Page 101 of Problematic

I found the black priest in a chapel built from stone. He had cinderbloom ash under his nails. His acolytes ran.

“The smoke hasn’t even cleared, and you’re already making more bombs?”

I crossed the chapel before the spell left his mouth and thrust my knife beneath his jaw and into his skull. His eyes bulged. His prayer died against the back of his teeth.

For a second, through the blood and incense, I heard Liv laugh.

My grip slipped, and the body dropped, dead at my feet.

I slept six hours in three days. Maybe four. I stopped counting after the marsh road because the numbers kept sliding out of place when I blinked.

On the fourth day Scarn’s men stopped running.

Their tracks ended at an abandoned rail station half swallowed by marshland, old brick sinking into black water, rusted signs swinging in the wind. No guards on the road. No scouts on the rooftops. I crossed the tracks. Salt glittered between the rails.

I paused over it and sunk to one knee, running a gloved finger through the powder. Old grave-salt, ground fine. Fine enough to sting through the leather. The kind of thing desperate men scattered when they knew the shadows were coming.

Cinderbloom smoke drifted through the fog, sweet under the swamp rot. My mouth curved into a manic little smile.

The first shot cracked from the rafters before I ever raised my pistol.

Stone burst beside my head. I moved before the echo finished, gun in one hand, blade in the other, jumping to the crumbling remains of a beam, scrambling up, and praying the rust would hold me. Men poured out above and below me.

I cut through the first wave in minutes, exchanging my spent pistol for the rifle I carried on my back. The station filled with muzzle flashes and the stink of hot metal, gunpowder, and blood.

A bullet grazed my leg.

Another tore through my left shoulder above my Kevlar vest.

I kept moving until the third hit.

It came from above, from the broken signal tower, an enchanted round, silver packed into the tip. It punched through my shoulder, exiting through the chest, and lit my nerves on fire. My arm went dead for half a breath, but half a breath was enough.

A hook-chain wrapped around my wrist.

They yanked me sideways, and pain ripped up my arm. I hit the platform hard, rolled, and tasted blood. Men came from the fog, six of them, maybe eight, their shapes splitting and doubling. Blood loss had decided to become problematic, apparently. I made it to my knees, then someone hit me from the side with the butt of a rifle.

The blow caught the edge of my mask and knocked my head sideways. Pain flashed white. The comm tore loose and skittered across the platform, still spitting Vale’s voice.

“Lux! Lux, answer me.”

A boot came down on it, crushing it. I spat blood. “Well, that was rude.”

“Lux Draven, the assassin. Of course. We should have known you would take care of things yourself,” one of Scarn’s generals said.

I coughed. Laughed. Blood filled the sound.

He stepped closer. “You’ve grown predictable,” he said. “Scarn thought you’d follow us here. You should have stayed at that meeting. Maybe this all could’ve been avoided.”

I quietly slid my fingers to the knife at my belt. “Say more stupid things. It entertains me.”

His smile vanished.

Good.

He lifted his hand, and the men rushed me.

After that, the world broke into pieces.