25th Day of Igbe in the First Month of Sun’s Height

4381 A.G.G. (252 Years Ago)

The City of Hisra, West of the Yavan Mountains

The Continent of Kazakoto

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Samahdemn

Despite my best efforts, I’ve always had a particular penchant for the smell of death. There’s not a time that I can rightly remember it not being about me. It’s long permeated my existence. It’s ever followed me. And never has it allowed me to escape it.

It filled my nose now as I moved swiftly amidst it; charging the assailant who stood several feet in front of me. His fair skinned face a hodgepodge of emotions as he gazed at the gore which used to be his allies strewn all about the street and sidewalks before him. His hand tightly clutching the nearly empty revolver that he’d been unloading in my direction.

He of course, hit nothing. I was able to dodge his shots by miles.

Regardless of the fact that I was swalii and such reflexive responses were as easy as breathing for those of us who are joined, he was still a bit of a sloppy shot for a killer.

I watched as his finger began to pull back on the trigger, almost as if it were in slow motion. And superimposed over my vision I could see the calculated courses of a number of possible bullets. The most probable ones that my Amalgamate could calculate, at any rate. This after taking into consideration my would-be killer’s movements, breathing, trigger discipline, heart rate, previous shot groupings and, of course, his assumed level of skill as opposed to mine.

It was right, as always. Unfortunately, there was both too much of a spread to allow for me to completely dodge everything cleanly and his grouping what a bit too tight to allow for any orthodox direction changes to avoid getting hit.

I found myself leaping to the side just as the first two shots rang out to avoid death. But I had too much forward momentum to stop without stumbling into the following ones and getting myself killed. So, I threw myself into a spin; twisting myself about nearly parallel to the ground midair.

I’d already adjusted my glaive’s ionization controls, mentally accessed the technologically advanced sword’s spill gates and hot white plasma was completely coating the blade as it intercepted the shots I couldn’t avoid while twirling. The bullets, which most likely would have hit me in the ribcage and stomach had I not attempted the dicey maneuver, were instead ricocheted across the street where I think I vaguely heard one of them shatter one of the block’s many storefront windows as I touched back down on the ground and brought my super-heated blade up to swipe at the man’s gun hand.

I had to give it to him, he was quick. A type of trained quickness.

Quick enough to jerk his hand back to avoid my swing.

…Mostly.

I’d been training with Tå’Sånnun for the past six months after all. A fox-kin woman who was power and heka incarnate. And my reflexes, while not Dįvįnë by any means, were still quite a bit sharper than most other humans by this point.

My blade hit the bottom of his muzzle, the impact causing him to fire again, but the shot was so high that I didn’t even bother to move my head to escape its trajectory. After that, the pistol was useless; its barrel sliced in twine and awkwardly twisted by my weapon. But it’s not as if it would’ve mattered for him otherwise.

I was already in a high side guard position with my grip firmly positioned in front of his face…and that’s exactly where I was aiming it when I used its hilt to shatter the bridge of his nose and simultaneously gouge his eye.

The blade isn’t the only part of a glaive, after all.

As the fool staggered backwards, dropping the ruined pistol and reaching for the source of his pain with his now free hand, I brought the glaive down edgeways upon his wrist; triggering it as I did. Plasma exploded across the top of the blade in all of its smoky white glory, forcing it downward in the direction of my swing. Through the muscle and bone to separate the limb in a mess of blood.

And there we stood; me repositioning my glaive for a final strike, and him looking disbelievingly at his hand laying on the ground amid a splattering of his own bodily liquids.

It was shock. I’d seen it many times before. The clammy skin. The dilation of the pupils of his blue eyes. The cold sweat. Looking back on it, he was already dead before I struck the fatal blow. He just didn’t know it yet.

My glaive exploded with another trigger pull as I swung upwards with all of the strength and fury I could muster. Its plasma coated edge cutting into his hip, up through his ribs and sternum, and out the top of his shoulder.

Gore and internals covered the sidewalk before me. It was glorious.

----------

My glaive was crossed in front of my body defensively with the dead man’s viscus blood sizzling over the plasma-infused heat of the blade. Both of my hands stood ready on its hilt. The white light produced by the plasm that slid like liquid across the sword spilled across the remains of the body that now sat slumped at my feet, highlighting the inglorious manner of the man’s death; having been cleaved nearly in two by it.

Bearly any sweat ran down over my brown skin or dampened my short locs. The only liquid that soaked my clothes was blood. I was covered in it; a sad byproduct of violent close quarters fighting. Luckily the afore mentioned training I’d been suffering through with the Ångëlįc she-fox prevented any of the blood from being my own. Her instruction even had the added benefit of making my glaive usage more coolant efficient.

Despite the violence that had just befallen me, the energy of my glaive, which is more oft than not strongly affected by its user’s adrenaline levels coupled with residual bleed off from one’s Amalgamate, was much calmer than it was the last time I held one a decade ago. Much less erratic and unpredictable. Not as power intensive.

But, if I’m being honest and fair, it also could’ve been at least partially chalked up to the Magick weaves that cradled my internal emotions just as much as to my aggressive physical conditioning. Rarely did I feel this good about myself, despite the fact that once again I found myself in a situation where I was taking life. A place that I’d promised myself I wouldn’t find myself again.

I hadn’t taken a human life in nearly a decade. (Admittedly, not for lack of trying in the case of Katelyn Claire.)

Much to my dismay, the last time I’d killed, it was disgraceful. Unnecessary. Stupid. A massacre of unwieldly proportions driven by wild anger and blind fury. Too many innocents murdered; women, children, elderly…

But I wasn’t angry now. I was calm. Attentive to the moment. And the blood shed today was justified and focused, even in all its ferocity.

Screams and commotion accosted my ears from all about me as my tunnel vision widened and my senses slowly opened back up. Pedestrians and motorists were scattering from the area in horror, leaving their belongings where they dropped them. Steam powered conveyances and otherwise along with carriages were abandoned in place once fear induced motor accidents inadvertently blocked all street passage.

“You ok…Sam!?” Jeruian yelled over to me, exhausted. “You hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“Fucking Goddess! You’re covered…in blood!” J didn’t often swear. But when he did, there was always cause.

Who does he think he’s talking to? I thought to myself. Apparently he’d forgotten that he was talking to a technologically augmented Absconder who killed fiends for a living and who’d been training to fight alongside Ångëlics. Literal Ångëlics.

What could simple men do to me?

Jeruian was several feet behind me on the sidewalk; previously in a half kneeling, half crouching position, leaning slightly to one side as he aimed around the bullet ridden frame of a steam car with his revolver at a body in the street. He stood cautiously, keeping his brown eyes trained down his weapon’s sights on the prostrate man, and side stepped to my back.

“I’m ok.” I re-confirmed. “Not my blood.”

“What in the…Goddess’ name was…that about?” Jeruian questioned over panting breaths.

“We must’ve…really pissed off…the wrong…fucking somebody.” Waimund responded; equally tired. His stout five foot seven frame heaving with heavy breaths. He’d tightened up our formation by walking closer to us with little regard for the attacker he’d been looming over but a moment ago; a man who was lying dead under a horse drawn carriage.

“Outright attacking us in broad daylight no less.” I added as I allowed my Amalgamate to feed information on the status of our opposition directly into my field of vision as it studied the bodies.

I could see the rate of their breaths, or lack thereof. Pupil dilation. Pulse.

They were all dead.

“By Åmbrosįå…do you ever…get tired?” Jeruian asked. “I don’t think…I’ve ever heard…you getting winded or…seen you sweat. Unfair.”

“Nothing I can do to help you there.” I responded, already mostly calm again. “The blessings of Hesijuan birth.”

----------

On the Subject of Amalgamates

In the eyes of the modern orthodox world, the swalii might as well be one of the Fallen. Living sacrileges.

While any significantly advanced tech is all but outlawed by religious decree, we’ve fostered a long-held love of technology. Ages before such laws were but a twinkle in the oratory’s eyes. It’s a love we hold to an intimate degree. So much so that it’s quite literally become a part of us through the unique relationship with the artificially intelligent machines that live within us.

Interwound. Symbiotic. They bestow onto us extraordinarily long life, and in exchange, our blood is pumped through them after it leaves our heart to keep them from overheating. Organic liquid cooling. We live, they live. Our blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen intake and more are all regulated for us by them. They produce chemicals to heal our wounds, prolong our cellular life, fight our diseases, ease our physical pains and even increase our chances of having healthy offspring.

And at times such as this, when we push our bodies to their limits, phosphates, lactates and Goddess only knows what else are expelled from my muscles twice over as fast as would otherwise be normal. All thanks to them.

Technological miracles they are. The absolute epitome of my people’s technological prowess. We’re born with the capacity to accept these machines into ourselves. We are weighed and judged during adolescence to determine if we are worthy of carrying one of the finite number of Amalgamates that are available at any given time for a host…or to see if we are found wanting.

If you’re not joined, you continue to lead an unextraordinary life. Average in every way. But if you are joined…

----------

“What can I say?” I asked with a hint of humor in my voice. “We’re just, better.”

“As long as…you’re joined.” Waimund interjected; too tired to allow the joke to pass.

“True enough.” I agreed without resistance as I examined the street looking for any further signs of aggression from any other possible attackers. So far, my Amalgamate wasn’t finding any. “Think it was retaliatory? Someone we collected remuneration for?”

“I can’t think…of any other reason off…the top of my head.” Jeruian answered as he slowly turned about in a stationary circle in my peripheral; finally safe in the knowledge that his mark wasn’t moving any more. He continued to scan all about with me; his freshly reloaded gun still drawn. Visually skimming the rooftops and all. “There’s a precious…few that we’ve hunted that…would have the coin to…push this kind of…weight.”

“True. It narrows the field quite a bit.”

“What do…those swalii eyes…of yours see?” Waimund asked.

“Nothing.”

“Shit Sam!” Waimund exclaimed seemingly out of the gold of the sky. “Are…you ok!?”

Apparently, he hadn’t immediately noticed my bloody visage. Tunnel vision affects us all.

The thought crossed my mind that- I must look like absolute death if that’s his reaction.

I studied him for the briefest of moments; taking note of the blood that tapped onto the concrete slowly from his side as he swayed lightly in place. But it was superficial from the looks of it, so I didn’t broach the topic. It would have likely only served to vex him; my doting over him.

“It’s not my blood Waimund. I’m good.” I quickly gave myself a once-over; for the first time noticing the full extent of the gore which covered me. “Might need to burn these clothes though.”

“Good. Then…that means that…I can shit down your…throat.”

As if my physical state of being would ever stop you Ray. I thought to myself.

“All the years I’ve been on this…job and I could count on one hand…how many people have shot at me.” he continued. “And now…I’ve been shot at twice in…the course of three…fucking months!” he exclaimed; his pump action shotgun held at the ready and loaded with at least three more rounds of double-aught buckshot.

“Quit your crying.” I answered jokingly. “You only got grazed last time. I’m the one who almost died.”

Waimund ousted a hard breath, expelled his edgy energy and grabbed hold of his breathing. “Says the man who was literally touched by…a fucking Ångël when it happened.”

I allowed myself to relax a little; the once clear and present danger now past us. I saw the window across the street that I’d heard struck by the round I’d deflected. It’s shattered remains strewn all about the ground. The women’s clothing store behind it was left fully exposed to the outside elements.

And that was the least of it.

The space about the sidewalk we stood on was a ruin of glass, debris and pieces of chipped concrete. At least some of it was from my conveyance, sadly. Silver coins glinted in the suns’ golden light about pieces of a parking meter some hundred or so feet away where they’d fallen after I’d accidently destroyed the machine with a missed swing of my trigger-propelled glaive. Vehicles and buildings all about us were riddled with bullet holes and scorch marks.

In short, it was a mess.

A young man was laying at the threshold of the store front nearest us; a man that Waimund was now making his way over to. He looked to be in his mid-twenties; malani. Smooth, short cut black hair framed his face. Brown skin. A newly minted lawman from the look of his cleanly pressed uniform, soiled now by the blood that leaked from the gunshot wound in his chest cavity. His was the first life taken by the people who assaulted us when he noticed our accosters’ weaponry and he attempted to act.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

A shame.

Another body, the one Waimund finished off before he’d regrouped with us, lay mangled in the spokes of the afore mentioned horse drawn conveyance where he’d left him. This one balani. The horses themselves had broken free of their aged harnesses quite completely after they were spooked by our exchange of gunfire and my glaive discharges. After the barouche took off and the horses broke free, the carriage’s advance was only halted after the assailant’s body now trapped within was crushed between the spokes and the transport’s rear elliptic spring. If that weren’t enough, from what I could see, the unidentified man’s body had already been ripped to shreds even before his unfortunate meeting with the carriage wheel. He’d been ventilated by the shotgun fire that pushed him into his final resting place alongside Waimund physically beating the man into submission before pulling the trigger; being the muscle-bound powerhouse that he was.

Finally, one last bloody and badly burned body was slumped through the shattered passenger window of my car; the one who I’d attacked and missed near the remains of the parking meter. You could hardly tell that he was once balani; his once fair skin now black and blistered. His blue eyes cut open by the shattered glass.

Three consecutive plasma discharges from my glaive had seen to his demise; aided by some choice gunshots from J who’d cut loose from a covered kneeling position to lend me lead-based assistance.

Fairly certain it was safe to do so, I shifted my position so that I could slide my foot out from underneath the half of a man that lay on top of it. I killed the power to my weapon and began quickly checking its systems.

All things considered, I was pleased with my new glaive’s functionality. Impressed even. Glaives, after all, were exceedingly exotic weapons which were rarely seen outside of my native lands…and almost never constructed elsewhere. And long had it been since I’d attempted to properly build one.

I’d salvaged what I could from my old weapon which was reluctantly left to my care by my former heka master, Lady Brigid, which was utterly destroyed during my foolishness in the Grand Spire Incident a decade prior. And the makeshift parts that I had to construct to compensate for what was missing didn’t really inspire me with an overabundance of confidence.

Not to mention that finding someone who was willing to break religious mandate and local law to assist me in constructing the illegal tech off of little more than raw curiosity was a whole other “can of worms”, as the Easterners say. And that’s ignoring the fact that the assistant forger would need to be as much an engineer as a smith; having the level of skill required to craft the complicated instrument from the diagrams I had in my possession.

Finding such a man boils down to a bit of luck wrapped in a miracle…helped along with a pouch full of coin.

And believe me, I didn’t skimp on the coin.

What all my effort and searching ended up affording me was not a man, but a stout, dark skinned woman with large arms left muscled from years of slamming hammer into steel. I remember seeing her smelting in her shop; covered in smut with hard black eyes gazing out from underneath short, sweat soaked black hair. A woman who, although skillful, ran a place of business that was little frequented because smithing was by-and-large a male dominated field and only men were taken seriously within it.

And while I had fair confidence in her talents, I was less inspired by the appearance of her struggling shop; which if I were to call it small, it would have been a practice in the art of understatement.

Honestly, all things considered, I half expected the blade to either overload my Amalgamate and kill me, or overheat and explode when I charged it…and kill me. A most humiliating and inglorious end indeed.

Much to my delight, it didn’t.

Jeruian must’ve been watching me as I stared at the instrument, as I suddenly heard his voice asking, “Is something wrong with it?”

He sounded much calmer; his combat high edging off.

“What’s that?” I asked, turning my head abruptly in his direction. Apparently, by the sharpness of his body language, I’d taken him aback slightly as he saw the green images that overtook my natural pupil.

“You’re staring at it.” he stated cautiously; seemingly suddenly unsure of himself. “Your sword.”

“Oh, no.” I said looking back down at the weapon. “My glaive’s fine. I was just checking the readouts.”

He cocked his head questionably. Lacking understanding. I sometimes forgot that no one could see the ghost images around the blade but me, as the information was fed directly to my eyes through the weapon’s power cable; jacked directly into the port in my forearm.

“Power consumption levels. Blade strength. Internal integrity. Forced charge count and etcetera.” I explained.

I looked back up at my dark skinned friend and saw his brown eyes behind those thin rimmed glasses of his questioning mine as he holstered his pistol. He nodded, but retained the look of a man who didn’t quite understand what he was nodding at; simply agreeing.

“Don’t worry about it. I know you can’t see any of it. The holographic information floating all over the blade is only visible to me. I’ll explain it better to you later…when we’re not in danger of dying.”

“Again.”

“True enough.” I focused on a few stray numbers about the hilt. “I’ll tell you though, I wish I could say I’m comfortable with the amount of coolant it’s burning. But the system is a bit piecemeal. Not master-crafted. So, it is what it is I suppose.”

“If you two are done chatting,” Waimund asked, shifting our focus back to the matter at hand, “Did either of you see where the fifth one went?”

“No.” I answered shortly; the glaive’s readouts melting away from my sight. “But I’d swear to you that I know his face Ray.”

“Know him? From where?” Waimund asked.

“You remember J?”

“Didn’t see his face clearly. Was it someone I’m supposed to know?”

“The mystery man Claire had been talking to in the cubby of that lounge the day we’d been trailing her.”

Jeruian looked as if I’d hit him in the gut with a bat. “Are you sure? That was a while ago. And then you ended up kind of…you know; comatose.”

I felt my face get overtaken by an involuntary frown. “You forget who you’re taking to?” I asked more defensively than I’d intended to.

“No. We remember. But total recall or no; Amalgamate or no, the fact of the matter is that you were in a medically induced oblivion for ten and one days Sam, and even an eidetic mind has its limitations. Ten and one. Fucking. Days.” Waimund stressed in his ever colorful vernacular. “You sure your memory is reliable?”

“He’s right.” Jeruian agreed supportively. “Not to mention that nobody was really sure how your augmented physiology was going to react to all those drugs at the time.”

“My memory’s fine. I remember everything about that day up to the moment I passed out. In excruciating detail.” I narrowed my focus; not wanting to slip into and loose myself in waking memory as was sometimes an affliction of my Amalgamate infested brain. And I moved carefully, deliberately, through each moment of reminiscence. “I remember you drinking my masala tea when I left the table just as I remember paying for our drinks and smoke after I…talked…to Ñä.” I recanted as I looked to Jeruian. “I remember fighting Katelyn in that shitty alleyway that smelled of garbage and steam; a bullet in my hand, dodging six shots, my vest eating a seventh, and dodging another before taking the ninth that nearly took my life. I remember staring down at myself as I bled out in the snow…shit. I mean, I remember Zåkÿntħos looking down at me, as I bled out.” I cleared my throat awkwardly after correcting myself after that last sentence. “Need I say more?”

Both men looked at each other for a moment, looked back at me and shook their heads.

Many an odd thing had encroached upon my existence since my brush with death. Knowledge of the existence of the Dæmöniȼ Plains and the Dįvįnë Realm; face to face meetings with members of the Choirs of Ångëls; the moment when Ëlzįëį, the Ångël of Faith, melded my thoughts with the High Drågon Zåkÿntħos…

Many of that ancient being’s thoughts and feelings were now mine. It was a disconcerting feeling to say the least; working to keep my memories and emotions separate from those of the old Drågon.

“Anyway, it’s the same guy.” I concluded. “I defiantly remember him. The dark skin. The short cropped, cleanly lined hair. The missing finger. The silver tooth that I saw glint for the briefest of moments in the smokey room. I even remember what he was wearing.”

“I swear I don’t understand how you do that.” Jeruian exclaimed.

“I know.”

Waimund, seemingly impressed, nodded to Jeruian, who shrugged his shoulders in response. “Good enough.” Waimund stated for the both of them.

I eyeballed his injury. A bit more closely this time now that things were quieter. “How are you Ray?”

“I’m just fucking dandy Sam. Just bleeding through my side, is all.”

“Through-and-through? It doesn’t seem bad.”

“No. Doesn’t feel like it. I’m pretty sure it’s just a graze. I know a specialist I can see later to have it looked at.”

“Good. I’d dread being forced to take you to the hospital right now given the circumstances.”

“True enough. We defiantly need to keep the lawmen from linking this shit show to us for as long as possible.”

That’s when I noticed the fifth person in question. He’d managed to flee however momentarily, only to collapse down the street. His body had failed him. But he was still breathing. Barely. It had been so shallow and intermittent that my Amalgamate missed it before.

This dwalli man lay in the center of the accident clogged throughfare on his stomach. Whether one of us fell him directly, or whether he caught a stray, I never bothered to learn. Regardless, as he was, he wasn’t much longer for this world. His wheezy breaths were crackly and ragged. Pink tinted bubbling saliva was exiting his mouth with each weak breath; his darkly brunette hair covered in sweat which mingled with the street grime and horse shit he’d landed in.

He was lung-shot. someone’s shots had hit true.

“Ray, I found your boy.” I stated; once again, more coldly than I think I intended.

“Speaking of the law, what are we to do about him?” I remember J asking somewhat sadly concerning the young constabulary lying dead at the store’s threshold, even though he likely already knew the answer. I guess that a part of him wanted to believe that Waimund or I would miraculously prove him wrong.

Waimund shrugged his stocky shoulders and shook his head. “Didn’t make it.”

I bit my lip in quiet anger. I knew I’d recognized the dwalli from the incident with Claire when he approached before the fight. I knew he’d somehow recognized us and meant us no good from his stare. And once I’d noticed his friends around us, I’d decided to waste precious time retreating to my trunk for my glaive instead of taking the fight to the fool outright. And as a result, a young lawman died trying to protect innocent people in the streets from the erupting chaos only to become a victim of it himself.

Never fast enough. I thought to myself.

I knew a problem when I saw one. And the appearance of these mystery killers was definitely systemic of a real big one. These were no amateurs. Salty dogs they were. Their movements were too fluid. Calculated even. And at least one of them knew when to try and cut-and-run; being the dying man in the street who’d even managed to give Waimund a run for his coin before he decided to exorcise the better part of valor and go rabbit.

“Interesting.”

“What?!” Ray asked in a most stunned manner after hearing the sound of me whispering to myself.

I’d apparently drifted into my own thoughts. “Nothing.” I lied. “Just thinking out loud.”

“Did you hear anything I just fucking said?”

“No. Sorry. Say it again?”

“I said we need to fucking move! It won’t be long before the city guard gets here and when they see all this-”

“Yeah. I get you.”

We’d gotten lucky with the way they came at us. Lucky that I caught them off guard when I brandished my weapon. It was easy to see the fear and surprise it struck in them. Although well organized, focused and capable, in remembrance, I can’t help but think that these assassins hadn’t truly realized what it was that they were getting themselves into with us.

Not at that point anyway.

If circumstances hadn’t been what they were, I’d have never had my glaive squirreled away in my vehicle. I’d never carried it before when not on a fiend hunt, but I’d been doing some stress testing on it and I’d forgotten to stow it back at my ramshackle home.

In point of fact, the last time I’d even deigned to have it within arm’s reach with the intention of igniting it was during a hunt for a popobawa several years prior; but there was no call for me to dawn it then as the creature never materialized.

I wonder how Dæmönic I must have looked to them; shifting past bullets like they didn’t exist. Blasting forth burning plasma from my blade’s tip. Spinning and slicing through solid metal as my blade was propelled with explosions of gas and white exhaust.

Not to mention Waimund and Jeruian’s excellent shooting.

“We’re in a bad fucking place here. I don’t know what this was, but as my mom would say, ‘it’s bad juju’.” Waimund continued to express. “We need to figure who these people were, who sent them, and if they’ll come at us again. And all of our clues as to the who’s, what’s, when’s and whys are right fucking here. If we let the local investigative teams get here, it’ll all get pissed away and we won’t have a single fucking idea of where to look for these people before it’s too late.”

“More coming you think?”

Waimund held out his hands as if to encircle all the bloody chaos. “Does this look like the type of thing that’s going the fuck away to you?”

“Look at this.” Jeruian said with the tenor of a man who’d stumbled across the answers to all of our problems as he drew our attention to the body I’d diced up and ripped open the remains of black shirt he wore. “Tailored clothes. Expensive body armor; thin yet strong and flexable.”

He kicked the dead man’s hand to bring attention to the pistol he carried; a revolver. .44 caliber. Recoil compensator on the muzzle.

“And high-quality weapons.” he continued. “These guys were funded. Well funded. If Waimund hadn’t introduced the one under the carriage to his scattergun thrice over at close range, he’d probably never have gotten through that ballistic undervest. Now that’s got to narrow down the possibilities.”

Katelyn Claire. I immediately thought.

“Ray’s right. People this determined are likely not people we’ll be able to reason with or even catch safely.” Jeruian continued as he pushed his glasses lightly up on the bridge of his nose with an almond skinned hand. “Somebody wants us dead in a way I can’t even begin to fathom. We’ll need to get ahead of this. Find the root of the problem, and-”

“No need to spell it out. I agree.” I confessed.

“I hate to further rain on this shit parade,” Waimund interjected, “but you need to put that what’s-a-ma-jigger of yours away-”

“Glaive.” I corrected.

“Whatever. And say goodbye to your expensive auto-mobile. Pull the plates and let’s get away from here before the law breaks through all this congestion in the streets. Papers or no, they’ll be tempted to shackle you for the Amalgamate and the eye by themselves. Let alone the glaive and all of the shit you have in that land-yacht you call a steam conveyance.”

“Even as thick as the law can sometimes be,” J added, “You can be sure that it won’t take them long to tie you to the Grand Spire once they get their hands on all of that. Even a baby could trace all that equipment of yours. Then they’ll fry all of us. Put us to the sword.”

“Probably publicly.” Ray said snidely.

“And there’s nothing anyone’ll be able to do for us at that point.” Jeruian supported.

They both had a point. Unfortunately. It was a bad situation either way it went. “No argument here.” I agreed as the distant sound of sirens became vaguely present to our ears; as if on cue.

I felt myself look sadly to my car. Two of its six tires shot to Brŭmal and back. Side panels damaged all to be damned. Burned body in the window. Interior lousy with blood. And that’s without even considering that the cobblestone streets were congested with abandoned conveyances. So it wasn’t going anywhere even if I’d wanted it to.

My sigh was audible.

“I agree with pulling the plates, but that won’t be enough. We’ll have to slag the conveyance to the frame. Too many augments.”

Waimund scoffed at the task as he looked to Jeruian who simply shook his head. “And how do you suggest we do that? I’m afraid that I don’t have any dynamite in my cargo pants.”

“Don’t look at me Ray. It’s not like I have any in my slacks or something.”

“Look in the boot.” I said; pulling the keys from my pocket and tossing them to Waimund. “There’s a black utility bag in there. There should be three gray canisters in there. Cylindrical. It’s thermite. One should do the trick.”

Both of my colleges’ eyes widened to a comical degree.

“It’s an incendiary. Kind of like dynamite, but…I don’t know…concentrated. It melts instead of exploding. Think of it as lava in a can.” I said, answering their unspoken questions.

“Nope. Nope, nope, nope. I’m not getting anywhere near that…shit. No. Nope.” Ray exclaimed in response. It was as if his brain had shut down to the very idea of it.

The sirens were becoming more audible. Packed streets wouldn’t hold them forever.

“Does it look like we have time to argue about this? You know that the religious mandates against my people are man-made bull. You know both Åmbrosįå and Sånįgron sent Zåkÿntħos here on my behalf. So you know that She won’t hold anything you do with me against you.”

“Within reason I’d fucking wager.”

“I need you to put your overly strict religious upbringing to the side for five damn minutes Ray!”

He acquiesced to the apparent logic behind my aggravated yelling; however reluctantly. At least, that’s how I took it. Either way, that was the end of the argument.

“J, get the plates. Ray, get the bag. You’ll pull the pin on the top and throw one of those cylinders on the dash board and get the hell out of the way. That’ll all but melt everything important to nothing in the first few seconds. And by the time the fire is extinguished by the fire department, the rest of my steam conveyance should be little more than a frame and a bricked engine block. But don’t pull the pin out until we leave.”

“And what about you?” Jeruian asked with nervous intensity.

“There’s something I need to do first.” I the still smoking blade of my glaive at the man in the street. “Before he dies, he’s going to confirm some things for us.”

“Sam,” Jeurian protested, “you said yourself, we don’t have the time.”

“For this? Yes we do. He has information we need. The hard information. No speculation. And we have to get it before he finds himself in Brŭmal. He’ll answer for this…and he’ll talk to me.”

I activated my glaive again for the briefest of moments as I stabbed it forcefully into the malleable mortar between concrete slabs in the sidewalk; its plasma coating allowing it to bite into the path with relative ease. “Believe it.”

Jeruian looked about at the insanity and sighed. Almost as if the reality of the moment had just truly hit him. He looked as though he wanted to swear to Åmbrosįå, but didn’t for fear of using a Goddess’ name in vain whom he knew all too well to exist; not wanting to incur Her wrath.

“Remind me again why we put ourselves in these hilariously fucked up situations for you, Sam?” Jeruian asked. It was odd to hear the swear coming out of his mouth, in his accent. He wasn’t like Waimund. He didn’t often do it. But when he did, well…there was always a reason.

“I don’t know.” I answered while keeping my eyes directly in front of me, on the dying man’s body. “For the coin? Because Brigid asked you to look out for me? Because the Ångëls entrusted you to it? Because you love me? Fear of shared stockades if we don’t help each other? Any of these ringing any bells for you?”

“Not particularly. Maybe the Ångëls.” Jeruian replied; possibly attempting to fish some humor from the sanguine moment.

“Possibly the coin.” Waimund added. “But it’s more likely the gaol time.”

I almost laughed darkly despite myself.

Then, with but a thought, I released the blade’s umbilical and its male ends fell free of my arm ports as the white coloured energy that flowed about it ceased to exist. There I left the weapon sitting upright in the ground. Its blade sizzling and smoking; cooked-on blood and all.

“Don’t touch my glaive by anything other than the hilt if you must.” I called back behind myself without looking as I moved forward. “The blade’s quiet, but it will still irreparably burn your hand and…possibly slightly irradiate you. It’s still baking from ionized plasma.

“I’ll be right back. Remember, no thermite until we’re booking it out of here. When it goes up, we won’t want to be around.”

“Fuck!” I heard Ray exclaim as he threw the keys to Jeruian. “You’re getting that stuff out the trunk J. I’m getting the plates. I’m not touching it.”

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to bring myself to forget it; that Balani man’s final moments there in the street as I watched the life drain from his light brown eye. It was the first killing I’d felt right about in a long time. Not even during my time as a Knight of the Order, when I was swallowing their lies and following their doctrines of chivalric conduct, had I felt so…justified. This was a man who deserved to die. This was a man worth killing.

It was the first conscious step I can remember taking towards being the child that I thought Fate wanted me to be…