Heist

[Warpath]

Don Rooster tipped the brim of his hat up and squinted out the train window, blinking away his nap. He’d done this job so many times that he was starting to learn the feel of the tracks as the train approached Kachuck on the Salvar side. No matter how fast the train got going, the rails got rougher here, rocking the cars from side to side a little more than they did in the rest of the southlands.

Don always hated this part. The route through the mountains was perilous and terrifying, full of hairpin turns, rickety wooden bridges across yawning ravines, and cuts through pitch black caves. And it was cold here, bone-biting cold year-round. The dwarves didn’t mind it, and the Salvarmen didn’t mind it, and even the Alerarans didn’t complain much, but Don was from Corone and he’d be damned if he was going to get accustomed to what they called weather in this sorry excuse for a country. He pulled his duster a bit tighter around his shoulders and scooted away from the window.

“Cold?” John Miller said. Miller was a kid from Corone who liked to consider himself Don’s apprentice. Don didn’t think of it as anything so formal. He liked the kid, but he didn’t see much of a future for him in the Rangers. Too soft, wide-eyed, and perpetually green. He was eager though, and that counted for something.

“Not yet, but we’re about to be. We’ll run out of farmland in about five minutes here, then we pretty much immediately run right between two mountains going downhill. It’s the worst fucking part of the trip, drops like fifty degrees out there over the course of a few minutes and it comes right in through the glass. I hate Kachuck.”

“At least the run’s almost over,” John offered.

“I guess.”

Miller stretched his legs out into the aisle, and Don turned his eyes back toward the window. They were security, the boy and him, but the job was a no-brainer. That’s the way Don liked them now. He’d served his time following people like Letho Ravenheart, keeping the peace and fighting tyrants. He wasn’t quite ready for retirement, but he did long for something quieter, and the government of Alerar offered it.

The train carried goods from Salvar – lumber, ore, diamonds, coal, and other raw materials to feed to the dark elf factories – and a few passengers. There weren’t many people riding the rails these days though, what with Salvar’s civil war fresh on the mind and the threat of worse between Alerar and Raiaera brewing on the horizon. Don was going to move on soon, himself. Men like him were valuable in wars, and he wasn’t interested in being valuable. He liked this job because it was peaceful and it was easy, and nobody stirred up trouble.

The mountains loomed, and the air grew chill.

The doors between cars slid open, and a number of people stepped into their car walking single-file. They were mostly dark elves, but there were Salvic humans in there too. One in particular drew Don’s eye: a big man with a bull neck and a beard. He wasn’t tall, but he carried himself with swagger, and his eyes flicked about the interior of the car with practiced strategy. Don’s instincts told him this guy was trouble, so he fingered his big knife and watched.

The Ranger and his would-be apprentice were the only people in the third car, and the second was reserved for Aleraran soldiers. Don watched the party reach the door between the third and second car, tense and curious. Was there someone important on board? Were these bodyguards? Don hadn’t been briefed, but the Alerarans never told him anything, damn them. Something was definitely wrong, but how wrong? Was a Salvic noble displeased with his imported coffee?

The door slid open, and one of the soldiers emerged and ordered the party of newcomers to back away from the door and state their business. Miller glanced over at Don, who was slowly drawing his knife now. One of the dark elves in the party began speaking their language in urgent tones. The soldier seemed confused, asked some questions, and then turned around to ask for a superior.

Don yelled at him, but it was too late. One of the newcomers drew a knife and slit the soldier’s throat, and then the lot of them shoved forward into the second car. Guns were fired, and glass shattered. Rooster cussed and leapt over the seat in front of him, charging forward. To his chagrin, the big man turned around and stepped forward to intercept him.

“Ah,” he said genially. “Mister Rooster.”

In the car beyond, his men were slaughtering the Aleraran soldiers.

[Warpath]

Rooster slashed at the brute’s throat, but the man leaned back a little faster than the Ranger was expecting. Miller came up from behind Don and covered his retreat with a fierce stab with his own blade, but the bald man caught Miller’s wrist, twisted, and took the knife away from him in a series of fluid motions. Miller was still staring at his own hand in disbelief when the brute kicked him in the chest and sent him sprawling.

“Aw shit,” Rooster said. The big man stabbed the knife into the ceiling of the train car and left it there.

Showing off, eh? Young people.

Don advanced with a series of short, safe, quick slashes, testing the speed and skill of his adversary. The big man retreated, holding his hands out to the sides. His eyes did not follow the blade, but remained locked on the Ranger instead.

Rooster didn’t like what he saw in those eyes: ferocity, intensity, intelligence. This was not a common thief. This was a man with beliefs and unshakable confidence, a man with a plan, and that plan would not be small. He was not here to steal a few crates of alcohol or gold bars.

Rooster hesitated, and the brute punished him for it, slapping the knife out of his hand. The Ranger recovered swiftly, throwing a right hook to the jaw and following up with a series of jabs to the gut, and they all connected. The big man took a few steps back, and worked his jaw. Don reached up and tried to pull Miller’s knife out of the ceiling, but it wouldn’t budge. He lifted his legs instead, hanging from the knife now, and kicked with all his might, sending the brute backward and down onto the floor.

“Overconfidence, you sack of shit,” Rooster said, wiping his mouth and shaking his head.

He turned to look for his lost knife when John shouted a warning from behind him. He looked up, but not in time. The brute was up again and no worse for the wear. He grabbed Rooster by the collar of his jacket and pulled, and the Ranger grunted as he was manhandled, tossed effortlessly into the seats. He tried to catch himself to no avail, tumbling to the floor between the seats behind and in front of him, where he got wedged. It took some doing and cursing to free himself.

By then, the bruiser had moved on to John Miller, and was now leveling a massive kick to the young man’s chest, which sent him against the door between the third and fourth cars. Rooster cussed and sought out his knife again. The bald criminal yanked open the door and shoved Miller through it, so that he went sprawling into the next car, and then he slammed the door shut and tore the handle clean off with his bare hands.

No reinforcements, then.

[Warpath]

Flint flexed his right hand and turned back to the elder Ranger. Don Rooster had recovered his knife by that time, and was holding it at the ready, eyeing the ex-gladiator warily. Rooster was taller than Flint, but Flint was the bigger man by far – heavier, broader, younger, and far more muscular. Age hadn’t robbed Rooster of all that much, but complacency had. Flint thought that was a shame.

The Ranger attempted another quick stab, perhaps sensing that speed was not the brute’s strong suit. Flint caught his arm at the wrist and took the knife away from him, and then tossed it across the car and behind a set of seats on the far side. He leveled Rooster with a solid right hook, drawing a freshet of blood and loosing a few teeth, which clacked and clattered against the window.

“Enough,” Skovik muttered, half to himself. “We haven’t the time now.”

Rooster lay on the floor, dazed and blinking, so Flint reached down and took a big handful of the Ranger’s duster, and then dragged him into the second car. The voivode’s men had finished with the Aleraran soldiers by that time, and were stacking the corpses in the corners.

The team did not need to speak. Flint nodded at the ones that needed the go-ahead, and then the men sprang into action as a unified whole. They’d trained for this moment, practiced the motions over the course of hundreds of hours, and each knew his part. They removed their equipment from their packs and prepared the runes with practiced confidence, soundless, wordless, and devoted entirely to the task at hand.

Flint did his part, too. He marched up to the secured door between the second car and the engine, and proceeded to batter it down with a series of brutal, unrelenting, bare-knuckled punches. The door bent just to the side of the jamb, thin metal scraping and screaming, wood cracking and snapping away, until at last the lock came free. Flint slipped his fingers into the opening and yanked the door open, and a burst of frigid air buffeted him. He breathed it in, and it soothed him.

The mountains rose up to either side of the train, and echoed the thunder of its wheels on the rails. They were on schedule.

Flint stepped back into the car, flexing his right hand, and his men surged past him and out into the cold air, their sheets of rune paper uniformly fastened to their hips.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rooster slurred from the far side of the car.

Flint turned and looked down at him and said, “Stealing.”

[Warpath]

Rooster struggled to make his eyes focus. He tasted blood, and the rocking of the train was more disorienting than it should have been. The bruiser watched him, framed by the open doorway and the mass of snowflakes that gusted in and danced around him. Rooster looked beyond him, and watched as his cronies began crawling over the locomotive like insects.

Despite being buffeted by intense wind, the men inched their way along the engine without hesitation, spreading out over its length and then making their way downward. When they all reached the lowest point possible, just above the rushing wheels, they produced large steel hooks and fastened themselves to the chassis. Each man performed the act in unison with the others, at the exact same time, without any one of them looking at another or waiting for a signal.

When they were attached to the train, the men carefully retrieved the rolled up rune paper attached to their belts, hunched close to the chassis, and then applied the paper to the steel. Immediately, the metal began to smoke and hiss so loudly that Rooster could hear it over the rushing wind and the clatter of the wheels on the rails.

Somewhere far overhead, the Ranger could hear a low roar emerging from the distance, and the train began to rattle and vibrate with the noise. The mountains to either side of the train suddenly gave way to open sky, and the rails began to angle downward. Sunlight burst in through the windows and illuminated the blood and broken glass and bodies, but then the light began to fade. Rooster twisted, and looked back through the windows at the carriage cars. A shadow was passing over them, looming ever closer to the locomotive, and the deep roar from the sky was growing louder.

“What the hell is that?” Rooster yelled. He hated himself for panicking, but it was what it was.

“Our ride,” the brute called back.

The Ranger glared at him, but the thug was unshakably calm. He just went on staring, unblinking and pitiless, and did not deign to turn and watch as the shadow finally fell over the locomotive and stopped. The acrobats attached to the chassis did look up, however, and waited. After a time, men dressed from head to toe in thick black clothing were lowered from somewhere above, attached to thick metal cables. These newcomers were caught by the men attached to the engine car, at which point they paired off and began to work together.

A picture was beginning to come together for Rooster, and his jaw dropped. What was about to happen didn’t seem possible.

The runes had burnt holes into the lower chassis of the locomotive. Now the thieves were attaching massive hooks to those holes, and then pulling the metal cables taut. When each finished this task, they began crawling up along the cables and toward whatever was blocking out the sun from above.

The brute suddenly lurched into motion, lumbering over to where Rooster lay. Somehow, the heavy pounding of his boots was audible over the roar of the flying thing and the wind, and the metallic squeal from the train’s wheels. He reached down and grabbed hold of Rooster’s jacket. The Ranger growled and grabbed onto his forearm, desperately trying to struggle away, but the big man was stronger and Don probably had a concussion.

The thug began to drag Rooster across the train car and toward the open door. He tried to struggle harder, wide-eyed, fearing whatever was flying above them, fearing being thrown from the moving train – fearing anything and everything these men could do. The bruiser dragged him out of the train and into the rushing wind, and he began to kick feebly. He looked up, squinting against the wind, and saw what looked to be the arched bottom of a ship, obscured by the steam rolling out of the locomotive. He tried to express his awe, but he didn’t have breath.

The bald thug yanked Don into the cabin of the locomotive, and then tossed him to the floor. He groaned, and glanced around. Two dark elves – the men trained to drive the locomotive, he assumed – lay wide-eyed and still in pools of blood. He forced himself to sit up, groaning, and looked back out toward the train.

The brute was stopped between the locomotive and the first carriage car, looking down. Through the fog of pain and confusion, Rooster began to put it all together, and he felt the color drain from his cheeks.

“No!” he shouted, but his voice was carried away by the wind.

He lurched to his feet, hissing through his teeth as the room spun around him. His training as a Ranger, his every instinct as a hero and an upright man, his duty as a guard hired in good faith, all added up to overwhelm his sense of self-preservation. If he did nothing, people were about to die.

“Stop!” he howled, stumbling out into the wind. It nearly tossed him off the train, and if the thug heard him, he did not look up.

Instead, he reached down and began undoing the rusty clasp that held the cars together. It would not budge, so he swung a series of sharp punches, and the rust flaked away in massive chunks.

The locomotive was steadily nosing downward as it began descending into the valley. Rooster was familiar with this route, and he knew what had to happen here: the locomotive should be gently applying its brakes, steadying the downhill rush so that the train did not emerge into the next mountain pass too fast. It was essential that the speed be controlled because the train would pass through a cave and then emerge on the other side on a thin, narrow bridge across a ravine. A bridge that curved.

But the brakes were not being applied. In fact, the train was gaining speed, and the man in control of it was trying to separate the cars from the locomotive – the cars, which did not have brakes of their own.

Rooster grabbed hold of the brute’s jacket, and tried to yank him away from the clasp. The big man nearly lost his balance, and Don heard him growl. He straightened up and slipped his arms out of his coat, which caused Rooster to stumble away holding nothing but an empty jacket. The brute turned his head, and his eyes alone gave the Ranger pause. He’d been threatened thousands of times, and most everyone he’d ever met was mad at him, but that look made Don Rooster feel like hell was waiting for him.

The thug turned back to the clasp, and Rooster shook the fear off and charged, throwing a stumbling punch into the big man’s side. The muscle beneath the skin did not yield, but the bruiser turned around again, distracted. Rooster threw another punch, this one at the man’s jaw, but he caught his fist and twisted it.

Don cried out as his adversary twisted his arm around behind him and straight, one hand holding his wrist captive, the other pushing down on his shoulder. The bearded man leaned close so he could be heard over the wind and the flying machine and the train, and he said, “Pain is your reward.”

He punched Rooster in the arm, right at the elbow. Don watched as something pressed the sleeve of his coat outward from the inside, and then blood welled up through the material.

The brute shoved him down again, and then turned back to the clasp holding the cars together. Rooster watched as the darkness closed in around him. Beneath his coat, the thug was wearing a sleeveless shirt with thin straps at the shoulders. When he bent down and began to pull the clasp upward, Rooster could see the massive, iron thews beneath his skin shift and tighten, and he wondered what madness had made him think he could overcome a monster like that.

The train cars became uncoupled.

The brute waved one hulking arm up at the flying machine, and then marched back onto the locomotive. A second later, the sound of groaning metal dominated all others, even the roar of the flying machine, and then Rooster felt the locomotive lurch. He moaned at the sharp stab of pain from his arm, and the world seemed to twist and spin around him madly. Somewhere, behind the animal fear and torture coming from his arm, the logical part of his brain understood what was happening.

The flying machine was lifting off, and it was carrying the locomotive with it.

They were stealing a train engine.

The darkness was closing in, but Rooster clung to consciousness. He had to stop this; he had to find a way. But then he looked down, and saw the train carriages all linked together far below, rushing downhill without their locomotive. They disappeared into a cave, and Rooster closed his eyes as tears stung them.

The last thing he saw was the brute, silhouetted against the severe blue sky, looking out over the Kachuck Mountains.

[Warpath]

Consciousness rose and fell like a tide, but the pain always pushed him back down before the dreams fully broke. Reality became confused with imaginings, and pain lay under it all – constant, relentless, tireless. It made the good dreams dark, and it made the nightmares cruel. He had no way of knowing how many people had been aboard that train, but in his mind they were all shades, and they all stared at him accusingly.

At the forefront was John Miller, looking older than his years.

“Don,” the shade said. “Are you awake?”

Rooster realized that he was, but immediately wished he weren’t. He shifted with a groan, which went high-pitched when his elbow sent a shot of burning agony up his shoulder. He rode the pain out, eyes and jaw clenched, and then he exhaled slowly, and sucked in little bits of air experimentally. He was hurt bad.

“Don?”

Rooster opened his eyes and slowly, very slowly, sat himself up. He looked himself over. Somebody had set his arm and put it in a sling, and compared to the rest of him it was relatively clean. He was in a sturdy cage inside a network of cages, all empty save his and the one next to it. He looked at his neighbor and felt his spirit waver. Was he still asleep after all?

“John?” he croaked. “How the hell…?”

John Miller gave him a lopsided smile and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Hi Rooster.”

“You were on the train,” Rooster said. “I thought you were dead.”

“I guess I should be. After that big fucker locked me out, I tried to figure out what you’d do in my shoes. Ended up climbing up on top of the carriage and running across the roof just as they were starting to fly off with the engine. They caught me. Sorry Don.”

Rooster let out a low whistle and slowly shook his head. “Not bad, kid. Guess I taught you something after all. What about the other passengers?”

Miller shook his head. “I don’t know, Don. I don’t know how they could have survived. The train just kept right on going without the engine. I never saw how many people were on board, but…”

Rooster nodded and held up his hand for silence. He didn’t want to think about that right now. It wasn’t the time. Someday he’d find out how many people he’d failed, though, and he’d make restitution. First, he’d get them justice.

“We’re on the flying machine,” he guessed, gauging by the terrifying and familiar roar he heard muffled by the walls surrounding them.

Miller nodded. “They’ve got an airship. Hell if I know how, but it’s an honest-to-gods airship. Do you think the Alerarans have something to do with this?”

Rooster thought about it, and shook his head. “Wouldn’t make sense. The big fucker flat out said they were stealing, and he didn’t seem the deceptive type. Why would the Alerarans steal from themselves? No, these guys are something new.”

Miller nodded thoughtfully. “They call him Skovik.”

“He the boss?”

“Far as I can tell,” Miller said. “He scares the hell out of his own crew. Apparently we’re the first people they’ve ever actually locked up. This is the brig, if you hadn’t guessed. Sounds like if you fail Skovik, he just tosses you overboard.”

“Hell,” Rooster said. “What does he want with us?”

Miller shook his head. “I don’t know, boss. Hostages, I guess. He said something about trading us to the authorities out here, but I told him there weren’t any.”

Rooster grunted.

“What the hell does that mean?” Miller said. “Are there rangers out here?”

“We’re over Kachuck kid. We’re a little out of Ranger jurisdiction.”

“You know what I mean,” Miller said, and he lowered his voice. “Do we have backup out here?”

Don nodded slightly, eyeing their surroundings. He didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean they weren’t being listened in on. He leaned himself forward. “There’s a garrison about twenty miles from the pass where they took the train, on the Salvar side. Hundred men, about, but most of them are sent out scouting and ranging. They’re sure to find the wreckage, but I have no idea how we’re going to get word to them.”

Miller nodded slightly, and then sat back on his bunk. He reached out and slapped his palm against the wall behind him three times, slowly. Somewhere on the far side of the brig, locks were turned and a metallic door creaked open, and then a pair of dark elves appeared, carrying keys and naked blades.

“Sorry, old man,” Miller said quietly, and he refused to make eye contact. “You taught me lot, but I’ve got to make my own way here. I’m sorry.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Get up,” one of the dark elves said.

Miller stood up obediently, and approached the door to his cell.

“You too,” the dark elf said to Rooster, and John looked startled. “Mister Skovik wants a word.”

[Warpath]

The interior of the airship was a contradiction. Everywhere, artistically carven wood met cold, utilitarian steel frames. As far as Don Rooster could tell, he was being led downward through the ship. The hallways were narrow and orderly, with doors and cross-cutting hallways spaced opposite each other, and every doorframe and opening was lined with wicked, bladelike carvings in the wood, or wrought iron in similar design. The airship had a way of swaying and shifting like its sea-bound cousins, but the motion was all wrong. Every so often his body sent a shock of panic through him, seized by a falling sensation that always stopped short – as if somebody was willfully teasing his instincts.

Men weren’t made to fly.

The hallway dipped downward so sudden-but-smooth that it was disorienting, and then it terminated at an imposing set of metallic double doors. There were faces worked into the metal, and stylized gears, and beasts from legend so twisted by imagination that they’d become something new and uniquely terrifying. One of the dark elf guards pounded the underside of his fist into the door three times, waited a moment, and then pushed both doors open. The remaining guard guided Rooster and John Miller forward forcibly. It had to be forcibly, because both men hesitated.

The doors opened up into a large bay – almost certainly intended for cargo, but it was mostly empty now, cavernous and dark. Opposite the door, on the far side of the room, the walls sloped downward and then opened up to empty sky. Snowflakes wafted in, swirling above that gaping hole, and Rooster was instantly terrified of falling through it. It was only after a long moment that he noticed a stout gate across the opening, bolted and chained at a point just before the room began to slope away.

Off to the left was a tight jumble of things, and Rooster took stock of them. There were crates, which formed three makeshift walls, and within those walls was a sturdy writing desk with a chair, a large glass jug full of water, and a simple down mattress laying directly on the floor, devoid of pillows or blankets. There were piles of thick books everywhere surrounding the desk and mattress, with a number open on the desk, but Rooster could not glean their subjects from this distance. There were also large pieces of metal littering the entire cargo hold, most surrounding this makeshift living space, and after a moment Rooster guessed at their purpose: they were weights, used for exercise, just like the thick metal bar laid across the crates and running above the living space.

In fact, Skovik was hanging from that bar now with his back to them, slowly and soundlessly lifting and lowering himself. The motion seemed effortless, but even in the chill air the brute shone with a sheen of sweat. He was naked from the waist up, and the musculature of his back stood out massive from his skeleton as it knotted and relaxed. He dropped from the bar and landed on bare feet, and then he turned around and approached. Rooster hated him for the way he swaggered – the way he took the callous murder of so many as a victory, and for what?

“What is this?” Rooster demanded.

Skovik held his mighty arms out to either side of him, indicating their surroundings. “Home,” he said simply.

“You live like a dog,” Rooster said, and spat.

“Yes,” Skovik said, as if he did not understand the insult. “Free of decadence. You’ve lived soft, and it has made you soft. That is why you failed those people on the train.”

“Fuck you,” Rooster said.

“You,” Skovik said, turning his eyes to Miller. Skovik was all eyes, and it took an act of will to keep oneself from being intimidated by his gaze alone. “Step forward. Give me your report, brother.”

The guards released John Miller, and he paused unsurely before stepping forward a few paces. “D-Don…Mister Rooster that is,” Miller said, “he told me about the garrison you a-asked about.”

“He told you their compliment?” Skovik said, speaking as he turned and walked back to his desk. He was writing figures on a piece of parchment.

“H-he said about a…uh…a hundred men.”

“Where?”

“He said the g-garrison was about twenty miles from where you derailed the train, s-sir, o-on the S-s-Salvar side, but the men…he um, he said most of the m-men aren’t in the garrison right now. They’re out, you know, r-ranging. They’re mostly rangers. Not in the garrison.”

If Skovik heard or cared about the report, he didn’t let Miller know. He scratched on the parchment for a time with his pen, and then he set the pen down and read it over. The silence stretched. Rooster glared at the back of John’s head.

Finally, the brute turned around and sauntered over to where John Miller stood.

“Good,” he said. He stopped before Miller. Miller was slightly taller than him, but his mere presence seemed to crush the young man, making him shrink and slouch. He put his hand on the young would-be Ranger’s shoulder and turned him around so that they faced Rooster together.

“You were right about him,” Skovik told Miller. “Donald Rooster is an old man, and he let age soften him without realizing it. More than that, in his bitterness he thought you were too weak to be of value to the marshals. He never would have recommended you. Absolve yourself of any feelings of betrayal. You took your fate in your own hands. This is commendable. A sign of strength.”

John tried to look up at Rooster, but dropped his eyes again immediately. Skovik wrapped one of his heavy arms around the young man’s shoulders, and dwarfed him.

“Unfortunately,” Skovik said, “your mentor was right about you. You are weak.”

The brute slipped his arm upward and stepped behind Miller in one quick motion, so that his arm slipped around the boy’s neck. He wrapped his other arm around his forehead, and began squeezing. Rooster tensed, but the guards stepped closer to his back, so he didn’t move. He went rigid, and he looked dully into John Miller’s eyes as the boy wordlessly begged for help. He did not move, did not speak, and he made his face hard.

“The weak have no place here,” Skovik said as John Miller ceased his feeble struggle and lost consciousness. When the boy was limp, he dropped the body and stepped aside. He waved at Miller’s sleeping form dismissively. “Throw him out.”

The guards stepped around Rooster and left him, each grabbing one of Miller’s ankles. Rooster tried not to watch and failed as they dragged the young man across the hold toward the gate. They bent down and lifted him over the gate, and then shoved him over. He tumbled down the slope. Rooster thought he heard the boy yelp as he disappeared over the edge and into the open sky, but he prayed he was mistaken. If the Thayne were good, he’d stay asleep until he hit the ground.

“A hundred men are not enough,” Skovik said, oblivious to what was going on behind him. “Even if you could rally every one of them, we will be able to open the Deep Door before they arrive. Your failure is complete. Your only chance to stop me was on the train, and you were far too weak. I am disappointed.”

Skovik stared into Rooster’s face for a long moment as the dark elf guards returned, unblinking and still. Rooster locked eyes with him, and refused to back down – refused to speak, to fight. But gods help him; he was going to be defiant until the end.

Skovik nodded slowly, almost to himself, and made a low, thoughtful noise.

“Take him back,” he said.

[Warpath]

The guards pushed Rooster back through the ship toward the brig, but his thoughts were with John Miller, tumbling through the open sky – betrayed by a monster. He hadn’t deserved that. Stupid kid. In the end, he was one more person the ranger had failed. He should have cut him loose years ago instead of filling his head with stories – building a legend around the Rangers that no man could live up to, but creating a sense of possibility at the same time.

After a time, he began to realize that they were taking a different route than the one they’d used to take him to Skovik. Were they going to kill him too? Why hadn’t the evil ape killed him in the cargo hold with Miller? The doors here had windows, and beyond them he could see the sky.

He couldn’t go down without a fight. Not like that.

Rooster twisted at the waist and shoved his good elbow into the first guard’s face, and he felt the nose break. He turned without missing a beat. The second guard was wide-eyed, fumbling for a knife, but Rooster kicked him in the knee. The dark elf went down, so he punched him in the jaw, and then he ran like hell.

He ran aimlessly, more focused on getting away than getting to any specific place. After what seemed like an eternity of this, he found a corner and pressed his back to the wall, catching his breath and listening for pursuit. He didn’t hear anything for a long time, so he made a plan. It wasn’t a very good plan.

Rooster made his way to one side of the craft, peering carefully around corners before crossing, furtively testing doorknobs. None turned, until one did, and then another, and another, until he was peering through a narrow window set high on a door made of metal instead of wood. It looked out over a metallic walkway cleaving tight to the outside of the airship.

No choice now.

He opened the door and stepped out, and the walkway creaked alarmingly beneath his weight. The side of the airship rose up from the door frame, sloping inward until it met the balloon the ship hung from. He’d seen illustrations of airships before, but this was different: rather than a ship hanging from a massive balloon by a series of thick ropes, this was a long wooden wedge built directly into the bottom of the balloon. Instead of wings it had long wooden arms lined with steel veins, each ending with a gargantuan, leathery flap that slowly turned this way and that like the tail of a fish.

The wind was intense and frigid, and it caused the wood of the airship to creak and groan. Rooster pressed his back to the door through which he’d exited the airship, and his breath hitched. Every instinct told him to go back inside, to find a place to hide until they landed. This thing had to land sometime, didn’t it?

He thought about Skovik, and knew that wasn’t an option.

He looked down, and his vision swirled for a moment before he realized what he was seeing. The airship was pulled in tight alongside a flat-topped hill, even with the snow-blanketed slope. He imagined this is how they kept from getting spotted, hiding in the shadow of hills and mountains. He eyed the drop, and shook his head, mentally arguing with himself. It was too far. Surely it was too far.

But it wasn’t, and he didn’t have a choice. He found a gangway and steadied himself on it, hesitating as long as he could, and then he jumped.

[Warpath]

Flint Skovik stood on the wrong side of the gate, having found the exact point just before the slope made it impossible not to tumble out of the airship. The chill mountain air of Kachuck buffeted him, tugging him insistently outward, but he resisted. A heavy knock sounded three times on the door, and he waited for Sar’thyn to enter.

The Aleraran’s nose was broken and was still bleeding, but he did not staunch the flow or express his discomfort. The blood formed a mask over his mouth and upper chest, soaking his shirt, and when he spoke bubbles formed at his nostrils.

“It’s done,” Sar’thyn said nasally.

“He survived the jump?” Flint said over his shoulder.

“He did. I was afraid he wasn’t going to do it, but he did. He’s making his way to the opposite side of the hill. It will take him all afternoon, but he’ll be close enough to the garrison for them to find him even if he doesn’t have the strength to make it to their door.”

“And the other one?”

Sar’thyn shook his head. “No sign of the boy. Even if the fall didn’t kill him, the force of it would be enough to bury him in the snow farther down the mountain.”

Flint looked back out over the mountain, squinting into the white. “Wait until the Ranger is out of sight, then bring the ship down. Bring me the boy’s body. And see the medic.”

“At once,” Sar’thyn said, silently berating himself. He should have sent a team to find the corpse already. Loose ends could not be tolerated.

Not if their plan was to come to fruition.

[Warpath]

The sun was setting, and Don Rooster felt death looking over his shoulder. It felt like everything else: cold, numb. He felt snot and ice frozen in his goatee, but there was nothing he could do about it. He hugged his good hand tighter into his armpit, willing the heat into it, and dropped his chin to his chest, and hunched against the wind. He tortured himself with thoughts of the Am’aleh Sea and the beach, until he was sure he could hear gull-song echoing through the mountains. If he survived this, he vowed he would die old on a beach somewhere. He’d find himself a wife and have a son or two. The first one he’d name Letho, but if he had another he’d name him John.

Deep inside, though, he knew peace was far off. He had a duty still, a task he had to see to the end, even if it cost him that peace. Even if it meant he had to die cold and alone on a mountain. He owed them that much. He owed John that much.

It was dark when he found the fort. He was a dead man walking by then, but he found it. He leaned heavily on the door and he moaned, and dared not take his hand from his armpit to try and knock. Instead he feebly shoved his shoulder into the door, over and over, and he tried to scream but nothing came out. He fell to his knees in a snow drift, and his tears froze on his cheeks.

[Warpath]

Rooster woke to the smell of roasting meat and carrots. Someone gently fed him, and it burnt his tongue.

He savored the heat.

***

“The Deep Door,” the grizzled old dwarf said. “You’re sure he said that? Those words?”

Rooster nodded. “He said he was going to open it. You know what it is?”

The dwarf looked up at his companions, and they nodded to him in turn. They were the leaders of this militia garrison. The five of them were gathered around a small table, illuminated solely by the blazing fireplace behind them. The walls were stone, and they held the heat in. Don Rooster never felt anything so sweet, and wanted nothing more in the world than to never venture beyond those walls again, even if it did smell like old sweat. He could hear the wind howling outside, and hated it.

“The Deep Door is a door,” the dwarf said with a ghost of a grin. “It leads to an underground city, old, old stuff. Almost as old as the world. During the War of the Tap, there were tribes of dwarves – at least according to legend I mean – and supposedly they retreated underground to hide from the gods and magicians having their apocalyptic disagreements. The greatest of these cities was built from the purest dehlar, and the dwarves mastered the art of negating magic with special runes.”

The dwarf paused a moment to top off their cups one at a time. His brow looked troubled as he struggled to recall the details of his story.

“The dwarves in this city – nobody knows what they called it – but the dwarves there had the best workmanship and rune-craft on Althanas. According to legend, the like still hasn’t been rediscovered. It is said that their runes could steal and redirect magic, funneling it right out of the Tap without needing a wizard in the middle. Anyway, they used their runes for many wondrous things, but nothing more wondrous than their guardians. You see, they boasted the unique ability to grant life with a series of words, a gift they stole from the Thaynes.”

Rooster sipped his drink and stayed silent. It sounded like a lot of bullshit to him, but he waited for the dwarf to get to his point.

“So they used those words to build a race of guardians out of dehlar, metal men that could think for themselves, in a fashion, but they weren’t like you and me. They couldn’t understand us, because they didn’t feel things like we do. The weather didn’t bug them, and they didn’t need to eat or sleep or love. They didn’t have families. All they cared about was protecting the city. So the wizards get real insidious about it, and convince the guardians that the best way to protect the city was to seal the whole thing up, and that’s just what they did. They built the Deep Door, and locked all the dwarves of the city in, along with all their knowledge. The thing about the Deep Door, though, is that it’s built from that pure dehlar, and inscribed inside and out with those runes, and they’re so sturdy and heavy and hard and cold that only magic could open them again. So they sat for millennia, and surely all the dwarves inside died long ago.”

“This door exists?” Rooster said, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh yeah,” the dwarf said. Rooster wasn’t inclined to believe him, but the other militiamen nodded.

“We’ve seen it,” one said. “It doesn’t look like a door as much as a big-ass metal wall set right in the side of a mountain, but yeah, it’s out there.”

“This Skovik fellow though,” the dwarf said, “he thinks he can open it? What, with a train?”

Rooster shrugged. “I guess so.”

“How?”

Rooster shook his head, looking down at his drink. “I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”

The commander nodded. “We’ll help you Rooster,” he said. “But first, our healer is going to have a look at that arm.”

[Warpath]

The way to the Deep Door had been more obviously artificial once, but the eons between its construction and the present blurred the line between nature and architecture. A broad, winding mountain road led to a stone bridge, wide enough for four big horses to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. The stone that made up the bridge was disconcertingly smooth, as if it had been carved from one cyclopean piece of rock. It was perpetually dusted by a thin layer of snow, but ice never formed on its surface.

The bridge stretched over a deep depression in the mountainside, but massive drifts of snow were piled up to either side of it. If a man were to fall from the bridge he would be doomed, but not because of the fall – he would slide down the snow drift and arrive safely at the bottom, where he would not have a way back up again.

At the far side of the bridge the way widened dramatically, and there were weather-worn stone steps leading up to a broad platform. The Deep Door itself loomed over that platform, gleaming like dull silver in the anemic sunlight. There was no seam in the door, no obvious place where it might slide away or crack open, but the entirety of its surface – as tall as ten men, as wide as twenty lying prone head-to-foot – was covered in tiny, obscure rune words. Not a single one of these symbols repeated, but they were surely part of the same alphabet.

The locomotive sat on the platform some distance from the Door, silent, forlorn, and surreally out of place. Men, elves, and dwarves hurried around it, yelling commands to one another and carrying contraptions full of gears, running cords and wires everywhere, and there were more people sequestered in tents on the opposite side of the platform.

Flint Skovik sat on the back end of the lonely locomotive, ensconced in a fur-lined coat and writing in a small notebook. He ignored the bustle around him, the calm center of a snowy whirlwind. The wind carried the scent of fear, but he was accustomed to that singular odor. To him, it was the smell of civilization, often mingled with smoke, spices, dogs, and horse shit.

“Master Skovik,” Doctor Barnabus Quartzeye said. “If it pleases you, my machine is very nearly ready.”

Skovik did not raise his eyes from his book. He’d kidnapped the brilliant dwarf engineer months ago, but it seemed that Quartzeye hadn’t minded. He was doing the same research he always had, but now he had the resources to build the machines his superiors deemed too dangerous to see the light of day.

“Ahead of schedule,” Flint said, still without looking up. “A pleasure to hear, Doctor. I will prepare the locomotive myself.”

Quartzeye grinned broadly, so broadly that his thick-framed glasses shifted on his face. He clapped his hands together once, and then hustled off back to his device, barely containing his glee.

“That little man disturbs me,” Sar’thyn said. “Are we certain his machine won’t just kill us all? I have concerns.”

Flint grunted.

The brute crawled to his feet on the back of the train, and straightened his back. His coat made him look even bulkier than he was, and when he reached up and took hold of the broad belt around his waist he looked like an educated gorilla.

“I smell fear!” he announced to the men gathered on the platform. They paused in their work immediately, every one of them, and all conversation stopped. Hesitantly, reluctantly, they turned to face him. “I sense doubt! I hear you muttering amongst yourselves, asking why I would force a lock rather than pick it.”

Flint let his eyes wander over the crowd for a long moment. No one tried to meet his gaze, but that was normal. Very few could in the best of circumstances.

“The man who picks a lock when he can force it is fearful of what is on the other side. We control the fear. Were we delicate when we took the Steamtalon from the corrupt governments of Salvar and Alerar? Were we subtle when we plucked this machine from its track while it was in motion?”

The crowd began to shift, a low susurrus passing over it. Shoulders straightened, and chins rose.

“We control the fear,” Flint growled, pointing accusingly to the north, toward Salvar. “Fear is ours, not theirs.”

“Are you not the strong?” he demanded of them.

They roared back, as one, that they were the strong.

“Do you fear the weak?”

They roared that they did not.

“Do you hide when you can fight?”

They didn’t.

“Do you whisper when you can roar?”

No.

“Do you ask, or do you take?”

They took.

“Then force. That. Lock.”

The men roared, fiercely, savagely, and the train engine roared to life with them and its mechanisms began to turn and chug. The men roared louder, and the locomotive belched steam. The wheels had been stripped from the chassis and replaced by turbines, and the wheel arms began to turn those turbines slowly, then faster. Behind him, in the cabin of the locomotive, a pair of dwarves were feverishly shoveling coal into the furnace while a third gradually pushed a lever forward, coaxing the engine to life. By the time Flint jumped off of the locomotive, the train was chugging furiously. Had it worked so hard in its intended job, it would have derailed itself long ago, but that wasn’t a concern now.

Flint crossed the platform while his men armed themselves with pilfered rifles, axes, pickaxes, and hammers. They began to gather behind him, cheering and brandishing their tools as the train’s labors became deafening. A mass of thick cords wound across the platform and terminated at a terrifying contraption: a clockwork cannon pointed directly at the Deep Door. Quartzeye stood beside the thing, tapping gauges and adjusting dials and switches, pausing every so often to wipe condensation from his glasses.

The brute strode boldly up beside the thing, to the right and slightly in front of it, and he gripped his belt in both hands and waited. Snow melted around the locomotive, sending clouds of vapor rising up all around the man gathered there, turning them into darkling silhouettes. The ground beneath their feet began to vibrate. They smelled smoke, and oil, and burning ozone.

The barrel of the cannon was made of glass, and droplets of water began to form on its surface. Inside it, a dark shape obscured by steam and condensation began to slide slowly backward through the barrel. Pebbles danced on the stone floor, and Skovik could feel the vibrations in his legs and the pit of his stomach and behind his ribcage. The edges of his vision blurred, and it felt as if the air itself was growing heavier.

But he did not smell fear.

The men began to chant and beat their weapons in the air in time, and they stamped their feet. The train’s alarm whistle squealed piercingly, and it echoed off the distant faces of the mountains. Flint raised his chin.

Quartzeye tried to yell something, but it was futile.

The cannon fired abruptly, but there was no proof of it except that the Deep Door exploded inward and reality itself rippled around it, and a tsunami of sparks leapt up from the base of it and faded as they lighted on the stone. A heartbeat passed as the scream of tortured metal faded, replaced by the roar of the crowd.

Skovik raised one hand, fingers splayed. The crowd went silent, tensing. He swept his arm toward the gaping hole in the mountain.

The men rushed forward.

[Warpath]

The scouts were silent, stretched out on their stomachs on their mountain perch overlooking the Deep Door. They watched wordlessly, breathlessly as the small army rushed forward across the platform and disappeared inside the lost dwarven city beyond.

Rooster’s jaw hurt from clenching, and he stared unblinking at the small figure of Flint Skovik, standing before the broken door like a proud conqueror.

“Put out the call,” the commander said to Rooster’s right. “Call in every man we’ve got.”

“We don’t know what’s in there, sir.”

“You’re right. But whatever is, we can’t let that son of a bitch have it.”

The commander shook his head and his sigh came out as a cloud in the chill mountain air. "If anybody else had told me they'd stolen a train..."

[Warpath]

The lost city beyond the Deep Door was cavernous, vast, and quiet – an empty necropolis. Flint did not venture in far himself, but his scouts brought him reports and gifts hourly. There were hundreds of thousands of buildings down there, homes and businesses that weren’t just built inside the mountain – they were a part of its flesh. Everything was in good repair, but the place was utterly empty, and there were no signs of its previous inhabitants or where they went. The rooms hadn’t been cleaned out, but they’d been meticulously organized. Every bed was made, every book on a shelf. Eating utensils were organized by type, fireplaces were set to be lit, and the streets were swept.

It was the perfect city. It had everything a people needed, but no people to mar it.

But even Flint Skovik felt ill at ease in those caverns. The silence was stifling, and he did not like knowing that his enemy – an enemy he could not overcome - was awakening with every passing moment, looming, preparing. So when he did venture into the lost city, it was not deep. He spent most of his time overseeing efforts on the surface.

Early on, his men had found a number of guard posts at the base of the main tunnel, and those posts had dedicated armories. They raided those places of their strange weapons and armors, built from bizarrely light and durable alloys, and loaded the pilfered goods into crates, which were loaded onto pallets in turn, and the pallets were set upon sleds for transport.

The scouts brought him strange utensils from the deeps, things that might have been toys, instruments, measuring devices, molds, jewelry. Their chief task was to find books that seemed especially precious or well-protected, and they brought these up by the sled-full. They’d brought two dozen artists with them, masters of accurate recreation and reproduction, and those men and women worked tirelessly in concert, copying down the hundreds of symbols etched into the dehlar doors and walls of that place.

Every so often the scouts found something troubling: a trap, or a mechanical device that responded to their presence. They did their best to dismantle these devices whole or in pieces, and transport them to the surface for study. Not even Quartzeye could make heads or tails of them, but he seemed confident that he could figure them out.

Sometimes the scouts that delved the deepest did not return, and the ones that did were sure that there was something living down there. They were only half-right, but Flint did not correct them. He impressed upon them that their time was limited – woefully so. Nobody slept.

The sun was rising on the second day of their raid when Flint was studying a particularly interesting engraving, flanked on either side by bleary-eyed artists. They were slowing down, but their works remained accurate, and that was the most important thing. He penned some notes of his own in his book, and was turning to return to the surface when a scout jogged up to him.

“You’ll want to see this, boss,” the elf said.

Flint followed him down the main tunnel to the outskirts of the city – deeper than he’d ever ventured himself thus far. In a narrow alleyway that led ever-deeper into the lost city, they came across six scouts all worse for the wear. Two were bleeding from the forearms, and a third was missing an eye and bleeding profusely from the wound, but every one of them was on high alert.

They were standing around a mechanical device which was clearly broken, its gleaming metallic carapace cracked open so that the still gears were exposed. It was built to resemble an insect of some kind – a flea or tick – but it was the size of a dog. Its legs were sharp as blades, and every one was soaked in blood. It had rubies for eyes. It seemed to be dead – as dead as a machine can be, anyway – but Flint kept his distance.

“It killed two of us,” one scout said, panting. “Jumped around the room whirring like one of the doc’s creepy tools. We managed to kill it when it got one of its legs stuck in Malik. We just kept hitting it until it stopped moving. We ended up killing Malik too, but it couldn’t be helped. It was the only way to keep the damn thing still.”

“Where?” Flint said, studying the thing without approaching it.

“About an hour down. It was guarding…well, we brought you a gift. Give it to him.”

One of the scouts stepped forward, and held up a bundle wrapped in burlap. He delicately unwrapped the bundle, until he revealed a gleaming piece of metal resting on the cloth. Flint could not keep the pleasure from his face.

“There were many weapons there, clearly sacred, but the rest were all too bulky or heavy for us to bring up, and, well, we were afr…concerned that there were more of those things around. This was the smallest, but, well, we thought you'd want it.”

It was a band of that unknown metallic alloy that was ubiquitous in that city, but it had been shaped more delicately than any tool he’d seen yet, and it was completely covered in tiny runes. It had four holes in it, and a short piece protruding from the main body. Every humanoid culture on Althanas – even the elves – made brass knuckles, but only the dwarves of this city had made a set that was sacred. He lifted the weapon from the burlap and marveled at its weight. His fingers fit through the holes perfectly.

Flint stepped forward and bent down, and then pounded his armored fist viciously into the metallic flesh of the machine-tick. The carapace dented in, but did not break. It seemed the knuckles were made from the same material.

“You did well, brothers,” he said. “Put out the call. Take as much as you can carry, but withdraw from the city immediately.”

“At once, sir.”

[Warpath]

They left dozens of lamps burning all the way down the path into the city, but nobody ventured deeper than the tunnel now. The artists were copying down everything they could furiously, glancing down into the dark as they worked. Lookouts were posted to watch the entrance from the city, and they were tense. Rumors of the mechanical beast spread through the camp, and Flint did not discourage them. Caution was warranted now.

He studied his new weapon – his new companion – and felt a deep sense of admiration and contentment. The metal was unknown to him or anyone, but Quartzeye hadn’t been able to chip or damage it, and the heat from his blowtorch hadn’t so much as discolored it. The runes were important, everyone agreed, but it was impossible to tell what they said, what benefits they conferred upon the thing, or what story they told. What Flint knew is that when he wore this thing, he felt more dangerous than ever.

The men were hammering lids on the crates, lifting the crates onto the sleds, and then lashing them together. The books, tomes, and tablets were being packed more carefully, but would be similarly loaded onto the sleds for transport. The sun set and lamps were hung from poles throughout the camp so that the work could continue unabated. Shifts were devised though, and the men began taking turns sleeping. The artists were the first to retire, which was an expected annoyance. Flint ordered the best of them awakened after three hours to resume their work, as it was among the most important tasks to be completed.

He retired to his own tent, and fell to sleep wearing the knuckles.

[Warpath]

Flint opened his eyes to shouts of panic. He sat up in a smooth, easy motion, then sat still and listened for a few seconds more. Panic, but no violence. Not yet. He calmly retrieved his coat, put the knuckles in the pocket, and stepped out into the cold.

The sky was still black and the oil in the lamps was burnt low. He guessed it to be just after five in the morning. Men were stirring throughout the camp, the sleepers rising and arming themselves. Those that had been on duty would not be sleeping, but they didn’t mind. Adrenaline was all the fuel they needed now.

Flint arrived at the door, and descended into the tunnel as his men parted to accommodate his passing. He did not have to demand a report; Sar’thyn was already marching up to meet him.

“Movement in the city,” he said. “Noises. Nobody sees anything and we did not approach as per your orders, but if I had to guess I’d say a force is gathering down there.”

Flint nodded, and stepped out in front of the crowd. He held out one hand, and the men fell quiet. The silence stretched until even the flames flickering in the lamps could be heard, whispering as they ate their wicks. Flint narrowed his eyes.

Something whined distantly in the dark below, and echoed through the empty city. It sounded like a hinge in need of oil. A second whine answered the first, and then a third. And then metal scraped on metal, grinding, and something heavy thumped against stone. Dust crumbled from the distant ceiling of the cavern, raining on them, and Flint caught a glimpse of something moving past the darkened window of a house.

“What’s down there?” someone whispered.

“An army,” Flint said. His voice sounded too loud, even to himself. He did not quiet it. “The guardians of this city.”

“Are we going to fight them?” Sar’thyn said.

“No,” Flint said.

“I don’t fear them,” Sar’thyn said, and Flint believed him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said anyway.

“We control the fear,” Sar’thyn insisted. “Not them. We will teach them.”

“No,” Flint said, turning his eyes to regard the elf for a moment. Something rumbled in the dark. “You cannot teach fear to them. Nothing can.”

[Warpath]

Flint emerged in the camp, his eyes wide and fierce. The artists were screaming and scrambling, gathering their belongings even as they struggled to find asylum. It was a futile gesture, and Skovik saw why.

The sun was rising from behind him, turning the sky pink-orange and casting pale light over the mountains. Horsemen were riding up the broad mountain path, drawing their weapons and screaming as they approached the bridge.

“Mister Rooster,” Flint growled. “You’re early.”

Flint marched forward, shoving panicking civilians out of his way when they ventured too close, and he began barking orders. Riflemen were sent forward, and they unleashed a volley at the oncoming riders. Those in the first two rows went down, either because they or their horses were injured. The riflemen charged, thrusting their bayonets forward, and battle was joined.

A high pitched scream sounded alarum behind him, and Skovik whipped around and marched back toward the tunnel. A low drone rumbled from deep within the earth as if from a thousand brass horns. Flint slipped out of his coat and left it in the snow, pointing at a passing soldier. “Get the sleds out of the way,” he said. “And light the signal.”

[Warpath]

Rooster’s horse leapt valiantly over a line of riflemen, landing fearlessly amongst them. It reared, bringing its front hooves down on some poor bastard, and then it bucked and kicked out with its rear legs, breaking limbs and spines. Don just did what he could to keep up, twisting this way and that as he slashed at the men surrounding him. His saber went down clean and came up bloody.

A dark elf shoved his bayonet up toward Rooster’s middle, but the Salvic horse twisted and tossed its head, coming between its rider and the blade. The bayonet pierced the noble beast’s throat and he felt it tense in pain, and then it went on kicking and struggling for a long moment before it began to slow, drowning in its own blood. Rooster leapt free as the horse fell with a lunge, dropping its weight on three elves at once. They screamed, and then their screams turned into panicked, breathless moans as they were slowly crushed beneath the dying beast’s weight.

Don landed in a roll and slashed at the first pair of ankles he laid eyes on. The elf went down yelping, so Don jumped on him, wrenched the rifle out of his grasp, and then turned it on the next man he saw. Blood filled the air in a fine mist, and when he breathed in, Don could taste it and feel it on the back of his throat.

The fight was desperate for a time, a jittery slideshow of near-misses and frantic slashes, until the militia broke the line with their horses and flooded out onto the platform. The bridge funneled them, offsetting their numerical advantage, but the bandit army could not keep the horses from pushing through. Slowly but surely, they began to fall back.

Rooster chased them, slashing and cussing, and shoving bodies out of the way.

“Where are you!” he roared. “Where are you?!”

And then, through the violence and the arcs of blood, beyond the screaming faces and the broken bodies, he caught a glimpse of his adversary, and Skovik saw him.

They surged toward one another. Rooster slashed and stabbed anyone who got in his way, and Skovik shoved, punched, and battered his way through better-armed militiamen. When they met, Rooster attacked without pretense or hesitation.

[Warpath]

Rooster slashed at Skovik’s throat, but the brute was wearing plated bracers and deflected the blade with his forearm. The heavier man tried to push forward and put himself within reach, but Rooster danced backward and slashed again. He attacked relentlessly, violently, passionately, but he didn’t fight stupid. He wasn’t going to let the bruiser get close enough to punch.

So they danced. Rooster leaned in and out, slashing and stabbing with his saber and forcing Skovik to retreat, leaning and diverting the slashes with his armored forearms. When Rooster overextended himself, Skovik lunged, getting inside the Ranger’s reach, but Rooster slid to the side and away, discouraging pursuit with a reckless swing of his sword arm.

Over one of Skovik’s heavy shoulders, Rooster saw the bandits pushing their sleds over the edge of the hill to the side of the bridge, and they jumped off after them. They were growing desperate, fleeing the battle now, and leaving their camp behind in waves. It didn’t matter. They would be trapped at the bottom and hell if the militia was going to help them out of there. They’d die down there; either from the cold or the lack of food, and the militiamen would stay up top and watch it happen. A slow death is what they deserved – justice for those souls lost on the runaway train.

Skovik was going to die bleeding, though. He was going to die screaming, for John.

Rooster screamed, and stabbed his saber forward with both hands. Skovik deflected the blade with his forearm, then unexpectedly twisted his left hand around and caught the blade. Don viciously pulled the blade, intending to slash the murderer’s hand open, but Skovik swung with his right hand and the saber cracked in half.

Only now did Rooster see the metal lining Skovik’s knuckles on the right hand.

“I don’t need a fucking sword,” Don spat, ardently flinging the hilt of the broken sword aside. “I’ll kill you with my bare hands, you whoreson. Hell, I want to.”

“Admirable,” Skovik said. “Perhaps one day, you’ll satisfy that desire.”

“Today!” Rooster shouted.

“Unlikely,” Skovik said, passionless in the face of Rooster’s hate. “I invite you to try again. If you survive.”

The brute lowered his arms to his sides, stared a moment, and then fell backward. Rooster screamed in desperate fury, only now realizing how close his enemy was to the slope. He surged forward and tried to catch the man, but he was gone, a black shape gliding smoothly down along the snowy hill.

A low mechanical roar echoed over the mountains and Rooster felt his heart drop even as his anger surged. “No,” he hissed. “No, no, no.”

The flying machine appeared, sweeping gracefully between two slopes and then gliding effortlessly downward. It threaded beneath the bridge and then slowed, dropping down until it hovered just above where Skovik’s men had gathered. Now they were pulling their sleds over to it, and ropes were being lowered so that they could load their pilfered goods on board. Rooster caught sight of Skovik, marching determinedly through the snow to his ride. He was going to escape.

“The rifles!” he shouted. “Everybody get a fucking rifle; shoot that goddamn thing out of the sky. They are not getting away!”

The militia scrambled around him, and he joined in, shoving corpses aside to find their lost rifles, and then he began rooting through their pockets to find ammunition. He had some limited experience with firearms, and he understood basically out how load them. He’d have to hope that some of the Salvic militia would figure it out, or find guns that were already loaded to use. A few good shots had to be enough to bring down a machine like that. It was big, yes, but something so complex had to have delicate parts.

They had to bring it down.

“Fire freely!” Rooster shouted.

“Belay that order!” the commander shouted.

Rooster wheeled on the man, a curse on his lips. But something rumbled from within the earth, something lower than the airship’s engines, louder, something more ominous. He felt the color drain from his cheeks, and he heard a familiar voice beside him.

“No,” the dwarven storyteller whispered. “Gods and Thaynes, no. Please no.”

The militiamen paused in their search for weapons, each raising their heads and turning toward the Deep Door. Dozens of glowing embers burned in the dark, growing brighter.

Not embers, though.

Eyes.

[Warpath]

Steamtalon lurched as she rose, overloaded with the spoils of the lost dwarven city – artifacts dating back to the War of the Tap, weapons wielded by mortals that stood against gods and all-powerful wizards. Secret words, and forgotten knowledge. Flint Skovik stood on the bridge of the airship on the port side with his hands on the guardrail. He didn’t care where they were going.

“We can’t lift off here,” the pilot said. “We’ll have to rise right past them. One good shot to the gas bag and we’re done.”

“Do not concern yourself with them,” Skovik said without turning. “They are not thinking about us now.”

“Sir, I don’t…”

“Your fear,” Sar’thyn growled, “it disgusts me. Take off, or your co-pilot will soon be cleaning your intestines from the deck before assuming your job.”

“Of course,” the pilot said.

Steamtalon’s nose lifted, the hum of the engines intensified, and Skovik felt his stomach lurch as they ascended. He watched through the windows as the snow suddenly gave way to the top of a platform extending out from the side of the mountain, and the figures scattering across it in desperate fear.

Flint felt a chilling sensation play across his scalp and down along his back, and he suppressed a shiver. The militiamen were being slaughtered. Things were emerging from the Deep Door, things shaped like men but forged from metal that glinted in the morning sun. There were only a few dozen of them, but they were between seven and nine feet tall, and they carried weapons that didn’t have names on Althanas – not anymore. These weapons spewed fire and sparks, bursts of heat and light that effortlessly tore men asunder and chewed their bodies to pieces in midair. Blood and bone rained on the snow, blood and bone but nothing that resembled the base parts of a man.

Steamtalon turned and rounded the crown of a mountain, and took the grisly scene out of sight.

But nothing could ever remove it from the mind.

[Warpath]

Don Rooster dragged himself up onto the icy ledge with a wretched sob. He hissed as he pulled his mangled leg up after him. Something had punched through his thigh as he’d been running across the bridge, and had instantly cauterized the wound. Tears stung his eyes, and he pulled his coat tighter around himself. The chill invaded him, as if it were coming from within rather than without. “Damn you,” he breathed. “Damn you.”

He turned himself onto his side and lifted his head, and looked down over the killing field he’d just escaped from. He was the lone survivor. Again.

Or at least, he soon would be. He watched as the clockwork men marched across the platform. When they found survivors, they brought their steel feet down on their heads and obliterated them completely. It was done quickly, efficiently. The steel-skinned giants were impervious to harm, hesitation, or fear. They felt no pity, no remorse. They were unstoppable. Don had tried shooting his rifle at one, but the bullet sparked off the flesh and left no mark.

He saw now, from his safe vantage point, that they carried small steam engines on their backs. The warrior in him thought, there is a weak spot. The futility of the idea almost made him laugh. Almost.

He watched as the guardians cleaned the platform. They dismantled the locomotive in scant minutes, effortlessly tossing the pieces off the ledge. They brought hoses from within the Door, and sprayed away the bloody foam and mush – the red remains of a hundred men and their horses. They crushed the tents that Skovik’s men left, and all their gear, and tossed that over too. After ten minutes, all evidence of their presence was gone.

As the pain became overwhelming and Don drifted involuntarily into unconsciousness, he saw them pushing the shattered edges of the Deep Door into place.

A pair of scouts, having arrived late to the battle, woke him in the late afternoon. They asked him what happened, where were the others?

The door was sealed and whole, and showed no sign of having ever been opened.

“He planned it,” Rooster told the scouts. “The whole thing, he planned it. He played me. He played all of us, every one of us.”

And so help me, the Ranger thought as he drifted off again, I’m going to kill him for it.

[Warpath]

Spoils:

The God-Breaker's Knuckles: knuckledusters dwarven-forged of an unknown alloy featuring dehlar, in large part. Every square centimeter of it is covered in long-forgotten runes, granting it a very powerful and specific enchantment. If a god, demi-god, ghost, spirit, elemental, or any such immortal or incorporeal being is struck down by a blow from the knuckles, their soul and/or essence is temporarily imprisoned within. It takes a constant act of will by the wearer to contain the soul of his victim, but as long as the soul remains captive, the knuckles gain some power based upon the personality and abilities of its prisoner. If the wearer's will falters (usually when he takes the knuckles off or falls asleep/loses consciousness), the captive soul is released. At that point, the lost soul must strive to either reclaim or reform its body, and the effort is always more difficult and time-consuming than it would have been normally. Flint can strike incorporeal beings when wearing the knuckles, and cause harm just as if those beings had material forms.

Plunder from The Lost City: A trove of books, tablets, artifacts, and engravings stolen from the lost dwarven city beyond the Deep Door. These materials must be studied and deciphered to be of any use, but they contain a plethora of valuable information dating back to The War of the Tap.

The Eternal Enmity of Donald Rooster: Don Rooster, a seasoned and trained Ranger of Corone, has declared Flint Skovik his arch-nemesis, and will hunt him tirelessly across the face of the earth until one or both of them is dead.

[Revenant]

Full Rubric/Light Commentary requested.

Plot: (19)

Storytelling (7) – I read this as a very well-written story with a good plot that would have benefitted from a bit more examination of the details.

Setting (6) – There was an overall solid feeling to the various locations within your thread, but the in-depth detail was somewhat lacking. Try to put some focus on the details to raise this score.

Pacing (6) – The portion of your thread in between Flint calling the fall back from within the Deep Door and the militia’s assault wasn’t as smooth as the rest of your thread, and it made for a bumpy portion in an otherwise smooth thread.

Character: (21)

Communication (8) – Your characters were what made this thread such an excellent read, and each character had a definite voice which made them stand out.

Action (7) – The action in this thread was compact but intense. The only complaint I have is that the train-heist scene seemed to take a bit too long to play out, which didn’t mesh as nicely with the rest of the thread as the other scenes.

Persona (6) – Flint’s setup of Don was well-done, but you never really state why he had done so. I understand the need of the train to open the door, but intentionally trying to draw the militia in for the slaughter seems like needlessly wanton slaughter. It may have been perfectly in character for Flint, but there just wasn’t the character development on him at this point which would have made that clear.

Prose: (20)

Mechanics (7) – The use of repeated letters to indicate fear mumbling from John was more distracting than it was engaging and somewhat disrupted the otherwise well-done buildup of the scene.

Clarity (7) – The biggest issue here was the scene between Flint’s crew leaving the ancient city and their flight from the militia’s charge. The change in pace and somewhat jerky nature of the posts made the reading somewhat bumpier than the rest of the thread.

Technique (6) – Everything was laid out pretty up front in your thread, which left little in the way of surprise for the reader.

Wildcard: (5)

Total: 65

Warpath receives 1625 exp and 260 gp.

Spoils:

The God-Breaker's Knuckles: knuckledusters dwarven-forged of an unknown alloy featuring dehlar, in large part. Every square centimeter of it is covered in long-forgotten runes, granting it a very powerful and specific enchantment. If a god, demi-god, ghost, spirit, elemental, or any such immortal or incorporeal being is struck down by a blow from the knuckles, their soul and/or essence is temporarily imprisoned within. It takes a constant act of will by the wearer to contain the soul of his victim, but as long as the soul remains captive, the knuckles gain some power based upon the personality and abilities of its prisoner. If the wearer's will falters (usually when he takes the knuckles off or falls asleep/loses consciousness), the captive soul is released. At that point, the lost soul must strive to either reclaim or reform its body, and the effort is always more difficult and time-consuming than it would have been normally. Flint can strike incorporeal beings when wearing the knuckles, and cause harm just as if those beings had material forms.

Denied – This spoil may be gained at level 3 as a result of fulfilled research from the Plunder from The Lost City below.


Plunder from The Lost City: A trove of books, tablets, artifacts, and engravings stolen from the lost dwarven city beyond the Deep Door. These materials must be studied and deciphered to be of any use, but they contain a plethora of valuable information dating back to The War of the Tap.

Granted – Any items/abilities gained from this need to be approved through the RoG. Information/knowledge may be used freely.


The Eternal Enmity of Donald Rooster: Don Rooster, a seasoned and trained Ranger of Corone, has declared Flint Skovik his arch-nemesis, and will hunt him tirelessly across the face of the earth until one or both of them is dead.

Granted

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.