The Villain Professor's Second Chance

One last boom rolled up from the hollow of the seabed.

At first no one heard it. They felt it. The sound arrived through bodies instead of ears—knuckles clicked inside gloves, old scars shivered awake, teeth rasped as if remembering a bite of ice. Even the canvas tents quivered on their guy-ropes, suddenly slack, then suddenly taut.

Air thickened. A hush pressed down—too dense to breathe, too jealous to share space with anything living. It drew heat from skin like a jealous suitor and left goose-bumps in return.

Far out where night and water usually touched with gentle indifference, the sea rose. It rose straight up, a wall of liquid slate hundreds of paces tall, sheet-flat and shining with reflected stars. For three impossible heartbeats it just—stood—a cold mirage of perfect stillness. In that hush a soldier heard his own pulse and mistook it for marching feet. Another noticed the tiny catching noise her lungs made each time she tried to exhale. All at once they realised how loud silence could be.

Then the wall folded, snapping under its own weight. A roar—half wind, half ocean—tore across the strand. Water slammed into the wet sand with the fury of a god scorned, shredding driftwood into splinters and flinging shells high enough to glint like thrown knives in the moonlight. Steam hissed where brine splashed against still-cool volcanic rock; the sulfurous mist smelt of blood and old iron.

When the surf withdrew it left a battlefield's worth of debris: knotted weed, shattered boats, a dozen fish already stiffening in crystalline salt. It also left something else—something dragging itself upright at the very edge of moonlit foam.

The thing was neither corpse nor construct but an ugly compromise of both. Corroded brass ribs, barnacle-studded pistons, hunks of gray muscle braided through with black tubing. Joints groaned as it levered itself erect. Fluid—too thin for oil, too thick for seawater—spilled from cracked hose into the sand and smoked there as if the ground disliked its taste.

Its head turned. Iris-plates ratcheted into focus with a metallic chirring that made nearby crows scatter. A sputtering spark darted across the glassy lenses—blue, violet, furious red. Something inside that skull remembered speech. Lips of algae-encrusted copper flexed, parted round metal teeth.

"Syal-ra," it croaked, voice like anchors grinding on stone.

A dozen soldiers flinched. One began the Sign of Four Currents and forgot how it ended.

Draven did not flinch.

He stood twenty paces up-slope where the sand gave way to gritty shale, arms folded, dual blades sheathed at his spine. Moonlight laid silver bars across his pale face; in the bars were shadows so precise they looked etched. His eyes—sharp, pale, unblinking—took in the automaton exactly as a jeweller inspects flawed glass: methodically, without sympathy, looking only for seams.

He did not reply to the machine. He only watched. After a time the creature's inner fire sputtered, violet bled back to dull blue, and the joints sagged. It collapsed sideways, half in the tide, and the waves began reclaiming it chip by chip.

Across camp a second procession moved with funereal care. Marrin Bright-Helm—captain, quartermaster, the woman who could find laughter even in ration lines—lay on a torn sail repurposed as shroud. Her limbs were bound, her face hidden, but her sword remained clutched in her ruined gauntlet. The grip had molded to the stiff curve of her fingers, or perhaps her fingers had stiffened to match the grip; either way, no one could pry it loose. Two soldiers tried and earned fresh cuts for their trouble.

Vaelira Morn-Banner walked at the head. Wind tugged the braids of her coat, snapping them like pennants. She kept her chin high though every step forced her to look at the dark patch where Marrin's chest should have risen in breath.

Behind her stumbled a row of younger troopers who had followed Marrin for stories before sleep and cinnamon bark on winter patrols. They looked smaller now, as if grief had traded inches of height for pounds of sorrow overnight.

At the pyre-field—a ring of blackened posts that yesterday had been their signal beacon—Vaelira halted. She raised a clenched fist. "We lay her here, and we light her before sundown." Her voice carried across the tents: hoarse, commanding, nearly cracking. "If we wait until night the salt will climb through her wounds, and tomorrow she'll stand among the blue-lit dead."

A lanky pikeman shook his head, jaw trembling. "She wouldn't turn, Marshal. She was stronger—"

"Strength isn't immunity," Vaelira cut in. "The airborne strain is merciless."

No sooner had she spoken than a ragged scream tore from the healer's marquee. Canvas flaps burst outward; a wounded conscript staggered into view, clutching his own forearm like it was a brand. Light pulsed beneath his soaked bandages, an awful cerulean that crawled up veins in erratic sigils. When he fell, the sigils crawled faster—as though the ground offered them footing.

The healer—barely more than a boy, his apprentice braids still raw-tied—dove after the patient. "It's re-igniting!" he yelled, voice cracking. "The salts are in the air now—trace crystals hooking marrow, rewriting blood—"

Panic fluttered like ash on hot wind. Soldiers stumbled back. A few clawed at scarves, remembering too late they'd loosened them for a breath of cool air.

Vaelira's gaze darted to the only man not yet moving—Draven. "Draven—"

He was already a blur.

In three strides he reached the supply chest and flipped the iron latch one-handed. Bottles clinked. His fingers selected two identical vials—one opaque with consecrated quicksilver, the other stuffed with shredded blackthorn leaves charred just past green. He tossed the quicksilver to Vaelira; she caught it on reflex.

Draven's cold voice sliced through panic. "Everyone with unsealed wounds, gather down-wind." He didn't shout—he aimed the words, the way a duelist aims a thrust. Heads snapped toward the direction he indicated. "Break each stopper under your tongue and swallow. It will line your throat. Blackthorn smoke next—breathe it in deeply and hold it. If you cough, start over."

A corporal with half a moustache stammered, "But the mixture—won't it poison—"

"Only if you take more than three drops," Draven replied. He hadn't raised his voice, yet the man flinched as if slapped. "Or if you prefer the alternative," he added, chin tipping toward the writhing soldier now ringed by scorched grass.

That decided them.

They moved—stumbling, limping, but moving. Bandaged men knocked into rain barrels, women hauled comrades under shoulders slick with sweat. The blue glow on the fallen trooper brightened, as though jealous of the sudden exodus.

Vaelira uncorked her vial with her teeth. A ribbon of translucent mercury coiled out, smelling faintly of winter apples. She spat the cork and braced Marrin's old second, forcing the liquid between his clenched teeth. He gagged, then breathed—ragged, but he breathed. Some colour returned to his paling lips.

Draven, meanwhile, lowered beside the healer's patient. The sigils on the man's forearm writhed faster now, questing along arteries. Draven observed them as a cartographer might study dangerous reefs—impassively, measuring distances, noting directions. Then he produced a thin lancet of witch-steel, made a single incision across the brightest glyph, and pressed powdered blackthorn into the cut. The blue light flared, shrieked like steam meeting frost, and dulled to ash-grey.

The injured soldier groaned, semi-conscious. Draven rose. "Strip the tent, burn what's inside," he told the rattled apprentice. "Canvas included. Containment first, lamentations after."

The boy nodded, eyes glassy. He scurried.

Draven surveyed the camp once more, calculating vectors of breeze, angles of torch-smoke, the number of untouched water casks. His mind leapt ahead fifteen, then twenty minutes, mapping infection drift and counter-measures while his face remained a frozen lake. Finally he looked at Vaelira and inclined his head—permission for her to continue the vigil she clearly ached to finish.

Vaelira turned toward the pyre posts, throat working. She tightened the leather thong around Marrin's scabbard to keep the blade in place. "Bring oil," she murmured, and her voice held a complex note—command braided through sorrow, like silk threaded with barbed wire.

From somewhere in the knot of troops a small voice—cracked, feminine—whispered, "She gave me her last ration of pear-jerky on the crossing." Another added, "She taught me the rivet knot—saved my gear that storm." One by one the memories tumbled out, fragile things. The air, heavy with salt and fear, accepted them.

Draven heard each confession but let none of it alter his expression. Yet in the crease beside his left eye a single muscle twitched, acknowledging something private and unshareable. He waited until the first canister of lantern oil sluiced across the stacked driftwood. Then he spoke low, to no one in particular, voice barely louder than the suck of retreating waves. "Remember her tomorrow. Today, survive long enough to make the remembering matter."

The words weren't comfort; comfort was a luxury. They were instruction, and instruction was hope measured in practical units. Several soldiers straightened their backs as though the very clarity of it let them breathe easier.

Vaelira gave the signal. The pyre team stepped forward with tarred torches.

And they did.