With a sudden start that threw her grimy blanket up into the air, Eryth leaped up out of the steel-framed bed that had been her nightly resting spot for something close to two years. This had the unfortunate side effect of tossing her blanket up into her face, thus impairing her vision, and making it quite impossible to avoid stumbling over the pack and traveling boots that she had meticulously arranged beside her bed the night before.
With the supreme grace of a sack of stones being dropped off a rickety scaffolding by an inexperienced and jumpy builder, Eryth's face clipped her bedside table, then made a hasty introduction to the floor.
Smack.
“Aaauuauaughgh.”
Loosing a rather pitiful groan, the crumpled-up mummy disentangled herself from both blanket and ground and got back up on her feet with only a minor sway.
Eryth reached over to her bedside table and flicked off the angry alarm, taking only a moment to look out at the balmy red sky through her fogged-up window. Collecting herself with a brief sigh, she shook off the residual dizziness.
"Right. Put on the uniform, then head to the canteen."
As she assembled her uniform, Eryth's mind combed over all the excitement that she was (hopefully) going to soon experience. She finally would be untethered from the local office of the Post Guild.
She was finally heading sunward and would get to traverse the Great Desert and its eternal winds.
Above absolutely all else though, she would finally, fucking finally, get the absolute hell out of Breakwater.
Ah, Breakwater, the town with a name that could belong to any other. Breakwater existed for one reason and one reason only. Fish. Fish and the accumulation and dispensation thereof. Thanks to its somewhat sunward location along the Break, this entirely unremarkable town had the modest benefit of catching more light than most while still being situated along one of the countless freshwater lakes that were endemic to the region.
However, these mild accolades did little to assuage the primary issue besieging the location. It was still located in the goddamned Break. The balmy sky? Eternal. The "more than usual" amount of sunlight? A pale and dissipated rusty glow that barely slipped past the horizon when the clouds were thin. It made the sky look like a nasty mix of ash and blood and cast everything in surreal monochrome.
Between the sanguine glow and the foul odor that somehow managed to accumulate despite the constantly shifting storms, it was like living in purgatory. You'd think living darkside would be worse, since at least along the sunward half of the Break there was sunlight, but the hellish glow meant that the town hadn't bothered to build an exterior lighting system. At least with artificial light, you get to see more colors than just red.
Eryth might have been a bit sick of living in Breakwater.
Slipping out of her nostalgic contemplations, Eryth finished lacing up her boots and gave herself a quick check in the mirror attached to the tiny closet her simple room was equipped with.
Her courier's uniform was a basic set of worn traveling denim with leather reinforcement on the knees, a simple long-sleeved tan shirt, and a faded brown leather vest covered in pockets and a few straps to hook small tools onto. Her shoulder-length reddish-brown hair was tied into a sloppy but serviceable bun, and a smile played on the corners of her iron-grey eyes as she thought about finally laying eyes on the Great Desert.
Satisfied, she marched resolutely to the painted steel door that led out of her room and made her way into the Post Guild's mess hall. After collecting her morning ration (calling it food was sometimes a question that occupied the more philosophical of the couriers), Eryth plopped down at one of the empty tables filling the plain rectangular room.
She had barely started her attempts to imbibe some kind of watery soup when a firm slap on the back caused her to send a small spatter of the fishy substance onto her metal meal tray.
"Eri! You're up earlier than usual. Hoping to make good on your promise to burn down the cannery before we head out?"
A grinning giantess with a dirty blond crew cut, dark skin, and an utterly unrepentant expression playing across her deep brown eyes met Eryth's attempt at an icy glare. Attempt, because it is very difficult to pull off intimidation when disadvantaged by almost a full foot. The slow dribble of soup making its way down Eryth's chin was likely also a factor.
With a slow sigh that morphed into a suppressed smirk, Eryth regarded her friend and co-worker who would be partnered with her for her first run Sunside.
"The whole town is infected with the smell of fish and misery, what makes you think I would stop at just the cannery?"
Sam echoed her grin. "As if your stubby legs would be enough to escape the inferno. You'd perish with the fishes before you could finish setting the first fire."
As Sam sat down with a dull thud across from Eryth an exhausted-sounding voice cut into their banter.
"Can you two stop joking about arson? I've started getting suspicious glares from the fishery workers whenever I have to make deliveries to them."
Much more softly than Sam, with a thump that somehow sounded slouched and tired, the third member of their trio set down his meal tray and started sullenly chewing on his barley bread.
"Joke? " Eryth looked over inquisitively. "I would never joke about doing a public service."
The exasperated Arnold gave her a glare much more potent than her own attempt. The complete lack of amusement made it much more effective. The dark circles that always plagued the pale black-haired boy's face added to the effect as well.
"I'm serious. I've been approached twice this last week by patrolmen who were interested in having a little 'chat' with me about what I was up to last Sunday."
"Well, to be fair, suspecting someone with a fire-aligned vis is a pretty logical assumption, at least from an investigative standpoint." Eryth countered with a thoughtful expression. "I mean, the fact that the Maye estate even managed to burn with this fish-stain of a town's weather is somewhat impressive. Plus, when you consider the previous fires.."
Arnold made a face at her rather inventive descriptor. "Fish-stain?"
"Well, that's more a feature of the Break as a whole rather than something to blame on Breakwater." Sam argued, completely ignoring Arnold’s confusion.
She then turned towards him brightly. "Don't worry about it Arnie, we'll be on our way out of here before the cops can even think of arresting you for burning down the old fart's house."
"I said not to joke about arson, and I never said you could use that as a nickname."
His reply was completely devoid of mirth and saturated with the kind of resigned desperation that comes from deep tribulations. "Why are you guys so excited to leave the Break anyway? The only thing up in Sunside is sand and rocks."
Arnold was a Breakwater native, and quite comfortable with that fact. If not for the bonus that came from making a delivery run that crossed into Sunside, he would probably have been content slinging sardines between dimly lit fishing towns for the rest of his life.
Sam wagged her spoon at Arnold. "Hey, only Sunsiders are allowed to talk bad about Sunside Arnie. There's a code."
Arnold was unimpressed.
"My question is how can you not want to go to sunward." Eryth chimed in. "They have actual sunlight! Honest to god, yellow sunlight. Not this gross orange garbage that we have here. Aren't you curious?"
"No." He was unflappable in his disinterest.
"Then why even bother making a delivery run there? Wait, don't tell me," Sam faked a gasp and clutched at her heart. "Would you miss us if you were left here alone?"
Arnold rolled his eyes with a conviction that would convince a jury of a defendant’s innocence even as that same defendant murdered the judge.
"My matrix is getting old." He gestured to the patinaed bit of hardware on his forearm, its tubes sliding beneath his skin and into his veins. "And the best artificers all live sunside."
He wasn't wrong. Mining was near impossible in the Break, the constant rains flooded any operations before they could even get to bedrock. The arid expanse of the Great Desert however was close to ideal for mining. The only natural hazards were the violent winds, but that didn't matter too much once you were below the surface.
Back in the Break, however, no access to metal meant no tech. Or rather, no tech that wasn't hilariously expensive on account of being imported across treacherous terrain over vast distances. That and the ease of solar and wind power meant that the further sunward you went, the more advanced the cities... at least to a point.
"You could just buy an old general-use model." Eryth offered and pointed to the small device on her own arm. "Burn off the vis for cheap."
Arnold gave her a look. "And give up the ability to sling fireballs?"
Eryth shrugged. "Just a thought."
She wouldn't have seriously considered it either.
"Not all of us are as good a shot as you Eri, we've gotta rely on the vis in our blood to get us through." Sam laughed. "I still can't shoot for shit even after you went full sensei mode on me."
Eryth had at one point gotten so fed up with Sam's trash shooting that she swore on her honor that she would at least get her good enough to send lead downrange more than half the time. What followed was not pleasant for either party. Sam still had nightmares. Eryth still had scars. The duo had agreed that it was better for everyone if Sam never touched a firearm again.
"Yeah well, after getting a taste of your marksmanship I can scarcely believe you're capable of depth perception." Eryth talked around a soup-soaked piece of bread. "How do you manage to aim your metal shards so well when your shooting is so trash?"
"Yeah well," Sam smiled as she made her spoon hover, then fly in tight circles around her head before landing directly in her open hand. "I guess some things just come naturally."
Eryth felt a little pang at watching the display but crunched the feeling down into dust. She was about to be on a long-term trip with these people, no use getting upset over petty stuff before they even left town.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Eryth stood up.
"I'll meet up with you guys at our caravan later, I have a side job that I need to check on before we actually head out."
Arnold slightly raised a brow. "What are you up to now Eryth?"
"Ooh, Eri's off to do her nefarious misdeeds. Give us enough time to clear the town before you start the inferno."
Eryth rolled her eyes. "Stop being dramatic, I'm just taking an extra delivery on the side."
Arnold narrowed his eyes. "Outside the guild?"
"Meh, sorta? I'm not competing with a guild contract if that's what you're worried about."
"Sounds suspicious to me." Sam chirped. "Why go outside the guild?"
"Guy has some personal hang-ups about privacy. Look, it's fine, alright?" Eryth lowered her voice. "Besides, I've been doing deliveries outside the guild for months, some people just don't like the guild’s bureaucracy and are willing to risk going without the guarantee."
Arnold looked shocked, but Sam's eyes glinted.
"Ah, is that how you manage to afford all your old tech toys? Clever Eri, I approve!" She nodded.
Eryth shook her head. "You two are gonna make me late." She looked over at Arnold, who seemed a bit conflicted about her newly revealed extra income. "If it bothers you that much Arnold, I’ll call the client and cancel. It’ll piss them off, but if it makes you uncomfortable I can do it.”
His expression was still sour, but it morphed slowly into his familiar resigned annoyance.
He sighed. "No, I guess I don't care that much. But keep the details to yourself, I don't want to get mixed up in your stuff when you inevitably get caught."
"It's not even technically against guild rules, but sure. I won’t mention it again."
~
Eryth popped by her dorm to grab a synthetic poncho before making her way out of the guild building and into the gloomy streets of Breakwater. The weather today was only mostly terrible; without any howling wind, the light drizzle simply rolled down the rain gear's hood.
Arnold could talk up Breakwater all he wanted, it was perfectly fine to be completely wrong, but every time Eryth trekked through these dim and foggy alleyways she couldn't help but imagine herself in the underworld.
The faint splashes her steps made as she stepped through the small puddles that were constantly forming were smothered by the humid air, and other pedestrians appeared and disappeared behind the fog as they passed. The faint red glow of the sun saturated the mists, and only the bright light of advertisements and store displays injected any color into the space.
Eryth couldn't wait to get sunside. This place was depressing.
She sent off a ping to her customer as she moved through the streets. Only being mesmerized by the scent of street food once before she was able to re-establish the delusion that the ration from the guild's mess hall was indeed sufficient sustenance.
She arrived at the small square that she had agreed to meet at. It was on the periphery of the town, but it was still moderately busy. There were a couple stalls selling vegetables and a bit of actual meat. The wildlife around Breakwater was limited, and the terrain too boggy for proper agriculture, but there were some critters around that weren’t corrupted.
She gave a stall selling some kind of flattened fish thing a side eye for contributing to the everpresent fishy stench. As the scattered sounds of commerce wafted around her she checked her comm only to see that she still hadn't received a ping from her customer, and it had been over half an hour since she had sent her own.
Annoying, but she had made deliveries for this contact before, so she wasn't too worried.
She approached one of the benches at the center of the space. Wiping off most of the puddles that had accumulated there, she sat down and took a breath.
Running tech around was one of those things that wasn't really illegal per se, Eryth was no criminal. These extra deliveries were just, well, let's call them wibbly. The guild liked to know exactly what they were having their couriers moving around, but oftentimes even figuring out what a piece of old tech even did was a rather complicated prospect. They used materials that were hard to replicate with modern manufacturing. Plus, sometimes things like to disappear en route.
Despite that, Eryth idly wondered what she would be carrying this time, usually, you brought tech from Sunside, not to it. The ruins in the Break were too waterlogged for any exploration or looting. Maybe something from Darkside? Now that would be really wild.
Just as her attention started to drift, somebody else quickly sat down next to her on the bench.
"Courier Cassidy?" A low and scratchy voice asked from beneath a hood.
She froze for a moment. This was not her contact.
Her non-response seemed to inspire some worry in her benchmate, who started reaching into his side bag.
The motion thawed the frozen cogs in Eryth's brain. She elbowed the man in the head with a sharp thump, knocking him off the side of the bench. As the stranger collapsed in a heap, Eryth fumbled for her sidearm. The surprise had thrown her off.
"And who would you be?" her tone was direct. She raised her pistol at the prone form.
"Wait!" The man coughed heavily as he clumsily removed his hood, revealing a well-worn face with fading burns. "Please, *cough*, don't shoot!"
"Holy shit, Mr. Maye?" Eryth just stared at him for a moment, blinking, then immediately started helping the middle-aged man to his feet. "I thought you died when your dump of a house burned down?"
He glared at her between coughs.
She looked him over as she waited for his cough to die down. She almost didn't recognize him, his dusty blonde hair had been cut short, and his trademark beard was completely gone, even if its loss was an improvement to his overall appearance.
Mr. Maye dealt in old tech, and he was effectively the source for all the artifacts that flowed into this side of the Break. Eryth had moved some of his stuff between towns before, but she had never had him hand something off to her directly.
"Yeah.. sorry for the rudeness, my coworker got me all wound up about doing extra work like this. That, and your voice sounds kinda.. messed up." She scratched at the back of her head as the two of them sat back down. "Not to double down on being rude but, why are you here?"
"Miss Cassidy, who else in Breakwater even deals in old tech aside from me. Who did you even think you were delivering for?"
"I'm not that dumb, I mean why are you here rather than your errand boy? Especially since you're clearly pretty screwed up from whatever happened to your house?"
While reviewing the damage to his appearance, Eryth noticed that Mr. Maye's eyebrows were gone, probably burned off. She fixated on where they used to be while he started to reply.
"I haven't been able to get in contact with him for the last couple days." He grumbled as his not-brows furrowed. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a small package. "I'll chew him out once I see him again. Get this to Chaolus, somebody will meet you when your caravan breaks up. Payment on delivery."
Eryth refocused at the mention of payment. Specifically, the fact that the payment was not now.
"Hey, that's not the arrangement." She made no move to take the package. "Pay upfront. I won't be back in Breakwater probably ever (hopefully), so what am I supposed to do if your friend gets stingy?"
Something flickered through his eyes for a fraction of a moment. Impatience? But it was covered with annoyance before she could truly register the slip.
"Most of my stock was destroyed in the fire, either take the delivery or don't. But if you don't take it you won't get an introduction, and we both know my network is something you want access to."
Eryth feigned aloofness. She had every intention to accept even though the delivery wasn’t ideal. The only question was how much richer it would make her. She crossed her arms.
"Fine, but this whole delivery has been shady as heck so far. The normal payment won't cut it." She played with numbers in her head. "Twenty percent above the normal rate. And if your friend won't pay up, I keep this," She reached over and grabbed the package from him, giving it a small rattle. "As collateral."
Mr. Maye scrunched his nose up as he considered. "No collateral and I'll give you the extra twenty."
"The collateral is happening no matter what, I'm not handing it over without pay."
Mr. Maye rubbed his forehead. "You're really shaking down an old man down on his luck."
Eryth snorted. "You've survived worse. Quite recently too"
He looked like he was chewing on a lemon. "I'll do ten percent over with the collateral, but make sure you deliver quickly, this delivery has further to go and if it's late it'll create problems."
"Deal." Eryth grinned.
They shook on it and stood.
Checking the time on her comm, Eryth shook her head as she slipped the unassuming package into her bag.
"I've gotta be heading out if I still want to make my caravan. Take care, Mr. Maye, try not to spend so much time in burning buildings."
He scoffed. "You try not to spend so much time assaulting your clients.."
She waved him off as she turned to depart the quiet square.
The square that earlier had been decidedly not quiet.
The now apparently abandoned except for her and Maye, completely deserted, eerily empty square with even the stalls left unattended.
Huh.
"Something the matter Miss Cassidy?"
She moved her hand down to her holster for the second time in the last half hour.
"Would you happen to know why we seem to have this square to ourselves?"
A confused frown crossed his face as he looked around.
His mouth moved to speak, but a gunshot rang out and Mr. Maye was suddenly on the ground. Eryth was frozen by the sheer shock before another shot hit him in the head and he stopped moving.
Thanks to the fog all Eryth could tell was that the shots had come from high up, so there was somebody on the rooftops. She started running for the nearest alleyway just as another crack signaled another shot. This one stung the cobblestone next to her and she tried to move even faster.
She reached the alleyway but no additional shots came, not that that stopped her running. Whatever was going on was something she wanted absolutely no involvement in. Piles of trash and bits of scrap blurred in the corner of her vision. This area was a bit of a dump, haphazardly built with odd corners and forgotten shortcuts. Hopefully, she knew the area better than whoever had been shooting. She started cutting into the odd spaces between buildings, slipping between disconnected alleyways and oddly quiet streets. People must have heard the gunfire. With vis, collateral damage was always a possibility; nobody wanted to be outside during a fight.
She rounded a corner and was facing another figure. No gun was drawn, but that didn't mean much. She skidded to a halt. It could be that he was just a random person obliviously going about his day, but safe was better than sorry, so she immediately tried to retreat back around the corner.
Her worry was well-founded since a thin tendril of electricity snaked through the air towards her from the fingertips of the figure’s right hand. It chittered as hairline branches spread out in random directions, searching, but the main bolt still found its way to her calf before she could react.
Her leg spasmed uncontrollably and she fell over, thankfully back around the corner and therefore into cover. The vis user cursed, a young-ish man by the sound of his voice, and his footsteps started approaching.
This was dangerous. It didn't seem like the attack was too lethal as long as she wasn't hit anywhere vital, but Eryth didn't want to know what a strike to the heart or brain would do to her. She got up to run back towards the square to cut through to a different alleyway, but her leg wasn't responding properly. Her muscles fired randomly and made her stumble. She needed a plan and fast.
Her head was an absolute mess. Panic and pain scrambled her thoughts as she tried to pull together something cogent to get her out of this. The fact that her leg was only spasming meant that the actual amplitude of the current wasn't all that high, if it was she might be a little more crispy. Not that it would matter. Since she was immobile she was fucked anyway.
The steps got closer.
Her heart accelerated.
She was going to d-
No, panic can come later. Eryth willed her thoughts to realign into something useful. The bolt hadn’t gone directly for her, it had branched out before it struck. That meant he could direct his attack, but only loosely. Probably. All he needed to do was stick his hand around the corner to zap her while she needed to shoot his core or head to put him down. However, getting struck would throw off her aim. That meant she needed to be able to take at least one shock.
She immediately started searching around the piles of garbage around her, hoping that something of the right size would be there. Her eyes skipped over useless bits of metal. A busted piece of piping, some oversized bolts, a pile of rebar. Then she spotted it, a piece of chain link fencing. The only issue would be getting to it in time.
Eryth staggered towards the piece of scrap and actually tumbled into it after a particularly nasty spasm in her leg. The racket alerted the vis-user, whose footsteps picked up and rapidly rounded the corner hand-first and wasted no time in losing another bolt of lighting.
She was ready though, and as the current danced through the metal links she had hidden behind. The vis user poked his head around the corner and had just enough time for his eyes to widen before he snapped back and fell over, letting out a scream of pain as he hit the ground. She fired again to make sure no more strikes were incoming.
Everything was now very quiet.
Shakily, Eryth got back to her feet. She stared at the body for a moment as blood seeped across the cobblestone before snapping back to the present moment. She started moving.
Her leg was still unsteady but was slowly improving as she continued her dash through the town. She gradually slowed her pace but still hurried, since she had no idea if anybody was even still after her. Eventually, she reached a more populated district and made her way to where the caravan was set to depart.