by J. Stone
Lockhart’s Confirmation
By J. Stone
Text copyright © 2016 J. Stone
All Rights Reserved
Additional Works
Cultwick: The Sweeper Bot Plague
Cultwick: The Wretched Dead
Cultwick: The Science of Faith
The Poison Princess
The Untethered Demon
The Displaced Planet
Lockhart’s Legacy
http://jstonewrites.blogspot.com/
Cover Artwork by Giselle Ukardi
http://giselleukardi.deviantart.com
For my little tornado.
Chapter 1. How to Kill an Oathbreaker
Chapter 2. Albino Snakes and Golden Queens
Chapter 3. With the Help of a Soul Eater
Chapter 1. How to Kill an Oathbreaker
Fighting sleep, Wynonna Lockhart sat in that train car, riding toward the city of Alexandria, where she had every intention of the vespari there confirming her as one of their order. How difficult a task this would be, she didn’t yet know.
For the moment, she sat on that hard wooden seat, softened only a little by a thin layer of cushioning, rolling a silver round over her knuckles in an idle movement, contemplating what the city held in store for her. This was no normal silver round, however. No, this round had the soul eater named Petronila trapped within. The soul eater was bound to the coin, and Wynonna waited for the creature to slowly starve to death inside. She would have to hold onto the coin until that happened or she found a way to speed up the process.
The only problem she’d encountered so far was that the soul eater had found a way to affect Wynonna even from within the silver round. Petronila reached out to her, tormenting her in nightmares every time the vespari dozed off. Unsettling though it was, she’d dealt with this minor inconvenience. Whatever the dark creature did though, Wynonna resolved to never free the soul eater from her prison. The creature was responsible for Corrigan’s death, and by releasing Petronila, Wynonna would be making her master’s sacrifice pointless. She tried not to dwell on it, focusing instead on her surroundings.
The smell of the train car was rather foreign to her senses. Wynonna had grown up in the desert at the center of their vast island continent and was accustomed only to the things out there. Sand, cows, horses, scarce wood, a limited selection of food, and of course gunpowder. Her train car smelled nothing like any of these. The trains connected to various cities in the region, but none that she had ever been to before, so the whole experience was new to her. The engine gave off a smoky smell that seemed to fill her lungs even with the window at her side clasped tight. Even the smell of the cushions and wood inside that car were unfamiliar to her, presumably from materials that didn’t naturally grow in the desert. That wasn’t terribly surprising, given the scarce nature of life in the desert.
Eager to catch her first glimpse of Alexandria, Wynonna stared out the window of the train car for most of the ride from Covelo, where she’d traded the death of a minor beast for a ticket. Corrigan had told her that it was a big place, but when it finally came into sight, the city still caught her off guard. Living in the desert, open space and an abundance of room to breathe were her normal. Alexandria had neither of these qualities from what she saw of the bustling city.
The buildings were stacked up so close together that there was hardly any room for streets and passageways between them. They were tall too. Taller than anything she’d seen. Some of the buildings stretched up so high that they towered over the city, casting shadows down upon the rest of Alexandria. She wondered which one of these buildings belonged to the Vespari Brotherhood. A clock tower called the Black Tea Tower was the name her master gave her.
Wynonna still didn’t know why they called it that, but that’s where Corrigan had told her to go. Though he was gone now, he’d left Wynonna with a path forward in the form of his journal’s last message. He informed her that she needed to go to the Black Tea Tower and receive confirmation from the vespari. Doing so, he wrote, would afford her assistance in her efforts to cleanse the world of the monsters vespari hunted.
Given that Wynonna had zero bullets after their fight with the beldams and the shapeshifting soul eater and only a useless single silver round to her name, she decided she could use the help. Even if it hadn’t been useless, Corrigan had informed her that the coastal cities, Alexandria included, used silver coins rather than the unofficially minted silver rounds.
Knowing she would arrive in Alexandria soon, Wynonna studied the city as she approached. She’d never left the desert, and she now discovered that the enormity and complexity of the place had an intimidating effect on her. Regardless, she wasn’t going to let her fear hold her back. Every day since leaving her family ranch to pursue her family’s murderer, she had come across new challenges, and this was but one more that she would have to overcome. As the city grew closer, however, her heart fluttered in her chest and her stomach swirled with anticipation.
When the train jerked in its first sign of stopping, she nearly dropped the silver round that she rolled over her knuckles, but thanks to her quick reflexes, she grabbed it with her other hand. Not wanting the silver round to fall into the wrong hands, Wynonna decided it best to simply stuff it into her pocket for safekeeping. After a few more jerks, the train entered a tunnel under a building and finally came to a complete stop. Up ahead, a conductor entered the car and called out to the passengers.
“Hawthorne Gate,” he announced. “All for Hawthorne Gate!”
Wynonna had no idea if this was where she should get off or not. She knew that Alexandria was a big place, and based on the man she’d got the ticket from back in Covelo, there were multiple stops within the city. All the same, she had to start somewhere, and Hawthorne Gate seemed as good a place as any.
The vespari grabbed the cowboy hat she’d sat next to her on the seat, and placed it on her head as she stood up and made her way to the aisle. Moving toward the exit, she tucked the sides of her duster toward her, so as not to get it caught on the other seats or the people who were gathering their things from the overhead compartments. Wynonna walked past the conductor still standing near the door, and she stepped down to the platform, giving the area a quick survey.
Other passengers stepped off the train as well, collecting the bags they’d stowed under the car or meeting with friends and family who waited for them there. She had no one waiting for her, feeling an acute loneliness and a bit of resentment toward the other passengers. Wynonna noticed that her train wasn’t even the only one sitting there in Hawthorne Gate either. Other tracks lined either side of the train, with the building serving as a much larger train station than she’d seen out in the desert.
Having brought no bag aboard, Wynonna left the other passengers and made her way toward the exit. She passed through a little black gate, down some steps and then found a series of doors. Through the glass panes, she spotted movement. The city street, she realized. Eager to see what Alexandria looked like close up, Wynonna hurried toward the doors and followed a woman through them.
Immediately, the city met her with a combination of smells, many of which she couldn’t place. In Alexandria, they used more machines than she was used to being around back in the desert. These left a greasy smell in the air, as well as black clouds of smoke. Not everything had an engine, however. Horses still roamed the street, and she could smell not only the beasts but also their droppings, just left in where they fell and attracting flies and other insects. She also picked up on the smell of gas. Looking around, she saw gas lamps on tall poles with lights at their tips. Given the early hour, no one had yet lit t
hese, but she could still pick up on it in the plethora of other smells. She felt like she could smell better than she normally would have, but she disregarded the thought as quickly as it came.
Her awareness of the sheer volume of noise in Alexandria followed her examination of the scents, drowning her own thoughts out. In addition to all the machines sputtering and the clomping of horse hooves on the cobbled roads, Wynonna heard people crying out. Not in pain or distress but rather calling for attention. Papers for sale, services offered, and advertisements for events happening throughout the city. Everything and everyone seemed so busy in comparison to how slow her life had been on the ranch.
The last of her senses for Alexandria to overwhelm her was her sight. The vision of the city was beyond anything she’d seen. When she and Corrigan had passed through Courtland and saw the crowds drawn to the saloon there, she thought that was overwhelming. Alexandria was something altogether different. The buildings, the machines, the numerous people, and every minor detail in between.
Taking everything in, Wynonna just froze on the spot. After a few seconds, she started to stumble forward, into the crowds of people going about their day and completely ignoring her presence. Surrounded by all those people, the vespari had never felt so alone. Knocking her out of her haze, a young man in a newsboy cap bumped into her.
“Sorry,” the young man muttered, not looking her in the eye.
Wynonna glanced after him but didn’t linger. Looking down toward her belt though, she noticed that the vespari medallion of a seven pointed star with a crescent moon carved into it was missing. She looked behind her to see the young man who had bumped into her quickly weaving through a group of people.
“Hey!” Wynonna shouted after the pickpocket.
He turned around to see her, smiled, and then fled through the crowd. She wasn’t willing to let the pickpocket take the medallion Corrigan gave her. Though she still had more of her master’s things, including his journal, gun, duster, and hat, the medallion was special. It served as his validation of her. It was proof that he’d trained her and proof that he thought her worthy. She didn’t know what the vespari elders would put her through, but she had thought it would be easier if she had the medallion with her.
Following the direction the pickpocket had fled, Wynonna raced after him. He wove through the crowds like a snake through the grass. She, meanwhile, lacking any grace or agility, collided with nearly everyone she saw, giving him time to get further away. Wynonna was nothing if not persistent though, so she barreled through the groups of people undeterred.
The pickpocket soon turned into an alleyway, and that was a relief to the vespari, who was tired of bumping into everyone in her path. Stumbling after hitting a group of businessmen and receiving a series of insults hurled after her, Wynonna followed the pickpocket into the alley.
The young man was already near the middle of this long alleyway when Wynonna spotted him, but she refused to let him get away. Breathing heavy and sweating, the vespari raced down the alley in her stomping boots. Ahead, the pathway between buildings split left and right. The pickpocket turned to the left, and Wynonna arrived at the intersection, bumping hard into the wall with her shoulder but turning to follow.
Behind the vespari, however, down the right path, she heard a pained yell. Turning around, she saw a man run past, followed by a lanky, flying, stony, grey figure. A gargoyle. Wynonna had never seen one with her own eyes, but she’d seen the drawings Corrigan left in his journal, and she’d read what her master had to say about them. They were dangerous, and that man needed her help. Wynonna turned once more to see the pickpocket fleeing down the alley. He’d get away soon if she didn’t follow.
“Damn it,” she muttered, knowing her choice to be already made for her.
Abandoning the vespari medallion Corrigan gave her, Wynonna took the path on the right to pursue the gargoyle and the man it was hunting. She regretted the decision immediately. She had no bullets, though she wasn’t certain whether they would penetrate the creature’s thick skin anyway. All she had was her knife, and there was no way it was going to hurt the stony monster. Regardless, she knew she had to try something. It’s what Corrigan would’ve wanted her to do. How she was going to stand up to the gargoyle though remained unknown.
Sprinting to catch up with the monster and the man it chased, Wynonna arrived where she’d seen them and turned down a relatively unoccupied backstreet full primarily with refuse and other discarded things. To make matters worse, it was a dead end, closed off by a fence where the man had run. He now pressed his back against the wall, and the gargoyle flew straight toward him. Having no weapon that could possibly harm the creature, Wynonna charged forward regardless.
“Hey, ugly!” the vespari shouted.
The gargoyle stopped, hovering in midair, as it lurched its long head around to see her. It screeched a shrill scream, whipped its tail back, hitting and knocking the man down, and then flapped its wings, speeding toward Wynonna.
“Now what?” she muttered to herself.
She had no bullets, the knife would do her no good, and she had nothing else on her. Looking around at the piles of trash in that back alley, Wynonna spotted a thick but rusted pipe. It would do.
Wynonna rushed over to the heap where she’d spotted the pipe and picked it up, gripping it in her hands. Waiting for the gargoyle to reach her, she turned her side toward the creature, raised the pipe over her shoulder, and waited. From reading Corrigan’s journal, she knew that there was only one way to deal with gargoyles. Their wings. Their stony little wings. If she could shatter all four of them, the stony little creature would perish. Breaking them sounded easier said than done though.
The gargoyle’s stone skin was harder than most rocks, and she expected based on Corrigan’s notes that even the metal pipe she now gripped wouldn’t stand up to all four of them. The gargoyle screeched just before charging into her, and Wynonna took a step back, swinging at the stony monster’s wings. She struck one, but the whole pipe shook in her hands as it bent and twisted. She lost her grip on the pipe and dropped it to the ground with a clanging sound, but the strike had been enough to crack one of the wings. The gargoyle continued past her and crashed to the ground - the wing she’d hit crumbling as the monster twisted to its side and the wing collided with the cobbled alleyway.
Looking back to the person the gargoyle had been chasing, Wynonna shouted, “Get out of here!”
The young man didn’t wait for a second offer and got to his feet before quickly fleeing from that alley and leaving her there to contend with the gargoyle alone. Meanwhile, and with her hands shaking, Wynonna reached down to pick up the bent pipe again, but the gargoyle moved faster. The stony creature pushed itself off the ground with its squat little legs and circled around, whipping the side of her knee with its tail as it passed her by.
Wynonna collapsed to the ground in pain, feeling like the gargoyle might have broken a bone in her leg. Knowing the stone creature still posed a threat, the vespari attempted to get to her feet. An electric pain shot through her whole body, and she crumpled back down on the ground, catching herself with her hands. The gargoyle offered no sympathy for her.
It came back at her once again, this time knocking one of her arms out from under her. Wynonna toppled over and saw the gargoyle twist around, ready to come at her once more, this time baring its stone teeth to her. Coiling in midair, the creature seemed to be rearing back in its flight path toward her, and it shot forth at the same dangerous speed as before.
This time, however, a shot rang out from further down the alleyway. Wynonna turned her head to see a man with a long rifle braced against his shoulder. He had pale skin and short dark hair that he’d greased and combed to one side. He wore a leather vest over a simple white button up shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His belt was similar to hers, with a revolver hanging from it, as well as several other tools, weapons, and ammunition. Through the opening in his white shirt, Wynonna spotted the tattoos i
nked into his chest. A vespari.
The gargoyle, meanwhile, had received another hit in one of its wings. Wynonna turned back toward the creature to see that the bullet had cracked the stone and shattered it far easier than her pipe had done. The gargoyle once again crashed into the ground, while the other vespari came over to Wynonna.
“Get out of here,” he told her.
“I’m not leaving,” she replied, forcing herself to stand on her injured knee. “This is my fight.”
“Bit of advice, sweetheart” he said with a sneer. “Leave this to a vespari.”
Wynonna grimaced. “I am a vespari.”
He laughed as though he’d never heard such a ridiculous idea. “Right! Now, why don’t you stop playing around, little girl, and get out of here before that thing comes back.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she told him. “I started this; I’m finishing it.”
“I don’t need you stepping all over my dick.”
“Here’s a wild idea. Put your dick back in your pants.”
Down the alley, the gargoyle managed to get airborne once again. It flapped its two remaining wings in rapid succession and shrieked at the pair of vespari.
“If you really do think yourself a vespari,” the man continued, “where’s your gun, huh?”
“Clearly, it’s hanging from my belt, eagle eye.”
“Then, why don’t you use it? A gargoyle’s not exactly a soft target.”
“What would I do without you? I’m out of bullets, jackass.”
“How can you be out?”
“Oh, I don’t know. If I had to guess, it had something to do with pulling the trigger until they all came out.”
He shook his head at her. “You got some mouth on you, bitch.” He sneered again. “After I take care of this, I’ll be happy to show you the only thing a woman’s supposed to do with her mouth.”
