If sitting beside Karma Alabaster had been like sharing carriage space with a block of ice, doing so with Pyrhic would have been very much the same. With the notable exception being that the vehicle and its interior were also of glacial composition.

Where Alabaster had spoken to Flint, if sporadically, Pyrhic seemed content to sit entirely within the clutches of silence. He supposed it was the response he would have been treated to by the Princess herself, had he not possessed information of interest to her.

Regardless, it still bothered him. Mystic scribes and secretaries weren’t such an uncommon sight in Wrath. Many commanders needed to spin plenty of plates at a time, and having individuals with supernaturally-augmented administrative competence was a sure way of doing so.

He’d never spoken to such a person face to face, however. His experience with Alabaster’s made him wonder whether he was dealing with an unusually boorish one, or if a life dedicated so monomaniacally to paper work simply resulted in such a personality, regardless of who led it.

The uncomfortable silence was graciously interrupted some hour into the journey when the carriage slowed to a halt. Pyrhic waited not so much as a moment before going for the door handle, and it took Flint a staggering amount of time to make the woman understand the concept of basic security.

His own door swung outward, and the ground crunched satisfyingly under his boots as he leapt down. For all the ease of movement, there was something unnerving about the unyielding sterility of pavements and cobbles. Gravel and dirt underfoot was a reassurement Flint hadn’t known he’d needed.

Decrepit buildings surrounded the carriage, affixed on shoddy ground and surrounded by an acrid atmosphere. There was something simultaneously familiar and foreign to it, stinging his nose just like a battlefield of musket-smoke, yet carrying something else along with it.

There were several places an attacker could have hidden themselves away in, and after a cursory glance at each, Flint was satisfied that none were being used for such a purpose. He called back to the carriage, circling around to meet Pyrhic as she stepped down from it.

“So, which building are we headed to?” He asked, not really caring. Thankfully, his attempt to draw her out of the perpetual, agonising silence succeeded.

“None of these.” The assistant answered.

By the time Flint had registered her reply and opened his mouth to inquire further, she had already begun walking down the filth-glazed street. Glancing over his shoulder as he hurried after, he wasn’t remotely surprised to see their carriage setting off back the way it had come.

So they still had some ways to walk. Marvelous.

Falling in beside the woman, and keeping an eye on his surroundings for every step, Flint pressed the issue.

“Is there any particular reason why we’re walking completely undefended through an open area?”

A stab of anger bit into his chest as he spoke, like a bayonet left in hot coals. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have guessed Alabaster had swindled him into a situation designed especially to make his job as difficult as possible.

Flint dismissed the thought quickly. Surely even she wouldn’t be so callous as to endanger a loyal servant for so petty a reason.

“Lady Alabaster’s carriage is well recognised, and this city is crawling with spies. Even the slums. If we were to ride it too close to our destination, many powerful people would be aware of her interest in the area. It is unlikely that any would actively interfere, none have anything to gain from doing so, but secrecy is a safeguard she prefers to use extensively.”

Taking a moment to chew on that, Flint found himself confused at her words.

“Wait, if secrecy is so important then why are you going out in the open? Aren’t you known as her assistant?”

He swore the woman bristled as she answered.

“I rarely appear in public alongside lady Alabaster, and few would recognise a presence as insubstantial as mine. She likely keeps me from the public eye for this very purpose.”

“Does she send you on missions like these… often?”

“No. Usually Lady Alabaster turns to one or more spies for such matters as these.”

Annoyed that he even had to ask, Flint did his best to keep the scowl from his voice.

“So why is she having you do it this time?”

The woman glanced at him, as though he were incredibly slow. Flint supposed that he was.

“Obviously because she values reliability and trustworthiness in this matter.”

“That’s a bit strange, considering she’s sent a complete stranger along to protect you.” He shot back, too quickly to stop himself.

“You’re a complete stranger who was selected by Lord Hercules to protect her,” the woman responded primly. “I very much doubt there’s a stranger in the world she trusts more than you.”

Flint chewed on that, falling back into silence as they trudged along the ruined street. The most trustworthy stranger, he supposed, was not the worst position one could have.

His thoughts halted as the hairs on the back of his neck pricked suddenly, an involuntary shudder running through his body and urging his hands closer to the musket on his back. Glancing around, he realised they were being watched.

Attempting to get Pyrhic’s attention, he took a half-step towards her and spoke in a hushed tone.

“How sure are you exactly that nobody’d try to interfere with us? Because I’m feeling a lot of eyes from a lot of directions.”

She stiffened at that, going to glance around, and stopping only as he discreetly nudged her.

“Don’t look,” he hissed. “At least don’t look that obviously.”

“Tell me what you see, then.” The woman replied through gritted teeth, clearly ill at ease. He couldn’t blame her, felt but unseen threats were among the most unsettling things in the world.

“Nothing,” he admitted. “Except for a bit of movement, I’m more hearing them.“

“Alright,” the woman gulped. “I think they’re just street-rats. Vagrants, there are plenty of them in these areas. They’ll be watching me for the chance to… well, rob me. And probably kill me.”

Flint noticed her eyes flicker to the surely-not-cheap attire covering much of her body.

“I’ll have to make sure I stay near then,” he replied, hoping to cut the tension. She nodded lightly, but gave no sign that she was relaxing.

The walk grew more tense from there, each step a struggle to keep from turning to a sprint. Flint was keenly aware of the many sets of eyes affixed on him, more so of those aimed at Pyrhic. His weapons were heavy in their holsters. Pistols seeming to worm their way from the leather, bayonet announcing its presence every other stride as it swung, bouncing from his back.

Flint had remained steadfast while surrounded by death before, there wasn’t a trenchman in Wrath who hadn’t, and yet on all those occasions it had been on his own terms.

The enemy had been within his sights, and he’d been safely behind cover, with a gun in hand and a body full of magic. Never had he been forced to keep his eyes front, knowing that a dozen shivs were raised at his back.

His hands curled to fists within the pockets, wadded by the physical strain of keeping them free of a trigger.

It was hard to keep track of how far they were walking, though Flint found the winding streets a simple thing to follow. The further into the slums they moved, the more the city seemed to decompose around them.

Buildings went from poorly maintained to practically collapsing, the dirt and gravel of the roads becoming more and more mixed in with a strange, foul smelling muck, seeming to have coagulated in the sun after being mixed in by rain and footsteps. The air’s reek intensified, an unmistakable tang of iron mixing with the cordite.

It was like moving through a bloated, rotting carcass. And every step of the way, Flint was keenly aware of just how many maggots were keeping their eyes on him.

Before long, a thought occurred to him.

“Where are all the people?” He asked Pyrhic, not entirely certain he’d like the answer. She hesitated before giving it.

“Well… According to my information, there should be a lot in these streets. I can only assume that… they’re hiding.”

“And why would they do that?”

He didn’t like the woman’s hesitation one bit.

“Presumably, because whichever street gangs are calling the shots around here started to mobilise once they got wind of a well-dressed woman moving into their territory while accompanied by an armed guard.”

By the time Flint noticed the unconscious movement of his right hand, it had already snaked halfway to the bayonet on his back. He paused, then spoke again.

“I’m going to arm myself,” he half-whispered.

“Don’t,” she hushed back. “If you take out your weapon, you’ll probably just instigate a fight.”

“If I don’t have my weapon out when a fight starts, I could be dead before I’ve got it.”

She paused, her jaw clenching as though merely considering the problem was a physical effort for her. Finally, she spoke once more.

“Fine then, I suppose as the combatant here you’re most qualified to say.”

Flint wordlessly reached behind him with one hand, seizing his bayonet by the handle and twisting it out of the tether that held it in place. Shifting his other arm, he slid the musket from his back and brought it up before him.

There was no sign of aggravation to their pursuers, and yet a great tension came over him as he worked. Fingers nimbly affixing the blade onto his gun even as he darted around to ensure there were no approaching enemies he’d failed to hear.

Once the triangular steel was in place, Flint brought both hands to the barrel of his weapon, aiming it at the sky and keeping his finger on the trigger. He didn’t need to load it, a Scruth musket could hold powder in its pan on a wild horse without any risk of leakage.

Of course, were the barrel pointed downwards, the ball and cordite load would still fall free.

Pyrhic, it seemed, had been wrong. Flint’s armament did not incite any form of conflict, or even cause any noticeable change in the atmosphere. As they continued walking, furlongs turning to miles beneath their feet, he almost began to wonder whether there would be any issue at all.

His complacency was revealed for what it was when Pyrhic nudged him, leaning over to whisper.

“If the report I read is correct, we’re about to reach the end of the outermost gang’s territory.”

He frowned at that.

“What do you mean territories?”

The look Pyrhic gave him brought back unpleasant memories of training and disciplinary drills.

“Believe it or not, Mister Locke, Bermuda’s criminals are not very well unified. They’re split into innumerable different factions, each with control over specific sections of the slums.”

“Why was I not told about this earlier?”

“It didn’t become relevant until now,” she snapped. “Would you like me to spend a few hours conveying each of the thirty-thousand words I read in preparation for this task?”

“Fine, I get it. Why are you bringing this up now?”

“Because, if I were about to ambush a wealthy woman and her heavily-armed guard, I’d want to do so as far from Bermuda central as possible.”

He understood her reasoning after a moment, cursing under his breath.

“How far do we have?” He asked.

“Not long, perhaps another mile.”

The attack would come soon, then. Flint knew little about cities or gangs, but he knew skirmish-warfare. Less than a half-mile from enemy territory was a risky place to attack anyone.

He felt the familiar buzz of adrenaline as it leaked into his bloodstream, driving his heart to beat faster, his lungs to breathe deeper, his muscles to move harder. Every inch of his body soon became racked with the familiar, miniature spasms that came before an imminent battle, and Flint became ever more aware of the satchel of arcstock crystals resting at his hip.

Finally, the street through which they were trudging became narrow once more. Two alleyways, leading into it from both the left and right, closed in as the buildings on either side of the road grew closer together and left only ten paces of space between. It made Flint nervous to be so close to such perfect hiding spots.

Nervous enough that the sudden movement his eye caught didn’t surprise him at all.

Gravel scraped against gravel, sludge squelched as it was kicked up, then loudly slapped back to the ground closer to him, and Flint extended his aura to one of his six remaining crystals.

The field of antimagic, anathema to the arcane energies held within the pellucid stone, acted as a compressive presence for the power inside. Magic was displaced, surging to escape the antagonistic force and flowing through a carefully created corridor. Untouched by Flint’s power, it led from the gem and directly to his own body.

The magic had no choice but to follow the path, and no further autonomy in whether to let itself disappear into Flint’s body. His form was entirely devoid of any more, an empty vessel just waiting to be filled, and filled it became.

He spun, reactions and speed heightened to preternatural degrees. Levelling his gaze at the source of the sound, he saw a young man, perhaps the age of Alabaster, sprinting towards him. In the boy’s hand was a piece of jagged glass, clutched around a strip of grimy cloth. A makeshift shank, he realised.

The boy had been four paces away when Flint heard him, in the time it took him to drain his crystal and raise his musket, he’d reduced that to two.

The muzzle bucked and roared in his hands as he squeezed the trigger down, flame and refuse powder spat free of the barrel like a volcanic event, propelling the ounce of iron fast enough that even Flint’s enhanced vision couldn’t see it.

The musket ball struck the boy squarely in the chest, then burst free of his back in a visceral explosion of splintered sternum and pulverised lungs. Flint spun, not needing to see the boy fall to know he was dead.

As he came to stare in the other direction, Pyrhic let out a startled cry. Finally processing what was happening.

More were moving now, either following in a coordinated charge or spurred into motion by the recklessness of the dead man. Flint had no time to reload, nor did he have any inclination to switch to his pistols so early.

Melee, then.

The first to reach him was the second to die, swinging a jagged, rusty blade in a wild arc as his eyes darted madly. Flint backstepped, metal whistling by his throat harmlessly. The excessive flourish pulled the man off-guard, and Flint’s bayonet met his throat before he could right himself.

“Behind you!” Pyrhic cried, confirming what Flint already suspected. He twisted his weapon, extinguishing any spark of life that remained in the man, then pulled it free as he spun once more.

The next man had almost reached Pyrhic by the time Flint faced him, and he had to exert himself to intercept the killing blow. A meat cleaver screeched as it scraped from the barrel of his musket, sliding harmlessly to one side and missing the assistant by nearly half a pace.

Momentum brought the attacker further forwards, and Flint realised his smaller, lighter weapon would be brought to bear before the bayonet. Gritting his teeth, he slammed his forehead into the ganger’s face.

Hot pain permeated him as the man toppled backwards, thrown back and to the ground by the force of the impact. Blood followed him in a trail as he fell, like flames in the wake of a flare. Bringing his gun around to bear, Flint stared ahead and noted the duo of men sprinting for him.

He glanced over his shoulder, then cursed as he realised those coming from the other direction would reach him too soon to take one side at a time. Pyrhic seemed to have disappeared, though he glimpsed her some dozen paces away further back down the road as he whirled to meet the first of the new wave.

The charging ganger had just enough time to widen his eyes in shock, then Flint’s lunge finished shrinking the space between them to nothing. His crimson-stained blade sank into the soft meat of the man’s gut, piercing muscle and gullet, then prying the wound apart as the metal widened.

Flint saw the dying man swing just in time to lean back, feeling the air whip his head as the makeshift weapon missed it. Gut wounds were fatal, but never quickly. Righting himself and steadying boots on the ground, he pulled his weapon free, a sloppy mass of entrails cascading from the suddenly open wound like a grisly waterfall.

Another ganger was suddenly beside him, and Flint realised with a curse that he’d been too slow in slaying the proceeding one. He raised his forearm to meet a descending blade, sleeve moving faster than his weapon could, and hissed with agony as it bit in.

Wrath’s uniform was half an inch of carefully made nylon, insufficient to stop a musket even from five hundred paces, yet stronger by dozens of times than human skin. By the time the serrated edge of his attacker’s crude weapon finished burrowing through the fabric, it had lost nearly all of its momentum.

Flint’s magically strengthened flesh was barely nicked, and the power infusing it let him cast the man off-balance with a single swing of the wounded arm.

Another cry came from Pyrhic, and Flint obeyed without hesitation. He leapt to the left, closer to the still-groaning man with the gut wound, and saw movement near the place he’d been standing moments earlier. The final two men had reached him.

The ganger Flint had thrown askew finished stumbling straight, turning back to him and snarling with pure hate. Flint took a step back, extending the gap between them to five paces. The group of belligerents took one forward, shrinking it back down to four.

All of them remained still for some time, none willing to move for fear of igniting the tension gathering in the air like gunpowder. Flint counted the passing time by the beats of his heart, finding the rest of the world muted by comparison to the tectonic thundering of the great engine.

Finally, inevitably, one of the men broke the stalemate. His eyes bulged, lips parted to reveal yellow teeth grit in fear and the mania unique to those who could scarcely believe their own actions even as they carried them out. The other two gangers followed him with barely a pause.

But there was a pause, and it was more than enough for Flint’s accelerated senses.

The moment he noticed the movement, he violated every instinct in his body and lightly tossed his musket upwards. The weapon left his grip, freeing both of his hands to dart for the pistols at his sides. Both had been drawn by the time his attackers had moved a foot, and both had been fired an instant later.

Twin bursts of vibrant crimson were discharged from the men, their bodies barely seeming to halt as the lumps of metal tore through the centre of their torsos. Flint didn’t keep his eyes on them to wait and see them realise they were dead, instead releasing his grip on both pistols and reaching up to snatch his still-falling musket from the air above him.

Surprise at the sudden movement was the second to last thing that ran through the final ganger’s head.

The bayonet flexed slightly under the weight of the freshly-made corpse, limp body mass held from the ground only by the span of metal protruding through it. Flint planted a boot on the dead man’s chest, then straightened his knee and launched the body free of his weapon. It collapsed to the ground a pace from him.

He turned from the lifeless meat strewn about, glancing down both of the alleys with a scrutinous eye. His suspicion was rewarded, catching a half-dozen more men strolling towards him.

At their head was an enormous figure, a half-head taller than Flint, with the papery skin of one who spent a lot of time obscured from the sun. His clothing hung from him as tatters, scorched and torn in ways Flint doubted could be replicated by simple wear and tear.

The group of men stopped twenty feet short of Flint, yet the man at the front continued onwards. He stared at the ganger, who he imagined was the leader, up and down, searching him for any hint of armament.

“Looking for weapons?” The man asked, his voice gruff and coarse. Flint didn’t answer, apparently he didn’t need to.

With a laugh, the ganger continued. “You won’t find any, because I’m not carrying any.”

Flint realised what that meant only a second before the man’s footsteps sped up, seeming to fall faster than the strides of a man in sprint, yet carrying barely a fraction of the motion. The sure sign of physical enhancement magic.

The man almost disappeared, his speed carrying him to Flint fast enough that his barely-inhuman senses were tasked simply registering his presence. There was a fraction of a second before he reached him, and far less time than that once it happened.

It was more than enough.

Concentration was not required as Flint unshackled the antimagic writhing around inside him, allowing it to extend beyond his body with all the insurmountable intensity that he’d always been forced to reign in.

He felt the mystic touch the edge of the field, felt his power strain against something else. A curious sensation. Flint couldn’t sense magic at all, no matter how much there was, and yet he was made aware of its presence simply from how it interacted with his own null field.

The clash lasted so little time, it could barely be said to have occurred at all. An instant after making contact with the field, every scrap of magic from the mystic’s body was forcefully dispelled, fleeing the touch of a pariah as any other arcane entity would. Abandoned by his power, the man’s body lost all supernatural augmentation, slowing to a crawl as even its momentum, magical in nature as it was, disappeared.

A paleness overtook the ganger’s face at the sudden arcane vacuum, Flint couldn’t blame him. A pariah’s presence had an adverse effect on most. Ordinary people found it unsettling, mystics found it loathsome, and Flint had spent years learning to contain his own for that reason.

He couldn’t imagine how strongly the ganger before him detested the touch of his power, nor could he fathom what it must have been like to live an entire life with all the strength of a mystic, only to have it taken away in an instant.

Perhaps, then, it was a kindness that the ganger was forced to experience such hopelessness and despair for only the quarter-second it took Flint to step forward and impale him through the heart. He stared desperately into his eyes as he died.

Flint looked away, twisting his bayonet for good measure before wrenching it free of the corpse. The friction of metal and meat pulled it forwards, and Flint stepped aside as it fell by his feet. Glancing to one side, he saw Pyrhic standing on her own, unhurt and far from the action.

Satisfied that she was in no more danger, he turned to the remaining five men, noticing with grim satisfaction the way they all gawped wordlessly at him. He supposed it was only a reasonable reaction, from the resistance he’d felt, the mystic had been of the Sage scale. More powerful than most, certainly a force outside of official bodies.

It was simply bad luck that he’d run into a pariah of Flint’s calibre.

“He was your boss, right?” Flint called out to the men. Though he found himself stumbling over the words, having scarcely practiced or spoken Unixian since being first taught all those years ago, he was onfident in his guess. Mystics rarely found themselves serving under inepts, save for extenuating circumstances. His question was met only with a blank, hollow stare.

Not deterred, Flint continued, raising his voice as he stepped towards the still-whimpering injured ganger he’d impaled through the gullet.

A quick glance at the blood trickling from between the man’s fingers, and the smell of excrement and infection seeping into the air from his ruptured bowel, confirmed his suspicion. It was a mortal wound. Flint put him out of his misery, then lifted his gaze back to the survivors.

“Well, he’s dead now,” he said. “And as you can see, I haven’t a scratch from it. I’ll leave it up to all of you whether this fight ends or continues here.”

They all seemed to reach their conclusion in complete silence, not so much as glancing at one another in the process. Within seconds, each of them had disappeared back down the alley.