Magic rippled down my arm and surged into my hand, filling the three cards spread out in a fan in my fingers. I tossed the cards onto the ground, and they spun as they sailed outward, their matrices expanding outward and then collapsing in on them. The power spread outward in a fan as the chained runes ignited, one after another. It washed over the battlefield, wrapping about my pets and shrouding them in a haze of magic that crystallized into a coppery sheen on their hide. It plunged down into the earth, which darkened and softened. It swirled around in the air, lifting my pets on unseen currents that lightened their steps. With the battlefield set, I urged my creatures forward and into battle.
My heartraptor screeched as it plummeted toward a herd of eight huge creatures that looked like a cross between an ox and a lion, with a furred, maned body, clawed front legs, hooved rear legs, and a heavy head with a pair of sharp, forward-pointing horns. The animals, called plainsrumblers according to my analyze ability, bellowed and milled about as the Shatterscream hit them. Shallow cuts opened along their backs as the scream weakened their defenses. In response, the beasts lashed upward with their sharp horns, and one reared to slash at the bird with its front claws, but the nimble raptor slipped past the assaults and beat its wings as it fought to regain altitude.
The rumblers moaned and stamped as my stormracer and moonstalker exploded from their hiding places in the long grass and rushed forward to strike at the rear of the beasts. Blood flew as feline claws and lupine jaws cut and tore at the large beasts’ legs and rumps. The animals spun to face the threat, stumbling as the soft earth pulled and sucked at their feet, slowing their movements, but by the time they turned, the two predators split off and raced back into the prairie grass to hide.
My fogrunner rose from its concealment and reared up on its back legs, its long muzzle gaping. A blast of frigid air shot from its maw, propelling small but sharp crystals of ice at the monsters. The Ice Spray bathed the two closest creatures, freezing their flesh and cutting open new wounds along their sides. That assault seemed to break the rumblers’ hesitance to attack, and almost as one, the beasts broke into a lumbering charge, racing with horns lowered toward the light blue weasel. The ground shook beneath their hooves as they activated their Thundering Charge ability. The muddy ground slowed them, but it seemed like nothing would stop their implacable rush.
My sparksnake rose from the grass in front of the fogrunner, its rounded head reaching my height. Its eyes flashed, and arcs of lightning shot from them, whipping and crackling into the nearest plainsrumblers. The creatures’ bodies stiffened, and three of them went down hard, their momentum causing them to plow long furrows in the soft earth. The rumblers behind the first group tried to avoid it or leap over their fallen comrades, but their heavy bodies weren’t made to dodge quickly, and the charge became a tangled mess of thick bodies, slashing claws, flailing hooves, and sharp horns.
The shellsnapper scuttled forward, its tentacles waving as it placed itself in front of the oxen. It lashed out with a barbed tentacle that sliced open the face of the closest plainsrumbler, and the beast responded with a bellow and a thrusting horn. The snapper’s rubbery flesh seemed to shrink away from the spike, and the blow slid harmlessly along the pet’s slime-coated hide. Another tentacle slapped into the rumbler, and the beast lurched back, stumbling to its feet. It fell again as the sparksnake darted forward and struck, plunging its fangs into the monster’s shoulder. Electrically charged venom flowed into the animal’s blood, freezing its muscles and paralyzing it in seconds.
The rest of the herd barreled forward, goring, clawing, and stomping, but my shellsnapper shrugged off their attacks, while the sparksnake whipped about, dodging the attacks easily. With the herd committed, my raptor, stormracer, and moonstalker plunged back into the melee. The bird struck a rumbler’s head, ripping at its eyes with its sharp beak while tearing at the ox’s head and neck with its talons. A rumbler brayed and stumbled as the moonstalker darted in behind it and tore out its hamstring, crippling it. My stormracer leaped at a fourth one, gripping with its front claws while its rear ones flashed up to rake at the beast’s stomach and sides, tearing open a long gash that spilled intestines into the grass.
I watched the melee from above, my thoughts riding with the cloudglider as it circled overhead. The prey-type Lesser beasts had no real chance against my pets, of course. They had decent defense, but they were slow, did low damage, and had no dodge ability to speak of. They were dangerous when charging, and if they pinned something, they could gore it for some nasty damage, but I didn’t let them do either. My sparksnake and fogrunner kept them from building up any momentum to charge, and their horns slid off my shellsnapper harmlessly. They couldn’t turn fast enough to deal with the attacks of the stormracer, moonstalker, and heartraptor, and when they tried, the creatures in front of them punished them for it. The last of the creatures fell with a despairing bellow as the moonstalker bore it to the ground and tore out its throat.
“Not bad,” the sheriff said, clapping his gloved hands approvingly from atop his mount. “You’re getting the hang of using those beasties the way they’re meant to be used.”
I withdrew my senses from the glider and opened my eyes, smiling sardonically at the old man. “It helps to have creatures that can serve in every role,” I said. “Although I could honestly use another ranged attacker like the fogrunner.”
“You could,” he nodded. “If you find another water type with an acid spray, you might want to grab it. Otherwise, when we get up into the mountains, we can hunt down a shockfloater. It’s a lightning type, basically a floating ball that just rides the wind and zaps things that get too close to it. Nasty thing, especially at High ranks, when it becomes a livestorm and can make a damn thunderstorm. Put it over the battlefield, and you can rain lightning down on anything beneath it.”
“That sounds useful.”
“It is. Gotta travel into the mountain valleys to find them, though.” He squinted up into the sky. “Getting close to time to head back, I think. Train should be coming soon. Besides, the folks in town will want all this meat.”
“He’s right, John,” Sara said. “The train’s scheduled to arrive in two hours.”
“Think we’ll get the reception we’re hoping for on this train?”
“I don’t know about hoping for,” he chuckled. “Now, if you’re asking if there’s gonna be someone on that train looking to kill us, then I think it’s safe to say the answer’s yes. Kamath didn’t have time to gather people to send our way for the last train, but that was six days ago. He’s had plenty of time to put together a posse to come after us.” He paused. “But what if he didn’t? We gonna stay in Shadewood?”
“No,” I shook my head. “But if he didn’t, then he’s setting an ambush for us farther up the line, which means we can’t take the train north. We’ll have to ride.”
“It’ll take a lot longer.”
“Better to take longer than to walk into an ambush, right?”
“I think so,” he grinned at me. “Hopefully, the marshal don’t agree and sent his people on this train.”
“Might as well head back and find out.” I sent a command to the cloudglider, and it wheeled to the northwest and flapped back across the river, banking north to find the train and follow it. The rest of my pets followed along with me as we headed back toward the river and the town beyond. The people of Shadewood hadn’t built a bridge yet, of course, but they’d managed to turn one of the surviving boats into a ferry drawn with a rope by a pair of roadwalkers. It was really only fit for a small group like ours to cross, but it would have to do; restoring the bridge was apparently going to be the work of weeks if not months. The townsfolk had done a lot in the past ten days, but erecting a simple building and driving new piles for a bridge were obviously vastly different things.
Still, just because it was hard didn’t mean they weren’t working on it. A warning cry to my left caught my attention, and I saw a floating platform anchored in the middle of the river with a group of lightly dressed people crouching down on it. I gripped the reins of my roadwalker more tightly, knowing what was coming. A moment later, a gout of water, mud, and debris shot up from the river, splattering the people aboard the raft, followed by a booming thud that I felt in the soles of my feet. Old Sena’s emergence hadn’t just destroyed the bridge; it had stirred up the silt and mud of the riverbed and created new mudbanks in the middle of the river. If those weren’t cleared, any ship running this way would be likely to founder, and the mud had to be cleared before new bridge pilings could be set. Apparently, the Gistal had its equivalent of dynamite, something I found quite interesting–and hopefully useful.
The townspeople weren’t the only ones who’d been busy, of course. I had plenty to keep me occupied. I’d managed to locate our watchers the first day. It wasn’t hard; they were trying to avoid being seen by people, not a tiny buzzfly. The two deputies were, as the hotel owner suggested, hiding out with an older woman named Siddhi who was an Imperial sympathizer. My buzzfly found them almost immediately, and I had it keep an eye on them that first night. I was pretty sure that one of them was like Siddhi, just someone who admired the Empire but not an agent of the marshals, but the other crept out every few nights and busied himself around the town, undoing repairs, tossing a tool or two in the river, and making general mischief. He was obviously on Kamath’s payroll, but I didn’t think he was the one who’d triggered the orb.
That honor I assigned to Daksh, the missing wagoner. My cloudglider spotted him that first night slipping out of one of the drying barns and heading into town to meet with the vandalizing deputy. He’d then headed into the forest, where he’d pulled out a large hexagonal rune card and began muttering into it in low tones. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I didn’t really need to. It looked like he was the one reporting to Kamath, and that meant that he was probably the one in charge. After seeing that, I had the buzzfly follow him, instead. So far, he hadn’t gone to retrieve the missing orb, but he had watched the sheriff and I riding out of town each day, and he hadn’t gone near the train station as far as I could tell. In fact, he was doing his best to avoid contact with the people of Shadewood at all, which had to have made it harder to gather information. Working all that out was enough to give me another level in Investigator and a point to Reason and Perception, plus another skill point, but otherwise, the knowledge didn’t really help me much. I’d identified Kamath’s eyes and ears–I hoped–but because they were avoiding everyone, I couldn’t feed them false information as I’d been hoping, which made them less useful to me.
Of course, I could have killed both of them without any real problems at any time. My buzzfly wasn’t powerful compared to most beasts, but I was pretty sure that with the bonuses being bonded to me gave it, it could kill either man with a single Lightning Bite. However, if I did that, Kamath would stop getting reports, and I wanted him to think that we were holing up here for a while. I’d gotten new pets, and I was busy training them as far as anyone was concerned. Hopefully, that would encourage the marshal to send a welcoming party to Shadewood to deal with me. At least, that’s what I was hoping.
To help keep my watchers’ attention, I made a point to spend the early part of each morning in the sheriff’s office, as if I intended to take up that role for the town. It meant that people came to me to deal with their stupid disputes, but I did my best Solomon impression and tried to give them my wisdom. Sadly, there wasn’t much of that to give.
The first few days, I headed into the forest to train my pets, but after the first train came and went without the expected posse–and the town worked out their primitive ferry–I started expanding my travels into the grasslands across the Sonkhee and the riverbanks to the north and south. My patrols helped the town by cutting down on the number of monsters in the area, but more to the point, the fights let me work out how to use my new pets in their best manner.
That wasn’t as simple as I’d thought it would be, at least not once I put some actual consideration into it. My first instinct was to assign combat roles to creatures based on their stats, but Sara pointed out that might be a little short-sighted. I was planning to rank my creatures up, after all, and that would change their stats significantly. I had to judge the creatures by their weighted stats, considering what they would likely become as they hit higher ranks. My sparksnake had the second-highest attack rating of my pets, but if they were all at High rank, it would probably be one of the lowest. Fortunately, Sara came through for me again by helping me determine which animals were the best at which roles.
Attack
Defense
Dodge
Damage
Speed
Stormracer
Shellsnapper
Cloudglider
Stormracer
Cloudglider
Moonstalker
Fogrunner
Fogrunner
Moonstalker
Heartraptor
Heartraptor
Sparksnake
Heartraptor
Heartraptor
Fogrunner
Cloudglider
Heartraptor
Shellsnapper
Shellsnapper
Sparksnake
Buzzfly
Cloudglider
Sparksnake
Sparksnake
Shellsnapper
Sparksnake
Moonstalker
Stormracer
Buzzfly
Stormracer
Fogrunner
Stormracer
Buzzfly
Cloudglider
Buzzfly
Shellsnapper
Buzzfly
Moonstalker
Fogrunner
Moonstalker
The simple fact was, weighted by rank, the sparksnake was a much better defender than attacker, despite its lightning type and potent attacks. The fogrunner was actually almost as suited for defense as the shellsnapper, as well, and the heartraptor’s high dodge stat made it at least decent at keeping an enemy’s attention. Sara’s table, weighted as it was to remove a creature’s rank from the equation, helped me work out the best roles for each creature to take. After that, it was just a matter of training them to fill those roles and making working with them second nature.
Thanks to Chomai, my pets weren’t the only new things I had to learn to use, either. The woman spent most days at the saloon, where she’d more or less appropriated a table for herself. Each day, she labored for hours sorting the decks I’d given her, deciding what cards were useful, which were not, and which were most important. She set aside three dozen new cards for me to copy, placing them in the order she thought I should learn them just in case we were attacked again. Most of those were either upgrades of cards I already found useful or area effect cards, ones that affected an entire battlefield. I’d gotten through about half of them so far, and learning how and when to use them was a big part of my training. That training was made much easier thanks to the card that Chomai had indicated she thought most important.
New Rune Learned: Greater Prey’s Call
Arcania Required: 8.0
Draws a random group of nearby creatures of Lesser or Greater rank.
The rune was basically a less powerful version of the sheriff’s Grand Summoning card; instead of pulling everything within a couple miles, it spread out and drew the closest group of Lesser or Greater creatures it found. The card was invaluable for training, since I could use it to bring beasts in a few at a time, and I wouldn’t have to worry about pulling anything my pets couldn’t handle. Thanks to Prey’s Call, Sanctum, and my ability to watch through my cloudglider’s eyes, I could stay hidden, summon a few creatures to fight, and practice my handling skills from relative safety. In old video games on Earth, what I was doing would be called grinding; here, I considered it vital to my continued survival.
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We reached the river in thirty minutes since we hadn’t gone far into the grassland–another benefit of Prey’s Call. The ferry was on the other side, and we had to wait while the ferryman led his roadwalkers along the bank, pulling the flat-bottomed boat across to our side using a makeshift pulley system, then back the other way to slowly haul our group back across the water. The boat shifted and rocked beneath us, and water trickled in through a few loose seams, but it stayed afloat, and the guide rope kept us from drifting downstream. It wasn’t the fastest and most comfortable way to cross the river, but it worked.
When we reached the other side, we headed to the saloon to find Chomai. The woman sat with her head bent low, a glowing lamp set in front of her and a pitcher of water beside her. Her face creased with concentration, and her tongue poked out the side of her mouth as she slowly drew a line that curved smoothly along the edge of the card. We stood back and watched in silence; I knew from hard experience how easy it was to screw up drawing a card, and that was with Sara’s guidance. Without it–well, I was just glad I had her around.
I hadn’t really realized how much of an advantage Sara gave me when it came to runes. To copy a card, Chomai first had to break it down and separate out the layers. To do that, she had to slowly charge the card and watch how it activated, using a piece of paper to make a rough tracing of what she discovered, then go back and do it again, over and over until she had it mapped out. When she finished that, she had to go back and check the connections, then charge the whole thing to make sure that she got it all right. If she didn’t, she had to start again to figure out where she’d made her mistake. It took her hours just to break down a Lesser rune, days for a Greater one, and she didn’t have the skill yet to deconstruct High runes. And once she had a rough mapping of the rune, she had to draw one of her own, which failed more often than not since she didn’t have perfectly drawn glowing lines to follow. Sara was a major cheat, no two ways about it.
Not that I was complaining, of course.
We waited in silence for the woman to finish. Finally, she lifted the pen and set it down, taking a deep breath as she gently waved the card in the air to help dry the rest of the ink. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand and peered blearily at us.
“What time is it?” she asked tiredly.
“Time for you to take a break, girl,” the sheriff chuckled. “You’re gonna hurt your eyes spending so much time staring at runes.”
“A break?” She snorted. “I’ll take a break when I’m dead, old man. And speaking of dying, how close are we to the train getting here?”
“About an hour,” I said, sitting down at the table with her.
“Long enough to test this and make another rune if it worked, then.” She lifted the rune, and I felt the power surge slowly into it. Magic trickled into the rune, and I watched with See Magic as the energy rippled through the card. I winced as it hit a bad connection and jumped, arcing from one layer to the next prematurely and short-circuiting the whole thing. Smoke trickled from the short circuit for an instant before it burst into flames that quickly began to consume the card.
“Shit!” She jammed the card into the pitcher at her side, and it extinguished with a loud hiss. “I thought I had it that time. Damn.”
“There was a bad connection,” I suggested. “You had a linkage from layer three to layer six that jumped over the linkage to layer four, so it skipped right to the end and burned the whole thing out.”
She glared at me suspiciously. “You could see that from over there?” she asked. I nodded, and she snorted. “Beastshit.”
“Girl, how many cards you managed in the past ten days?” the sheriff asked her as he pulled out a third chair and settled languidly into it.
“Eleven,” she said with a touch of bitterness. “They was all Greater ones, though, so they took longer.”
“And boy, how many did you get done?” he asked me with a grin.
“A few more than that,” I hedged.
“How many is a few, exactly?”
I sighed. “All told? Twenty. Seven of those were upgrades of my Lesser cards, though, so they probably shouldn’t count.”
She stared at me, her jaw slack. “Twenty Greater cards? In ten days?” She shook her head and held out a hand. “Ain’t no way. Let me see that deck.”
I handed it over, pulling up my deck screen so I could see more or less what she would.
Current Deck (41/120)
Attack
Buff
Debuff
Utility
Greater Acid Bath
Greater Copperskin
Greater Blinding
Greater Analyze
Greater Flame Wave
Greater Floating Steps
Greater Frozen Bones
Greater Healing
Greater Lightning Web
Greater Hunter Claws
Greater Mudeyes
Greater Pacify
Lesser Brain Jolt
Greater Slime Skin
Greater Plague Wind
Greater Prey Call
Lesser Deadly Lunge
Lesser Darkblood
Greater Quicksand
Greater Shearing
Lesser Lightning Whip
Lesser Fire Fang
Greater Wind Cocoon
Greater Shielding
Lesser Ice Fang
Lesser Heavyfoot
Lesser Camouflage
Lesser Iron Hide
Lesser Skinrot
Lesser Far Talking
Lesser Piercing Bite
Lesser Sanctum
Lesser Razor Tooth
Simple Bug Off
Lesser Spike Skin
Simple Fixing
Lesser Water Bones
Simple Freshen
Simple Heating
Simple Launder
Simple Skin Scrub
Max # Runes Active: 16
The runes I’d copied were all ones that Chomai set aside for me. Almost all were Greater cards; Camouflage and Far Talking were the only Lesser runes I’d copied, and those only because there weren’t Greater versions of them in the decks. Far Talking was what the rangers used to chat with each other, and Camouflage was what I’d used on my pets earlier to help them hide in the grass, making the air around them hazy and distorting their outlines so they were harder to spot. Flame Wave, Acid Bath, and Lightning Web were just large-area attack runes, doing elemental damage to an entire battlefield at once. My Greater buff cards gave bonuses to all of my pets that were smaller than I’d get if I just targeted one at a time: Copperskin and Slime Skin to defense, Hunter Claws to damage, and Floating Steps to speed. The debuff runes did the opposite, giving all enemy pets on the battlefield a small penalty: Quicksand and Wind Cocoon slowed them, Frozen Bones reduced their dodge, Mudeyes lowered their attack, Plague Wind weakened their defense, and Blinding flashed light in their eyes that blinded them briefly. Of the utility runes, Shielding was an improvement of my Deflection rune, lasting longer and repelling more enemy cards, while Shearing was what Pramod used to end the debuffs I put on his pet.
However, probably the most useful rune I’d gotten was the Greater Analyze card. In addition to the information I got from the Lesser version, Greater Analyze told me what pets and affinities a handler had when used on another person, weaknesses when used on a creature, and my affinity for and chance to bond with a creature if it wasn’t already bonded. Sara had almost immediately incorporated the new rune into my ability, giving me a lot more information when I used it. On a whim, I analyzed Chomai to see how it worked.
Chomai
Paths: Hunter, Shaper, Horde Head, Horde Leader
Rank: Greater
Affinities: Water, Wood, Earth
Pets: None
Dominia: 21.7 Personia: 14.5 Arcania: 22.8
Threat Level: Low
The extra information would prove incredibly useful, I imagined. That was another huge advantage Sara gave me: I could learn about my enemies without needing to use a card and thus without their realizing it. Knowing more about them than they did about me could only help.
She tossed the deck back toward me with a disgusted sound. “How the hell did you do that?” she demanded. “There ain’t no way you could have made twenty damn cards–most of them Greater ones–in less than two weeks, just working nights! I’d need a month of solid work to do that!”
“How don’t matter,” the old man chuckled. “Point is, if he can do it, then maybe when he gives you some advice, you should listen.”
“Maybe,” she grumbled.
“So, what card were you working on?” he asked.
“Greater Stillness,” she sighed. “It’s a card that makes other cards harder to use for a while.” She flashed the sheriff a glare. “Without totally stopping everyone from using more cards like a Nullification card does, that is. I thought it might be helpful for when the train gets here.”
“I imagine it would,” he nodded, gesturing to the template she’d been using. “Why don’t you try again? The boy can let you know if you’re about to make a mistake.” Her eyes flashed, and her face reddened, but she saw the sparkle in his eyes, and she let out a deep breath.
“You can be a right pain in the ass, old man. You know that, don’t you?”
“I aim to please.” He touched the brim of his hat with a chuckle.
“Besides, I got what he was saying. I won’t make the same mistake again.” She made a face. “At least, not more than one or two times, I hope.”
The train station was barely recognizable when we reached it forty minutes or so later. I’d asked the townspeople to make a few modifications to it while they were repairing the rest of town, and it looked like they’d done a pretty good job. A chest-high wall of tightly fitted wooden planks ran along the platform’s edge with two gaps in it to allow people to enter and leave. Elevated perches stood at two places near the ends of the platform, really nothing more than four-foot-tall stands with a waist-high wall in front of them. Rubble from the town stood in small piles all around the open space, stacked up to provide clear paths. On the whole, the work was somewhat shoddy and wouldn’t last long, but then, it didn’t really have to last past the day. I was sure that after we were done with it, the townspeople would rip it all down and use it to rebuild.
The station stood oddly empty. Every other time I’d been to a train station in this world, it was fairly busy, with people waiting to board, wagonloads of goods to be shipped, and empty carts ready to bring new supplies into town. That day, though, no one stood dressed in their traveling finery; no loads of cut boards waited to be transported south; no merchants and traders stood about, checking their watches and talking idly about the weather and prices. People had wanted to greet the train, of course–some people didn’t want to rebuild and would have preferred to leave, and while the town needed lumber, it also needed money and goods to survive–but it hadn’t taken much for me to convince them not to be there when the train first arrived. People were still a little fearful and overawed by the three of us, and while I knew that would pass, I was happy to use it to my benefit–and theirs.
Chomai and Ramka knelt on the two raised perches. Multiple rifles and shotguns lay at their feet, basically the town’s entire armory. I stood behind the wall and rested my elbows on it, trying to force myself to calmness. My stomach felt tight, not the queasiness of imbalance but a far more mundane tension. The simple fact was, I didn’t know who or what would be on that train. I laid my plans based on how I would react to Old Sena being driven off. In Kamath’s shoes, I’d have seen me as a viable threat, maybe for the first time, and I’d have sent a solid team to deal with me. I’d have pulled every marshal I could gather and sent them south to eliminate that threat once and for all, with no doubts about success or failure. It would be an all-or-nothing gambit, but sending anything less to deal with someone who’d managed to drive away an Epic beast would be asking for failure.
The problem was, I could see other actions he might take, too. Instead of a large group of marshals, he might only send one or two extremely powerful ones. He might have hired mercenaries instead of sending his own people. A real possibility was that the man would continue ignoring me; I didn’t know his plans, and I didn’t know if he needed the marshals to stay in their towns or not. The last option was that he might come himself with every marshal under his command and every creature he’d stolen. If that were the case, we were probably dead. We’d planned well, but sheer force could overcome careful planning if you used enough of it.
I took another deep breath and closed my eyes, forcing my racing brain to slow down. I’d dealt with the same anxiety a hundred times while waiting for the right moment to complete a hit, and I’d learned that the best thing I could do was ignore it and push forward. Changing plans last-minute based on what might go wrong always made things worse, and the fact was, there was no way to plan for everything. Trying would drive a person insane.
Instead, I focused on what I could control, reaching out and watching the train chugging south through my cloudglider’s senses. I guessed it to be about ten minutes out, and I retracted my senses and opened my eyes. My pets were placed around the platform, the shellsnapper and sparksnake by the two wall gaps, the heartraptor perched atop the station, and the rest huddled atop the platforms with the sheriff and Chomai. We were as ready as we’d ever be.
I touched my case and willed several cards to my hand, and I felt the hard line of those cards rise up from the deck to touch my fingers. I drew them out and checked them to be safe; so far, the holding case hadn’t let me down, but part of me rebelled against trusting a device I didn’t really know or understand that well. Seeing that they were correct, I palmed the cards and held them in readiness.
“It’s getting closer. Get out of sight.” At my instruction, Chomai and the sheriff dropped down just low enough to peer over the edge of the wall. They had Sanctum runes, as well, but the less the rune had to hide, the better it would work.
A loud whistle shattered the quiet, followed by the scraping of steel against steel as the train began the long process of grinding to a halt. Steam hissed from it in a scream as it let off pressure, and the rhythm of its wheels renewed, this time at a much slower pace. I forced myself to stand still and relax as the locomotive crawled down the tracks toward the station, plodding along as it chugged toward Shadewood. Its wheels squealed again, far quieter this time as it braked to a shuddering, lurching halt, easing forward a couple feet at a time until it finally fell still.
A man in a dark blue jacket and matching pants with a squarish hat on his head jumped down from the train and hurried along the side, sliding doors open. People lined the windows of the train, peering outside, but none made a move to get off, and no one lined up at the stairs or jumped out of the probably hot, stifling cars.
“Ain’t nobody getting off,” Chomai observed in a voice just loud enough to carry over the sound of the train’s engine. “That’s a bad sign.”
“Or a good one, depending on how you look at it,” I thought silently. Out loud, I said, “Go ahead and trigger Sanctum. This is going to start soon.”
Minutes passed in a silence disturbed only by the hissing of released steam, the groaning of the engine’s brakes, and an occasional clang as the railroad man slid open cargo doors. I stood and watched, ignoring my pounding heart, my cards in my hand, hopefully the only person visible to anyone watching from onboard. My cloudglider floated overhead, but it didn’t see any beasts joining it in the air or following behind the train, which hopefully meant that the marshals didn’t have eyes on us all. Not that it would matter soon enough, of course.
At last, a figure in the long, black coat of the marshals appeared on the steps, clumping down them and dropping to the platform. The man had long, straw-colored hair that hung from his hat, a well-trimmed beard of the same color, and no mustache. He walked away from the train and looked around, spitting on the planks at his feet as he took in the changes to the station.
“Well, this is different,” he drawled in a deep, booming voice. He turned and faced me, his expression amused. “You’d be the one they call Naasi, then?”
I nodded but remained silent. I did take the moment, though, to analyze the man, and I suppressed a wince at what I saw.
Marshal
Paths: Tamer, Trainer, Master, Cultivator
Rank: High
Affinities: Metal, Vermin, Predator
Pets: Steelscuttler (High)
Dominia: 22.0 Personia: 48.3 Arcania: 30.9
Threat Level: Fatal
He waited for me to speak, but after a moment of silence, he shrugged. “Well, then, I’m here to inform you, Naasi, that you’re under arrest in the name of the Empire.”
“On what charge?” I asked curiously. It didn’t really matter, but I wondered if they’d bothered to make the arrest official or not.
“Charge? Huh.” He rubbed his sandy-bearded chin. “That’s a good question. Can’t really call it treason since you don’t seem to be a citizen of Sarjay just yet.” He grinned at me. “How about for being a right pain in the ass? That should be good enough.”
“In that case, I guess I plead guilty,” I said wryly. “So, we’re not even pretending anymore?”
“Nah, we’re past that. With all the towns in the valley under our control, we don’t have to keep up appearances for the bigger cities. We can just strangle them into submission.” He spit on the ground again and laughed. “But listen to me, talking like we’re in a taan-novel, and I’m the villain!”
He took a few steps toward me and gestured to the wall. “You know that this isn’t going to help you, boy. I don’t know what you did down here to rile the Head Marshal up so much, but he made sure that there’s no way you’re getting away free and clear from this.”
He lifted his fingers to his lips and whistled sharply. A moment later, ten more figures stepped off the train, all dressed in the dark uniforms of marshals. I analyzed them all and withheld a relieved sigh; the other marshals were all Lesser and Greater ranked handlers, not High. That gave my plans a much better chance of succeeding. That surge of hope briefly stilled as creatures surged out of the stock cars along the train, three dozen at least crawling, slithering, hopping, and flying over to their handlers. Analyze showed that most were Lesser beasts, although the black, fifteen-foot, millipede-shaped creature with ram’s horns, an octopus’ beak, and scorpion pincers concerned me a bit more.
Steelscuttler (High)
Type: Steelbite
Bond: 2,497
Attack: 280 Defense: 235 Damage: 409
Speed: 432 Dodge: 311 Heal: 215
Special: Special Defense +73%
Special Attacks: Piercing Bite (189), Poison Spit (189)
Special Defenses: Steel Hide (328), Reflexive Strike (320)
Weaknesses: Lightning, Acid, Wood
The marshal flashed me a wicked grin. “You see? You don’t have much chance, here, Naasi. Surrender, and I won’t have to feed you to Riki, here.” He patted his steelscuttler affectionately. “He takes his time with his food, you understand. Neither of us wants to see that, trust me.”
“Well, as much as I appreciate the offer, Marshal, I’m going to have to decline,” I shrugged. I held up a single card between two of my fingers. “You see, despite how it looks, I really am holding all the cards, here.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, I charged the card in my fingers. A wave of orange flame leaped out of the card and sprayed outward in a fan that covered most of the platform, washing over the assembled marshals and their pets. Men shouted and swore as the fire reddened skin and crisped hair but did no real damage. Flames burned here and there across the platform as most of the rubble piles caught fire, and people on the train screamed and slammed windows shut as the flames washed through the windows and scorched them. When the fire subsided, though, the lead marshal simply stood there, holding his own rune in front of him, untouched by the scorching heat. He stared at me with one eyebrow raised.
“That it?” he asked scornfully. “That’s your big surprise?”
“Nope,” I grinned at him. “And you all might want to duck.”
I dropped down behind the wall as all hell broke loose.