Steamforged Sorcery - Chapter 24 (Patreon)

Vanessa and Angel didn’t need to be told twice. Angel hopped onto his board and Vanessa’s skates hummed to life. Cowl took off and the two of them took off after him. They spoke little throughout the rest of the day, traveling late into the night and setting up camp quietly.

Angel found himself too on edge to even toy further with his pendant. He let Cowl take the first watch and drifted off to a restless sleep as quickly as he could. Luckily, the night passed without issue. Cowl awoke Angel for his watch, which was perfectly boring.

They had a quick breakfast and immediately set off once again, Cowl at the lead. Despite the strange events from the previous day, none of them seemed eager to speak. When the dark form of town walls started to materialize on the horizon, Angel let out a sigh of relief.

“Almost there,” he said. “It looks like Vita didn’t end up getting his payment.”

“Yet,” Cowl said grimly. “That kind of man doesn’t take no for an answer. He’ll be back. We just need to make sure we’re far enough away that he can’t find us. We need to get a map at Silver Sands. I don’t dare travel past the center of the Barren without one.”

“In and out,” Angel agreed. “Just keep an eye out for bandits. I’m honestly surprised we haven’t run into one of the smaller groups yet.”

The sand in front of them shifted. Dozens of tall copper pillars about the width of a forearm rose up from it in a circle around them. Large, circular disks sat atop the pillars, glowing faintly. Blue energy crackled to life between them, forming a sparking fence.

The three of them skidded to a halt. Cowl shot Angel a look that the Seeker. It was impossible to see what he was thinking behind the mask, but Angel got the feeling that he was getting glared at.

“Did you really have to say that?” Cowl asked, drawing his sword.

“I’ll keep my mouth shut next time,” Angel said. He still had the canister from their interaction with Vita loaded in his arm, so he didn’t make any sudden movements.

Vanessa jerked her head back and forth, trying to find where the pillars had come from. “More bandits? Where are they? Underground?”

A grating laugh rose up from the ground near the fence closest to the city. Four men rose up from the ground, each wearing a mask with a breathing tube that ran down to a small tank at their sides.

“Clever guess, girl,” the largest of them men said, his voice muted from behind the mask. “And you’ll be cleverer still if you hand over one Vei each.”

“One Vei?” Angel exclaimed. “What do you think we are, local lords? Silver Sands has never had such an exorbitant toll.”

“Well, it does now,” the large man said with a stupid laugh. The other three mirrored him.

“We’ll give you five Vex each,” Cowl said. “And that’s being generous. The toll to pass through Silver Sands is barely worth that much.”

“You got a lot more than that on you, rag man,” the large bandit said. “That flying artifact of yours ought to run at least three Vei.”

“You’re an idiot,” Cowl said. “The Magistrate is going to rip you a new breathing hole if he finds out you’re trying to charge people this much.”

“Well, he isn’t here. We are. Fork the cash over, rag man.”

Cowl glanced back at Angel, then turned to the bandits and shrugged carelessly. “Fine, fine. I’m not trying to get killed over some cash.”

He walked towards the men, lowering his sword and reaching into his clothes. Cowl pulled a large bag of money free and held it out in front of him. Angel could see the greed flash in the bandits’ eyes as their leader stepped forward to claim his prize.

The bandit blinked. The tube connecting his mask to the breathing tank severed and flopped down limply as Cowl pulled his sword free of the man’s neck and flicked the blood off it. The Hunter had moved so fast that none of them had even seen him attack.

Angel raised his hand and pointed it at one of the gaping bandits. A bolt of lightning tore free of his palm, crackling across the desert and slamming into one of the men. The electricity slammed into the man’s body with a violent crackle, dancing down his torso and down into the sand beneath his feet.

Angel grabbed another canister from his shoulder and slammed it into place just as the spent one ejected itself. The bandit swayed once and then fell forward, hitting the ground at the same time as the canister.

The two remaining bandits abruptly realized that they’d picked the wrong fight. They paled and backed up, but their own fences proved to be their undoing. Cowl’s wings whirred to life and he shot forward, slicing one of the men clean in half.

He grabbed the other one by the front of his shirt and shoved him back into the electric fence. The man screamed as electricity arced across him. Angel leapt forward to pull Cowl back before the man fried himself as well, but the Hunter didn’t seem phased in the slightest.

Cowl held the bandit in the fence until the screams stopped. He dropped the smoking corpse and drove his sword into the base of the fence, twisting it. A puff of steam rose up from the circular disk atop the fence and the lightning between it and the nearest pole flickered out.

“Come,” Cowl said, wiping his sword off in the sand and returning it to his side. “We don’t have time to waste on these fools.”

“Gods above,” Vanessa said. “You slaughtered them!”

Angel grimaced, bracing himself for her inevitable complaints about the Hunter’s cruel actions.

“Can’t you do that to the other bandit crew? What are we even scared of?” Vanessa asked. “You smoked those assholes!”

Angel blinked. That hadn’t been what he’d been expecting, but it was certainly better than someone trying to push morals on a man that killed for a living.