It was mid afternoon and hotter than hell when Lia Xin stumbled out of the desert and into the frontier town. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes focused almost blankly on her intended destination, being the large building with a brightly colored sign and many people around it. Her black hair was a shoulder-length tangled mess, dulled by the sun and nearly grey-brown from the sand and dust while her light skin was darkened by exposure and a layer of grime. Her clothes were not spared either: the loose-fitted black silk pants and single-breasted pale blue silk coat with its high, straight collar were fine pieces and would recover, but for the moment they were soiled to a uniform brown as befitted the wastelands of Jakkard.

Lia forced herself to regain her balance as she stumbled into the saloon and walked up to the bar, looking very out of place more for her age and gender than her featues and clothing, though all those items were abnormal.

She made hand signs at the barman, slowly and carefully. He responded with a dumbfounded look.

That was alright. Not everyone knew the signs. She lifted her satchel and removed from it her supplies: an inkstone, a sitck of ink, a brush, and a strip of parchment. She had a little water of her own left, and used it to moisten the stone and make a good ink. Quickly, she wrote on the parchment

I want food and water.

She offered the slip to the barman, who looked it and scratched his head. Did he not know proper characters? The people in this desert place used strange letters, similar to the ones used on the first strange world she found herself on and possibly the same, but she hadn’t quite put them together. She felt like she was close, but at the same time she wouldn’t know until she had a breakthrough. This was going to be very frustrating

With exaggerated gestures, Lia mimed eating and drinking

“Oh!” the barman said, “Food and drink, that right? We’ve got baked beans for three coins a plate, whiskey’s two. Wouldn’t take the water, tastes like piss and probably is.”

Lia did not know what whiskey was, but she trusted the barman’s tastes and nodded in an exaggerated fashion.

“Will you, ah, be wanting a room and a bath too?” he asked, apparently having caught on that she could not speak for herself. Lia nodded again, somewhat more hesitantly than before. She did not have much money on her person.

“Right. Now, little lady, you don’t mind if I ask to see the – ah – the goods now do you?”

Lia rooted through her pockets. She placed a few coins on the bar, though they were radically different. Three were copper coins from home, with the large square holes in the middle. Another was a small, badly worn silver coin she had found between cobbles in another world, and the last was a larger, shiny silver – what was left of her earnings for a hastily-drawn landscape painting.

The barman looked up the coins with a concerned, confused frown.

“What kinda money is this?” he asked. He picked up the shiny silver, weighed it in his hand, tested it with his teeth, and held it to his ear before striking it against a tin cup.

“Got any more of these?” he asked.

Lia emptied her pockets, placing a few more coppers and another tarnished old silver coin on the bar. The barman moved all three silver coins aside.

“I think I can get you a bowl of beans,” he said, “And maybe something to drink, quench the thirst, you know?”

It was clear he didn’t want to do even that much, but Lia must have made a pathetic enough sight to convince him. Still, she wanted a bath, and to not sleep out where the dust blew so fiercely. She flexed one arm and grabbed it with the other, mimed wiping a plate, and mopping a floor.

“You wanna work for your keep, little miss?” The barkeep asked, incredulous, “Now I don’t know about that-“

“Aww,” a woman said, “Let her try.”

Lia looked around, and for the first time noticed that her attempts at communication had drawn something of a crowd. The one who had spoken was a tall woman in a pretty fancy red dress with a black garment covering her from her hips to the bare tops of her breasts that Lia guessed was giving her the figure like an hourglass she displayed. The woman’s brown hair was curled and shiny, her tan-skinned face was heavily made-up in a style foreign to Lia, and her lips were painted ruby red.

“Now, Maddie,” the barman said,

“Look,” she said, “What did she give you?” the woman bent over the silver coins, “Well, if she works out she works out, if she doesn’t I’ll fill the difference for a spot by the fire and a bath. But if she does a good job, you ain’t collecting from me. Actions speak louder than words.”

Maddie turned to Lia and started talking to her as though she was a child. Lia forced herself to remember she didn’t have any other way to pay, and so she shouldn’t offend her benefactor with harsh glares

“Don’t you worry your little head about it,” she said, “Ol’ Maddie’s got you covered. How about you go upstairs and wash up so you can wait my tables when I go up on stage. Can’t have you servin’ guests with half the grime in the wastes all over yourself. That’ll be okay, wouldn’t it?”

The barman rolled his eyes, and Lia nodded.

“Go on.” Maddie said, and Lia hurried up the rickety stairs, finding a room with a locking door, hand pump, and big metal tub in short order. She tried to make it quick, filling the tub with the tepid, metal-smelling water and bathing her silks and her body at the same time, only unbuttoning the high collar and rolling up the cuffs a bit to get and the uncomfortable dirt beneath. She scrubbed as much as she could, then found the towels hanging nearby.

One had a corner that was passably clean, not just cleaner than her. She scrubbed her face with that, wrung out her hair, and then used the wrest to try to quickly dry her body and clothes a bit. She picked up her pack and headed back downstairs. Maddie waved at her almost immediately, holding a plate of beans and a mug of what smelled like alcohol of some sort, likely beer, and weak by the smell of it. Well, if the water wasn’t safe… she downed it quickly, and practically shoveled the beans into her mouth, after which she was put to work. Maddie lead her on one round of tables, then walked up onto the small stage at the other end. For some time she sang and danced and Lia did her best to deliver orders, fortunate the menu was simple. She quickly found the right pantomimes for food, beer, and ‘whiskey’. As she did, she took note of the characters people used for words, that were written on the signs around.

Saloon
Whiskey
Wanted
Show

She paired them with their proper characters. What did these people do? She looked at Whiskey and Wanted again. Saloon and Show. Was it about the sound, not meaning?

The barman shouted for her, and Lia put her studies away. She’d figure out their letters later, for now she would do with miming actions and holding up fingers for numbers. It was unfortunate work, but she would rather do it than fail to earn her own keep.

***

Late in the evening, no one seemed perturbed at her and she had earned her keep. She was worn down, beat, and exhausted but for some reason her eyes just didn’t want to shut, she expressed to the barman, who also seemed to manage what room for sleeping there was, that she was going to walk around the saloon, but would be back soon.

As she rounded towards the back, she heard an agitated voice.

“Damnation,” the rough man said, “Stinky Paul should be here, Sythis! What’s the matter with him? Probably talking to the law. Told you we should have cut him out.”

“You tell me where he is.” A sibilant voice replied, “You should know better than I.”

“Just what are you saying?” the first man asked, dangerously.

Lia Xin peered around the corner. One man wore leather pants and a leather vest over his bare, hairy chest, and a broad-brimed dark hat on his head, a massive belt with some sort of small sheath at his hip. The other was a snake – a snake the size of a man, with strong arms, an even larger hat on his head, this one of straw, and a bandoleer hung from his shoulder to about where a human hip would be, with both the same sheathed weapon as the other man and several other objects hung off it.

“Black-Tooth Bart says Deadeye Annie is a problem, too crazy to work with. A law man finds Deadeye Annie and we leave her to choke on a rope. Black-Tooth Bart says Noddy Nine-Teeth is going to go after the treasure alone, Noddy Nine-Teeth is hit by a train the next day. Black-Tooth Bart says Stinky Paul is going to sell us out? I think we will not be seeing Stinky Paul again.”

The other man, who a glance at his mouth said must have been Black-Tooth Bart, put a hand on the hilt at his hip.

“And just what are you implying, Shady Sythis?”

“That Black-Tooth Bart’s problems are not problems for long. We have a two-way split.”

“I always knew you was a reasonable rattler, Shady.” Black-Tooth Bart said with a big, black smile, “We ain’t stickin’ around to find Stinky Paul, got it?”

“We leave now, then.” said Shady Sythis.

“Now?” Black-Tooth Bart demanded.

“Yes,” Shady Sythis said, “Now.”

“Hold on one doggone minute.” Black-Tooth Bart said. “I need to wet my whistle.”

Black-Tooth Bart started sauntering in Lia’s direction, and she pressed herself flat against the wall, out of sight. She could hear him walking, and she could hear him stop just around the corner.

“That’s better, ain’t it?” he said, and Lia breathed a very small, very quiet sigh of relief. Then a massive hand slammed her against the wall, grabbed her collar, and threw her out into the open.

“Think we didn’t see ya?” Black-Tooth Bart called. She tried to stand, but he kicked her in the gut, and she stayed down, sprawled on the ground.

“How much did ya hear?” he demanded. “How much?”

Lia shook her head, the only communication she could give.

Black-Tooth Bart pulled one of his weapons, a short, blunt object that he brandished menacingly.

“Cease.” Shady Sythis said, “It is a child. You would kill a child?”

“She’ll sell us out to the law, or do worse an’ follow us an’ try to take our gold.” Black-Tooth Bart said, “Black-Tooth’s problems ain’t gonna stay problems.”

“I saw in the saloon. She cannot speak, cannot write. She cannot tell a lawman where we go.”

Lia wanted to take offense at the snake man, but more than that she didn’t want to see what the weapons they carried did.

“Fine.” Black-Tooth Bart said, “But I ain’t gonna trust it till we’re free and clear with our gold. She comes with us, and we leave right now.”

Shady Sythis flicked out his tongue, tasting the air and seeming to consider Black-Tooth Bart’s change of heart.

“We will do this.” He said, and slithered over to Lia, pulling her quickly but not roughly to her feet.

***

“You’re sure about this, Shady?”

“We rode this out, we can ride it back.”

They were standing on a platform of rotting wood, listing towards a rusted set of iron rails. It was still dark, and not too far outside of town. It hadn’t taken much time, but Lia had taken the measure of the two outlaws. Shady Sythis was the better of the two to be near. Lia did not care for him, but he seemed to have his own stern code. Black-Tooth Bart, on the other hand, she dearly wished would disappear.

“Yeah,” Black-Tooth Bart said, “We all rode that engine out of the wastes, and it weren’t nothing I’d want to do again, long as I lived.”

“To get the gold,” Shady Sythis replied, “We must. I found out where we need to get off from here, remember.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Black-Tooth Bart replied. “Sounds like it’s comin’”

There was a sound like a strange wind oncoming, and a single faint, violet light down the tracks. The sound grew from a whisper to a thunderous roar, adding great clanks and metallic screeching. It grew quieter and slowed after a point, and what stopped in front of the platform was a massive machine, black iron. Its front, as it went by, had a wicked grill that looked like a wedge of spines, and above that a great circle with a screaming skull. The part that actually stopped next to the platform had windows, darkened with curtains, and small steps leading up to a door like a casket lid. Shady Sythis lead the way in, and Black-Tooth Bart, despite his reticence, ensured that Lia entered.

Inside, there were rows of seats, upholstered with black velvet and made of dark wood, and chandeliers that burned with purple light.

“How far do we go on this hell contraption?”

“Two stops.” Shady Sythis said, “Don’t know how long that will take.”

“We’re mad enough to ride a ghost train.” Black-Tooth Bart said, “But I don’t know who’s mad enough to chart their stops. I’m gonna check out the other cars.”

Black-Tooth Bart left through a door at the end of the center aisle.

“Beware,” Shady Sythis said to Lia. “When he returns, we will fight.”

Lia wanted to ask why, and apparently her eyes said enough.

“A man does not remove three of his gang for half the gold they stole and buried,” Sythis said, “As for you… I do not hurt young ones. Were you a woman, you would be dead now. But I will see you to other humans. Only that far, not a coin richer, but I do not hurt young ones.”

Lia took out her brush. She drew a character in the air, letting mana be her ink. After a moment, it faded into blue sparks. ‘Understanding’ was what she wrote, but for some reason or another, it didn’t work. She understood nothing more. Lia was torn between trying to write the character again or not, dumbfounded at how it gave her no insight now when it had in the past, but Sythis grasped her hand.

“Put that away.” He said, “Even a little spellslinger is still a danger. He will kill you first if he sees.”

Lia returned the brush to her pack, hesitantly and with a glare at Shady Sythis.

“Perhaps, though, you can use it again some time. There is a lot of treasure there, gold and glitter-gold. I could pay well, if you will use good magic for me. After we have the treasure… no, it is never enough. There is never enough, not for folk like us. Sooner or later, we’ll have to take on another train, and then a spellslinger could be a big help.”

Lia simply frowned. She didn’t intend to stay in this desert much longer, if she could avoid it. As far as the next town over, when she could finally travel with a meal in her belly and a good night’s sleep behind her.

Then the door opened, Black-Tooth Bart stomping in, his weapon drawn.

“You been plottin’ against me this whole time!” he yelled, “This whole time, Shady Sythis!”

“Me?” Sythis demanded, “Who drew his gun first? Who got rid of the other three? You were always a lone outlaw, we were fools to think you would keep us as your gang.”

“Yeah,” Black-Tooth Bart said, “Guess the time for talkin’ big is up, ain’t it?”

“Try to shoot me,” Sythis said, “And you will see how fast a Rattler can strike.”

What happened after that happened in an instant. Black-Tooth Bart used his weapon, pulling the trigger and making a hellish sound. At the same time, or an instant before or after, Shady Sythis lunged and Bart, he jumped to the side as he shot. When the smoke cleared, Sythis lay where Bart had been standing, and Bart, on the floor to the left, fired several more shots into the snake man’s body. When he was confident Sythis would not move again, Bart stood up and spat on the corpse.

“Now what do I do with you?” Black-Tooth Bart asked as he stomped over to Lia. She reached for her brush, but at the last moment remembered what Shady Sythis had said. If Black-Tooth Bart did not know to kill her, she might have a chance.

Black tooth Bart grabbed her, muscled her out of her seat and threw her to the ground, to the pool of Shady Sythis’ blood that was seeping all too quickly into the floor.

Lia spotted Sythis’ gun, fallen from its holster. Covering her movements with her body, she hoped, she slid it into her pack as she struggled for her feet. Such a destructive weapon could be useful. She managed to turn and look at Black-Tooth Bart.

“Can’t say a word, can ya?” he said, “Well now, I could shoot ya in your weird, slanty-eyed face, but I’ve been thinkin’, and I know a madame who pays men like me a finder’s fee for new talent, ‘specially when the talent can’t say ‘no’ one way or the other.”

Bart reached into his own pack and took out an apple, then messily bit into it with a loud crunch, juice and pulp staining his moustache.

“It’s your choice, little girl. You wanna live, you do just what I say. You wanna die, just piss me off and the rest comes easy.”

***

When Black-Tooth Bart’s shovel struck metal, it was almost dawn. Lia had managed some little rest on that horrible train-thing, but it was disrupted by nightmares of strange things, and they had walked for at least an hour after, Lia maintaining her pace on the constant threat of joining Shady Sythis in death if she proved more trouble than she was worth. But, when they had reached what Bart declared to be the spot, he had only one shovel, and decided to at least dig the hole himself.

Lia waited on the edge, unsure of what to do. Her hand reached into her bag. If she managed her brushwork, she could get out of this, write her way to another world, or inscribe the character for ‘Death’ for Bart… assuming it worked better than had her attempt at ‘Understanding’ for Shady Sythis.

The clank of the shovel hitting metal.

“Yes!” Bart growled, hauling the massive, heavy iron chest to the edge of the pit, “Yes! It’s all mine!” he struck off the flimsy lock and threw it open. The insides glittered brightly, bars of gold and some sort of golden crystal in the center of it all.

“Hang a five way split!” Bart laughed, “I can pay my own bounty a hundred times with this. I can buy a whole damn town and sleep with a new whore every night!”

Lia fumbled in her bag and found cold metal.

“As fer you,” Black-Tooth Bart said, “You can be the first. I feel like celebratin’, even if you is a mangey little weirdo.”

Lia shook her head. She was old enough to know what he meant, and was now certain she needed a way out, some way out.

“Real cute.” Black-Tooth Bart said with a laugh, “Ya think you can say no? Like hell you can! Come on, what are ya gonna do?”

Lia reached deeper into her bag.

“Oh, I’m real scared.” Black-Tooth Bart said. “What are you going to do, give me a papercut?”

He had checked her bag when they had first hauled her off, and found none of it worth his time. He hadn’t checked after Shady Sythis had died. He didn’t know about the gun. Lia grasped her brush, and saw the character for death in her mind.

Then she remembered how fast Shady Sythis had struck, and how little good it had done him. Could she draw faster than Black-Tooth Bart?

Lia found the metal again, fingers sliding around it where they were supposed to go.

“Come on, bitch.” Black-Tooth Bart said, “You gonna be smart, or are you gonna die?”

Lia made her reply. A great, thunderous crack rang out across the desert, echoing in the emptiness beneath the pink pre-dawn sky.

Black-Tooth Bart stumbled back, clutching the fresh hole in his chest. Lia gripped the gun tighter, with both hands, and raised it to fire again. Another shot echoed through the Jakkard, and Black-Tooth Bart toppled back into the hole he had dug, a light gust lifting his black hat from his ruined head and depositing it top side down upon the chest of gold who knows how many men had died for.

Lia shook, her whole body with the reverberations of the shots, the recoil and the noise, but she did not drop the gun. Instead, she slid it carefully back into her pack, in case she ever again needed such a voice to speak for her, louder than any man’s words.

Then, she approached the pit, and the chest at its edge. There was Black-Tooth Bart, laying in a grave he’d dug, and there was his hat to keep the sun out of Lia’s eyes as it cleared the horizon.

And there, in glittering mana gems and metal coins and bars, was a bit of a reason to stay in the wasteland yet. Lia packed some of that too, and buried the rest with Black-Tooth Bart. She tilted her new hat on her brow, and looked out to the rising sun.

It couldn’t be that far to the next town over.







Post commentary: No idea if I handled this one well at all. I got the idea at about the same time as the "Morgan's Notes" ascension story, and the first bits came naturally enough, but once I introduced the actual plot -- the bandits -- I started seriously struggling.

Lia is 15 in this story and no more than half a year a Planeswalker. Jakkard is the second or third plane she's visited after her home. She's potentially/probably still on Jakkard as of the "Present" in Morgan's Notes, or it's possible that she's just taken to making a base out of Jakkard, since she can't carry what's now her stash of (glitter) gold -- it's too heavy.

I will get to this and to the Morgan's Notes thread at some point, mark my words. Everyone is just producing so fast lately that it's hard to keep up let alone catch up @_@

I liked it, actually. I think it gives us a clearer understanding of Lia Xin's character, particularly her specific form of spellcasting, which I think it pretty interesting. The other characters were a little stock, but I don't think distractingly so. Black-Tooth Bart certainly made me uncomfortable for a few reasons, which I think you were going for, more likely than not. Overall, I thought it was pretty good.

Tevish - my feelings are similar to Raven's here. (I feel like I'm saying that a lot, recently.) I think that the story does a very good job of showcasing Lia, and I'm similarly interested by the way she casts spells, and how they do (or, as the case may be, don't) work. And my heart went out to her at the beginning and the end. I hope we'll be seeing more of her.

I also loved the characterization of the train. Not sure if this is what you were going for, but it really called to mind Keeper's illustration.



Like Raven said, the bandits and the people in the saloon are about what you'd expect in a Western-inspired setting, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Precisely because these character types are so well-known, it allows you to surprise the reader with even a small deviation from the established script. Sythis surprised me a bit there at the end, for example.

Some of the dialog felt a little close to pastiche, but if that's what you're going for, then stick to your guns.



Just took some quick typo notes as I went along, collapsed below to save space.



EDIT: One item I'm not clear on, upon further review -

I like this one so far! There's just a few things that struck me as needing some expansion or clarification.



This is an interesting window into Lia's character, though, and I think you do a good job of telegraphing the black aspects of her character, even without the information that she can cast kill spells.

That reminds me of something I had thought of while reading, but forgot to mention. It's clear that Lia is out in the Wastes, but she thinks about how she's planning to 'walk out at the next town. However, 'walking out of the Wastes is particularly difficult. Granted, she may not know that, but it begs the question of whether she planeswalked into the Wastes originally, or if she came into Verkell and thought nothing of it.

Those typos should be fixed (including the consistency of Bart's name). I also expanded the paragraph where 'Understanding' Fizzles. Just a little. A few other questions MAY have been answered in the Dossier.



Yeah, I didn't use much about the Ghost Train. I thought of doing more, but really I didn't want them wandering through the desert for days, so they needed faster travel. and it needed to be unpopulated. But! Somebody just got murdered on a ghost train. I wonder if we've heard the last of that? From me, probably. From me.



@Orcish




Not sure how Lia has interacted with the Planar Ceiling in the past or will in the future. If it's possible to drop in the Wastes now, she probably did: I don't know why she'd end up out there if she started in the city, though I'm sure there could be a reason. Since it makes leaving hard, that's more to suggest that she's liable to still be on Jakkard "now" rather than coming and going.



Not related to anything, but I think part of what drew me to write Lia on Jakkard was playing with tropes -- the 'chinaman' is a bit of a stock figure of the west, but as an immigrant laborer. Lia has something of the look (what with her traditional silk garb) and being her has something of the translation issues, but she bucks a lot of the stereotypes involved.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. It just occurred to me on my second read-through that there were two possible explanations with very different implications.



I was actually wondering about this, but I didn't want to presume that it was part of what you were going for. I really like the little edge it provides, particularly the way Lia subverts the old "inscrutable Oriental" stereotype.

I thought this was good! I love that she draws her spells, that's awesome. I thought the best part was when she was washing up. I think you mananged to say a lot about her and the type of person she is by the way you described that and her feelings, like, about the towel. That was cool.