I woke up.

  Not on the shores of old Kairnwoad, nor in the Divine promised land, or the hall of Mother Strix.

  They didn’t even let me into hell.

  No.

  I woke on a long, white, sandy beach. The calls of gulls and the stinkin’ scent of fish and salt were in the air.

  The sun, hot and orange, beat down on my near-naked form. Blisters, welts and bites from all manner of bugs, crabs, and other things marked my skin. I was raw and red, and I felt sick.

  But sure as the dawn is good, I was alive... somehow.

  Little bit thirsty, little bit hurt, but still kickin’.

  Let it never be said, Lorcan Roche, little old Roche, ain't lucky as sin.

  I dug salt from my eyes and looked to the world around. I was alone, here on this spit of white sand. Alone save for the bloated corpses and the flocks of white gulls and black strix. Each feathered beast called its kin to fetid feast, in great swarms they tore at man and drowned rat alike.

  The sky was blue and the air was warm, hotter than I'd ever known. Yet wrong. The sun didn’t feel quite right. Almost like someone had borrowed it from a memory or dream…

  The far-off line of trees was strange too. For more mundane reasons. No pine, no birch, just broad leaves and dark, fetid green. I saw no smoke from any fire, no hint of any livin’ man. Just jungle, ruin, and the endless sea.

  "Welcome to Terra Nova, I guess," I muttered and laughed, “How much you want to bet it’s just the same, with a little more sand?”

  I laughed and laughed, and the gulls joined in.

  After I indulged the madness a touch, I worked up and stood. Breathed that free air deep and felt the heat of that burning star above. No more dark Lorcan, no more chains lest you let em' bind ya' again.

  I searched the carnage and the waste of the dead. There was somethin’ strange about it all, not the destruction, but the way the light seemed to shimmer and squirm…

  Crates, broken wide. Carcasses torn for sweetmeats. Wood and steel and other sundry bits.

  Rats and beasts worked in the offal and feasted on the bounty of the sea's dark wake.

  And I joined them.

  A fine coat. Officer make.

  Good breeches taken from a dead Uruk's waist. A leather gun belt, a shirt, boots that fit. Then-

  Buried half under white sand, it took a moment or two to free.

  A dark case.

  Sigil runes, witchman-locked. A prickle of coiled mana hung in the air around it, a warning.

  Normally, to touch such things was death, but... I could feel a call, could feel the tug of mana strings. Something innate led my hands.

  I had gotten an Ability and didn't even really know, despite employin’ it a time or two.

  Even if it was-

  Click.

  Just for pickin’ locks with a bit of wire and a steady hand.

  My ragged breath caught in a sun-parched throat as I opened the lid.

  In that case, was the bounty of men better than me? Probably meant for one of the naval officers, or some colony captain.

  I saw consecrated iron in the shape of a gun. A fine piece, two-shot, breech-loaded, pistol-gripped, and all of the best Imperial make.

  A shotgun, as the Southern crafters called it. I had never used such a thing, but I had seen the magistrates employ it to good effect. Tear a charging rushboar to meaty ribbons. Kill a man dead, and another behind. Good for crowds, up-close brawls...

  And then, as if I had not providence enough-

  A Matrix Gem.

  A beautiful, terrible thing.

  The size of a plum, it was the core of a great beast cut and runed.

  Kraken, so the sigil said. Probably a reason it was never used. Monster gems were considered a… risky choice as a path to power. They made changes some folks couldn’t stomach.

  But not me.

  I gripped that smooth, glassy stone. Felt its mana resonate with my own, felt it burn and take.

  This was an ending, I knew, and a beginnin’.

  This was the end of Lorcan Roche, son of a farmer, convicted bandit and poacher.

  And the beginnin’ of...

  Crunch. The protective shell snapped.

  Something new.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d just been led by the nose down this winding road.

  All this felt-

  Arranged.

  Artificial. Like someone was pullin’ strings.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Can’t say I cared much but-

  Movement.

  I had been still, sittin’ around and digging in the dirt, and now I wasn't alone.

  Footsteps, soft and careful. I knew now that they had been there for long moments, hidden from me by deaf ears and dull senses. Now I could feel them in the vibration of sand and earth. I could smell them, distant, a nervous sweat on my tongue.

  Hungry, that was the feeling in the air.

  Predator.

  Hunter.

  And me, their prey.

  Thunk.

  Two rounds of fourteen pellets.

  Click.

  And the gun came to hand.

  Its cold iron and darkwood stock was soothing.

  Its weight, its power, I could feel the mana that hummed, and the purpose of its design. It drew a little, just to form the tether of control between wielder and weapon. A little of my mana, a little lifeforce to send the shot that much faster.

  I leveled the gun.

  And I spoke in that voice of mine.

  The one that scared off wolves and made Greenhorns piss themselves out in the Broken Coast’s mire.

  "You son-of-a-bitch, you walk on out from behind that tree or I swear… I'll shoot the damn thing down!"

  A long moment passed, and the man stepped out. Hands out.

  Runed face twisted in a sneer.

  "Boy," spoke the old timer, the Named who helped me pass the time, "boy, you'd best put that damn gun down. Or I will take it from you."

  "Cute."

  "You ain't a killer, boy. Just give me that gun that you found. Come on you're just a-"

  Boom.

  A palm tree exploded, spraying a thousand splinters out and up into the air. The old timer yelped and hit the sand as I leveled that smoking barrel at his head.

  "Sorry, couldn't hear you over the sound of me shooting that fuckin' tree down," I growled, "speak up. I said to come out, and I meant all the way. We were friends, Sven, down there in the dark, and I'd like it to stay that way, but I can feel you lying. I can feel the fear. And that makes me wonder."

  "Easy, boy. Easy," said the man.

  Click.

  Hammer cocked on the right barrel now. Side by side presented all the options you needed. One to warn, one to kill if they didn’t listen right.

  Or you could use both, and make a man real, real dead.

  "You're scaring me, boy..."

  "I ain't no boy," I said, "Come on out, and I won't shoot. Fixed your lock, and more besides. Give me a reason to trust you, Sven. I don't want to hurt nobody, but I will."

  Oh I fuckin' would too.

  I felt a connection to the old timer, but not enough to be shot or knifed. Situations like this always brought out the worst. Prison had showed me that, over and over again.

  I would've loved to think we were all good and honest men, just dragged low by a hard life.

  But I didn't.

  I knew. Honest men worked and died. We, we had lived.

  "I don't need to fight you," Sven said, his eyes darting to the left-

  Movement.

  I fired once more.

  Boom!

  The sand, the green, the jungle puffed and bled.

  The catman, that dark Pardaz bastard, fell in a gurgling heap.

  His fur was bloody and his body ruined. Six pellets through his chest and bone. A shortsword and a pistol clutched in his clawed hand. A mad light in his eyes that looked at me, then it dimmed.

  Fear was plain in Sven’s eyes. Fear and the understanding that whatever he had planned, had just gone to shit.

  The old timer drew a dagger from behind his skinny back, taken from a corpse or guard, rusted by sea and salt. He ran with the fury of a man betrayed, the rage of a man that had seen battle and gone through hell...

  Twenty paces between us.

  I tossed the smoking gun and grabbed for whatever was at hand.

  Lots of folks think steel is the best way to end a man.

  Ten.

  But it ain't.

  Truth is, anything can kill. Stone, bone, wood, water if you're patient... Even words, if spoken careful and cruel.

  Five.

  And so can a stick. Swung from the hips, aimed high to catch him in his charge-

  One.

  Boom.

  I broke it off on his skull.

  Sent driftwood to splinters as his weight met my full-bodied swing. In that beautiful, terrible moment, mana from him, from myself, from that dead cat, all of it was flowing, swirling about us in a heady miasma. It only added to the violence, the brutality, of it all.

  I had never seen the inside of a skull before. I didn't like it when daddy processed the aurochs, when he broke bone and dug out stones.

  I was too much a boy. I didn't have the stomach for it...

  Still didn't now. Not even after my seventh, well, eighth murder. Why even count? Wasn’t gonna stain my soul any more than it was.

  From the edges of the world, some color suddenly flooded in. Seemed like some spell had broken.

  The old timer's name was Sven; he was a veteran of the Sixth Rebellion. He drew steel for the Iron Martial, claimed blood from the Grass Clan.

  And now he was dead.

  Well, dying, certainly.

  It's hard to kill in one clean stroke. Most times you gotta do the work, and that's true of any good thing in this life.

  Bit like slaughtering a pig.

  I drew his own dagger in a deep gash across his throat. Listened to him choke, sputter, and finally go quiet.

  Honored Dead, Named Man. Good, Northern stock, so rare in these dark times.

  Go with the Gods, or the Saints, or the Ancestors to the peace you seek...

  Sorry Sven. I don’t doubt you deserved better, but dammit, so do I.

  I stripped them of what they had.

  Gun, two shots. Sword, dull. A knife, rusty and curved cruel.

  Food. Some tinned beans no doubt found in the wake, a bit of water in an uncorked skin. And finally, some coin, and-

  An old Rune Book.

  Fancy that. It had a Southern name written on the spell-pages, in bright blue ink that shimmered.

  Juan Ostagar, Captain of the Sixth Naval Legion, Officer of the Empire, and Mage of the Second Circle.

  With a wave of my hand and the barest tax of vitality, the name shifted from his to mine. Written in that same, bright blue, shimmering ink.

  Name: Lorcan Roche

  Path: Desperado

  Step: 0

  Patron: Kraken, Bound

  Rest and ignite Offered Flame to progress.

  I looked at those dead men at my feet. I looked at the work of a desperate, starving sinner. I looked at that book, and the promise of power it offered.

  Then I bent, picked up my scattergun, and I laughed.

  For a long moment, I laughed.

  Strange world indeed.

  Something about killing them both banished the feeling of wrongness away. Like a soap bubble popped by a needle, this couldn’t be no dream, no drownin’ man’s hallucination if I was still killing other men.

  Nah, only reality was quite so cruel.

  I walked on.

  They sent me to a new world, to the frontier, to die and bleed on the edge of an Godless land. To serve an Empire in rotten decline, and a Pantheon that didn't speak to any man. And yet, I found myself smiling.

  It was a strange and wonderful world I had come to.

  I meant to do things different. I would not succumb here. Would not go meekly to other men’s justice. This time I would take what I needed, wanted. I’d grasp this whole damn world by the hair and bend it over good.

  This time, I meant to be the one standin’, the whole world under a dusty leather boot.

  Murder.