Page 5 of Snake Eyes & Bad Luck

“What now?” Callum huffed, unprepared for whatever it was Grahm had to show him.

Grahm nodded into the woods after a distinctly, not the woods, sound. A woman, drenched in blood, raced through the tree line, followed swiftly by four yelling Paladins. As the group grew closer, the clearer Callum could hear the chaos. She’s in trouble. Grahm whispered softly, “We got company.”

Callum watched in silent reverie as the woman in all red shrieked and blasted the Paladins with a powerful force of magic out of her hands. Ink-colored magic threw the Paladins out of the trees and into the field, their golden armor sizzling. The SunBringer’s followers screamed in agony as magic sank into their skin and ate away at their bones.

“A warlock,” Callum breathed, lips spreading broadly on his face. The woman ran deeper into the swamp, panic vibrating off her. A desperate warlock by the looks of it. She didn’t notice the two camouflaged outlaws hidden amongst the trees. He glanced down at Grahm. “Go see about the train, see if either of the fools survived or if you can find the horses…I’ve got a little lady to question.”

“Yer sure about that one?” Grahm glanced at the warlock disappearing into the haunted treeline.

“Oh yeah, she’s all mine.” Callum patted Grahm on the shoulder before he slithered after the woman in red. Something built up in his chest. Interest, desire, curiosity, they filled his belly with a giddy delight. It’d been a long time since he felt…inspired.

Chapter Four:

Avelina

Blood. That’s all she saw. All she knew. All she tasted as she woke up on the floor of a train car. Only after she swiped her grimy hands over her face did she smell the smoke.

“What happened?” she murmured through sticky lips. The second she did, she regretted it. Something toppled off her head and she wrenched backward. Blood. She sat in a pool of it. The whole train car was coated in it. Crimson from the ceiling to the floor. Puddles of it everywhere with clumps of flesh scattered. Avelina slowly sat up, shifting onto her knees, searching the horrifying scene for answers. Her fingers brushed a spine and she screamed. Scrambling backward, she toppled over a body that sent her splashing across the floor. Avelina shoved herself up against a wall, her boots slipping through the sinew.

“What. Happened. Here?” She panted for air as it dawned on her steadily…the train wasn’t moving. Avelina sat in a puddle of blood, her sticky back to a wall, trying to regulate her heart in the midst of a nightmare. “Why am I alive?”

“Because I saved you…” a soft voice tickled her ear. Avelina watched from down the hall, a pair of gray feet, delicate but boney, stepped through all the gore toward her. They pushed aside chunks of dead flesh as their lace shroud dragged through all the death. Inch by inch, Avelina memorized the form of Catalysta. She knew her name, not because of her father’s incessant lessons on the heretical gods or her own studies. No, she knew who the woman with a crown of bones atop a head on long, silver hair was because Catalysta told her. In her mind, when they joined hands, she was known to Avelina.

And as the Goddess of Madness knelt in front of the blood-coated girl on a dead train, Avelina recalled exactly what happened. The power surged through her, and she ripped the first ruffian to shreds. She tore through him like wet paper and stepped out into the hall. Blast after blast, she turned the train robbers into sinew and roasted meat. Clumps of them fell around her as she stared through bleeding eyes. Catalysta’s power raced through her veins, and she almost let Avelina rest until another man charged her from the back of the train.

Warlock. They cursed her. Spat at her feet. Pushed and shoved her, screaming at her till she made it all…stop.

“I crashed the train,” she breathed. Avelina Dalethorn tore apart the train like a monster. Her belly quivered as she assessed the damage. Not a single person was left alive. I’m a murderer. I’m a monster.

“You must leave. They’re coming for you. They’ll kill you if they find you.”

Avelina crawled up the wall with her nails, leaving tracks in her wake as she climbed to her feet. Catalysta bowed her head to her slightly. The words came out in a rushed croak, “Why are you helping me?”

But the goddess did not deign to answer her. Instead, she disappeared in a swirl of floating ash as the door to the train car burst open, filling the space with thick smog. Right, crashed the train. Avelina bolted across the floor. Stumbling around all the bodies, their personal effects spilling out of cabins like their innards, she did her best not to trip. Every inch of her was doused in her crimes. Avelina managed to get to the back door of the train car before she heard the thunderous boots of Paladins descending upon the train.

If she were a better liar, she could try to play it off as a victim. If she were a better daughter, maybe she’d cry for her father, and the Paladins would buy it. If…if…if. There was no time to change her mind. Avelina climbed down out of the crunched car and slid out onto the tracks. Her boots crunched gravel, but otherwise it was a silent escape. She crept alongside the other train cars, using the embrace of night to hide her disappearance.

Only, a beam of light stopped her and sizzled her skin. Avelina cried out in pain, throwing herself into the tall grass away from the beam.

“There it goes! Did you see it?”

“Grab them!”

Avelina tore through the grass, getting a few feet away when two large hands grabbed her arms. Shrieking, she thrashed left and right, slick as an oiled pig, she freed herself from their gloves. Avelina spun to face her doom. Heart in her throat, hands up, she sobbed as the two Paladins painted in her crimes stared at her bewildered. One of them held a lantern over her. Crimes illuminated, there was little she could say.

“The train was robbed. They killed him so fast! I didn’t mean to—” her pathetic whine cracked in her throat. Trembling the whole time, she desperately hoped they believed her.

Run.

And yet she stayed. Hands up to them like white flags, eyes wide in fear, she watched the two men clearly assess what garbled language she spoke at them.

“He’s dead!” Her death sentence echoed over the tall grass. A Paladin bellowed out the window of her train cabin, the whole of Parandor’s forces turning to stare at the caught woman in the grass. Another beam of light shot down and she shrieked, lurching backward. “She murdered Knight Commander Dalethorn!”

“No!” she screamed as hands descended on her. “No! No I didn’t! They killed him! I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

They dragged her forward, panic stabbing her veins. Visions of swords brought down over her throat, of Tala reading about her death in the paper, of her name used as a curse, of her head on a spike on the wall of her father’s beloved Stronghold filled her head.

Run! Her goddess bade her to run, and knowing they would never trust a word she said, Avelina obeyed.