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Mike looked out at the wasteland and grimaced. Now that they had seen how sci-fi The Sprawl’s underbelly was, topside was even more depressing.
Despite the grim view, Mike felt good. He had a lead on finding Melvin, which was something he didn’t have yesterday, voodoo mojo lead or not. Plus the Sons of Kaftar had taken good care of them.
The caravan got a serious upgrade. The Sons of Kaftar attached an iron triangle with wheels to the front, which allowed the engine to push aside small to medium chunks of debris without problem. They also loaded two barrels of glow water and an institutional-sized bag of rice on the caravan.
Mike and Ruki both got diskbows and lightning gloves. Ruki had his diskbow holstered at his waist as he steered through Sprawl debris, another tradesman turned warrior-poet in the making.
Mike didn’t know why they called them diskbows. They were more like diskguns. You had to pull the tension spring back and forth until it clicked tight and it shot bladed disks instead of bullets, but it was still more gun than bow.
Runt had declined the lightning gloves. “Grip is bad,” he said after putting on a pair and hefting his Z-blade staff. He didn’t like fumbling with the diskbow tension spring either. But the buff cat aian had a weapon Runt did like, miniature dagger versions of his Z-blade. The aian had given Runt a spare set, which he was sharpening now.
Savashbahar didn’t want any new weaponry. She swore by hexes and since they didn’t have any, she preferred to remain hex dry. Instead, she received a couple of outfits courtesy of the Daughters of Kaftar. It was just in time, as her robe had been beat to shit after the escapades in Maltep and the Hierophane. Now she looked cool, with the leather pants and brassy hardware giving her a vibe of Victorian lady at the Thunderdome. She had body—who knew?
She looked at the Hexenarii tattoos on her exposed arms, shoulders and tummy. “It takes years to earn these,” she said to no one in particular. “Understanding hex purpose, divining intent from its shape, mastering yourself. How strange the marks that men work so hard for and proudly display should be a badge of shame for me.” She looked at Mike and smiled. “Showing them again, after so much time in the dark, it feels like flying.”
Mike returned her smile. Things were looking up.
Well, not for Ruki Provos. He was driving angry. “I can’t believe you have us heading to a place called Start of Dark Wozencraft,” he said. “Fooling with you will likely be the death of me,” he finished, turning to show Mike the sour look on his face.
That turn saved his life. A diskblade shot past, glancing across Ruki’s neck.
Ruki yelled in pain and grabbed his neck. He instinctively ducked, which saved him from another diskblade aimed at his head. The whole crew took cover and looked out at the wasteland.
Whooping and yelling, their attackers broke cover. They rode towards the caravan in small, bug-like vehicles that scurried over the debris on five mechanical legs.
“Clockwound Warders,” Runt said. He would know; he had spent the night trading war stories with the Sons of Kaftar.
“Well, why are they attacking us?” Ruki shouted, looking at the blood on his collar. “Don’t they know we blew up the Hierophane?”
“They don’t care,” Runt said, “Warders have no truck with the mages.”
“Get us out of here, Ruki!” Mike hollered. He ventured a look out of cover and ducked again as three diskblades whizzed by. He popped back up to put his own diskblade into the chest of the closest Warder. That Warder collapsed across the controls of his mechanical bug, sending the vehicle’s legs scurrying into the nearest pursuing bug and forcing both vehicles to crash into a marble pillar.
Little good that did. There were over a dozen more on his side alone. He looked at Runt.
“How many on your side?” he asked as he pumped diskbow tension spring taut.
Runt popped up and down. Two diskblades shot past.
“Nine,” he said.
“There’s a bunch in front of us, setting up barricades,” Ruki said, barely peeking his head over the steering column. “Hang on for a hard left.”
The tank treads squealed in protest as Ruki banked it hard. Mike crashed against the walls of the caravan. His brain raced to come up with something useful.
A hand grabbed the side of the caravan. A goggled face appeared, aiming his diskbow at Mike.
Savashbahar struck with blinding speed, shattering the Warder’s goggles as she stabbed him in the eye with her dagger. She ducked a near-fatal diskblade as she made it back down.
Mike popped up and blasted another Warder who was hanging onto the caravan. “Count your closest side!” Mike ordered.
Runt checked the side, and Savashbahar checked the back. Ruki popped up once, ducked quickly and then popped up again to put a diskblade through a Warder hanging onto the engine before he gave a count of what was up front.
The limited recon produced a count of three on the left, nine on the right and fifteen behind them. Several Warders from the sides had scurried their bug vehicles to the front, where they were trying to put a fair amount of distance between themselves and the caravan.
“They’re setting up another barricade,” Ruki said. “Looks like my only option is right.”
They weren’t just making these barricades because it was fun. The Warders were trying to corral them.
“No!” Mike yelled. “Ram the barricade!”
“Are you mad?” Ruki asked looking more shocked than when he got shot by a diskblade. “If smashing into it doesn’t wholly destroy the engine, it will definitely slow us down enough for these Warders to catch up.”
“Trust me, ram it!”
Ruki raised his head up, then down, then up, then down again. He pulled a lever, and the engine lurched as it gained speed. Ruki yelled over the whine of the engine.
“If we don’t survive this, I’m going to kill you!”
They hit like a missile. The impact came with a deafening boom and an exploding white cloud of dust and rock fragments.
The caravan had pushed through the barricade, but now it was grinding to a halt. The white cloud of dust enveloped everything.
A crowd of Clockwound Warders slowly appeared in the dust fog behind the caravan. They approached the stopped caravan with caution, probably trying to make sense of Ruki’s suicidal ramming.
They were almost upon the caravan when Mike and Ruki popped up from the back. Mike smacked his hands together, activating the lightning gloves. Then he pulled his hands apart and a lethal dose of electricity erupted, blasting through the surprised Warders. Ruki followed up with a lightning bolt from his own gloves, bringing down the rest.
Ruki wiped dust and sweat from his brow and looked down at Mike. “Is every little purple fiber of you packed full of crazy?”
“I’m an unpaid employee,” Mike said. “You get what you pay for.”
“Bravo!” a voice yelled out from the dust cloud.
Everyone on the caravan watched as a shape started to emerge from the fog. The purple robed mage walked toward them, his hand claps jarring in the silence.
“One more turn and you all would have found yourselves at the wrong end of a spike pit,” he said. “It would’ve been a quick death.”
The purple robed mage flashed the perfect-toothed grin of a serial killer. “But where’s the—”
Mike shot his diskbow. Fuck all that talking. If this bastard liked the sound of his own voice that much he could listen to it gurgling.
Whatever the mage was going to say was replaced by mumbo jumbo. He waved his hand and the disk veered off, deflected.
Ruki fired next.
The mage twirled and the diskblade curved around with the mage before finally coming back toward Ruki, who ducked as the blade shot past.
Now the purple robe wasn’t all smiles.
Chains shot out from his sleeves. They wrapped around big chunks of debris. The mage hurled the boulders at the caravan.
The crew jumped off as the boulders crashed into the caravan, sending up a spray of neon blue water and rice.
“Insolent jackass!” the mage yelled. “You will learn to fear me!”
Mike sat crouched behind a crumbled marble wall with the rest of the crew.
“How the hell did this guy find us?” he asked.
In answer to his question a boulder crashed through the wall they crouched behind, showering them with bits of rubble.
“You can’t hide forever,” the mage said. “Hell, you can’t hide at all.”
They needed to put a little more distance between them and the mage. If he was going to throw stones, he was long on ammo and this wall was short on support. Mike motioned for the others to follow him. He ran in a crouch to another wall twenty yards away.
“Anybody got any ideas on how to bring this guy down?” Mike asked.
Another boulder crashed through this new wall, dangerously close to Ruki’s head.
How’d this guy know where they were in this sea of ruins?
“I can smell your fear!” he yelled at them. “How do you think I tracked you to this wasteland? My dog left a nasty wound, didn’t it love?”
If he was tracking them through fear then the guy essentially had radar. Mike took his team further into the ruins. It wasn’t going to help much, but it would buy them some time.
The mage laughed. “Look at you run, you little twerp! I can smell you. The scent of your fear reeks like alley piss. You’re afraid you won’t see your brother again... and you know something, you’re right.”
“Notice how that fear isn’t of you,” Mike called out. “It’s cause I ain’t scared of bitches in lavender dresses!”
The whole team had to dive out of the way as a boulder came down like it had been launched from a catapult.
“Way to improve our odds, Mike” Ruki said as they scrambled back under cover.
“Leave me,” Savashbahar said. “He tracks us through me, from my fear exploited at the Hierophane.
She looked at them, her face grim. “You all must flee. Where ever I am, the Hollower will find me.”
Mike didn’t want to believe her, but there was no other way to explain how the mage got here. Whatever had gone down in the Hierophane had left Savashbahar with a scent of fear the mage could track til Doomsday. Mike was reasonably sure if everyone else got enough distance the purple robe wouldn’t be able to sense them from their fears.
But leaving Savashbahar alone to fight this guy with only a dagger was condemning her to die.
Mike felt a hand yank him off his feet. Runt pulled him out of harm’s way as a boulder crashed through the wall where his back had just been.
“Can’t keep this up,” the mage yelled out from the expanses. He was hidden, invisible in The Sprawl. “All this running is just making more rocks for me to fling at you. And I got a lot of rocks.”
Mike had an idea. “Savvy, I need you to run some circles. Get the mage hot on your trail. Then meet us back at the caravan, hooah?”
Savashbahar nodded. “This I can do. How much time is a hooah?”
Mike smiled. He’d give her Army training later. “Twenty minutes. Stay a stone’s throw away from this clown. Keep him talking.”
Savashbahar darted, disappearing into The Sprawl. She turned long enough to see Mike, Ruki and Runt crouch run in the opposite direction.
The Hollower responded to their split party tactic with a hail of boulders for Savashbahar. She had to run and dodge as a rain of giant rocks threatened to crush her.
“You have chosen a beautiful place to die, Hollower!” Savashbahar yelled out. “The silence here will make your screams sound deafening.”
“And who’s going to make me scream?” the Hollower asked. “You, with your magic sticks? I already had you running scared at the Hierophane and Ardenspar.”
He stopped talking long enough to launch some more massive boulders at her. Then his voice hit her ears again.
“Think your friends’ll stop me? They can’t get close without me picking up their scent. If they know what’s good for them, they’ve already left you to die here.”
Savashbahar darted from cover and the Hollower was there on her left. He raised his hands.
“Tashbana chek!” the Hollower cried.
A thousand small stones and rocks behind Savashbahar flew towards the mage. She had no time to escape. She covered her head and braced herself.
The rocks felt like punches. They hit her without mercy as the mage called them toward him. Her body twisted and turned as the stones pushed and pummeled to get past her. She fell to the ground as the wave passed.
The Hollower didn’t stop with calling the rocks toward him. He waved his hands and spoke and the small rocks melded together, forming a giant stone wall.
He pushed out and the wall careened towards Savashbahar.
She scrambled and dove for cover as the wall shot past to crash into the ruins behind her.
Bruised and battered, Savashbahar fought the instinct to lay there. She got to her feet and tried to put some more cover and distance between her and the Hollower.
“There’s no chimney to scurry up this time,” the Hollower called. “Nothing to come between our game of cat and mouse, my little hex rat.”
“I still stand, the hex rat with a dagger in her teeth,” Savashbahar called as she ran through a clearing to a broken wall. “How easy will it be for me to chew through you, a cat without claws, purring his empty threats and yowling fake fear.”
That got his ire. He sent his chains smashing through the walls to get to her. She dodged his questing chains easily, her years as Hexenarii making her supremely agile. His anger made her smile with smug satisfaction.
Savashbahar finally made her way back to the caravan. The Hollower’s rock assault had crushed the back wagon. Neon blue pools of water and mounds of rice littered the ground.
No one was there.
She turned and found herself facing the Hollower. He grinned at her, malice dancing in her eyes.
“Friends left you, eh?” the Hollower asked as he walked toward her. “I don’t blame them. You’re a death sentence.”
She didn’t blame them either. This was her fight. She brandished her dagger, fought down her manufactured fear of him. Not enough to completely dispel the terror, but enough for one final strike.
The Hollower’s boots splashed in the water as he stood, reveling in his moment of victory.
“Time to scream, hex rat.”
His chains shot out toward her.
She couldn’t help her fear. She closed her eyes to it, the way of cowards.
Nothing came. She opened her eyes. The Hollower was shaking in place. Smoke came from him, the sound of his body frying.
He collapsed in the puddle of water. Savashbahar noticed a trail of neon blue going from the puddle. Her eyes followed the line to where it ended.
Several yards away, cleverly hidden in the rubble, were Ruki, Mike and Runt. Mike and Ruki were huddled over the water trail, smoke coming from their lightning gloves.
They hurried to her. The Hollower was coughing, trying to gather his wits. Mike kicked him in the stomach.
“Not so tough when you get set to extra crispy, are you?”
“Please,” the Hollower coughed.
Mike gave him another kick in response.
“C’mon, man!” the Hollower cried. “This isn’t how this is supposed to end,” he said as he looked down the sights of Mike’s diskbow.
“This is supposed to be fun,” the Hollower continued. “A game, for Christ sake.”
Mike raised an eyebrow. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“Chicago,” the Hollower answered.
“The Windy City,” Mike said.
“Yeah,” he said. The Hollower’s body wracked from a coughing fit. He spit blood and looked at Mike. “You?”
“I’m from Philly. Or at least was from Philly.”
“The City of Brotherly Love,” the Hollower responded.
The Hollower laughed and looked at Savashbahar. “You want to kill all the Hollowers, start with your little purple friend here.”
The Hollower pointed at Mike, his wicked grin returning. “He’s one of us.”
Mike kicked him again and again.
“That’s where you wrong, dude,” Mike said. “There is no us. I ain’t nothing like you.”
The Hollower’s laugh turned into a cough. He wiped the blood from his mouth. “Yeah, that’s right, you’re playing as the good guy. Well, here’s where you let the defeated enemy go, good guy.”
Mike shook his head. “I ain’t the good guy. I’m the dude you tried to kill. There’s real world consequences for that kind of shit, even in fantasy land.”
He squeezed the trigger.