Chapter 6

They had eventually found the inn, the Azure Pavillion, down on the ninth terrace in the seventh district's seventeenth quarter's third road where it was number three on the twelfth block, which is what the numbers that Ser Samara had given them meant, and which she had clearly assumed they understood. Thankfully, the average citizen of the Imperium was surprisingly helpful, so after a funicular ride to descend a terrace to the upper residential area, followed by a jaunt on a train almost to the other side of the caldera that had Heidi bouncing up and down in her seat like a child, they arrived at the inn.

It was a large structure, wrought from the same greyish stone as the rest of the city on the outside and painted blue on the inside. It might have been some architect's pet project, since the beams and supports and walls and slopes made interesting geometric patterns when viewed from the foyer's entrance. It seemed to serve primarily as accomodation for visiting bureaucrats and authorised merchants, and the young goblin porter with lurid dyed pink hair who greeted them had been very excited to have foreign mercenaries staying with them. There was a whole bunch of forms to fill in, which seemed to be a theme in the Imperium, but then they were given their keys and led to what might have been the nicest rooms Adeena had ever stayed in.

She had immediately fallen into bed, and woken almost three trances later feeling, if not whole, then at least no longer dead on her feet. Heidi had, apparently, already run off to something called a 'train museum,' and Xavier wasn't interested in leaving the inn's bathhouse. She would have preferred to lounge around in hot water as well, but after two revivals and a mauling her only set of clothes were ragged, and she had lost her armour with the rest of her luggage on the Brightspark, which meant that she had to go shopping alone.

Which, in the Imperium… weird.

The Imperium used currency. In fact, the Imperium's system of Horns, Fangs, and Talons, which were gold, silver, and bronze alloys respectively, were accepted in most places across Ruvera, even those that had their own mints.

However, inside the Imperium there were two tiers of economy. The first comprised goods that were deemed 'essential.' This included any food not considered 'luxury,' basic items of clothing, toiletries, healthcare and other things that people 'couldn't do without.' In places like Everhearth where there were lots of foreign traders coming and going outsiders like Adeena used normal currency for everything, while citizens of the Imperium had little books she'd seen them 'paying' with. In the Seat of the Stars, however, it seemed that foreigners were rare enough that they didn't bother with that. There were just places where people went and took what they needed, and the 'shopkeepers' were just there to take money for the 'luxuries.' This was, to Adeena, a rather novel concept, and had it not come along with the whole 'ruled by authoritarian dragons' thing, would have been positively charming.

Of course, the things she was looking for – enchanted clothing and high quality armour, were not 'essentials,' and cost money. In fact, they couldn't even be bought in the residential terraces, so instead of a short jaunt around a market district like a normal city, she quickly realised she was going to be running back and forth over the entire caldera to get what she needed.

"Nah," said the tailor she had consulted, a large grey-haired orc whose nametag said he was called 'Kor Spineripper.' "We don't have anything enchanted – you'd need custom work from the College, up on the 12th Terrace. You'll need to bring what you want enchanted too, so best get everything you want here before heading up there. And it ain't cheap."

Finding some things she liked wasn't that hard in the massive, warehouse like 'clothing store,' although the jacket and replacement tricorn for the one that she'd lost somewhere in the tunnel counted as 'luxury,' and she had to shell out for. Still, they were very reasonably priced, and the free blouses were high-quality cotton, if not quite as flowy-sleeved as she was used to.

After that, it was a trip down to the 2nd Terrace, where the foundries were. It was surprisingly simple to get there, with the funicular crawling passed the masses of picturesque terraced farms.

Getting fitted for a breastplate, pauldrons, greaves, and gauntlets was also less of a hassle than she'd expected. The outfitters dealt with a wide range of mortal body-types, and although she was in a bit of a weird place between elven and human proportions, they managed. It wasn't the best gear she'd ever had, that had melted in Chace, but it was about as good as what she'd lost in her luggage aboard the Brightspark, and surprisingly cheap. The only downside was that, minus the various badges of rank and such, she looked very much like an Imperial Marine – dark steel plate trimmed with gold around the edges.

That was the easy part, the hard bit was getting to the 12th Terrace, which apparently needed a special pass. Which meant that she got turned around at the entrance to the 11th District, was sent across the caldera to a tiny office of the seventh floor of a building where she had to wait in line for almost an hour, before an official glanced at her documents and told her that she did have permission to go there because of the Dragonsworn seal on her papers, which she hadn't shown in the first place because she'd just assumed that it wasn't the special pass she'd needed.

Needless to say, she was quite cranky when she finally arrived at the 'Imperial College of the Arcane,' a massive, leafy campus that covered about an eighth of the sprawling, park-like tier. The Department of Enchantment had a 'public' facing section where people could get things bewitched, although almost everyone else in the very long line for it seemed to be getting things like 'enchanted violins' and 'ever-warm teapots,' so she stood out a bit in her full plate armour with bundles of clothes under each arm.

"Yes, they need to be fireproof," she said when she finally got to the front of the line, almost an hour and a half later. "Totally fireproof. "

"Even the underwear?" asked the human clerk.

"Yes, even the underwear!"

"Quite the irregular request," sniffed the woman, glancing over the mass of items on her desk. "And it will be rather expensive. I'd say… at least twenty Horns. Twenty five if you want it done quickly."

That was almost a fifth of what she was getting paid for the expedition, and for a moment she considered forgoing the clothes enchantments and just getting the armour done. But then she remembered how many times she'd been put in an awkward situation after reviving covered in nothing but ashes, and she reluctantly shelled out the money.

She arranged for the majority of it all to be delivered to the inn, and after what felt like hours of just queuing she settled back into the funicular that would take her back to her terrace, wearing her change of 'off-duty-and-probably-don't-think-I'm-going-to-get-killed' clothes and closed her eyes.

A bell rang twice as the conductors closed the doors, and with a groan of shifting metal the large, sloped carriage began to crawl down the slope. If you had to live in a city, which was not something Adeena had any interest in, she did sort of see the appeal of the 'mass transit' that Heidi was so ecstatic about. It certainly made for nicer streets, which weren't covered in horse manure and jockeying carriages that had knocked her down more than once.

Personally, Adeena would have just preferred to live in the countryside, if she had to settle down somewhere, which thus far had held absolutely no appeal to her.

They crawled past the military terrace. Beneath the funicular she saw what had to be an entire legion practicing marching on a parade ground, black and gold armour like the set she had brought gleaming in the city's artificial light, flanked by twenty strange, self-propelled armoured carts with what looked like canons affixed that she'd never seen before. She shuddered and looked away. The Imperium's forces and armaments had seemed unbeatable back at Chace, but apparently they hadn't been content to sit on their laurels, and had developed new terrifying weapons.

'How are we ever going to ever defeat them?' she wondered to herself as the parade ground faded from view and a massive shipyard replaced it, where the keel of some kind of sky-dreadnaught was being laid.

Even if they Wyrd ended tomorrow and the mortal races resettled the continent and the Imperium was content to simply remain on their peninsula, how on Ruvera was any coalition ever going to defeat them? Or was this it? The end of history? The invincible, unassailable Draconic Imperium that would slowly but surely bring everyone else to heel with its hundred Legions, sky-ship armada, and magi-tek weaponry epic-cycles ahead of anyone else?

An entire world beneath the talons of the dragons. Bloodmoon would have cheered at the notion, and after seeing a bit even Adeena couldn't deny that the Imperium had some things going for it: a lack of poverty for one thing, in stark contrast to much of the Shattered Sea where the rich ruled and the poor ate dirt. But there was also a total lack of self-determination, a rigid hierarchy that even as an outsider felt suffocating. No, not suffocating – soporific, something that some small part of her could imagine just accepting, slipping into and never waking up from ever again.

Did it have to be either/or? Couldn't they have both? Couldn't there be worlds where there were no poor people, but also without the crushing hierarchy? It had to be possible; she refused to believe it wasn't.

The bell of the funicular chimed, and she stood, making her way down the steps and exiting onto the '9th and 86th Station.' Beneath the offical plaque someone had hung a roughly-made sign which said 'Northwald Station,' which must have been the name the locals called it. The sight of it made her smile a little. It seemed that not every expression of creativity was crushed beneath the logical, mathematical precision of the clockwork empire. Then her smile faded as she realised that the only reason it had been allowed was because some bureaucrat had permitted it, perhaps to give exactly that kind of feeling – an expression of creativity and rebellion recaptured and repackaged by the very system it aimed to subvert.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Adeena shook her head and looked at the map, scoffing to herself. Or maybe a sign was just a sign. She really was getting cynical in her old age.

It was only a short walk to the trains, and according to the strange, ticking signs, three minutes to the next one, but she was weary, and sat down on a bench next to a human woman with two small children who seemed to have had an orcish or goblin father, given the sheen of their skin.

"Hey miss, why have you got a sword?" asked one of them, a little girl with bushy pigtails.

"Claire, leave the nice woman alone," said her mother with an apologetic look.

"It's OK," said Adeena. "I have a sword because I'm an adventurer."

"An adventurer! Like in the books?" said the little girl. "Is that why you speak funny?"

"Claire!" said the mother sharply. "People do not speak funny, they have accents. This lady has an old world accent, like your mathematics teacher – Mr. Gaspard. He isn't 'funny,' is he?"

"No…" said the little girl, Claire. "Sorry, miss."

"That's alright, I grew up in Crowncourt – an old human city in the midlands," said Adeena. "Can you guess how long ago?"

The little girl scrunched up her face for a moment. "Four hundred cycles?" she said.

"No, no! The Wyrd came before that, she's super old!" said her brother. "She must be like… a thousand!"

"Felix!" said the mother. "Sorry about that, ma'am."

"It's fine," said Adeena. "I celebrated my one and a half thousandth cycle not that long ago. I am quite old, relatively speaking."

"Wow, thats so old!" said 'Felix.' "Even the oldest humans and goblins don't live that long!"

"Felix!"

"Can I see your sword?" asked Claire.

"Ah, not today," said Adeena, standing as the counter-clockwise 'slow' train pulled in. "Nice to meet you, this is my train."

The children waved goodbye and their mother gave her a thankful smile, and once again Adeena felt conflicting feelings. In the Shattered Sea, the half-blooded children would have been considered strange, and in certain parts, abominations. As someone who presented as a half-elf, which were more tolerated than most half-bloods, she knew that. But here? Here no one seemed to be pay them anymore attention than any other children. They were… normal here.

The Shattered Sea was multi-species, yes, but in most places highly segregated. Slavery along species lines was institutionalised in certain cities, although there were other places that actively fought against it – financially or militarily or both. Here… here there was something very nice in knowing that the two children wouldn't grow up to feel lesser for their mixed heritage, even if they'd always be servants of the dragons.

The train doors opened to reveal a mostly empty carriage. It was toward the middle of a shift, which meant that not that many people were travelling about. She understood now, after taking the trains several times, that she could get off at an upcoming 'major' station and then catch the 'express' to her district, which would be much faster, but she was tired, and a nap as the slower train made its way around the city sounded just fine. So she closed her eyes and began to doze.

Adeena was an Oathsworn. That had, for most of her life, given her powers that other swordswomen could only dream of. One of those powers was a very limited form of passive precognition. A prickling sensation that she got when someone was trying to stab or shoot her from somewhere she couldn't see.

She hadn't felt it in a very long time, but just as a drowsy warmth was starting to envelope her, after almost thirty stops, Adeena suddenly felt it. Reactions honed over hundreds of cycles of fighting both people and monsters snapped her eyes open to find a hooded elven woman moving towards her, a small, triangle-shaped dirk glinting in her grip.

Adeena threw herself sideways, and instead of taking her in the left heart, the dirk only scraped her arm and dug into the upholstered seat behind her. The elf, who had a scarf wrapped around the lower part of their face seemed surprised by the sudden dodge, and wasn't quick enough to react to Adeena grabbing her wrist and pulling the elf down at the same time as she rammed her forehead into her assailant's nose.

The elf reeled back, and Adeena followed her up onto her feet, socking her in the stomach with her free hand and then twisting, using the leverage of the grabbed wrist to flip the elvish woman over her hip and down the carriage.

There were shouts of alarm from the occupants, who rushed to get out of the way of the elf crashing into the carriage floor. Adeena pursued her, hand going for her sword, but before she could draw it the elf flipped back to their feet and twisted mid-air, hurling a throwing-knife that stuck straight through Adeena's left wrist.

Adeena hissed in pain as the assassin closed on her and, again, a dagger emerged from her voluminous robe. The elf slashed at her face, and Adeena jerked backward, drawing her sword in a reversed grip with her right hand to parry the follow up.

She could feel the tell-tale sting of poison from the dagger in her right wrist, but she could also already feel her body counter-acting it. She ignored it, instead flicking her sword into a forward facing grip and stabbed at the elf. The elf managed to block the first, second, and third strike, but clearly had been somewhat caught off-balance by Adeena's competence with her non-dominant hand and lack of debilitation by the poison, and was forced to the back of the carriage, near the door that led to the next.

The elf tried to rally, going on a vicious assault, but Adeena knocked one of her daggers from her hand, parried the other, and kicked her in the chest, sending her careening back into the door so hard that the glass window shattered behind the elf and she slumped to the ground.

Adeena took advantage of the woman's discombobulation to pull the throwing knife from her left wrist and toss it aside. It hurt like the hells, and bright red blood trickled onto the otherwise immaculate wooden flooring, but it was nothing compared to what the Vodyanoy had done to her.

"Now, how about we talk about this like reasonable people?" said Adeena, looming over the woman, sword pointed at her chest.

The elf looked up at her with hate in her blue eyes, but didn't say anything. Then something that looked like a wand dropped into the elf's palm, and Adeena had barely enough time to conjure a full shield before a blast of fire erupted.

Wands were powerful, supremely expensive objects that contained charges of complete spells. The reason that their use wasn't widespread and aether-rifles were instead employed by the Imperium's forces was that after one, two, or maybe three spells, they were used up and all the expensive gems and metals that went into making them were essentially ruined. Adeena could count on one hand the number of times that anyone had used one in a fight against her.

Fire, by itself, also wasn't dangerous to Adeena, thanks to both sides of her heritage. Explosive force, however, was, and the glowing bubble of golden energy that snapped into existence around her was the only thing that stopped her being pulverised by the detonating spell in front of her, and the metal carriage roof behind her when she was blasted through it.

Adeena's shield dispersed as she reached the apex of her arc, and she landed hard on the slippery metal top of the next carriage up from the one she had been napping in.

"Ow," she managed, rolling over and looking down the train. The elf's head poked up out of the wrecked roof a moment later, her eyes betraying irritation at Adeena's continued survival.

"Oh, sure," said Adeena, wobbling back to her feet as the elf flipped up onto the roof and began to rush towards her, long daggers flashing. "Of course, this seems like a perfectly reasonable place to have a duel."

The train rocked and bucked beneath Adeena as the elf closed on her, and the pair began to exchange blows once-more. The elf did better this time, no longer surprised by Adeena's ambidexterity, but the terrain did not favour her. Daggers required agility and space to really use effectively, and the nature of the sloping top of the carriage meant that she was forced to fight on a single axis, which favoured Adeena's sword's greater reach and ability to adopt a side-on, fencer's stance.

She pushed the elf back again until her opponent's boots reached the edge of the carriage. This time, Adeena didn't offer mercy, and instead went for the elf's heart with a vicious stab. The woman didn't have space to back away, and the angles were all wrong for her to be able to deflect the blow. By all rights, she was dead.

Which is why Adeena was rather annoyed when there was a surge of uncomfortable divine magic, and her blow was caught by a glowing sheet of magical armour that flashed into existence in front of the woman's chest.

She wasn't just an assassin, apparently, she was a priestess. A priestess who had been holding back, seemingly not eager to advertise the full extent of her abilities. Why? Adeena had no idea. She didn't know why she was being attacked in the first place.

Adeena had been outmatching her handily before, but she immediately found herself on the back foot as the woman started going all out, hacking and slashing at her with the daggers, but also mixing in blasts of holy lightning that even when Adeena managed to duck or twist out of the way still stung at her excruciatingly as they passed by. Holy energy, even when it didn't hit her was something that Adeena tried to avoid at all costs.

The train lurched, slowing as Adeena reached the other end of the carriage, and she nearly lost her footing. It did create an opening, however, and she screamed in pain as the elf slashed at her leg, opening a deep cut across her thigh and driving her to one knee.

"This is the end, heretic," said the elf in a thick K'lavierien accent as she deflected Adeena's desperate sword-swipe and moved in for the kill, dagger aimed at her throat.

Adeena was faced with a choice. Either get stabbed in the throat, or fall between the carriages and maybe be crushed by the churning wheels. The former she knew from experience was not a great time, so, in the spirit of trying new things, she shoved herself backward off the edge of the carriage.

She hung in the air for a moment, before hitting the end of the next carriage and bouncing back towards the other. The whirring tracks raced up to meet her, but she managed to grab the chain railing of the thin metal walkway that joined the two carriages before she fully fell. Her sword, however, hit the ground, and the surprising force wrenched it from her hands. She swore as it vanished underneath the wheels. She'd had that sword for a long time, she liked that sword.

Still, she had more immediate problems, and scrambled for purchase with her boots, one finding part of the undercarriage that stuck out. Above her she saw the elf raising a hand, which crackled with golden lightning as she prepared to cast a spell.

Knowing that she wouldn't be able to avoid this blast, Adeena tried something else that she hadn't managed for a long time. She thrust her hand out and tried to channel her internal energy into a blast of raw force.

The elf yelped in surprise as the invisible front of telekinetic energy hit her and knocked her back out of view. Adeena didn't waste the opportunity, and hauled herself up onto the walkway and shoved the door open. Now bleeding copiously, she stumbled into the carriage as the train continued to slow, approaching the next platform.

The passengers shouted in alarm and backed away from her.

"It's OK, I'm not going to hurt you-"

Glass crashed behind her, and something hard and sharp took her in the back, making her stumble forward. Oh, right. She wasn't going to hurt them, but the crazed elf assassin-priestess didn't seem to mind fighting in such close proximity to innocent bystanders.

Swearing, Adeena pulled the dagger from her back and turned to meet the onrushing elf. She released another blast of force, but the elf braced, and was only pushed back a few paces. Bloody, stolen dagger clashed against the elf's clean one once, twice, and thrice before Adeena managed to lock them both against one of the many vertical metal poles.

Then Adeena punched the elf in the face. Despite clearly being well-trained and deadly with blades, and empowered by whatever God or Goddess they followed, it was clear that the woman wasn't that used to such 'underhand,' tavern-brawl style tactics, and actually let go of her dagger in shock as her nose broke.

Adeena, however, had been in more tavern brawls than she could count, and immediately followed up, stabbing the woman in the stomach and driving her to the ground. The elf screamed and tried to strike Adeena, but she socked her in the face again with one hand, and pulled the dagger free with the other, bringing it up and pressing it against the elf's throat.

The elf froze.

"Feeling chattier now?" asked Adeena. "Who are you, and why did you attack me?"

The elf locked eyes for her, but said nothing.

"I'm serious," said Adeena. "I have killed a lot of people, and my patience is running very thin."

Behind her the bell range, and the doors hissed open, accompanied by rushing boots and the sound of cocking weapons.

"Blades away, stand up, hands where we can see them!" shouted an enforcer.

Oh well, that worked too, she supposed.

"I'm taking the blade away now," said Adeena carefully, rocking back and raising the dagger into the air where they could see it. "She's the one who attacked me – careful, she's a priestess-"

There was a choking sound, and the elf's body seized beneath her.

"No, no, no!" shouted Adeena.

She dropped her dagger and squatted down again, ripping the woman's face covering off. A familiar, spasming elf stared up at her with a defiant, almost triumphant look in her eye, bloodied foam spilling from the corners of mouth.

"Gabrielle?" said Adeena in shock as the light left the elf's eyes.

Gabrielle. The elf from the Brightspark. She'd not only survived, but taken it on herself to try to kill Adeena? And then killed herself with some kind of deadly poison when she'd failed. Why?

Then someone grabbed her roughly from behind, and she was slammed into the floor as her hands were wrenched back. Adeena could probably have fought back, and might have even won – she very much doubted random enforcers in the Imperium were a match for even an Oathsworn as diminished as she was. But she was tired, and by this point, very, very done with all this nonsense.

Maybe if she cooperated, they'd go easy on her?