Bresal’s mind swam with the sickly sweet scent of centaur sweat and stale hay. Sixty minutes remained to dose a warlord's beverage, or the city would vaporize, starting with his own splattering soul.
“The ‘Phial of Forbidden Affection’?” Bresal choked, his voice a raspy whisper as Tavok hauled him upright. The dispatch staging deck, usually a scramble of cargo harnesses and grease, smelled of ozone and hot copper. “Where do I even get that?”
Tavok, ever unruffled, tapped a finger against Bresal’s temple. “It’s already in your pouch, courtesy of our… benefactor. A shimmering vial, distinct scent. You can’t miss it.” His slate irises scanned the bustling staging deck. “Varkhas’s afternoon tea order is being processed now. Standard procedure, extra strong ‘Gloom Bloom’ infusion, delivered by ground-level drone from the lower docks.”
Bresal fumbled at his belt, finding a small, ornate flask. The liquid inside glowed with an unsettling, saccharine pink. It smelled like overripe lychee and desperation. He pictured Varkhas, the district's most terrifying conqueror, bellowing tender ballads to a rusted bulkhead while Bresal's own ribs strained against the System's countdown.
Meanwhile, miles away, Talasya was already on her return descent from the Sky-Lord’s Tower. The Sky-Master promotion felt a little closer after Varkhas’s generous tip. To protect her pristine shift ledger, she cut hard into the Gear-Tooth Gutter, a jagged trench flanked by corroded ten-story tenements and venting shafts.
Gale streams screeched between the twin masonry precipices. Her glider bucked, the composite wing-sheath scraping against a particularly corroded exhaust vent jutting from a forgotten factory wall. Flinty sparks sprayed into the fog. Talasya clicked her tongue over municipal neglect, keeping her wrists locked tight on the steering bars.
One of the sparks, however, wasn’t so minor. It landed precisely on a pile of discarded, unmarked crates tucked into a grimy alcove below the vent. Deep in the cavity, an illicit munitions cache simmered in glass carboys. The ember hissed through a split bung of blasting salts, igniting a subterranean roar that jarred the whole flue.
Talasya’s glider dipped sharply. “Ugh, more construction work,” she grumbled, correcting her trajectory with a practiced flick of her control-tethers. Shockwaves punched outward, shattering subterranean distilling vats and sending scorched pipe fittings rattling down the monsoon drains. A vast network of clandestine manufacturing equipment, processing vats for a potent new street narcotic, disintegrated in a spectacular, fiery bloom. Talasya, still oblivious, just steered around the billowing smoke, mentally logging the unexpected ‘air turbulence.’ She was making excellent time.
Back at the central depot, grease-slick tension hung thick over the cranes. A brute in plated wool paced the gantry, dragging an energized cattle pike that hissed against the iron deck. His knuckles bore the brass studs of the local street cartel.
“Someone's shorting the Sky-Lord's freight,” the brute rasped, spitting tobacco against a bollard. He jammed the copper-toothed prod toward an intake manifest clerk. “Varkhas is not to be trifled with. These are not standard goods. These are… *personal*.”
Bresal spotted Varkhas’s designated tea-drone, a sleek, four-propeller model, hovering near a conveyor loaded with labeled parcels. It was the perfect opportunity. He edged closer, the pink phial clutched in his sweaty palm. Tavok was nearby, ostensibly inspecting a cargo net, but his eyes were on Bresal.
The enforcer barked again, slamming the prod into a crate of drenched manifests. “I want names! Who has access to the Sky-Lord’s… *luxuries*?”
Bresal made his move. He extended the vial, aiming for the tea-drone’s open brew-port. Just as he tilted it, Tavok smoothly shifted, ‘accidentally’ bumping Bresal’s elbow with a well-placed cargo hook. Bresal gasped, his hand jerking.
The vial slipped. The syrup splashed across the enforcer's heavy wool shoulder, saturating the fabric.
The syndicate enforcer froze. His pupils dilated into massive ink spots as he turned his neck toward a rusted wash pail propped against an oil drum. The sloshing gray water smelled of lye and gutter slime.
A dopey grin spread across his scar tissue. The cattle pike slipped from numb fingers, sparking against the floorplates as he shuffled toward the tub.
“My radiant dove,” he murmured, fingers trembling against the galvanized zinc lip. “Why did we ever part?”
Tavok bit his knuckles to choke down laughter, while Bresal stood paralyzed beside the tea conveyor.
The man hoisted the filthy metal tub against his ribs, rocking back and forth. “Your wire bail... supple as braided silk! Your scummy sheen, my personal dawn!”
A pistol-toting thug stepped forward from the lift shaft. “Boss? What are you holding?”
The enforcer whirled, teeth bared in psychotic bliss. “Step back from her, you swine! Our vows are forged!”
He swung the heavy wash pail like a morningstar, scattering suds and cracking ribs with deafening declarations of eternal romance. The enforcers, utterly bewildered, tried to subdue their suddenly infatuated leader, inadvertently smashing crates and sending delicate equipment flying. The staging area devolved into absolute carnage, soaked in dirty rinse water and flying ledger receipts.
Just as the chaos reached its peak, a familiar neon Guildhouse jacket, glowing a vibrant cerulean, zipped into view. Talasya hummed a shipping chantey, dropping her skids cleanly onto the blood-and-suds-slicked deck. She unclipped her safety harness, a faint smile on her lips, ready for her next pickup. Enraged, surviving gang members, covered in bruises and mop-water, turned from the brawl. Bruised gunmen slowly turned toward her pristine flight suit.