The train thundered past beneath them.
Impossibly fast. Sunlight gleamed off polished metal and rune-etched plating, mana humming through its bones like a living thing. Plumes of white steam hissed from its vents, instantly shredded by the wind.
It had been two months since they watched their village turn to ash. They had spent those weeks dragging themselves across the salt-flats of the desert, hollowed out by grief, until they finally hit the jagged lip of the Drogan Empire.
"Adam," Alaric said.
Adam looked up.
"What?"
The word came out weird. Tired. Hoarse. Like he was trying to throw away his youth.
Alaric nodded toward the canyon. "Those bandits we fought earlier," he said. "They mentioned a train. Remember?"
Adam followed his gaze.
The train roared below them, wind tearing at his hood.
"…Yeah," he said.
Alaric lifted a hand to shield his eyes, watching it pass. There was something almost reverent in the way he looked at it.
"Amazing," he murmured.
Adam clicked his tongue.
"Built on blood," he said flatly.
Alaric glanced at him.
"You think they were up to something?" Alaric asked.
"Probably," Adam replied, already turning away.
Then he stopped.
Alaric was stretching his shoulders. Rolling his neck. The small, unconscious movements that indicated he was about to fight.
Adam sighed.
"I'm not saving a bunch of nobles!" he stated.
Alaric didn't argue right away.
"Not all of them are nobles," he said instead.
Adam's jaw tightened. "They're not innocent either. No good people ride trains like that."
Silence hung between them, broken only by the fading thunder of the engine.
"Those guys were probably cultists," Adam added. Quieter now.
"And?" Alaric asked.
"They kill nobles today," Adam said. "They'll kill villagers tomorrow. Or children. Or anyone they can reach."
Alaric turned to face him fully.
"Then shouldn't we stop them?" he asked. He wasn't pleading. Just asking.
Adam closed his eyes.
The wind pulled at him, cold and relentless. The wind here was different from The Wildlands, from the desert. Less harsh. But it held its own style of ruthlessness.
"…Damn it," he muttered. Tani woke up and looked around, out of shock at the change of scenery.
He exhaled slowly, shoulders sagging.
"Fine," he said. "But how do we get on?"
Alaric scratched his cheek, eyes tracking the train's path through the canyon.
"Uh…"
Both Adam and Tani's face formed into an unimpressed expression.
They stared at the impossible distance.
The speed.
The drop.
Alaric smiled faintly.
"…We'll think of something."
_________________________________________________
The heavy iron door of the passenger car screeched open, and Victoria stepped into a storm of chaos.
The hijackers were everywhere—cloaked in the jagged emblems of the cult, their eyes wide with the frantic energy of a job gone wrong. One of them leveled a rusted carbine at her. Victoria didn't flinch. In one fluid motion, her first pistol cleared leather.
CRACK!
A single plume of grey smoke, a single hole in the center of the man's chest.
Victoria moved through the cars. More cultists had teleported in, but all of them fell victim to a .40 inch piece of metal imbued with mana.
A cultist swung straight towards her. She snapped back and dove low, the sword cut her cheek as she did.
She spun back around. Now behind him. The cultist turned around. Victoria smiled as she shot him in the head.
The sixth and final bullet.
As he collapsed, his heavy, mana-etched broadsword clattered to the floor. Victoria snatched it up by the hilt, feeling the familiar weight of the steel.
"I prefer a sword," she muttered, sliding her smoking pistol back into its holster.
The sword was a blur of silver light, parrying heavy strikes and answering with lethal precision. She took two hijackers down before they could even scream, her blade finding the gaps in their leather armor.
She wasn't stronger, she was more disciplined. And that discipline was a thing to behold.
But there were too many.
For every man she cut down, another surged from the next car. The narrow hallway, once her advantage, became a trap.
The pommel of a sword caught her in the liver, sending a jolt of white-hot pain through her side. She stumbled, her breath hitching. A blade grazed her shoulder. The numbers were simply too high.
The cultists closed in, sensing her fatigue. They pinned her against the door, their breathing heavy and smelling of cheap ale and dark magic. A masked man with a jagged sneer underneath, stepped forward, kicking her dropped sword out of reach.
"Look at you," he hissed, eyeing her empty hands and her holster. "What are you gonna do now? You're tired, bleeding, and all out of bullets."
Victoria didn't look afraid. A slow, bloody smile spread across her face
"Wrong," she said.
With a snap of her wrists, she drew her second gun.
The hallway erupted. In the confined space, the muzzle flashes were like lightning strikes.
One, two, three, four. The hijackers fell like wheat before a scythe, caught in the crossfire of a woman who had a lot of pent up rage.
In seconds, the hallway grew silent, save for the frantic panting of one final survivor. He was backed into the corner, staring at the pile of his fallen comrades.
"What... what are you?!" he stammered, his voice trembling.
Victoria stood amidst the smoke, her chest heaving, her uniform torn and stained. She adjusted her grip on the weapon, her smile never fading.
"A Knight," she said, the words coming out in a harsh, jagged breath.
The man's eyes darted to the iron barrel pointed at his head. "Lying bitch! A Knight doesn't use a gun!"
Victoria looked down at the weapon in her hand, then back at him. Her eyes glinted with a mischievous, cold light.
"A gun?" she said softly. "No. This is just... a very weird-looking sword."
BANG!
The hijackers slumped to the floor. Victoria exhaled, the sound lost amongst the roar of the train.
But something didn't feel right to her. It wasn't the emptiness of the train, this train was only for her and her father's friends. Along with her now dead fiancé.
But it was that. That afraid sensation clawing at her mind.
The intuition of a Knight was rarely wrong. Victoria felt it like a cold drip of water down her spine.
She ran to the teleporter car. And she hoped, prayed, that nothing came out. But she was wrong.
The teleporter surged.
A second wave of hijackers poured in, but these weren't the desperate street-thugs she had just executed. These men moved with a terrifying, synchronized grace. They wore heavier armor, reinforced with dark metal, and their masks were more intricate.
One of them scoffed. "Incompetent bastards," he spat, stepping over a corpse. "They were supposed to have everyone dead before we even arrived!"
"Doesn't matter," another replied, his voice a gravelly rasp. "Where's the main group? Did they die before even arriving?"
They turned their gaze toward Victoria. She stood her ground, blood dripping from her cheek, her second gun held low. She went to raise it, but her body betrayed her. The strike to her liver earlier had caused internal swelling; her muscles seized.
Before she could squeeze the trigger, the leader blurred forward.
He caught her wrist, twisting it until the bone groaned, and kicked her shattered ankle.
"ARGHHH!!"
Her scream was real and raw.
They threw her down like a broken doll. She tried to reach for the sword she'd picked up, but a heavy boot slammed down on her fingers, pinning her to the floor.
"A waste of time," the leader said, pulling a dense, obsidian-colored cylinder from his belt. It was a mana bomb—a localized core-destabilizer.
"The Duke isn't here. And he doesn't care for his bitch of a daughter, either. This train doesn't matter to us, anymore."
He activated the device. A high-pitched, whining hum filled the room, making Victoria's teeth ache. The cultists gathered around the teleporter pad in the center of the car.
"Wait!" Victoria wheezed, clutching her side.
They didn't look back.
With a flash of violet light, they were gone.
Victoria was alone. The bomb sat five feet away, pulsing with a rhythmic, sickening glow. She tried to crawl, her fingers digging into the gaps in the floorboards.
Every inch was a battle against the darkness encroaching on her mind. She reached for her gun, then her sword, pulling them close to her chest like holy relics.
She looked at the door. Too far. The bomb was seconds away.
She stopped crawling. She leaned her back against a heavy oak crate, the roar of the train shaking her bones. A strange, peaceful clarity washed over her. She had lived a life of rules, of conformity. She had won her first, and most likely final, real fight.
She looked at her "weird sword" and laughed, a wet, rattling sound.
"At least," she whispered, her vision blurring into a haze of violet and gold, "it will be an awesome death."
The world turned to white.