Chapter 16

“There is no such thing as a criminal. There is a person who has been pushed beyond the limits of the law by their circumstances or who has made bad choices so that they can survive and thrive. Both of these are matters that can be addressed more fully by changing the material conditions under which they live than by doling out punishment. If people are given better circumstances, and better choices, then they will not choose to pursue the illegal as an alternative. Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides that they want to be a bad person. Nobody wants to be a criminal.”

—The Overdue Reformation of Criminal Justice within the Empyrean Alliance, Lysanlien Glimmerbrook

Stepping out onto the surface of the planet was a mixed experience for Sylvas. While Hector and his friends had strapped on protective gear—goggles and masks and an array of scarves wrapped around them to soak up the worst of the poison air before it could stick to their skin and start eating in—a cursory scrying of the planet had shown nothing that could hurt him. It was an odd little reminder of how much he’d changed. He wrapped himself up the same as the rest of them to help him blend in, but it was entirely cosmetic. As they stepped down onto the rocky terrain, it had a strange sponginess to it—a result of the constant acidic bombardment of the atmosphere. To Sylvas, it felt like nothing more than walking over the surface of a giant mushroom. There were a few other people moving around their own ships in the vast field, but everyone seemed intent on minding their own business, even as Hector cast the spells that locked up their ship and activated its dormant defenses.

They had a small communication spell linking the four of them in case they became separated while on the planetary surface, but with the masks, scarves, and the speed of the wind whipping by, those spells became necessary just to be heard.

“Not the nicest place for a first date,” Kaya was the first to opine.

“What luck we aren’t here to date then,” Malachai was quick to say. Sylvas suspected he was scowling at the dwarf, but it was difficult to tell under the goggles.

“Let’s just head for the biggest population center we can find and see if there isn’t somebody we can ask for directions… or buy a drink from.”

Kaya smacked him on the back as she passed him by, trudging along the row of parked ships. “Just how much of this job of yours revolves around going to a bar anyway?”

“Less than I’d like, and more than you’d think.”

There was more walking involved than any of them would have liked or expected to make their way from the ship towards the mysterious mass of heat and light up ahead in the poison-shrouded distance. The planet was definitely populated, as they could tell from the regular roar of ships taking off and landing all around them, but there were surprisingly few people to be seen. Presumably, even smugglers avoided going out onto the surface of a planet like this unless they really had no better options. Those few that they did spot heading to or from their ships were strange silhouettes against the yellow, the natural shapes of their bodies masked by the bulky layers of protective gear they wore. Kaya waved to them in her usual jolly manner, even though every single one of them ignored her, and Sylvas suspected she was just doing it to be an annoyance after the first couple of waves.

The wind began to die down as they drew in closer to what passed for civilization on this rock, spells spinning in the lower atmosphere to calm the worst of the chemical storm that engulfed the whole world. With all the muffling of their senses, he had no idea if the others could even feel the difference, but he felt the prickling sensation as they passed through the various alarm spells and wards that had been plastered haphazardly across the entire place.

Individually, none of them would have caused a troublemaker worth their salt any particular problem, but with so many of them having been laid down, interconnecting accidentally, feeding mana into one another, and overlapping in purpose and power, there was a distinct possibility that anyone attempting magical warfare here was liable to end up blowing both themselves and everyone else up. It was a profoundly stupid setup, but something being smart didn’t mean it was more effective. Sylvas’ own brute force use of mana to move things around was about as dumb an application of magic as you could get, yet it had also proven itself more effective than any number of complex spells to date.

The city, if it could be called that, loomed up out of the yellow fog soon after. Pitted, rusted, and stained metal gave it the look of a scrapyard, with hastily strung tarpaulins and roughly riveted sheet metal being the only thing making it look like it was even possible that people were attempting to live there. If there were actual people living on the planet rather than just stopping by the surface to trade, then presumably they were keeping themselves elsewhere, most likely underground, where the worst of the weather wouldn’t reach them. This shanty town was for trade. A marketplace sprawling in the acidic air.

Almost immediately, Sylvas’ senses began singing. “What’s the policy on buying things here?”

“Might help us blend in,” Hector conceded.

Malachai tutted. “Surely, you cannot be considering purchasing what are clearly smuggled or stolen goods.” 

Sylvas nodded off to the left. “Well, they’ve got a world-soul fragment for sale over in that big tent, and I’m tempted.”

Hector made a little choking noise inside his mask. “I brought some pocket change to buy drinks. I don’t think we’ve got anything valuable enough to trade.”

“Let’s settle for finding some vlashgahr, eh?”

Hector clapped a hand on Kaya’s shoulder. “This one’s got her head on straight.”

“It doesn’t stay on straight once she’s had some vlashgahr,” Sylvas grumbled, following after them as they veered away from the big tent and towards a lean-to shack that seemed to have music coming from inside, although Sylvas wasn’t entirely certain he’d describe the heavy drumming and shrieking as music or some sort of torture being enacted.

Ducking in through the open doorway felt like getting his skin scraped all over thanks to the spell meant to keep the poisonous gases of the atmosphere outside, but Sylvas had suffered considerably worse and didn’t even flinch. Kaya and Malachai, by comparison, let out surprised yelps—Malachai’s considerably higher in pitch than Kaya’s. Hector must have known what was coming because he held himself braced as he passed over the threshold. 

The inside of the bar was as appealing as the outside had been. The same bare and rusted metal walls were on display, some of them melted in interesting ways by spell damage, but mostly, they were just slowly degrading in an atmosphere hostile to anything staying upright. The bar itself was a row of steel barrels with what looked like an old storefront sign laid across it, the lettering abraded and stained away by the passage of so many drinks over it. The bartenders were a pair of fiends, one male, one female, both the same yellowish tone as the world outside and both equally massive with musculature. As Hector pulled off his mask, they both took one look at him, at each other, and then simultaneously winked at him. Sylvas rolled his own eyes and moved in to the room so they weren’t blocking the entrance. The bar was not a big place, which meant that even though the clientele was less than abundant, it felt full even before their arrival.

Sylvas half-expected a place like this to be one wrong look away from a brawl breaking out, but instead, the opposite seemed to be true. This far from civilization, and all of the medical wonders it could work, people seemed to be a lot less belligerent. That or they were all really intent on their own business. Regardless, they made their way carefully through the crowd to the bar, and Hector refused to take no for an answer when ordering them all vlashgahr. Surprisingly, Kaya seemed to have some objections to his drink of choice, too. “Is it even vlashgahr if nobody is trying to arrest you for making it?”

Malachai had finally stripped away the many scarves wrapped around his head to look bemused. “Is the danger of being caught a part of the flavor?”

Kaya nodded and jerked her thumb at him. “See? He gets it.”

Hector just shook his head and handed along the steaming metal cups. Without hesitation, knowing that nursing it and smelling it would just make things so much worse, Sylvas knocked his back. With his changed physiology, it burned going down, as expected, but then he was surprised to find that many of the noxious components of the liquor were actually useful to his enhanced body. Worse yet, his reinforced tongue was able to withstand the initial rush of chemistry to pick out some distinct flavors in it. “Mmm. This is better than yours, Kaya.”

He glanced her way, only to notice that her mouth was hanging open in horror. He had never seen her so offended. He nodded at her cup. “Go on, try it. It’s good.”

She continued to gawk at him, so he turned back to look over the crowd. None of them were obviously involved with the organized crime on this planet. Which was to say, all of them definitely were involved with the organized crime on the planet, but none of them looked distinctly more criminal than any of the others. Sylvas had expected the crowd to be mostly fiends and dwarves from the way that the planet had been described, but in fact, humans were far more prevalent.

“So, who do we approach?” Sylvas leaned over to ask Hector.

“Nobody. Just give them a minute to get the measure of us, and somebody should come over to…” An elbow nudged into Sylvas’ back as Hector was still talking.

The old woman who’d made her way up to the bar looked like she was made of leather, except for her clothes, which were actually made of leather, stained yellow by the atmosphere. She had one eye, with the other one stitched shut, and most of her teeth appeared to be metal. “Alright, love?”

He forced a smile onto his face. “Good, thanks…. you?”

She snorted in amusement. “What brings you here?”

Sylvas’ eyes flicked to Hector, but he didn’t need a babysitter; he knew the mission. “Don’t suppose you’d know where I could find the Saizen Brothers?”

Thanks to the thick layers of clouds, the planetary surface of Glamrock Nine was actually pretty balmy despite it simultaneously being in a perpetual state of shrouded night, but Sylvas was still pretty sure he felt the temperature drop the moment he said that name.

“Ain’t nobody by that name around here.”

“It doesn’t need to be them. Anyone in their organization would do,” Malachai weighed in. Sylvas could already feel the situation getting away from them.

“Anybody who might know what we want to know.” Hector had produced a coin from somewhere and was flicking it and catching it casually with one hand. It seemed a lot shinier and bigger than the coins he’d doled out to buy them their drinks.

“Might be I know what you want to know.” The old woman now ignored the rest of them entirely to focus on Hector.

“Might be…” Hector began. “Do you have somewhere private where we could talk?”

She glanced at the four of them, Kaya still industriously guzzling her own and Malachai’s drink with her back to the bar. “Just you.”

“Wouldn’t be private otherwise.” Hector winked.

She took him by the elbow and started heading for what Sylvas had initially taken to be the door to the bathroom. Hector called back over his shoulder, “Try and behave yourselves, kids.”

Rolling his eyes, Malachai turned back to the bar and his now-empty cup, which he stared at with some small measure of confusion until Kaya belched, and the smell of vlashgahr on her breath was strong enough to curl his eyelashes. Then his confusion was replaced with disgust. “Vile.”

She punched him, not entirely playfully, in the shoulder. “Same to you, buddy.”

“What do you want with them Saizen scumbags, then?” Sylvas’ attention had been on his friends when it should have been on the potentially hostile patrons of the bar. A couple of the humans had made their way to their feet and strolled over, obviously feeling that the masses of muscles that they’d somehow accrued gave them some sort of advantage.

“I’m not particular,” Sylvas replied, trying to diffuse the situation. “I’d settle for any scumbags you have available.”

“Those boys have been causing us a lot of trouble, you know,” the balder of the two humans said. “Interfering in business that ain’t theirs. Reminds me of you.”

It slowly dawned on Sylvas that this was not a conversation. It was the prelude to a fight. The justifications were being lined up to excuse taking a swing at him. He made one last-ditch attempt to avert it. “Maybe I’m looking for them because they’ve been causing me trouble, too.”

“A nobody like you? Wouldn’t even be on their radar,” the shorter and less bald of the two men said, as the balder one wound up a punch. Sylvas sighed.

I guess we’re not doing this the easy way.