Chapter 17

  Dalex tossed Michel down the perron stairway leading up to the lodge. He hit a few steps on the way down and then tumbled to a stop on the narrow road below. Dalex descended the staircase step by step, watching to see what his fellow human would do next. His companions and a crowd of hunters gathered among the columns at the top of the stairs, murmuring quietly to themselves. Hitasa looked like she might faint again.

  Michel rolled over onto his back and stared at the sky for a second before rising to a sitting position. He gritted his teeth and growled, “Boy, I am going to peel off your skin and feed it to your woman.”

  “Seventh? I think you would find that difficult. I’m not even sure she has a stomach.”

  Michel got to one knee and pointed an accusing finger at Dalex. “Torsclap strikes you with lightning.”

  From the clear blue, a bolt of concentrated electrical energy shot into the canyon and struck Dalex’s scalp. The thunderclap of its arrival shook the lodge. Hitasa and the hunters reflexively covered their ears. Streams of light split off from the main bolt, streaking across the staircase and charring its stone steps black.

  Electricity crackled through Dalex’s armor. The {adamantine} diffused the energy and absorbed it into the armor’s pool of power. Dalex paused a moment to examine the scorch marks and check the sky for any kind of thundercloud, which there was not.

  “Very cool,” he said, and continued his descent. He put one hand to the side and announced, “{Skull Anchor}.”

  The axe appeared from its cloud of {astral mortar} and dropped into his hand. He kept it raised above his head. The first signs of genuine fear crossed Michel’s face. Not moving from his half kneel, he repeated the same spell, “Torsclap strikes you with lightning.”

  This time, the lightning struck the top of Dalex’s axe. The energy quickly dissipated, not even splashing out in extra streams. Dalex reached the bottom step and stopped just short of Michel. The man looked up at him, all the confidence draining out of his eyes. He opened his mouth like a fish gasping for water on dry land.

  Dalex set the head of his axe on the ground and knelt so that he was face to face with Michel again. The handle of his axe extended just over both their heads. So everyone could see, most importantly Seventh, Dalex tapped the bottom of the handle with two fingers and said, “{Chaos lightning}.”

  A crimson and black bolt of lightning descended from the heavens and struck the pommel of the axe. It arrived with an even more deafening thunderclap than Michel’s own, but also a screeching howl like a dying vulture. Michel raised a hand to cover his eyes. The dark light blinded even Dalex, momentarily. When the flash cleared, purple veins of light spread out from the head of {Skull Anchor} through the rocky road. They lingered for a few seconds and then slowly evaporated with the passing echo of the thunder.

  Dalex patted Michel softly on the cheek. Michel looked back at him, his expression blank. “Who are you?”

  “Maybe you should just think of me as the consequences of your own actions. But I have to admit, your timing was impeccable. Just don’t hit anyone anymore and we won’t have to do this again, alright?”

  “What dragon do you serve?”

  “I’ll leave that up to your imagination.” Dalex gave Michel’s cheek another pat. “There’s a good man. Now, run along. Get out of here.”

  He pointed toward the river. Michel slowly got to his feet and shuffled away down the rocky avenues of the canyon wall. Dalex turned around and started back up the stairs. He found Yesui staring down at him from the landing, a bemused expression on her face.

  “How did you do that?” she called.

  “Magic!” Dalex said.

  “But you don’t have any mana. The testing stone never lies.” She looked at Hitasa and Seventh and then out at the city around the lodge. “Do you have some partner defining your spells for you? Someone with mana?”

  Considering the {chaos lightning} had in reality been a concentrated charge of [plasma] from an [orbital satellite weapon], she wasn’t too far off. But Dalex only shrugged. “You’ll have to believe your eyes. Now, what do you think? Do I have a shot at becoming a hunter?”

  “No,” Yesui said flatly. “You just assaulted a High Lord of Batulan-bar. Even if you’re stronger than him or you serve a dragon that’s stronger than his, Lodge Mother Sarnai doesn’t want to be involved. If Lord Michel finds out we recruited you after this, we’ll get his attention in a worse way than we already have. I’m going to expressly refuse your application and make sure he knows it.”

  Dalex set his hands on his hips and stared at the step directly in front of him. “Oh.”

  “But,” Yesui said, “I do thank you for the show.”

  She went back inside the main hall. Most of the hunters followed her. A few stayed behind, chatting with each other and occasionally casting a curious glance in his direction. Seventh and Hitasa came down the steps to join him.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “How big of a mistake did I just make?” Dalex asked.

  Hitasa cocked her head and said, “I don’t know, though I have heard the name Lord Michel Montbell. He doesn’t have Castreier’s influence or power, but he is widely publicized.” She smirked and added, “I can say for sure you won’t be a hunter, at least not in this city.”

  Seventh stepped forward. “Infiltration [drones] could quickly enter the building and sift through any records they might keep.”

  Dalex sighed. Maybe that was all he could do.

  “Pardon me, Lord Dalex,” a deep voice said from farther up the stairs. “Might I intrude a moment?”

  Dalex looked up to see a wolf-eared beastkin hunter standing respectfully a few steps away. He kept his hands clasped behind his back and, even though he was taller than any other beastkin Dalex had seen and standing higher on the staircase, he did not give off the impression that he was looking down on anyone. More hunters, another beastkin and two elves, waited farther behind him, keeping their distance likely to avoid crowding around Dalex and his companions.

  “No lords here,” Dalex said. “Just call me Dalex. What can I do for you?”

  The wolf-eared beastkin took a step closer. “My name is Dava Altantarin.” He gestured to his fellow hunters. “I lead the hunting party Cotton Alley Arrows. Might I ask why you want to be a hunter?”

  Dalex thought about his answer for a moment and then said, “I’m looking for something—something connected to the mutts. I also think they’re dangerous, but I’d be lying if I said hunting mutts was my main goal. Why do you ask?”

  Dava silently inspected him for a moment and then said, “My party has been tasked with scouring a mutt den upriver. It’s small for the moment but needs to be dealt with before it can grow. Unfortunately, our most publicized hunter is sick and won’t be in hunting shape for at least a week. We can’t wait for him, and none of the other hunters of our lodge will be available for another few days. I need an extra man.”

  Dalex tried not to sound too eager when he said, “I’d be happy to lend a hand. What can you tell me about the job?”

  Dava held up a hand. “Not now. The Lodge wouldn’t like us recruiting outside help. Come to the Cantering Colt tonight after sundown and we can discuss the details there.”

  Dalex took down information on what exactly the Cantering Colt was—an inn and tavern near the river that didn’t usually host many hunters—and where to find it, and then Dava left with his party. Dalex watched them go, not believing his luck. He didn’t really need to be a hunter to get information about mutts. Traveling with hunters would probably be just as good.

  “You got lucky,” Seventh said.

  He turned around to see her staring at him. “You really wanted to send in the {sneak golems}, didn’t you?”

  “Infiltration [drones] would still be a useful tool in this matter, yes.”

  “If you can be sure the {golems} won’t be caught, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with finding out what the Hunters’ Lodge keeps in its records. Send them in anyway.”

  He realized Hitasa was staring at him too, more intently than she normally did. “What’s wrong? Is there something on my shirt?”

  “Why did you attack Michel?” she asked.

  Dalex blew out his breath. “Oh, lots of reasons. He annoyed me, I was frustrated about not having any mana, I didn’t like that he hit Yesui, I didn’t like that he told you to bow to him, and because the humans of your world really piss me off.”

  “They… piss you off? Is that why you attacked Castreier, as well?”

  Dalex thought back to that moment. Two pitiful elves trapped by their necks. The crowd calling for their release. Sitoa with a smoking hole in his head. And his own sorry self watching it happen for too long.

  “Yeah, he pissed me off too.”

  “I haven’t met many humans in my life,” Hitasa said. “Most of them were like Michel or Castreier, hateful and aggressive. A few have been better, but only through their ambivalence. They just didn’t see elves.” She paused. “There are all kinds of beastkin. Bad, neutral, good. I don’t like most of them, but I have had beastkin friends. They have been good to me. A human has never been good to me. I have never heard of a human being good to anyone.”

  Dalex remembered the people of his own world. They came in all varieties. He wondered if Earth’s humans were better or just the same. Most people were good, at least in his estimation. Even under stress and in danger, they helped each other for nothing in return. But they also abused and killed each other for nothing, just like the humans of Gaia Eta treated their chosen lessers. Dalex wondered if his own humans would be so universally cruel and arrogant if they had spawned on a world with substantially different humanoids sharing the space. Then again, Earth had once been home to neanderthals, and some believed humans played a big part in wiping them out.

  Or maybe the small slice of Gaia Eta he had seen was too limited a sample size to draw any conclusions about the collective morality of its humans. Hitasa had good reason to suspect every human of evil intent, but how much of the realm had she seen? With seven worlds feeding off the light of one sun, some of them had to harbor humans of good heart.

  “I’m guessing they aren’t all like that,” Dalex said, “but I’m sure that’s small comfort to you. I think I didn’t say it quite right earlier. I didn’t attack Michel or Castreier because they pissed me off, though they absolutely do. I did it because I recognized something was wrong with the order of Gaia Eta, and I knew I had the power to do something about it.”

  “What if there’s nothing wrong with it?” Hitasa asked.

  For a moment, Dalex thought she misspoke, but he saw the uncertainty in her eyes. She doubted herself. She doubted her place in her world. He assumed it was conditioning after a lifetime of living under human thumb and dragon claw, but Dalex didn’t know the first thing about this world or its history. Maybe there was some reason for her to think her subservience was the natural order of things.

  Dalex shook his head. “No, there’s something wrong. True, I’m an outsider. If you don’t believe me, you can chalk my ignorance up to amnesia. But I can tell this world is infected with something nasty, and so far, the humans here are the most obvious cause.”

  What Dalex didn’t say was that he wanted to put these humans in their place. If no one was going to stand up to them, he would be the exception. He didn’t even want to be an example of what a good human should look like. He just wanted men like Castreier and Michel to know someone was watching. Seventh had put power in hands that dwarfed this realm. The least he could do was set straight the men and beings that used their power for evil.

  The three of them stood in silence for a moment. Dalex couldn’t be sure how Hitasa took his proclamation. At least the catatonia didn’t return. But she seemed on the verge of something.

  “Can I ask you a question, Hitasa?”

  She looked a little taken aback. “Yes, I suppose.”

  Dalex took a deep breath. “Before I do, I want to assure you that you are welcome to journey with me for as long as you feel like it. I don’t want you to think you should leave.”

  She gave him a sideways look but let him go on.

  “Hitasa,” Dalex said. “Why are you following me?”

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