Duran thundered up a hillside, and Sonara paused him for a breath.
In the distance, she could see the distant shine of the Briyne,like an unraveled spool of emerald thread in the middle of endless pale sand.
She squinted in the bright suns, just able see the colorful specks on the Briyne that marked the sailboats that traveled north and south along the body of water. They were often targets for outlaws and bandits to pick off, hauling away their wares.
Sonara, Jaxon and Markam had spent years perfecting those attacks. Work was hard to come by in the Deadlands, especially for those who couldn’t stay in one place too long, for fear of revealing their Shadowblood powers.
They’d become outlaws instead, for with their curses the prizes were quickly earned, and they paid bountiful amounts of gold, even split thrice. For years, the troupe worked the Briyne, but in recent months had grown tired of the jobs on the salt river. They’d turned their eyes to Jira instead; the ultimate prize. His ring had evaded them, but Gutrender… well, that was a prize far mightier, and one Sonara hadn’t ever dreamt of getting her hands on.
A cry resounded overhead, and Razor banked in the sky, turning backwards as if Jaxon had wanted to check on Sonara. He removed his hat and waved, pointing as if trying to draw her attention to something.
Sonara lifted a hand, signaling back that she’d understood.
For she saw it then: the flash in the distance. The strange, otherworldlythingthat bobbed across the sky at the base of the hill.
Metallic, fast, and heading further away by the second.
“Gazer,” Sonara said. She clicked her teeth. “It’s aGazer,Duran!”
A kick of her heels had the steed tearing down the hillside to give chase.
Sonara leaned close to him, her fingertips digging into his mane as he thundered across the desert.
The Gazers had been around for years now. Strange, metal orbs in the sky, something from another planet, anotherworld.
They did not show up often, but when they did…
“Faster!” Sonara shouted, squeezing her legs as she urged Duran onwards.
The world became a blur, her focus only on the metal orb that bobbed away, buzzing slightly as if some strange power was held within it, moving it along.
Most were the same, battered old floating orbs that catalogued information and sent them back to wherever they’d come from, in another world across the sky, beyond the domain of the goddesses.
But Jaxon was right to have signaled her. For as Duran’s hooves caught up with the Gazer…
Sonara glanced sideways, the wind stinging her eyes as she tried to focus on the Gazer.
“Steady,” she said, and her loyal beast held pace with it.
This Gazer was new, without markings or crude scribbles of anatomy from those who’d caught them and let them go. New Gazers hadn’t arrived in years.
Sonara leaned, focusing as best she could until she could read clearly the two words inscribed on the side: GEISINGER CORP.
Something new, indeed.
Sonara couldn’t quite be sure what it meant.
She’d been obsessed with the strange metal orbs for years,dragging Jaxon all over the Deadlands in hope of gaining information on them.
The sight of it would have given any Dohrsaran pause; perhaps even filled them with terror, thinking of the strange Wanderers that had arrived, years ago, to announce their presence and demand a treaty of peace with the Dohrsarans.
The Gazers remained, a sign that Dohrsar was being watched, being measured up by them, at all times.
Civilians did not know exactly when the Wanderers would show, but those who saw them had a hard time ever forgetting.
Like their ships that ventured down from the skies, the Wanderers themselves were encased in metal. Gleaming armor molded to their bodies as if forged in fire. It had no breaks, no folds, no weak spots in which to drive a spear or sword. Some of the Wanderer armor was as black as Sonara’s blood. Other sets were ice-white, or ember gold. But one thing was always the same: none had ever seen the faces of the creatures hidden within.
The ones who’d removed their helmets had burned to piles of oozing, steaming waste within minutes. As if the very air on Dohrsar was poisonous to them.
