Crimson Ring Chapter 4

Raven took less than a quarter of a bell inside the headquarters of the peacekeepers, which were just a quick ride from Carrion’s tower, and left with a full standard issue of equipment including uniform, bedding, and medical supplies.  

He weighed heading to the safe-house to resupply with making his way straight toward the team. Given the distance he had to cover, which was halfway across the city, he ran a real risk of missing the team’s operation if he replenished his alchemical munitions. Ultimately, it was the fact that he had never pursued a target with anything less than his full arsenal forced his hand. He would not get complacent about his final contract. 

It took only a half bell to make it to the location. He reined his camel in front of a modest single-level shop of baubles and trinkets, deep within the middle tier’s seventh district. It was his first time at the establishment, but when he entered and was greeted by the shopkeeper, he flashed three fingers in the shape of a talon beside his belt and was quickly and quietly ushered through a heavy drape in the back. 

Beyond was a room roughly six paces from wall to wall in any direction, empty of all furnishings. At the center was a dust-coated stairwell that descended belowground. On the low ceiling was a single alchemical dome that cast cool blue light throughout the space and radiated refreshingly cool air that brought instant relief from the already rising heat of the surface. 

Raven glanced over his shoulder to be sure the shopkeeper hadn’t descended behind him—something a contact of the Bloody Murder should know never to do, but he had to do his due diligence—and then withdrew a vial from his belt. In much the same process as back at Carrion’s tower, he placed a few drops of the activating agent into his palm and pressed his hand to the center of the left wall. Moments later, the packed sand behind his palm glowed, the luminance spreading out across the ocher surface, and then he pushed a large section of the wall inward.

A frigid gust of wind rushed out from beyond the opening, temporarily leaving a thin layer of frost atop Raven’s gloved hands that raised goosebumps along the surface of both his sleeveless arms.

Inside, another stairwell awaited, this one easily twice as long as the one he had just descended. He ducked inside and hurried down. Atop every third step on either side of the narrow passage rested another blue alchemical globe that made the narrow passage colder the lower he descended. By the time he made it to the bottom, his boots crunched on a thick layer accumulation of frost. 

Finally, he had reached his destination. The room, while still small, was easily twice the size of the space above. A half-dozen alchemical orbs were set in the corner where the wall met the low ceiling in a straight line down the length of both sides of the narrow corridor, and each glowed a fierce blue that radiated frigid cold. Along either side of the wall rested twin long tables close enough beneath the mounted alchemical orbs to coat the entirety of their surfaces in a thick layer of ice that formed sickles that hung jaggedly from the sides. 

Moving quickly but carefully, he drew one of his throwing knives from his vest and went about the painstaking process of chipping away at the thick coating of ice to excavate the specific alchemical orbs needed from the blocks of ice that trapped the moulds and slotted them back into the bandoleer strapped across his chest. He replaced all the munitions he had spent back on the plains of Kulthene and turned to leave. 

Remembering Carrion’s warning, that access to the Roost would be off-limits, Raven paused. If other Bloody Murder agents had assignments anywhere in the city, the unmatched high alchemy might become harder to find. For Raven, that would be a major complication. He would much rather someone else feel that pain.

He turned back into the room and moved to the table on the opposite wall. It took only a few moments to find perhaps the most precious of the brews and wasted no time going to work with his knife. When he finished and sheathed his knife, he held two additional vials of both the black and gold elixirs and slid the four into his belt. Last, he swapped out his vial of activator with a frozen vial filled to the rim. It was comforting to have his full arsenal, for sure, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Nothing would make him happier than to make this last assignment a quick in and out, but he was more than prepared should things go differently.

It took a tenth of a bell at most, and then he had the access doors sealed up again and any trace of his passage brushed clean. Now it was time to head to the outer ring’s nineteenth district, where strike team Dark was set to begin their operation. 

Except for a single trio of men that were either hard or desperate enough to converge on him as he passed through the fifteenth district. After a quick demonstration of his threat, whipping his arm around just as the three emerged from the mouth of the alley, sending a throwing knife spinning end over end in a flash. All three flinched in unison, paused, then prodded their throats. The shallow cut had their fingers come away tinged red with blood. He brought a hand to the hilt of a knife at his waist and eyed the three, one after the other. They scurried back into the alley and were gone by the time Raven passed the mouth of the alley.

The only other people who came up to him were the urchins, hands outstretched, trying to either beg or steal from the traveler wealthy enough to ride a camel. For these children, he went out of his way to help, giving a coin to every one that approached. And when his purse ran dry, he gave away all the dried food he carried in case of emergencies. His water, though, he kept for himself. Especially considering he was to travel the city during the day, lacking water could put the success of his contract in jeopardy.

The first signs of trouble came when he crossed into the nineteenth district. The closed shutters drew his eyes to window after window. Those without shutters had thick drapes, rugs, or raw fabric covering the windows. The doors of each squat tenement were also closed. To say that was odd would be a gross understatement. Unless a major sandstorm blew through, every structure, especially the simple squat designs found in the outer ring, was always wide open to gain some relief from the oppressive heat. 

Most unsettling was the utter lack of street hawkers, toughs, and urchins. Block after block, the streets of the district were empty. This window of time, right around dawn, before the heat of the day grew intolerable by midmorning, was among of the busiest of the city. The silence unsettled Raven enough to slip a throwing knife into each hand from pockets along the front of his vest.

Roughly a quarter bell after crossing into the district, just after turning into another quiet street, a green and red funnel of roiling fire erupted high into the air from dangerously close by in a sustained, deafening roar that nearly threw him from the camel’s back. An instant later, a mix of sand and shards of molten glass rained down into the street and atop Raven, peppering him and the camel both with searing pain.

After failing to angle the bleating camel toward the shelter of the buildings, Raven dismounted and threw the whole of his weight into pulling the protesting beast out of the middle of the street. He had aimed for the tight alley, but only pulled the camel toward the side of the building. While the building absorbed most of the molten rain, Raven took his covering from the saddlebag and threw it over the beast, protecting the bulk of its body.

Beside Raven was the boarded door to the tenement. Getting inside was the best chance for proper shelter. He released the reins and threw his shoulder door. The door held. Ignoring the pain that blossomed on his shoulder, he tried a second time, rattling the door, then a third. When the door hadn’t so much as budged in the frame, he scrambled for the reigns of the camel again and pressed himself and the camel against the door, thankful for the protection offered by the lip of the frame. As he waited through the already diminishing rain of sand and glass, he processed what had happened.

He knew with certainty that the power behind the release wasn’t pyromancy, or another destructive affinity. He would have sensed it, given both the high potency and the fact it was only a block or two away. That left only alchemical fire. 

The roar of the fire dissipated gradually, and the world returned to the ochre cast that was the Bhadestan’s ever-present hue. And then he dragged his terrified camel back out onto the wide avenue, took a moment to settle the beast as best he could, then mounted and galloped off in the eruption’s direction. 

Two blocks later, Raven rounded the corner of a street and reigned in as he surveyed the scene. While a cloud of fine sand hung heavy over the block and severely decreased visibility, Raven could see that the blast had shattered nearly every window. Toward the center of the block, just off to the side of the road, was an enormous crater that still smoldered with green and yellow embers. The building closest to the crater was scorched black and had a latticework of cracks and fissures spread across the entire facade that threatened to bring down the face of the building at any moment. 

All this Raven took in at a glance, then dismissed as something more important caught his attention. He heard the faint but distinct sounds of combat coming from the far end of the block. As he urged the camel down the avenue at a trot, he could make out more details. He heard the clash of blades—lots of blades, the crashes of objects falling, wood splintering, glass shattering, the grunts and groans of the wounded. 

As Raven came to the tenement where the fighting was taking place, a concussive detonation sent a thick plume of sand and smoke venting outward from the top floor windows of the squat, three story structure. The camel staggered beneath Raven, nearly unseating him for a second time. That pissed him off. He swung down from the back, quickly tied the beast off at the hitching post at the curb, and drew his fighting knives as he stalked toward the entrance. 

He stepped through the shattered door and into a darkened hall, then turned into the first unit on the left with its door hanging off the hinge, head swiveling as he assessed. The room was destroyed. Remnants of a table lay shattered in the middle of a living space only a dozen strides across. One chair had its legs broken, the other lay upturned onto its back. 

Most notable was the pair of corpses, youths both that appeared maybe eighteen to twenty summers old. One still clutched a shamshir, the weapon somehow standing erect from the corpse’s hand with the blade pointed at the low ceiling. The other corpse had a blood-soaked tulwar lying on the dust coated floor just beside his slack fingers.

Raven took mental note of the scene, but hurried on as he heard the sounds of fighting from small pockets off to his left and right. The sounds were most intense from the room off to his right, so he padded that way and entered the next room.

Two men were locked in battle, with one clearly getting the better of the contest. Upon Raven’s arrival, both heads snapped to him with hopeful expressions. And then both men frowned, not knowing whose side he was on. The man on top wore the black pantaloons and matching black boots and top of the peacekeepers. Only, unlike the funny-looking berets that are part of the standard issue uniform Raven had always loathed, this man wore a black kerchief covering his nose and mouth, and emblazoned across the front was a skeletal mouth in a disturbing grin.

Not knowing who Raven was there to support, both men returned to their work of trying to kill one another with redoubled effort. Raven watched for a few heartbeats, until it was clear his new team member would come out on top of the exchange, and then he doubled back out of the room, swept across the first room, and entered the next room on the opposite side. 

Raven rushed into the room and slid to a halt just as a wooden chair crashed down on the back of a man hunched against the wall and exploded into pieces. It was a peacekeeper, a strike team corpsman, who had swung the chair. She was an impressively large woman in her own right, both in height and mass. Her hair was braided back into six rows that fell just above her shoulders. Her bare arms bore veins that wrapped around her taught arms thick as sand worms. She wore her kerchief tied around her neck, leaving the disdainful scorn on her face visible. 

The man straightened and revealed the immobile form of a peacekeeper. But this man was not a corpsman; the black beret of the standard peace keeper lay in the dirt beside his body. The peacekeeper lay wedged between the corner and the floor, a mass of swelling and bruising along the face and head. Poor bastard was unconscious, possibly dead. 

A feral growl rumbled from the throat of the large man as he turned to see who had struck him—and then a second chair crashed down atop the man’s head and exploded. This time, the beast of a man crumpled to the dust-coated floor.

The woman tossed the two broken legs of what remained of the chair to her feet and went to turn away. She paused, glanced back at the groaning hulk of a man clutching at his head and writhing on the floor, then grabbed a third chair and brought it crashing down on the man’s head again. It didn’t shatter this time, but the thud was sickening. The large man no longer moved. She left the ruined chair atop him and turned to the peace keeper that still laid unmoving against the wall.

Raven’s brain kicked into motion at that point. “Hey,” he said, edging towards the large woman that came nearly up to his height. She might have been the largest woman he’d ever seen.

Her head snapped around towards him, revealing a web of scars and fresh cuts that crisscrossed her face. There was a moment of surprise as she clearly hadn’t seen him standing right behind her. She gave him a quick once-over, her gaze hovering a moment on the knives in his hand, and then she set her shoulders and walked toward him with purpose.