“Oh, you vindictive little bastards,” Angel cursed. He shot the grappling hook at the wall and launched into the air, swinging back towards the other end of the room.

By the time he’d reached it, the sand was already pouring through the halls and starting to trickle into the hallway behind it. Angel dashed into it at full speed, grabbing his travel pack as he passed by it. The sand nipped at his heels as he made his way back to the lowered segment of the wall.

It was almost completely shut. The only thing keeping it open were the rocks that he’d placed on the top, and the cracking noises coming out from them didn’t inspire Angel with confidence that they’d last much longer.

Angel didn’t bother trying to push the wall back downwards. He was strong, but he wasn’t going to beat out a machine specifically designed for strength. Instead, he pressed his ear against the door.

There was a faint clicking from the lower right corner as what Angel suspected to be a motor struggled to finish closing the trap. He grabbed a canister and slotted it into his arm. Angel held his arm to the lower right portion of the wall as his arm sparked with yellow light. A burst of electricity shot out of his palm, slamming into the door and coursing through it.

A crackle told him that the spell had hit its mark, and a small puff of black smoke rose up from a tiny crack between the wall and the ground. Without the motor powering it, the wall shuddered and dropped back down to the ground.

During the short time it had taken him to disable the wall, the sand had already reached Angel’s feet. He grimaced and stepped over the wall, dashing towards the exit of the catacomb.

The first door that he’d entered had also attempted to close, but it too had been foiled by the rock. It was much easier to break through the motor trying to swing a door shut than one holding a wall up from below, so Angel barreled into it, leading with his mechanical shoulder.

Gears caught and sputtered for a moment before something gave way and the door swung wide. The sand was right behind Angel as he scrambled away and leapt out of the hole he’d made to enter the catacomb.

No more than a few seconds later, a wave of sand crashed against where he’d been standing. His makeshift hole had been completely filled. Not a single trace of the catacomb’s entrance remained.

Angel rose to his feet, brushing the sand off his clothes. That had been closer than he would have liked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the wooden box, running a finger across it in wonder.

It was much smoother than he’d expected. A smooth, shimmery coating covered the surface of the box, and there was a small latch at the front. Angel popped it open, revealing a tiny purple marble in the center of a lush red silken pad.

“Huh,” Angel said, picking it up with his mechanical hand and tilting his head. “What could you be, friend?”

The orb twinkled innocently in the late afternoon sky. Angel turned it over, but it was perfectly glossy. As far as he could tell, it was just a piece of glass. As he inspected it, the slippery ball suddenly slipped between his fingers.

Angel cursed, grabbing at it with his other hand. He caught it midair, but his smirk vanished as a sharp pain punched into his palm. He yelped and yanked his hand back. A purple splotch twinkled on his palm, stinging like the bite from a large insect.

The splotch twinkled and faded away into his skin, vanishing as if it had never been there. “Ah. Shit.”

Angel prodded at his hand, but he couldn’t feel any trace of the orb. He couldn’t feel it moving within his arm either. If it had been poison, there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He shot the wooden box a dirty look and carefully closed it, placing it within his travel pack and hopping back onto his board. If he was going to die, he wasn’t about to do it in the middle of the desert. His board roared to life and he shot off through the desert once again.

The sun traced through the sky and dipped towards the horizon. Just as the light was starting to fade, the dark form of a city rose on the horizon. A permanent cloud of steam and smoke floated in the air above it. Angel slowed as he grew closer. Massive walls easily five stories high towered over him, all made of shimmering bronze.

Cannon barrels poked through holes in the wall and lined the battlements. At the front of the city were two massive doors that rose all the way up to the top of the walls. They were half open. In the sky far above the city, an enormous blimp made slow circles through the air as it prepared to land.

Angel hopped off his board as soon as he was within walking distance of the massive doors. A small, ever-present crowd had gathered just inside the city, leaving an opening in the center for vehicles to pass through. Vendors yelled and hawked their goods at anyone foolish enough to listen, and the smell of fried food drifted into his nostrils.

He hopped out of the way as a heavy metal box on treads shot past the crowd and rumbled by him, spraying sand everywhere as it sped into the desert. He rolled his eyes and slung the board over his shoulder.

Vendors called out, waving trinkets that Angel had no doubt would fall apart by the following morning. He ignored them, just like the rest of the city’s residents. The only people that actually spoke to the merchants at the gate were tourists.

Angel walked at a brisk pace down the main road. He entered the markets, which had been conveniently placed in the center of the city to ensure people had to pass through them at least once wherever they went.

Despite the late hour, the markets were bustling. Large tarps covered the hundreds of tiny shops from the searing desert sun, and most of them were still open. Many never closed – Bronze City never slept.

A dirty boy in one of the alleyways started towards Angel at a casual pace. Angel turned and looked him straight in the eye, shaking his head slightly.

The boy grimaced. Then he gave Angel a small nod and turned to return to his alley. Angel just shook his head. Some things never changed. It hadn’t been that long since he’d been in the boy’s place, but fate in the Barren was as fickle as the wind.

Angel arrived before a small building near the edge of the market. The sign had long since fallen off the door, which was rusted and turning green. The smell of oil and smoke assaulted Angel’s eyes and nostrils as he stepped inside.

“You’re back early,” a rough voice said. Angel grimaced and waved a cloud of dark smoke away from his face. An overweight man sat in a chair in the corner of the room, a cigar in his hand. Knick knacks and random items adorned every single inch of free space on the walls and a good bit of the floor.

“Hello, Fence,” Angel said. “Still trying to drive yourself to an early grave, I see. I thought you’d stopped this particular habit.”

“We’re all going to die eventually,” Fence replied. His hand shook slightly as he raised the cigar to his puffy lips and took a slow drag. He combed his thinning black hair back with his other hand. “What, it's your business if I choose how?”

“Suit yourself,” Angel said, shrugging. “I’m fine, by the way.”

“Of course you are,” Fence grumbled. “So? What did you get? Anything worth my time?”

Angel hemmed and hawed for a moment, mostly to get a rise out of the large man. He would have told him about the purple orb if there was anything to be gained from it, but he wasn’t dead yet, and he didn’t fancy the merchant digging around his body if he did end up biting it. Fence crushed the cigar in his large grip and thrust his hand out.

“Come on, Angel!” Fence complained. “It’s cruel to do this to me.”

Angel chuckled and pulled out the green orb he’d taken from the orc. He tossed it to Fence, who snatched it out of the air with surprising dexterity. He examined it for a moment, then let out a small grunt.

“Nice core,” he said. “I can give you four Vex for it.”

“It’s worth seven and we both know it,” Angel replied, getting ready for a long haggling session. He wasn’t a fan of it, but Fence would happily wring him dry if he gave the other man a chance.

“Five,” Fence replied, looking down at the crushed cigar in his hand regretfully.

“Six,” Angel said.

“Fine,” Fence sighed. He reached into a pouch on his waist and tossed six bronze coins at Angel, who caught them with a surprised blink.

“What else do you have? You can’t tell me that’s all you found,” Fence said.

Angel shrugged, not wanting to knock his good fortune. He put the coins away and pulled out the pendant. Fence’s eyes lit up slightly, but Angel shook his head.

“I’m going to take a look at it first.”

“You do that with all the artifacts you find!” Fence complained. “This is why you live out of the corner of my shop, Angel. If you stopped ruining all the artifacts you found, you’d be one of the richest Seekers in Bronze City.”

“And then I would be dead,” Angel said. “My augments are what make me this good. You need to see the bigger picture, Fence.”

Fence pulled another cigar out from his pocket. He scrabbled through a pile of junk for a few moments before finding a small metal canister. He grabbed a metal gauntlet from the ground and slid it over his hand. He placed the canister in a slot on the back of the glove and held his hand up next to the cigar.

A spark of flame flared out of his palm, lighting the cigar. The canister ejected and clinked to the floor, rolling against a pile of trash. Fence pulled the gauntlet off and tossed it to the ground. He took a deep drag of the cigar, then let out a sigh.

“Do what you want, Angel. Just make sure you can afford this month’s rent. I’m not running a charity.”

Angel rolled his eyes. He navigated through the piles of garbage on the floor and over to a small door nestled in the corner of the room. He pushed it open and stepped inside, closing it behind him. Unlike the rest of Fence’s shop, his small room was neat and organized.

Artifacts of all sorts hung from hooks on the walls in various states of disassembly. The room was only a few paces long, and Angel had put every bit of it to use. His small metal desk and chair were sandwiched up against the wall, and his tools were stored under the desk in a small bin he’d found in the market years ago.

Angel’s bed was just a mattress and a sheet on the floor, but it was better than the streets. He detached the board from his back and tossed it onto the bed. Angel sat down in the chair and took the pendant out of his jacket.

He placed it on the table and pulled the tool crate out with his foot. He grabbed a pair of tweezers with his left hand. The gears in his mechanical arm whirred and miniscule machinery shifted. Small needlelike appendages emerged from the tips of his fingers. Angel flicked on a kerosene lamp, filling the room with a dim orange glow.

The glass eyepiece shifted and lowered in front of his right eye. He closed the other one as magic tickled his nose. Angel’s vision magnified several times until he could see every detail and scratch in the pendant. It was rather plain, with swirling lines that could have been either Old World magic or just plain art.

It was kept closed by several small latches along its edge. Angel poked and prodded at them gently, using the tweezers to hold the pendant in place without damaging it. The latches didn’t seem to budge on their own, but they clicked when he pressed down on them.