Black Widow Demon

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Tidy towns often concealed dirty secrets. And this small mining town was too tidy for Blade’s taste.

Nestled among the foothills of the Godseeker Mountains, it suffered from too-uniform construction and a general lack of aesthetic design. But after several months of crossing the desert alone, Blade’s standards were not all that high. He wanted a bath, a hot meal, and a soft bed.

A bed he could wake up in alone. The two-foot goldthief—one of the more dangerous variety of snakes in these parts—he had found in his bedroll that morning had been an unwelcome surprise. Fortunately, Blade was neither a restless sleeper nor easily startled, and he possessed a great deal of natural patience. Once the sun came up on the desert, the well-rested serpent had slithered off on its own without incident.

Blade continued to study the mining settlement deep in the valley below him from an outcropping of weathered sandstone. Layers of desert dirt coated the rooftops, painting the entire town a dull shade of gray. Beyond it, the hills rose to flat peaks of a vast rocky mountain range, sparsely forested with juniper and yellow pine. Narrow ribbons of silvery water streamed down to filter through sand dunes on the valley floor and irrigate the town’s gardens, ones that were now spent and shriveled by this time of year. Behind and above, past the top of the mesa, stretched the desert. Beneath where Blade stood, a lone open wagon hauled by a sway-backed, listless hross clattered along a dirt trail that broadened into a street where it met town limits.

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