“Something isn’t right.” It was the fourth time Derek had said so in the past day. The train made due course from Ter.1.2 to Keel along the main tracks.
“Take your pick from the garden of Everything Is Wrong. There’s no shortage of bounty in the field.” Florence settled in the plush seat of the train cabin they’d been given on Powell’s behalf. But even if Powell hadn’t asked it of the train, they still could’ve each taken their own cabin if they wanted. The vessel was at less than half capacity and most of the travelers kept to themselves. A heavy weight kept heads down and mouths quiet.
Nora gave Florence a tired look at the discourse repeating itself.
“There should be more Dragons along the checkpoints. They’ve been monitoring all trains going in and out of Keel for months, looking for an illegal transport of supplies,” Derek clarified. “But we haven’t seen a single one so far.”
“I suppose they only have enough time to burn Loom and not dance on its ashes.” Florence folded her arms.
“I don’t know why they’re not here...” Derek leaned his forehead against the window, watching one of the aforementioned tunneled checkpoints that kept the endwig at bay through the Skeleton Forest whiz by. It was dark and unmanned, so the train continued on.
“Yes, you do.” Florence wouldn’t stand to see fear and shock dull Derek’s sharp senses. “You know why they left.”
“No, they still need to…”
“To what? To guard the transportation of goods? Derek, there has to be a guild for the goods to go to.”
“There’s no way they would do that to the Alchemists.” He couldn’t even say what “it” was.
“The Harvesters are more essential to Loom than the Alchemists.” Derek and Nora both gave Florence incredulous stares at the notion, but she held fast. “If they’ll do it to one guild, they’ll do it to any.”
Or all, Florence thought but didn’t say. The more she had time to mull over everything that had happened, the more she realized there really was no other alternative. After what Powell had said, after what the Dragons had done… It was to be total warfare between their worlds.
“The Alchemists have fought off the Dragons for years. We’re the only guild to refuse to allow them in.”
“They don’t need to be ‘let in’ to reap destruction.”
“Enough, both of you.” Nora pinched the bridge of her nose with a heavy sigh. “Derek, Florence is right, something must have happened. But until we get there, we won’t be able to see exactly what.” She shook her head and looked out the window.
Florence let the topic drop. She hadn’t had a home for most of her life. She was born five years before Dragon contact was made. Her vague memories of Ter.0 were nothing more than the ghosts of emotions and the hazy remnants of bygone dreams. She had been moved to the Ravens, arbitrarily, as part of the Dragons’ restructuring following the end of the brief war. There she learned, and she failed, earning a few friends rather than a sense of belonging to a guild. When she left, she did the bidding of the Wraith of Dortam, and was little more than a transient ghost herself.
Florence leaned against the door on the opposite side of Derek and Nora, watching them. She had always found more family in people than places or things. But they were different from her. Their place was their identity, and they belonged to the Alchemists.
So, while all three felt heartbreak the moment they arrived in Keel and learned the Alchemists’ Guild hall had been destroyed mere hours after the Harvesters, Florence’s pain was of a different sort than her two companions.
The streets of Keel were full of Alchemists, not unlike how Ter.1.2 was now the de facto hall for the Harvesters. However, unlike Faroe, the Alchemists Guild Hall was far enough from the city that the majority of the capital city of Ter.2 remained unharmed. Physically, at least.
Their train was the first to arrive from Ter.1, so carrying the burden of truth was their responsibility. Men and women alike collapsed on the platform. Screams of sorrow harmonized oddly with cries of relief as people embraced in both pain and joy. Some survived, some didn’t; their world had been thrown into a shaker and then spilled back out upon the land. Now, it remained to be seen what was left.
“James?” Derek called from halfway down the platform to an Alchemist directing the flow of people.
The man, James presumably, looked around before finding Derek’s eyes and giving a wave. “Derek! Nora!”
They met each other in the middle with a reserved clasping of hands in relief at seeing each other again.
“We thought you for dead.”
“We nearly were,” Derek confessed. “The new Vicar Harvester got us out in time.”
“It really is true then?” James’s voice took a deeper, heavier turn. “The Harvesters as well?”
“What happened here?”
“Vicar Sophie suspected something was amiss when the day before all Dragons were pulled from Keel. Mysteriously, the King’s men who had been so intent on becoming our official liaisons and staying permanently in the guild decided they had tired of the job.
“The Vicar sent a team of men and women to investigate. While they were here in Keel, they were approached by a Chimera living in the city, a graduated journeyman. He manages a store that sells dried fish from the coast, near Ter.1.3. His supplier contacted him, informing him of delays as a result of the attack on the Harvesters’ Guild.”
“Did the Vicar Alchemist not try to fight the Dragons?” Derek asked hopelessly as they traversed the platform.
“With what weaponry?” James sighed. “You know how it was: there was barely enough gunpowder to make a spark.”
The image of that giant canister plummeting through the sky toward the Harvesters’ Guild came back to Florence. There wasn’t much fight to be had. The Dragons had set out to make a statement about the helplessness of Loom and so far, they had succeeded. They had traveled and killed using Loom’s technology.
“How much of the guild escaped?” Florence asked.
“About two thirds.”
The three words formed a single golden lining to an otherwise terrible situation. It put the Alchemists in a better position to remain the spearhead of the resistance if the other guilds were in a state that was anything like the Harvesters. But James didn’t seem to share her reasoning. His mouth formed a scowl at the news.
“Then it should be no trouble for us to see the Vicar?”
“Sophie is quite busy.” James’s pointed look at Florence’s right cheek was missed by no one. No matter what she did, she would be seen as an outsider to them.
“She’ll want to see us,” Derek insisted.
“Derek, you may want to wait,” James cautioned.
“It’s urgent.”