Tro held a firm grip on the cable that held fast to Sin, but with no small amount of effort. The immortal’s drag was strong, almost yanking Tro off the caravan to follow him under the wheels of the bandits. The only difference being that while Sin would return from that unscathed, Tro would be crushed to pulp. Worse yet, there was no afterlife waiting for Tro given his soulless state. When he was gone, he was gone for good. No reincarnation, no resurrection, just nothingness.
“Tro!” Vex shouted from her place behind the gun emplacement. “Anchor down! We don’t need you taking flight lessons!”
Tro gave a single nod that he wasn’t sure Vex could see. But he trusted her to give him the time to activate his boots. With an effort of will, Tro activated the function of his mystech boots, causing them to seal to the ramp beneath him with intensely anchoring gravity magic. He wasn’t going anywhere unless he was ripped out of his boots. Which he hoped wouldn’t happen again.
Vex turned her gun to face Sin and fired off a blast, launching the immortal to slam against the side of a bandit car with enough force to cause the driver to swerve and crash into another car. With that, Alex seemed to catch on and brought his own gun to bear against Sin, the ice sealing the gun cracking and shattering under the soul-forged’s strength. He fired off his own blast and Sin bounced off another car, a tentacle slithering inside an open window to latch onto the driver. The life drained from the bandit in short order, and the car slowed and veered off course to crash into the woods beside the road.
By this point, the bandits had realized that Sin was a serious hazard to their goals, and the remaining four cars drew aim on the mass of tendrils and fired everything they had. Tro responded to this by lashing the cable hard enough to throw Sin high into the air. Tro then extended the line just the right distance for the immortal to land atop the hood of a bandit car, centered between the remaining pursuers. The scarlet pounded any bandit car within range, demolishing the vehicle Sin landed on and driving the other two to either side off the road and into the forest to crash. The sound of crumpling metal faded into the distance as the caravan continued on its route.
As the final bandits fell away, the effect infecting Sin died out. The scarlet tentacles faded away, and Tro reeled the immortal in. Sin was a mess. His suit was in tatters. The flesh had been stripped from his bones; those bones roughly ground against stone. His entrails hung in loose ribbons, and one of his eyes was missing. No blood leaked from his body, all of it doubtless consumed by Vex’s hex-round to fuel its effect. What he was covered in was the waste Vex had spilled over him to blind and distract their pursuers.
Tro wrinkled his nose in disgust. The sewage of orcs always had a particularly potent stench that made his nose hairs itch and burn. Trouble wrapped his arms under the mutilated shoulders of the immortal and dragged him back inside the rear dreadnought. He unceremoniously dumped Sin onto the rugged floor in a stinking heap.
“Foul,” Tro said as he took several steps back from the almost-corpse.
“Yeah,” Vex said with a weary sigh. “I know. And I’m sorry, bro. But it was the only thing I could think of to help us throw them off the chase.”
Alex made a sniffing sound. “Well, guess I got lucky with this body for once.”
Architallis stepped into the car, followed closely by the head of the guard. “By the gods.” Muttered the captain. “This is your fifth member?”
“Yup,” Vex said simply as she kneeled over Sin to inspect his state. Her nose wrinkled at the potent scent, even as she prodded his shoulder with a single finger.
“I’ll notify the mortician,” said the captain, waving to one of the guards who had been watching Ill Omen. “I’m… sorry for your loss. I… I was wrong about you.”
Alex barred the way of the guard who moved to follow his captain’s order. Vex stood and prodded Sin harder with the toe of her boot. “Thanks for the apology, Cap. But we don’t need condolences for this twit.” Vex said ‘twit’ like she was scolding a naughty child. “He’s still alive.”
“Then he needs a healing potion,” the captain pointed to the guard Alex had barred. “Get a healer! Double time!”
“Don’t worry about him,” Vex said calmly before speaking directly to Sin. “Come on, trog face. Get up. We need to get back to business.”
Sin shot up into a sitting position with a pained groan leaking from his mangled mouth. The captain and his men leaped back with cries of panic. He pressed a flayed hand against his neck and rolled his head, eliciting a series of cracks and crunches. Sin then scooped up his entrails and awful back into his body with practiced motions.
Even as everyone looked on, muscle, sinew, and cartilage slowly mended and regrew.
“By kith and kin,” the captain cursed under his breath. “What is he?”
“A problem,” Vex answered. “But he’s our problem.” Vex looked down at Sin with an irritated expression, one brow raised. “You healed a lot faster when the low-orbit turkey turned you Insideout. Something wrong?”
Sin tried to rise to his feet, but slipped on the puddle of waste all around him. He fell on his face and crumpled to the floor again. “I had recently subsisted on nurturing sustenance.”
“You what?” Alex asked, folding his arms and rolling his fingers along his upper arm.
“He’d eaten before.” Architallis clarified.
“Oh,” Alex lowered his arms and scratched the back of his head. “So you need a munch or two.”
“I do so loathe that lamentable language.” Sin grumbled as his cheeks reformed and the start of an eye appeared in the empty socket. “Why can’t the potently petulant people of this age simply speak properly?”
Vex rolled her eyes. “Why do you need to speak like a mummy that crawled out of a tomb to harass poor townsfolk?”
“Talk weird,” Tro agreed.
“Or why do you need to say words that start with the same letter in patterns?” Alex asked with a casual wave of his hand.
Sin carefully rose to his feet. “Tis but a habit I developed to keep my sanity.”
“What sanity?” Vex asked with an amused smirk that held no venom.
The guard captain cleared his throat. “So he needs food. I’ll take donations from the market. But I will be charging you for the damage you caused.”
Vex waved off the captain’s statement. “Yeah, yeah.” She pulled off her hat and pulled free Sparky. Vex tossed the drone into the air, where it caught itself and turned to face her. “Sparky, go with the cap and flick him the funds he needs.” She then turned to Alex. “Can you head to vehicle storage and snag the beacon? Turn it off. Throw it overboard. I don’t care what you do, just get rid of it before we get jumped again. I don’t have the spoons to deal with another ambush.” Vex moved toward the door. “I need a week of sleep and a cask of something strong.”
Vex left for their quarters, and both Tro and Archi moved to follow. As they passed through the still abandoned market car, they found Potato running in circles, occasionally stopping to chew on the leg of a stall, leaving brutal teeth marks in the metal.
“Hey, Archi, how did you know to come to our rescue?”
“Called backup,” Tro answered with a smirk hidden behind his collar.
“Ah,” was Vex’s reply before walking over to pick up Potato and rest him on her shoulder. Tro caught her looking over at a stall adjacent to the hole in the dreadnought’s floor. Tro immediately noticed a cable wrapped around two of the stall legs. Vex knelt down to inspect the cable, its free end sheared cleanly as if severed by bolt cutters. “How’d you cut the cable? I figured you’d use acid or some dreck like that.”
Architallis gave an amused smile as he knelt to pick up a small piece of metal. “Your pet assisted me with it.” he walked over and offered the device to the creature atop Vex’s shoulder. Tro recognized the metal thing as a trap trigger from Architallis’s trap kit.
Potato took the perceived toy with an excited gurgle, chewing on it with obvious glee. Vex reached up and patted her pet affectionately. “That’s my special little buddy for you.” She rose and continued moving toward their guest quarters. “I’m surprised you befriended my little guy, Arch. He normally bites off fingers and toes of anyone who gets close.”
“Oh, he isn’t so bad. He just needs something to keep him preoccupied.” Architallis said as he patted Potato on the head with an amused and gentle expression.
“I wonder if he sees you like him. My little buddy is a melting pot of genes. You probably smell like a cocktail of creatures,” she looked over her shoulder at Tro for confirmation.
Tro took a deep inhale through his nose, then scrunched it up in thought. “Messy. Complicated,” he said.
“Makes sense,” Vex said as they stepped into their guest car.
Architallis moved to sit on the couch against the back wall. “You owe us an explanation, you know,” he said in a level tone. “Those women. They were after you, correct?”
“Yeah,” Vex said in a tired voice. “But let me get some shut-eye before I give you all the download.” She moved to the doorway of her room. “Hey, Tro, can you snag me a bottle of something strong for when I rise from the dead?” She said over her shoulder.
“Sure,” Tro said with a single nod before heading out of the car again.
Alex entered the vehicle storage bay, finding the loading gate wide open. With a few moments of examination, he found the beacon, throbbing with a sullen blue light. With clumsy hands, Alex scooped the beacon up and almost dropped it twice before throwing it out the gate and closing the hatch. He was pretty sure that the caravan people would be pretty pissed if the hatch got ripped off by a passing tree or boulder.
With that done, he hurried back to the quarters car, carefully avoiding eye contact with everyone he passed as they glared at him. They must’ve thought that he was the reason for the chaos that damaged the market. He didn’t have the time or patience to deal with an angry mob, even if they were lacking torches and pitchforks. He suspected that they couldn’t do anything to really damage him. After that Willow woman tried to crush his fist with an enhanced grip, he suspected that his body wasn’t really made from brass.
Alex stepped inside the group’s quarters to find Architallis playing fetch with Potato using some piece of metal. Beside Archi sat Sin, slowly eating small blocks of some soft, white substance. The immortal was mostly healed, even if his nasty suit was still in poor shape.
Alex stepped over to his tomb shell and rapped a fist against its faceplate. “I’m not leaving home without this ever again.”
“I doubt you would have been able to use it during that scuffle. The space was so tight, you like would have caused even more damage than what Sin caused.” Archi said as he tossed the metal piece in his palm before flicking it into the far corner.
“Speaking of, I see they got you food. What did they scrounge up?”
Sin swallowed hard before answering. “The only sorry substance they procured for my personal consumption was tofu.” He popped another piece into his mouth and chewed with a sour look on his face. “I suspect the whole collection is expired.”
“Gross,” Alex said. If he could’ve made a disgusted look at the box of tofu, he would’ve. But all he could do was glare at it with his digital eyes. “Where’s our bad attitude leader? She owes us a few answers for that scrap.”
Architallis hid the metal toy behind his back, teasing Potato, who skipped from side to side in eager excitement. “Our Lady of Hexes is sleeping. From the bags beneath her eyes, I suspect she needs the rest. Hopefully, with enough, she will be in a more palatable mood.”
Alex flopped down on the couch beside the other two, drawing an audible creak from the furniture. He rested his arms and head across the back of the couch. “Gods, I hope so. Her attitude grinds my gears. It’s like she’s got something to prove to the world. Between her and that brawl, I desperately need a drink. Some nice strong scotch or a big cup’ve ceangar gin.”
Both Sin and Archi leaned forward and silently stared at the soul-forged. He could feel their gazes without looking. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Not going to happen ever again,” he let out an exasperated and pained groan. “Gods, I miss drink. I miss drugs. And I really miss sex.”
“Well, weren’t you a debotcherous boy.” Sin said before popping another chunk of tofu into his mouth.
“Hey! Life is for living it up. What’s the point of breathing if you can’t enjoy life?”
Architallis chucked the metal piece again before scratching under his jaw. “I found making a difference in the lives of others made my life worth living.”
“You, helping?” Alex asked as he raised his head to stare at the Vhenari. “The guy that illegally testing mystery drugs and cocktails on people.”
“That was done out of desperation,” Architallis said in a mournful tone. “Before that, I spent my days trying to help people. I might’ve worked in a corporate lab, but I always did my best to improve the lives of the sick and those in need.”
“So what changed?” Alex asked.
“It was-” Architallis started, but was cut off as Vex’s door slid open and she staggered through, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. As soon as her door opened, Tro’s door followed suit. The neoform carried a ceg of some form of alcohol within.
Vex eyed the ceg before flopping into a chair with a borderline sexual groan as her brother set down the container beside her. “Marry me,” she said as she picked up the mounted hose and put it to her lips, as she opened the valve.
“Gross,” Tro said, but Alex could see the smile in his eyes.
After Vex took several deep swigs of alcohol, before closing the valve and offered the hose around the room. “Anyone else want some?”
Tro waved off the offer before taking a seat on the floor.
“I don’t drink,” Architallis said as he pocketed Potato’s toy. The creature climbed into Vex’s lap, curled up, and began emitting a bubbly pur.
“Gods, I wish.” Alex groaned in mourning.
Sin waved off the offer was well. “I would receive little libation from it. I would rather not waste it when others can enjoy.”
“Geeze. You all are already on the fast track to make me an alcoholic, and I can’t even enjoy it with you guys.” Vex groused.
“Why didn’t you sleep longer?” Architallis asked.
Vex saved a dismissive hand. “Nightmares, as per the norm.”
“Then I think you owe us some answers,” Alex said. “Those trog witches were after you.”
Vex took another swig from the hose but shot Alex a warning glare.
“Sorry,” Alex hurried to apologize. “But that Mesarra lady said something about a contract. If you’re drawing heat, then I think we are all owed an explanation why.”
Vex took several long draws from the ceg before closing it and wiping her mouth with the back of one hand. “Okay. Yeah. I guess I do owe you guys that much.”
Tro gave his sister a worried look. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Vex said with a sigh as she replaced the hose to the metal tank. “Have any of you heard of the Order of the Gilded Rose?”
Architallis and Alex both shook their heads in the negative, both leaned forward in anticipation.
“I have,” Sin said as he massaged his brow as if a headache was setting in. “An Adventuring guild. Extremely exclusive. They only take young women. Specifically, daughters of people with a notable degree of power in one form or another.”
Vex snapped her fingers and pointed at the immortal. “Just so. They have this thing about finding girls they say are ‘trapped in gilded cages,’” She said this phrase with strong air quotes. “They break in and whisk the girls away to be elite adventurers, whether they agree or not. But they always start with offering sugary promises of freedom, power, and adventure.” Vex rolled her liked her lips, her tongue piercing rattling against her teeth. “I feel for it like so many others. Mother dearest was obsessively controlling, and I was desperate to get out into the world and experience life.”
“Who was your mother?” Alex asked.
Vex gave a derisive snort. “My mother was the Witch Queen of the Hawkthorn Witch Coven. A very long line of very powerful Witches. Each and every single one doomed to go schizo and likely kill themselves. Family curse and all that.” Vex waved off the questions before they could be asked. “That’s a talk for another time. Anyway, a lance of ladies broke into my room, offered me what I’d been after since I was able to walk. I said yes, took their hand, and was dragged to a high, locked tower, where they trained me, and talked me into becoming a Hexxen Bane since I’m trash for a Witch.”
“And you fled?” Architallis asked.
“Yeah,” Vex said with another tired sigh. “They had been doing a lot of dirty grunt work. Finding people looking for the Order and putting them down before they got too close.” Vex’s eyes fell to the floor in shame. “I killed a lot of worried parents. Most of them were bad, but far from all of them.”
“And those women?” Alex asked, his hands clutching his thighs, elbows spread.
Vex’s face screwed up in anger and disgust. “They’re a rogue agent retrieval team, code-named Purple Roses. Mesarra and team have been on my tail for years. Tracking me from place to place somehow.”
“What can you share of your stalkers?” Sin asked, pushing the half-empty box of tofu away with a good.
“Well, Mesarra is a trog bitch. But she’s also a Martyr class. A faith proto-caster. Can’t do much damage on her own, but she’s hell on wheels when it comes to buffing friends and rendering most of my stuff useless.” Vex pointed to Sin and Alex. “You two saw that ground thing she did. “It’s called Hallowed Ground. Weakens negative magic elements and supports friendlies.”
“The gust she used to divert your deadly attack was Divine Gust. Throws off negatively aligned ranged attacks.” Sin said as he wiped a streak of tofu slime from his lower lip with a thumb.
“That tracks,” Alex said, making the motion of stroking a chin that wasn’t there between his thumb and forefinger. “I saw her boost the other two with that white energy. Must’ve been strong stuff since that Willow lady was surprised that she couldn’t rumple my knuckles.”
Vex wobbled her head in a ‘so-so’ manner. “She did buff Willow, but not Fee Fee. That short little ball of attitude is a Fury class. One of those fifty-fifty manifold classes. Her whole thing is boosting her own strength and speed and throwing some nasty element-infused punches.”
“What about those fire lance things?” Alex asked.
“Furies can get some nasty range attacks, among other things. Those were flame javelins. Fee Fee’s a big fan of fire, lightning, and lumina elements. She’s got javelin abilities for each and aura abilities called cowls. Both types of powers are nasty to go up against.”
“And the last lady? Willow?” Asked Alex.
Sin spoke up before Vex could answer. “She is a Warden class. The class specializes in conjuring wards for offensive and defensive ends. They are notoriously proficient in apprehending foes.”
“Geeze.” Alex breathed out the curse. “A three-man— or woman team in this case, specially designed to snatch you. Sounds like these Gilded Rose trogs are playing slither-spined dirty.” Alex sat back and crossed his arms as he thought about the situation.
“There is no playing dirty in life.” Sin said tiredly. “There are only those who win and those who lose.”
Vex leaned forward, cracking the knuckles of her right hand in her gauntleted left. “I’m done playing around. With you guys, we ran those damned trogs off like a pack of wild dogs. They’re going to keep coming, and I intend to make them regret this chase,” she leaned back and licked her lips. “I’ve already left them with a parting gift they haven’t found yet.”
“What did you do?” Architallis asked nervously.
“And how do you know they haven’t found it?” Alex asked.
“Ex, Tro, Sin. You all saw me throw that punch into Mesarra’s gut.”
“Yeah?” Alex half answered, half asked.
Tro nodded in confirmation.
“I was unfortunately indisposed by a certain bullet in my chest,” Sin said, giving Vex a pointed look.
“Yeah, yeah,” Vex said, waving Sin off. “Don’t be a baby about it. But back to it.” She leaned forward and gave the whole room a mad grin. “I might be a trash Witch, but I’m a damned good Hexxen Bane. When I hit her, I slapped the bitch with a Hexxen Brand. Brand of the Black Dog to be specific.”
“And that does what?” Alex asked.
“For as long as the Brand is active, I can track her by direction and distance. Right now, they are trailing us by a few miles.”
Architallis gave Vex a questioning look. “How long will the Brand last?”
“Until I cast it on someone else,” Vex said with a rather smug expression.
The opening chapter’s atmosphere immediately drew me in the way you describe Dreadwood’s eerie setting and the looming sense of dread around the Last Light Lantern gives the world such rich, immersive vibes. I also really like how the characters’ interactions hint at deeper lore and personal stakes right from the start. I’m curious, how does the Lantern’s history tie into the larger mysteries of Valraven?
The Last Light Lantern was one of a large series of cursed items crafted by Vex's long-distant ancestor. Just as with any of the Omens, the lantern holds dangerous power and even more dangerous secrets. There are far larger games at work in the world than any could theorize.