A thunderous roar shook the air as the packs of dynamite hidden inside the piles of rubble exploded. Thuds struck the wall before me as the bent nails and chunks of broken glass I’d had the townspeople pack around the explosives ripped through the air, barely audible over the ringing in my ears. People screamed as the explosion slammed into the train with a screech of metal and the crash of breaking glass, and I hoped that I hadn’t hurt anyone on the train too badly.

I quickly scuttled sideways, staying below the wall and getting away from where the marshals had seen me. The wooden walls wouldn’t hold up long against bullets, especially not if the marshals concentrated their fire in one place.

A ripple of magic rolled through the air as the sheriff charged Chomai’s Tilted Battleground card, weakening the marshals’ pets and strengthening mine. I followed suit by activating the cards in my hand, and power flooded the battlefield. The wooden planks of the platform turned soft and sticky; a chill wind scoured the station, reeking of rot and decay; flashes of light exploded before the eyes of the enemy pets. A gentle breeze wrapped around my pets, and their hides shone with an oily, coppery gleam. I’d linked as many buffing and debuffing runes as I could reasonably afford to, eight runes in all, leaving me that many that I could activate for the rest of the fight after using the Greater Flame Wave. I quickly activated Lesser Sanctum, cloaking myself just in time.

Another ripple of power spread out over the battlefield as Chomai powered her new Stillness card. Magic poured out and lay over the battlefield like a blanket, sealing in the runes that had already been cast and making it harder for anyone to activate new ones. I was originally planning to use the sheriff’s Nullification card instead, but that one would have wiped away the effects of my runes, leaving us to deal with the marshals on a fair battlefield. That was the last thing I wanted.

I crouched down and hurled my senses upward into the cloudglider. The platform resolved below me in incredible detail. Marshals were scattered across the open space, hurled about by the blasts. A full dozen pets lay still and unmoving, their bonds shattered by the explosions, and I guessed that the few handlers lying still and motionless were the owners of those pets–or had been. The rest of the marshals moved weakly, pushing themselves upright, their clothing torn and battered, and their bodies covered in dust and bits of debris. Their bonds were still intact, which meant they were still a threat.

“Open fire!” I shouted. A moment later, gunshots rang out as Chomai and the sheriff lifted their rifles and began shooting. I couldn’t see them beneath the veils of their Sanctum runes, but I saw the effects. Pets staggered as bullets crashed into them, and marshals cried out in pain as lead smacked into their heads or faces.

I scanned the battlefield and issued orders to my pets. My heartraptor struck first, plunging from the station’s roof with a Shatterscream and tearing into one of the Lesser pets, a two-foot-long feline with a wolf’s muzzle and bristly fur. The raptor snatched up the weaker creature and bore it into the air, tearing at it with its beak and ignoring its flailing bites and scratches. A moment later, the cat plummeted earthward and landed with a loud crack of shattering bones; being able to land on its feet apparently wasn’t enough to keep its bond from snapping and its legs from fracturing.

That act seemed to galvanize the marshals, and they scrambled to kneeling or sitting positions, pulling out cards. More gunshots rang out, and cards burst into flame as bullet holes tore through them, disrupting their runes, but my partners couldn’t possibly shoot fast enough to stop all the marshals from activating their runes. Power flared, then settled as the Stillness rune covering the area suppressed the Lesser runes trying to activate. If the marshals wanted to use them, they were going to need more power and time, and I was hoping not to give them much of the second one.

Men and women flinched as my moonstalker leaped over the wall with a loud roar, its Frightful Bellow sapping their will to fight and freezing most of their pets in place. The stormracer tore out from the other side, sprinting across the battlefield and slamming into a creature that looked like a goat with hind legs like a rabbit. The goat froze up as the racer’s lightning claws froze its muscles, and the big cat dragged it away from the battle, tearing at the unmoving creature with its claws and shaking its head furiously. The goat lasted for about five seconds before its already battered bond succumbed, and blood spurted from it as the racer’s fangs sank in. I ordered the cat to release the creature, letting it add to the chaos, and the feline ran across the platform and leaped over the wall into cover.

Two groups of creatures rushed toward the gaps in the walls, and my shellsnapper and sparksnake moved to block those spots. A creature that looked like a wolf-sized wasp with glowing wings and stinger flitted across the platform and dove at the snapper, but a blast of ice crashed into it as it descended, freezing its wings and causing it to plummet to the planks below. A froglike beast whose skin dripped mud sprang at my sparksnake, but lightning arced from the serpent’s eyes, freezing the monster in midleap and sending it crashing into the ground. Still, the mass of enemy pets surged forward, and only the narrowness of the gap in the wall kept them from surrounding my defenders and ending them the same way I’d lost my bonecrusher.

Men and women shouted and cursed as bullets continued to fly. Smoke filled the air from the slowly growing fires along with the misty fog of my fogrunner’s Aura, obscuring vision and adding to the chaos. Marshals held up cards or lifted pistols, firing blindly toward where they thought we were, hitting their own pets as often as not.

The lead marshal clambered to his feet, and his steelscuttler surged forward, undulating swiftly toward my shellsnapper. The centipede tossed smaller and weaker creatures aside in its haste, the sticky planks beneath its feet only slightly hampering its speed. Halfway there, arcs of lightning from my sparksnake bit into it, crawling across its metallic body. The centipede curled up into a ball as its muscles convulsed madly beneath the power of its bane, lightning, and the marshal swore loudly in frustration.

My heartraptor swooped down again, landing atop the paralyzed frog creature and tearing out one of its eyes before lurching back into the sky. It dodged the strike of a huge bat and slipped around the claws of what looked like a flying lizard. The lizard spun to follow with more speed than I’d expected, but it dropped as a blast of ice tore into it and sent it plummeting to the ground. A bullet that struck it pierced its body, finally shattering its bond.

A five-foot-tall bird that resembled an emu with a long, hooked beak, sharp talons, and clawed arms instead of wings struck at my shellsnapper with a kick that knocked the creature backward. The emu lunged forward, but it squawked as the moonstalker’s jaws closed around its long neck, shaking it and flinging it into the press of creatures behind. The bird struggled to its feet but tumbled as the stormracer leaped atop it, clawing and biting madly. Blood flew, and the cat sprinted away, leaving the creature to scramble to its feet and charge its former handler.

Marshals shouted and cursed, drawing pistols and firing as their own pets turned against them. The Lesser-ranked monsters, already badly weakened from the explosions, didn’t last long when my pets struck them. Once they started taking wounds, I ordered my creatures to leave them alone, knowing they’d go after their handlers. The wounded creatures weren’t much of a threat to the marshals, but they were distractions, keeping the handlers from effectively controlling their beasts and making them far less dangerous in battle.

A bearlike monster with a striped raccoon tail struck at my sparksnake, its ponderous blows far too slow to hit the nimble, twisting serpent, then stumbled as the heartraptor crashed into its back, shredding its fur and flesh until it tore through and freed the beast from its bond. A creature that looked like a bull with glowing, orange horns and a third horn on its nose charged my shellsnapper, never even seeing the moonstalker that raced up behind it and grabbed its rear leg, tumbling it to the platform. A blast of ice washed over it, opening up a series of jagged wounds, and it lumbered to its feet and charged at its handler, knocking aside two more marshals and trampling one beneath its hooves in the process.

The steelscuttler slid forward once more, but by that point, my sparksnake had killed or paralyzed every pet before it, and the serpent raced to intercept the centipede. It twisted to face the snake, and my stormracer ran out of nowhere, landing atop the back of the centipede and hitting it with another blast of electricity. While the huge bug twisted and writhed, my heartraptor streaked down, its Shatterscream shivering the centipede’s armor before it smashed into the thing’s head, biting and clawing madly.

“You son of a bitch!” the lead marshal roared. “I’m gonna kill you, you bastard!” He pulled out a card, but before he could activate it, my moonstalker plowed into him, knocking him down onto the platform. The huge wolf-bear bit and tore at the man, knocking him around and flinging him sideways, then pouncing on him again and tearing fiercely at him. The marshal’s hand stilled gripped the card, though, and I felt power flood it. The card exploded with light, a light I’d seen before, and my eyes widened as the Severing rune activated, hurling tendrils of power out at everyone around.

“No!” A young woman screamed and clutched her uncovered head, dropping to her knees as the rune cut through her bond effortlessly. A man across the platform did the same, dropping his revolver and gripping his temples in pain–a pain I shared.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

My head burned in agony as the rune reached out and grabbed the nodes of power in my mind, trying to tear them free from me. I growled and held onto them, pulling them back, but the pain increased steadily as the rune’s strength swelled, trying to yank my bonds out of me by sheer force, leaving empty holes behind. I staggered to my feet; I needed to get one of the marshals’ hats while I still could, before I started losing bonds.

“John, wait! There’s a better way!” Sara’s voice in my head sounded urgent, and as she spoke, glowing lines appeared in a hexagonal shape on the wooden board in front of me.

“What?” The pain in my head made it hard to think, much less to focus on her words. “What are you talking about?”

“Trust me, John! Trace this rune–and hurry!”

I hesitated for only a second before yanking my pen from my pocket. Power rolled down my hand as I unthinkingly traced the lines that glowed before me. My skull burned and throbbed, and an ache slowly grew in the center of my chest as the bonds were pulled from me despite my efforts. My vision darkened, and I could barely see, but after drawing so many runes, my hand moved swiftly and unerringly, flowing across the wood. The rune was ridiculously complicated, far more so than any I’d drawn before, but blinded by the agony in my skull, I didn’t notice. I felt my bonds slipping away, slowly dwindling, but I still barely held them as the rune completed.

“Now, power it! Quickly, John!”

I slapped my hand to the center of the rune and triggered it. Energy poured out of me and exploded into the rune, which flashed with a blast of darkness that pulsed across the air. The pain in my skull vanished instantly, and the marshal screamed as the rune in his hand burst into flames in the same instant that fire spurted from the wood in front of me, searing my palm. He screamed again as my sparksnake’s fangs finally plunged through his steelscuttler’s shell, filling the bug with paralytic venom that held it still as my stormracer tore off its head.

I shook my head to clear it as my bonds slowly renewed themselves. I quickly pulled up my pet sheet, sighing as it appeared before me.

Creature

Type

Rank

Bond

Buzzfly

Glowwind

Simple

32/202

Cloudglider

Air

Lesser

58/301

Shellsnapper

Water

Lesser

56/301

Fogrunner

Ice

Greater

91/738

Stormracer

Wildstorm

Greater

83/688

Heartraptor

Wildwind

Greater

104/867

Sparksnake

Glowwave

High

203/2,037

Moonstalker

Predator

High

165/1,590

My bonds had been damaged, no doubt, but they still held. I closed the screen with a feeling of relief and looked around at the battlefield.

A few marshals still fought their pets–apparently, losing their bonds the old-fashioned way made them immune to the debilitating effects of the Severing rune–and I let those battles happen. I figured the marshals would probably win, in which case I’d have more people to question, but if they didn’t–well, I wasn’t going to lose sleep over their being devoured by their own pets. My pets were swiftly finishing off the beasts freed by the Severing rune; without the bonuses from their handlers, the monsters were simply no match for mine, and as Pramod said, they’d lost their aggressiveness and ferocity by being severed. The battle was over, even if there was still some fighting to be done.

“What was that rune you made, Sara?” I asked now that I knew that it was safe to do so.

“It basically did the same thing that we did to the orb, John,” she said with satisfaction. “It cancelled it out and destroyed it. With that rune, you can counter the severing one.”

“That’s…” I sighed. “Honestly, I can’t even think of a word to say how amazing that was. Great job, Sara.”

“Thank you. I’m always happy to help!”

I walked out of the protection of the Sanctum, seeing the sheriff and Chomai emerge at the same time. The old man’s eyes gazed at me with concern as he walked toward me.

“You okay, boy?” he asked worriedly.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I nodded.

“What did you just do?” Chomai demanded. “How did you make that Severing rune flame out like that?”

“I did the same thing to it that I did to the orb that pulled Old Sena. I figured out a way to undo it, and that destroyed it. I’m not sure why, though.”

She stared at me. “Wait, you figured out how to invert that damn rune–while it was being used on you? A High rune?”

“I’d been working on it for a while,” I lied easily. “Ever since Whitestone, in fact. I thought I had it figured out, so I took a chance.”

“Damn, boy,” the sheriff chuckled. “You know how valuable that is? People work for years to figure out rune inversions, and they keep them close to their chest when they work them out.”

“Why?” I asked curiously.

“Because an inversion is a zero-cost card,” Chomai sighed. “The power you put into it comes back to you when the runes collapse, so it don’t take away from the number of cards you can power. If you know somebody’s favorite cards and can make inversions of them, you can cancel them out without costing you a thing–and it destroys their cards in the process. Inversions are a shaper’s worst nightmare.”

“Sounds like it,” I agreed. I turned my thoughts inward, but Sara was ahead of me.

“I can work on inversions for the more common runes, John, yes,” she said with a laugh. “Being able to undo something like the sheriff’s Nullification would be useful.”

“Yes, it would. Thanks, Sara.”

I walked through the gap over to where my moonstalker held down the bleeding lead marshal. My pet’s fangs had pierced his shoulder, his chest sported a long gash that stained his shirt crimson, and another slash creased the side of his neck and his face. He swallowed hard as I approached, afraid to move with the stalker’s jaws around his throat. I squatted over the man, and he stared up at me, his face filled with pain and fear.

“Who–who the hell are you?” he gasped hoarsely.

“I told you. The name’s Naasi.”

“Beastshit. You’re not a naasi. No naasi could have done all this. Who do you work for? The Confederacy? The Republic? The railroads?”

“I work for myself, Marshal. And I told you, I held all the cards from the very beginning. I knew you’d be coming, and I was ready for you. You, on the other hand, only thought you were ready for us. You were wrong.”

I stood up and looked around as the platform fell silent. Two of the marshals survived the fight with their pets, while four more lay unconscious, taken out by the Severing rune. The rest were dead, killed by the blast, their pets, or gunfire. Bodies and debris lay scattered across the platform, and fires burned steadily in several places, threatening to spread if not contained. The side of the train was scorched and battered, and it leaned precariously, several of its wheels hanging off the tracks.

I shook my head and looked back down at the man. “And now, you’re going to answer some questions for me. If I like the answers, I’ll finish you off quickly. If not…” I sent a mental command, and the sparksnake slithered over beside me, rearing up with a hiss, while the moonstalker growled low in its throat. “Well, let’s just hope I like the answers.”

I glanced at Chomai. “Can you check the train and make sure nobody on board needs help?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I’d prefer to do that. Helping people is what marshals are supposed to do.” She glanced down at the fallen marshal, and I saw recognition in her eyes. “Ain’t that right, Ishar?” she asked coldly.

“Chomai,” he grunted. “You’re looking well.”

“And you look like shit,” she spat. “But not as bad as you’re gonna soon. I been waiting for this day for a long, long time.” She looked at me. “Don’t be gentle with his worthless ass. He deserves anything you do to him and more. But save some for me.” She turned and walked toward the train, and the marshal sighed quietly.

“I take it you two know one another?” the sheriff chuckled. The marshal remained silent, and I bent over him, removing his pistol and two decks of cards from his jacket, then ordered the moonstalker to release him. He sat up slowly, rubbing his throat and looking around in silence.

“Don’t get any ideas about clamming up,” I told the man with an evil grin. “You were just about to answer those questions I was talking about, remember?”

He glared at me before his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I’ll answer your questions,” he said quietly. “On one condition. The others–the ones who survived–you let them go.”

“No,” I shook my head. “They came here to kill me, Ishar–or worse. And from the fact that they weren’t severed already, they must be some of Kamath’s actual followers, not his conscripted ones. I don’t have any way to safely hold them, so…” I shrugged. “I can promise, though, that I’ll make it quick for them. They won’t suffer. That’s the best I can do, and you’re not in a position to ask for more.”

The man blinked rapidly, and I saw actual tears in his eyes. “They aren’t Kamath’s deputies,” he said in a slightly frantic voice. “They’re mine. I dragged them here. They shouldn’t suffer for what I did.”

“You’re a bad liar, Marshal.” I dragged the man to his feet. “You came here to take my life for no reason except that I’m trying to stop Kamath. You as much as admitted it upfront, and you did it openly, so all these marshals knew what this was all about–and they didn’t care.” I shrugged. “If you’re planning to take a life, you have to accept that you might lose yours in the process. If they didn’t know that, then it’s the last lesson they’ll learn.” I pulled him close and glared into his eyes, activating Terrifying Demeanor as I did. His eyes widened, and his face paled as the ability struck him.

“So, here’s my offer. You talk, and all of you die fast. You hold back, and I won’t hurt you. I’ll take it out on them and make you watch.” I let some of my rising anger show on my face. “I’m a bad person to anger, Marshal. Understand?”

He swallowed hard and nodded. “I–I understand!”

“Good.” I looked around and spotted the station nearby, then pointed to it. “We can talk in there. Sheriff, will you tie up these other prisoners for me while I’m doing that?”

“Happy to,” he nodded somberly.

“Thanks. Now, Ishar, let’s have a little chat, just you and me, shall we?”