Deadwake was too quiet for that.
He sat, worn thin by the night, waiting for consequences that hadn’t arrived yet. Thren’s holdings on Deadwake had spent the day in a flurry of activity, bracing for an assault that had not come. Guards slumped where they stood, stealing minutes of sleep before nightfall, hands never far from their weapons.
As the sun dipped low, a woman lit the lamps. Soft, flickering light illuminated a thin novella on the table. A macabre work. A Blood and Thunder novel, rushed in by courier from Rafael. It detailed the blood duels and Rafael Montoya’s magnificence, each bout introduced by a single oversized letter, typeset in deep red-brown ink, the literal blood of his victims.
Just looking at the book made Drew tighten his jaw. Disgust, and something colder beneath it. He wanted to survive the day, and after that spectacle, it didn’t look certain.
One of the guards stared at the novella with open envy. In Nueva Trujillo, a Blood Edition was worth several months’ wages. Or so Drew had been told.
Drew picked up his crossbow, inspecting the thin keelweave and vine resin the armorer had added. Hefting the weapon, he hoped it dampened vibration the way he expected. He wished he had done more, gone further. A compound design, maybe.
He thought of Fray Hernando.
Fray Hernando had spoken once about men who survived long enough to forget why they shouldn’t have.
Drew turned the thought over as night fully settled in.
Birdcalls chirped through the dark. The signal.
Instantly, the guards around him went still. No whispers. No shifting. Diego caught Drew’s eye and gestured once. Drew followed as the small group moved to the ladder bolted against the warehouse wall.
A woman and two men climbed first, stopping just below the trapdoor. Outside, the false birdcalls had vanished. The silence left behind felt tight, stretched to breaking.
They waited.
A cacophony of stuttering roars tore through the night.
“GO! GO! Dammit, go!” Diego shouted.
The group surged up the ladder. Drew stuffed his ears with cotton and followed.
He hauled himself onto the warehouse roof as the battle revealed itself. Black smoke rolled in from the neighboring islands, figures darting within it, briefly illuminated by flashes of gold as shield-vines flared. Clay pots arced overhead, bursting into oily smoke that an unnatural wind pushed hard against the walls.
Drew glanced back toward the keep.
Inside, the forges still burned.
The keelweave presses waited.
The winter traders’ frames stood intact.
If the walls fell, Thren didn’t just lose ground. He lost the means to rebuild it.
The woman beside Drew raised her bow and nocked an arrow. Drew mirrored her, lifting his crossbow.
“Northeast!” someone shouted. “Targets in the smoke!”
Bolts and arrows vanished into the haze.
Interlocking fields of fire answered from the star-shaped walls. Organ guns stammered in overlapping bursts, tearing into the mass below. Screams cut through the thunder of muskets.
Between the warehouses, small catapults fired burning pots over the walls. Flame splattered across moving shapes. Figures writhed, stumbled, fell.
Breathing hard, Drew cranked the windlass until the string seated in the nut. He removed it and set a bolt against the string.
He aimed into the densest smoke and fired.
The crossbow bucked once, thump… and went still. No rattle. No shudder.
Good. The dampening held.
A neon blue message flared in his vision.
+150 Combat XP (Lethal Engagement)
Combat: Crossbow
Condition: Defensive Kill
He registered the XP
CRACK
and dropped.
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Drew started cranking again as an arrow clattered against the roof beside him.
“Shoot, duck, move, you idiot!” Diego shouted.
Drew dropped behind the sandbags, rolled sideways, and kept cranking.
He rose, fired, dropped, rolled, then did it again.
“Fire to the north!” Diego bellowed.
Drew popped up and saw the northern assault cresting the wall. Attackers poured over the edge. Some of them walked straight up the vertical stone.
Arawinaya.
Not the patchwork pirates of Deadwake, but Arawinaya auxiliaries, climbing with unnatural ease. Drew fired, the bolt catching one square in the chest. The figure toppled backward over the wall.
+150 Combat XP (Lethal Engagement)
Combat: Crossbow
Condition: Defensive Kill
They were being overrun by Arawinaya, or worse, the Arawinaya were being used as expendable shock troops.
Drew rose to fire again and missed.
The staccato roar of an organ gun ripped across the top of the wall. Bodies fell—Thren’s men and assailants alike, cut apart without distinction. Drew shivered despite himself.
The Arawinaya wore disparate garb: some in all green, others marked with vivid face paint. Multiple bands. Coordinated enough to climb. Disposable enough to die.
Arrows began hammering the rooftop. They had the range now.
A shaft punched through the shoulder of the man beside Drew. He screamed and collapsed.
“Fall back!” Diego shouted.
He dragged the wounded man toward the ladder as others rushed in to help. Together they got him down, hands slick with blood.
They hustled, retreating to a secondary line behind the first ring of warehouses.
“The west wall’s gone!” a commander shouted as they approached. “Saboteurs!”
Diego cursed under his breath. That alone told Drew how bad it was.
The new defensive line was improvised, crates and sandbags piled hastily in front of the second ring of warehouses. Drew took position to the rear as the assaulting forces closed.
“Hold!” a woman in steel armor shouted. “Soldiers, hold your fire until my mark!”
Around the corner, a cluster of unarmored Arawinaya charged, desperate to close the distance as organ guns tore into their rear ranks.
“Cannons only!” the commander yelled.
Boom.
The group, barely thirty yards out ceased to exist. Bodies pulped. Blood and fragments splashed across the pale warehouse walls, painting them red. The tightly packed formation had been erased by canister shot.
Drew turned aside and vomited, then wiped his mouth and raised his crossbow again.
Silence followed as the attackers gathered themselves. Then a war cry split the air and a scattered assault surged forward.
Arawinaya men in braided orange leather burst from cover, moving unnaturally fast, leaping, rolling, dashing in short violent bursts.
“Fire!”
They were too few. Muskets and bolts tore them apart before they reached the pikes.
Archers on the opposing warehouses opened up, arrows raining down onto the line. An organ gun swept the approach, forcing defenders to scatter for cover.
Heavy breathing. Reloading clicks. The stink of smoke and blood.
It wasn’t over.
Drew wiped sweat from his brow. He was still alive. His quiver was nearly empty. Staying low, he scrambled back to a resupply crate behind the line and refilled it with shaking hands.
Armored figures flickered into view at the corners of opposing warehouses, firing muskets before vanishing again. The line was within range, but not killing range.
“Hold your fire. Find cover!” someone shouted.
From the warehouse on the left, clay pots sailed overhead. Windvine grafts caught them midair and dragged the smoke forward, rolling it toward the defenders in a thick gray sheet.
The opposing roof on the right was raked again by organ guns. Nothing answered from above.
A musket ball smacked the stone a few feet to Drew’s left. He flinched. The potshots weren’t meant to kill. They were meant to pin.
Stoneweft climbers appeared on the walls opposite, bowstrings snapping as they fired and vanished around corners. That was deadlier. A sub-commander to Drew’s right went down hard, two arrows buried in his neck and thigh.
“Crossbows, left building!” someone called.
Drew loosed a bolt. It vanished into smoke. No hit. He ducked and cranked again.
Standing was dangerous. Rafael was insane for dressing like a peacock.
A loose block of musketmen in blue burst into the open between warehouses and fired as they ran.
The cannon answered.
Multiple overlapping golden domes flared to life, blunting the canister blast. The left third of the formation staggered anyway. The shields flickered and failed.
Behind them, halberdiers in blue and swordsmen surged forward.
No one needed orders. Drew and the others fired into the mass. The formation stumbled.
Stoneweft archers resumed their harassment from the walls. Men and women fell around Drew, dragged down by arrows he never saw coming.
From the right, a pike and shot block in green advanced, driven forward by the pulsing resonance of vocal vine grafts. Behind them, more clay pots arced overhead. Smoke. Burning oil.
Drew slotted a bolt, turned, barely aimed into the blue formation.
He loosed.
A woman dropped mid-stride, her scream cut off so abruptly it took him a second to understand it had been his.
+150 Combat XP (Lethal Engagement)
Combat: Crossbow
Condition: Defensive Kill
The blue and green blocks collided in their rush for the line, bodies compressing into a brutal knot. A single golden dome snapped into place over the scrum.
The cannon roared again.
Everything outside the barrier vanished. Limbs, bodies, debris blown clear as the blast tore the edges away.
The blue halberdiers reached the line. Their hooked heads ripped sandbags aside, dragged shields down. Thren’s pikemen countered, stabbing into the gaps.
Musket fire cracked wildly. Organ guns punished the enemy rear.
Smoke swallowed everything.
Drew lost his targets. He spun, searching for a clear shot, finding none.
Men in Thren’s colors fell back toward him. Too many. Too fast.
The rear became the front.
Someone landed behind him, orange leather flashing as the attacker rolled to his feet.
Drew fired on instinct.
The bolt punched into the man’s gut, pinning him to the stone as he screamed.
The man writhed, hands grasping at the bolt in his gut. The enemy were now dropping behind them! Drew dropped the crossbow and pulled a pistol from his belt. For all the good it would do him. Through the smoke green and blue clad figures ran past him.
The line had buckled and Drew was now behind it.
Drew closed his eyes and focused.
Skill Activated: Residual Charge
Effect: Area Discharge (Radius: 18 ft)
Output: Amplified (Partial Sync)
Status: Unstable Conduction
Cooldown: 55 minutes
+90 XP (Skill Activation Bonus)
Drew tasted copper his vision tunneling. The outward pressure release caused the onrushing attackers to stumbled and seize. Vocal chats turned to cries. Men and women lay gasping convulsing. Several pikemen behind Drew rushed forward into the smoke and began stabbing the writhing attackers.
“Retreat!” The call went out.
Drew turned and ran. The pikeman getting a few more stabs in before following.
Drew reached the last low wall surrounding the keep. It barely came to his chest. He vaulted it on shaking legs and collapsed hard behind the stone.
“Get ready!”
He rolled onto one knee, clutching the pistol tight against his ribs.
“Ready!”
Above him, the organ guns spoke.
Their stuttering roar shook the air, rattling bone and stone alike.
“Fire!”
Drew rose and fired into the smoke without aiming.
Nothing answered him. No system message. No certainty.
The broken remnants of the assault turned and fled. Arawinaya and pirate alike scattered under the renewed fire, bodies dropping as organ guns stitched the dark.
A cheer rose along the wall thin, already fading.
No one believed it was over.
Character Sheet Snapshot (Post-Chapter 22)
Drew Wilson — Current Progression
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Crafting: Level 4 — 14,500 XP
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Combat: Level 2 — 1,100 XP
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Intelligence: Level 3 — 3,000 XP
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Navigation: Level 1 — 600 XP
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Aether Control: Level 1
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Storm Affinity: Level 1
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Volucite Resonance: Level 1
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Endurance: Level 1