Clearheart and Blackwing leave the city at dusk, departing aboard the merchant’s lumbering kerkouros rather than a nimble Glassblood bireme for the sake of subterfuge. To further reduce suspicion, her soldiers lurk out of sight in the vessel’s emptied hold, having arrived discreetly in small groups dressed as dockworkers. Clearheart herself had climbed aboard wearing a rough spun woolen cloak with a heavy crate balanced in her arms.
Their activity will have drawn attention from certain observers, despite those precautions, but none apart from the city’s cleverest spies could have gathered enough intelligence to surmise their target, and all such agents work for organizations too esteemed to risk open affiliation with the butchers’ cartel. They aren’t likely to send warning.
Even if someone tried, no runner could traverse the jungle before the Glassblood’s arrival. Word might, in theory, have reached the gang at far greater speed via overland graft-light relays, but in practice, she doubts those miscreants possess the resources or discipline to maintain such a network. An inland route across the island’s densely forested hills would require too much effort and expense to maintain, whereas along the coast, even shielded flares could never escape detection.
No. The only feasible way for her enemies to have received forewarning is if someone discovered Clearheart’s plans hours ago and immediately dispatched a ship to convey their message. In that scenario, she would have risked no further harm by using a Glassblood warship to catch up. Indeed, it was sorely tempting to simply rush forth aboard her own vessel instead of borrowing Blackwing’s as a disguise.
Had she taken that approach, however, then the Merchant Prince’s direct involvement would become deniable, and Clearheart can’t abide that. The public needs to know- needs to witness- precisely whose boat carried away the butchers’ trove of stolen grafts. It won’t be hers. At no point will the Glassbloods store any of the bounty they claim tonight. Let Blackwing face all the scrutiny; between the two of them, he’s certainly the one who most deserves it.
Clearheart’s mind returns to the present as they clear the bay’s exit and leave her city’s sparkling lights behind. Looking out toward the open sea, she reflects that it’s been a while since she last left the island, having settled more and more into administrative duties as time goes by. She trains too much to worry about losing her edge, but there’s a certain restlessness of spirit which afflicts warriors too long removed from battle. Tonight, she feeds the flame within.
Her brooding suffers an interruption when Blackwing’s agate-faced way-lighter deactivates his graft and retreats from the prow, plunging the ship into darkness with his departure, as intended. In their planning that afternoon, the two leaders had agreed to complete this journey by starlight alone to prevent the tracking of their movement. Inconvenient and overcautious though it may be, Clearheart could hardly have pushed back after abusing similar logic to justify taking Blackwing’s ship at all.
As their barge’s lightless bow crashes through dark waves, the shuffling of two dozen sandals upon the stairs announces the emergence of her warriors onto the main deck. Clearheart glances towards her assembling Glassbloods to see that most have already donned their full armor, though a few of the larger men waited to strap into their most cumbersome pieces in the relative free space topside.
Seeing no reason to delay her own preparations, Clearheart passes her soldiers with a quiet exchange of salutes and descends below deck to retrieve her own equipment. She finds it neatly laid out and waiting for her atop the crate in which she’d carried it aboard, despite her never having asked for such assistance. This small, anonymous favor brings a slight smile to her face as she slips inside her company’s uniform of war.
The Glassblood’s simple-but-effective kit comprises painted and padded bronze helmets, breastplates, and greaves, along with tall, leather-bound wooden shields. Segmented bands protect the outside of their right arms, descending from their shoulders to the back of their hands. Aside from a few small markings to show which set belongs to whom, the pieces sport no engravings or stylistic flourishes. They weren’t made for parades.
Naturally, the Glassbloods came armed as well as armored. Although every soldier in her outfit commands a modestly powerful graft, Clearheart still trained them to view their powers as secondary weapons. Her mercenaries rely, first and foremost, upon their spears. Decades of experience have proven to her that few expressions of magic rival the combat effectiveness of strong men wielding long, pointy sticks.
In the exceptional cases where magic prevails, it tends to dominate without contest. For those encounters, their middling grafts wouldn’t help them much anyway. Distance and arrows would serve them better.
That line of thinking leads Clearheart’s thoughts to Blackwing, so she seeks him out after returning upstairs. He proves easy enough to find, having positioned himself to keep an eye on her soldiers through the open door of his cabin.
Like the Glassbloods and Clearheart herself, the prince of merchants has also donned his armor. Its design closely resembles her own equipment, though he carries neither shield nor spear. Fittingly, his bronze shell is painted black to match his graft, while Clearheart and her mercenaries wear their kit in a deep red. That matt coating will provide excellent camouflage for the night raid, especially for a group approaching from above.
She might pity the graft hunters for what’s coming their way, but they don’t deserve the sentiment.
Tonight, their reign of terror ends. Or, more realistically, their reign of terror suffers a major setback. This single strike won’t break their operation completely, but it will decimate their network in the local islands and hopefully intimidate survivors for a few years. Even if it doesn’t prove a permanent cure, tonight’s work should make a meaningful difference for the people of her city.
Perhaps she should have done this good deed long ago. Upon consideration, she’s almost grateful to that silver-faced twerp and Blackwing’s insubordinate twink for pushing her into it.
Nodding to herself in satisfaction, Clearheart joins her soldiers as they migrate toward the stern and inserts herself into their hushed pre-mission banter. Time slowly passes while they debate matters of inconsequential nonsense. The mercenaries wait patiently enough, accustomed to lengthier voyages than this, but they’re all still pleased to see that the wind favors their sails throughout the journey’s longest leg. Eventually, their borrowed ship rounds the island’s western terminus and begins traveling the shorter distance back east.
At this point, a few members of Blackwing’s crew haul a strange bundle of fabric, wood, and wicker up from the hold, giving Clearheart her first clear glimpse of the expedition’s second vehicle. Blackwing had referred to this contraption as an ‘air bladder’ during their pre-mission planning. When pressed to explain the mechanics of his conveyance, he’d claimed that he could generate sufficient lift to pull their entire away-party into the sky for a short flight simply by trapping a large volume of heat inside a specially-constructed sack.
As the merchant described it, his device functions more as an air-dingy than an air-ship. The system can’t remain aloft long enough to carry them across the jungle, unfortunately, or even all the way from his boat to their inland target. However, Blackwing promised that it could transmit them to shore, and, crucially, that it would manage to hop over their enemy’s walls. Provided nobody puts an arrow through its envelope.
If his machine actually works, then it will offer Clearheart her first jaunt across the sky since she arrived in the new world. Despite her carefully-concealed trepidation, the former princess finds herself feeling slightly giddy at that prospect. It should make a nostalgic little treat before the killing starts.
As Blackwing’s sailors progress in their assembly, Clearheart projects a confidence she doesn’t fully feel into her voice and proclaims that she looks forward to flying aboard the wondrous oddity. In response, a few of her more skeptical subordinates start a bet that the air bladder won’t manage to even lift them off the deck. A subsequent counter-wager hedges that the vessel will drift a short distance away before dumping everyone into the ocean. Clearheart puts her own money on a successful deployment and lets her people know that she looks forward to collecting their coin.
“Thank you for your confidence.” A gentle feminine voice murmurs from nearby. “If I put my money on dropping us into the water, would you allow me to collect afterwards?”
“You don’t get to bet.” Clearheart chuckles while glancing over her shoulder at the new arrival. “Wouldn’t appear fair.”
“You only say that because I’m not cheating in your favor.”
The mercenary captain flashes a grin she knows the other woman can’t see. “Should’ve spoken up before I locked my position if you wanted to fix it, Wire.”
“Alas. If only we’d thought to collude beforehand.”
“There’s always the journey back. You can dunk us then.”
“Okay. I’ll do that.” She answers with an innocent smile. “Gambling aside, I came back here to warn you that we’re less than half an hour out from our anchor point. Also, I’m going to start charging, and this is my preferred location on the ship.”
“Noted. Should we move?”
“Only if you’re feeling selfish.”
“We are. Glassbloods! Scooch back if you don’t want frostbite!”
Her soldiers comply, giving the small woman space as she begins to draw heat from the air. Clearheart lingers slightly closer than the others, silently reminding those who stand behind her of the gap between their magic and her own, though she keeps enough distance to avoid real exertion.
The woman before her, Blackwing’s proxy within New Carcosa and the key to their impending flight, is a petite, cripplingly near-sighted heat-binder who goes by the name of Candlewire. Square leaves of unoxidized copper wrap every inch of skin exposed by her knee-length chiton. The false gilding creates a rough texture of ridges and bumps that catch the starlight in interesting patterns.
When asked by a tactless soldier on a prior visit to the Glassblood compound, she’d affirmed that the graft covers her entire body. Clearheart had neither occasion nor desire to verify that claim, but she quickly believes it after seeing the rate at which Candlewire’s graft consumes heat. Cool mist pools and condenses against the slender woman’s metallic skin and lingers there until a headwind whisks it away. Thin rings of ice slowly form at her feet, and frost crystalizes atop the mink fur eyelashes she wears to ameliorate her lack of natural hair.
The effect lends Candlewire an ethereal beauty, but it also marks her as dangerous. She could reverse her power and release all of that stored heat at any time. She likely already holds enough to fry a man, yet she keeps pulling in more. Clearheart idly wonders what the minimum safe distance would be for an ordinary human. She doubts her soldiers are outside it.
Blackwing’s second in command truly is exceptional. The diminutive heat-binder probably could have made herself a minor basileus if she wasn’t consigned to work for that merchant. Clearheart herself would never accept such an overshadowed life, but she won’t judge the other woman for her preference.
Staying under someone else’s protection offers less autonomy and fewer opportunities for independent wealth but grants far more stability and safety, so long as you aren’t working for a fool. Candlewire is far from the only person with her level of talent who chose to enter a peer’s employ instead of striking out on her own. Not every person born with potential also possesses ambition.
Those fortunate enough to obtain both qualities make far more troublesome neighbors, but Clearheart generally enjoys their company when she can claim it. To that effect, she bids farewell to Candlewire and her soldiers, then sets off to locate Blackwing for one final conversation in the peace before battle. She quickly spots him standing on his own beside the railing and heads his way.
The merchant nods respectfully when the mercenary sidles up next to him, and she returns the gesture in the same spirit. Clearheart briefly studies his expression, finding his visage untroubled despite the grisly work awaiting them. As a wealthy man with isolated settlements under his protection, he must have plenty of blood on his hands already. Nights like this don’t bother people like the two of them.
She turns away from the water and leans back against the rails. Blackwing’s eyes follow her gesture when she waves a hand at his deflated air bladder.
“When I asked for your help bypassing the walls, I had thought you might lift us yourself.” She comments nonchalantly. “I didn’t expect you to have such a well-developed flying method tucked under your cloak. We’re lucky you happened to stash this prototype inside the city.”
The tall man shakes his head. “It was Candlewire’s project more than mine. The only luck is that she bothered to keep it in good repair after I abandoned testing.”
“Her project, was it?” Clearheart looks at him askance. “What use would a woman who can barely see beyond her own nose have for a mobile observation platform?”
“The device had no intended function. We simply wanted to verify whether her idea was feasible.”
“Droghego.” She mutters her accusation, then sighs and lets the issue drop. “So, did the two of you ever test your method with a group this large? Are you confident you can carry us across the necessary distance?”
“Yes,” he nods, “but if your full complement proves too massive, we can still bring enough Glassbloods inside to force the gates.”
“Too massive?” Clearheart asks with a humorless expression. “You calling us fat?”
The corner of his mouth twitches up. “Interpret my words however you like.”
“Then I’m telling my men you called us fat. The news will crush them. They work hard to maintain those figures.”
That quip gets a smile, just barely, and he replies with feigned contrition. “I hadn’t realized. I retract my insult. Please forgive me.”
She huffs. “The Glassbloods accept your apology, merchant, but we’ll remember this.”
“Mother preserve me.”
With that intonation, their banter lapses. The two of them stay together a while longer but stare off in opposite directions. Blackwing watches the waves while Clearheart observes his crew. As their silence stretches, she briefly considers dipping another bucket into the same conversational well to set up a joke about men with stamina problems. They aren’t close enough for that kind of ribbing, though, so she opts against it. Instead of further teasing, she takes a moment to re-check the readiness of her soldiers, then nods to herself after confirming they haven’t gotten any less ready since the last time she looked.
As the remaining minutes roll by uneventfully, Clearheart makes a few more attempts at conversation while they wait for the ship to reach its target. Although Blackwing responds politely to each overture, he doesn’t seem to be in a conversational mood. Perhaps he never is. She doesn’t know the man well enough to be sure.
At any rate, their ship reaches its destination without incident, dropping anchor far to the west of a dark little hamlet situated at the mouth of a small river. Their final target lies inland along that waterway.
Once the boat has stopped, Blackwing signals Candlewire to begin inflating the hot air bag. Turns out, she fills the thing by standing under its fabric and continuously outputting what feels like the heat of a furnace from the top of her head. How her clothing stays un-singed, Clearheart has no idea. She’s just glad the bladder’s multilayered envelope doesn’t catch fire either.
The mercenary captain watches just long enough to be certain that their conveyance actually is expanding from its crumpled form, then turns away and calls her soldiers to attention.
“Glassbloods! To me!” She barks at significantly less than full volume, just in case any preternaturally keen ears happen to be listening from the distant shore.
From this point onwards, light-binder relays are a far more plausible threat, so they’ll need to be cautious. Once her troops form up in a disciplined manner, she commences with the softest voice she expects them all to hear.
“It’s been a while since my last speech, so I’m not wasting this occasion.” She pans her eyes over familiar, stoic faces before proceeding. “You know who we’re preparing to assail and why it’s necessary. These bastards have had it coming for a long time, and tonight the Glassbloods are finally giving them what they’re due. I’ll have you know, I expect an easy slaughter. They don’t anticipate us! They haven’t trained like us! And even at their best they can’t fight half as well as we do!”
She pauses to allow a quick round of hushed battle cries and subdued manly yawping, then resumes when her audience quiets fully.
“That said, as the more seasoned of you already understand, every operation poses risk. The safety of your comrades depends on all of you taking every moment seriously. So I want you to watch each shadow like it’s holding a knife and treat every opponent as an active threat until he stops twitching when you stab him. Understood?”
“Yes ma’am!” Chants the soldiers’ chorus.
Clearheart grins at the sound. “Marvelous. Now, raise your heads. It’s time for prayer.”
Her fighters comply, lifting their faces and closing their eyes. Standing before them with her arms raised, the mercenary captain takes a deep breath as she considers her next words. The mercenaries’ battle prayer is an old and integral tradition that predates her predecessor’s command, but while she leads, the phrasing is hers to choose.
She begins with a solemn tone. “We ask of the Mother to guide us safely home to our hearths and kin. We ask of the Regent and the Mirror to accept our comrades’ souls should they fall in righteous battle. We ask of the Wayward to let me win my bet that Blackwing’s machine won’t pop and kill everyone. We ask of the Artisan to help us crush those thieving goat-fuckers expeditiously. Aletheia.”
“Aletheia.” Her warriors echo. Truth.
“Good. Now, I think I just barely beat the air bladder on timing, so if any of you didn’t get the message, tough luck. We’re moving.”
Candlewire finishes her preparation in short order, and the strike party boards the floating contraption’s wicker platform at Blackwing’s instruction. Everyone aboard tries to find a middle ground between the soon-to-be precipitous edge and the intermittently broiling heat-binder. Her Glassbloods are all clearly apprehensive about this new experience, but they’re also all professionals. They do what needs doing without hesitation or complaint.
Once her people are as settled as they can get, Clearheart nods to Blackwing. He nods back, and she feels the vessel lighten. With that, they lift silently into the air. As expected, a gentle south-easterly sea breeze catches the fabric and steers them towards the beach.
The gamblers who doubted Blackwing’s staying power thankfully lose their bet, and their jaunt above the waves passes without complication before grinding to a relatively gentle stop in the sand. No one speaks as they all shuffle off the platform, with Candlewire exiting last. Then they wait a minute in silence while the bladder gradually deflates, a process hurried along by a certain weight-binder’s long left arm.
Once enough hot air has escaped, the Glassbloods fold the bag’s fabric neatly onto its platform, and Blackwing lifts the assemblage in an asymmetrical two handed grip. He gives Clearheart a nod, she gives her troops a signal, and their starlit inland march begins.
It doesn’t take too long to reach their next launch point. Maybe twenty minutes. Certainly less than an hour. Whatever the duration, no one aside from Candlewire has begun to flag by the time they summit a promising hill.
Only Clearheart and Blackwing climb to the very peak, staying low to reduce their silhouettes as they perform reconnaissance. Their target lies on the opposite bank of the nearby river, atop a slightly higher promontory than their own. Its wooden palisade stands downslope of the main buildings, however, and so exposes the compound’s features to observing eyes despite its greater elevation.
Clearheart spies dark buildings with low activity. One wandering light betrays the movement of a light-binder to and from the privy, while fatigued watchmen slowly mill about the walls. Otherwise, the hillfort appears to slumber, and it sleeps alone. No other settlements occupy this area. That means no remaining chances for advanced warning, no witnesses, and no collateral. Perfect conditions.
Clearheart studies what sparse details she can discern and quietly shares a simple plan of attack with Blackwing. He agrees, and they retreat from the hilltop. Without further delay, the merchant corrals his slightly winded subordinate to refill their air bladder.
No one speaks as the vessel inflates; the time for banter ended miles back. The silence holds until their conveyance is nearly ready.
Once the bulging bag has enough warmth to stand upright on its own, Blackwing holds out his left arm between Clearheart’s soldiers and whispers. “When the time comes, grab hold or hang on to someone who is. I’ll repeat this gesture when your captain gives her signal. Position yourselves accordingly.”
With that, he boards the platform, and the Glassbloods file after him. Before they launch, the merchant murmurs one last order to his co-pilot.
“Stay afloat long enough for the wind to push you out of sight. Once you land, burn anyone who doesn’t immediately greet you by name.”
The thin woman bobs her head in understanding, so Blackwing turns to Clearheart.
“We’re ready.” She tells him.
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He nods, the vessel lifts, and a gentle night breeze begins to blow them towards the river. They had chosen their starting point so that the natural wind would mostly favor them, but that still isn’t quite precise enough. To compensate, Blackwing and Candlewire make minor adjustments to their heading as needed. They steer with a technique Clearheart has never seen before, combining their powers to direct streams of hot air in the opposite of their desired direction. Based on their comfort with the system, they’ve clearly spent a lot of time practicing in the air.
Clearheart might comment on that training at a more appropriate moment. For now, she waits in silence as the vessel drifts into position. When they cross the river and begin to encroach upon the enemy position, she stretches her magic to its furthest range to brush her influence over the minds below.
Rather than bestowing fear, she absorbs it in small measure, sampling the mental atmosphere like a snake tasting the air. She finds, as expected, little agitation among the defenders. So far as they comprehend, this is still an ordinary, uneventful night. And, of course, none of them bother looking up to see an approaching dark mass blotting out a few stars at a time.
The fortress’s complacent human population is not her only concern, however. Clearheart maintains a portion of her focus on an overstuffed coop which she can sense but cannot see or hear. Its occupants are most likely chickens, but on the off chance it contains geese, she remains ready to steal away their apprehension and lull them into silence, lest their honking alert the entire compound. She monitors a few slumbering dogs with the same intention.
Luckily, even the animals display a fortuitous carelessness, and the Glassblood strike force passes above the walls undetected. As they drift towards their pre-selected drop point, the soldiers wordlessly obey Blackwing’s earlier order, grabbing hold of his proffered arm or the belt of a comrade who’s already found purchase.
Then, in a courteous manner ill matched to their objective, the merchant offers his human right hand to Clearheart. Summoning the vestiges of her courtly manners, she rests her palm in his and delicately wraps her strong fingers around the back of his hand. In the next instant, the mercenary captain feels her weight reduce to nothing as Blackwing steals gravity away. He lifts everyone but Candlewire from the platform, steps forward into the open air, and they fall.
The ground approaches at dangerous speed, but Clearheart trusts Blackwing’s judgement of distance and velocity. Rather than worry about their landing, she takes a moment to survey the field one last time.
Elevated platforms placed along the interior of the graft hunters’ wooden palisade provide their sentries with a clear view of the surrounding land, but none of the poor fools on watch think to look inwards or up. These guards, the only ones on duty, will be among the last inhabitants to recognize the presence of invaders. With no one else patrolling inside the walls, Clearheart may announce their arrival at her leisure.
In the last second before impact, Blackwing eliminates their collective momentum, and the infiltrators set down with a whispered scraping of soles against dirt. The soldiers release their hold on the merchant’s black arm and ready their weapons. Then Clearheart nods, and the assault commences without a word.
Their first target is a dormitory filled with resting criminals, though a soft glow escaping around its poorly-fitted frame reveals that some of those inside are still awake. They weren’t quite lucky enough to catch all of their enemies asleep.
Blackwing had placed them quite near the building’s entrance, so they have little ground to cover as they quickly and quietly move into position. One of her soldiers reaches for the door then pauses, waiting to receive the signal his captain always gives before the violence starts. She doesn’t keep him waiting.
Clearheart opens her graft and siphons away all traces of fear from the Glassblood contingent. Apprehension vanishes completely from their minds, and grim confidence fills its vacuum. On that cue, the waiting soldier throws open the door. In the same heartbeat, Clearheart floods the building’s interior with the inverse of her gift. Under her influence, every bandit on the other side suffers an instantaneous panic attack.
Chaos erupts. Her people capitalize on the disorder, swarming into the room and cutting a bloody path through the unprepared graft hunters. The first third of the room dies before it knows what’s happening, while the rear third turns and runs for the dormitory’s opposite exit. Members of the middle group, trapped in their position by the press of bodies to either side, grope for any nearby weapons and scramble to activate their magic.
Although most of their startled enemies sport at least one stolen graft, and some have usurped even more, that ill-gotten advantage won’t suffice to even the field. The Glassblood’s hold the edge in morale, cohesion, arms, armor, and skill. Their coordinated prowess and superior equipment lends her soldiers greater strength than these butchers could ever attempt to steal. However, even if this was a contest of magic against magic, Clearheart alone eclipses them all.
She focuses her attention on the men trying to resist, wielding her power in quick, tight bursts to interrupt enemy combatants whenever they make a half-competent attempt to fight back. Her psychic assaults don’t stop all of them completely, but she robs her targets of their focus and resolve in moments when they can’t afford a disruption to either. Their frightened attacks swing weak and fly wide before they fail to block the Glassbloods’ immediate and ruthless counters.
Easy prey.
At the back of the building, the final third of fleeing bandits find no respite from the slaughter. Soon after the first of them step outside, death rains down from above. A massive wooden stake, stolen from their own defensive wall, crashes into the tightly packed group with such force that it explodes into a cloud of shrapnel. Before the survivors can recover, Clearheart catches up to them. What follows thereafter doesn’t count as a fight.
When the final cry for mercy cuts short, Blackwing steps off the roof above them and settles back onto the ground. As he walks toward the wall to collect another stake, Clearheart nods her thanks to him, and he nods back. They pass each other without sharing a word, intently focused on their work.
The first and largest engagement of their assault has ended in absolute victory. Some of her soldiers suffered minor wounds, but they incurred no losses. Meanwhile, the greatest concentration of enemy forces lies in bloody squalor beneath their feet. This building was the graft thieves’ only barracks, their only source of reinforcements, and no one dwells there now.
The battle still had its price, of course; their presence here is no longer secret.
Shouts of alarm echo across the field. Frantic watchmen along the palisade scream warnings to the remaining buildings, alerting the late workers and rousing the officers who had slept apart from their men. In response, Clearheart pans her eyes across the sentry platforms, gifting potent fear to every soul that cries alarm. All who fall within her view choke upon their words and drop into silence. Half of them show enough wit to turn around and vault their bodies over the wall. The rest she leaves to dwell on their options.
Clearheart returns her attention to the action on the ground. Beams of light spill out from other buildings as their doors fly open and the occupants rush out. When these remnant forces catch sight of the invaders and their carnage, most of them turn and flee, dashing towards the compound’s nearest gate. As for the rest, some duck back inside the structures they emerged from, and the remainder sprint toward the central warehouse.
That last group becomes the Glassbloods’ next target. Clearheart would rather kill them in the open than fight them indoors, so she and her people move to intercept. On both sides, the warriors with momentum grafts engage first. Brass darts, dense stones, and spiraling javelins tear through the dark air, their range and power extended by magic. Again, the butchers demonstrate a slight advantage in potency, but their stolen grafts can’t do shit to fix bad aim.
The Glassbloods make it immediately obvious that they spend far more time at practice. Every enemy with ranged capability dies before the two groups clash, and the survivors follow soon enough. When the last corpse drops and the bloody night finally falls silent, Clearheart pauses to assess the field. Upon confirming that no enemies remain in sight, she turns her people toward the warehouse.
From behind, they hear a loud crash and boom as Blackwing drops another wall post through the roof of the officers’ quarters. The violent noise erupts without warning, but with Clearheart still consuming her soldiers’ fear, none of them even twitch at the sound. Their captain likewise pays the commotion no mind, trusting her erstwhile counterpart to handle himself. Without so much as a glance backwards, she signals her people to advance.
So far, the operation is going well. Her only concern is the apparent absence of a powerful leader. She had expected someone on the level of a basileus to claim command of an operation this large and profitable, yet no such warrior has emerged. The lack of a single opponent capable of countering threats like Blackwing or herself has made the grunt-level graft hunters vulnerable and weak. How much longer will that condition last?
Even distracted, Clearheart catches a flicker of movement from a second-floor window and raises her shield reflexively. An instant later, an arrow buries itself in the leather-wrapped wood. Wasting no time, she breaks from a jog into a sprint, running towards the warehouse’s closest door. A second arrow imbeds in the wood before she reaches the building and bursts inside.
Ambushers waiting within had prepared to strike at her with graft-born attacks, but she strikes first and harder. Her enemies’ hearts seize, their knees buckle, their focus evaporates, and some outright faint. None of them are ready to defend against her soldiers as the squad rushes in behind her. She joins them in mopping up the broken enemy line, and the night falls silent once again.
Now their only remaining task is to sweep and clear the rest of this building. In that work, Clearheart will again prove her dominance of the battlefield. Her power has two sides, and she can wield both of them as weapons.
The mercenary captain opens her graft to feed, drawing upon the ambient energy, tasting the air. With her acute sense of fear, she can judge the rough locations of surviving enemies hiding in adjacent rooms. She quietly signals their positions to her people, and the Glassbloods advance as silent hunters following the scent of blood.
Their cleanup work goes smoothly, guided by her insight. Clearheart’s unfair advantage reveals and eliminates several isolated opponents. Some were clearly waiting in ambush, while others seemed inclined to surrender after they were found. To her, it doesn’t matter who would have fought and who would have begged. Clearheart won’t offer them mercy after seeing the charnel house in which they worked.
Each of these thugs deserves the grisly end she’s brought them. For each butcher she roots out, she finds three additional corpses stacked on operating tables throughout their warehouse. Judging by the quantity of freshly amputated bodies, the graft thieves likely used this location as a processing hub for their operations across multiple cities. Purging this shithole of life is a chore she should have handled long ago.
Distracted by self-recrimination, and assured of her ability to sense her enemies before they see her, Clearheart holds her shield low and strides through the halls with a reckless confidence. Her soldiers trail behind, trusting their employer to protect herself. Their collective carelessness nearly costs Clearheart her head when another fear-binder lunges from the shadows of a room she thought was empty.
Ambushed by a man who had consumed his own fear, Clearheart receives no warning aside from a flicker of movement at the corner of her vision. The glint of a rising blade offers too little time for her to sidestep as the assailant bursts from his concealment. With impressive accuracy, he swings a wood axe into the gap between her helmet and her chest plate.
In the split second she has available, Clearheart manages to lean enough so that the blade barely catches the side of her neck instead of ploughing into her throat. Then it’s her attacker’s turn to suffer an unwelcome surprise when his weapon glances off a crystalline vein and deflects into the open air.
The redirected cut opens a sharp line of pain beneath Clearheart’s jaw, but it’s not enough to kill. Her opponent, having swung at full force under the expectation that his weapon would bury itself inside her spine, loses both his tempo and balance upon missing.
Clearheart punishes that misstep with a spear thrust into his armpit. He scrambles to evade but recovers too slowly, and she drives the point into his chest whilst slamming her shield against his axe hand. A vindictive knee to the groin sends him stumbling backward before he collapses, and his last words disappear behind a wet gurgle. Another life ended by her deeds.
Clearheart withdraws as her soldiers close protectively around her. She lets one of them tend the injury while the rest ensure that no threats remain in their immediate vicinity. Once her wound is cleaned and wrapped, she signals the group to continue forward.
There can’t be more than a handful of graft hunters left inside the compound now. Her group has already killed everyone on the first floor and most of those hiding on the second, including the archer who shot at them earlier. Indeed, the next living person she sees is Blackwing himself.
The merchant prince nearly surprises her when he climbs in through a second story window; she only barely senses his approach before she sees him. Though he’s not fully invisible to her graft-sense like the fear-binder she killed a minute prior, his apprehension is so low as to be nearly undetectable.
Blackwing simply isn’t afraid of anything that might be lurking in the darkness. Even Clearheart’s soldiers carry more worry in their hearts, and each of those men has a group of elite veterans to protect him while Blackwing moves alone. Clearheart’s estimation of the man rises yet again, and she greets him with a wolfish smile.
“All done outside?” She asks.
“Yes.” He answers professionally. “I cleared the remaining buildings, some of which no longer stand.”
Clearheart nods. “We heard all the crashes and saw some of the dust clouds. I admit, I would hate to have you as an enemy.”
“Good. I prefer to keep most people as friends.” He gestures at her bandaged neck. “Are you badly hurt?”
She waves a hand dismissively. “I’m fine. All my major blood vessels are part of the graft. His blade bounced off with only a minor cut. I’ll get it sutured later.”
“Very well.” Blackwing nods. “Have you seen their leader?”
“Not yet, but there isn’t much building left to search. If he’s home, then he’s straight ahead. Let’s dig him out.”
She strides ahead, and Blackwing joins her at the vanguard. As she’d told him, there isn’t much of the warehouse left to search, and they soon find what has to be its main office. Scribbled papyrus covers a small desk in the corner, with more sheets stacked in haphazard piles on a row of shelves. At the far end, two small windows look out over the compound and a closed door leads into an adjoining space with no other entrance.
The room’s most arresting feature is a trophy stand displaying a full human skeleton. Its ribcage, spine, skull, and horns comprise the graft, seeming to be carved from flawless amethyst. The remaining bones have a normal, yellowed complexion. Clearheart doesn’t recognize who this person was, but the darkening of Blackwing’s expression indicates he might have some idea.
Setting her curiosity aside for later, Clearheart opens her graft to sample the local fear and pulls a faint whiff of anxiety from almost directly above the door frame. She looks up and points out the enemy’s location to the others, drawing a circle in the air to indicate his rough position.
The warehouse doesn’t have a third floor, so their final enemy has either climbed onto his roof or else hidden in the attic. If it’s the latter case, then the door on the far side of this room might open onto a stairway. It’s worth checking before she asks Blackwing to lift her up from outside.
She signals her soldiers to hold their position then silently crosses the room. The closed door doesn’t have a lock, so she slowly and carefully pulls it open. As she suspected, she finds a spiral staircase on the other side.
She takes another sample of the ambient fear. The enemy hasn’t moved from his position, and his level of concern holds steady. He’s worried but prepared, so he must think he has a decent chance of surviving. Either he’s crazy, or he’s much more of a threat than any of the subordinates whom he abandoned to die.
Glancing back at the skeletal trophy, Clearheart concludes that he’s crazy either way. She waves for her soldiers to stay put again before climbing the stairway alone. In a fight between high-tier grafts, new rules come into play. Her people can’t assist her here.
She ascends the stairs with tempered trepidation, making as little noise as possible and keeping constant track of the enemy’s position. He hasn’t moved, and she doesn’t hear footsteps from anyone who might be avoiding her graft-sense. Just in case, she carries her shield before her as she reaches the top of the stairs and cautiously opens the door.
The stairwell lets out into a hallway, a feature she hadn’t expected to find in this short-ceilinged attic. To her right, an unshuttered window looks down on the devastation wrought by Blackwing and herself. To her left, the hall leads to an open door. Standing in that doorway, backlit by flickering oil lamps, Clearheart finally sees the enemy lord.
The bear of a man is a tall, burly, disheveled, and sweaty creature. He wears a wrinkled chiton clipped over a single shoulder, a vambrace on his left forearm, two greaves, and just one sandal. Clearheart notes multiple styles of graft dotted across his body. Although he looks naturally gifted, like herself, Candlewire, and Blackwing, he sports several additional stolen parts. All of his extremities, a good portion of his chest, and even pieces of his face display some variety of inhuman material. Their mismatched composition gives him a grotesque patchwork appearance.
He must have rolled the dice on surviving graft surgery at least half-a-dozen times. As his reward for taking that risk, he likely carries more storage potential than Clearheart herself. That factor alone won’t decide this fight, but it adds another advantage in his favor beyond his superior height and strength.
Knowing that she’d need to fight someone like him was a major reason Clearheart left the graft hunters alone for so long. She’s here now, though, and there’s no room for excuses, so she enters the hall and readies herself for a difficult battle.
The bandit surprises her by raising his hands in surrender.
“I give.” He calls in a gruff voice. “You win. I’ll go. Just stand out of the way and I’ll disappear from your territory forever.”
Clearheart immediately refuses the offer internally, but she can play along in the hopes of finding an advantage.
“We haven’t chased after anyone who ran away.” She tells him honestly. “If you go, we won’t pursue.”
That technically isn’t a lie, but only because she isn’t planning to let him get away in the first place. She’ll strike the moment she manages to create an advantage. The bandit starts saying something back to her, and she half-listens as she examines the room behind him through the fraction of the doorway his body doesn’t fill.
She spies a messy bed against the back wall, tousled and sweat-stained like the man himself. She considers, with derisive amusement, that the Glassbloods may have initiated their assault on his compound whilst he was engaged in the act. That goes some way to explain his absence from the fight, at least in its early stages.
Clearheart steps to the side, trying to look past the hulking man to catch a glimpse of his partner. She expects to find either a second warrior or a frail non-combatant, but she gets neither. Instead, her blood runs cold when she meets the lifeless eyes of the naked corpse lying on his bed.
Stealing their power wasn’t enough. He had to defile them too.
The man’s still speaking, but Clearheart doesn’t hear him anymore. She attacks without preamble, flooding the hall before her with the fear of death. She charges forward in the same instant, meaning to make his fear reality.
The bandit leader reacts to the sudden onset of panic in the same way as every other member of the Select in this world. He unleashes his captured energy in a blind, directionless flood. In his case, that energy comes as sound. A deafening wave of thunder blasts away from him in all directions. For any of Clearheart’s subordinates, the strike would prove debilitating, but this is a battle between high-tier grafts, and she has more tools at their disposal.
Clearheart flexes her dominion around her body, shrouding herself in an invisible shell of magical authority. The sonic assault crashes against her willpower and breaks like a wave upon rocks. The hit doesn’t even slow her down. It does, however, limit the extent of her power she can spare to attack.
Under a lessened pressure, the bandit recovers from her mental assault a second before she reaches him. He uses that time to grab the haft of a war-hammer he’d hidden against the interior wall of his room. As Clearheart thrusts forward with her spear, he returns a jab at her face with the spike jutting from his weapon’s head.
She sidesteps and ducks to avoid his thrust while redirecting her own strike. Her spear cuts his arm instead of impaling him. He ignores the injury and presses forward, swinging his hammer in an upward blow which she deflects with her shield. His attack drives Clearheart further back into the hallway and prevents her from reaching the mutually favorable open space of the room beyond. This retreat doesn’t trouble the mercenary, however, as the hallway’s narrow confines will limit his body’s movement more than hers.
The brute steps forward to maintain pressure, and again Clearheart yields her ground. She lands another hit even as she backsteps, slicing her spearhead across the outside of his advancing thigh. He counters with a clumsy downward swing meant to shatter her collarbone, but she twists it aside, and he achieves nothing more than a bruise to her shield arm.
Her opponent now bleeds from two injuries, but she’s only managed to strike his limbs. The man does a surprisingly decent job of guarding his core, keeping his weapon close to the center line. She has no clear opening through which to stab his heart or stomach, and peripheral wounds won’t sap his vigor fast enough to settle their fight before he drives her back to the end of the hallway and begins pushing her down the steps.
In order to win in single combat, she needs to break his mind before he steals her footing. It’s not impossible, but it certainly isn’t guaranteed.
Of course, she has a second victory condition, and they should be standing right above him now.
The bandit steps closer again, fully exiting the shelter he’d unwittingly received from the thick wood of a load bearing wall. As soon as his weight transfers forward, the wooden floor explodes beneath his advancing foot. A black, three-clawed hand grabs him by the ankle and hauls his body down. He crashes through the floorboards and smashes into his own desk in the office below.
Though stunned, the enemy suffers minimal injury from the first impact thanks to the partial shielding his authority provides against weight manipulation. So Blackwing throws him up against the ceiling before slamming his body into the desk again. After the second crash, the bandit abandons his sonic assault to focus his full attention on fighting the merchant’s influence. Blackwing’s next attempt to slam him into the ceiling barely taps his body against it, though the subsequent fall still looks quite painful.
Distracted and dazed, the outnumbered cretin barely manages to fend off Clearheart’s next assault on his mind. Her renewed pressure fails to pierce his defenses, but it splits his attention just before Blackwing hauls him upwards to prepare another drop.
A split-second after the next impact, Clearheart finds a weakness in the bandit’s soul. He feels that moment as strongly as she does and reacts instinctively, trying to force out her probing magic with his own, but she’s already wormed a finger between the seams of his sewn-together power, and she’s not letting his weakness go. If she can pull apart the threads binding his artificial authority and tear a hole in that blood-soaked tapestry, then she can rip apart his stolen magic.
Clearheart envisions a hundred grasping hands clawing at his stitches, fingers digging through the gaps in his mind to tear him open from within. As Blackwing lifts the bandit into the air once more, a genuine, self-sourced wellspring of panic erupts within the doomed man as he finally recognizes the true impossibility of escape. In that moment, Clearheart tears down his mental walls and suffocates his senses beneath a flood of fear.
From that moment onward, there’s nothing left but the formality of killing him. With no coherent defense against Blackwing’s assault, it doesn’t take long. After another three drops, he stops moving. On the sixth, his stolen shin graft detaches in Blackwing’s hand.
The fight, if she can call it that, is over. Clearheart surveys the room from her vantage above. Aside from the skeleton display, not a single piece of furniture remains intact. The floor buckles in multiple places, and a few snapped boards have fallen through to the ground level.
Impressed, Clearheart drops down through the hole in the attic. She lands on a relatively stable portion of the floor and strolls over to the bandit’s one-footed body. When she reaches him, she stabs her spear through the bastard’s eye, just to make sure. With that accomplished, she offers Blackwing a celebratory grin.
“Nicely done.” She compliments him.
He nods. “Likewise.”
Clearheart looks through the office’s main exit and finds her commandos sheltering further down the hall. She raises her voice and her spear to proclaim their common victory.
“Glassbloods! The night is won!”
Warlike cheers answer her call, and she smiles at the sound. Then she turns to her partner-in-mayhem and taps the back of her fist against his chest.
“We did good work tonight, Blackwing. This won’t destroy their trade or drive them away from our city forever, but it’s a major blow. Thank you for making it possible.”
He nods. “If my translator’s plan works, then we’ve done two good things tonight.”
“I hope so.” Clearheart sighs in sudden frustration. After a moment of internal deliberation, she asks him, “Would you do it, in my position?”
“Would I go back to sacrifice myself?”
“Yes…” He pauses, and she waits. Eventually he tells her, “I can’t imagine leaving my people in the first place.”
Clearheart frowns at his reply. “What’s done is done, and the Glassbloods are my people now, as are the civilians we protect. That’s the clan I chose. Your little interloper wants me to abandon them for the sake of a nation that raised me to become their sacrificial lamb. If I followed her back, I would damn my territory to chaos just to save a single life. And then her princess would die anyway in a quarter century. It isn’t worth what it would cost.”
“A fair point.” He acquiesces. “Either way, this is neither my decision nor my cause. The girl will have to plead her own case if she isn’t satisfied with the solutions we’ve created for her.”
“This is the best she’ll get from me.” Clearheart mutters. Then she glances towards the horned skeleton standing against the wall and abruptly changes subjects. “Was that someone you knew?”
Blackwing nods. “He was a famed sea captain, or so he claimed. I met him only once, in my youth; he retired from his trade at the same time I entered mine. I’d heard that he disappeared on a pleasure voyage more than a decade ago. Everyone assumed his ship sank in a storm.”
Clearheart looks over to watch his face but struggles to read his expression.
“Do you think his family would want to know the grisly truth?” She asks two questions at once, leaving the darker one unspoken.
He answers in a non-committal tone. “They might like to have his bones back.”
“They might, but telling them where those bones were kept could open fresh wounds for a clan that has already grieved him once.”
He nods but doesn’t answer. After a moment, she prompts him.
“Are we taking him for Owl, then?”
Blackwing spends a few seconds pondering the question before sighing deeply and closing his eyes. “People like us receive enough privileges in life. We don’t deserve special treatment in death also. His remains will join with the others.”
“Not like he still cares.” Clearheart agrees with a shrug.
“No. It’s not like he does.”
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