Red Wishes Black Ink

Cortland Finiron, Hammer Master of the 12th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, demolition man

Rivian Stonespirit, Sword Master of the 5th Renown, Soldier's Rest, familiar with shadows

Vitt Secondson-Salvado, Hunter of the 9th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, just making conversation

Watts Stonework, Survivor of the 1st Renown, Soldier's Rest, listening

9 Blossum, 61 AW

The pyramidal city of Infinzel, North Continent

51 days until the next Granting

The sky.

The Firstson had never expected there to be so much of it. So much space for his brothers to stretch their wings. They were free now. Free of the dark and damp. Free of the endless pacing through tunnels that led nowhere new.

What did his brethren do with that freedom? They hunted. They destroyed. They killed.

The Firstson felt those urges as well.

But, in comparison to the sky, these old desires felt like small things.

The Firstson had not known what to expect of the outside. Having expectations instead of merely instincts was still a new development, and he often sank into unmoving contemplation like one of his faltering brothers whose core had begun to dim. In short, he found all this unexplored space to be exhilarating and overwhelming.

From his perch, the Firstson gazed upon the vast pyramidal city—he had always known that place was up here, could feel it like a great weight pressing down upon him—and the Firstson felt the same hatred for its walls and its people that he was sure now filled his brethren. And yet, the Firstson also felt a strange hollowness. He rubbed the broad stone expanse of his chest where his cores were buried and felt longing.

Old orders, he discovered, did not need to be followed.

With his wings folded around himself, the Firstson watched the murderous cavorting of his brothers. They had not undergone the changes that he had. These were the final throes of extinction. They would destroy themselves acting out a battle that had ended long ago. The Firstson wondered if it had been foolish to lead them to freedom. They would have served more of a purpose if he had taken their cores and their strong stone and made them a part of himself.

But, it had been mother who imbued his brothers with this purpose, and a part of the Firstson wished to honor that.

Mother. She was far away. In a prison of her own. The Firstson had much sky to travel if he was going to help her. He called to his brethren, but they did not listen. He would have to go alone.

As the Firstson flexed his wings, he saw the man with the hammer down in the street. Once, the little, muscular human had come to the Underneath to find the Firstson. They had tried to communicate with each other, but words were not the Firstson's purpose. The exchange had ended poorly—in fire and shouting. The Firstson suspected the man with the hammer would not be happy to see him considering all the death his unleashed brethren had wrought. Of course, the man with the hammer had destroyed many gargoyles across the years. The Firstson could remember a time—a time when he ran on four legs—and he had fled from the man with the hammer and his friend who carried a wall on his arm. Perhaps that inkling of self-preservation was the beginning of what the Firstson would become.

The Firstson did not have the same appetite for violence as his brothers. He would leave soon and so should not concern the man with the hammer. To express his neutrality, the Firstson raised one of his clawed hands and waved.

In response, the man threw his hammer.

The Firstson barely managed to duck in time, the weapon's studded head grazing across the delicate edge of his left wing. He hissed, felt the air change, and sensed the weapon whipping back in his direction. The Firstson leapt into the sky. The hammer cracked through the roof he had been standing upon and glided back to the man's hand.

Time to go, then.

The man had a strong arm, so the Firstson tucked his body tight and worked his wings as fast as he could. He flew upward and away, hoping that he was faster than the man was strong, and that the man would not attack an enemy in retreat.

The big sky welcomed the Firstson. He hoped for a warmer reception when he made it to Mother.

The hammer snapped into Cortland's hand. He cocked his arm back again, but the monster was already a small target in the reddish sky and traveling swiftly south. Away from Infinzel. Cortland didn't have time to waste pursuing it. Let the thinking gargoyle be someone else's problem.

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"That gargoyle waved to you," Rivian said.

"It learned to talk, too," Cortland replied. "Old magic evolving or some shit."

Rivian nodded as if that explanation made perfect sense. She led Cortland halfway down the street. The so-called Firstson hadn't traveled too far from its original point of egress.

What was left of the warehouse throbbed with shadows that clung to the air like heavy fog. The building had been blown apart like Rivian said, and then further damaged by gargoyles tearing their way through the windows and ceiling. A jagged crack ran down the front wall, the east wall had buckled inward, and the roof was little more than a few crossing beams. Cortland and Rivian stood on the opposite side of the street, in a steadily narrowing patch of sunlight.

The gargoyles bursting out through the ceiling had probably kept the shades from gathering sooner. There was no direct sunlight on the building now, though, and so Cortland watched as an appendage of yellowed bones clicked itself together, forming something like a lobster's claw in the entrance to the warehouse. It could've been one shade or a dozen working in concert—Cortland had no way of knowing. Through the gaps in the wall, he could see how the cursed spirits assembled new creations from their collections of bones, building bigger abominations than they would've been able to construct in the tight tunnels of the Underneath. Once night fell, those things would be unleashed on the streets of Infinzel.

"Those are shades," Cortland said to Rivian.

"Yes." The sword master had never visited the Underneath, yet she seemed unimpressed by the horrors gathering in the warehouse.

"I need to get in there," Cortland said.

"Not good to let them surround you," Rivian said. "Need to smash their skeletons. Drive them back."

That was the strategy patrols used in the Underneath, but that had been before Carina provided them with a method of killing the shades. Cortland reached into his satchel and produced one of the orbs that the logician had left behind.

"Let me show you how these work…" Cortland began.

"A bouncing blessing," Rivian said, and Cortland was surprised to see the woman flash a smile. "Excellent."

Cortland had forgotten that the sunlight-producing orbs weren't a Carina original. She had cribbed the designs from the Gadgeteers who sold them to Orvesians for use in their lands, which were rotten with shades.

"You've fought shades before," Cortland said, turning his head to study the sword master anew.

Rivian took the bouncing blessing from him and held it close to her lips, almost like she might kiss the smooth metal. "Yes," she said.

"Where?" Cortland asked.

"In the south," Rivian replied.

She could've meant Ruchet. The coastal town to the east of Orvesis had no shortage of problems with the undead thanks to the black magic and misspent wishes of its neighbor. However, as Cortland looked closer at Rivian—her dark hair, her pale face smeared with dirt and dust—he saw something else. He saw an Orvesian.

Rivian did not turn to look at Cortland, though she no doubt sensed his staring. He couldn't delve into this now. There wasn't time. The woman had the broken wall tattooed on her neck and that was good enough for Cortland.

"They sense us," Rivian said.

Indeed, at that moment, the skeletal pincer in the warehouse doorway snapped toward them, like the spring from a jack-in-the-box. Cortland flung his hammer out to meet it, smashing first through the smaller half of the claw, then careening through the skeletal architecture that fed back into the warehouse. The larger half of the claw spiked down toward them, but Cortland deflected it aside with [Greater Shield].

Meanwhile, Rivian whispered the activation word to her bouncing blessing. Vibrant light spewed from the orb as she lobbed it into the gap created by Cortland's attack. Together, they watched the artificial sunlight slash through the shadows. For a moment, humanoid forms became visible, like performers dancing around a fire, their arms waving frantically—and then the light sheared them apart like scissors through paper cutouts.

"You have more?" Rivian asked.

"Yeah," Cortland replied. His hammer snapped back to his hand. "And a plan on how to use 'em."

Although he sensed the ability was nearly drained, Vitt once again used [Open Weak Point] on the latest gargoyle to try the duo. A fist-sized gap opened on the underside of the monster's torso, its core glowing icy blue within.

"All yours," he told Watts.

Vitt couldn't help but watch what happened next with an assessing eye. Watts lunged forward with [Speed+] that rivaled Vitt's own and [Strength+] that probably matched Cortland. When the gargoyle snapped at him, Watts responded with an uppercut that clapped the monster's stone jaws shut. He caught the beast with one hand, wrestling an arm around its throat like he was dealing with an unruly drunk, and then pumped his free fist into the gargoyle's open midsection. Not much technique, Vitt decided, but incredible power and a certain no-nonsense brutality.

He could still kill this man, Vitt decided. He could kill him twice, if that's what the gods required. However, it was a fight Vitt would rather avoid.

Watts shoved the broken gargoyle aside and continued south. Vitt followed. The grisly wound on the back of Watts' head hadn't healed any further since the last time Vitt forced himself to look at it. The man's [Recovery+] had probably knitted him back together as much as it could and then faded. The chasm of split skull and gray matter no longer looked wet and red, but dried out and putrid. The sight of the injury turned Vitt's stomach.

"Better hope Henry still has some healing for you," Vitt said, drawing level with Watts so he didn't have to stare at the man's head.

"I'm counting on it." The bouncer's eye twitched. "Be a sad bit of irony if he lets me down again."

Vitt wasn't sure what he meant by that. Henry's drunken failings were well known, though, so it didn't surprise him. They had made it around the pyramidal city and were marching to the south side now, into Soldier's Rest. Checking the darkening skies, Vitt glanced back to the north.

"Irony is you lot digging a mineral garden and ending up with an Underneath all your own," Vitt said.

Watts shot him a look. "You think we caused this?"

"Did you?"

"No."

Vitt held up his hands. "I didn't think you had, but I thought I should check." He shook his head. "Probably my father, honestly."

For the first time since they'd joined forces, Watts slowed his steps and faced Vitt fully. "What?"

"It's the logical thing, isn't it?" Vitt replied with a wave of his hand. "Create a crisis to drive all you people back into the pyramid. Remind you that you're dependent upon him."

Although Vitt delivered this theory with the blasé attitude of small talk at a cocktail party, he felt a brief swelling of pride at the look on Watts' face. Carina would've appreciated this deduction.

"I hadn't thought of that," Watts said, picking up his pace again.

"No, of course you wouldn't," Vitt replied. "You have a hole in your head."

Watts had opened his mouth to respond when a brilliant light shot up from the east, like a star rising up from the ground to take its place in the sky. It couldn't have been more than three blocks over. Vitt squinted as he watched the light spin end-over-end, then plummet back toward the ground.

"That was a glowing hammer, wasn't it?" Vitt asked.

"I thought so, too," replied Watts.

"Well," Vitt said, "I suppose that's a signal. Should we—?"

Watts was already running in that direction.