The signs were all there, the rhythmic resting spots, the desperate scavenging, and the unmistakable pieces of human shit.
"He's in Lilliebore," Kima murmured, watching the stilted silhouettes of the city rise in the distance. "And in a pit like that, he isn't going anywhere. He'll keep for a few days."
With her secondary objective secured, she pulled Chira's reins hard to the left. She had no intention of entering there just yet. Instead, she skirted the outskirts, her black cloak billowing as she rode past the mud-caked huts of the Nōh.
Memories of a man named Hersch flickered in her mind, an old debt, an old face. She wondered if the locals would still look at her with that same mixture of fear and curiosity.
Of course they will.
She thought with a smirk.
I'm not exactly easy to miss.
She looked at her chocolate skin.
She rode straight for the Bore Gorge.
To most, the gorge was a tourist trap, a place where people came to gawk at the terrifying depth of the earth and crystal statues.
Kima avoided the lower paths, choosing instead to ride along the treacherous upper rim. She passed ruins of ancient wooden houses that sat directly on the earth, forgotten relics from a time before the stilts were necessary. As the mists thickened, the ground grew slick.
"Whoa, girl," she whispered, sliding off Chira's back. She crouched low, her boots sinking into the soft muck.
"Stay quiet," she hissed to the Hortes. "We're dealing with Confessors. If they catch our scent before we're ready, this becomes a bloodbath I don't have time for."
Her mission was simple in theory, suicidal in practice. Intercept a heavily guarded transport wagon and extract a single prisoner. The target was being moved under the personal order of the Lord of the Herkos clan, and he had spent a fortune hiring the Confessors' Brotherhood to ensure the cargo arrived intact.
But he isn't going to be the only prisoner I have to save…
Okay. I'll save all of them.
Kima didn't care about the politics or why Lord Herkos wanted these people. She only cared about the one soul in that wagon she had promised to bring back.
She went fully prone, crawling through the rock mixed mud until her head hung over the dizzying edge of the gorge. Below, the world was a sea of swirling red and the faint glow of Q Glyphs.
Chira followed suit, flattening her feathered body against the earth like a predator in wait.
The silence was absolute, broken only by the hiss of Kima's gas mask. She peered down, her eyes straining.
Am I early? Or did I miss them?
Then, a flicker.
Deep in the red byss to her left, an orange pulse of light cut through the mist.
It was a torch.
"Bingo," Kima breathed.
She waited as the light crawled closer, the faint sound of wheels grinding against stone finally echoing up the cliff walls. The wagon was moving slow, burdened by its own importance.
Kima stood up slowly, dusting the mud from her palms. She checked the seals on her mask and flexed her legs, feeling the coiled power in her muscles.
She extended her right hand into the open air.
White flames that had no heat erupted from her palm then forming into a massive slab of steel. It was a sword as tall as a man, wrapped in heavy, rattling chains that dangled from the hilt like a prisoner's jewelry.
The wind picked up, tugging at her dreadlocked strands as she stepped to the very brink of the precipice.
"Let's go."
Kima didn't hesitate. she stepped off into the nothingness, her black cloak snapping upward like wings as she vanished into the mists of the gorge, falling like a silent, vengeful star toward the orange light below.
---The End of Chapter 30---