Conquering Reality & Other Misconduct (The Guild Codex: Warped #6)

Prologue

Kit

Off the coast of the Netherlands, along the Vlie estuary in the North Sea, the frigid waters reflected a spectacle of undiluted destruction.

Two moored boats—a stupidly expensive yacht and a small cargo ship—were blazing infernos that painted the shoreline orange.

The dock had been reduced to crumbling tinder.

Lit from beneath by glowing embers, black smoke streamed into the dark sky from the incinerated remains of four wooden storage sheds that had lined the beach.

A single set of footprints disturbed the gray ash dusting the path that led inland.

Up a small hill, flames wreathed a massive warehouse, the long red-and-amber tongues licking hungrily at the low-hanging clouds.

A truck-sized flap of the warehouse’s industrial plastic roof sagged, softened by the heat.

It broke off the steel frame and crashed onto the countless crates and boxes stored within—each one containing illegal and unsavory artifacts and weapons, all likely acquired by equally illegal and unsavory means.

A fresh wave of bright sparks swirled with the smoke billowing from the new hole in the canopy.

I wondered if the sheer devastation would make the island residents think they’d been transported back in time.

In the summer of 1666, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, Rear-Admiral Robert Holmes led the English fleet in a raid against the Vlie estuary.

One hundred and forty ships were destroyed, and the entire town of West-Terschelling was burned to the ground in an act that would later become known as Holmes’s Bonfire.

This time, however, only one resident of Vlieland was in danger.

I tracked my quarry into her palatial home, situated uphill of the ravaged warehouse. An explosion had torn away one of the house’s exterior walls, making my job of getting inside much easier.

Smoke roiled through the interior, turning the décor into looming shadows. My feet sloshed through inch-deep water from a burst pipe as I followed the sound of rough, hacking coughs into Floris Visser’s formerly opulent office.

The black-market tempemage cowered under a broken window she’d probably hoped to escape through. On her knees, she tried to filter the smoke with her torn sleeve, her shoulders heaving.

A soft breeze of pleasantly fresh air swirled around me as I took in the ruined symbols of her ill-gotten wealth. The singed heads of half a dozen exotic animals, acquired on lavish trophy-hunting excursions across the globe, clung to the wall, glaring down at their killer.

She didn’t look like a killer now. Her broken left arm hung at her side, one eye was swollen shut, and scorch marks peppered her bloodstained clothes.

Hate twisted her stark features at the sight of me, and electricity crackled across her fingers.

I tilted my head. Her pupils rolled, her body flailed, and her lightning attack careened into a wall instead of my chest. A chunk of the ceiling’s extravagant panel moldings fell into the water with a satisfying hiss.

While Floris recovered from her sudden dizzy spell, I closed the gap between us. Outside, another colossal explosion boomed. Probably the fuel tank of one of her boats. She flinched as the blast wave shook the disintegrating remnants of her once affluent stronghold.

I crouched in front of her, my eyes narrowing. “I suggest you start talking.”