I stashed the other thunderguns in the hidden locker under the desk, slipped into my ranger leathers, and made my way through town toward the Masked Seat. I kept my head down and my hood up. The last thing I needed was for anyone to recognize me.
Most steered clear anyway. I wore the jack inside-out to signal I was off duty (as I’d been for years, now), but that didn’t stop soldiers from “quelling seditionist behavior” when they felt like it.
Rafdorek had always been a shithole, I realized. I’d just been lucky. The unfortunates braved the Warrens to harvest fungus just to keep themselves alive, and most didn’t survive the creatures in the tunnels. I’d always assumed—hoped, even—that the brood mothers enjoyed taking the burden of child rearing away from all the other citizens, or that the other hobgoblins in Rafdorek were always thankful to have the children taken from their arms to be raised and cared for far away from their busy lives.
I’d dodged the worst avenues of life under the Geren-thal. I’d been an athletic youth and I’d never had an issue taking orders or giving them. Like all the good children of Rafdorek, I’d dreamed of joining the army and serving the city. That was the best life you could hope for, and shortly after leaving adolescence, I’d worked my way in. Soldiers enjoyed leniency where others suffered under the fist of the Geren-thal’s rule. We had lives of drink and joy, we worked hard to know our way around blades and crossbows and how to move laden in armor, but a campaign hadn’t been launched in nearly two decades. The most action the armies saw was the odd monster from the woods or a bit of bloodying against a troop of deregal from Nabith searching our land for their escaped slaves.
I’d never advanced past the intermediary rank of corporal. You had to be Named to rise to sergeant, and there were very few opportunities for that without a campaign. Priests of Melrala would visit the wounded soldiers and use their hieromancy to seal a wound to your flesh forever. Ebonskar was rumored to be named for a black rift torn down his face from brow to chin, mirrored by the mark on his mask. Noseless for the hole between his eyes. Sevenfingers for the appendages he lost to the first test of Halfjaw’s munitions against one of the Nabithan towns captured in the last campaign.
My time in the army had been purging seditionists and little else. Now I marched to the center of Rafdorek to kill a man who served only the Geren-thal. Not that I could muster a grin at the irony.
I approached the gate to the Masked Seat. Two Geren-jatt stood with their spears at the threshold, eyeing those who would seek passage into the masked one’s district. I discreetly flipped my jack and pulled it back over my shoulders. They let me walk right through.
Azren’s refinery wasn’t hard to find. Heat boiled out from the room at all hours. Azren kept his forges stoked in case he woke with inspiration in the night. He wouldn’t have been anywhere else.
The front room was empty, all the other workers sent home, as they would be. Everything was dark, only the orange coals lighting the room, save for a lantern filtering in from the back. I crept forward, pressed my back to the wall, and peered inside. I saw Azren bent over a desk, a quill in hand as he inked lines onto page. He was completely unaware of my presence.
The iron shade left of the threshold wasn’t. He lunged, the glimmering tip of his knife seeking my throat. I threw my head backward, knees bending, felt the kiss of cold steel slide against my chin. He drew back to thrust again, and I scrambled away, managing to get my knife into my hands. I danced around, eyeing all the room’s corners. Dim coals proved a hindrance more than anything. Like all Shadowblade Jhetan’s pets, the shade wore a skintight ebonthread weave, thickness doubled at the hands, feet, hood, and mask. The material was as protective as chainmail, but silent and weightless as one’s own flesh. Each shade was at the very least an initiate in umbramancy – the magic of shadows and altered perception, and as such, he had slipped entirely into the murk, invisible to my eyes despite their proficiency for darkness.
Only the whisper of wind gave his first attack away. I nearly tripped over my own feet turning to meet him as he lunged at my side. We both dodged the other’s blades, once, twice, then my fist found his jaw and I opened a cut across his forearm, a dark trickle of blood splashing onto the flagstones. He hissed, leaped away, and the shadows enveloped him.
I kept moving, my gaze swinging back and forth, waiting for his next strike. My feet traced tight, concentric circles, my arms ready, swaying with my movements just in front of my chest. The dancing light of the flickering forges slowly faded away, leaving me in utter darkness. Just as my eyes adjusted to the lacking light it grew more oppressive, concealing everything, depriving me of even seeing the knife inches away from my face. My jaw tightened; my feet didn’t stop their successive circuits.
Two golden dots flared ahead of me. They grew larger, luminous, reminiscent of draconic eyes. Light bloomed below them, revealing the visage of a demon, curled horns arcing backward. A flash of white stung my eyes as the light stretched into the shape of a blade, fiercely roiling, and illuminating the massive shape of a muscled monstrosity. It lurched forward, roared, spittle catching the firelight and gleaming orange as it splattered away. It charged on clomping hooves. The blade rose.
I whirled at the last moment and caught the iron shade in the neck. His eyes were wide, shocked. He had chosen intimidation and deceit as his tactics, and on another hobgoblin it may have worked. But I had been trained against such things. And I had used them myself. His blade rattled on the ground as it slipped from his twisting fingers. He collapsed and began painting the floor, his illusion scattering to nothing at my back.
I rushed to the threshold. Azren had remained at the desk, and he recoiled in horror as he saw me instead of the iron shade. I held my knife forward, my intention clear. “Wait – wait!” the master-smith shouted. “Don’t do this! You and your wife can still save yourselves!”
I’d masqueraded as an active soldier. I’d slain an iron shade in service to Shadowblade Jhetan, Third of the Geren-thal. I’d committed treason of the highest order save for killing a member of the Masked Council. There was no chance to reverse my fate.
I closed the distance to Master-Smith Azren while he begged and pleaded. I grabbed a fistful of his wiry, white hair and opened his throat, snarling all the while.
On the desk, he’d drawn diagrams of our creations. He’d made a perfect recreation of all three thunderguns.
The iron shade wasn’t just a guard, present by coincidence.
Ebonskar knew.
Ben Stovall Blog 