Penumbra (Darkling Mage 0.50)

Maybe it was precisely the fact that we didn’t take the car together that initially caused the rift between me and Bastion. Maybe. But I distinctly recall disliking him as soon as he walked into Thea’s office, and I still disliked him when I saw him again at our destination.

Prudence busied herself with tying her hair back and, for some reason, putting on leather gloves as soon as we got out of the hired car, so she was either too occupied to notice Bastion pulling up on his motorcycle, or had seen it enough times not to care. I doubt she didn’t notice, though. He was throttling it loud enough, in that specific way where someone pretends he doesn’t want the attention, but clothes himself in the loudest, most attention-grabbing accessories anyway.

But that was too harsh. As histrionic as he was, it pained me to admit that Sebastion Brandt had some pretty good dress sense. I’d hack my tongue off before I’d let him know that, but his leather jacket looked like it’d been cut to fit, his jeans the seven-hundred dollar type that came pre-distressed, because the wear and tear were worth extra somehow, and the silver flames running up the sides of his motorcycle helmet were, okay, kind of cool. His blond, close-cropped hair stayed oddly neat and unmussed even after he’d removed his helmet, and his eyes seemed to savor the way others looked at him. He was, in short, a cocky bastard

.

Bastion looked like the kind of guy who grew up with a nanny and servants and a house with a pool and a library, and also the kind of guy who failed at every effort to conceal it. He couldn’t have been any older than either myself or Prudence, but his swagger, the way he dismounted with his nose held high and his shoulders spread too broad gave him the demeanor and impertinence of a teenager. I could smell the desperation from him, this deep, unrelenting want to be cool. He was exactly the kind of person who’d try to assert that coolness by putting someone down. And as the new guy, that someone was me.

“Okay, rookie.” Bastion cracked his knuckles, like it was supposed to intimidate me. Okay, it did, a little, but it was such a patently alpha move that I had to question why he was so eager to throw his weight around. “Job’s simple. We’re the diversion. You grab the goods.” He cracked the knuckles of his other hand. Fingerless gloves, I noticed.

“I got that,” I said. “Prudence explained to me on the way.”

Bastion’s lips turned up at the corner, what I would come to ruefully recognize as his signature sneer. “Did she tell you about the potential traps?”

Traps? He got me there. “What traps?”

“Bastion, honestly,” Prudence cut in. “Don’t scare the poor kid.”

That stung a little, not because we were so close in age, but for highlighting how much of a rookie I was. Which, I suppose, was fair, but didn’t I deserve a little credit?

“He’s a newbie,” Bastion said. Also fair. “Guy barely knows how to control his gift and Thea’s already sending him out with us?” He stuck his hands into his jacket pockets and sidled up to me, his head at an angle, face so close that I could see the blond wisps of stubble on his chin that he was so transparently trying to pass off as a beard. “What makes you so special, anyways?” Anyways, I noted. Another little affectation.

I shrugged. That was the way to get under their skin, guys like Bastion, by showing them how unbothered you were. There was another way, of course, and that was to be a bit of a smart-ass. “Maybe I’m cute.”

Bastion frowned. He didn’t back off.

“Or maybe,” Prudence said, slipping a forearm between us and firmly shoving Bastion back a couple of steps, “maybe Thea sees something in him. You have to admit, nobody at the Lorica’s ever seen anything quite like what Dustin can do.”

Bastion scoffed. “So he can move between shadows. That makes him less than half a Wing, and a mediocre Hound, at best.”

“Bastion,” Prudence spat, her voice rigid with warning.

“It’s cool,” I said. “It’s just a tantrum. He probably just hasn’t gotten his bottle yet.”

Bastion frowned so hard I thought his skin was going to split at the forehead. Prudence groaned.

“But yeah,” I said, suddenly concerned. “About those traps?”

Prudence waved a hand. “It’s nothing. Bastion’s exaggerating. We’re dropping in to visit Hubert. He’s a vagrant, pretty much, who has this unfortunate habit of finding and acquiring magic items he has no business playing with. He’d make a decent Hound if he wasn’t so – unhinged.”

“Unfortunate for him,” Bastion agreed. “But lucky for us. Makes tracking down some of this stuff real easy.”

Prudence nodded. “He’s right. We drop in once every couple of months and we’re pretty much guaranteed to find contraband. You know the drill. That’s what we’re meant to do for the Lorica, is to make sure the dangerous stuff doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“So this thing we’re looking for, this sword? How do we even know it’s in there?”

“An Eye picked it out,” Prudence said. “Eyes are never very specific though. They know the sword’s in there.” She placed her hands on her hips, then squinted. “Just – they don’t know where exactly it is.”

“And you’re saying it’s booby-trapped?”

Bastion examined his nails, picking under them. “Could be. You never know with Hubert.”

Prudence rolled her eyes. “He’s exaggerating. Hubert couldn’t keep his hands from shaking long enough to use a wand, much less set a trap.” She looked away from me then, her eyes shifting. “But, uh, just be careful all the same, in case you see anything out of the ordinary.”

“News flash.” I threw my hands up. “This is all out of the ordinary for me.”

Bastion buffed his nails against his jacket. “It’s no big deal. Could be just a fireball.” Just a fireball. He clapped one hand heavily against my shoulder. “I’m sure you can handle one of those.” He pulled me in, his eyes gleaming as he grinned. “How good are you at dodging things?”