Clint leaned against the old, rough-brick rampart with his arms crossed, idly kicking up dust beneath the dry shade of the south-most wall. It was mostly for show – Ravenna hadn’t been under serious threat of large-scale invasion for over a century – but somewhere along the way it lost that special grandeur, that imposing pride, bricks worn down by time and bronze trimming faded and dull, scheduled upkeep having become a rare occurrence.
“Back in the good old days,” he muttered, eyeing a cloaked figure making their way towards him.
He was honestly surprised at how easy it was to arrange an unsupervised meeting with one of the country’s head generals and sole curse-user, at least that Clint knew of, though he supposed folks were ready to believe anything after the death of their king a few months back.
“Julian! You have my thanks, coming all the way out here! Hope getting out of town wasn’t too much of a pane, eh?”
“Quiet,” the man hissed, drawing the musty grey hood over his head, trying and failing to keep a few odd strands of shining blond hair from poking out of the threadbare cloth. “Do you want to draw attention? Ravenna’s security is no joking matter, especially not in the midst of a potential-”
“Spies, right,” he affirmed conspiratorially, ushering the general further into the shade. “I have reason to believe a prominent figure among your ranks is leaking sensitive information, quite possibly contributing to the downfall of our departed king,” Clint finished loudly. He paused, a bead of sweat running down his neck, before hastily thumping a fist against his chest, the traditional Ravennian sign of honor. Julian stepped closer, crystalline eyes boring into the pot-bellied, middle aged man nervously standing before him.
“If what you speak of is true, any piece of information would go a long way. Your anonymity and wellbeing is guaranteed, if that’s a concern. We have people for that, safehouses. I just need a name.” Damn it, Clint was never good at improvising, and they were way past the cue. What was taking him so long?
“Yes, well. I’ve observed several unsanctioned meetings between legionnaire Kaseo Aurelius and the Keraxe ambassador, taking with him official building plans for-”
“Aurelius…the Aurelius house has been loyal to the crown for generations, what reason would they have to betray our country?” He withered under the general’s opalescent gaze, eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“Well, I…erm.”
“I think I’m being quite fair, taking into account the concerns of common folk,” Julian started, voice taking on a colder tone. Heavy bags hung under his eyes, a mark of the rising political tension Ravenna had been drawn into with the loss of Calvus. “Though my time is rather valuable, and I don’t take lightly those who seek to waste it. I hope for both our sakes that you speak the truth.” Clint could feel his throat drying, acutely aware of the danger he was in. He could only buy time for so long…one last shot.
“I like Prince Revon,” he blurted.
“Excuse me?”
“Or…or rather King Revon, I s’pose. He’s smart, n’ kind, and I reckon he’ll make a great king, I…well. Erm…I really like him. A lot.” Julian recoiled slightly in confusion, an undecipherable expression plastered on his face.
“I…admire your transparency."
“…Right.” The general snapped to attention as a shadow passed over the dry grass below, turning to strike the incoming object in an explosion of water and wood, only realizing his mistake too late – it had been a barrel of sea water. Sopping wet, he collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath as their skin cracked and fissured, atrophying under his conflicting curse and biting salt water.
“You little-” Julian swiveled his head, propping himself up with a blistering arm as his vision lurched to the side, sending a shard of glass narrowly whizzing past the man’s ear. Clint lowered his stance, arms straining up in the air as a flat slab of rock shakily rose from behind a bush, wobbling above Julian.
“Nothing personal, mate,” he grunted, releasing it with a dull thud and crash of shattering glass. “I swear…Phil! Get yer arse down here! What was the holdup?” A wiry man leapt down from the rockface, softening his fall with a cushion of air before stumbling against the coarse stone wall.
“I’d have liked to see you lugging it up that steep an incline,” he scoffed, straightening his greying hair. “You could’ve made some stairs, at the very least.” Clint stooped down, irritably brushing off glass dust from his trousers.
“Already told you, th’ meeting got moved up. You…didn’t hear that last bit, did you?”
“What? Listen, we don’t have much time before the bloke reforms. Help me out here, would you?” With a sweep of his arms he coaxed the scattered glass shards under the slab of rock as Clint shakily rose it in the air, along with an identically cut stone plate from the ground beneath. He slowly pumped his arms as the two rough slabs began rhythmically scraping against each other with the gritty crunch of powdery glass, sandwiching what was left of the general between them. Phil formed a thick bubble of air in his hands before ballooning it out into a plump ball, supporting the slabs as they rolled them across the ground.
“Well, let’s get on with it, shall we?”
~
Clint stumbled slightly as a trickle of glass dust escaped from between the two rocks, before being guided back by a soft eddy of wind.
“Keep up the grinding,” Phil sighed. “We’re nearly there.”
“…That’s what-”
“Shut up.” The two were almost at the coastline, a worn-down, rocky incline dropping into the bay below, waves lapping at the rough russet edges in the evening sun.
“D’you reckon he can feel pain?” Clint furrowed his brow, peering curiously between the slabs.
“Who, th’ general? Eh…dunno, probably. Wonder if he can-” With an apoplectic roar, Julian forced the two stones apart, cracks splitting down his glass arms like gunshots.
“You miserable, insignificant piles of filth,” he spat, skin sloughing off his body as their face splintered and snapped with every word. Waves of pure loathing crashed over Julian’s form, air rippling around him from their sheer intensity.
“You’ll be begging for death by the time I’m finished with you. There won’t be enough of you to bury.” His fingers shattered and reformed again and again, losing their shape with each reconstruction as glass shards stitched together with strings of tendon and bone.
“You make me sick. It’s people like you who drag down society, people like you I have to deal with every day, who think they can-”
“Blimey, he’s an angry one.” Phil emptied his waterskin onto the general as he let out a hate-filled howl, skin boiling against the sea water, and the stones crunched back shut. With one last push Clint heaved the slabs over the edge of the cliff, and they crashed into the sea below with a wet gulp. The surface of the water began to fizzle angrily, globs of multicolored bubbles clumping together and popping with a sharp hiss, before…silence. Phil peered expectantly over the cliff, only to be met with the soft lapping of waves against the rocky coast.
“That…that’s it?”
“What, you wanted more?”
“Dunno, I was just expecting…y’know, fire! Fulmination! A real show!”
“Get over yourself,” Clint grumbled as a glowing cube exploded out of the sea, spraying the two with a shower of spindrift. Time seemed to slow as it passed by his face, hundreds of thousands of his own mud-green eyes staring expectantly at him through the depths of the curse, crystalline realities fracturing, reflections spawning reflections, shards of his deepest desires shattering and rearranging into sprawling mosaics, refracting through prisms of infinite possibility – before it was gone, soaring off into the horizon. Fishing a pencil and scrap of paper from his trousers with shaking fingers, Clint crossed a name off the list.
“Well then, who’s next?”