Something had broken through the boundary. Something big.
The turbines on the Rakzeri airship Wicked roared loud as they blasted away waves of cold desert sand. The sky was pale and vast, and a dank red glow pressed up from the western horizon. Kane smelled sea salt and coal dust on the icy wind. They were just a dozen miles from the Ebonsand Sea, a dark and impressive expanse o f churning waters and dangerous, unnatural storms.
Kane knelt down in the sand and fac ed the barrier, a series of tall arcane pillars made of limestone and granite. The line of stones stretched in either direction for as far as the eye could see. Each pillar was covered in dark runes that supposedly cast an invisible shield between them, which acted as a twenty-mile long fence between Blacksand and the wild territories to the north and west.
A pair of the pillars had been broken, however, and up close it appeared they’d been rammed by some sort of vehicle or a large creature. Unfortunately, the salt winds off the Ebonsand coast had blown away any tracks, so all he could tell for certain was that either an armored land mammal or a small tank had smashed through the stones.
Awesome, he thought. Is it too much to ask for things to just be easy every once in a while?
“Well?” Jade asked. The witch stood just inside Wicked’s open bay door. T he ship hovered a few yards behind Kane and less than a foot off the ground. It was appropriately named: every Rakzeri ship Kane had ever seen looked like a handful of broken knives shoved around a conch-shell. The ships were efficient and fast but, in his humble opinion, ugly as hell.
Jade’s long dark hair caught in the wind. She was very short — five feet, if even that — and as thin as a rail. I t was a wonder she didn’t lift up in the breeze and sail into the sky.
“ ‘Well’ what? ” Kane said. “ You’re the expert. Y ou tell me.”
Kane had to shield his eyes from the dust kicked up by the Wicked, but there really wasn’t much to see other than the boundary, an unnamed arcane perimeter built by the mages of Blacksand to keep hostile wilderness mutations and primitive humanoids at bay.
It occurred to Kane that they weren’t far from Crucifix Point, the site of a terrible massacre at the hands of a vampire kick murder squad several years back. Ever since the Southern Claw had pulled most of their resources out of the area to concentrate on fighting the vampires in and around Rimefang Loch, the more the southerly territories had fall en into disorder. Now they were just a lawless haven for criminals, pirates and outcasts.
“It doesn’t look good,” Jade said. Kane hadn’t even seen her disembark from the vessel, but suddenly she stood on the ground right next to him. Ronan was behind her.
Jade walked across the cold sand with sandaled feet. Kane’s skin went cold at the presence of her spirit.
“Well?” Ronan asked. Only his eyes were visible beneath his shemagh.
“Give her a second,” Kane said. “You got a hot date, or something?”
“Blow me,” Ronan growled.
“That’s between you and your date,” Kane nodded.
“ Grow up, ” Jade groaned.
She walked past Kane and up to the nearest obelisk, which stood some eight-feet-tall and three-feet across even after it had been broken. The obelisks were partially submerged in the sand. There was roughly fifty feet between the individual stones, and they’d been linked together with a thin iron chain that had snapped and fallen on to the ground.
“There are trace s of foreign magic here, ” Jade said. “ Something used it to shatter the barrier.” She concentrated a moment. “ Ebon Cities magic. Chattel sorcery. ”
“ Shocker, ” Kane said.
“That’s terrific,” Ronan said with a shake of his head. “What now…‘Chief’?”
Kane tried to ignore the comment. Ronan was upset that Black had put Kane in charge while she stayed behind in Blacksand, but Kane liked it even less.
I shouldn’t be in charge, he thought. The only reason it’s me is because Black knows Ronan is two steps shy of being a complete nutcase, but she does n’t just want us to take orders from Vago’s flunkies. God, this sucks!
“This is the third breach we’ve found,” Kane said, mostly to himself, and then he turned to Jade, “but this is the first time you’re been able to get a read for what might have caused the damage, right?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“Then we should go through here, and check it out.”
She gave him an annoyed look.
“So you’re an expert on magic now?” she asked sardonically.
“Don’t get your panties wrinkled,” Kane said. “Do you disagree?”
“No,” Jade said after a moment. “But maybe you should let the mage ma k e the call on things related to magic.” Her smile went cold. “ Got it?”
Kane glowered, but he clenched his teeth and bit back about fifty insulting comments that came to mind. He heard Ronan laugh behind him.
We wouldn’t be in this mess if not for the f riggin’ Revengers. He and Cross had always kno w n it wouldn’t be easy for Danica to walk away from Black Scar, especially with as much a s she seemed to know about T he Revengers. But we didn’t expect them to track her down here, in the middle of N owhere S quared. They were basically out of money and short on all of their other supplies, and they really had no easy way to escape. Working with Vago was the only way they’d managed to stay out of Black Scar’s clutches, and every day they had to hide and rely on his protection they just fell deeper into his pocket.
Jade looked at the barrier again. Her attention was lost in the shifting sands.
“What is it?” Kane asked.
“I don’t know…” she said. “Something’s here…s omething is tied to this land.”
Her voice was dreamy and distant, and she stared straight ahead. Kane cautiously stepped around to look at her face. Her eyes glowed. They were locked in some arcane realm, trapped in a vision of magical trace lines or spectral pulses or some other damn thing Kane only barely understood. Even with as much as he’d learned about magic in the two years he’d spent with Cross and Danica, very little of it actually made sense to him.
“ ‘Something’ is…kind of vague, ” he said.
“Something old,” she said. “ S omething powerful.” Her eyes blinked, and when she opened them again their normal cold green color had returned. She looked dazed for a moment, and then regained her composure and looked at Kane. Whatever she saw on his face made her smile. “ What, did I creep you out? ”
“What?” Kane said with a flippant smile. “Oh, no…you know. It’s all good.”
Jade laughed.
She was such an enigma to him. Even with as much power as she supposedly possessed, Kane though t Jade lacked that harde ned edge he was used to seeing i n other mercenaries.
Well…most of the time, at least. Keep your head straight, pal. She could fry your balls off with a gesture.
She turned back to the open desert.
“What did you see?” he asked.
“I saw something the vampires might want,” she said. “We should go and check it out.”
Blacksand had to date managed to stay out of the war between the So uthern Claw and the Ebon Cities, in part because the criminal portcity only had a relatively small human population. Most of the inhabitants of the ramshackle and crime-ridden place were Doj, Vuul, Gol and the little-seen Draj, a race of Cruj offshoots who kept to the shadows and were generally distrusted and feared. There was no true ruling authority in Blacksand. As had been the case in Kane’s home city of Kalakkaii, the crime guilds competed for control. I n Black sand the upper hand unquestionably belonged to Klos Vago and T he Shard, but Kane understood they’d recently been challenged by a new band of thrill- seeking mercenaries and robbers called t he Shadow Guild.
Yeah, I do n’t see that ending well.
Unfortunately for Vago, holding the reins of power in the city also meant that he had to deal with the city’s problems. W hile he maintained a fairly traditional city militia that handle d local troubles, the problem of the downed arcane barricade warranted sending out the heavy hitters to investigate.
And since you own our asses at the mom ent, why waste your goons when you can send us instead? Seriously, we get all of the fun jobs.
Sightings of Ebo n Cities scouts in the region — which was unusual in and of itself, since Blacksand was literally hundreds of miles away from both Southern Claw and vampire territories — had forced Vago to take some initiative and find out what was going on. The last thing the Shard or any of the nomads, natives or settlers of the southern wastelands wanted was for one of the major powers to move in and start taking over the area.
Kane thought about Danica, stuck back in the city with Vago, who both of them suspected had no intention of ever keeping up his end of the bargain. He was worried about her. She’d probably kill him if she knew that, but that didn’t change anything.
He thought about Cross, and wondered if they’d ever be able to bring him back. He’d not woken since they’d rescued him from the ruins of Shadowmere Keep, ca rried him across the wastelands and hitched a ride on the Dubrakki Railway to get to Blacksand. He ’d not stirred in the three weeks since they’d found him. Not once.
Kane shuddered, and tried to calm his mind. He’d been at odds ever since Ekko had died, but his new family — there was no other way he could think of them now, not after all they’d been through together — had helped him heal his wounds. In a way, Cross’ s disappearance had brought he and Danica closer. They trusted each other now, and worked well together.
That was important, he thought. I spent two years blaming Danica for what had happened to Ekko. It was past time for me to get over that shit.
Before, it had been Cross that had fused the team together, but Mike felt sure that even after Cross came back the three of them would be even more tightly knit than ever before. Others came and went, but it was those three, the survivors of Karamanganji i, who held the tightest bond.
If he comes back, he thought. If.
“There,” Jade said.
The Rakzeri vessel tilted back and forth as freezing ocean wind batter ed the underbelly of the ship. Everyone held onto support bars or the backs of the seats. Weapons and armor lined both walls of the vessel, and various gauges, valves and scopes littered the ceiling like plumbing pipes. The unstable floor made Kane’s stomach turn, but he held on with muscular arms lined with tattoos — eyes, blades, suns, pyramids, crescent moons — and tried to balance the weight of the blades and the HK45s on his shoulder harness.
“Fly much, Maur?” he laughed. “I’m about to lose my lunch if you keep up your Red Baron shtick…”
“Maur will ignore that comment,” the Gol replied. “ That is lucky for you, because if he hadn’t you would get out and walk.”
“That m ight be safer,” Ronan laughed.
“You girls are funny,” Sol smiled. “Now shut up and keep your minds on business.”
“Maur should warn,” he shouted back, “that he can easily open the bay doors and dump all of you out.”
Kane walked up next to the cockpit, a small metal recess surrounded by tubes filled with hydraulic fluids and heating pumps that kept the vessel’s interior atmosphere bearable even in adverse weather conditions. The pilot’s seat was pressed tight against the forward plating, and there were so many panels, monitors and dials it was actually difficult to look through the forward window and see what was in front of them. Jade stood directly behind Maur, and as Kane came close she pointed again.
“Look,” she said, and her voice was frightened.
The terrain ahead looked like any beach along that stretch of the coast. Metallic white fog rolled along the bleach white sands and half-buried rock formations.
But about a klick ahead of them was a wide expanse of dark ground surrounded by a crumbling circle of black pillars. A n unmistakable air of power gripped the area, a faint and shimmering black ice glow.
“There’s something in there,” Jade said. “Something that’s hidden from plain sight.”
“Can you…you know…scout it?” Kane asked. “With your spirit?”
“I’m sort of hesitant to do that,” she said quietly. “Something isn’t right here. ” She took a breath and nodded. “But you’re right…that’s what needs to be done.”
T he air twist ed and stiffen ed as her spirit shifted away from her body and exited the craft. Jade’s feet lift ed off the ship’s floor. White light shone from her eyes. Kane heard cold whispers, a winter’s breath.
Up ahead, t he space within the pillars shifted. Pale sands burned to black and twisted in to the sky in a tangle of ink-dark coils. Pulsating pockets of light appeared in the darkness, a shine of frozen stars.
“Whoa, ” he said.
The darkness rose. T endrils of shadow joined together in a wide arc. A shifting archway of dust rose up, and in just a matter of seconds it stood a hundred feet high. T he space within the arch was like a cold dark mirror filled with choking vapors.
Kane looked through the massive lens and saw more of the desert and the sky, but everyt h ing was saturated in an air turned charcoal: the sand was black, the sky was an onyx slate, and the birds were twisted, like scars. Soiled wind howled from within the arch and blast ed shards of razored darkness onto the pale sand.
Kane’s eyes were lost in th at vision. He knew he stared into another world.
Moments after the gateway appeared it exploded, and fell back to the desert floor. Only a wide circle of charred ash remained.
“Jesus…” Kane breathed. “PLEASE tell me I wasn’t the only one who saw that!”
“What the hell?” Ronan breathed. Sol looked like he’d seen a ghost, and Maur was visibly shaken.
“Jade?” he asked.
Jade shook all over. She held herself as st ill as she could. Kane took her shoulder in his hand, and he almost jumped at how cold she was.
“Jade?” he repeated. “ Y ou okay?”
“I’m sorry,” she breathed. She s ounded exhausted and terrified. Kane tried to steady her. “I’m not sure how that happened…”
“How what happened?” Kane asked.
“I was just scouting the area, but I…I triggered something…I accidentally found the way to open some p ortal…”
“Ok…it’s okay,” Kane said. F or a moment he forgot the fact that she techn ically wasn’t on his side. “I t’s okay. We know it’s bad, and that’s enough to get us started.” He looked at the rest of them. “Maybe we should…”
A deafening explosion rang through out the cabin. Flam es blasted across the window. T he ship nearly flipped over in mid-air. Maur cursed, and Kane wasn’t able to grab hold before the ship violently lurched sideways and threw him against the wall.
Alarms blared through the airship. Freezing wind blasted through a rent in the hull. Noise and violent motion eclipsed Kane’s senses.
He managed a glance at the nautoscope, and he saw war machines approach across the sand. He wasn’t sure how they ’d managed to get so close without being noticed.
Jade went to the torn hull, and her spirit tried to weave it back together. S team erupted from the ship ’ s pipe-work as the auto-flush system purge d the flames from the aircraft’s interior. Sol grabbed his weapons and Ronan climbed into the gunner’s seat, a swivel-mounted chair near the aft end that controlled the top-mounted 20mm cannons.
Bladed missiles raced by them outside. Kane readied his M 14A, moved behind Maur, and looked through the viewport. A pair of vampire tanks with oversized stone wheels and steel-plated hulls raced towards them, bladed sharks that dragged chains across the ground. The vehicles bore rotating iron guns and bone harpoons. Dark sails atop the sleek vessels propelled them along using the desert wind, and churning pillars of smoke billowed from their exhaust ports.
More missiles launched, screaming black shards of serrated cold metal that left trails of spectral steam in their wake. Kane saw ghastly faces race ahead of the weapons as they drew close.
“Maur, I hope you know what the hell you’re doing!”
Wicked ’s cannons roared. Kane covered his ears — the grind of the motorguns was deafening. The ship rocked with explosive blasts. Shells tore one tank apart as Maur twisted Wicked and dodged the first missile.
But the second missile struck home. The blast tore open the starboard hull and threw the ship sideways. The roar of exploding steel enveloped them. A wave of h o t wind threw Kane hard against the port wall. Glass shattered and flew through the cockpit like rain.
Kane felt nothingness below and around him as Wicked careened out of control. The cannons kept roaring.
Jade fell against the shattered starboard hull and nearly slid out of the ship and into open air. Kane threw himself forward and slid across broken glass, grimacing as he reached out and snagged her hand. Sol grabbed his legs and kept them both from falling out. They all three held on to the floor plating as Maur did his best to wrestle the ship back under control.
“Hang on!” Kane shouted. H e held tight onto Jade’s arms for those final few seconds before the airship crashed to the ground in a blaze of metal and fire.