Page 13 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

For the second night in a row, Galahad failed to summon me. I remained braced for his call, ready in my head, while Jonquil watched me from my dresser top. The ceiling darkened as the sun sank below the horizon outside my window, and I dared to close my eyes.

When I opened them again, it was to sunlight streaming in through my curtains. It felt like a sick joke. They’d finally convinced me that Skalterra was real, and now I’d been stood up two nights in a row.

At the register that morning, I curled my fist around the T-shaped scar on my palm. As much as I resented the marking, it was the only indicator that Skalterra had been real.

Maybe the rotsbane had hurt the others. Maybe it had killed Ferrin, Galahad, and Orla on that train.

No evil Magicians had come bursting through the fabric of reality yet, so the Frozen God’s glacial prison had to still be in place. At the very least, Fana was probably alive.

But the others?

The bell over the front door rang as Liam walked in. My stomach clenched at the sight of him. I was worried about people I’d barely known for four days. It must be so much worse for him to be in the same boat but with his cousin.

And his parents.

“What?”

Liam’s lips cocked into a confused smile as he handed me my morning bagel.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“No, but you’ve got a look on your face.”

“What, am I not allowed—”

I cut off, remembering his assumed dead parents and probably dead cousin.

Liam laughed and pulled his apron on over his t-shirt.

“That face! Right there. You’re still making it.”

“I’m just listening to the rain,”

I tried to cover. The steady beat of rain on the roof had followed me from the upstairs apartment to the shop. There was a cozy comfort in the pattering sound after so many days of sunshine.

Liam turned to look out at the street, and his brow furrowed.

“The rain?”

His confused smile returned. I followed his gaze to the cloudless sky that shined down on the dry pavement.

My stomach clenched, and I strained my ears, focusing on the patter of rain that I could still hear tapping out a disjointed rhythm overhead.

I took a bite of bagel to keep from having to answer Liam about the weather. Unfortunately, it left the door open for him to keep talking.

“How did yesterday go with the posters?”

“Oh!”

My cheeks burned hot, and I glanced towards Gams’s workshop door.

“Mr. Lane says not to worry about the printing cost. He covered it.”

Liam nodded, and his brow furrowed.

“That’s good. And you were able to get them posted okay?”

“Um—”

I hesitated.

“Yeah. It was—”

“All this talk and no working!”

Gams burst through the door to the basement, laden with more blue chickens.

“What am I paying you both for?”

“For bagels.”

Liam held up the brown bag. Gams gave him a grateful smile as she traded her armful of chickens for her bagel.

“You don’t need to keep painting them blue,”

I said, watching Liam arrange the chickens on the front shelf.

“I got the interview with Von Leer.”

“The blue chickens have gotten you this far. I’m not changing the color until I’m sure you are a Von Leer Viking,”

Gams said as the front door swung open.

I recognized the weak-chinned man who’d bought a chicken a few days ago, and he gave Gams a jovial wave.

“What’ve you got for me this time?”

he asked, crossing to the chicken shelf.

“Weren’t you just in here buying chickens the other day, Stanley?”

Gams laughed through a mouthful of bagel.

“Are you trying to deplete my stock?”

“One of my client’s kids saw it on my desk, and I let him take it.”

Stanley plucked a new chicken off the shelf and crossed to the register to hand it to me. I tilted my head to the side, certain I could still hear rain pattering against the roof.

“And here I thought bankers were supposed to be heartless,”

Gams chuckled as I wrapped the chicken in paper and took Stanley’s payment.

“Maybe in Keel Watch, but not up in Dunningham! If you shipped chickens to one of the shops in town, I wouldn’t have to drive all this way for new ones.”

“And run myself out of business?”

Gams patted Stanley on the back.

“My chickens will stay here, thanks. Supply and demand! Surely they taught you that at your fancy banker school?”

Stanley shook his head as he laughed, thanked me for the chicken, and headed back out the door.

Gams returned to her workshop, and Liam didn’t ask anymore about Riley’s posters, but that might’ve been thanks to the steady stream of customers keeping his ice-cream scoop busy. The invisible rain let up around noon, just in time for me to go enjoy my lunch break in the sun of the back deck. I convinced myself it must’ve been the sound of Gams’s air conditioning I’d heard, or maybe Jonquil was running laps upstairs.

Whatever it had been, it could not have been rain, because the streets of Keel Watch Harbor stayed dry.

With the exception of the mystery sound, the day passed without consequence and with no word from Galahad. I dared to stay up later than I should have, but by the time ten o’clock came, I figured I was going to pass another night unbothered by Skalterra, and crawled into my covers.

I fell into a dream that felt real enough. I stared at my hands and was trying to determine if they’d always had six fingers each, when a voice cut into the scene.

“Let’s see if it works this time. Wren Warrender?”

I looked up from my hands at the fuzzy darkness that opened before me.

“Galahad?” I asked.

“There she is,”

Galahad’s gruff voice responded.

“Already asleep, are you?”

The darkness shifted, closing in on me until I was under a low ceiling lit by glowing yellow orbs resting on sconces. The floor was uneven beneath my leather boots, and warped wood creaked as I stumbled backwards to catch my footing.

“See? That salesman didn’t rip you off.”

A familiar hand pressed against my back to steady me. Ferrin’s facial hair had become rugged and unkempt in the days we’d been apart.

“Welcome back, Just-Wren. Miss us?”

“What happened?”

My stomach felt sluggish, and my limbs buzzed with an uncomfortable energy. Something invisible pressed on my chest, and breathing was difficult. My veins burned with a dull heat, like my blood was attacking me from the inside.

“I feel like garbage.”

“Maybe the salesman did rip you off after all,”

Ferrin mused.

“The Skal was probably diluted with something.”

“She’ll be fine,”

Galahad grunted.

“Lots of Nightmares get made out of diluted Skal for cheap labor.”

“I hate it.”

I thought I’d be more relieved at seeing they were okay, though maybe “okay”

was a bit of a stretch. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could tell they were both dirty, and their clothes were torn. Galahad had a black eye that looked several days old.

“Just-Wren is back?”

A door to our right slammed open, and Orla tore from the room to wrap me in an embrace.

“Thank the Three Magicians, we thought you might be dead!”

“Dead?”

I pushed her off of me. Her short brown hair stuck out in every direction, and one of her goggle lenses was cracked.

“The rotsbane! It had you. We thought Galahad might’ve been too late in releasing you,”

she gushed.

“And then the rotsbane ate all the Skal on the steamcart, so we couldn’t call you back. And the city sent a rescue cart, but one of the diners figured out you had been a lucid Nightmare, which is illegal, so we had to run into the woods, and then it took us two days to walk here without any Skal.”

“Oh.”

I looked between the three of them, relieved I’d missed spending time in the woods.

“But no Grimguard?”

“Not yet.”

Either the yellow light of the wall sconces made Galahad’s wrinkles look deeper than usual, or the forested trek to wherever we were now had been harrowing enough to age him several years.

“But we can’t be too careful. He’s had plenty of time to catch up. He could be here in the city for all we know.”

“The city?”

I looked around the dingy hall.

“Vanderfall, the capital of the Grand Barony!”

Orla said.

“You’ll love it. It’s the biggest city in Skalterra.”

“Yeah, so far it’s beautiful.”

Something lurched inside me, and I leaned against the wall of unfinished wood. Whatever Skal Galahad had made me out of was definitely not sitting well.

“Galahad and I are going to request an audience with the Baron.”

Ferrin shifted his weight from foot to foot, and looked sideways at Galahad. His hair had lost some of its usual height and now drooped to the side.

“We’re hoping to secure passage as far north as Riverstead, and maybe secure some better quality Skal, but the Baron isn’t exactly known for being generous. We need you to watch the inn with Orla and Tiernan while we’re out.”

If this was an inn, then the rows of doors on either side of the hall made sense. I glanced down the line of them, noticing Tiernan for the first time where he sat on the floor with his back against what was probably Fana’s door.

“We’ve paid for the entire floor,”

Galahad explained.

“so if anyone who isn’t a Riftkeeper comes up here, get rid of them.”

Orla nodded importantly, and her cracked goggles slid from their perch on her head to hang around her neck. Ferrin pulled her in to press his forehead against hers.

“We won’t be long,”

he assured her in a hushed tone.

“But the Baron—”

Orla protested.

“Doesn’t scare me, and shouldn’t scare you either. You know I’ve handled worse.”

She nodded against his head, and Galahad grumbled for Ferrin to hurry. He pulled away from his niece and gave me a tiny salute as he followed Galahad over the uneven floors to the stairwell.

“Orla, rest up,”

he called back.

“Wren’s the only one of you with Skal. She’ll keep watch.”

Ferrin and Galahad’s boots echoed down the stairwell, and Orla watched the empty hallway with apprehension.

“They’ll be fine,”

she said, more to herself than to me.

“The Baron is a bit intense, but— well, you heard Ferrin. He’s faced worse.”

She gave me a brave smile.

“I knew you were still alive. Tiernan said you were probably reduced to Skal particles swirling inside the rotsbane, but Galahad would never let that happen.”

“Right.”

I snorted.

“Couldn’t let his favorite weapon go to waste.”

I glared at Tiernan’s bowed head down the hall as Orla led me through the open door of her room. The space was small and sported a dusty wardrobe and thin bed with a lumpy mattress that smelled like damp straw. Bright lights pushed against the moth-eaten curtains that obscured the window, fighting back against the otherwise drab atmosphere.

“Galahad only pretends to be terrible.”

Orla fell backwards to sit on her mattress and tried to smooth down the brown sheets where they wrinkled around her.

“He does it because he’s afraid we’ll all figure out he’s secretly a softie.”

I gravitated towards the window but hesitated with the curtains in my hand.

“A softie?”

I repeated through a laugh.

“It means kindhearted and gentle,”

Orla explained.

“Sorry, it’s easy to forget you aren’t familiar with all our phrases.”

“I know what it means. We have that word too, and it’s not one I’d use to describe Galahad.”

I pulled the curtains back to reveal a view of the river below. Water flowed parallel to the street below us, and while our side of the river was barren and quiet, busy shops and restaurants lined the cobbled road across an arched stone bridge. Glowing pipes dipped in and out of walls in a dizzying tangle of steamed Skal. People in robes, cloaks, and leather milled between storefronts despite the late hour, and the Skal-glow that emanated from wrought iron street lamps kept the night sky above obscured.

“Oh,”

I breathed. Maybe the chainmail and the parapet from my first encounter with Skalterra had thrown me off, but the elaborate network of pipes weaving between bright shops and stone terraces was a shock. There was still something aged and rural compared to the neon cities I was familiar with, but it was more than I had expected.

“I didn’t think you guys had all this.”

“Beautiful, right?”

Orla sighed.

“This is only my second time here. You should see the Baron’s mansion.”

“You mean where Ferrin and Galahad are going?”

I thought I recognized Galahad’s leather duster making its way through the crowd next to Ferrin’s coiffed hair. They stepped through rain puddles that reflected the lights of the shops in hues of yellows and oranges.

“Yes.”

Orla played with the hem of her cloak where she sat on the lumpy bed.

“It’s a risk leaving us here, especially with no Skal, but it’s a greater risk taking Fana. She’s valuable, and the Baron likes valuable things.”

Ferrin and Galahad turned a corner and disappeared behind a merchant’s booth. I pressed my lips together. Galahad’s diluted Skal sat heavy in my stomach, uncomfortable and hot.

“If it’s such a risk to not have Skal, what if we went and found some?” I asked.

“Skal is expensive. Usually we replenish our store at private springs owned by the Sovereign families or by their Riftkeeper. But on the street? Buying enough Skal would bankrupt us. Ferrin will see what the Baron is willing to give us, and then we’ll use that to get to Tulyr and restock there.”

I silently watched the Skalterrans across the river for a moment. Despite the variety in clothing styles, almost all of them wore bottles of glowing Skal at their hips.

“This mission benefits all of Skalterra, right?”

I asked.

“Keeping Fana alive and the Frozen God in his glacier?”

Orla nodded, but her lips drew into a frown.

“Of course. The Four Magicians built Skalterra as a safe place for magick to exist.”

“But we can’t just ask for Skal, and tell them we’re saving Skalterra?”

I watched a woman in a bustled dress down a vial of glowing liquid on the cobbled street beneath us.

“Definitely not.”

Orla laughed.

“Some Skalterrans wish we could return to Keldori and view our world as a prison, so they aren’t really big fans of the Riftkeepers.”

“Okay.”

I straightened up.

“Then we take Skal without asking.”

I pushed away from the window, back towards the hall. Orla rushed to follow me.

“I don’t know what’s normal in Keldori, but here we don’t—”

“We are defenseless.”

The floorboards of the hall creaked beneath my leather boots.

“We don’t have Skal. I have some inside me, but it feels like poison. If Skal will help us keep Keldori and Skalterra safe, then us taking some will benefit everyone. Think of it like a tax.”

Tiernan glared at us as I led the way to the stairwell.

“What are you—”

he growled, but I cut him off.

“We’ll be back,”

I assured him.

“You don’t need us.”

I knew his pride wouldn’t let him argue the contrary, and he was silent as I led Orla down the twisting steps to the first floor.

“Wren,”

Orla hissed after me.

“We can’t steal Skal! We’ll get caught!”

Back at home, I’d never do this. But I wasn’t at home, and I wasn’t really me, either. I wasn’t Wren, the waitlisted college hopeful. I was Just-Wren, the warrior weapon with great hair and little-to-no consequences as long as a rotsbane didn’t get involved.

The low-ceilinged lobby of the inn was dark despite the light that filtered in through the windows. A grizzled man read a dusty book in the light of an azure skalflame at the front desk. He glanced up as we passed, and Orla shot him a nervous smile.

“Wren,”

she said again through gritted teeth.

I stepped out onto the street, letting the noise and smells wash over me. Something savory wafted on the wind, mingling with the scent of recent rain. Iron-wrought lamps topped with glowing orbs of Skal lined the riverwalk, and I followed them to an arching bridge of stone.

I paused at the peak of its arch so I could look down into the water. It reflected my blue-haired figure back up at me, and Orla’s harried reflection joined mine in the rippling water.

“Let’s go back to the inn,”

she insisted.

“Ferrin said I should get some sleep—”

“Do you want to sleep?”

I asked her seriously, pushing blue hair back from my face. Her lips twisted, and her eyes darted to the bright storefronts on the other side of the river behind me.

“No, but—”

“You’re from the mountains, right? Your uncle showed me a map.”

“I grew up in the Second Sentinel.”

“How often do you get to leave the mountain?”

She looked back at our reflections in the water.

“This is the first time,”

she admitted.

“But I have a duty to Fana, and it doesn’t include stealing Skal.”

“It does if it means keeping her alive.”

I took Orla’s wrist and pulled her after me across the bridge.

The stone buildings rose up around us, boasting open storefronts of trinkets, clothing, and food. Spiraling sets of staircases led up to second and third story terraces that connected to each other via footbridges that arched overhead.

Elaborate networks of pipes and glass carried Skal between the shops and to the streetlights to cast warm yellow glows over the crowds of cloaks and leather.

“You know, if Galahad told me this is what Skalterra is like, I probably would’ve agreed to keep coming back sooner.”

I craned my head to watch a footbridge as we passed underneath it. Puddle water splashed up my legs, drawing my gaze to my boots.

“Did it rain today?”

“It was awful.”

Orla nodded.

“Rained all night and all morning. We were soaked when we finally arrived in the city.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking about the nonexistent rain I’d heard on the rooftop throughout the morning.

But then, a sweet smell caught my attention, and I whipped my head up to look into the nearest storefront.

“Are those pies?”

I faltered at the outskirts of the gathered crowd to stare at a baker preparing a doughy crust behind a counter. A jumble of pipes dipped in and out of the wall behind him.

Orla glanced backwards down the way we came. The dark windows of the inn stared back at us from across the river.

“Yes, but—”

“This way.”

I tracked the path of the pipes along the wall and rounded a corner. There were more storefronts here, and I resisted the smell of simmering meat to pass under more archways.

Men and women in leather and goggles sipped from glasses where they lounged on large, stone steps around a fountain that sprayed water twenty feet into the air. Pipes hugged the wall behind the water feature, and I followed them around another corner. It was less crowded here, and there were fewer lamps to light the way.

“Getting closer.”

“To what?”

Orla hissed.

“Look, I’m far from being the smartest Riftkeeper, but even I know that this is stupid.”

I stopped to look back at her.

“Orla,”

I said.

“you’re plenty smart.”

She blushed and looked away.

“You weren’t there for the rotsbane attack after Galahad released you,”

she mumbled.

“You all survived. Whatever you did can’t have been that bad.”

“I lit the steamcart on fire.”

I took a moment to gather myself.

“Did anyone get hurt?”

“Well, no—”

“Then it was fine. You aren’t stupid.”

I turned to lead the way down the street.

“But Tiernan—”

“Tiernan?”

I spun back to face Orla again.

“That guy? Mr. Broods-A-Lot? We care what he thinks?”

“He’s only brooding because he’s mourning Caitria.”

She wrapped her long, thin arms around herself.

“He’s still my friend.”

My stomach lurched in a way that had nothing to do with the nasty Skal Galahad had used to form me.

“Friends aren’t rude to each other, even when they’re sad,”

I said.

“Friends who treat you like garbage are actually just that. Garbage.”

“Tiernan—”

“Is garbage,”

I snarled.

“You’re worth more than how he treats you.”

I whisked into the shadows of an alley before Orla could stop me. She hesitated on the main street, and I tried to quash the rising guilt in my throat. Maybe what I had said was harsh, but if someone had told me that bad friends aren’t actually friends, I could’ve avoided everything Linsey had put me through.

“Do you have bottles?”

I tapped on a pipe that jutted out of the stone wall and dove down under the cobbled walkway.

Orla finally followed me into the alley and lifted her cloak to reveal a row of empty bottles swinging from her belt.

“That’s where you want to steal Skal from?”

Orla blanched.

“Better than picking someone’s pocket.”

I played with my fingernails. The diluted Skal in my veins felt like sludge, but it was still Skal and would do what I needed it to do.

“No, this is a lot worse! That Skal still belongs to someone!”

Orla glanced back at the main street, but we were alone. The distant sound of laughter mixed with that of the fountain splashing.

“This is the Baron’s Skal. The Baron we need to like us if we want help getting north.”

“No one named ‘The Baron’ has ever been a good guy.”

Maybe it was the fact that Skalterra gave me the freedom to be whoever I wanted, or maybe Sarah’s comment at the Keel Watch Harbor library about being switched at birth was getting to me, but whatever it was, I liked this new Wren.

The fingernail on my right pointer finger elongated when I willed it to, and then sharpened and hardened into a steel point. I pressed it against the metal pipe and turned my wrist back and forth until I felt a small groove begin to form beneath my nail.

“That’s a new trick,”

Orla mumbled.

“I’ve never seen a Nightmare change themself like that before.”

“Yes, you have. You watched me turn my tree trunk into tree legs, remember? It needs to be sharper.”

The metal of the pipe was thick, but it looked like copper, a relatively soft metal. I willed my steel fingernail to be stronger and sharper, then pressed into it.

The point punched through, and I grinned at Orla.

“Bottle.”

I held my free hand out to her. She gulped, but unclipped a rounded bottle from her belt. I imagined a small channel running through my fingernail, and the Skal flowed.

It poured out as a glowing pale-blue liquid that was thinner than water but thicker than steam. It fell into the bottle with a soft whisper, filling the glass with both liquid and gas that swirled up towards the bottleneck. Despite the weightless appearance of the Skal, the bottle felt heavier than I would have expected once it was full.

“Next.”

I passed the bottle and its swirling contents off to Orla. She traded me for an empty bottle.

“Does Ferrin know you can do this?”

she asked.

“The fingernail thing?”

I frowned at my makeshift siphon.

“I’m not sure. Tiernan does, I think. He saw me make bone spikes on my arms when we fought the Grimguard. But if I can imagine it, I can be it. Or, at least, I haven’t found the limit yet.”

Orla was quiet for a moment.

“You can do all that, and yet you can’t make a decent sword,”

she finally said.

I laughed.

“Forget making flails and swords out Skal,”

I said.

“I can make flails and swords out of my arms!”

She flashed a reluctant smile, and traded me a new bottle for the filled one I now held.

“That would be good for fighting, but probably not much else.”

“Good thing fighting is all Galahad needs me for.”

I grinned at Orla, but her smile had dissolved into a tight frown. She focused on the bottle in my hand.

“You’re good for more than just fighting,”

she said.

“You’re also a good friend.”

“Would you still be my friend if I had flails for arms?”

She smirked.

“Yes, Just-Wren.”

We traded bottles again.

“And you’d still be a better friend than Tiernan. Because you’re right. He is garbage.”

“He is! Thank you!”

The Skal flowing through my steel fingernail was making my hand warm.

“Poor Fana, getting stuck with that guy.”

“Especially after she had someone as wonderful as Caitria as her primary Riftkeeper. You would’ve loved Caitria,”

Orla insisted.

“I hope the Grimguard killed her quickly. I hate to think about her in pain.”

“I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know what else to say.

“I wish I could’ve known her too. I’m sure she went down a hero.”

The face of the dead woman on my first night in Skalterra was still burned into my brain. I’d tried not to think about it since coming to terms with the fact that Skalterra was real.

That had been a real woman lying dead right in front of me.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

A gruff voice pulled me out of my reverie. A man in a maroon vest with matching goggles stared at us from the mouth of the alley.

“Oh,”

Orla gasped.

“That’s bad.”

The man charged at us, and I tried to pull my fingernail from the pipe, but the heat of the siphoned Skal must’ve expanded the steel tip, because it didn’t budge.

“By order of the Grand Barony, you’re under arrest!”

“Orla!”

I hissed. I yanked harder, but I was properly stuck.

“Make it smaller!”

Orla yelped.

I tried, but it was hard to focus with the man in maroon bearing down on us. A bright red staff of Skalmagick erupted in his hands.

“Hold on!”

Orla pulled her goggles into place and took a hearty swig of Skal. A green blade lengthened in her grip, and she brought it swinging down.

It sliced through my wrist, hot and painful. I cried out, but Orla was already pulling me down the alley as the guard gave chase.

“My hand!”

I yowled, looking down at my wrist. Where there should have been blood, flesh flaked away from my arm in streams of ash.

“Grow a new one!”

Orla pressed the Skal bottle into my remaining hand, and I took a sloppy sip as we rounded the corner in a sprint. The liquid dissolved the weight in my stomach, and new energy buzzed in my limbs as I pushed through the crowd waiting outside of a noodle house.

“Stop them!”

the guard bellowed. Bright lights and new smells assaulted my senses from every angle, but I kept my focus on my wrist. I could grow a hand.

Orla looked back over her shoulder, and the panic in her eyes told me the guard was still tailing us through the thick crowd. We’d be easy to track. As diverse as the wardrobes here were, I was the only one with blue hair.

But as I looked down at my growing fingers, I realized my hair was a fixable problem. In fact, I could fix much more than just my hair.

I focused on one attribute at a time. If I changed too quickly, someone might notice. But if I did my hair first, then my eyes, then my nose, my chin, my clothes…

“Put your hood up.”

The deep voice that resonated in my throat didn’t sound like my own.

“Who—”

Orla yelped. She let go of me, and I raised a freshly grown finger to my lips.

“It’s me! I changed my face! Go that way!”

We slipped down another alleyway. Orla yanked her hood up over her face just as the guard came around the corner. I met his eye, and gave a half-hearted wave.

He faltered, seemingly taken aback by the man standing before him. He craned his neck to look past us down the empty alley, then continued on through the crowd.

Orla sighed, and shook her hood off.

“That’s a neat trick.”

She gestured towards my face, and I ran a hand down my cheek, feeling the shape of Liam’s chin. His face was the first one I’d thought to change into.

“What is that?”

I looked down at the perfect replica of Liam’s Von Leer hoodie that I was now wearing.

“It’s, um, a coat. Kind of.”

I couldn’t get used to the sound of Liam’s voice coming from my mouth.

“I figured that since Galahad forms my clothes when he makes me, I probably have control over what they look like.”

“It’s hideous.”

“I know.”

“You’re hideous too.”

I grinned, and wondered if I had the same stupid smile on my face that Liam had given me so many times.

“Thank you.”

I pulled my fingers through my hair, imagining my hair lengthening as I did so and procuring a hair-tie to keep it out of my face. It reverted back to blue with no effort, and my face rippled beneath my skin as my preferred bone-structure returned.

“Do you still have the Skal?”

Orla flicked her cloak back, revealing the four bottles secured to her belt.

“I still don’t approve of your methods, by the way,”

she said, though she smiled in spite of herself.

“Stealing is—”

She cut off, and her eyes flitted to something at the far end of the alley. She snapped her goggles into place, and a green blade fired to life. I whipped around, igniting my silver flail.

A cloaked figure staggered out of the deepest shadows of the alley. His clothes were tattered, and he walked with a heavy limp, but orange irises set against black sclera glowed bright above his dark cowl.

“Blue,”

the Grimguard croaked. An orange blade erupted in his hand as he took the first running steps towards us.

And then the orange blade turned to steam, and he fell forward, unconscious.