NeoExodus Legendary Tales - Grit for Hire Part 4 Written by Erik Scott de Bie

Waking, Freja coughed out filthy water. She lay on cold stone, soaked to the bone, her lower half submerged in a pool of icy water. Outside of a thin gleam trickling down through the waterfall, the darkness seemed absolute. Targa and Gryn had carried the light, and she didn’t have her pack.

Distantly, over the sound of rushing water, Freja could make out some sort of faint snuffling noise, perhaps like breathing. “Targa?” she asked. “Gryn?”

The noises paused, and she heard a rumbling growl that echoed off the stone walls. Definitely not one of the others. Bloody Covenant, the others. She had to help them.

Her right arm ached badly when she tried to move it, and she flexed her fingers experimentally. Sprained but not broken. Lucky. Freja crawled forward, but her leg screamed in pain when she tried to move. It was caught under a heavy rock, the leather soaked in water and blood. Possibly broken.

Something in the pocket of her coat ground into her leg, and with some effort she pulled it out: the tiny illusion projector Milka had made her. Her lurid, leaping pose cast surprisingly bright orange light, illumining glistening stone walls covered in clawmarks. Not promising. The Last Word lay on the grimy floor just past her hand. She set the projector down and reached for the gun, but her trapped leg exploded in pain and she fell just short.

Freja pulled back, panting. “Bloody and damned,” she said.

She pushed tentatively on the rock, grunting at the effort, but she didn’t have the leverage or the raw power to move it. She heard the growls again, growing closer.

The light trickled down a tunnel, and she saw movement at the very limit some twenty paces. The creature didn’t seem to react when the light appeared. It was, however, coming gradually closer, scraping itself along the walls.

“Bloody!” Freja pulled harder on her leg, biting her tongue against the pain. Fresh blood welled as the stone scraped through her leathers, but she was almost free.

A blood-chilling shriek echoed up the tunnel, and she saw the thing running toward her. It looked like a hound at first, based on its size and shape, but as it closed she saw that it had quills and spines instead of fur. It had no eyes, either, but it must have sensed her. Freja had heard of razorfiends but never actually seen one. If she didn’t move fast, she would get to inspect it much more closely.

With a cry of pain, Freja finally wrenched her leg free and scrambled out of the water. She snatched up the Last Word and took aim at the charging razorfiend. The weapon clicked.

Misfire.

The razorfiend tackled her into the shallow pool. Freja managed to catch her breath before she went under, but hitting the bottom blew it right back out in a swarm of bubbles. She broke the surface with a gasp, and the razorfiend scrabbled madly atop her. It thrashed, shredding her coat and skin with its spines, and its mouth snapped at her face. Half submerged, Freja fed those jaws her leather-wrapped arm instead of her throat, and she could feel the teeth digging into her flesh.

The Caliban dagger dug into her hip. Without thinking, she drew the blade and plunged it into the side of the razorfiend’s head. It wasn’t the strongest blow, but the creature yelped in pain and leaped off her out of the pool, taking the dagger with it.

Fighting to breathe, Freja half-crawled, half-stumbled toward her gun, lying on the stone where she had dropped it. She palmed a fresh cartridge, sealed in wax, from her belt pouch. Her right arm pulsed with waves of pain.

Half a dozen paces away, the razorfiend yowled and mewled and smashed itself against the wall in a vain attempt to dislodge the dagger stuck there.

Freja reclaimed the Last Word, and the trembling left her hand. Slowly and perfectly, she lifted it and cleared the misfired cartridge.

The razorfiend whirled toward her and charged, fangs slavering.

Calmly, Freja broke the wax and inserted the fresh cartridge. She ignored the razorfiend.

The creature was upon her, leaping for her throat. She could feel its hot breath—

Freja clicked the cartridge into place and fired, the bullet exploding into the razorfiend’s mouth from less a than a thumb’s breadth distant. Blood and spit spattered her hands and face. The creature sailed back and slapped into the wall, a broken hunk of smoking flesh.

Hands still, Freja breathed out, letting the panic burn down to a low, smooth surface of tension.

That was when laughter rippled down through the hole in the ceiling, resonating through the running water. Of a sudden, Freja’s calm shattered and she felt like a frightened little girl. The Exodite was up there, and it was waiting for her. Her hands began to shake, and her legs felt like dead wood.

“Shut it out,” Freja said. “Let it bleed away. You’re a corpse anyway.”

Slowly—agonizingly slowly—she grew calm once more.

She had work to do, and she didn’t have time for fear.

#

Freja pulled up short when she heard the moan echoing down the tunnel. Closing the projector in order to bring back the dark, she crouched behind a natural bench of stone and peeked over at a muddy source of firelight somewhere ahead. The moans were louder now, as well as a series of scrabbling, snuffling sounds that reminded her of the razorfiend.

“Bloody perfect,” she said under her breath.

Without her pack, she had the equipment she’d carried down through the waterfall. Milka’s projector cast some light, but she used it sparingly: it both let her see and made her a target. Several of her spare cartridges were ruined, and she could only salvage the Last Word of all her guns. The others were either missing or too broken to repair in the field. She had six cartridges she thought would fire, but she wouldn’t know for sure until she tried them. She had the Caliban dagger, her armor, and her hat, which made her feel a little better.

Time to move again. The tunnel sloped upward, which was progress. She let a little of the projector’s light out around her sleeve as she went, so that she could at least see where she was going. It wouldn’t do to brain herself on a stalactite or stumble into a pit.

Abruptly, Freja caught herself on the edge of a gap, sending bits of stone down into the yawning darkness. The scuffling noises came from below, she realized. She shone her light that way, and it illumined at least a dozen razorfiends scurrying and rolling like a swarm of ants. They clearly detected her and were literally crawling over themselves to get to her. Wonderful.

Freja looked up at the opposite ledge. “I can make that,” she said, trying to believe herself.

She drew out the projector and tossed it up onto the ledge, bathing the narrow tunnel in light. Making sure her gun was tightly bound in its holster, she backed up, braced, and ran for the edge, ready to leap across the gap.

And she would have made it, had not the ancient stone edge crumbled under her foot.

She half-jumped, half-stumbled into a moment of weightlessness, and her stomach slammed with bruising force into the opposite ledge. Gasping, she scrabbled at the stone, trying to find some sort of handhold, then slid backward. She caught just the edge with her left hand, dangling by one arm for a heart-stopping moment. She tried to reach up with her right, but the arm screamed in pain when she tried to put weight on it. She hung there, trembling, as the razorfiends scrabbled far below her.

Her hat shrugged off her head, and the creatures tore it to pieces before it hit the ground.

“Bloody come on,” Freja said to her body, demanding it pull her up.

Her wet fingers slipped on the stone.

Then thick, red-skinned hands closed around her wrists, and she looked up into the yellow-gold eyes of Chenoa Gryn. The Prymidian was bruised and covered in blood and mud, his eyes glazed and his face pale, but he was whole and alive. His arms strained as he pulled, and she kicked her legs to try to push herself up. Finally, Gryn hauled Freja up from the abyss and they lay gasping on the stone. The Prymidian groaned, and Freja realized it was the sound she had been following.

“You’re injured,” she said.

Gryn shrugged. “I came when I saw your light.”

After a moment, Freja sat up, bruised and not wanting to move. “The others?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“How—how long?” she asked. “How long have we been down here?”

“Hours,” he said. “It is still day outside. The Exodite is waiting until nightfall to sally forth.”

Freja frowned. “How do you know that?”

The Prymidian’s eyes glittered. “Exodites fear the sun,” he said at length.

It hadn’t looked to Freja like that woman needed to fear anything. “If she’s still up there, what do we do?” she asked. “We can’t fight her.”

“We steal past her,” Gryn said. “Voshtet’s necklace. That’s our best chance.”

Freja nodded. “Well, at least it’ll be impressive.”

The Prymidian’s eyes glowed in the darkness with something he had not and could not say.

“What?” Freja asked. “Don’t tell me. No healing yet?”

He shook his head. “Night draws close. We must go.”

Freja nodded, though every bit of her hurt. “Just keep moving.”

#

Gryn led them efficiently to the main chamber of the crypt, which was blasted and littered with the remains of the exploded sarcophagus. Purple fires crackled at half a dozen isolated points in the room, consuming bits of leather, wood, and flesh. Freja could make out Targa’s arm and leg poking out from behind a pillar. It took her a moment to find Garrull: the P’tan’s body was partly imbedded, spread-eagled, into the far wall. Blood and other juices had drained down his furry corpse and hardened like a glaze left too long in the cold. It made her sick to her stomach, but she suppressed the urge to retch. The chamber otherwise seemed empty: no Exodite.

“Where is she?” Freja asked.

Gryn shook his head. He indicated the sparkling rubies on their chain by Targa’s limp hand.

“Right,” Freja said.

She crept slowly across the room, staying as low to the ground as she could. In her unhurt hand, she held the Last Word ready, for all the good it would do. The strange fires cast flickering shadows that made her look up constantly, heart in her throat. The Exodite could be anywhere.

She crept up to Targa’s corpse, and realized that his upper right torso and head were missing, his body a hollowed out shell with only a grayish stew of guts. She set her teeth to keep from vomiting. Her pack lay where she had left it, with her spare gun and cartridge pouch. Ten, maybe. She donned the pack and reached for the necklace.

The shadows parted and the Exodite appeared, standing over her. Her purple eyes matched the pockets of flame scattered throughout the room. The dark woman smiled, her lips curling back too far from too many dagger-sharp teeth. Freja tried to bring the Last Word in line, but the Exodite caught her arm. The black fingers closed tight, making her bones grate in her arm. Her struggles ripped open her coat and the contents of her pockets clinked to the ground.

“Gryn!” Freja hissed. “Gryn!”

He just stood there, trembling but not moving, his face slack.

“You have done well, my pet,” the woman said, making the Prymidian stiffen.

Freja furrowed her brow for a heartbeat, then cursed. The Exodite had charmed Gryn—that’s why he’d been acting strange—and she’d walked right into the trap. Bloody perfect.

The Prymidian walked toward them, his gait awkward. The Exodite smiled, but her expression slipped slightly when he had come within a few paces. Freja saw it too: Gryn was playing up the charm, but his eyes seemed very bright. He’d worked through the spell.

The Exodite hissed in sudden rage, dropping Freja to the floor. Gryn had been murmuring words to a spell of his own, and he vanished even as the Exodite lunged toward him. Half-sitting, Freja leveled the Last Word at her back and squeezed the trigger. The cartridge fizzed and smoked. Misfire. Blood and damnation! Freja reloaded.

The creature whirled, crouched low, and pounced. Freja reached for the necklace, but the Exodite knocked her flying toward the narrow exit tunnel. She hit and the world turned gray-red for a heartbeat. Freja’s teeth vibrated from the force of that blow. She shook her head to clear it.

The Exodite declaimed arcane syllables, and the air tingled as power discharged. Chenoa Gryn reappeared, right at Freja’s shoulder, and she put the Last Word to his throat by reflex.

The Prymidian seemed calm. “Use the necklace,” he said.

Freja looked at her empty hand, then at the Exodite, which had picked up Targa’s necklace and was regarding them with a curious expression.

“We’re dead,” Gryn said.

“No.” Freja took aim, hoping for no misfire. “She is.”

The bullet struck the necklace in the Exodite’s hand. Magic flared and exploded.

They leaped into the passage even as a wave of force shattered the chamber. Fire and smoke washed over them, and they scrambled down the corridor. All around, the stone trembled, and Freja knew it was all coming down. She pulled Gryn along, through the tight squeeze, just before a massive boulder sealed off the passage behind them. They kept running, not looking back, until they climbed out the cave entrance into the dying sunlight. Dust drifted out behind them.

They stood, covered in blood and dust, bodies aching on the verge of collapse.

The Prymidian looked up at the setting sun and breathed out. “A tale for the legends,” he said.

Freja shrugged, looking at the remains of her attire. “You owe me a new coat.”

“Gladly,” Gryn said. “Assuming we survive them.”

The rustling of feet on stone caught Freja’s attention. A score of Caliban stood on the path, weapons in hand, faces furious.

Freja reloaded her pistols. “Time to go to work,” she said.

#

In the tight, sealed chamber, a faint orange light swelled from a small device that leaned against the broken altar. It projected a heroic, risqué image: a woman wielding two pistols, leather coat partly unbuttoned and flowing around her, rotating slowly to show her in all its glory.

It would take time to find another escape—time to memorize every line and curve, the determination in those eyes and the arrogance in that grin.

A jet-black hand reached out of the shadows and righted the projector.

Plenty of time.

NeoExodus Legendary Tales - Grit for Hire Part 3 Written by Erik Scott de Bie

“Ai!”

Targa slipped on a loose stone, but Freja caught him before he could slide off the little path.

“My gratitude.” He dusted himself off. “We’ll rest a moment, then press on.”

“Fine by me.”

Freja scratched at the blood itching on her neck. With dirt and water, she’d managed to get the worst of it off her face and hands, but the remainder demanded a vigorous scrub in a soapy bath. Until then, it would stick around to remind her—the blood, and also the dagger she’d taken off the Caliban who attacked her. It was good steel—stolen from some long dead adventurer, probably—and if the ambush had taught her nothing, it was that her guns weren’t always the solution.

Against Freja’s judgment and Gryn’s objections, the four of them had set out down a rocky path into the hollow among the mountains. The sun had not yet risen fully beyond the peaks, offering a jagged maze of light and shadow that made the trail ahead treacherous. She’d seen several more trail markings denoting Caliban territory, and she kept her guns handy for an attack.

“It’s not too late to turn back,” Chenoa Gryn said. “Come back after we’ve rested and my power has returned. Until then, my words are just words.”

Targa laughed off the suggestion. “You worry too much, my scholarly friend.” The veteran explorer fairly vibrated with excitement. “The P’Tan will warn of waiting foes.”

“Garrull?” Freja looked up to where the wiry scout lurked on the edge of a cliff, about a dozen paces ahead, keeping just within sight. She remembered the hesitant look he’d given the other P’tan when they left, but he’d gone along with Targa’s instructions.

“Right,” Targa said. “No fear. Our gunslinger protects us.”

In response to the Prymidian’s uncertain look, Freja patted the butt of The Last Word holstered at her hip. She’d worn her half-dozen loaded guns and had plenty of cartridges. That didn’t make his doubts wrong, though. Her bruised neck ached terribly, and she wore plenty of blood already.

“Until your power returns,” she said to Gryn when they started moving again. “You mean no spells until then.”

“Call them spells if you must.” The Prymidian seemed too distracted to offer a derisive scoff. Seeing him nervous made her nervous. “Power flows through the words, but I can only stand so much at a time,” he said. “Try not to get yourself hurt—no more healing until tomorrow.”

“Right.” Freja shrugged. In her experience, every spellslinger in Exodus had a different explanation for how it all worked. One metaphor was as good as another.

It was slow going. About two hours in, as the sun crested the ridge, they had traveled about half a league. Garrull had insisted they move slowly, giving him time to scout ahead. Ancient stone steps cut into the rock made for easy enough going. Targa suggested this was part of an ancient Sorcerer-King’s kingdom, and the crypt—discovered by a previous expedition—might be that of the ruler itself.

“This could be the most significant find in the region in centuries.” Targa opened and closed his hands anxiously. “The name of Targa Voshtet will be known throughout Exodus!”

Freja gave him a nod, but she was barely listening. Instead, she noted all the sprung or disabled traps in their path: a tripwire here, a deadfall there, and the like. Once, they skirted around a pit set at the bottom with rusty knives thrust hilt-first into the thick dirt. She assumed Garrull had disarmed these hazards before they arrived, but it made her wonder.

“All this to protect a tomb?” she asked.

Targa shrugged. “The party that discovered the crypt thought it might have some religious significance to these savages. A place of worship, perhaps.”

“If it’s so important to them”—Freja glanced around—“why haven’t we seen any sentries?”

“Perhaps our P’tan is simply that effective,” Targa said. “No corpses, though.”

“Exactly.” Freja kept one hand on the butt of her favorite gun. The Last Word reassured her.

They came to a cavern opening, which was covered over with a network of tree branches, stones, and rusted metal. It was crude, but looked solid. Someone didn’t want them to go inside. Garrull perched on a stone next to it, looking puzzled. Targa’s face brightened.

“This is it,” he said. “The entrance!”

“Why seal it, if they go in there to pray?” Gryn asked.

Freja bit her lip. She’d been thinking the same thing.

Targa waved away the objection. He drew a necklace hung with rubies out of his shirt—a piece of jewelry Freja had noticed several times before—and plucked one of the stones from its gold strand, which promptly corroded away and disintegrated as though it had never been. He held the stone between his thumb and forefinger. It glowed with inner power.

“I’d stand back, were I you,” he said.

Targa flicked the stone at the gate. It struck with a soft plink, then erupted in a concussive blast of flame that blew the barrier off the cave entrance. Freja had instinctively covered her ears, and she looked up as the smoke cleared to see Targa smiling wildly, Garrull hissing like a spooked cat, and Gryn wiping dust from his face and glaring at their employer.

“I am certain no one heard that,” the Prymidian said.

Targa beamed. “I’ll go first, if you’re worried.” He pulled a torch from his pack along with a flint. “Lady Gunslinger, you follow next. You can shoot whatever pounces on me.”

“Fair enough.” Freja double-checked The Last Word’s cartridge before she followed him.

Beyond the destroyed barrier, the yawning cave led down along a tunnel reinforced with relatively fresh wood buttresses. The sunlight dropped away after three steps, so Targa lit the torch and swept it through the dusty gloom. Garrull followed them, his feline P’Tan eyes glittering. Gryn came last, a hooded lantern held up high. It shone with much better light than Targa’s smoldering torch.

About a dozen steps into the darkness, they encountered a series of spider-webs heavy with dust. No one had come this way in quite some time. The tunnel had still partly collapsed, it seemed, and Freja had to squeeze through a tight spot to follow Targa at one point. Gryn, with his big Prymidian frame, barely made it. As they went, Freja noted the mark of picks and axes on the walls, and she saw burn shadows around piles of rubble. If she had to guess, she would have pegged this as a former excavation site. Targa had apparently guessed her thoughts, because he chose that moment to speak.

“The explorers who discovered this cave brought a healthy supply of explosives to aid in the excavation,” he said. “They got a certain distance in, before Caliban attacks made them call it off.”

“You knew about the Calibans?” Freja asked. “And you didn’t warn us?”

He gave her a sour look over his shoulder. “I warned our sentries, and they warned us about the attack before it befell. I expected you to perform, and you did so--admirably. What’s the problem?”

“No complaints, sir.” Freja bit her tongue. Targa seemed supremely indifferent to the death of one of his own--she doubted he would respond well to the reminder. Perhaps it was for the best nothing had passed between them.

Somewhere ahead, Freja heard rushing water. She’d glimpsed a waterfall up the mountain, which she had assumed fed a small lake at the base of the rocks. Maybe there was some sort of underground river in the mountain.

“Almost there—ah.” Targa held the torch aloft, and the muddy light showed a smooth straight line cut along the floor. A smile brightened his face. “We’ve found it.”

The tunnel emerged through a hole into a smooth chamber about ten paces on a side cut out of the stone. Two massive pillars in the middle of the room vanished up into the darkness. Freja made out movement in the far corner of the room: a waterfall sparkling in Targa’s torchlight. The stone had broken away in some sort of collapse, and now a waterfall raged through the chamber down a wide gap into the depths. It was the river she’d heard before, though it seemed particularly fast and precipitous. Dust choked the room, trailing from thick cobwebs in the corners of the chamber. It lay so thick on the pillars and some sort of object in the middle of the room, it resembled sheets of white silk.

Targa held the torch aloft, making something sparkle to life in the shadows behind him. Freja drew her gun in surprise before she realized the source of the light: engraved and inlaid designs and runes that traced the walls, revealing a haunting forest of faces and claws looming around them. Fortunately, they did not spring to life and attack.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Targa asked. “Look at the artifice!”

“Right.” Freja holstered the gun but kept her hand on the butt.

The P’Tan, who padded into the room after her, looked even more nervous than she felt, offering a faint whine that drew out like a nervous breath. The way he held himself, Freja almost thought the place caused him physical pain just by his presence.

Chenoa Gryn was the last through the hole in the wall, and he looked up at the walls and pillars with genuine interest. “These markings are old,” he said. “Definitely dating from the time of the Sorcerer-Kings, if not before. Yes.” He ran his hand along the wall. “Ancient. Primordial.”

“What came before the Sorcerer-Kings?” Freja asked, shedding her pack.

“The First Ones, of course.” Gryn looked at her as at a child asking a very stupid question.

“Fascinating, yes.” Targa moved deeper into the room, casting around the torch. “Can you read them? Gather any hint about this place? ”

The Prymidian frowned. “It would take some time and study,” he said. “These runes here--they resemble old protection wards. I’d learn more if I had any of my power to call.”

“They haven’t immolated us yet,” Targa said. “Whatever warded this place, it’s long dead--probably when the chamber broke open.”

Freja wasn’t too sure. She didn’t feel alone in this place.

Targa had moved into the center of the room, where his oily light exposed a massive stone block, like an altar to some ancient deity. It looked like a piece of the mountain itself, shorn off by some unfathomable power from deep in the earth. It resonated with power: Freja felt warm and tingly just being near it. By contrast, Targa approached as though invited, reaching out to touch the dark stone.

Every instinct in Freja screamed at her to stop him. “Wait—”

Targa brushed cobwebs away from the black stone and laid his hand on it. “It’s warm,” he said. “Something . . .” His words trailed off as his whole body convulsed, jerked taught as though stabbed.

“Voshtet?” Gryn asked.

The explorer made no reply. His brown face had gone pale. A web of red light spread across the stone outward from his hand, growing wider and more complex as he lost more and more of his color.

Garrull reached for his master, but Gryn held him back. “Touch him and you’ll be caught too!”

With a groan, Targa fell back, shivering and pale, into Gryn’s arms. Whatever it had taken from him remained, continuing to spread across the stone slab. The lines of light crossed over and around one another, forming a spider’s web of crimson veins. The light spread until it encompassed the entirety of the black stone, which became a brilliantly shining star in the center of the chamber.

Then the light suddenly vanished, leaving them alone and dazzled in the dark chamber.

Garrull growled low. Eyes gradually adjusting, Freja leveled her guns on the stone she could only partially see. The world slowed around her as she focused.

Nothing happened, and nothing continued to happen for several long breaths. The stone slab stood in the center of the chamber, as unremarkable as before.

Targa coughed. “You see?” He stood up shakily and reclaimed his fallen torch where it guttered on the floor. “Nothing to be concerned about.” He took a step toward the slab. “We—”

The slab abruptly shattered like glass, sending shards of black stone flying in all directions. Freja managed to duck behind a pillar and pull her coat over her face, stopping the worst of it. Stone shrapnel bounced off the pillar and cut through the thick leather. Garrull cried out in pain, and she saw him go staggering past, clutching at blood trickling from his cut open torso. Chenoa Gryn loosed a grunt of pain, and she heard Targa make a strangled noise that made her blood run cold. She whirled around the pillar.

What she saw made her hands tremble.

A creature stood amongst the ruin of the stone slab: a woman taller than most men, all jet black flesh stretched over wiry muscle and sinew. A silver circlet sat atop her bald head but otherwise she was naked, and she looked not at all inconvenienced by that fact. Targa Voshtet stood—or, rather, hung in the air next to her, dangling from her left hand that was thrust through his chest like a pin through an insect. Blood flowed from his mouth and his eyes had rolled up to the whites.

“Ex—”Gryn was slumped against the wall, obviously hurt. “Exodite—”

Why hadn’t Freja fired? Why was she hesitating?

With a maniac howl, Garrull leaped at the woman, blades extended, but she casually reached up with her free hand and caught him by the throat. As Freja watched in horror, she squeezed with seemingly no effort, and his head popped off his body like a grape from a stem, blood showering.

The woman dropped both corpses and stared wordlessly at Freja as though at a curious butterfly she had not noticed before. She smiled like a predator, revealing a set of jagged white teeth.

Freja squeezed the triggers, and her pistols resounded loudly in the mountain crypt. But the woman was gone—vanished into the darkness before the bullets could find their mark.

Freja slammed a fresh cartridge into the Last Word.

Hot breath fell upon Freja’s neck, making it tingle. She started to turn, but the Exodite caught her neck and gun wrist in a grip like iron. Freja’s bones felt like they would shatter.

“Thank you, child,” the woman said, in a voice like grinding boulders.

Freja palmed the pistol in her left sleeve and fired right into the Exodite’s face.

With an inhuman shriek, the creature lifted Freja and hurled her bodily across the chamber into the waterfall. She crunched against the stone and started to fall, her arm smashing into the lip of the chamber.

Then she was sliding down through dark water.

NeoExodus Legendary Tales - Grit for Hire Part 2 Written by Erik Scott de Bie

Freja knew guns, leather, and violence—not horses. She would be the first to admit as much.

She and her stallion had got to know each other fairly well over the last fortnight’s worth of travel, and they didn’t like each other one bit. As the sun dipped into the horizon behind them, casting long shadows from the mountain peaks at their back, the stallion tried again to shake off its cold, hungry, and grumpy rider. Freja clutched hard to the reins and cursed the day she was born, the day this beast was born, and every day in between. Fortunately, the dashing leader of their little venturing party was on hand to grab the bridle and keep the cursed animal from hurling her into the gulley to a crushing death on the rocks below.

“Whoa,” he said, hands raised to calm the horse. “He is this way all day?”

“Just about.” The gunslinger glared down at the stallion’s eye. He was skittish about something—the strange striations of brownish orange on the rock wall she had noticed a few paces back, maybe? Or else he just disliked her as much as she disliked him. “Spiteful bastard.”

Her employer smiled wryly up at her. “I doubt he means harm.”

Freja scowled at the horse. “Oh certainly, take his side.”

They’d traveled several days, by boat on the Abaddon River and on foot, to the far corner of the Protectorate, where the Broken Cliffs of the eastern coastline met with the mountains of the Highlands to the south. Few could say what lay much farther, and Freja had to admit being in the unexplored frontier gave her a little tingle of excitement in her belly. That sense of danger just unrevealed, lurking in every shadow—it made her feel alive in a way she rarely felt outside of a gun battle.

The difficult horse had almost ruined the whole experience, though she could look at her employer. The fading sunlight caught the man’s amber eyes, making them sparkle. The dark-skinned Targa Voshtet was an explorer of Dominion heritage—hence the reason he wouldn’t come into town to recruit Freja himself. A vital and energetic man, Targa was nonetheless inclined to reserve, letting others take the lead most of the time. For instance, he’d spent every night by the fire taking notes while Chenoa Gryn regaled the little group with tales. The Prymidian had spoken of the Protectorate’s past, its various wars, and the Sorcerer-Kings of old. Freja had hardly listened, spending most of her time imagining Targa warming her bedroll. It hadn’t happened yet, but Freja was ever optimistic, despite the hurdles. Even now, as their hands touched briefly on the reins, and Freja could feel the little shock where he went from confident to a little uneasy.

Their shared gaze lingered a little too long, prompting Gryn’s bemused snort. Always watching, the damn Prymidian proved as much a barrier to getting what she wanted as Targa’s inherent shyness. “Work up any more magic there, you two,” he said, “and you’re apt to summon the shade of Sineath Abadas or perhaps Ruon Dondun.”

Targa’s cheeks flushed red and he hastened back toward the fire, leaving Freja fuming.

“Now you’re just making up names,” she said as she climbed down from her horse, refusing his proffered hand. Dismounting was an awkward thing, but Freja had the trick of it now, and she was a graceful woman anyway. “Besides. I’ve never seen a Sorcerer-King. Have you?”

“ ’Twas seven centuries and forty years before Unification that the last of the Sorcerer-Kings reigned over this place, but yet does their power linger,” Gryn said. “Be wary.”

“Right you are, red man.” Freja gave him a mock salute. Her other hand gripped the handle of The Last Word quite hard. “Right you are.”

They’d ventured the treacherous passes of the mountains for the last day, and finally laid camp near an old cave on a rocky plateau overlooking a canyon between steep mountain slopes. Trail sign—three rocks mounted atop each other—pointed the place out, and Targa explained to Freja this meant explorers had come this way before and scouted out the location. No doubt she could have convinced him to follow her into the cave for a bit, but the call came for the evening meal, ruining their moment.

The camp was small and thus crowded. Ten had set out from Mavra initially, though only eight remained after one of the porters took sick and a slip down a rocky slope had broken the neck of another. Freja couldn’t remember all their names: faceless sword-swingers or beasts of burden, the lot of them. At least the two cat-like P’Tan hunters Targa had recruited displayed some use, shooting rabbit or deer with their keen arrows and feeding the party quite well along the journey. They looked so alike that at first she had thought them brother and sister—litter mates? That lasted until she had chanced to see them in the woods, engaged in rather amorous activities. She supposed it was better not to know.

For her part, Freja had proven herself many times, with flawless marksmanship and keen eyes, and they hadn’t lost a single porter to beasts or bandits. She rather wished Chenoa Gryn had met an accident on the road, if only to spare her the sight of his smirk or his ridiculously long beard.

“Tomorrow,” Targa said over the sizzling meat on the spit, “I will lead a small party, setting forth on foot. Our ranks consist of me, wise Chenoa, bold Freja, and—” He pointed at the male P’Tan.

“The name you . . . gave me . . . is Garrull,” he said in halting Common. He sounded very serious.

“Yes. Garrull.” Targa smiled. “Rest well, for tomorrow we unlock the secrets of the ancients!”

In an hour, when their small party bedded down for the night, Freja found herself lying awake, gazing at Targa and Gryn conversing softly by the fire. She’d almost convinced herself to make another attempt on the expedition leader, but then her bedroll finally became comfortable. She drew out Milka’s projector and looked at her tiny, ridiculous image. She smiled.

As she drifted off, she thought of those markings she’d seen on the stone. Like clawmarks leaving trails of old blood . . .

#

She came awake smoothly—the beneficiary of many such experiences—with a hand over her mouth. A pair of yellow green eyes burned at her, like fire caught within green amber, the pupils slits like those of a cat. The P’tan blended so well into the darkness, Freja would have doubted her own eyes were it not for the catwoman’s body pressed over hers to keep her still.

“You’re the female scout,” Freja said. “The one whose name I don’t know.”

The eyes narrowed. “It’s—”

“I didn’t ask.” The gunslinger tapped her pistol against the P’tan’s ribs. “Explain what you’re doing, or I rip you in two.”

The P’tan looked briefly irritated, then grimaced in something like respect. When she spoke, her common was far smoother than Garrull’s had been. “Many foes approach,” she said. “We rouse the camp slowly—do not alert our foes too early.”

“Right. Sensible.” She looked toward the campfire, where Garrull was perched over Targa’s sleeping form. Gryn’s crimson bulk still snored contentedly near the coals. “You said many. How many?”

The P’tan’s eyes glittered in the firelight. “Many.”

Then she was gone, bounding through the darkness to rouse one of the porters, or else secure a defensible spot. Freja attuned her ears to the whistle of the night wind. No birdsong—only the faint rustling of the spindly trees and brush that grew in the wilds deep in the Highlands. She stared at one moonshadow in particular, not entirely sure why it attracted her attention, until it moved, slightly and against the wind. A hunter.

Freja suppressed the urge to draw a bead immediately. If she fired, that would be going loud, and that would steal precious time the others might need to prepare. Instead, she crept slowly out from under her long leather coat, leaving it where she had draped it over herself for warmth, and slipped around the withered log she’d used as a pillow. A rocky slope led around to the rise where she’d seen the shadow, and she moved as quietly as she could. The night wind chilled her exposed skin. Thank the Sanguine Lord the moonlight didn’t catch her: in the desert, she’d have blended in, but in the mountains her flesh might as well be glowing. Perhaps it was the rest of the camp that distracted their stalker, for she got close enough to see without him alerting. The creature had a bow in its thick gray hands, drawn back and pointed directly at the camp—at Freja’s empty coat, in fact.

It was a man of some sort—she could see that—all gray-white skin stretched over rippling muscles and more than a few old, scarred over wounds. His individual parts seemed of decent form, but the total was hideous: a bulbous, bestial thing in the vague shape of a man. A Caliban, she thought. She’d met Kalisans before, and this creature reminded her of them, albeit wilder. Vicious.

From behind, Freja aimed at the spot where heavily muscled neck met distended skull.

A commotion in the camp took them both by surprise. Of a sudden, Chenoa Gryn leaped to his feet, entirely naked, sword in hand, and intoned what Freja thought at first was a warcry.

“Arms!” he said, voice echoing. “Arms, the women and men of whom I speak, who set forth from cursed Ablis—”

That was enough. Freja squeezed the trigger, and a bloody crater appeared in the back of the Caliban’s head. Its arrow flew harmlessly into the sky and its huge body tumbled off the rocky perch.

As the thunder of her shot faded, angry roars filled the hollow where they had set up camp. Three Calibans rushed out of the night, hefting jagged axes and spears, but the explorers were ready for them. A P’tan arrow took one of the brutes in the throat, turning his charge into a stumbling fall.

A second Caliban pounced on one of the porters, driving its spear deep into the man’s gut. The hapless man shrieked and fell to the ground, blood spouting from his mouth. Freja shot that Caliban in the back of the head, and it collapsed over its victim, quivering down into death.

The third Caliban locked steel with Chenoa Gryn, staggering him with its ferocious strength. Targa put his warpick in its leg, but the creature backhanded him away.

She reached for a third pistol when someone hurtled out of the darkness at her back. She spun, her reflexes putting the pistol in line with the charging Caliban’s torso. She squeezed off a shot that blasted blood out of the creature’s side, a hand’s width outside its heart. Not enough. The creature tackled her to the ground with enough force to knock the world out of alignment. More out of luck than skill, Freja twisted her head just in time to avoid the creature’s slavering jaws snapping. That settled any illusions she might have held about the Calibans’ intentions. These things meant to eat them.

The creature wrestled her onto the ground and scrabbled for her neck, choking off air. Freja’s head felt hot and her limbs started to tremble. She discarded her empty, palmed the pistol in her left wrist holster, and fired. At that range, she shouldn’t have missed, but the Caliban smashed her in the face and her whole body jerked to the side, so the shot just grazed the creature’s muscular side. She tried for another gun, but couldn’t reach any of them. The Caliban was choking her, and the world started to turn gray around the edges.

Panic set in.

Freja smashed The Last Word into the Caliban’s ear: it felt weak, but she did it again and the creature shook its head, startled. Then she managed to grab something from its belt—a dagger—and sink it into the gray-white flesh. The Caliban gurgled in surprise, but Freja just kept stabbing. With every blow, the Caliban’s fingers lost a little of their strength, until she could finally breathe again. Eventually, the corpse sagged atop her, and she wriggled free, panting and smeared in gore.

There was one Caliban still up, at the center of the camp. It was on one knee, howling in pain, and Targa finished it with a brutal rising chop to the chin that made Freja cringe despite herself.

That was all, then: five Calibans dead, one porter screaming in agony. The other two porters knelt beside him, one trying to soothe him and the other scrambling to bandage the wound. Gryn joined them, speaking in soothing words about the bravery of Arman barbarians who faced far worse wounds at the hands of decadent sorcerer kings. As he spoke, power flowed through him into the man, slowing the bleeding and rejoining the torn skin.

“That’s some good speechifying,” Freja said to the Prymidian.

“Bard.” Gryn had no smile for her just then. “You look afright. You need healing?”

She shook her head. “Mostly bled all over me,” she said.

“These will bruise.” Grin touched her cheek and neck, making her wince. “See to Voshtet.”

Freja might have objected, but he was already reciting another soothing speech to channel more healing. She noticed three reddish hash marks painted across the nearest Caliban corpse’s face, and realized she’d seen the same thing the day before. This was their territory.

She joined the leader of their party where he stood at the edge of the little cliff, gazing down into the gap between the mountains. The sun was just creeping over the horizon, making his deep brown skin glow a kind of russet gold. He was distractingly beautiful just then.

“Targa,” she said. “Are you hurt? What’s wrong?”

“Am I hurt? You’re the one covered in blood.”

Freja shrugged. “Didn’t get any on my coat.”

“Well, get cleaned up.” He nodded. “It’s time.”

Freja frowned. “Time for what?”

He turned a dazzling smile on her. “To press on,” he said. “Right when our blood is up.”

Freja cleared her throat. “One of the men is badly injured, we’re in Caliban territory, and we don’t know what would be waiting down there.”

“I know. Terribly exciting, isn’t it?” Targa looked at the others clustered around the wounded man. “I won’t have our expedition ended because of this. We’ll get him home, yes, but not before we give the crypt at least one attempt. That’s what I’m paying for, isn’t it?”

Freja wanted to argue, but the fire in his eyes burned too hot. Finally she nodded. “As you will,” she said, despite the unsettled feeling in her gut. “You’re the boss.”

NeoExodus Legendary Tales - Grit for Hire Part 1 Written by Erik Scott de Bie

The gunslinger made a face as she unbuttoned her leather jerkin. “No self-respecting gunslinger would ever dress like this on the job.”

“Not like that. Here.” Milka Bronislaw shook back her unbound crimson hair and leaned in to button the top of Freja’s jerkin whilst leaving the middle one undone, revealing a generous stretch of sandy bosom. “Don’t move—hold that pose. Remember you’re selling a fantasy, not reality.”

“Hrm.” Freja Ilyanovka tried not to stare while the machinesmith fiddled with her buttons. She adjusted her fingers around the grip of the pistols she held out wide. She raised her right leg high enough that her skirt slipped, revealing a hint of lace. “You’re the pretty one. I just carry the guns.”

Ignoring that, Milka stepped back to look her over critically. She reached down and pulled Freja’s hat lower over her face, then returned to the crackling apparatus at the edge of her smithy.

“So this does, what?” Freja asked, decidedly uncomfortable. “Makes an instant portrait?”

“Something like that.” Milka turned a dial on the device, making it whir to life. “Hold still.”

“Hrm.” Freja eyed the crackling energies dubiously. “But if this lightnings me, I’m blaming you.”

Milka placed her hand on the device, and the machine uttered a rising hum that built painfully to make Freja wince. She bit her lip, trying not to break her pose. If she didn’t need the coin, she never would have agreed to this, old friendships notwithstanding. Dazzling light made Freja leap aside out of pure instinct. Heart hammering, she danced behind the cover of a massive vat of some viscous liquid.

“Ooh, an action pose!” Milka wound the machine down, and the whining hum died away. She looked at Freja with a nonplussed expression. “Jumpy, are you?”

“Oh, very nice.” The gunslinger slid her weapons back into their holsters. “Did it work?”

“Let’s see.” Steam erupted form the device, and Milka removed her hand daintily. In her palm was a square of metal about the size of a Protectorate crown. “Exceptional.”

“That’s it?” Freja asked. “I hope?”

“Not hardly!”

Milka turned the raised edge of the object, creating an eight-pointed star. Orange light shimmered above her hand, forming into an image of Freja, leaping, her two guns held out wide, her half-buttoned shirt straining. She looked fantastic.

Milka beamed. “Who wouldn’t want to hire that?”

Freja’s eyes widened. “That’s . . . I don’t even know what to say.”

“Say you’ll buy it.” With her too-perfect teeth, the machinesmith’s smile was almost as dazzling as the machine. “Leave one of these at every inn, and you’ll have dozens of commissions in no time.” She cranked the dial once more, and another chit slid out of the machine, identical to the first. “Once the device has captured an image, it can duplicate it as much as I want. Provided the proper materials, of course.” Her eyes lit up. “A few hundred crowns each should suffice.”

“Hrm.” Freja felt at her hollow coin pouch. “I thought you were paying me to test this.”

“Oh.” Milka’s face fell. “Well, coin’s a bit tight at the moment . . .”

“Of course it is.” Freja sighed.

#

A few drinks later at the Raider’s Bounty, the tension had evaporated, and they were laughing like the old friends they were. “Will you forgive me?” Milka sounded tipsy. “I’ll get the next round?”

“I will,” Freja said. “If you keep ‘em coming.”

The machinesmith levered herself to her feet and staggered toward the bar, leaving Freja shaking her head with a bemused smile on her face. Milka had paid Freja with one of the chits produced, keeping the other for demonstration purposes. She’d laughed off the setback, saying she would rethink some things. The woman moved from project to project, never seeming to worry about the failures. She was a legitimately good person, if given to naiveté and not always thinking things through. Freja envied her that sense of security—she’d known from an early age that her own life would never be so simple.

The two red-haired women looked a bit odd in an Arman Protectorate tavern. With her fair skin, Milka at least looked similar to an Arman at a distance, but the bright green eyes and burning desire for order and structure gave her away as a Nasian émigré. Freja remembered Milka with straw-colored hair, but she’d dyed it crimson to—ironically—make her less distinctive. For Freja’s part, her mother had been quite the traveler, bequeathing a mixed heritage to her firstborn daughter. A Khymerion father had gifted Freja with reddish eyes and sandy skin, and of course her own fiery red hair. Her half-brother Oleg was a full blooded Arman, and their little sister . . . well. Freja was thinking about herself now.

Freja was toying with the chit, turning it over and over on the table, when her neck prickled in warning, the way it did when things were about to go bad. She might have had a few drinks, but she still had her wits, and she knew not to put her back to the door. Thus, she watched as the big, red-skinned Prymidian came in. Naked to the waist, he had a wiry muscular build and a long silver beard, and he boasted a contemptuous smirk to match the reputation of his race. He wore a sword at his waist and a bow strung across his back and he fixed his eyes directly on her. Wonderful.

After surveying it all with a dismissive sniff, the Prymidian made his way to Freja’s table and plopped down in the chair across from her. He spoke in the Common tongue without a hint of an accent. Damn Prymidians and their mastery of language. “You are the gunslinger Freja Ilyanovka, yes?”

“Depends.” Over his shoulder, Milka was looking at her with wide eyes and two tankards in her hands. Freja shook her head slightly. She had this. “Who’s asking?”

“I am Chenoa Gryn,” he said. “I wish to hire you for a job.”

“That was bloody quick.” Freja tapped the machinesmith chit on the table and glanced around.

Gryn’s arrival had not gone unnoticed, as Freja expected he had intended. Prymidians were as likely to hail from the Dominion to the west as the southern parts of the Protectorate, and the two countries were always at war to some extent. Not to mention that more Prymidians had been appearing in recent decades in the south, creating tension. Several of the other patrons in the tavern were tossing him the dirty eye: cultural prejudices never really slept, especially in an out-of-the-way town like Mavra. Freja should have been just as suspicious—and she was—but honestly, she needed coin more.

“What kind of job?” she asked at length.

Gryn narrowed his eyes. “The kind for which my employer thinks you will be suited.”

“Your employer,” Freja said. “Not you.”

“I reserve judgment.” Gryn crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Should you wish to prove yourself, do so now.”

Smoothly, Freja drew her guns and laid them on the table. The first was a simple starter pistol—useful, nothing special—but the second she particularly loved. She’d got it from a machinesmith in Mureath for four hundred crowns and a roll in the hay (though that was for her own satisfaction). The Last Word, she’d had engraved along the barrel, which was always what this pistol gave her.

Gryn nodded in mute approval. “I knew you had those.”

She touched Last Word’s barrel. “Did you know I had this one pointed at your groin from the moment you walked through those doors?”

“I might have advised aiming for my head.” Gryn’s mouth quirked up at the end. “Weapons alone are not enough. Tell me about yourself.”

“Maybe I’d rather talk about you,” Freja said. “For instance, why you came to me unarmored, wearing a sword you obviously rarely draw, and slung with a bow you don’t have the calluses for. You have the hands of a laborer but the skin of a dandy.”

“How perceptive,” he said. “Can you hazard a guess what it all means?”

“You’re certainly not a warrior,” she said. “Perhaps you’re a . . . scholar of some kind?”

That made Gryn smile wide. “Worse,” he said. “I know a little about everything, and I talk about it in great detail. I tell sweeping epics of the vast, forgotten history of Exodus, the conclusion of which leaves my audience weeping tears of joy and sorrow.”

“So you’re a bard. Wonderful.” Freja shook her head. “You’re here alone, so you’re either extremely brave or foolhardy. Both, perhaps.” She nodded at the purse attached to his belt. “You don’t have nearly enough coin to afford me, unless you’re paying in something more valuable than crowns.”

He opened the pouch and poured the contents on the tabletop between them: a collection of small, sparkling gemstones. Rubies, fire agates, pale sapphires—even an amethyst. Freja would hardly call herself an expert, but she estimated their worth as much more than their weight in silver.

“So the coin is there, the job is solid,” Freja said. “Is there something else?”

Gryn adopted a contemplative expression. “But even the greatest, most noble of women and men have been undone by greed and their own desire for showmanship,” he said. “Witness.”

Not philosophical at all, but practical. Other eyes had fallen upon their interaction, and when the gemstones appeared, that scrutiny became action. There were four of them: two rough-and-tumble Arman fellows who looked one empty belly away from becoming vagabonds, an itchy looking, knife-wielding tiefling—or Gevet, as they called themselves—who licked his lips as he slinked toward them, and a wide-eyed killer holding a crossbow in one unsettlingly steady hand.

“Consider this another test!” Gryn said in a loud, boisterous voice, right before he plucked up a tankard and hurled it. Ale and ceramic shards exploded in the face of the woman with the crossbow. It spoiled her aim, but she didn’t loose in surprise. A professional, then. Wonderful.

Freja leaped out of her chair up onto the table, even as one of the lumbering hulks lurched for her from behind. She rolled over the table, scooping up her pistols as she went—too bad she didn’t have a third hand to grab those stones, too—and came up with a full-force whip to the tiefling’s face. The wiry creature managed to twist with the attack, so she only caught him a glancing blow on the cheek, but it was still enough to send him staggering back.

She heard the smack of flesh on flesh and saw Gryn elbowing one of the men in the throat. He was reciting some epic poem in a language she didn’t know, but First Ones be Burned if she didn’t feel oddly inspired. It was all too chaotic to be credible.

The big brute she’d dodged before came lumbering around the table, but Freja danced nimbly out of his grasp, the skirt of her duster fluttering through his fingers as she landed up on the table. She trained her favorite gun on his face, and his dark eyes went wide. She saw glinting metal past his shoulder, however—the crossbow-wielder lining up a shot—and fired even as Freja threw herself to the side. A quarrel slashed past her face, and she heard it rip through the trailing edge of her leather coat. The aim was off, because the woman had flinched behind cover as she loosed.

Unfortunately, in the distraction the big man got hold of Freja’s feet and held her flat on the table. The tiefling loomed over her with some sort of scythe-bladed axe.

It wasn’t just a brawl any more—it was kill or die. Her kind of fight.

Freja trained her starter pistol down along her trapped leg and fired blind, making blood spatter her legs and hand. The man roared in pain and the pressure vanished, letting her roll aside just in time to avoid the axe head that buried itself in the table. If either of her pistols had been loaded, she might have shot the tiefling in his face as he sneered down at her. Instead, she whipped him again, this time splattering his nose across his cheek. He sagged backward, blood trailing, and hit the floor with a groan.

This bought Freja a moment, and she looked past her feet to see Chenoa Gryn pounding the blood from the face of the other big man who had accosted them. The Prymidian wore a dazzling, red smile as he told of a mighty fray, punctuating each punch with the name of a great hero of Exodus legend. Freja caught only bits and pieces of the tale, but it was a stirring one.

Her two opponents dealt with, Freja rolled right and dropped her pistols in favor of another pair in her sleeves, which she fired in quick succession in the direction of the crossbow wielder, who had just peeked out from behind cover. Splinters exploded from the common room pillar, along with a string of curses from the woman behind it. Things had not gone as she planned.

“What’s a matter, lovely?” Crouching, Freja set down those pistols on the table and drew the third pair slung across the small of her back. “Outgunned?”

“Burn you, you—uuuutttt!” The woman’s words cut off in a teeth-chattering shock, and her body went taut as a wire. She fell sideways out from behind the pillar, her crossbow clattering to the floorboards. Freja covered her for a breath, then drew a bead on the pillar she’d used for cover.

Milka Bronislaw stepped out from behind the pillar, energies crackling around the analyzer on her left arm. “By the Blood,” she said. “I didn’t know it’d do that, exactly.”

“Hrm.” Freja glanced around the tavern, but no one else seemed inclined to test them just now. She slid the guns back into their holsters and set to reloading her discarded weapons.

Meanwhile, Gryn had finally finished pummeling the single attacker. He looked around, and saw that she had dispatched two on her own, and a third with help. He smiled—an expression made grotesque considering the gore on his face. “Not bad,” the Prymidian said. “For a human.”

Freja slid a fresh cartridge into The Last Word. “When and where do I meet you?” she asked.

“Dawn tomorrow. Pack for a long journey.” He nodded to her guns. “Bring all of those.”

“Always,” Freja said.

The Prymidian left, and Freja sat down, The Last Word set on the table before her, and waved for another drink. She waved for Milka to join her. The groans of the wounded serenaded them.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Milka said. “You’ll be careful, right?”

Her hand around the reassuring weight of her gun, Freja drew her hat down low over her eyes.

“Always.”

Transparency Agenda 96: #Two Hidden Projects And Something I am Reading

Would you like NeoExodus based short fiction stories to read each and every month?

Wouldn't it be nice if there was NeoExodus based short fiction stories to read each and every month? Wouldn't it be nice if we could get an author with writing credits from Wizards of the Coast and Privateer Press to work on it? Would it be nice if we could get freelance writer, Erik Scott de Bie? Well I guess your wish has come true. If you don’t know Erik Scott de Bie, here is his bio!

Transparency Agenda #39: The Pre-Halloween Update

Coming this week NeoExodus: Legendary Tales: The Shield of Ignorance

Coming this week to DriveThruFiction, NeoExodus: Legendary Tales: The Shield of Ignorance written by Joshua Cole, edited by Joshua Yearsley cover artwork by Phill Simpson (This is just the rough draft of the cover). Fans of Paizo's Planet Stories and Pathfinder Tales lines might want to check this out. Only 99 cents!!!

NeoExodus Legendary Tales: The Shield of Ignorance finished!

The third and final chapter of the NeoExodus Legendary Tales: The Shield of Ignorance written by Joshua Cole, edited by Joshua Yearsley will be releasing very soon at the blog. The collected version will be available in PDF and ebook format in the next few weeks. Congrats to the start of the LPJ Design’s NeoExodus fiction line.

NeoExodus Legendary Tales: The Shield of Ignorance - Chapter Two written by Joshua Cole, edited by Joshua Yearsley

NeoExodus - The Shield of Ignorance: Chapter 2

I could go into the jungle alone, Riss thought, if I wanted to die. With every mosquito that found its way beneath her robes, it grew more tempting.

Awenasa had not been so bad. In the capital of the Reis Confederacy, every street she walked had been a wide boulevard, shaded by tall trees and cooled by canals that, as criers had eagerly informed her, were literally endless. Riss had wanted to inspect one of the enchanted fountains that spilled into the canals in an attempt to prove the criers wrong, half from national pride and half from academic curiosity.

She’d thought she didn’t have time, though, and only stopped in Awenasa to take her lunch. Twelve hours later, the pleasant sting of peppers had faded, replaced with pangs of hunger.

She didn’t want to eat in Miska, though.

It was not one of the Confederacy’s great cities. It only qualified as a city because it had walls to keep the jungle at bay. No cool, clear magical water here, just rain that sizzled on the rough stone streets and the sweat it failed to wash away.

Riss’s Sihr caste robes were not meant for wet heat. She would have broiled in them if her gold equipage had not included a charm for enduring the elements.

Unfortunately, it did not include charms against insects or smells.

Nor did it include a charm to convince one of the hunters who clustered near the Miska walls to act as her guide. Riss had prepared a spell that could do so, but she didn’t intend to use it. She would have to spend at least a week in her guide’s company; if he realized she’d used a magical compulsion on him, she didn’t expect to survive the trip.

The best intentions, she thought, can lead to hell.

As she fought the urge to slap at another mosquito, she wondered if she'd already arrived.

She approached another group of hunters. Crouched in the shadows of the city walls were two Enuka who could have passed for beasts of burden if they’d worn fewer weapons, four gray-skinned Caliban whom Riss hoped were at least semi-civilized Kalisans, and as many humans of the bronze-skinned, black-haired local type.

They were already muttering and laughing when she spotted them, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t directed at her. Riss wondered if they were sharing a joke at her expense. She strode into the middle of their semi-circle and repeated the words she’d spoken so many times. “I am looking for a guide.”

Silence.

“I will pay well. Gold.”

One of the Enuka snarled something in an unintelligible language or accent and shambled off. The rest of the hunters hesitated. Riss thought she might have at least one, but then the most weathered of the humans gave a little shrug and followed. The rest went with him.

She watched them and tried not to scream.

A man’s voice at her side left her too startled to stay angry. “You look tired, lady.”

She turned, forcing herself to seem calm.

The speaker was human, rangy, with green-and-brown strips in his hair she assumed were dyed and tattoos covering every exposed part of his body, which was almost all of them. He had a spear slung at his back, a knife strapped to his leg, and a string of bone fetishes and feathers on his neck. His equipment radiated enough magic that Riss was sure she’d have sensed it without any spells or charms.

Riss noticed the fading aura around one of the bones, which she recognized from carvings as from a jaguar’s paw; she knew that however stealthy the man was naturally, he hadn’t crept up behind her by entirely natural means.

“What is it to you?” she asked.

“I am thinking,” he said, “you would like to stop looking for a guide.”

I would like, Riss thought, to leave this cesspit and never come back. Burning the moisture out of it is optional, but preferred.

What she would like didn't matter. No amount of discomfort or local intransigence would keep her from finding Hadassi.

“Perhaps,” she said.

“Then you are lucky,” he said. He flashed a golden smile. It might have been a display of wealth, but Riss could only wonder if who or whatever had knocked his original teeth out was available to serve her. More interesting were his eyes, dark but twinkling in the fading light. He had the look of a man with a secret he could hardly wait to tell.

“Fortune has been known to smile on me,” Riss said, “but you’re going to have to explain how it has done so.”

“Because the great Quelpa is at your service, lady,” he said.

Riss raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Are you his herald?”

He laughed. “The lady is bright as well as beautiful.”

“The lady is busy,” Riss said. “If you want to compliment me, you can follow while I look for someone who wants to help.”

“Apologies,” he said, not that he looked the least contrite. “It so happens that I am myself the great Quelpa. I will be your guide.”

“Where I come from,” she said, “an employer usually decides whether or not to hire someone.”

“The lady is not a fool, so I already know she will hire me.”

“In my studies of divination,” Riss said, “I have discovered an interesting fact.”

Quelpa’s grin didn’t fade at this apparent change of subject, but he cocked his head.

“Knowing the future inevitably changes it.” She gave him a thin smile and stepped past him.

He was laughing by the time her back was to him. Since his laughter didn't fade into the rain, she knew she hadn't chased him off. She put her smile away even though it threatened to turn genuine. Quelpa seemed capable, quick-witted, and equipped with expensive magic—exactly the kind of guide she wanted, provided she hired him on her terms.

She needed to know more before she did, even if it meant staying in Miska.

He didn’t try to get in front of her, even though his legs were long enough to. It seemed he understood the place she expected him to occupy. “The lady is a seeress?”

“I’ve been known to make predictions from time to time. Do you want your fortune told?” His equipment said he would see through parlor tricks, but equipment could be inherited—or stolen.

“I would settle for being paid a fortune,” he said.

“You have a very high opinion of your worth, ‘great’ Quelpa. Most people as confident as you are fools.”

“Are you?”

“What makes you think I have a high opinion of myself?” It wasn’t that he was wrong, or that Riss took offense. Most were fools. The few who weren’t had earned their confidence. That Quelpa recognized Riss's confidence gave her hope his own was justified.

“Because the last one of you brought dozens with her. You came alone.”

Riss froze.

She knew she shouldn’t have shown that he got to her, but she was a scholar, not a spy. “‘The last one?’”

“That is why you are here, is it not?” Quelpa remained at her back. Suddenly, his position felt more sinister than servile to Riss. “Chasing the same ghosts the other Dominion woman was?”

Riss whirled. She had to regain control over the conversation, but she couldn’t manage to master herself. “What do you know about Hadassi?”

“Her name, now.” Quelpa was still grinning. Before Riss could snap at him, he spread his palms and continued. “That her party disappeared into the jungle eight weeks ago with five of the best guides in Miska. That none of them returned.”

“Leaving the rest of the guides spooked,” Riss said. “Except for you?”

“I am braver than any dozen men,” Quelpa said.

“Which has nothing to do with why you’re willing to take my coin.”

He gave a little bow. “I am also cleverer than any dozen. I knew those guides. Any one of them might have made a mistake and died for it. No one is perfect, not even me. But all five? No. Whatever happened to them, it was not in the jungle.”

“You think Hadassi found what she was looking for?” Riss asked.

“Was she looking for something bad and dangerous? Because I know that must be the thing she found.”

Riss thought of Kynon Tehya’s warning. “Sometimes ignorance can be a shield,” he’d said. He’d believed the ruins she was looking for were left by the First Ones. If what little historical record remained of their rule held any truth at all, then “bad and dangerous” didn’t begin to describe it.

Riss said, “It’s possible.”

“Then when you reach it, the great Quelpa will wait outside.”

Riss didn’t bother to claim she wasn’t going to hire him.

***

Riss glanced over her shoulder. “You’re really staying here?”

Quelpa spread his hands. The motion was the only reason she could see him. Even when she knew where to look, his tattooed body disappeared into the jungle. Six days together and she wasn’t sure if his camouflage was natural or magical.

“The lady must have something to inspire her return.” His grin gleamed from the shadows.

Riss cracked a smile; a man who could swagger while he cowered deserved at least that much. Besides, she didn’t blame him, as he was probably the wiser of them.

“Then I’ll see you shortly,” Riss said.

“Something much to be hoped for.”

Certainly, she thought, since it meant he had not abandoned her.

Between Quelpa’s knowledge of the Wildlands of Bal and the map Riss had pieced together from Hadassi’s notes, they’d made good time through the jungle. The trip could as easily have taken months—or lifetimes. Riss had no illusions as to her chances of returning to civilization, or even Miska, without her guide.

Before she concerned herself with returning, though, she had to find Hadassi.

She turned back to the walls.

They were shorter than Miska’s, but cut from similar limestone and only a little more vine-choked. Riss had half-expected the whole city to be carved from obsidian, like the tablet she’d left in her study in Anidem. 

Only the carvings, the same deep, straight, angular carvings, told her the city and the tablet were of the same origin.

That, and the fact Hadassi and her party had disappeared inside.

Riss picked through the underbrush to a gap in the walls. Mud of a different color from the surrounding terrain marked where adobe bricks must once have sat. Riss found no foot- or handprints. Either Hadassi hadn’t come in through this gap or the daily rains had washed away signs of her passing.

The wall surrounded a wide outer courtyard. It might once have held structures of wood or brick, but time and weather had wiped them away. Nothing remained to obstruct her view of the central structure, which looked—well, not quite like a pyramid. Unlike the step-pyramid temples and palaces Riss had seen in Awenasa, Miska, and countless books, the structure at the heart of this city was round. Four limestone terraces, of a height—if not a floorplan—similar to those she was used to, formed the lower layers. Atop those sat the obsidian she’d been looking for, a single too-tall terrace, like a great black beetle overlooking the city.

Riss shuddered. Something about the vista tugged at her mind, but she couldn’t figure out what. She glanced back at Quelpa again. He might not come inside, but she could at least get his opinion.

She could have if he were visible, anyway. He didn’t wave this time.

Had he left?

No. She had not been fool enough to pay him more than a retainer. To make the kind of coin he had to be accustomed to, he had to find her when she emerged from the city.

She couldn’t emerge if she didn’t enter first.

Riss slipped through the gap in the limestone wall. She dropped half a meter to a floor that had turned to dirt ages ago, and to mud with yesterday’s rain.

She realized what had bothered her when she first looked through the wall. The courtyard should have been distinguishable from the jungle only by the wall’s presence, but all she saw inside was bare dirt, ruined buildings, and patches of limestone and obsidian flooring. No growth, no life. “Bad and dangerous,” Quelpa had said. Riss hadn’t doubted it. Seeing the evidence firsthand shook her in ways speculation had not.

This wasn’t climbing over the skies of Anidem or chasing rumors in its streets. It wasn’t opening burial grounds claimed by families even more exalted than hers. It wasn’t even running into the jungles of the Reis Confederacy with only a glib-tongued guide for company, following in the footsteps of a mentor who had to be dead and gone by now.

Riss had always taken more chances than her colleagues were comfortable with. But for all that, she'd never chanced anything worse than death.

This was worse.

She felt her hand close on the limestone of the outer wall.

And then, she yanked it back.

This city was a scary place, a bad one and a dangerous one. Perhaps even, and Riss did not use the term lightly, an evil one.

But it wasn’t what was frightening her.

She straightened up and faced the empty courtyard. “I did not come this far,” she called out, “to turn back now.”

Quelpa’s voice came from directly behind her. “That is a shame. I did not want to kill you.”

***

Riss understood several things the instant she heard Quelpa’s voice.

If he was native to Miska, he’d left it long ago, because he’d picked her up in Anidem and followed her through two Nexus Gateways. He wasn’t a hunter, at least not of beasts, and he certainly wasn’t a guide. His mental powers had almost discouraged her from pressing on; they had kept the real guides from taking her custom.

And now he was going to kill her. She felt the impact of his spear on the shield she’d raised with the same breath she had used to call out her challenge. Even blocked, the blow sent her reeling to her knees. Her shield didn’t so much shatter as fade, dispelled or absorbed by whatever enchantments his spear held.

Riss rolled onto her back and flung her hands up, conjuring not a shield—that obviously wouldn’t work—but a wave of flames. If she’d landed on stone instead of soft dirt, it might have jarred her concentration too much, but as it was she managed to keep hold of the spell.

Quelpa ducked beneath the blast, hardly losing momentum. Riss hadn’t expected to hit him; she did it just to buy herself another breath, another spell.

Quelpa whipped his body upright, muscles gleaming in the evening sun, and spun his spear toward where Riss lay.

He pierced the illusionary duplicate she’d left there. It didn’t surprise her that his spear sucked away her invisibility as well, though she’d dared to hope it wouldn’t. She gasped out another spell, audibly this time since stealth had failed her, and lifted into the air a few meters from him.

He smiled sadly. “You should have gone back, lady.”

Under the circumstances, she couldn’t exactly disagree. “I suppose an explanation is too much to ask?”

“I trust you to understand,” Quelpa said.

Riss suspected she did, but she wasn’t about to devote time to thinking about it. “What is understanding worth at spearpoint?”

He shrugged. “You are the scholar, not I.”

Riss tried to thrust her hand forward in an arcane gesture. Her body refused to obey.

Quelpa tapped his temple.

If Riss could have nodded, she would have. She understood, all right. The power he wielded wasn’t magic, not as she practiced it. She could have shielded herself against his psionics if she’d prepared the proper defenses, but considering she’d had a telepath meddling with her mind for days at least, was it any surprise doing so hadn’t occurred to her?

Quelpa’s expression hardened, and he pulled back his spear.

Then obsidian swallowed him.

The black stone erupted from thin air. Before Quelpa could dodge, it snared his arms and legs. Before he could fix on its source, it covered his eyes and mouth. He must have been too surprised to scream.

The obsidian seemed to compress, wrapping itself around the telepath's rangy frame. In seconds, only the crackle of energy in the black stone indicated it was anything but a crude statue.

Released, Riss stumbled to the dirt. She looked up at the terraced structure at the heart of the city. As she’d expected, her rescuer was descending its steps.

Riss didn’t recognize the spell. It wasn’t the kind that mages broke out in casual contests. It didn’t matter.

She recognized the caster, though.

The afternoon sun at her back and the purple energy limning her outstretched hand cast weird shadows across her face. Her headscarf was missing, her skin was drawn tight over her high cheekbones—but she was unquestionably Hadassi Al’meram.