Penny

Maverick Malediction

Calliope shook her head in mock amazement. It was a wonder he managed to get around so nimbly with balls that large. It was clear he was still nervous though now he had explained the situation to her he needn’t have been. If Neil had faked his own death, as she had originally assumed, she would have felt the need to kill him out of a sense of professional work ethic. Given that he had actually died however, she felt that her agreement with the Syndicate had been honored. Neil had died as a result of her action, even if that action hadn’t been anything as crude as a blade or a spell. If they wanted him to stay dead, they should have been more specific in the wording of the contract.

“You are off my target list as far as the Syndicate goes,” she told him, picking a piece of beef out of her sandwich and dipping it into a spiced gravy that seemed to be all the rage these days. She popped the morsel into her mouth and chewed daintily.

“I am a little put out with you for disrupting my morning though,” she admitted, her crimson lips making a moo of annoyance.

“It took me weeks to prepare that spell and now I won’t even get to use it,” she bemoaned, taking a sip of the peppery wine that was apparently the special of the house. In the morning she would need to start reapplying the many sigils she had painted to make the attempt again… unless…

“You must be something of a thief for the Syndicate to hire you. What would you say to working a job for me? If you succeed it will make you a legend. If you fail… well if you fail you die.”

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

At first it seemed like there might be no further survivors. The ripping torque of the missle strike had started seams the length and breath of the Hikendorf. Most of her crew had been outside working on the repairs, killed outright or suffocated when their air bottles ran out, but enough had been inside without suits when rents suddenly appeared in the hull. Probably the only reason anyone was alive at all is because a number of the internal partitions had been closed as a reaction to damage from the previous attack. Those survivors, such as their were had been in the core of the ship, where the flexion as tons of dust had been converted to heat energy had been minimal, the way the core of a branch might survive a greenstick fracture. Sabatine helped supervise the move of Alliance spacers up and onto the commandeered mining ship. There didn’t seem to be much fight in them. That was probably to be expected. A minute ago they were facing the likelihood of a slow death by asphyxiation, RCN custody, a term in a prisoner of war camp or a prison hulk, probably seemed like a vast improvement.

“Sir, sir!” one of the prisoners called, pulling on the arm of Sabatine’s suit. How he had deduced she was an officer in a faceless sexless rigging suit she had no idea. Perhaps he was just observant of how the other RCN treated her. Danzetti lifted his submachine gun to deliver a butt stroke. Sabatine held up her hand to forestall the action, not only did she not want a random spacer brutalized, she wasn’t that confident that Danzetti knew enough about guns to have the saftey on. The last thing they needed was for him to accidentally trigger a burst that ripped them all to shreds as rounds ricochet around inside the corridor.

“What is it spacer,” she asked, not friendly but not openly hostile. The man’s name was Pollock, or Pollack judging by the faded name tape of his fleet green uniform.

“I was wondering what the chances were that I could list you know, rather than prison or whatever,” he burbled nervously. Sabatine cocked an eyebrow, a gesture that was totally invisible inside her helmet. It wasn’t unusual for crews of captured prizes to be given a chance to sign aboard the winning ship if they were short of crew, which every naval vessel was of course. Spacers didn’t typically have ideological or political loyalties and saboteurs were disincentivised by the fact that the were all, very literally, in the same boat. There just weren’t enough experienced spacers to crew the warships of the fleet and the merchant service simultaneously. He must have mistook her lack of verbal response for skepticism.

“We have a communications officer, he ran off when you…” he blurted out, finching back as the Alliance Lieutenant stepped forward with a snarl. Danzetti hit him in the face with his submachine gun. He got to hit someone and it was an officer, a banner day for the power room tech. Sabatine wasn’t shredded by an accidental discharge which pleased her also. The lieutenant staggered back, clutching a bloody nose and cursing like a spacer. Sabatine’s eyes widened as they met Kaiden’s.

“Danzetti, watch them, you Pollock, where is your comms room?” she demanded, pointing her own weapon at the spacer unintentionally. He cringed back against the bulkhead hands raised.

“One deck down on the starboard…” but Sabatine was already running, or at least shambling as fast as she could in the cursed suit. Kaiden was on her heels clearly reaching the same conclusion as she had. Every major Alliance fleet unit would have a code book which held the various signals and encryptions the Fleet used to keep its communications secure. It wasn’t a physical book of course, but it was a separate computer that could be physically firewalled to prevent digital intrusion. The Alliance hadn’t known that the RCN was coming, why would they? The odds of a single corvette driving off two destroyers were beyond astronomical. Therefore they would have had no reason to purge their computers before Sabatine dropped through the hole in the hull. She pounded down the companion way a step ahead of Kaiden, caroming off the steel wall in her haste. They hit the deck below at the same instant, Kaiden’s longer legs closing the distance. Halfway along the hall a thin man in an Alliance warrant officers uniform was heaving at a hatch with a prybar. The impact of the missiles must have torqued the hatch, trapping the communication’s officer on the wrong side. That hadn’t been a priority before, but now he had to sanitize the equipment before it fell into RCN hands. He turned to see the two RCN officers emerging from the companion way, his face contorting with frustrated hate. Dropping his prybar with an echoing clatter he whipped a pistol from his tunic pocket with surprising speed. Sabatine stared in dumb amazement. Kaiden’s shove knocked her to the deck a moment before the pistol cracked. It struck the facing plate of the companionway and ricocheted wildly, drawing white sparks. Awkward in her rigging suit she struggled to raise her own weapon.

A Chartered Course: Medieval Trading League RP

Clearly Alrik was a little more wound up than she thought. She wondered if she could remember the first time she had seen it. Death by violence wasn’t like seeing an old woman slip away, or a sick man breathe his last. The siege of Mari Casteen when she had been thirteen or fourteen? Her father had been wounded in the fighting and wasn’t expected to live. Her mother had rushed her to his side, as much to get an ironclad declaration of inheritance from him, a young daughter vs a pair of grown but bastard sons. She remembered the bodies stacked against the wall, pierced by crossbow bolts or spitted with steel. Some of them had been burned alive with oil and pitch. Her mother had been horrified by she had been morbidly fascinated. The stink had been beyond belief though, so many unburied dead ripening in the sun while grim faced soldiers tossed them into pits or piled them on pyres. Her mind snapped back to a seemingly unimportant detail the way it sometimes did. Never tuped ANYONE? It was like a unicorn. By the Black Lady she needed to get this boy laid.

Composing herself, she tucked the knife away and picked a clean one from the cutlery box. Damned Potato Eaters. Still she was hungry and her stomach was a little sour. It had been a considerable time since she last had any wine, but it was probably good for her to try and space that out. If you thought a man who had been roasted in his armor smelt bad, then you had never had the chance to see one who went out from the drunkard’s liver.

“Well there is always the simple crazies,” she said dismissing the matter and carving herself off a slice of potato with one of the dull butter knives. She popped it into her mouth and chewed. Like most northern food it had been cooked to the point that it felt personal, but it was tasty enough. Besides, there was never a bad time to take a nap, grab a bite, or visit the latrine. You never knew when you might get another chance.

“This one time at… Palona maybe? Bardice? Anyway this man comes up to me, tries to stab me right there in broad daylight, screaming something about how I seduced his wife… or cheated at cards… or maybe that I killed his brother?” she realized the story was beginning to meander somewhat and also wasn’t really making her point.

“So… somewhere you don’t remember, someone tried to kill you for a reason you also don’t remember?” Alrik sumiried, cocking an eyebrow.

“Yeah well I went for a bard but I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket,” she responded around a mouthful of potato.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Emmaline had, in point of fact, forgotten the existence of the ring, though this wasn’t an artifact of her flighty nature or self centered outlook. The Ring of Shadows was, by its very nature, an item of obscucation. It’s subtle magic encouraged others to forget its existence, to overlook its presence, even as it encouraged watchers to ignore its wearer. Even now it was brought to her attention, she found the fact of its existence slipping quietly from her mind. It wasn’t important how Amal had survived afterall, simply that he was alive and Zhar Tan Zhou was dead. The greenskins too seemed to be sharing in their masters fate. Zwili tore into them with a fury, teeth bared with ancient racial hate. One of the goblins tried to grab her with its yellowed talons, but she twisted aside, broke its arm with a powerful blow, and then staved in its skull as it staggered back. That was enough for the rest of them. Emmaline burned one down with a bolt of golden energy, just to be seen to be contributing, and the few survivors fled squealing from the throne room, vengeful dwarf on their heels.

“Well I’m glad you were in the neighborhood,” Emmaline said, catching Amal in a relieved hug. She still wasn’t exactly sure where they were or how they had gotten here, but she suspected Amal would be able to fill her in.

“And I’m glad you finally decided to show up,” she said to Asp, who had transformed into his snake form and was coiling around her arm.

“Better late than never,” she said, somewhat censoriously. Asp lifted his head, tongue flicking as he hissed and bobbed his head in lengthy explanation.

“I can’t understand you,” Emmaline reminded him. The snake lifted its snot loftily, in clear indication that her lack of understanding was both not surprising and beneath his regal notice. Emmaline stuck out her tongue at the serpent, but it had already sunk back into her arm, becoming the familiar tattoo once more.

“Luckily some heroes are right on time,” she grinned, bestowing on Amal a lingering kiss.

___

“So the villagers sold us out?” Emmaline asked incredulously. She took a bite of cheese and washed it down with a gulp of wine. They were sitting in the garden, enjoying a meal of pilfered supplies. Emmaline had scanned both the strange cavern and the supplies carefully with her mage sight and detected no sign of the taint of Chaos upon them. It was somewhat saddening to think that Zhar Tan Zhou had accomplished this without the aid of his patron. What great works he might have done if he hadn’t been lured by blind ambition into madness. Emmaline couldn’t even begin to contemplate the spells woven into this place, and her head throbbed faintly from the effort.

“And you rode here on a dragon?” she asked incredulously.

“Technically its a Wyrven because it has only wings and legs,” Amal replied around a mouthful of bread.

“Ohh pedantic for a street rat,” she snickered.

“Ped what?” Amal asked, reaching the limit of his Riekspiel. A sudden noise prevented further conversation and they both turned to see Zwili stalking into the cavern. They hadn’t seen the dwarf in the hour since she had chased off after the goblin and she was much changed. Her fine clothing was gone, she wore only breeches, boots and a bandeau that wrapped around her chest. Her hair was disheveled beyond belief, clumsily shaved on both sides to leave a kind of crest that hung somewhat limply, an effort having obviously been made to make it stand up. She held a heavy hammer in her arms, a real weapon rather than a miners tool.

“Zwili I take it the goblins are…” Emmaline began.

“Dead,” the dwarf concluded with grim finality. Emmaline wondered how she had managed to catch them all but didn’t ask.

“Did uhh… I mean what happened to your hair?” she asked, imagining a goblin barber assaulting the dwarf.

“I have taken my oath to Grimnnir,” Zwili spat. Emmaline had no idea what a Grimnnir might be but judging by Zwili’s expression it was a sore subject so she chose not to pursue it.

“I owe you a debt, to both of you,” the dwarf continued, ignoring Emmaline’s lack of reaction to her announcement.

“To both of you, I will travel with you until I can repay it.”

"But we don't really..." Emmaline tried to interject. Zwili's hands closed so tight around the haft of the hammer that her knuckles ran white. When she responded it was very slow, as though speaking to a child.

"I will travel with you."

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

Sabatine felt considerable relief when Kaiden made the decision. Leaving men to slowly suffocate beneath tons of dust would have been a grim end to the battle. It was strange how one could be at peace with being vaporized when a missile ripped through a vessel but fear to slowly choke for lack of air. It didn't hurt that the decision irritated Tilda either. With the course decided they were faced with the how. The wreck of the Hikendorf was buried by twenty meters of dust and rock. Sabatine and Savachev discussed several options before settling on the one they felt would be both fast and safe.

"Switch on!" Sabatine called across the unit push. She was wearing her rigging suit, clumsy under the light gravity. She stood in the umbilicus with three other riggers, each attached to a mast that had been swayed out above them by ships cables. The umbilicus, at maximum contraction stood above them, a three meter wall of plastic and steel. All four spacers gripped the square handle they had welded around a spare waterline. She felt the thrum of water racing along the pipe at firehose pressure. It blasted into the dirt in a muddy spray, the force of which almost lifted the four spacers in the low gravity. A second house began to gurgle and slurp, sucking up the slurry. By slow increments they dug into the dust, the umbilicus extending around them like a well casing. Danzetti hung above them on the cable, spraying the walls of the umbilicus with plasticizer as it extened, strengthing it so the weight of earth didn't crush it shut.

"How is it going?" Kaiden asked on a private channel. By now, Sabatine's world had been reduced to blindly fumbling in the muck, running her hand around the base of the umbilicus by feel to lower it another inch. A scum of plasticizer had formed on the water and gathered like dandruff on the head and shoulders of her suit.

"If I wanted mud," she gasped, breathing heavily, "I'd have joined the bloody pongos." Kaiden chuckled over the comm and might have been about to ask more, when water splashed on something metallic. Shoulder mounted lamps lit sparkling reflections from the spray as they exposed a section of hull plating.

"We are there," Sabatine replied, it took another minute or two to clear the three meter circle and secure it with the plasticizer.

"Think we should let them know we are coming?" Sabatine asked. She made a hand guesture to Danzetti who began to shimmy up the line, disappearing into the darkness above.

"Let's not give anyone a chance to be a hero," Kaiden replied. Sabatine didn't think it was too likely that spacers trapped in a wreck were likely to open fire, but she wasn't in command. A moment later Kaiden slithered down the line, a diamond saw in one hand and a pair of slung submachine guns. His beet touched the deck and he let go of the line, handing the saw off to one of the spacers. Sabatine leaned close and pressed her helmet to Kaiden's so they could talk without the radio.

"Kaiden, I don't know its a good idea for both senior officers to be involved in a breech," she said. He unslung one of the guns and passed it across to her.

"Wan't to climb back up then?" he asked, the amusement clear in his voice. She took the gun, her eye roll concealed behind the face shield of her helmet.

"Pressurizing," Savachev's voice came across the comms. Air began to pump into the umbilicus and the indicator light in Sabatine's helmet went green, indicating the air was breathable. She didn't open her helmet, breathable didn't mean pleasant, and she doubted the plasticizer would do her lungs any favors. Kaiden stepped back and made a curt gesture. The spacer flicked the saw to life and sank it into the hull plating. Sabatine felt the scream of it through her boots as the blade cut into the hull, there was a slight outrush of air, indicating that the hull section was at least still pressurized. The spacer reversed the blade, making two more cuts that dropped a triangular section of hull plating into the ship. A greenish glow of emergency lighting washed out. Sabatine stepped into the hall, falling into the ship under the low gravity.

"Entering," Sabatine reported, engaging the magnets in her boots at twenty percent strength. She shuffled forward clearing the way for Kaiden and the other armed spacers who were already coming down the line. The interior of the ship showed signs of the trauma she had undergone. Cracks and stress fractures ran through the bulkheads where the impact waves had torqued the hull. An alliance spacer came around the corner, his face discolored by a dark bruise and with an arm full of spare air bottles. His eyes widened in shock and he dropped his armful raising his hands.

"I surrender," he gasped, pressing himself back against the wall.

Maverick Malediction

Calliope looked around theatrically for a moment. Neil blinked and arched an eyebrow.

"Never a gargoyle around when you need one," she lamented. The tapestry flapped nosily in the breeze, as though demanding her attention. There was a gryphon woven into the fabric. Her eyes brightened and Neil followed her gaze.

"Hey, hey, steady on," Neil entreated, glancing nervously at the image of the gryphon. Calliope folded her arms beneath her breasts. It was true that Neil had been killed, even if it grated at her sense of rightness that he was still walking and wisecracking. She pulled one of the long silver pins from her bun and began to twirl it idly in her hand. It would make an adequate tool to spill blood, her's or Neil's, either would work. She really should finish him off and get back to her other project. She thought of all the work that had been wasted by his sudden appearance and a germ of an idea began to form in her head.

"Alright," she said after a moment, relaxing her posture ever so slightly.

"Lets get some lunch and you can tell me why you still have a pulse. After that... well I'm not making any promises."

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

"Perhaps you can discuss it with him when I feed him your soul," Zar Tan Zhou snarled, leveling his staff. Before Emmaline could react a bolt of ravening energy ripped from his staff. Amal, moving faster than anyone expected, dodged aside and the bolt blew a smoking hole in one of the walls. Emmaline raised both her arms and began to chant, but the chaos sorcerer, sensing magic directed at him, flicked an irritated wrist. An invisible hand swatted Emmaline away and she avoided crashing to the ground only by virtue of the carpet coiling around her to break her fall, its fabric snapping taught and flipping her onto her feet like a prize fighter being pitched back into the ring by his supporters. Zar Tan Zhou slicked his hands in angry gestures, deflecting two thrown knives away in showers of sparks.

"Come minions!" Zar Tan Zhou shouted, the words ringing unnaturally loud. Emmaline tried her spell again only to have Zar Tan Zhou snap his fingers. The blue tapestries shot out, grabbing at her wrist and she yelped and leaped away, avoiding the enchanted fabrics grasp but loosing the focus of her spell. All across the chamber the tapestries reached out, forcing Amal closer to Zar Tan Zhou. The wizard snarled and shouted a word, tendrils of mist reaching out to seize the thief. Amal slashed at them with his blade and there was a flash of light and a grunt of pain from Zar Tan Zhou. Quick as a whip the wizard lifted his other hand and blasted the thief off his feet. Amal flew backwards, but twisted in the air like an acrobat fingers catching on one of the columns, and landing horizontally on it, cushioning the shock with his feet before flipping down and back to his feet. Emmaline could see shapes moving through the entry hall now, the greenskinned servants of the magus coming to his aid. Ahead of them, almost being dragged by her collar was Zwili, eyes filled with hate, teeth bared in useless defiance. Emmaline raised her hands and began to chant, gathering Charmon to her as greedily as she could. The snake tattoo on her arm writhed and extended out into the golden staff. She leveled it at the dwarf and shouted a word. The iron collar around the dwarf's neck shattered explosively, spraying fragments of hot metal all around. The goblins howeled as their own enchanted collars flew to pieces. They came to their feet, wiping at the cuts and contusions the spell had wrought.

"Oi, the fuggin' collars gone!" one of them hissed. A dozen pairs of yellow eyes turned towards Emmaline and the wizard beyond her. She swallowed hard and stepped to the side.

"He did it," she declared pointing an accusatory finger at Zar Tan Zhou.

"Da' blonde bint is 'it! Git 'em!" one of the green skins snarled and then they were surging forward, some brandishing garden tools, one wielding a pastry roller.

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

“RCS Victory I really must protest, this is outrageous, its unfair!” the captain of the freighter Bullock’s Bones whined over the comm. Sabatine resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

“As we have stated, you will be compensated for your services to the Republic in due course, which is all well and good, but if you do not comply with my orders now, we will have a problem NOW. A very brief problem Bones. Victory Out.” Sabatine concluded cutting the channel. It might have been a mistake not to just seize the ship and ground its crew somewhere but they were short handed in the extreme already and she couldn’t afford to spare the men. It was even possible that she was telling the truth. The War Ministry might eventually pay the standard charter rate for the thousand tone freighter which had been commandeered by a junior lieutenant in a distant theatre of a chaotic war. Some people did win the lottery afterall. It was axiomatic in the RCN that hard work lead to more hard work and that had been true in spates after their unlikely victory. Kaiden had taken a prize crew aboard the K-21 while Sabatine had executed the short intra system jump to commandeer on of the mining ships. Even though the alliance ships had most of their crews on the ground there were still more notional ‘prisoners’ on the K-21 than there were in the Vickie’s crew. There was no space aboard a starship to keep 80 people prisoner. They needed to be offloaded and fast, and since Kaiden’s attack on the Hickendorf had smashed the few temporary structures the Alliance had constructed on the moon, that meant finding another ship. Fortunately mining ships were both large and locally available and if they didn’t prove to be comfortable places to be incarcerated, well, worse things happened in war time.



“Is there a problem five?” Kaiden’s voice crackled over the comm circuit, clipped and tired. Sabatine wondered if she sounded that tired. Probably not, as she hadn’t been securing a battle damaged prize ship for the last three hours.

“No sir, Bullock’s Bones is beginning approach…” she tapped a few keys and remoted a view of her proposed landing site, a shallow crater a hundred meters from the scarred ruin which had housed the Alliance cruiser, “are you ready to set down?” She needn’t have asked, K-21 was already beginning to maneuver. A moment later a gridded silhouette of the ship appeared on her own image. Either Kaiden was getting better with signals or…

“I’ve highlighted our landing site Lieutenant Hickoring,” Tilda broke in. Sabatine ground her teeth. She had been surprised when the one time reporter had volunteered to go with the boarding party and was annoyed to have her break into the conversation now, even if she was being helpful.

“Acknowledged,” she responded as neutrally as she could. Why Tilda even wanted to be there was beyond her, perhaps she just preferred to stay with her meal ticket, maybe her reporters instinct told her to stay with the story. Heroic Cinnabar Officer Kaiden Caladwarden takes charge of his prize. It did have the ring of a headline about it. A handsome high born officer winning a stunning victory with courage and guile. It might be enough to distract from the fact that he had mutinied against his captain, victory was a great cloak afterall, but was there room in that cloak for two? What of Sabatine Hickoring? Would she be left holding the bag for the mutiny? Not officially perhaps, but in the minds of the RCN officers who would determine her future assignments or lack thereof? Would she be Kaiden’s lackey or his patsy? Sabatine checked the PPI making sure that the Bones was on course, she needn’t have bothered, low g landings on moons and asteroids were the stock and trade of miners after all and the big freighter slid graceful to rest on the dust coated surface, thrusters angled artfully to blow the dust away at a slight angle to the hull. K-21 was beginning its decent now, one of its plasma engines had been destroyed by the plasma cannon fire she had endured in the battle and Kaiden was compensating by lowering the output of the eight portside units rather than risk her nose dipping too much if he took the corresponding engine out of action. It wasn’t a landing that would make the Academy Ship Handling instructors smile, but it was serviceable enough. It took perhaps fifteen minutes for the ground to cool sufficiently for the spacers to unroll an umbilicus, a twenty meter long tube of plastic with metal stiffeners to connect the two ships, allowing the prisoners to be moved to the hold of the freighter, chivied along with wrenches and lengths of high pressure tubing. How the civilians would handle them if they got hostile Sabatine had no idea and honestly it didn’t much matter. The bones was armed only with a bundle of chemical rockets, the standard defense against pirates. While the rockets could strip away antennae and rigging, they were no threat to a warship, even at relatively close range.

“Five this is Six,” Kaiden’s voice came over the comm, sounding grim. “You better get down here.”





“We didn’t pick it up till we got to the ground,” Bushman said, handing a headset to Sabatine. Bushman was a power room tech who had been transferred with Kaiden, Sabatine didn’t know him well, but he seemed to know his business. They were in the secondary hold of the Bullock’s Bones. It was a dingy ship, ill maintained with exposed cabling and a dozen major safety problems Sabatine could spot without so much as turning on a scanner. Her crew were equally dirty, and probably considered themselves equally dangerous, though next to the RCN crew they just appeared scruffy and somewhat underfed. The console they were using was easily older than Sabatine, but it seemed to be the only working one that wasn’t on the bridge where the irate captain was still stamping around complaining about piracy. Sabatine put the headset to her ear.

“….anyone receiving….survivors….dorf….say again…. trapped…” the signal sounded tinny, a telltale sign that Bushman was boosting it for all he was worth. Survivors in the Hickendorf, buried beneath tons of dust and debris. There had been no hope for the crew out on the hull when the missiles hit. Even those that survived the blasts would have died of asphyxiation by now, the air bottles in their suits exhausted, but she had never considered anyone in the cruiser itself might still be alive. Her face grew tight, skin stretching into a grimace that she did her best to suppress. Killing the enemy was part of the job, something all RCN personnel had to accept but the reality was that the difference between RCN and Alliance spacers was minimal. The two communities had much more in common with each other than with the civilians of the various powers they fought for. Half the time planet of origin was mismatched in any case. The Vickie had crew who had been born on Pleasance, the Alliance Capital, and they were just as skilled and loyal as those who had been born in Xenos. Often it was just a case of which planet they had been drunk on when the recruiting officers, or press gangs, had run across them. She looked up at Kaiden expression neutral. Leaving the spacers to die made the most sense. They should be taking their prize and heading for Herculaneum immediately, to raise the alarm about the Alliance attack. Every minute they delayed here could prove costly, it was even possible, though not likely, that Alliance reinforcements would arrive and threaten the Vickie herself.



“What are your orders sir,” she asked formally.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Emmaline’s relief at seeing Amal alive was immeasurable. A leaden weight which had been lurking unrecognized in the back lifted. How he had found her and how he had gotten here so quickly remained good questions, but they hardly seemed immediately pressing. For a moment she regretted not having him cut Zwili’s throat, just so they could have talked together, but that seemed a rather uncharitable regret. Amal was no fool, and he must have a plan. All she could realistically do was play her part as best she could. She raised her arms and allowed Zwili to continue to anoint her with oil, hoping it didn’t result in her sprouting tentacles or something. It didn’t or it least it hadn’t by the time the dwarf had clothed her in a white and gold garment which Zwili said was called a kimono. Once this was done a white paint was applied to her face, accented with dark eye mascara and cherry red lipstick. The whole effect struck Emmaline as slightly ludicrous, making her look exceedingly pale and washed out with her fine gold hair, but she supposed that an insane chaos warped wizard probably wouldn’t be that interested in her fashion advice. Once again she tried to rouse Asp, but the snake remained stalwartly inked on her arm, unwilling or unable to manifest.

“You are ready,” Zwili announced in a dull listless voice. Her face worked mightily and she managed to add, “I am sorry.”



“Don’t worry about it,” Emmaline responded, “Half the girls I knew growing up got married at the end of a pitchfork with their bellies swelling. I suppose I’m better off than they are.” It seemed impolitic to remark that at least they weren’t marrying psychotic wizards.

“Not,” she added with a grimace as she plucked at the kimino, “that it is without its challenges.” The garment had clearly been cut for someone with a figure significantly less generous then Emmaline’s. The belt that cinched around her waist pulled the fabric in ways it hadn’t been designed to do and she had to make frequent adjustments in order to prevent her cleavage from making a made dash for freedom. A result she doubted would be looked upon with favor. Asking for a shift seemed unlikely to go over well however.

“Alright, lets get this over with,” she announced finally, figuring she had delayed long enough to give Amal a chance to make whatever preparations he needed, without giving the inhabitants of this strange fortress too much time to stumble over him.

“A… wedding…. gift,” Zwili ground out, reaching into a pocket and producing a small knife. The dwarf was twitching so violent as she handed it to Emmaline that she seemed about to vomit. Emmaline tucked the blade away in a fold of her kimono, greatful for the effort. The dwarf seemed disappointed that she didn’t stab her with it and try to escape, but the dullness stole over her before she could make further comment.

“This way.”



***



A lot, it seemed, could change in an hour. The throne room, which had been majestic bare stone, was now draped with blue silks of every hue. Some were bright as the sky, others the dark grey black of a storm tossed sea. Others Emmaline had no name for and made her slightly nauseous to look upon. An eye searing sigil was emblazoned on many of them, perhaps some kind of coat of arms of Zar Tan Zhou, or perhaps a sign of his blasphemous patron. The wizard himself was also transformed. Gone were his simple robe, replaced by armor that seemed to be wrought of dark blue ice and edged with gold. It had an improbable number of hooks and points that seemed to limit its practicality, though he showed no signs that it hindered him.

“Step forward my dear, let us speak the words of dedication before mighty Tzeentch,” he grinned, showing his pointed teeth and beckoning her. As sthe stepped forward the ground began to glow as it was lit by strange sigils on the floor. There was an odd smell, like sandal wood and old pine tar. Emmaline swallowed, hoping that Amal knew what he was doing. Against the unarmored wizard, Zwili’s knife might have been some use, but against this armored warrior of chaos she didn’t much like her chances.

Maverick Malediction

It would have been the perfect job. Done so neatly and in broad daylight that every assassin between here and the Free Cities would have marveled at it. All Calliope had to do was wait for the perfect moment to spring her trap, the moment when all the clockwork of days and nights of preparation, dozens of spells, hundreds of inked sigils, all came together. Then her eyes locked with a dead man. For a moment she thought she was simply hallucinating, she had thought of him more than once in the intervening weeks, partly in admiration at his pluck and partly in frustration that her job had been completed in a way she hadn’t really anticipated or earned. Now she saw him, apparently alive and well, she didn’t quite know what to think. Or at least she didn’t until Magister Therman’s carriage clattered past her magical ambush point, barkers still yelling obnoxiously, and onwards to his day of debauchery and dark dealings at the Arcane Assembly.

“Fuck!” she snapped, yanking her hand away and scratching herself on the henna needle. The woman applying the ruined image cringed back, apparently believing she had punctured a clients skin.

“Please mistress, I’m sorry, forgive…” Calliope wasn’t listening. Instead she sprang to her feet took a running start, jumped onto the stone balustrade and leaped out over the shocked gasps of the crowd. Twisting slightly in the air she landed on the sidewalk, took the three steps to the bridge at a sprint and hopped over the lip, dropping to the alleyway below like a falling arrow, skirts billowing out around her. The various denizen’s of the alley, stared in shock, watching a second person dropping from the sky what must have been moments after the first. She scanned the alley, searching for Neil, a slight commotion at the end of the dark narrow street was all she needed and she sprinted towards it. This was foolish, it might be a trap, but she had seen the shock in his eyes and reckoned he was as surprised as she was. Well maybe not quite as surprised as she was, given she thought he was a corpse. If she lost him now there would be no easy way to track him, and as the Syndicate had said, and experience borne out, he was a slippery bastard. A staggering drunk stepped out from the end of the alley carrying a bottle in a paper bag.

“Have a drink with me girly,” he mumbled toothlessly. Without breaking a strike Calliope raised a hand and an invisible force blew the drunk off his feet and smashed him into the mounded garbage and out of her way.

“Read the fucking room!” she shouted as she sped past in pursuit of her quarry.