The only place the rowboat could slip ashore was a small, barely-visible beach of black gravel near the back of the inlet. The pebbles were glassy, like fresh coal, and even beneath Vayra’s boots, she could feel them poking up uncomfortably. The warm waves lapped up against her ankles. She trudged up the shore, following Glade, Pels, and Bremi.
There was no proper path or trail through the maze of obsidian shards, but they knew which way to go to get to the village—walk along the shore, towards the lights in the haze. They set off.
For a few hours, they navigated along the shore, keeping within sight of the steaming ocean at all times. When Vayra glanced inland, she saw nothing but a plane of obsidian shards and a distant range of dark mountains.
To keep their disguises up, Pels had taken off his yellow coat and hat, and Glade had gotten rid of his coat and pulled a simple, tattered tricorn hat over his hair. At first, Vayra wasn’t sure how she would hide her vibrant orange hair, so she braided it up and tied it into a loop on the back of her head, then put on a straw hat.
A trio of sailors had helped them row ashore, but they didn’t step ashore. It would be better if Vayra travelled with a small group. The sailors looked thankful for it.
The lights of the village didn’t seem to get any closer, until, after about an hour or two, they found a boardwalk running through the black shards. It was wide enough to fit a horse-drawn wagon, and instead of wagonwheel ruts, she noticed two lines of sooty debris running down the center.
They entered the outskirts of the village, passing by a house of brown stone. Its walls were angular and sloped, and a round roof perched on top of it like a conical hat. Its windows were made of pale amber glass, which spilled orange light out onto the street.
More and more houses began to crowd the edge of the road, all designed in a similar way. Each one had an exterior fire pit with a tall chimney—here, no one would have needed a fire to keep their house warm.
The streets—here, they were even broader wooden boardwalks—grew steadily more busy as they approached the center of the city. All sorts of people crowded them, dressed in mismatched, sooty attire. Nothing was vibrant, not even the bluecoats. She spotted a small group of them at a street corner, and their coats were barely blue. The brass decorations on their masks and lapels were covered in a thick layer of dust. Their muskets were nearly black.
Despite the busy streets, the city seemed eerily silent. Vayra kept her head down, trying not to attract attention. They didn’t need the bluecoats after them just because they stood out from the crowd.
But just because she kept her head down didn’t mean she didn’t spot the shadows slipping through alleyways or clinging to the stacked, round rooftops. She heard a musket click, then saw the glint of a silver bayonet. She cleared her throat, but Glade shook his head. He saw it too, but he must have figured it’d be best to ignore it.
“I’d bet a tavern or a pub would be the best place to start spreading rumours about a God-heir in town,” Pels said. “If we can find one.”
They turned away from the shore and headed inland, where the city gained a little elevation—both from taller buildings, but also because the ground began to slope upwards. A pair of bluecoats ran past, their gear clattering and their muskets clicking.
Vayra looked at Glade and whispered, “Is it just me…or is something about to go down?”
“It is not just you,” he said.
Vayra didn’t think she’d ever seen him take his hand off his sword’s pommel since they’d arrived on the surface. She looked down at her pistol. It was loaded, but it wasn’t cocked. “Phasoné?” she muttered. “Do you have the scythe ready?”
‘I was just working on that,’ she said. ‘But…there are no stars. We won’t be able to do much today—too cloudy.’
Vayra looked up. Even if it had been night time, she didn’t imagine she’d see any stars beyond the veil of soot clouds. She tucked her hands behind her back and scowled. If something happened, she would be without her magic. “We need to do something about that.”
‘I do have an idea,’ the Goddess said. ‘But you’ll need to get…a little stronger for it to work. Say, Master’s Mate, or Master.’
“I guess we’ll just have to make do until then…”
The road they walked down intersected with a larger street. Rather than a boardwalk, this street was paved with obsidian flagstones. The buildings around it were all three or four stories tall, and their roofs were wide enough to cast shade over the entire city.
“Any idea where the nearest tavern is?” Pels asked. Vayra shrugged, and Glade shook his head. As they walked, Pels took to asking the passersby. Most shrugged him off, but a few pointed down the street.
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Vayra squinted up at the edge of the buildings. She spotted a shadowy form hunched behind a railing, and a pair of dark-cloaked figures in an alley across the street—both holding pistols.
She wasn’t being paranoid, was she?
‘Not paranoid,’ Phasoné said. ‘Though, I thought it was my job to be the overcautious one.’
Vayra snorted. “I’d rather not have to deal with more bounty hunters.”
“Bounty hunters?” Glade whispered. “I find it unlikely that these are bounty hunters—they could not know who you are.”
“Then…what are they?”
“Not everyone is terribly fond of the Elderworlds,” Glade said. “There are many who fight back, however they can—even if Velaydia has not fought a battle for this world in a few years.”
Pels tipped his head towards the end of the street, where a troop of bluecoats marched in front of a wagon. It was filled with casks, and crates of cannonballs. Behind it, two horses pulled a field cannon each. “If they were looking for a target, then I think they’ve found it. Or maybe they’re just opportunistic, eh?”
“Resistance fighters?” Vayra asked. She glanced around. “This doesn’t look like something we should stick around for.”
By now, the street was beginning to clear. People dodged out of the wagon’s way, but she figured that there were others with the same idea as them.
The next alley they found, they ducked away into. For a second, Vayra paused. She could afford to watch, just a little, to see what happened.
“Best not to stick around,” came an old, scratchy voice from one of the alcoves.
Vayra glanced around, searching for the voice’s source. In an alcove, she spotted an elderly woman with a bag of yarn in one hand and a cane in the other.
“You’re not from around here,” the woman stated. “Not often we see travellers in a lowly village-port like this…but they never know what to do when the brawls start…”
“What to…do?” Vayra pressed her back against the wall and held her breath. Pels and Glade looked back at her.
“There’ve been attacks every week for the past couple months,” the woman said. “Bluecoats’ve started arresting anyone nearby. Never see ‘em again.”
Vayra winced, then looked back at the street. It had cleared almost entirely, except for a few stragglers.
‘Don’t even think about going back there without the stars out,” Phasoné snapped. ‘Unless you want to get—’
Before Phasoné could finish speaking, a boom reverberated in Vayra’s eardrums. A wave of dust blasted past, and the ground buckled beneath her feet. She fell to her knees to catch her balance, and when she looked up, the old woman was gone. A door in one of the walls swung shut.
“Come on!” Pels snapped, waving them down the alley.
Vayra wiped her eyes with her arm and sprinted down the alley behind Pels and Glade. It was cluttered with crates and boxes, and when she rounded a corner, a set of nets hung across the alley, blocking their path. Glade hacked through them with his sword, then they continued onwards.
As they ran, Vayra heard muskets and pistols banging behind her. She drew her own pistol, and so did Pels.
They rounded another corner and took a short flight of stairs up. At the top, the alley ended, depositing them on another street.
A cluster of bluecoats was sprinting past, but they stopped when Vayra and the others emerged from the alley. “You there!” the bluecoat at the head of the cluster yelled. “Stop right there!”
Vayra stumbled to a halt, her boots skittering on the black paving stones. “We’re just—”
Pels pointed his pistol and blasted one of them. Left with no other choice, Vayra cocked hers and fired it as well. They ducked back into the alley just in time to avoid a volley of return fire from the bluecoats.
Glade drew his sword, but they were cornered, now. By the time the bluecoats got within striking range, he’d have a hole in his chest.
“Back the way we came!” Vayra hissed, pointing back down the alley. “Run, before they catch us!”
They sprinted back down the alley in the opposite direction, retracing their path. When they emerged back on the main street, it looked like a battlefield. The wagon was overturned and the horses were dead, and fires burned all across the road. Bodies sprawled across the street—both bluecoats and dark-robed ambushers.
The bluecoats sheltered behind the wreckage of their wagons or the corpses of their horses, but the ambushers attacked from all directions, firing their muskets as fast as they could. Off to the side, she spotted a few ambushers fighting off a few bluecoats with bayonets and sabers.
Vayra pressed her back against the wall and reloaded her pistol as fast as she could. Her fingers shook, and she fumbled with the ram rod. The bluecoats’ footsteps pounded in the alley behind them. “They’re going to catch us.” She rammed the shot and powder down the pistol’s barrel as quickly as she could, and she cocked it.
“Get across the street,” Pels said. “Keep running until we find a place to lie low.”
He raced out of cover and, keeping his head low, sprinted halfway across the street to hide behind an abandoned set of crates. A man in a dark robe charged at him, and he fired his pistol. The shot hit the man’s shoulder, toppling him.
Vayra and Glade broke out of cover as well. Glade hacked through a bluecoat with a precise swing while Vayra dove into cover beside Pels. She peered over the crates, and spotted the bluecoats readying their field cannons. They aimed for a tall building with stacked conical roofs, where a large portion of the musketfire erupted from.
Vayra fired her shot in their general direction. It hit one of the gunners, but there were enough to still fire their cannons.
Both were loaded with grapeshot. With an explosion of smoke, the cannons spewed tiny pellets into the building. On the main floor, an ambusher was reduced to red mist. All of the building’s windows shattered, and an awning collapsed.
“Keep moving!” Pels said.
Vayra pointed to another alley on the opposite side of the street, where she couldn’t see any ambushers or bluecoats. She flipped her pistol over in her hand, ready to use it as a club, then sprinted out from behind the crates.