing about in the sun. Arks didn’t buy the defenseless part, but he supposed the rest was true enough.
“So you don’t know anything about what’s going on?”
“No, ma’am,” he lied.
She stared at him in silence for an uncomfortably long moment.
Suddenly, she shot up from her seat and drew a revolver from a holster on her belt. The gun was in his face before he could react.
Now this was more like it! They were finally off script. Arks never could enjoy a game where the other party didn’t put in some effort. He acted out a pantomime of fear, hands up and a layer of distress added to the face.
She examined him at gunpoint, her eyes searched him for something. Then the Captain holstered her gun and sat back down. She had an amused smile on her face.
“You’re pretty good at this,” she said finally.
“At what?”
“Pretending to be human.”
Arks let out a sigh. He hadn’t been expecting to lose that quickly. He knew he would lose eventually of course, but he had imagined it would be after months of living with the crew. Not within hours of meeting them. Still, it was a fair loss; he couldn’t be too upset.
“How’d you figure that out?”
“I haven’t heard you take a single breath since I walked in here.”
“Oh? Humans can hear each other breathe now?”
“Not all of us,” she tapped the side of her ear, “I got my senses enhanced by an alchemist. Could probably hear someone’s heartbeat on a good day.”
She leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other.
“I want your word that you’ll only speak truth for the rest of our conversation here,” she said, “Also, ditch the human disguise, it creeps me out.”
Arks unfolded like some kind of paper craft. His limbs and body stretched until his head was scraping the low ceiling. His face dissolved into a vague mass of ink while his skin turned chalk white. The hair on his head blurred out into a grey mirage and his clothes shifted into a cloak of billowing black smoke.
Even unfolded as Arks was now, if a human had seen him from far enough away, or on a particularly foggy day, or even just while drunk, they would have sworn he was still human.
He raised his right hand.
“You have my word I’ll only speak the truth for the remainder of this conversation,” he said, “Now what do you want from me?”
“Who are you really? What’s your connection to Walker?”
“Well, my proper name would be Arks-In-The-Sky, but you’re more than welcome to just keep calling me Arks. I know how you humans get with fey names,” he replied, “As for Walker, I suppose in human terms I’d be her son.”
“Fey can have children?”
Arks made a show of shrugging.
“Perhaps I’m using the word wrong. She stole me from the service of another archfey when I was young and taught me about the world. What would you call that in your tongue?”
“Kidnapping, probably,” she said, “I don’t suppose this archfey is the same one that Walker wants us to kill?”
“Indeed!” the ink blots that constituted Arks’ face shifted into something like a wide grin, “He is called Sticks-Build-the-Pyre. Or Sticks, I suppose, to you mortals. He’s an archfey of the Summer Court. Last I was with him we were at the Winter Court’s Palace.”
“How dangerous is he?”
“Well, he killed our Walker-Among-Leaves, no?”
Arks watched the Captain’s face collapse. He kept his own face and body carefully controlled, but he could feel a rising tightness in his chest. It had been there since the start of this conversation; it had been there since before the start of this conversation. It had been with him ever since he had watched Walker die.
Fey weren’t supposed to die. Death was an awful, dark thing that humans had taught them to do with bullets and knives and cold iron. He would never see Walker again; her voice would never be joined in a Chorus. He was alone, alone, alone.
He stamped the feelings down, locked them into the depths of his mind. He couldn’t function like this. He would forget her. Until it was time to grieve.
He looked up, and met the Captain’s eyes. An understanding passed between them then. They would mourn her later.
For now, there was much work to do.
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A few days later, Jin stood in the dark of the Last Dawn’s storage bay. The Captain had asked him to take inventory of the ship, and specifically to look for any cold iron they might happen to have. Normally, this would be the job of the ship’s quartermaster, but the crew’s previous quartermaster had been killed just before Jin arrived, and seeing as he was the only person on the ship who actually enjoyed organizing things, he was declared the new quartermaster by default.
He had done his due diligence and taken inventory of the ship, even though he knew there would be no cold iron to be found. Most of that sacred metal had been dug up and fired out the ends of gun barrels back during the Harvest War, when the fey nearly wiped humanity out. You could still find pieces of it for sale in night markets, assuming you were willing to fork over half a year’s pay per bullet. Considering the crew’s current funds, they’d be lucky if they could scrape together enough to keep the crew fed and the engines running.
Jin had no more counting left to do, so he stared out the storeroom’s only porthole at the landscape flying past below the ship. After the funeral, they had cut back south down to the coastline, then followed it west, the way they had been going before the Captain got Walker’s invitation. They operated under sail power now, in order to conserve whatever little fuel they had left.
They were flying over the Great Glass Desert. Out the porthole, the landscape was an endless stretch of grey rock, occasionally broken up by spires of black glass and yawning holes. Every time Jin blinked the landscape rearranged itself. The glass spires and holes and the hills of grey rock would disappear and new spires and holes and hills would take their place. If they weren’t following the coastline they would have been lost in seconds.
He had heard of the spatial anomaly that haunted the Glass Desert, he had even written a paper on it, but finally getting to see it in person was something magical.
The door to the storage bay opened behind him. He turned from the porthole, and saw the Captain picking her way towards him. Even in the echoing expanse of the room, her footfalls barely made a sound. Benefits of military grade enhancements, he supposed.
“Anything?” she asked when she got closer.
“Not a single scrap of cold iron in the entire ship.”
“Any way you could just transmute normal iron?”
“Sure! I’d just need a literal mountain of blue blood, a blessing from three separate gods, and an alchemical circle the size of Throne,” he stopped smiling, “In all seriousness, it would take more blood than we have. Probably more than we’ll ever have. Cold iron is… alchemically expensive.”
The Captain sighed and slumped down on a nearby crate. Jin was struck by how tired she looked. Her orange blood normally meant she was awake and alert even late into the evening, but now Jin could see dark circles forming under her eyes.
“Sorry, Captain.”
“It’s fine. We’ll figure it out, I’m sure,” she didn’t sound sure, “We’ve got a pretty lucrative contract coming up in Glascrest, direct from the Lord Governor. We might just be able to buy some cold iron bullets outright.”
“Oh? Think there'll be any money left over afterwards? We’re picking between food and fuel at the moment.”
“Sure,” she said, “if we’re only buying one bullet.”
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They hit Glascrest the next day, at noon. The imperial colony was set into a deep gash in the stone surface of the Glass Desert, one that ran from the coastline beach to several miles inland. Or at least what the Captain assumed was several miles. Jin had told her measuring distance was a fool’s errand here.
The Last Dawn , coasted up to the docks that stretched out from where the colony met the coastline. They managed to tether the airship to the docks with the help of a few very startled dock hands. The Captain and the Lieutenant hopped off the ship as soon as it was secured. They crossed the dock and made their way into town.
The colony town was arranged along the bottom of the canyon, houses and workshops arrayed in almost neat lines. Alcoves and stairs had been carved into the sides of the canyon, forming space for mushroom farms and other structures. The whole town was built on a slight incline, and towards the top, farthest from the docks, was a small golden tower. The residence of the lord governor.
The two of them walked briskly down one of the town streets, headed straight for the tower. The locals stared out at them from under the fiber brims of sun hats. They all wore dust masks around their noses and mouths. The Captain soon found out why, when a strong breeze blew through the canyon, and kicked up a cloud of silt and glass. She was left coughing all the way to the governor’s tower.
The tower was styled to look like a bundle of twisted thread that had burst from the ground. It was low, only a few stories tall, but after walking through the drab grey single-storied houses of the rest of the colony, it seemed…
“Opulent,” the Captain muttered as the guards at the door searched them.
“I’ve seen worse,” the Lieutenant replied.
The guards took their guns without comment, then let them into the tower proper. The entry room was as gaudy as the outside, with plush red carpets on the floors and polished wooden benches along the left wall. A servant led them to the back of the first floor, to an elevator set in the back wall. They stepped inside along with the servant, who pressed a button for what the Captain assumed was the top floor, because she couldn’t imagine anyone who lived in a place like this would meet guests anywhere else.
The top floor was even worse than the first one. The entire floor was dedicated to a single wide-open room. Every possible appliance and piece of furniture, from baths to beds, was scattered throughout the room. The Captain was pretty sure she even saw a blacksmith’s anvil somewhere in there. And the damned carpets were back.
Near the far wall, a series of couches and chairs were arranged just under an utterly colossal fireplace set into the wall behind them. A fireplace which was currently lit. It was hot enough outside under the noonday equatorial sun, adding in a massive open flame did not help matters. The poor servant who had shown them in almost immediately retreated back into the elevator and left.
A large man in a white robe lounged on one of the chairs by the fireplace. When he noticed them he smiled and gestured to some of the empty chairs. By the time they had walked over and sat down, the Captain was sweating profusely.
“Captain of the Wild Hands, I presume? I am the Lord Governor of Glascrest, as ordained by the emperor himself,” the man said.
Even sitting down the man was half as tall as the Lieutenant was standing. His entire body seemed like it had been chiseled out of stone, and he’d had something done to his eyes to make them appear like solid gold. He also had a number of seemingly impressive scars across his body, but the Captain had been around long enough to know fake scars when she saw them.
“If we didn’t need your money I’d throw you into your own stupid fireplace,” the Captain said in Omeric.
“Sorry, I don’t speak the lower tongues. Could you repeat that?”
“I said ‘It’s an honor to meet you, I heard you had a job for us?’” she said, in Imperial this time.
“Ah yes. Some group of cultists has been harassing some of our outposts further out in the desert. I’d like you to take care of them. Should be an easy job.”
“You’re paying us an awful lot of money for an ‘easy job’,” she replied.
“Oh, well if you’re willing to work for less than I’ll-”
“No, no we’ll take it!”
“Excellent. Head back down to the lobby. My assistant will give you more information.”
The Captain stood up and walked back to the elevator. The Lieutenant trailed a few steps behind. Just as they stepped inside, the Captain heard something from the room behind her. The faint sound of footfalls on carpet. She turned, but all she saw was the still seated form of the Lord Governor, looking back at her with a smile.
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Harrow watched the metal grate of the elevator doors close around her quarry. She waited until the elevator had descended out of sight, then she reached up and tapped a circle on the shoulder of her cloak. Her body slowly faded back into view. She looked back towards the Lord Governor, who was at that moment pouring himself a glass of wine.
“You couldn’t have made the job sound harder? She’s not going to bring a lot of her men with her now.” she said.
“Not my problem, little hunter. I was asked to separate the Captain from her ship, nothing more. Whatever task you’ve been asked to complete is up to you.”
Harrow shook her head with a sigh. She double checked that her rifle was loaded, then tapped the circle on her cloak once more and faded from view. This was going to be a long job.
Chapter 2: A Job
The Captain double checked her guns with a sigh. This was going to be a boring job. She could already picture it. They’d treck their way across a couple miles of scorching glasslands, all for a shootout that would last less than a minute.
The Imperial Sargent who met them at the edge of the colony filled them in on what intel the Lord Governor had gathered on the cultists. Supposedly, there were only eleven of them, with maybe half that many rifles between them.
The Captain knew her Lieutenant could probably handle this whole contract by herself, but she desperately needed something to take her mind off the funeral, so she was going too. She’d also brought along three other members of her crew, on the off chance they needed some extra rifles.
They stood at the edge of the colony.
I would have continued writing from here, if I had more time.
ceruleanfour on Chapter 2 Mon 11 Aug 2025 10:46PM UTC
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