George was a murderer. He killed a man. Shot him dead. His body raced ahead of his mind over the next few minutes as he got up and ran for anywhere, anything that would be safe. The shot was so loud. His hand trembled. All it took was one gentle pull. A force that couldn’t even pry open a windowsill was what ended a human life. And it was still in his hands to do it again.

He ran out through the same alley the bandit came from, through the back streets, through yards and unpaved dirt paths until he reached the road again. He didn’t even noticed that he was waving his murder weapon freely in his hand until he was in someone’s way.

“Watch the road!” a man on a horse and buggy called out. George fell over backwards and hit the heavily trodden ground. The man above who drove the roofless carriage looked George over skeptically. “You mad?”

“I’m sorry,” George said. He gulped. He was out of breath already. He just realized how far he’d gone and couldn’t even see the church anymore. He was lost again in the back roads that linked the districts together. He pushed away and clambered up, using the gun as a stiff metallic palm against the ground.

With no idea of what to do next he ran down the road and tried to get as far from the city’s epicenter as possible. He fired a gunshot. Someone would surely turn up to investigate the sound. Even if they didn’t know what it was, it would be curious enough to draw some kind of attention.

Then they would see the body and know something had gone wrong. He tied it together in an instant. Loud noise, man dead. Whatever made the noise would have made the wound. As far as a stranger could tell, the man was just a church beggar going out to the well in the yard.

The only hope George had to remain undetected was that no one in the world knew what Guns were, and even if they found him suspicious, they might not suspect his sidearm to be a weapon at all. It wasn’t a proper weapon for a medieval world. The only guns they might know would be cannons, which were huge.

Once George ran into the slum district and had to dodge stray dogs chasing down rats in the street, he slowed down enough to recall the whole scene and try to assess his own blame. He was not a cold-blooded killer. The other man was.

The thief or rogue or whomever, he had an agenda. He was there specifically to cause trouble, specifically for the Ward church members. He was after George on the misunderstanding that George was complicit in an unheard of and unplanned string of blame the man was obsessed with. So he attacked, and George defended himself.

He brought a knife to a gunfight and lost. Even if he were an honorable man, the conclusion was foregone. What interested George was how the knife came into being. It wasn’t holstered or drawn from a pocket. It just came into his hand out of nowhere. Like a magic trick.

Finally, George ran out of steam somewhere in the outskirts of the walled city. The wall was stoute but firm. It was impossible to climb. No notches or hard edges of brickwork was present. The wall, in fact, looked like the mountain castle. It was a continuous rockface, as if it naturally sat there and was weathered into a massive ring along the sides of the river.

He checked to make sure no one was in sight. Everyone in the outer limits of the city seemed to keep to themselves exclusively. Houses were shuttered as they saw him run past and the ground was softer, not as packed down with passing traffic. It was much like the river-grid homes outside, homes that fell to the wayside for being half a mile from the central river.

The town’s scope continued to expand. He only ran in one direction, yet the whole thing was an encircled and fortified city with two halves to it, all lorded over by the pillar of stone at the top of the hill. Despite having no skyscrapers or tall buildings, the place was massive enough to remind him of home.

Which reminded him of his gun, and how he died in walking distance from his own apartment. All the comforts he knew, all the things that were normal, were taken from him. The things that man knew were likewise abandoned, never to be touched by his criminal hands again. At last, half a mile and half an hour after, the fact of the matter came to him.

George turned over and braced his hands against the cold grass ground. He killed someone. He recalled the sight of blood oozing out of the entry wound and the man’s confused, pained expression as his body locked up. There was no gasping wheeze or final words, really. He just fell over and died. It wasn’t even a head shot. It was barely a heart shot. It must have been in the lung.

The reality of his power started to suffocate him. George gagged out in the open street. He was not physically okay with what he had done, and mentally he reeled over it in agonizing detail. Every second of what he saw passed by in his mind like a documentary. He started to imagine it from other angles, from above and down low, to the dagger as it faded into nothing.

That, too, drove his guts into a heave. There were forces at work he failed to understand. The Goddess, the magical shield and other gods, and his gun - he still couldn’t let it go. His fingers were all splayed out as far as he could get them but his palm was still curled into a grip to hold it to his skin.

George slowly stood up and faced the sky. There was a soft orange glow of twilight on the horizon. He guessed that it was West. He needed something to hold onto that would remind him of his old world, for sanity’s sake. Then he turned around and saw how dark the night became.

There were a few stars. No lights on the streets, no blinding city infrastructure, and very few clouds were overhead. All those advantages for stargazing and there were still only a few of them. Enough that he could count without getting lost. And they weren’t in any order he could recognize.

“You there,” someone called. George turned, assuming the worst, and for once he was right. A small troop of guards came up the grass-spotted road on horses, two at a time. Two dismounted and left their riders to maintain the steed's place.

Stolen novel; please report.

The guard pointed at George while his partner advanced close by. “You’re a stranger to me,” the guard said accusingly. “Tell me who you are.”

“Uh,” George began. He had to gulp loudly to undo some of his dry heaving soreness. “My name George. I’m George. That is….that’s who I am.”

“George,” the guard repeated. He turned to his partner who shook his head, then turned back. “No. I don’t know you. This is our quarter, the Bristletown street. We know everyone here and keep them in check. I ask again, who are you?”

“Uh,” George began, “George is my name. I’m - I’m human. Male. Caucasian. Twenty -.”

“He’s a what?” the partner said. “Cock-ass?”

The leading guard grinned, simultaneously smug and glowering. “I’ve never heard of such a place. Not from here out to Ixia, nor in between. Do you claim to come from even further than there, George the stranger?”

“Uh - yes,” George said. He finally learned another place, Ixia. He didn’t know where it was, its topography, if they were friendly with Dossul or Murton - he didn’t know anything, and neither did they. But his lies already trapped him once in a pit of ignorance. He couldn’t simply lie again, not to town guards.

“And you wandered all the way here,” the guard said as he began pacing, and his partner paced wider to surround George from the front and behind. “Weeks upon weeks, traveling through arid lands and murky swamps, to make a mess in the yard of a disparate loner?”

George laughed nervously. “It’s been quite a journey, yes. Uh, and has left me destitute. I am not trying to make trouble for anyone, least of all the people here. Least of all you. But I don’t know where I’m going, and I planned to leave once I could find some labor or trader who would take me -.”

“What is that?” the other guard asked. George saw him looking at his gun. It wasn’t hidden. Not even a little. He was gesturing and swinging it around with his finger off the trigger the whole time. He looked at it dreadfully, which caused the guards to rouse with suspicion.

The lead guard tilted his head. “Is that a wagon hitch?”

“N-no,” George said. He tried to hide it from both of them, then realized how suspicious that made him look. He held it at his side, away from his body. He didn’t want it near him or pointing at anything close by. He aimed it down, fingers on the grip, index out of the guard and straight forward. His hand felt numb.

“Is it a weapon?” the other asked.

“No!” George insisted. The guard nodded, affirming his suspicion at George’s undue protest.

“Right,” the lead guard said. “You’re a stranger, a foreigner, and you’ve a weapon.” The guard took a step back and held his hands out as if he was about to hold a spear. A swirl of light filled his hands and coiled together into a shaft, then flashed outward at the tip into a spearhead.

Just like the bandit in the alley, it was magic. Seeing it so much clearer made George’s heart skip a beat. The weapons appeared out of thin air, without even a mutter of a magic word. They just had them, immediately, like he had his gun. And they were approaching him with their spears point-first.

“Wait!” George said. He backed up off the road towards the flat side of a shanty home. He noticed how close he was getting and stopped just shy of nudging against the thin wooden wall. “What is this for? I’m just -.”

“You are to come with us,” the guard insisted, “to answer for your place and purpose here.”

“I told you already!” George said. “I’m leaving! I’ll leave now! I don’t want to be here. I don’t want this!”

“Don’t beg for your life,” the guard said. “It won’t help.”

“Ixian scum gets what it deserves,” the other guard said. “Even if you passed through there you could have a third ear implanted on you.”

“What pact do you have?” the main guard insisted. “Where did that weapon you hold come from?”

“I don’t know!” George insisted.

“Lawrence,” the main guard called over his shoulder, “bring about a wicker for this one. We’ll drag him up to the castle.”

“Please,” George pleaded with his free hand up in half a praying motion. “I’m innocent!”

“No Ixian is innocent in Dossul lands,” the guard said. “You’re killers. Murderers -.”

“I didn’t mean to,” George whimpered. He caught himself mid-confession and tried to course correct. “I haven’t - I wouldn’t. With this? I didn’t - I can’t!”

“It must’ve been that body at the Ward church,” the other guard determined. “He may have more than one pact, a blunt one here and the shiv he drove through the vagrant.”

“Then we’ll arrest him for murder,” the lead guard said, “and trial him for spycraft.”

The guards inched closer with their spears up. The metal drew nearer and nearer in the dark, glinting off the last of the light, aiemd at George’s face. He shivered all over and tensed up. His index finger tensed up as well and he shot. The guards were stunned with shock at the sound. One looked up at the sky for a cloud.

The horses were spooked and bucked their riders off. Once the two spear-wielding guards saw it happen they lowered their weapons and guard. George saw the event unfold as well and winced with terror as the guards tumbled down onto their backs.

“Steady the horses,” the second guard called out. He dropped his spear and ran for the waving reins from the horses’ mouths as they stomped and shook their heads. George started to slowly amble away onto the road when the lead guard turned to him with anger. The anger of a man ready to kill.

Just like the anger of the last man George saw before he died.

George snapped his left hand over the pistol grip and aimed. A thin line of smoke rose from the barrel. “Stop!” George insisted. The man with the spear lowered his stance and angled his feet to charge. He was really about to charge a gun-wielding man with a spear.

“Look,” George said, pointing to the ground. His bullet released into the dirt and kicked up a smoking hole that went several inches into black soil. The guard averted his gaze just long enough to see it. “That - that’s what this did. Okay? It’s faster than any arrow, or any crossbow, and it bores through iron as easily as dirt. It kills on contact with a burning ball of molten lead that shatters into many pieces and fills whatever it touches with splitting needle-like holes that bounce off of bone and ricochet all over everywhere inside of you until your organs are torn up into shreds.”

The guard looked confused. George asserted himself with a stern, ferocious look. The guard looked back at the hole where the bullet impacted with the ground and how much dust and dirt and debris was kicked up from just one shot. The horses finally settled down behind him and he turned to check on his comrades.

“Lawrence?” he called.

“Yeah,” the apparent man of that name replied with a grunt. “I’m not rocked hard.”

“If you can stand,” the lead guard said, “take a staff and come help me.” He turned to George again. George settled his grip harder with his gun and tried to steady his aim. He was shaking. His hand wasn’t numb anymore but it was pulsing. He was in pain from the unexpected kickback of the unplanned discharge. It hurt to shoot a gun, all the way up to his elbow.

“Listen,” George called out. The guards jumped at his words. They feared him, but they still didn’t know why. “I don’t want any trouble.” George could see the guards were on the backfoot and planning a tactical retreat of some kind. He kept his gun up, between him and the nearest guard. The narrow sights lined up over his body. He had them held up and could get anything he wanted.

“I was attacked,” George explained, “by that man at the church. And I killed him with this. I’m no thief, I’m not a criminal. I just…. I just have this. And I’ll use it. But, for you. If you’ll pay me.”

George slowly lowered his gun to his side and tried to put on his best smile. The rush of excitement, his earlier fury and the dreary lack of light made his forced smile seem discomforting and grim. He looked downright demonic.