A volley of musketfire blasted through the bluecoats hiding behind the wagon, and a group of ambushers in dark robes ran towards it. They cracked open the barrels, revealing black gunpowder inside. Cheering and hollering, they hoisted the barrels and ran off to the edge of the street with their prize.
Once the ambushers made it back to safety, one rolled a small, fuse-powered bomb towards the cannoneers. It detonated after a second, knocking the canoneers off their feet and destroying the field cannons’ carriages. But there were still more bluecoats. They fired volley after volley at the buildings. Surely, they hit something.
Both sides were distracted enough that Vayra could sprint past them. She pressed her back up against the stone wall of one of the buildings on the other side of the street, then inched towards the empty alleyway.
‘Varya, above you!’ Phasoné warned.
Vayra’s head snapped upwards. Above was a ramshackle wooden balcony. A pair of ambushers pointed their muskets down at her. She dove to the side, skidding along the ground with her bracers. Both of the shots blasted into the stone where she had been standing.
She kicked out the rickety supports of the balcony, collapsing it. It tumbled to the ground and collapsed into a puff of dust and splinters. Both of the ambushers leapt to their feet. They already had bayonets fixed to their muskets.
Vayra scrambled back along the ground, trying to climb back to her feet. Her hat toppled off her head, and her braid spilled out over her shoulder. “We’re not your enemy!”
They hesitated for a second once her hat fell off, but Vayra doubted her words would matter to them. Pels had just shot one of their brethren, and they must have seen it.
The closest of the two, a woman with dark hair, lunged at Vayra with her bayonet. Vayra rolled to the side, then clubbed the woman’s thigh with her pistol. She leapt to her feet, just in time to sidestep the second ambusher’s jab. She grabbed his musket’s barrel and tugged it out of his hands. It was warm from having just been fired, but not unbearable to touch. She bashed the woman with the butt of the musket. The woman’s head snapped to the side and crashed into the wall.
With her pistol, Vayra clubbed the man in the wrist, then in the bicep. He lunged forward, trying to grab her shoulders. Ducking away from his grasp, she struck him in the forehead with the pistol’s handle. He, like his companion, fell to the ground—limp but not dead.
Vayra scrambled into the alley, but it wasn’t as empty as it had been before. A pair of bluecoats ran through it. The first one looked just as shocked to see her as she felt. He thrust forward with his bayonet. Vayra ducked aside, but the steel blade still slit her bicep. Before she could retaliate, Glade jumped into the alley, slashing at the bluecoats. With a whirl of his sword, he killed them both.
Pels followed Glade into the alley, running backwards. He fired his pistol into the street, hitting another ambusher. The man held a small bomb in his hands, and it exploded as he fell to the ground, throwing chunks of obsidian and wood up into the air.
The three ran down the alley as fast as they could. Vayra pushed on every door they passed, until she found one that wasn’t locked. It swung inwards, and she ran inside.
The room was dark, and it appeared to be a cellar of some sort—except there was nothing in it. As soon as Pels and Glade ran inside, she pushed the door shut and locked it with the chain.
With a sigh, she slumped down against the door. Aside from the light creeping under the cellar’s door, there were no other gaps in the wall to let in light.
Pels found a lantern along the far wall and lit it with the firing mechanism of his pistol, then set it in the center of the room. “We’ll just wait for things to cool off,” he said. “Then we can find a place to get started.”
First, Vayra tried loading the musket she’d grabbed from the ambusher, but the extra shots she had for her pistol were too small and would slide right out of the barrel. Instead, she took the bayonet off and tucked it into her belt, then reloaded her own pistol.
Once she was satisfied that she could at least fight off another bluecoat if she had to, she stepped away from the door and leaned against a far wall on the other side of the cellar. She reached into her haversack and first, she produced a bandage. She wrapped one around her bicep to stop her clear blood from trickling down her arm.
The wound had been caused by a steel bayonet. She pursed her lips, then pulled out her case of elixirs. Since she’d caught the wound early, and it had been clean (not rusty) steel, the Namola elixir would have no trouble cleaning up the iron poisoning.
She pulled the stopper out of the faintly-glowing pink liquid and took a small sip. She wouldn’t need much. It was sweet, and nothing else, and it tingled as it slid down her throat. When it reached her stomach, it began to swirl around.
The Namola elixir had potent spirit energy, and she would need to be careful cycling it. There wasn’t much, but right now, she needed to be as inefficient as possible when integrating it into her Arcara.
She tucked it back into the elixir case, then tucked the case back into her haversack.
For a few minutes, they waited in silence, listening to the distant crackle of gunfire start to slow down. A few more minutes, and the popping of muskets stopped entirely.
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She would be willing to bet that the bluecoats overwhelmed the ambushers—given their numbers.
Standing up, Pels reached for the doorknob, but Glade said, “We should wait longer. Give it an hour, so we can be certain that they are gone and that we have no enemies waiting for us outside, or—”
Before Pels could step back, someone pounded on the door. “Open up! We know you’re in there!”
“What was that about no enemies?” Pels cocked his pistol. Vayra drew hers and did the same.
Someone kept pounding on the door. The boards creaked. It wasn’t sturdy, and with more time, they’d pound it down. Vayra ran to the other side of Pels and pushed her back against the wall, just beside the door. “Who is it?” she yelled.
“You know well enough!” a gruff, deep voice called back. The voice didn’t have an Elderworld accent; it couldn’t have been a bluecoat. A resistance fighter, then? “Bluecoats can’t kill all of us, not when we’ve gotten what we wanted! Now let us in, or we’ll bust down the door!”
“We aren’t your enemies!” Vayra called back.
“Yet you took out five, six, of ours!”
She glanced at Pels, then Glade. Glade ran up to the door, holding his sword ahead of him. “What do you want?” he yelled back.
“Perron Yawls wants a word with you!”
Vayra tilted her head, then whispered, “Perron Yawls?”
“The…resistance leader in this sector?” Glade said, his voice soft. “That might be her name, but I cannot remember for certain.”
“What does she want with us?” Vayra called.
“We’re under orders!” another, softer voice replied. “If we see a female phoenix, we’re to bring her to the Camp immediately! And believe me, I’d very much like to bring you in. The hard way!”
“You tried to kill us, too!” Vayra called back, nursing her arm.
“The heat of the battle,” the same man replied. “We’ll call it even, though you took much more from us.”
Vayra grimaced, then whispered to Pels and Glade, “Do we have any choice?”
“Unless you have another way out of here,” Pels said. “I’d suggest we cooperate.”
She unhooked the chain from the back of the door and unlatched it, then pulled it open slowly. Glade kept his sword angled towards the intruders, and Pels pointed his pistol, his finger hovering over the trigger.
The resistance fighters stepped inside, holding their muskets at the ready. They wore loose brown robes. Two were orcs, and the other was a human, and they all scowled. “So, phoenix—and her companions—will you come with us?”
“Why should we?” Vayra stepped back from the door and pointed her pistol at them as well. At such close range, she couldn’t miss.
“I wouldn’t try that,” said the fighter in the lead, an orc with a long ponytail of black hair. “Three muskets on two pistols. All of you go down, not all of us.”
‘Vayra, I really think you should cooperate,’ Phasoné said.
Slowly lowering her pistol, Vayra met the gazes of the resistance fighters. “Where is your camp, then?”
“The Camp is here, on this planet,” said the human. He reached into his pack and produced three hemp sacks. “We can’t have you seeing the journey.”
Vayra scowled, but there was no point in resisting.
‘Remember, Vayra,’ Phasoné asserted. ‘They are on the same side as you. They might be able to help you.’
She stepped back and nodded. “Fine. We’ll go with you.”
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She wasn’t sure how long the journey took, until they pulled the sack off her head.
It was nighttime, and the haze in the sky had thinned enough that she could see faint pinpricks of stars. For a moment, she contemplated leaping to her feet and attacking the resistance fighters with her scythe, but she stopped herself.
They sat in the back of a wagon. It was full of resistance fighters, all wearing mismatched garb and carrying some type of firearm. She figured they wouldn’t hesitate to use the weapons if they wanted.
“We’re here,” said one of the orcs, who Vayra now guessed was pretty high-ranking in the resistance. “The Camp.”
Vayra glanced around, trying to observe her surroundings. Everything looked much the same, except the dark mountains were much closer, and the shards of black rock surrounding them were much taller. They overshadowed the path, nearly three stories tall, and some even leaned overhead like the canopy of an enormous forest. Vayra only caught glimpses of the distant Stream over her shoulder. Glade and Pels sat in the wagon beside her.
She could safely say that she had no idea where they were.
Ahead, the shards of stone peeled away into a broad clearing. The floor was black gravel, pressed flat by hundreds of boots. Ramshackle huts were scattered all around the clearing, with steeper conical roofs and campfires outside. None had any glass or stone, though she did spot a couple forges—the blacksmiths were hard at work, even late in the evening.
Everywhere she looked, she saw someone who she could safely say looked like they belonged in a resistance. They didn’t wear a uniform, nor the robes of the ambushers, but they all wore tattered, dark attire. Some wore more formal coats, and some looked like pirates—with large hats and bushy plumes. Others seemed content to simply blend into the stone, polishing and cleaning their muskets and swords.
The pair of orcs and humans led Vayra, Glade, and Pels off the wagon. A few hours ago, before they had gotten on the wagon, her hands had been bound by a rope, but she knew that she could break out easily enough if she conjured her scythe.
Phasoné did have the scythe ready, right?
‘It’s been in my lap all afternoon. Awaiting your command. Or, for you to see a star or two.’
Vayra rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Phas.”
‘You’re…you’re welcome.’
The resistance fighters led them to a large hut at the center of the Camp. A ship could have fit across it, and its roof was high enough that Vayra would have been comfortable calling it a hall. The orcs pushed open the front doors, but before Vayra, Pels, and Glade entered, a set of robed guards on the front porch took their weapons from them.
“If you were concerned, you should have taken them while we were in the wagon…” Vayra muttered.
“You weren’t going before Perron Yawls,” one of the orcs said. “Get a move on. She doesn’t have all day.”