Ashen Crucible

Chapter 10: Fortune

Chapter 10: Fortune (Part 1)

Three days after Oberyn and his party departed, Su finally left the abandoned city.

This was a sprawling metropolis designed in an antiquated style popular before the Cataclysm - a central hub surrounded by four satellite cities to the southeast, southwest, west, and north. The skeletal remains of intercity highways, dry canals, and collapsed maglev tracks still hinted at its former grandeur. The main city stretched nearly a hundred kilometers across the plains like a slumbering behemoth, though the recent life-and-death struggles had only occurred in one small corner of this urban carcass. Even during the most desperate battles, Su had carefully avoided the dangerous central districts and other hazardous zones, a caution Oberyn had wisely shared.

For three days and nights, Su sat motionless on the rooftop of a high-rise that captured both dawn and dusk. When darkness fell for the third time, he departed, though the persistent sensation of being watched lingered until his final steps beyond the city limits.

After three days of healing, his wounds had closed and most hearing returned. His emerald eyes now glowed faintly crimson at the center - the mark of true infrared vision. Night's embrace no longer held secrets.

The evening breeze tousled Su's golden hair as he walked barefoot through the debris field. His tattered clothing revealed ivory skin that seemed to glow in moonlight, unscathed by jagged concrete and twisted rebar beneath his feet. The ruined rifle swung rhythmically in his left hand, its barrel pointing earthward with metronomic precision.

His silhouette melted into the dying light, becoming one with the endless road stretching through darkness.

Rigaud crushed his cigarette against the mahogany doorframe before kicking open the executive office. The aging bureaucrat Faswell froze mid-motion, a stack of documents hovering over his alligator-skin briefcase. Behind smudged pince-nez glasses, watery blue-gray eyes locked with the intruder's.

"I'm back," Rigaud growled, stalking forward until their faces were twenty centimeters apart. The reek of sweat and gunpowder clashed violently with Faswell's cloying cologne.

"I'm aware," Faswell replied evenly, though the twitch of his jowls betrayed irritation. The antique office with its leather-bound economic treatises seemed to shrink under their confrontation.

"Then you know how this ends?" Rigaud's yellowed teeth gleamed in a predator's grin.

"Lecroix is dead. The Dark Dragon Knights will send replacements."

"We've poked a f*****g wolverine!" Spittle dotted Faswell's forehead as Rigaud leaned closer. "That wolf will tear out our throats long before your precious nobles come crawling from their marble towers!"

"I gave you five hundred armed men!" Faswell retorted, spraying reciprocal saliva.

"Five hundred lambs couldn't stop a hungry coyote!" Rigaud produced a cigar, tearing off the tip with his teeth. "I grew up in the wastes - I know what not to f**k with!"

"Yet we've already f****d with him!" Faswell snapped back, emptying a cologne bottle onto the cigar's ragged end.

Their escalating duel of words and fluids culminated when Rigaud struck a match across Faswell's briefcase. The cologne-drenched cigar tip erupted in a chemical fireball, scorching facial hair and antique neckwear alike.

As acrid smoke cleared, both men assessed the damage. Faswell's prized 19th-century spectacles lay cracked on the desk while Rigaud's chest rug smoldered pathetically.

"You're leaving," Rigaud stated flatly, rubbing his hairless chin.

Faswell gingerly probed his blistered lips. "The boardroom battles don't pause for provincial dramas. My absence costs you more than you-"

"Stay if you value breathing," Rigaud interrupted, staring through dust-caked windows. "He's coming."

Su watched the armored patrol vehicle crawl through his rifle scope. At 500 meters, the dusk-shrouded SUV resembled a mechanized beetle bearing six oblivious soldiers. Its roof-mounted 12.7mm anti-aircraft cannon slowly pivoted - operator complacent after countless uneventful patrols.

The modified rifle coughed once.

Three hours later, the vehicle completed its automated return to Pendulum City's gates. Soldiers discovered five corpses stacked like cordwood inside - each sporting identical fist-sized chest cavities. The missing anti-aircraft cannon and 200 rounds told their own story.

When emergency floodlights illuminated the grisly scene, three armor-piercing rounds answered. Two slugs bisected the veteran sentry mid-crouch; the third shattered the million-candlepower lamp. The rookie guard collapsed screaming, drenched in his mentor's viscera.

As air raid sirens wailed, Rigaud crushed another cigarette beneath his boot. "Behold our three-star sheep."

Faswell mopped his glistening forehead, attempting levity: "At least our sniper friend avoids headshots."

"He wants us to see their faces," Rigaud growled, staring at the frozen rictus of terror on a dead gunner's face. "The message is the wound."

Their debate drowned under sudden cannon fire. The sentry post disintegrated in flaming debris - final confirmation that Su's hunting grounds now included home territory.

Chapter 10: Fortune (Part 2)

The anti-aircraft cannon's muzzle flare burned like a beacon in the darkness. Rockthorpe Company's seasoned soldiers instinctively returned fire, their weapons spewing flame. Though their reaction proved swift and their unaimed barrage technically competent, every bullet fell short - their assault rifles useless beyond 400 meters against a target positioned over 800 meters away.

Night's shroud deepened after the searchlight's destruction. No one dared activate the backup lamp. The thousand-meter shot delivered through iron sights rather than proper optics left even veterans shaken.

When a dozen soldiers began flanking maneuvers, Rigaud countermanded the lieutenant's orders. He understood Su's lethal efficiency in darkness better than most. Armored vehicles offered no protection against anti-material rounds, and mobilization delays would only let their quarry escape.

Rigaud rose from where he'd crushed Faswell during the initial attack. The elderly executive groaned as he disentangled himself from debris, his complaints dying when he noticed Rigaud's intense scrutiny of the returned patrol vehicle. The mounted cannon had been replaced by a battered rifle nearly as long as a man's leg.

Examining the weapon under portable lights, Rigaud's calloused fingers traced the splintered stock and scarred barrel. This rusted relic shouldn't have been capable of killing Lecroix, let alone repelling Oberyn's squad. Yet through its primitive iron sights, Rigaud saw only darkness where Su had somehow found targets at twice effective range.

"Waste of time," Rigaud spat, discarding the rifle. As they returned to headquarters, he followed Faswell into the executive suite uninvited.

"At least shower," Faswell griped from the bedroom doorway, wrinkling his nose. "You reek of cordite and failure."

Rigaud's grin turned feral. "On your water ration then."

Five minutes later he emerged steam-wreathed, towel precariously slung around his waist. Faswell's appraising glance over patched glasses drew a warning growl. The shaving of Rigaud's chest hair and beard during the earlier explosion had revealed surprisingly refined features beneath the rugged exterior.

Dawn found Rigaud whistling toward Li's quarters, hoping shared breakfast might defuse tensions. Instead, he learned the hotheaded commander had stormed out hours earlier with a patrol squad after hearing of Su's attack.

"Fool woman!" Rigaud cursed, commandeering Li's repaired motorcycle. The black steel beast roared through Pendulum City's gates, following fresh tread marks into the wastes.

Li stood atop the armored vehicle's roof, combat boots planted wide as wind whipped her chestnut spikes into fiery tendrils. Her modified pistol barked six times at the empty horizon.

"Su! If you've got any balls left, face me!" The challenge echoed across crumbling farmsteads. Her remaining three soldiers exchanged nervous glances, knowing what anti-aircraft rounds did to human bodies.

In the ruins' shadow, Su's infrared gaze tracked Li through his scavenged cannon's sights. The crosshairs settled on her diaphragm - one shot would bisect the muscular frame he'd once found disturbingly attractive. His finger hesitated on the trigger as engine thunder announced Rigaud's arrival.

The motorcycle became a careening missile. Rigaud's airborne tackle carried them both behind cover as Su's first round shredded the bike's rear wheel. Two subsequent shots punched through the patrol vehicle's armor, painting the interior crimson.

Li emerged from the tackle ready to break bones, until she saw the furrow carved across Rigaud's back by the near-miss round. "You..." Her accusation died as comprehension dawned.

"Don't...stand...exposed..." Rigaud wheezed through pain-clenched teeth, fingers slipping from her calf.

Li stepped into the killzone instead, ejecting spent casings. Sunlight pierced clouds as she thumbed a coin skyward. Her final bullet vaporized the spinning disc at its apex, the symbolic gesture hanging between shooter and shadowed adversary.

The return convoy moved funeral-slow. Li's white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel matched the blood dripping from her bitten cheeks. Rigaud picked cigarette fragments from his singed leg hair, answering the unspoken question:

"Maybe he needed supplies only we stock. Anti-aircraft rounds...new toys for his collection."

The lie curdled in his mouth. They both knew this was war, not looting.

In the ruins behind them, two precision shots disintegrated the modified pistol left on a stake - Su's farewell note written in gunsmoke.

"Fortune's wheel turns..."

The whisper died in the wind as Su shouldered his cannon, becoming another shadow in the wasteland's endless twilight.