Survivors of Arcadia

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  The dual bolts resonated for a moment, then detonated, slinging him to the earth smoking. With a groan, he struggled to rise; below, Xander and his arcanist protegee both gestured toward the unprotected hilltop.

  Scarlett put a shot through his eye before the evocation could materialize.

  Xander winced away as the other Inquisitor spasmed, the back of his head abruptly gone. Whatever expression he wore was locked behind the featureless mask, but he immediately turned his attention back to Scarlett, crouched on the crest of the tortured hill, rifle propped across forearm. He gestured sharply, directly at her—

  She put a bullet directly into his onyx visor.

  The lead projectile scraped off the stone, but jerked the Inquisitor’s head back and shattered his concentration. He reeled and staggered back from the safety of his conjured barricade.

  She shot him in the face again.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Tritanium trumped lead—but onyx fractured under the assault. Behind her, the Mayor found his feet again and the rainy, steamy sky above the enemy became a shower of shards of frozen daggers.

  In response, the enemy force surged forward, massing behind the heavily armored knights as they plowed a path through the field of traps. One tumbled into a pit that suddenly opened up beneath his feet, but the other two didn’t miss a step, leading the Elizabethians in a ground-shaking charge.

  The other part of the Estori militia dropped their bulky shields, readied spears and swords and halberds, and charged to meet them.

  The morning air rang with shouts of opposition. Xander’s visor cracked and split apart. The man fell to the earth; Scarlet recognized the gleam of hated green eyes through shattered black as he lay there, stunned.

  The last bullet clicked into her rifle’s chamber.

  She grinned.

  Behind her, someone screamed.

  She whipped her head around in time to see the last of her halberdiers fall to the earth, clutching the bloody rent in his chest.

  And Kaitlin sprinting up the hill, directly at her.

  Empowered by the Queen’s magic, the charging Inquisitor was little more than a black blur in the long shadows of the breaking dawn, closing most of the distance in a moment.

  The barrel of her longrifle spun around. She sighted in on her former lover.

  Scarlett’s heart thudded in her chest. Her lungs ached for fresh air. Her finger trembled in the trigger.

  She fired.

  A lead shot tore through Kaitlin’s upper ribs and barely slowed her down.

  The longrifle clicked dry. Scarlett cursed at the missed shot, and her fingers fumbled through the grass, searching for a fallen cartridge. Where was Adain—

  She spotted him as he stepped into the Inquisitor’s path, halberd at the ready to hold her off.

  Kaitlin rolled around the weapon’s point without effort, cut the pole in half with a wrist-mounted blade, and then stuck that same blade directly in his throat.

  No! Breathless, the Overseer couldn’t even voice her denial. The young soldier grabbed his killer’s arm as he fell to the grass, already choking on his own blood.

  But not before he somehow managed a warning cry.

  Mayor Bertram spun around as Kaitlin shook the dying soldier off. With an angry, wordless shout of his own, the Mayor evoked ice and fire, singeing the Inquisitor’s flesh as the ground beneath her cracked and froze, holding her in place.

  Not enough. Scarlett’s eyes fell on an intact steam cartridge a few feet away, not so far from Adain’s outstretched hand. She scrambled for it.

  Fire fell away from the Inquisitor as spikes of ice and earth erupted from beneath her, punching through her legs and lower body. Scarlett could feel it as the Mayor drew on her for support, but didn’t dare lend him much of her strength.

  Because if she did, they were both about to die.

  Slick, cracked earth shifted beneath her as she reached for the cartridge; the Overseer fell forward and caught a rock under the chin, the impact leaving her momentarily breathless once more. Her eyes focused on the metal cartridge in front of her face, and she rolled to a crouch next to it, fingers fishing in the grass.

  Crude blades of earth and ice tore into Kaitlin’s body, ruptured her organs. She pushed through it. Elemental spikes broke off and slid free as the torrent of invoked magic coursing through her body knitted her wounds and lent her unstoppable might. Rich red blood dripped thickly down her Inquisitor’s leathers, but she barely made a sound; the Order was thoroughly trained to ignore pain for this very reason.

  Implacably, swiftly, she advanced on the Mayor anyway.

  Scarlett already knew how this story ended.

  She’d written it herself many times before.

  There were only a handful of ways to kill an Inquisitor. All of them were sudden, violent, and overwhelming. It couldn’t come from sustained damage; it had to be a wound that gave them no chance to react, to heal.

  Like a bullet to the head.

  Scarlett ejected her spent cartridge; the metal box danced in the grass as she slammed the next one into its place.

  Kaitlin brushed aside bloody, elemental spears as Mayor Bertram sweated and strained, trying to hold her back. She reached for her belt.

  Scarlett leveled her rifle and took aim.

  The Mayor stumbled as a slender throwing axe bloomed from his chest.

  Magic soaking the air suddenly vanished, his frozen, rocky conjurations crumbling in an instant. Suddenly free, Kaitlin leaped the last ten feet at the Mayor, wrist blade aimed at his head.

  Scarlett shot her in the shoulder and knocked her off course.

  The Inquisitor still slammed into Estori’s Mayor, sending the portly man crashing to the ground at her feet, an axe still embedded in his chest. Then she rolled to her feet, catlike and inhumanly quick, and launched herself at the Overseer instead.

  Scarlett dodged her old friend’s first swipe, ducking low as the wrist blade skimmed through her crimson hair. She shifted to the side and rose, cracking the Inquisitor beneath the jaw with the butt of her rifle. Kaitlin staggered back, and her good arm darted to her belt and whipped forward.

  Scarlett stumbled; a pair of axes slammed into the side of her rifle as she transposed it to block the throw, but she wasn’t strong enough to absorb the Inquisitor’s might.

  Kaitlin rushed her again, throwing out an experimental jab as her shattered shoulder joint regenerated. Scarlett parried it aside with her forearm, but let it come dangerously close to landing. The Inquisitor stepped into the follow up blow, a close-range elbow that would probably shatter her skull if it landed.

  The Overseer ducked low; even expecting the blow, she was barely fast enough, and it grazed her scalp with enough force to jerk her head back. But she kept moving as her opponent overextended, flowing under and around the strike, slipping to the Inquisitor’s side. She pushed the woman’s arm to the side to divert her momentum, stuffed the butt of her rifle into her armpit to knock her off balance, and kicked her legs out from under her.

  As she fell, Kaitlin kicked her in the shin, cracking the bone and stopping her offensive momentum cold.

  Before Scarlett could do more than gasp, the Inquisitor was already back on her feet.

  Kaitlin closed the gap in an instant; with a shink of metal, another wrist blade joined the first as she jabbed, punched, and thrust at her former lover. Scarlett knocked them all aside, each strike coming closer than the last until her skin was etched with bloody tracks from the grazes.

  Almost like old times. Their eyes met, and they shared a smirk.

  Kaitlin stepped in and kneed her in the gut.

  Scarlett coughed blood onto the Inquisitor’s black leathers. Dark spots danced in front of her eyes as her vision blurred. But she didn't fall.

  Instead, she dangled from Kaitlin’s outstretched fist, scarlet hair tangled in bloody fingers.

  The Inquisitor gave her an apologetic frown, emotions roiling in her jade eyes, and rared back with he
r other blade-tipped fist.

  Scarlett stuck her boot knife into the woman’s side, deep enough to nick her heart.

  The grasp on her hair disappeared. Scarlett’s legs wavered like jelly as they tried to hold her upright. The Inquisitor reflexively reached for the blade with her other hand and yanked it out, throwing it far to the side, then lunged for Scarlett again.

  The Overseer kicked her rifle back into her hands, spun it around, and planted the barrel in her friend's eye.

  She winced away and squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  A quick glance down the barrel showed a twin pair of axes, one lodged far too deep to let the steam mechanism fire properly.

  Kaitlin slapped the weapon aside. The force tore it from her grasp as the Inquisitor tackled her and bore her to the ground. There wasn’t even time to curse her luck as her head struck the churned earth right beside the motionless Mayor of Estori.

  Feet pinned her legs as fingers found her throat. Kaitlin’s steel grasp wrapped tight around her neck, hesitating for a moment before inexorably tightening. Scarlett twisted, grabbed at the woman’s hands and pried, but she had a better chance of moving the hill beneath her than dislodging the Inquisitor now.

  “Sorry, Scarly,” her killer whispered.

  Scarlett’s eyes fluttered shut. She reached out for her sparse network of followers, only to find most of them missing. Frantic, she reached out even further, to the Mayor’s connections—and found them closed to her.

  With Bertram gone, most of the town had already turned its back on her.

  Even though she was trying to save him. Even though she was trying to save the whole Abyssal town, to avenge its fallen who still bled out on the ground on this very hill.

  But then, they didn’t know that, did they? Or maybe after fifteen years with her as the face of Elizabethian oppression, maybe they didn’t care.

  Figures… Despite the futility, she reached out anyway. This isn’t...for...me. She pleaded, sending out her urgency along the few thin, silver lines that connected her to others in this world.

  She found six.

  Five worried sparks dimmed and faded; her fingers strengthened and her wounds healed, but nowhere near enough.

  One weak spark fluttered, guttered, and danced, already on the edge of oblivion.

  Weakly, Scarlett opened her eyes. They met Adain’s as the spark of life finally faded from them.

  A sudden surge of strength coursed through her veins.

  He’d given the last of his life, his hope, to her.

  Compared to the living conduit of the Queen’s power above her, it wasn’t much.

  But it was enough for one strike.

  It had to be enough.

  With a snarl, Scarlett reached above her head, tore the axe from the Mayor’s sternum, and planted it in Kaitlin’s neck.

  The Inquisitor choked, a gasp of shock cut off by lack of air. Her grip weakened instantly as the axe blade cut off the supply of blood to her brain. She reached for the handle.

  Scarlett head-butted her, breaking the Inquisitor’s nose. It healed instantly, but stunned her and splattered blood in her bright jade eyes. She grabbed the woman by the arms and flipped her over, then shoved the axe deeper into her throat with one hand while slamming the bottom of her fist into her nose over and over again.

  The burst of power ran its course. Adain’s spark faded from her mind. Beneath her, Kaitlin’s struggles weakened.

  “Can't believe…” her breath came out as a whisper. Scarlett had to lean low to hear it. “You won. Got to be...so out of practice…”

  “Sorry, Kait,” she whispered back. Blood, rain, and tears dripped down from her face, splattering the Inquisitor’s pale, delicate features. “I'll see you soon, okay?”

  Somehow, she held on until her lover stopped struggling.

  Then she collapsed on top of her.

  “Carlyle. Carlyle!”

  An eternity later, something shook her. Simone? Sophia? Did I oversleep again? The sounds of distant gunfire and screams brought her back to the present, and she looked up.

  Bertram Dietrich stood over her, panting.

  “You’re...alive?” She stared at him, forcing her sluggish thoughts to process the moment.

  “Barely, and not for long,” the Mayor pressed a hand to the wound in his chest. A steady trickle of power funneled into her, and her wounds started sealing of their own accord as her instincts took over. “Scarlett, please. They’re killing my people. I need you.”

  She blinked away her daze. And stood.

  She left the axe where it was.

  “I’m on it,” she replied. The words came out a croak through her damaged throat.

  Bertram stared at her as she picked up her battered rifle, then dropped it back into the dirt with a disgusted grunt. “What are you going to do? What should I do?”

  “Me? I’m going to end this.” She bent and carefully searched the Inquisitor’s body. “You stay here and keep low.”

  “I...can’t do that. That...man...is destroying my people. It’s terrifying. If I can slow him down at all…” The Mayor squared his shoulders.

  “Then he will kill you, destroy your people’s morale, and cut me off from any help.” She tugged Kaitlin’s short, thick tritanium blade from the sheath on her back and nodded. “Don’t make me do this the hard way, Bertram.”

  Her eyes couldn’t help but flicker to Adain’s body.

  The Mayor’s eyes followed her, and he slowly nodded. “I’ll step up if you fail, then. Good luck.”

  She nodded.

  Scarlett slid down the hillside, slick with blood and rain, some of it her own. It wasn’t hard to get behind the enemy force; she’d chosen this position partially for that reason.

  She just hadn’t expected to survive long enough to make use of it.

  If I beat Kaitlin, I can kill Xander.

  Her eyes found each of the four motionless forms on her way down, her own most trustworthy soldiers.

  Soldiers she’d failed, every last one.

  After all, I want this one a lot more.

  Holding her wounds, limping from her cracked shin, she slipped into the back of the narrow pass between hills and followed the path laid down by the Elizabethian force. Ahead of her, Xander stood in his conjured fortification, calling down the elements. Above the Inquisitor’s back, icy black poured from between his shoulder blades into the clouds, streamers spiraling around his body. It formed a shroud of ebony edges, which she knew to be sharper than razors and far less forgiving.

  At his command, wind and storms congealed on a pair of soldiers and crushed them to a pulp. Fire ignited within a soldier and burnt its way out as she screamed. A handful at a time, the Inquisitor selected his opponents and sentenced them to gruesome, unavoidable deaths. The rest of the invasion force stood back and held a perimeter; Xander didn’t even need them any more. Maybe he never had. Maybe they were just here to clean up his mess.

  Sadist.

  Supposedly, it was to “send a message.” While no longer proud of it, she’d once done similar herself. And it was undeniably effective.

  The difference was that if she could have seen his face, she knew he would be smiling.

  Something in the Empire had changed.

  Maybe today she could help fix it.

  Scarlett crept closer, readied her fallen lover’s blade.

  If he’d so much as glanced back, he would have seen her; the Sisters’ light was at her back, illuminating her against their glowing background. If she’d had even a pistol, it would already be over, but Kaitlin had never carried pistols, and neither did she.

  Luckless to the end.

  Black daggers spun in front of her face, spraying sundered droplets of rain. Tiny sparks of lightning danced between them.

  One arced outward and caught her skin instead, a flicker of pain.

  Xander paused, then spun to face her.

  Scarlett leaped into the blade wall.

&
nbsp; She tried to protect her face with one arm and was able to watch as the black shards tore it to pieces. She drank deep from the Mayor’s power as the banner rent her flesh like cheap cloth, but quickly exhausted it. Her training kicked in and shut out the overwhelming pain as something raked across her face and half her vision vanished. She twisted as his aura tore open her side, but kept her other arm safely behind her body.

  Scarlett slammed into the surprised Inquisitor General shoulder-first and knocked him to the ground.

  Then she used her good arm to ram the short blade through the base of his neck and up into his brain.

  She shoved two of Kaitlin’s grenades into his mouth for good measure and rolled away.

  Shock and recognition still painted his face, right up until the resulting explosion tore it apart.

  The Overseer’s head lolled to the side, and she smiled as best she could at the scorch mark.

  Perfect execution.

  Just like you taught me.

  Well...maybe a little messy at the end…

  With the last of her energy, Scarlett laughed as she bled out into the mud. As her consciousness faded away, it trailed off to a chuckle, then faded away entirely.

  I...got you.

  Promise...fulfilled.

  - - -

  A shadow loomed over Estori.

  Slim and small and shrouded in black, it stared down from the tallest building in town as the city hall’s bell tolled.

  It was a mourning bell, calling out for all the heroic souls that the Gravekeeper had called down to the Abyss.

  One set of tolls for each soul. It had been ringing for days.

  It was also a victory bell. There was no set number or pattern of tolls for the militia’s success, but the town knew it all the same.

  They had fought for what they believed in, and they had won. Despite the odds, and with much sacrifice, but they had won.

  The shadow had to respect that.

  Maybe one day it would return to correct the victory.

  But that day wasn’t today.

  And who knew? Maybe it would never come.

  If these people could have faith: innkeepers and merchants, barmaids and mayors, even outcast Elizabethian soldiers…