one had been a sking questions about the team — and specifically about Danica — for the past several days.
Someone hunted them, and they had no one to fall back on for assistance except for each other and their “ host ”, a local crime lord named Klos Vago. And Vago’s help came at a price.
The team had rented the entire top floor of an extremely run-down hotel called The Fire Goddess, located near the center of the city. The walls were grooved metal stained with rust and soot, and the entire structure appeared to ha ve been built from the rem ai ns of a crashed airship. F lickering beams of grungy light cut through circular fans in the ceiling. Danica heard the groan of aircraft and dirigibles and the roaring engines of gas-powered sea vessels as they pull ed into port. A glaze of sweat covered everyone and everything in Blacksand, and pollut ion hung as thick as oil in the stifling heat.
Danica pulle d open the door to her quarters and stepped into the hall.
“Morning,” Ronan said quietly. The swordsman was lean and tall, dressed all in black, with metal-studded boots and fingerless gloves. One hand gripped a throwing dagger, while the other held an MP5 A5. His short and spiky hair was dark and looked like it had never been properly groomed. H is once-good looks had been permanent ly marred when he’d leapt into a blade storm to pull Cross to safety. Most of Ronan’s cuts had largely healed, but he still wore several messy bandages, and most of the time he wore a black shemagh to conceal his face.
“Morning,” Danica said.
“I’m kidding. It’s noon.”
“Whatever.”
One of the other doors in the hall opened. Maur wande red out; he fidget ed with something in his small hands. The diminutive and pale-faced Gol wore red fatigues. He’d left his cloak in his room, and his bald grey pate was basked with sweat.
“Maur says it’ s far too hot in this building,” he said. None of them knew why he always referred to himself in the third person, but he’d been do ing it for as long as any of them had ever known him. It had made the team’s first interview with the pilot-mechanic somewhat confusing, and during most of the conversation Kane had been convinced Maur was talking about someone else.
“It’s like that everywhere in Blacksand,” Ronan said snidely.
“Then Maur thinks we should leave.”
“We’re working on it,” Danica said.
Unfortunately, they were in something of a bind. They had to try and purchase passage to get back home, but that wasn’t going to be easy with no money and with someone actively hunting them. The identity of their stalkers had yet to be revealed, but from what they’d learned whoever it was had sold iers stationed outside the city, as well as plenty of money and influence. According to Vago, every cutthroat bounty hunter in Blacksand had their eyes out for them.
And there are a lot of bounty hunters in Blacksand, Danica thought. Like… half the population. I wish we hadn’t blown the rest of our cash paying two week’s rent on this dump. Of course, they’d had little choice after a near-fatal run-in with a squad of Vuul headhunters. That fight was what had first tipped them off to the fact that someone in Blacksand was actively hunting them down. They weren’t able to afford passage away from the city, but they ’d had enough money to go into hiding, at least for a short time. And now we’re trapped.
Danica nodded towards the door behind Ronan.
“How is he?” she asked.
“Same as ever,” Ronan said quietly.
“Morning!” Kane said as h e came out of his room. He wore no shirt, and his pants were partially undone. His long blonde hair fell just past his shoulders. Dozens of tattoos and scars covered his chiseled chest and washboard stomach.
If I was straight, I would probably jump you, Danica thought with a quiet laugh.
“ Not morning. Lunch time,” Ronan said.
Kane threw up his hands in mock despair.
“Get dressed,” Danica told him. “We have to meet with Vago.”
“What does Ugly the Hutt want?” Kane yawned. He pulled on a dirty grey shirt as he walked across the hall. “Is he finally going to help us?”
“That’s what he said when I spoke to him,” Danica said, and she didn’t bother hiding the skepticism in her voice. Vago had dangled them around like worms on a hook for over a week. They’d already performed a handful of odd jobs for him, but t hey needed him to agree to terms of how much service they’d provide in exchange for passage north, and they needed him to do it before their mysterious pursuers caught up with them. “ Maybe he can also tell us who’s looking for me.”
“Us,” Ronan said. “You mean ‘us’.”
Black hesitated. “Yeah,” she said. “Us.” She looked at the door. “I’m going to go say hello.”
The door opened to a stark concrete room. They’d chosen it because the small window was reinforced with an iron grille and it faced south, so very little sunlight came into the room… although none of them was sure why that mattered. Direct sunlight was unlikely to stir the occupant of the chamber. The bed was neat, nearly made, even though a man lay on top of it.
Eric Cross was twenty years older than when he’d left the team behind to go and find out what had happen ed to him after he’d fallen in to a vat of necrotic fluid in the Bonespire near Thornn. He’d never come back. They’d pursued him halfway across the continent before they’d caught up with him. Even after they’d found him, his nightmare had been far from over.
H is once boyish face was lined with age and fatigue. E ven after they’d changed him out of his soiled clothing and trimmed up his dark and scraggly beard he was still just a haggard reflection of who and what he’d once been. He was tall and thin, and skin once pale had gone darker, almost leathery.
Danica quietly stepped up next to his bed. He hadn’t woken since they’d rescued him. They’d lost two of their team getting him back, and they had very few answers as to what had happened, or why he was still asleep. They didn’t know how to help him.
But if we can ever actually get you back to Thornn, maybe we can find out, Danica thought. God damn this place.
She ran a finger along Cross’ weather-beaten cheek. He looked so strange with a beard. She hated seeing him like that, so helpless. So alone.
When I first met you, I thought I was going to have to kill you, she thought. Now I owe you everything.
“Come back, Eric,” she said softly. She knew he couldn’t hear her.
After a time she left him there, and she closed the door behind her.
Gouts of steam erupted into the air. Human traffic packed lanes filled with caged animals, livestock, tables of linens and knives, fruit stands, watch vendors, fortune-tellers and soothsayers. People were dressed in a motley assortment of loose clothing, tunics or capes, sandaled feet or combat boots, exotic and colorful cloaks that looked like peacock’s feathers or somber grey and green work fatigues. Small dirigibles loaded with goods soared overhead. Rickety wagons barreled down the street. Mutated horses and homunculi servants brayed and keened in the background. The team passed through drifts of tobacco and alcohol, fruit vapors and burning meat. Danica smelled linseed oil and beeswax, smelted copper and roasted corn.
Her spirit kept to the background and quietly skirted the periph ery of her thoughts while they passed through the bustling city-state. Kane and Ronan kept their eyes alert. They were all exhausted and on edge, but everyone was ready. They were in dangerous territory, and she knew she could count on them.
Blacksand was a port-city. It was a crossroads — a means to getting elsewhere. Travelers of all sorts stalked the corridors of Blacksand looking for buyers or wares: Rakzeri merchants, Vuul pirates, nomads from the distant islands of Nezek’duul with their filed teeth and frost-white eyes. Waters lapped against dark pylons in a bay filled with iron and steel ships weigh t ed down with weapons and slaves. The s andy streets were awash with liquor and blood.
Danica, Kane and Ronan moved through the streets with determination. They’d left Maur back at the hotel with Cross and a lot of guns. The one thing they hadn’t left there was Cross’ s wea pon, the mysterious fused blade Soulrazor / Avenger, a rcane swords forged from opposing energies. They knew little about the blade save for the fact that the separate pieces had been forged from the power of two opposing deity-like forces, and that it had somehow allowed Cross to survive long after he should have been dead. Danica carried the hybrid blade concealed beneath her armor coat.
