She was tired of waiting.
It hadn’t been long, but still. There’d been such a flurry of noise she was sure he was face down with a porcupine back—and that was a terrible thought—and in a matter of moments she’d have to kick the ass of people attempting to enter the cave.
She tightened grip on the stout stick and approached the mouth, pausing to also borrow a grenade from Milo’s pack.
Just before getting to the mouth she kicked off her sandals. The following might require an ass kicking with bare feet.
She stepped out.
Milo was on the ground to her right, but not face down. Kneeling. Unconscious pygmies littered the area. His back was to her and he was making scooping and patting motions near the ground.
She was about to call his name when he slit his wrist.
She grabbed at a bra she no longer wore.
Back in her old home she’d wanted to be queen of an island. This is why it’s good never to dream. God listens.
“It’s OK,” said Milo. He didn’t glance to see if she moved. “Blood is a special substance. Very powerful.” He made a ruddy circle around the figure he’d made in the dirt. “Very binding. Smart people fear it,” he said, but she was gone, running back from the cave with his pack and dropping to her knees to rummage for bandages or a canister of the goop he’d used on the Red Shirt’s stump. She found the goop and lathered his wrist in it.
“Blood and magic should be feared,” he said.
He was entirely loopy.
Why all the fine brothers gotta be crazy!?
“I’m binding the Djinn’s hatred to my blood,” he explained, as if, oh, that explained it all, do carry on. “If the Ic doesn’t abandon him, it’s stuck here too. Ics are…”
“Shut up.”
This crazy man had just slit his wrist.
The decision was made.
She claimed it: she jumped up and knocked him squarely in the head with the stick, then snatched up his pack. She didn’t knock him out but she hurt the hell out of him, and pain was best used to advantage.
She ran. He seemed to have everything but a flame sword in that bag; she was confident she could defend herself for a few days if necessary.
She hurriedly made her way toward where, hopefully, she might run into some pavement.
~~~
Milo fought through pain to complete the Binding. Chronic’s taunts were dim now. It might have been a good thing Neon’d taken off, as the last stroke was urinating on the totem and there are some things simply not meant for a first date.
“This piece of yours is mine forever, Jetstream,” a tiny voice boasted like a gnat in his brain.
Binding him also meant Milo had to leave a piece of his own soul there. “There are bits of me scattered all over this globe, Chronic. You’re not special.”
“Just accept defeat and shut up!”
“Dude. You’re trapped in a mound of pee, blood and dirt. With a piece of me I haven’t used since puberty,” he said, briefly taking his eyes off the humanoid mound to track Neon’s progress.
“I was on top of the world,” moaned the fading gnat.
“World rolls, Chronic,” Milo said, shaking off the last of the ceremony and zipping up. The Djinn’s broadcast abruptly stopped. “Dumbasses on top tend to forget that.”
Now, if he wasn’t mistaken, Neon had his pack and was running around with a grenade in her hand.
That wouldn’t do.
He lurched forward. His bitten arm was now completely numb.
It looked to be a long evening.