Amazon Apocalypse 4: Chapter 17

“I’m busy,” Cyra said to the woman who’d just kicked down the restaurant door. She turned back to me to continue our conversation. “Now, what were you saying about artificing?”

I shot one last glance at our rude interlopers before continuing where I’d left off. She claimed to be Lauria of the Phantomfist Clan and looked more like a brawler than a spellcaster to me. But as Cyra had proved, a skilled enough warrior could still get into the Dragon Lodge. Since Cyra was ignoring her, I went that route as well.

“Anyway, Dane Delverson took me through a few projects that apparently every artificer knows. This one will help with condensing mana into experience pearls. I think I can rig them up to my solar panels— that's an Earth invention that collects energy from sunlight, by the way— and then I can start manufacturing experience pearls in bulk! It might not be useful for me, but there are a lot of crafters in town and--“

“Hey! Stop eying your boyfriend and look at me, Cyra! You, me, fight. Now!” the angry interloper.

Cyra let out a low breath and turned on her with a growl already on her lips. There was true anger in her eyes now.

“You’re interrupting a lot of people’s dinners right now, including mine. I will fight you tomorrow. Go away.” Cyra turned back to me, expression shifting in an instant. “Sorry, Carter. You were telling me about your magic gizmos?”

“Right... anyway, I really think this could help out the crafters back in Crownhill, and if it works on my people, I think we could bring some infrastructure over to Themyscira. Shadefall can be the testing grounds, but I bet we can have C-Grade crafters all over the place by the end of the year! They won’t be able to fight, but they won’t be bottlenecked by their racial levels anymore.”

“That sounds wonderful, Carter. Whatever you think is best, I trust you. I think--“ Before Cyra could finish, Lauria grabbed our table and flipped it over, throwing our dinner all over the floor.

“You, Cyra Samhain, are a cheat and a coward! Fight me! If you won’t do it in the arena, then how about here and now?” Lauria jammed a meaty fist in Cyra’s direction.

“I fight in the arena, not the streets. I suggest you leave now before the guards arrive.” Cyra knelt and righted the table. I picked up our plates, though our remaining food was smeared across the floor. “I’m sorry about this Carter, I really didn’t think anyone would follow me to dinner.”

“It’s alright, Cyra. It’s not your fault some people are assholes...” I shot a glare up at Lauria.

Her expression darkened. “I’m an asshole, huh? Guess I better start acting the part. An asshole like me wouldn’t mind knocking the teeth out of her enemy’s dinner date.”

She cocked back an arm and lunged for me. I felt her coming before she even started swinging, and I’d gotten a sudden urge to turn my head to the side. The motion was just enough that Lauria’s fist passed right by me. To her, it probably looked like I'd dodged her punch through dumb luck.

“Damn brat...” Lauria growled. She narrowed her eyes at me to take another swing, but she never got the chance.

“You fucking bitch!” Cyra growled. Until that moment, I was pretty sure I’d never heard Cyra swear before.

A moment later, Cyra was swinging for Lauria, much to the latter’s delight.

“There’s that fighting spirit! Come on, hit me! If you don’t, I’ll take another swing at your boyfriend there.” Lauria laughed uproariously. Meanwhile, people scrambled away from the nearby tables. Most of them were only D-Grades. Getting caught up in a fight between C-Grades could have been deadly for them.

“Grah!” Cyra yelled a wordless battle cry that knocked Lauria right across the jaw. Her head rocked back, and Cyra brought a knee into her chest before she could respond. I heard bones in Lauria’s chest cracking with the force of the blow.

Lauria stumbled back, and the tattoos lining her body squirmed to life. A snake peeled itself off her left arm and wound around Cyra’s leg like a python. On her shoulder, a phantom scorpion grew to giant sizes and lunged at Cyra with a venomous stinger.

Cyra slashed her arm, bisecting the phantom snake with a blade of magical energy. She tucked her shoulder and ducked beneath the stinger while using that shout of hers to interrupt whatever magic allowed Lauria to turn her tattoos into monsters.

I debated stepping in to help, but what followed rapidly transitioned from a fight to a one-sided beatdown. Cyra slammed a fist into Laura’s stomach, and the tattooed woman coughed blood. Cyra brought a knee to her face, then in one smooth motion transitioned to clapping both hands over her ears.

When Lauria came up, she was bleeding from her mouth, a broken nose, and two popped eardrums. A second later, that was the least of her worries as Cyra broke her cheekbone with a right hook.

Lauria got one hand up and threw the other in a desperate swing, but Cyra wove around it until she trapped Lauria’s thrusting arm under her shoulder. Then she took one step forward while twisting around her opponent’s leg. I wasn’t quite sure what she did, but everyone in the room heard another round of cracking bones as Lauria’s leg snapped backward unnaturally.

Cyra wrapped her arms around Lauria’s center then, twisting with one smooth motion as she heaved Lauria’s head around and slammed her face first into the floorboards.

It’d been a long while since I’d seen Cyra fight. Now that I was at her level, the way her fighting style differed from her sisters’ was far more apparent. Where Myrina was flamboyant and daring, Cyra was calculating and reserved. Myrina might stand wide open, daring her opponent to hit her. Cyra didn’t leave any openings at all. She fought like she was giving a demonstration of perfect fighting technique.

I finally got the chance to examine our attacker, which I did just to make sure she was still alive.

Lauria Phantomfist (Level 145)

Cyra had taken down someone more than twenty levels above her in the blink of an eye. And not only that, she’d made the battle look completely one-sided. Just how much had she been training lately? If the current Cyra had fought Elder Thalassa, I was pretty sure the battle would have ended long before Morgathor had the chance to intervene.

“I think she’s down,” I said cautiously. Truthfully, Cyra had won quite thoroughly a while back. The examine proved she wasn’t a corpse, but at this point, I wasn’t sure Lauria would live for long. A C-Grade body could take a lot of abuse, but it was rare to see one so thoroughly mangled. Especially not so quickly.

“Good riddance,” Cyra spat.

I heard the sound of clanking armor and peered out the window. I saw a dozen men in uniform rushing toward us.

“Seems like the guard is on their way, late as usual.” I sighed. And here I thought we were going to get our last bit of shopping done before leaving for Themyscira.

The guards kicked down the door, and Cyra held up two bloody hands. A moment later, a half dozen guards tackled Cyra from all directions. They had her handcuffed in the blink of an eye and started dragging her out of the restaurant. I moved to follow.

“This is an arrest, stay back!” a guard said when he spotted me.

“I’m with her,” I nodded in Cyra’s direction.

That turned out to be the wrong thing to say, because pretty soon I was in handcuffs too. At least they didn’t tackle me in the process. I felt a bit bad for the restaurant, though. Cyra and I had ordered a full seven course meal, and now we were getting arrested before being able to pay. Hopefully they wouldn’t tack dining and dashing onto whatever charges they had lined up for us.

***

They took the two of us into separate interrogation rooms. There was a lot of waiting after that, but when someone finally came in to hear my side of the story, he slammed his fists onto the table angrily.

“Why did you and your companion assault Lauria Phantomfist?” the guard demanded.

I’d watched enough cop shows to keep my cool. Besides, having some red-faced guard yelling at the top of his lungs in my face didn’t feel as impactful these days after so many life and death battles.

“We didn’t. She attacked us first. Cyra was just defending herself, and me too.”

The guard glared at me. “We already know everything. Your companion has admitted to all your many, many crimes! You’re going to be locked away for a long time, but if you admit to everything now, you might get away easy. Well, kid?”

I fought to keep from rolling my eyes. I was surprised to see all the interrogation tricks were the same here as they were on Earth. All the bluff and bluster told me one thing. They didn’t have anything on us and just wanted an easy admission of guilt so they could dust their hands and be done with this case and go back to coffee and donuts, or whatever cops here ate while out to lunch.

“Look, there were plenty of people on the scene. Just get one of them to tell you what happened.” I shrugged.

“And when they tell me you’re guilty, what then, huh? I know for a fact we’ve got you on dining and dashing. You didn’t pay your dinner bill.”

“I would have if you guys hadn’t arrested us!”

The guard leaned low over the table. “Listen here, the Phantomfist family is pretty powerful in these parts. Several of them are academy students. One of them even has a gold medallion. Gold! You hear me, kid? You know what that means?”

I shrugged. “Sure. Gold is one rank lower than my jade medallion.”

The man blinked. I shifted my chin and gestured to the Dragon Lodge medallion around my neck with my chin. He reached over and pulled on the chord until the jade disk with the Dragon Lodge’s symbol came out of my shirt. As soon as he saw it, he jumped back like he’d been burned.

Five minutes later, I was walking out of the police station and being led to a waiting area overlooking something that resembled a coffee shop. The guard who’d been interrogating had completely changed his demeanor.

“Here’s your tea. Can I get you anything else? I'm sure I can get them to cook up some more pastries. Apparently somebody just bought everything they had in stock, so sorry." The guard handed me a drink, purchased with his own money.

I took a sip. While not coffee, it was pretty good.

The guard fidgeted nervously as I drank. Apparently, this little jade thing around my neck carried greater status than I thought.

“No need for pastries. I just want Cyra back.”

“Of course, sir. I’m going to have her brought out of the interrogation room right away...” the guard took a few steps backward, flashing me the fakest smile I’d ever seen.

A moment later, a female guard appeared with Cyra trailing behind her. She also had a cup of hot tea in her hand and held a stack of pastries in the other, all from the shop I was currently standing in front of. The female guard next to her had an absolutely panicked expression on her face.

“Wipe the books. The woman we just arrested is a member of the Samhain Clan!” she hissed the words like they were a curse. “Whatever vendetta the Phantomfist clan has is their own problem. They’re kicking a sleeping dragon.”

The guard who’d been interrogating me sagged against the nearest wall, clutching his temple between his fingers as he told his female counterpart about his own discovery. Meanwhile, Cyra and I sipped on our respective cups of tea.

“How was your interrogation?” I asked.

Cyra shrugged. “That’s the first time I’ve been on this side of things.”

“Same. The girls are going to lose it when they learn we got arrested during our shopping trip,” I chuckled.

“Probably. I’ve got a feeling I made too big a splash in the arena. Let’s get the last of our shopping done and head back to Themyscira. We can return when things cool off. Besides, by now, reports that a Samhain clanswoman was arrested here will spread back to our other branches, including the one on Glacia. I’d rather not get involved in family drama.”

“That’s fair. We’ll make the rest of our trip quick.”

***

Our first stop was back at the restaurant we’d been eating at. I went back and paid our bill just to make sure that wouldn’t bite us in the ass at some point down the line. They weren’t used to writing out receipts for this sort of thing, but I made them do it anyway, with the signatures of the waiter and the manager on duty.

“You can bill the damages to the table and floor to the Phantomfist family. It was their daughter who came in here to cause trouble,” I said to a nervous manager. Her eyes were locked on my jade medallion the entire time I spoke with her.

After that, we finished shopping. I picked up a number of skillbooks. Some of them were things that would fill my new racial slots and a few that I could swap out to improve existing skills I wasn’t using much. Most of the books were for Sakura, Myrina, and Bridget.

I also picked up a lot of exotic magical materials for artificing that we couldn’t find back on Themyscira or Crownhill. I had a whole list of artificing projects to get through once I got back home.

Doing so blew most of the free contribution points I’d gotten for getting the jade medallion, but that was alright. Next time, I’d just have to show up with stuff to sell. Cyra was the same.

“I have everything I need. We should leave before sunset.”

“Something happening at sunset?” I asked.

Cyra gestured over her shoulder. “See the woman in black? She’s been following us for the last fifteen minutes. And she’s not the only one. I think I started more trouble than I thought with my little day of arena fighting.”

"How do you know they aren't following me?" I nudged her with my elbow. "I could have gotten into trouble too, you know."

"Please, you? All you did was talk to people. How could that get you into trouble?"

I shrugged. “Either way, I guess we’d better get out of here. We’ll give the hotheads in here a bit of time to cool off. A few weeks outside will be like a month or two in here, which should be plenty of time.”

“Maybe...” Cyra shrugged.

A few minutes later, we boarded the train and took a short ride to the nearest teleportation array. The people tailing us finally broke off as we left over the bridge back to Glacia. We tried to stop by Galbatorix’s shop then, but for once it was closed.

From there, we returned to Themyscira to reunite with Myrina, Bridget, and Sakura.