//------------------------------//
// Chapter 30 — Robbery 
// Story: Jericho 
// by Crushric 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 30: Robbery


“Do I really look like a murderer?”


“Worse.”


Shuffle.

It hurt. A lot. Like, it hurt about as much as that one time I was a mare and that moose attempted to have drunken sex with me. I was just lying on my back, staring up at the hole in the ceiling. Beneath me, I could both feel and hear the railroad clacking.

The space here was larger than it should have rationally be, larger than any train car need be. But then again, everything which that baleful black engine had been pulling had been big, more like it carrying a long, long line of dead whales than train cars. Although being in one of these cars, painful as it was, was still better than that one time I accidentally spent the night inside a dead whale’s vagina.

Taking a deep breath through my nose, which I thought may have been bleeding, I tried to rouse myself to my feet. When that failed, the shrieks of the giant flying squirrel didn’t. I bounded to my feet just as the giant, cow-sized squirrel leapt at me, hissing and growling at me like it had been doing all the way here.

“Yield!” I yelled, throwing as hard as could a fist into the beast’s face. With my new fingerless leather gloves and the armored padding around the knuckles, everything just felt better to punch. Unfortunately, accidentally punching straight into a giant squirrel’s mouth and then getting bitten didn’t feel very much good, no matter what kind of gloves you were wearing.

It hissed and shrieked even more, trying to roll and tear my arm off, but succeeding only in throwing me partway across the room and into a hard wooden crate. Were it not for the armor of my duster, the squirrel’s teeth might have torn my arm in hair, and as it was, the arm merely felt a little broken, probably just some fractures. Still, that hurt!

When it charged at me again, I twisted, pulled out the shattergun Skybane, and fired. The round blew the squirrel’s chest off. The rest of its limbs seemed not to notice that the chest was done until they all rolled up to my feet in a neat little pile.

Thanking the Archangel Thor for seeing me through that voracious, desperate fight, I cocked the shouldershooter’s lever and inserted a new round into the weapon. As I put the weapon back in its sling across my back, I looked out at all the crates in this massive train card, and then to the empty poker table.

A weird, quiet, and distant whirring noise erupted for just a moment before it died, followed by a smooth and feminine-sounding “Hmmm?”-like noise. There was nobody else in the room, and… ow, my head. Just ow.

I fished around in bag for some painkillers, which were always the answer. Got a tumor? Painkillers! Boyfriend just left you? Overdose him on painkillers while he sleeps! Painkillers—the solution to every problem. Every. Problem.

Then it occurred to me: just how the hell had I gotten here, exactly?


|— ☩ —|


Shuffle.

Everything’s a blur. I am in a bed, though I don’t know where. It is not the cozy bed of a home but rather the efficient bed of a hospital. From somewhere distant comes the voice of Big Bag-a-Wolf through a livebox.

“Ding dong, the Black Man’s dead! He’s gone, he’s departed, and he’s no more than blood!” he cheers. “And do you know who to thank for killing this most deplorable of monsters? Why, none other than the Gunslinger himself! Yeah, that man I told you about earlier, the one straight out of the storybooks. Not even a day after he arrives does the man save the whole of Evesland from the worst outlaw in history—hot damn! More on this in our upcoming special report, but till then, just know that some are saying that the Gunslinger’s topless groupie’s been shot. So, if you see a gunslinger walking about, ladies, I’m pretty sure he’s single, and you gals know how to thank a gunslingin’ hero like him!”

Someone turns the livebox off. And this someone, a woman, says, “You are the man who saved me, more importantly gives my daughter hope.”

She suddenly appears at my bedside. The woman looks like an older, more tired Lightning Dust. Though I still have no proper grasp of what werekindred found attractive, I can easily tell that this woman’s best years were long behind her. Mayhap once she’d been the apple of every man’s eye, and she likely in some ways was still sought after, but now her daughter was likely that apple.

The woman nearly collapses as she grasps my hand in her own. “Thank you! I… Thank you, Gunslinger! You have no idea just for how long her eyes have been dull and hopeless!”

Shuffle.

I am looking at myself in a mirror, barely standing. My arms are covered in white bandages, and only my fingers are unbound by them. More bandages cover my breast, over the place where once I’d had a right nipple, and beneath my left where ran up a deep, still-stitched scar.

My vision dwelves on my bandaged arms. Doc Holiday has told me that my arms suffered extensive throughbright burns, caused by massive exposure to throughbrighting. He says that it is infecting me, rotting me. Though he’s given me medication to deal therewith, what meager he can provide me feels like nothing. At least, so he says, the throughbrighting isn’t throughbrightsprack, which apparently means that it won’t spread and further than my arms, but the damage is done. I can still feel the throughbrighting in my bones, my blood, and skin. It’s enough to make my Gene scream.

Slowly, I bring a hand up to my hat, which for some reason I am wearing. Tucked into the hat, I can see, is a tarot card, “The Fool”: in the card, he is a man without a shirt, his arms bandaged like mine; behind him is a wall covered in belts with holstered guns, two of which the Fool is holding; one gun he holds at his side, the other one he holds close to his face, as if deeply contemplating or praying with it. I take the hat off and just look at myself like a fat hamster looks into the eyes of a rapetacular clown. Where my horn would have been on my normal body, there is a nasty scar.

“You don’t honestly mean to do it, do you?” I hear C ask from behind me.

“It’s like I told you, dammit—she’s dying,” I say. “That bullet of decay still affects her, and this is where we get the supplies to save her.”

“Her body became dependent on the schotl on its first use,” he says almost casually. “It’s like a medically induced hemophilia combined with the fact that her body is now decaying from the inside out. I doubt that pumping her full of more drugs can save her.”

I chuckle mirthlessly. “Well, you heard the livebox. Elkington’s number one general, ‘Black’ Jack Parishioner, is on this train alongside a good many soldiers plus tons and tons of food, medicine, and munitions on its way to the Drawers.” I smile. “And, even if Dust dies, we get ourselves a much faster way to Sleepy Oaks and get to stick it to Elkington, right? Plus, you heard what Doc Holiday said: the town’s functionally out of medicine. I’m thinking that we storm the train, give away everything on the train we don’t need to the town of New Pegasus, and then we ride it off into the sunset towards the Drawers. A train seems faster than a horse, see?”

“Yes, faster,” he dryly replies. “What do I know of speed? After all, I am a horse.”

No, I think, you are a liar.

“Now, get out,” I spit. “I have to brush my teeth and then learn how to take a shit with this body.”

Shuffle.

The Fool. The Sorceress. The Gun. The Murderer. The King. The Priestess. The Liar.

The false deck of the oracle. The true deck of the Blue-Eyed Mare.

All run through my mind, all cards meaning something.

“My deck is incomplete without that card,” the Blue-eyed Lady says.

I drag my hands down my face, feeling my new fingerless leather gloves. Smelling them. Enjoying them. “The Fool remains in my hat, mare,” I hiss. “It reminds me who I am, what I am.”

“That sounds almost like guilt.”

I take a hard breath as I gather my things, putting on my duster and holstering my revolvers. “I feel neither guilt nor angst nor regret. So long as I remember the face of my father, I need not bear such emotions upon mine unclean soul.”

“Hmm,” she hums. “And for how long do you plan on holding onto my tarot card?”

“Until the day comes when it is my flesh consumed,” I reply.

Shuffle.

The woman I know as Dust’s mother is sobbing, face buried in her daughter’s chest. Dust herself is lying in the hospital bed, unconscious, bandages over her forehead and breasts. The room here certainly smells like a hospital room—so clean and perfect that it can only smell like death itself.

I speak a quick introduction, and the woman gasps

“G-Gunslinger?” She looks from me to her daughter, sniffling. I think that she understands why I am here. I tell her of my plan, and when all is over, she looks thunderstruck. “Now… now I think I understand what she sees in you.” She wipes her eye of tear. “I… I know that this is usually of job of a father, but…” The woman gives me a weak sort of smile. “But I can think of no one else with whom she would spend her days.”

It takes me a moment to understand that she’s given me her blessing to date her daughter. I merely sigh and give her a sad smile. Before I can speak, however, Dust groaned. I look down at her, and she’s holding up her bandana to me.

“H-hey, you,” she says in a distant, dying voice. “Take this.”

Such is not an option. But I am unable to refuse, as she croaks out, “I want you to… to have it. It was all I had of Mammy, and now I have her. It is… the most precious thing I ever had.” She chuckles mirthlessly and coughs. “Let’s be real here—I’m just some dumb girl like you’ve probably met hundreds of times before. You’re not coming back for me, are you?”

I say nothing.

“You come in, save the day, and then move on to do it again somewhere new.” She smiles. “Exactly like the Rhonaen gunslingers of old.” Dust pressed the bandana into my hand. “Your neck looks so naked and cold, and I thought you’d… just… it’s something to remember a nobody like me.”

After consulting my character sheet, I realize that I have no character sheet. But had I possessed such a character sheet, it would have said that the bandana’s armor slot was empty. That in mind, I put the bandana on, tying the tails of it behind my neck enough so that they could flutter in the wind and look awesome.

Shuffle.

Cards had once told me she’d be willing to make a deal with the Devil if it meant avenging her friend and town. She had, of course, been speaking of me. Dealing with devils, hmm? Well, some say that Waltharius, the Good Stallion, rose to power because he had signed a pact with Korweit. And dealing with Korweit was always dangerous. As the monster himself had once said, “By my right hoof—my servants, my soldiers, my tools.”

And while I’m not dealing with Korweit or the Queen of Graves, as I enter the Blackgard—the great sign above the front gates reading “Under New Management”—I know that I am about to make a deal with a whole new kind of devil.

Slowly riding C through deeper parts of Blackgard, I can see Blood Knights directing haggard-looking people around, handing out food and water rations. These people look like slaves in their ragged clothing, their faces dirty. Blood is everywhere, likely from the night before—the evidence of the witch’s successful coup. That, or it was national “Everyone Gets Hepatitis Day”. Seriously, is it too much to ask somebody to just get a mop and clean up all this blood?

We pass by a man and woman standing before the exploded husk of what had once been the Blackgard armory. The man has an arm around the woman’s shoulder as they sit down before the husk, the woman crying, her hands to her face. “It’s okay,” he cooes. “I’m sure that even without him, nothing will be able to destroy the wholesome family values that kept Olympia strong in the times of eld.”

I stop C, get off him—he whispers the word “Horse”—pick up a rock, and chuck it at the man’s chest.

The man screams as it hits him. “Ah, fuck! What was that fo—oh shit, it’s the Gunslinger!”

I hiss, “You both are idiots. That pink-eyed arms dealer was a psychopath! And mind you, that’s coming from me, and if I think you’re a psycho, you know you’ve got a problem.”

He tries to stammer something out, but fails.

“Look, it’s a bit, I guess, like just gathering a bunch of rape into a pile. Can you picture that? Just-just a bunch of rape in a pile. So then you look at it and think, ‘All this rape messes with the feng shui of my room’. So then you go to move it, but then you touch it—and bam! You’ve touched all this rape with your bare hands, and now you’re pregnant and your asshole hurts verily.” I nod sagely. “This is exactly how this story would be going if you still had your Wholesome Family Values.”

I get back on my horse and ride off before the man can reply. Then I see it: the huge manor house where I wish to go.

Shuffle.

Now C and I are behind the manor house, by the stables. There are other horses here, I see, and all of them are screaming and trying to run away from C, even though there is nowhere to run in their stables. As I get off C, the skinwalker utters a low shrieking noise that sets the hair on the back of my neck on edge, riddling me with chill bumps.

Before I can spin around to look at him, a burly Blood Knights hops over on the low walls. His boots land in the mud, and there is a concerned look on his face. “Shit, what happened to the horses? They okay?”

Even as I walk up to him, I recognize the burly man with the warhammer slung over his back, and when he exclaims “Gunslinger!”, I know he knows me too. “You are an odd sight to see back. What brings you here?”

“Howdy,” I say to the man. His is shorter than I, but built like a brick house. At least we both have broad shoulders. Or, at least I think I have broad shoulders. It is hard to tell what defines ‘broad’ to these werekindred. “I am here to see the w—” I stop myself. “To see the dear lady priestess. We have business to conclude.”

“Here to offer your guns again to the good cause?” he asks, stopping very close to me. “That kind of business have you with the priestess?”

I give the man a confused look. It is calculated, of course. “Business with her? Well, I would suppose, but I said that we have business to conclude.”

“Yhar?” he replied, cocking a brow.

“Yhar,” I say back. “When last we spoke, I promised that I would thee kill for groping and touching the girl I was with.”

He snorts a twisted species of laughter. “Yhar, I recall. No harm done with that little show, brother.” He laughs again. “You’re a funny guy, you are.”

“Yes,” reply in a cold, distant voice. “I’m a funny guy.” The knife comes out before he can see it. Quicker than greased lightning, I stab him in a vital area and rip and tear the knife out as brutally as I can. He can’t even shriek as he collapses to the ground. The horses jump and whine at this, those ugly corruptions of the pony form.

“Wh-wh—” The man gasps, bleeding out into the mud.

With a cold look on my face, I wipe the blood off my knife and sheath it back. “I am a Teutscher, and we Teutsche do very much so value honesty and frankness.” I crouch down and spit into his bleeding wound. Through grit teeth, I growl, “When I make a promise, I keep it.”

“You-you!” he stammers as I pull away from him

I point a finger at the bleeding, dying man. “Devour him.”

C whinnies. “With pleasure!”

His screams attract no attention, and by God, Allfather, are they pleasant to hear.

Shuffle.

I stand before the manor house wherein the witch now reigns. Here, I can see corpses impaled on stakes, blood running down the wooden poles. My thoughts turn to wondering how long these bodies will stay here, since too long being here and they’ll start to smell—but then I noticed that each of the several poles has a little tag thereon. I go up to the nearest pole and read its tag.

“After two days,” it reads, “please take down bodies and wash the stakes—other people need to use them for nefarious deeds too, you know!”

“Huh,” I say. “At least the witch is considerate of her fellow miscreants, thugs, and those supporting Wholesome Family Values.” I pause and think as I rub my chin. “Okay, from now on, I am forgetting all about Wholesome Family Values.”

Shuffle.

“You can’t go in there!” the Blackguard outside the witch’s door shouts.

I give him a glare so icy that he pauses, possibly dying from frostbite. It’d explain why he freezes so suddenly. “Watch me”—and I open her door and step into the large, large room. When I shut the door behind me, he does not throw it back open and charge in. Clearly, the witch needs to hire better security.

This isn’t her ruling room, I soon realize. At least, I hope it isn’t. I struggle to honestly think of a brutal ruler reigning and making decrees from that luxurious-looking king-sized bed that acts as this room’s centerpiece. Or maybe I can think thereof—this world was kind of crazy like that. The witch probably snuggled under covers, all warm and cozy and looking cute as a button as she had men dragged screaming and crying into her room and ordered them to be tortured to death before her so that she could watch them die as she drank hot cocoa, whereafter she would go to her Voixson and say, “Dear Diary, today I tore the genitals off several men because I got a bit hot thinking of that Gunslinger. He’s so dreamy! Tomorrow, we’re going to be in the same math class together, and I’m totally trying out a new hairstyle! Think he’ll talk to me? I hope he does! Because by the Old Ones—I. Want. Him. To. Fuck. Me. Hard!” Then it ends, and I’m left standing there with my dick trying to scramble into my body to get away from her, since that last sentence didn’t come from the Voixson. Again.

Shaking the thought from my head, I try to figure out where that witch had gone off to, and if I should go out and politely ask that shitty guardsman where his dark mistress is. That’s when I see the doorway in the room, from whereunder I can see a light shining out. Not sunlight like, but the light of an artificial source, and I think I can hear a voice from that side. A light moan, really, like someone enjoying a pleasant stretching after a good night’s sleep.

My legs carry me swiftly to the door, and I quickly throw it open. Why I’m suddenly in a rush to find the creepy bitch is beyond me, and—“Get out! Get out! Get out!” the witch screams.

It takes me a moment to realize what’s going on. I’ve just ran into her bathroom as she’s showering, a fresh wave of heat and steam washing over me. I can see her dark silhouette on the other side of the curtains, and the way she’s sitting and the position of her hand leaves little to the imagination just what had prompted that light moan.

“Should have seen this coming,” I groan, and she gasps sharply. Her silhouette bolts up, momentarily slipping before catching herself. The water is still running, and the steam is still fogging up the mirrors even with the door still open.

“G-Gunslinger?” she asks in a weak, shaky voice. The shower curtain pulls back slightly as she pokes her head out. She sees me, freezes, and then tries to partially hide herself behind her long pink hair. From her silhouette, I can see that one arm holding the curtains, the other arm shielding her breasts—as if I care what they look like and would like to gander at them for a period of time. “What—why—how—you were—I was just—”

“If you say ‘I was just thinking about you’ in a seductive voice,” I interject harshly, “and then give me a creepy come hither smile, I am setting this whole compound aflame.”

She blushes, uttering a little squeak as she pulls back away from me, refusing to meet my eye. “That… I… I wasn’t going to say that,” she says in a voice I can only barely make out over the shower. Her flush is so hard now that I think she’s about to get a nosebleed. “I was going to, uh, say that I, um, wasn’t doing whatever you think I was doing.”

I cock a brow. “And just what did you think that I would think you were doing which you insist that you weren’t?”

The witch bites her bottom lip and looks as if she’s trying really hard to look as small as possible. “Um, that.” Her breathing hastens. “Sorry.”

Although it would be wise of me to leave, I can’t help but stand there and ask, “Sorry?”

She swallows, and I am sure she is biting her lip so hard that she will draw blood. “About yesterday. I’m sorry.” The witch still refuses to meet my eye. “I… was so amazed that you existed, so excited, and so… excited that I came on way too strong, and I just kept hoping that if I pressed a little harder, you and I…” Her eyes finally meet my lone eye. “I could see that it was making you uncomfortable, and… when you left, I said that I was going to… And it only made you more uncomfortable, and I’m sorry, and I promise that it won’t happen again.”

I stare at her like either one of us has lost their mind. A girl who not only recognizes how uncomfortable she made me feel, but then who apologizes for going too far and says it won’t happen again? That is, a sensible girl? What the hell is this madness? I don’t understand it and therefore it must die!

“But, um,” she goes on, “could you hand me my towel?”

And I do.

Shuffle.

Hands are odd to use. They feel all kinds of wrong, yet so right, like really dirty intercourse with your sister. Not that I have a sister, thank God, but I’ve been told. Of course, those who’ve told me were rapist monsters, and so I had to murder them dead right there, but details, details. The point is, when the witch asked me to help lace up her corset, I had to use hands.

Now, as I lace it up from behind her, I notice that her bodywash actually smells rather pleasant. She goes on about the new reforms she issuing: better housing, people to actually build houses in the first place, folker assigned to help clear up all this ancient rubble, a pet shelter for all those poor animals without someone to love them, painless ways of executing political prisoners—all generally rather kind things.

Personally, I’m more concerned with the corset. The entire thing doesn’t add up for a werekind. As I can see from here, the corset seems far too tight for a werekind, and crushes her breasts, making them seem inflated in a way that cannot possibly be comfortable. It is almost as if she were trying to wear a made-for-ponies article of clothing simple because that’s what females are expected to wear, with no one thinking about the fact that a corsets simply make no sense for a werekind. Really, what kind of backwards civilization uses objects that were clearly never designed for their anatomy?

Like doorknobs. Because screw doorknobs and the Equestrian fascination with using them. I don’t know for whom they were designed, but it clearly wasn’t for ponies! God, I hate doorknobs, so hard and fiddly to use. Do you know what we don’t have in the Reich? Doorknobs! We use handles, because those actually make sense.

But the time I finish ranting in my head—because I am so damn talkative in my head—I have finished lacing the corset, and the witch is putting on her dark clothing. When she puts on the plague mash and hides all her pink hair, the air of timidness and shyness vanishes. Now, the air about her is one of authority and command. It is the air of somebody who would burn a young girl alive without a second thought if it honestly meant achieving her goals.

“You know,” I speak, “I rather like what you’re doing with the place. Lots of gorey decorations outside.” I gesture over my shoulder in a vague yet menacing direction.

“Those are all leaders of other chapterhouses,” she says in a voice like a leader, not the horny stalker-like girl from the Voixsons. “Unless they swore allegiance to me, they died. Very simple. It meant that no one else needed to get hurt.”

“How kind of you,” I reply, “to pull such a Viktorian move.” I smile. “King Viktor, that is. Your action reminds me of one of the first things he did upon becoming king.”

“They do?”

I recline back slightly, still sitting on her bed. It is soft and cozy. Very attractive for rolling around with another in. “When Viktor became king, he gathered every general and admiral in the land, all the big shots from the Luftwaffe, the Marine, and from the branch that Viktor would later reform into the Mobile Infanterie of today. To ensure that none of them dared subvert his will and side with the infinitely rich corporations and other obscenely powerful interests Viktor’s new regime was going after, he made them all swear a blood oath to him. Those that couldn’t were executed on the spot; those that tried to convince Viktor that such an oath wasn’t necessary were executed on the spot; those who hesitated too long were executed on the spot; those that swore the blood oath were bid to live.”

My mind is full with memories of all the A’s I got in history class. I was a complete badass at history class. Math? Not so much. I don’t care that the Book of Chains states that math is sacred for it was the tool wherewith God wrote the universe, math is evil. “With the oaths of his generals behind him,” I go on with an almost exited voice, not really caring if anybody but I happens to be listening, “Viktor disbanded the Wehrmacht, and on that same day created he the modern Rheinwehr in its place to stand as the united armed forces of Teutschland.” I pause, and say with vague nostalgia after a moment, “Although, the Wehrmacht did show up again a few years back as the Südwehrmacht—which the people sometimes as die Südwehr but generally called as die Wehrmacht. It was the name of the Reich’s guerrilla army of the South during the Dark Crusade.

“Anyways, ever since that day—that is, after dem Tag des Eides, Oath Day—all in the military, from the recruits to the top leaders, must swear an sacred oath to serve no one but the King, not the Reichstag or the people or God, but the King and the King alone, although only higher officers have to swear that blood oath.” I give a little chuckle. “Therein also lies the reason why every day in school, children are required to offer a pledge of loyalty to the King, and through him swear their loyalty to the democracy and liberty which he protects.”

I allow her to think thereabout. Or maybe she’s trying really hard to forget my boring history thing. ’Tis hard to tell. Whatever the case is, in the end she says simply, “You came here for a reason, Gunslinger.”

“Yes, I did,” I reply. “You have heard what the livebox said, yes? Livebox Free Evesland spoke of a massive train leaving from Songnam. Destination: the Drawers. It is laden with massive amounts of food and medicines and arms and personnel and all sorts of other stuff Elkington needs at the Drawers. Big Bag-a-Wolf said it was the single largest military cargo train ever launched by the Kingdom of Songnam.”

She crossed her arms. “And what would you have me do about it?”

“The train’s journey will take it through this city,” I say with increasing fervor. “I want your help to help me get onto the moving train—since my horse says he is of no use.”

“Your horse says?” she asks, but then shakes her head, muttering something about “Teutonic figures of speech.” “Well, Gunslinger, I don’t… Unless you are…” She snaps her fingers, and I can feel her smiling at me through her mask. “Gunslinger, for all you’ve done for us, I think I have a way onto that train. Just, one question: do you like animals?”


|— ☩ —|


“Oh yeah,” I absentmindedly said, looking at the dead squirrel. “That’s how I got here. God, why don’t animals ever like me?” I thought for a moment. “And was it just me, or were all of those memories slightly off-color and in the wrong tense? I’m pretty sure that I was supposed to think of past events in the past tense.” I massage my temples, letting the painkillers do their job. “Oh, brain. You’re so silly when you’re concussed.”

I looked around. “Who the hell am I speaking to?”

Then, on the far side of the train car, a door slid open. In stepped a man in a strange blue great coat with gold-colored cuffs, a yellow vest barely visible under the coat, white breeches, and black boots. He adjusted his tricorne hat as he stepped into the room, looking up at the hole in the ceiling. I saw the shattergun slung over his back. It wasn’t at all like Skybane in design, and it had one hell of a bayonet attached at the end.

The man, still not looking towards me or the dead squirrel I rode in on, groaned. “By Oskaligar,” he said, “not another one. Why do these damn cabooses never have good roofing?” Then he saw the squirrel’s mutilated torso and sighed. “Why did you possibly think the caboose was a good place to be? These places are dead. And you’re a royally protected endangered species.” He glanced around, still not looking at me. “Who the hell am I speaking to?”

“Howdy, pardner,” I drawled, and he lethargically turned towards me, a dull puss on his countenance. His eyes fell upon the pistol I had aimed at him.

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill,” he told me, rolling his eyes and raising his hands. “The gun’s loaded, I’ve three knives on my person, no three-shooters, and my asshole is weapons free, so please don’t go digging around in there. It’s still sore from those ironroad security guys, and gloves or not, they still basically raped me with their hands.” He got down on his knees, but still went on. “I mean, it’s like they stick the world’s longest finger up my ass, grab my prostate, and give it a firm handshake before deciding that I wasn’t carrying any illicit materials in my anal cavity. For the Fathers’ sakes, I’m a one of Elkington’s finest, not some common thug. And seriously, who’d be dumb enough to store things in their asshole?”

“Certainly not I.” And I certainly wasn’t thinking about all those times wherein I totally didn’t stash knives in my asshole, because that was dumb, and I was smart. Wasn’t that right, Duke Elkington when you tied me into that bed and probably tried to rape me?

I got up and went over to the man. “So, I take it that you are one of the fearsome Caroleans that I’ve heard so much about?”

“If you figured I’d be more inclined to rape some little girls than I currently am, then you’re buying way too much into the false legends.” He snorted. “Just because we sometimes have no choice but to gun down rioters doesn’t mean we enjoying raping the dead girls we kill.”

“Gun down rioters?” I asked, more because I didn’t understand the term ‘gun down’ than because I wanted a story.

“Look, zyrh, when you’re trying to restore law and order to a land that’s been without law and order since the last gunslinger, Grifter Greaves, died some four centuries erstwhile, sometimes you need do the bad stuff, like firing into crowds of rioters in newly captured cities. Blame me if you want, I just follow orders.”

“I can understand that,” I said with a nod, thinking back to all those historic times that the Rheinwehr needed do much the same, especially when the military came into any cities in the Southlands to purge the local witches back when we were fighting the Good Stallion. The Reich had to teach them that magic was wrong, and if they wouldn’t hear the truth normally, then the Rheinwehr was to let them feel it. Sometimes, enemy civilians were just so stupid as to try to fight back against our troopers; and if you were that dumb, you deserved to die. Nothing wrong therewith.

“So, just tell me,” he spoke, “are you going to just kill me?”

Frowning, I replied, “Well, since you’re being just such a good sport, I can let you live, no problems.” I removed his rifle and examined it. The thing was thick, stocky, heavy, and I couldn’t figure out how to open the breach and reload it. It wasn’t lever- or revolver-based, and—oh, hello. There were a short number of mechanical parts one had to realize before the breach opening, revealing the part of the barrel whereinto the huge bullet was loaded. And I did check, the weapon only allowed for the one bullet. But with a bullet so scary-looking in the breach, I supposed that was all reasonable. “Hey, do you have a rope on you somewhere?”

“No real need, zyrh,” he said. “If you disarm me, I can’t go running for help, since the only way would be to run through you—assuming you’re going to crawl up the train by yourself. Plus, I’m not stupid enough to try anything.”

That was reasonable, and this guy didn’t seem like the lying type. “What does ‘zyrh’ mean?” I asked.

“Dialectical variant of sir,” he told without a moment’s hesitation. The man probably got the question often or something, which begged the question: Why use it if no one but you understands it? “Um, if you’d like, I have a saw in my pack and a pair of handcuffs. You could cuff me, give me the saw, and by the time I can cut myself free, you’ll probably be gone.”

“You know, you are just such a good sport about this that I’m not going to do any of that stuff to you,” I said simply, patting him on the hat. “I wish all people were half as considerate as you—maybe I could stop killing people wherever I went. Ah, then all my problems could come elsewhence.” I found and removed his three knives, and together with his shouldershooter, I stepped out through the door and tossed the weapons all off the train.

Out here, I could hear the wind whipping past me, even though I knew that the train had slowed down considerably in order to make it through the city. Stopping to think, I found that I wasn’t sure how I knew that, only that I did. Stupid concussion. And now that I was looking around, these trains cars seemed weird. Granted, I could only see the ones behind and before me, but even then I could clearly see just how wide they were, wider than the train cars of my where.

From the next car, as I stepped up to its door, I could hear a muffled voice. I drew my revolver. Quick as could, I slid the door open and aimed. The train car here was full of bunk beds and locks, all but one of the beds occupied. Why they were all sleeping at this hour was beyond me, but I was sure that it made sense. Probably. Big Bag-a-Wolf’s voice came from a livebox somewhere in the room. As I holstered the gun and crept through the car to the other end, I listened to his broadcast.

“Songnam officials are now offering a reward for any tips leading to the arrest of one Michael McLaughlin. Michael McLaughlin is now a fugitive from the law, having escaped from police earlier this day. According to authorities, Michael McLaughlin is a fifteen foot tall, five-headed, fire-breathing dragon. Police first became suspicious of Michael when authorities found him loitering at a local park; when they questioned him, he provided a fake ID, stating he was actually a Taiping unicorn with a work visa who just happened to be turned into a fifteen foot tall, five-headed, fire-breathing dragon by a bout of poison joke. This, police knew, was a fallacy, as poison joke can only turn people into a fifteen foot tall, four-headed, fire-breathing dragon—as everyone knows.”

I saw that one sleeping guy had had a mustache drawn onto his face with a marker. On his cheek was written the acronym “FNG”. I suppressed the urge to try to learn what “FNG” meant via waking him up and asking politely. So, I just proceeded to creep through the train.

“When he was put into a cell, Michael McLaughlin quickly and easily escaped because he is literally a five-headed, fire-breathing dragon. Michael McLaughlin is wanted for tax evasion.

“And now, some music!”

On came more of that old-timey-sounding music that both Eveslanders and Equestrians liked. Bleh. At least by now, I was near the door to the other side of the car. Near that door, though, was a man in the chair, his rifle leaning against the wall next to him. A cigar in his mouth, he was playing came of what I presumed was solitaire, and thus he wasn’t looking in my direction. Creeping past him as quietly as I could, which wasn’t all that silent given all the armor and items I was wearing, I could hear him singing along to the song.

“You’re not fooling anyone, you know,” he suddenly said, and my hand went to my knife. “Look, Kaylepson, I don’t care if you want to draw dicks on sleeping soldiers, but if you draw any of my recruits, I’ll cut your balls off and rape you in the nostril with ’em.” He didn’t look up from his cards; he just kept playing. “Now get the shit out of here before I decide your skinny ass needs to be kicked directly in the asshole.”

I gave an affirmative grunt and quickly went through the door. Once more outside, I sighed. So far I’d been lucky, but I could easily imagine that were there just a few more trooper cars like the last one, I’d have to be expending a lot of ammunition before this day was over. Really, it was stupid to think that this train might he holding munitions for my hungry guns, instead of ammo for the weapons the Caroleans used.

As I stepped up to the next car, which was oddly grayer than the other cars, I heard a distinctly female voice on the other side groan very loudly. “Why me? Why every time me? Fathers fuck me, I wish someone would actually help me out of this damn mess.”

Well, that was as dramatic a call as I needed. I drew a revolver and burst into the room. The first thing I noticed was that either hemisphere of the room was enclosed in cell bars, creating a straight walkway whence I was to the door on the far side of the car. As the sliding door closed itself behind me, I noticed the second thing: the long cell to my right was divided into two halves via a pile of flimsy wooden chairs.

“Holy shit, it worked!” the same female exclaimed. “My wishes work! Oh, I, um—I wish for a bunch of hot guys and a ton of money!” Slowly, I turned to face her. She was standing in the corner of her half of the cell. The woman was smiling at me, her green eyes almost sparkling. Her hair, I noticed, was a snowy white whose otherwise endless monotony was broken only by a weird lightning bolt-like streak of arctic blue running horizontally therethrough. When she looked directly at me, she shrugged. “Well, I guess I got one hot guy. Could do without the eyepatch, though, but at least he’s got that sexy foreigner bonus. I don’t suppose you’re rich, are you?”

I blinked. “To the best of my knowledge, I have enough gold coins on hand to destroy the Evesland economy, so I would presume this means I am rich in a matter of thinking.”

She shrugged again. “Huh. Well, I guess I’ll take what I can get. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?”

My eye fell upon the pile/wall of chairs before going back to the girl. I noticed in that glance that there was no door to her cell on this side of the makeshift wall. “Why are you in the cell?”

“Well, that’s simple, I—” And she dropped into silence. The woman shifted her slightly slacked jaw side-to-side as she seemed to think. “That’s a good question, actually. Why am I on a train?” She put a hand over her chin, one of her fingers reaching out and slowly drumming on part of her cheek. “Got these bits and flashes, and I know that my gear is over in that footlocker.” She gestured to a little locker outside the cell. “Although I can’t say I know why. But I can say something else. You might not be able to tell from looking at me, but my preferred choice of outfit doesn’t include a depressingly gray tank top and weird gray pants. Really, this outfit is shit. I think whoever owns this train doesn’t like me.”

“How can you tell?” I dryly asked, holstering my revolver.

“Well, seeing that being put into a cage isn’t exactly too high up on my fetish list—I’m not too, too big on violent BDSM, y’see—I think I can safely presume that they don’t like me.” She smiled. “They could at least give me a ball gag, y’know? So inconsiderate.”

“Hmm,” I grunted. “Last time I met the guy whom I suspect put you here, he strapped me to a hospital bed and showed me the bad touch.”

She frowned. “See? Why don’t I get any love. If you were in here, you’d get a nice ball gag. But no. I just get locked in a room with the Calf of Despair.”

I shifted my weight, crossing my arms. “Calf of Despair?”

“Yes!” she quickly replied. “Don’t look at it in the eyes, or else! Just trust me on this one, okay? It’s a vicious monsters the likes of which our puny mortal minds can’t even comprehend! There is no survival when it is near you; there is only rape!”

I stared at pile of chairs, the cocked a brow at the women. “Then how are you alive?”

“Because, at the last, most daring second, I discovered its one weakness!” she nearly shouted. “It’s weak versus flimsy wooden chairs, so thankfully I’ve been safe so far, since this cell had a ton of flimsy wooden chairs. See? I even built that barricade after I surrounded it with the chairs. And now I’m bored.” Her voice got calmer and calmer. “And I’m also hungry. And that Carolean took away that livebox that was in this room. And I’m hungry. Twice. Double hungry. And I think the next car up has some tasty, tasty snack cakes. Help me out, please?”

“Why, exactly, would I help you out?” I asked. “You could very well be in that cell for a good reason, a reason wherefore I would be wise to let you rot in there.”

She clasped her hands together under her chin and fluttered her lashes. The purpose of fluttering lashes, as everybody knew, was to make it look as if your eyelids were having an epileptic attack. Because as everyone also knew, there was nothing a guy wanted to bang more than a girl with epilepsy, since, providing they didn’t bite off and swallow their own tongues, epileptic girls were wild in bed. “I’ll be your best friend.”

“Hmm, that is tempting, but I’m afraid to say that—” I dropped into a dramatic monotone “—all my friends are dead.”

“So, that just means you’ll need new ones!” She pounded a fist against her breast. “And I am just the woman for the job, yessir!” As I stared her down, her smile slowly faded. Then her eyelids twitched, and she suddenly was rubbing her eyes. “Ugh,” she groaned. And then I could again see her eyes, there was something… off about them. Whatever it was so startling that I reflexively took a step back. I couldn’t see anything different per se, but it felt like they were regarding me differently than from before.

“Ma’am?” I prompted, and she leveled a gaze up at me.

“You have a rifle over your shoulder, no?” she asked, and I nodded. “Yet, you have revolvers, and you’re wearing them low, like a… like a gunslinger. In fact, you absolutely resemble the mythical gunslinger so much it’s… uncanny.” She hmmed, hand clasped over her mouth as she looked at me. “Before that Carolean took away my own source of entertainment, that livebox, Bag-a-Wolf had spoken on a new gunslingers showing up, and I think that this must logically be you, is it not?”

“Folks have been highting me that, yes,” I replied, and she shot me a little smile.

“And so… hmm…” She did that thing with her hand again, putting it over her mouth and slowly drumming a finger on a part of her cheek. When she went to speak, she first moved her hand from her mouth. “Before Olympia fell, I was an Olympian Ranger. And though the only firearms we used were those in the final days which we liberated from Elkington, I do know how to fire an wield a furrowgun like the one you have slung over your back.”

“Furrowgun? Just how many damn words do you have for a rifle?”

She glanced around quickly. “Rifle, shouldershooter, furrowgun, scratchgun, and shattergun. The last of which is the term popularized recently, since Carolean rifles have the habit of shattering enemy lines. Said shatterguns are imitations of the old Zündnadelgewehr, the weapon invented and mass-produced in the Rike over a century ago.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned lightly as if in pain.

Zündnadelgewehr? I thought as she hissed in a deep breath. That’s clearly a teutsches word, but I don’t know what a “Gewehr” is. Zündnadelgewehr—ignition-needle-Gewehr?

She took another deep breath. “Point is, you can only use one gun at a time, perhaps two if you’re feeling stupid, but you cannot hold three weapons at once. Let me help you, Gunslinger.”

Shaking my head, I said, “No, pedal back. I want to ask what’s an Olympian Ranger.”

The woman froze. “I… uh…” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m not exactly positive, but I know they did stuff for Olympia, and they were… stuff…” Running a hand back and forth through her hair, she grit her teeth. “Really, I don’t know how I know so much about guns in particular, but I know I do, and that it has something to do with me being an an ex-ranger. Honestly, I can’t recall why I’m in a prison car, but I know I am, and I know that I don’t like those Caroleans, and I don’t think you like them either, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?”

I thought about this, and eventually nodded. “Alright, I will help you get out of there.”

Her eye twitched again, and pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyelids tight. 

“Are you well?” I asked.

“Ugh, yhar, yhar,” she said in a strained voice, like she were trying to do her taxes while fighting a bear. The woman waved me off and made a show of smiling at me. While meant no doubt to reassure me, it only made my skin crawl, and I took another reflexive step back. Once again, her eyes were different not in how they looked themselves but what they seemed to be perceiving. It was hard to formulate in my head words trying to describe it. 

“Just, don’t look the Calf of Despair in the eye,” she said in a casual tone, so utterly unlike that of her previous, downright diplomatic tone. “Trust me. I did that once, and I have regretted it ever since. So many regrets, and none of them the regrets that were totally worth it at the time.”

Taking her words into consideration, I crept on past the wall of flimsy wooden chairs. There, near the door and shackled to the ground was a small cow calf. The damn thing was chained so tightly that it couldn’t stand up, only lay there weakly. It raised its head with a terrible frailty, and our eyes met.

A hellish voice thundered in my head. “Upon the foulest wings of the blackest night do I come to you, he of mortal flesh! You shall enter my realm and you will know the true meaning of being raped in the ear, mouth, nose, and urethra all with the same penis!”

“No,” I said simply, and shot it in the face. That was how I learned that the Calf of Despair’s other one weakness was being shot in the face. It was a dark reminder of just how alike the Calf and I were. As I reloaded the revolver, I called out, “Well, I met that which I didn’t understand and so I killed it. Are you happy now?”

“Depends,” she said as I approached her. “Does being a happy girl get me a ‘get outta jail free’ card?”

Shaking my head and furrowing my brow, I replied something to the effect of, “I don’t… pardon?”

“Oh, never mind. Just—” Her expression sunk. “We don’t have the key to my cell.”

I went over to the cell door and examined the lock. When I pushed on the door, I found something out. “Huh. Door’s unlocked.”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” she groaned. I watched her scramble over her pile of flimsy wooden chairs. She reached the door and swung it open. “Just… argh, just fuck me… The one time I don’t try pull and push.”

Crossing my arms, I watched her leave the cell, still gritting her teeth. The first thing she did was stretch, and I could hear some of her joints cracking. “Ugh, I’ve been in that dinky little corner for what feels like forever. Like being stuck in a shitty job, and you just wanna escape, but you can’t.” She groaned. “Like, after Olympia fell, things didn’t go well for me. Had to take jobs that would pay—washing, hunting, fucking mining. You know how hard it is to dig a hole in a wall? Only way to really make it all worth it is to work the dark shafts and pray.”

I nodded. “I can speak likewise, although my past jobs involved being an assistant to the politicians. My knees were always red by the end of the day.”

She gave me an oblique look. “Something tells me we’re not on the same page.”

“I was speaking about being forced into giving oral sex to older, more powerful people to keep my job,” I said in a perfectly level voice. “What were you talking about?”

“Oh, um. Very well then.” She continued giving me that odd stare as she slid past me and moved over to the footlocker, kicking it open. The women turned to me and made a spinning gesture with her hand. It took me a moment to understand what she meant, but until then, I’d just been staring at her hand.

“You want me to turn around,” I stated.

“Well, yes—kinda what this means.” She did the hand thing again. “My gear’s in here, and I don’t want to wear this prison garbage anymore. It chafes and it’s at least two sizes too small, and not in that kiddy ‘it will become bigger before you know it’ way, either. Also”—she glanced down at herself with a confused look on her face—“ I don’t actually know if this outfit has underwear beneath it, and I kind do wanna change pants. So, turn around and don’t look, if you would.”

I turned around stared at the door. Behind me came the rustling of clothing and a sound like a metal object getting dropped. As I was about to wonder why Eveslanders cared for clothing and Equestrians didn’t, the woman behind me gasped hard. “Oh my Fathers, that’s not what I think it is!”

I spun around. “Why, what’s wrong?”

She froze, and so did I. In the course of me looking away, she had done away with her top, exposing all her skin. Of course, the proper matter likely had something to do with the pants she was trying to remove, pants which did not indeed have underwear under them, as I could very clearly see. I got off the start of a groan before she exploded. Well, more like she fell face-first onto the ground in a position unlike a sexual caterpillar before she exploded.

“Ah! You fucking fuck! Did I give you fucking permission to turn your ass around!?”

I finished that long, long groan, rolling my eyes and pointédly not looking at the woman. “One of these days I am going to find a companion with an actual penis who won’t whine when I accidentally see him naked. In fact, I need to mix it up. I’ve only been traveling with girls since I got to Equestria. And Evesland, by extension.”

When I turned around, she exclaimed, “Oh fuck, it is that!”

“Not falling for it twice!” I called back.

“That’s Skybane! That’s fucking Skybane! Why do you have Skybane!?”

“Because I pulled it out of the stone in the middle of the lake which was guarded by the ghosts of various B-list celebrities,” I said. “Whence did you think I acquired it? Now, get yourself dressed before you scream again. Because that was all your fault, not mine.”

And so I did. She asked me a number of questions, but until I was assured and reassured that she was dressed and all suited up, although I informed her before I turned around that what was seen could not be unseen, and cursed my nigh photographic memory for things which I did not want to remember. And because today was all about clothing, from the witch’s lack thereof to this girls prior lack thereof, I had to look at her outfit.

To wit, her get-up consisted of a few notable things. There was her faded gray t-shirt and weirdly skimpy excuse for some kind of armored vest. Rather than gray pants, she was now clad in the most cargoiest of khaki cargo pants I’d ever seen, a dazzling array of pockets and pouches that ran down to where she’d taped her pants into her combat boots. I paused at the single binocular tube—monocular?—hanging from around her neck as she fiddled with the bag she had. Her bag was clearly inferior to mine, for mine were the master race of bags!

Her eyes were once again the more perceptive and aware-seeming eyes as she said, “You carry Skybane. I’m not sure how, but I know that’s important to me. Very important.”

“You want to hold onto it for me?” I asked, removing the furrowgun’s sling. “Have it”—and I tossed her the weapon. She scrambled for it, grabbing with both aggressive fear and reverence. She did much the same when I tossed her the weapon’s ammo bandoliers. It amused me to watch.

“What the hell are you doing?!” she barked. “This is sacred stuff! I know it is!”

I merely smiled. “We’ve loitered here long enough to get a ticket therefrom. You swore to be of help to me for assisting you?”

Still trying to care for the gun and bullets, she nodded. “I did.”

“Well, this may bite me in the ass come later, but, ma’am, welcome to Team Gunslinger. Have you a name?”

Again, she nodded. “Yes. It’s Frosty. Winds, Fro—aw fuck, I messed that up. Can we get a do-over?”


|— ☩ —|


The first car we went through was full of boxes, but nothing interesting. Well, went I tried to open the boxes, I found them to all be full of clothing. I found a black tricorne in one box and put it on Frosty Winds’ head.

“That’s where that goes,” I said as she frowned up at her headpiece. “I officially dub thee the new Cards of this great train adventure, granting you exclusive rights to whine, cry, be sad, be depressed, and be emotionally abused and unstable.”

She gave me an even more confused look. “Well, I guess I do fancy a game of pinochle. Wait, I think I've got a deck in my bag somewhere…” But by then, I was already proceeding to the next train car.

The car thereafter was filled with pictures of squid. Nothing kinky, just squid doing their things. I was pretty sure it had something to do with Elkington’s supposed Neighponease ancestry, presuming that was still a thing in this world.

Frosty, once more without a hat, said in a humorless voice, “Oh, well, look. A whole train car full of things that should be killed with fire.” She grunted, and was suddenly massaging her temples, muttering things like, “Ouch, ouch. Ffff! Ow!”

I stared at the woman. Why had I given her a gun, again? “Frosty, are you well?”

Frosty took a deep nasal breath and looked back at me. “Uh , yeah. A little headache, I think, but nothing I can’t handle. Why?”

My gaze didn’t let up. “Think hard for me, girl—why did you think you ended up on this train?”

“Um, didn’t we cover that already?”

“I think it’s important right now, for you’re acting odd. Why?”

“Eh,” she half-groaned, half-grunted. “Look, does it really matter? Whatever happened happened, and I ended up on some train staffed by guys I don’t like. How that came to be and my past doesn’t really matter. Right now, we’re here, doing”—she glanced around—“we’re staring at hundreds upon hundreds of squid on our way to help out New Pegasus or whatever your story was.” I blinked. “Memories and history weigh you down, keep you from focusing on the present and the future, okay? I won’t ask about your doubtlessly tragic and dark and dramatic past, and you won’t ask me mine, and that’s that.”

I leveled a heavy glare at the woman, heavy enough to crush the life out of a small insect. “You can’t be serious,” I scoffed, “can you?”

She held my glare firm. Then she broke out into a chuckling fit. “Pfft, fuck no. I’m neurotic out the wazoo and I know it. I just don't remember anything particularly interesting to tell you. But I won’t shoot you in the back or the face or the dick if that’s what you’re worrying about. I’ve got enough problems of my own without worrying about a gunslinger after my ass.” She smiled. “Trust me, I’m PTSD’d so hard that I’ve got the entire LMNOQ-alphabet after me, although I don’t know how or why that is.”

“So, it’s amnesia,” I stated bluntly.

She nodded. “Sorta.”

I stared long enough at her, and eventually chose to leave the status quo as it was. Crazy is as crazy does, as they say. Sure, she was probably going to end up ruining my day, but… why wasn’t I having a problem with her, again?

The next car wasn’t like the others: it was all outdoors, a number of little metal slabs scattered about to hold onto crates, whereof there were four. So too were there a small number of crane-like aparati scattered about no doubt used for the loading and unloading of these creates. Really, this whole place looked perfect for a firefight. Plenty of cover from either direction. I pulled down on my hat’s visor as Frosty and I crossed the car all the way to the next door.

As we reached the next door, I paused. Down below, where the locks and other mechanisms to connect the train cars together was, I saw what looked like dark and mechanical veins. I knelt down to get a closer look. As I stared, a blue light ran down the veins, like a pulse on energy. “What the…?”

I looked up to Frosty, “Hey, is this nor—”

“Down!” she shouted dropping to the ground, her back to one of the metal plates.

“What?” I asked, and then I heard the crack of a rifle. A hole in the metal floor materialized before me with a bang. Glancing up, I saw several men—Caroleans, by the outfits—funneling out from the last car and taking cover. Then one came strolling purposefully out, and I recognized him as that Carolean who’d been playing solitaire. He saw me, pointed, and barked. The Caroleans opened fire.

“Great. Just great!” I said, dashing for the door to the next car. “And it’s locked. Because of course it is! Why wouldn’t it be! Where’s my lockpick?”

I heard Skybane fire as I ducked for cover. “Eleven!” Frosty shouted. She popped out of cover and fired the shattergun again, deftly cocked the lever as she barked, “Ten!” It took me a moment to realize she was counting her shots.

More bullets whizzed past me, piercing deep holes in our cover. Really, with the size and power of their bullets, the cover here was shit.

“The hunt has begun, now let ’em hit the floor! Eight, and ooh, I just made a widow!” Were those one-liners? No! Only I got to do awesome one-liners! She ducked back under cover and in a single fluid motions removed four bullets from the bandoliers and inserted them into the weapon as she called out, “Tac’ reload, cover me!”

As interesting as it was to watch, I had a lockpick to find. Actually, now that I thought thereabout, how did I even know locks in this place worked like they did in my where? How, exactly, did I even pick a lock with these hands? “And, dammit, where’s my lockpick?!”

Frosty slid over to where she could be in cover and stand at the same time, a bullet tearing a hole through where she’d just been. “I got a pick,” she said, and popped out of cover to fire twice again. “I’ll give you two credit, you’re superior at dying!”

“Where?” I asked, diving from my cover to hers. I failed and simply jumped head-first into the metal wall. As I yelped in pain, I somehow managed to roll into the cover. A trickle of blood ran down my forehead, and I had to readjusted my hat back into place. That was how I learned that I was not a dolphin, thus crushing my lifelong dream of becoming a dolphin, and thus no more dramatic dolphin diving around shootouts.

“One of my back pockets! Can you get it yourself? I’m a little bit—eight, seven!—bit busy at the moment!”

Wiping the blood off my forehead, I crawled over to her before attempting to root through her cargo-laden cargo pants. I needed to get me a pair of these. They’d act as a whole bag all on their own. I opened a fat-looking pocket and felt around.

“Wrong pocket!”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Other one! Other one!” she spat. “Six! Five!”

Another pocket.

“Dammit, are you just trying to grab my ass?”

“Well, you seem a little tense,” I replied. “I figured an ass massage might do you wonders.”

“We can get into a bunch of weird kinky massages after people stop trying to kill us, dammit!”

“Which is, in my case, to say, never.” Then: “Maybe if you could point me in the right direction…”

She growled. “Lower, lower, left, right—that one! That one right there!”

“Danke, Fräulein!”

I turned to face the door, and then realized that standing out in the open was actually a really terrible idea. Like, really, really terrible. So I just sat there, trying to figure out what to do. The answer to my wondering came from Frosty.

“You know, I had kinda figured that a gunslinger would, oh, I dunno, sling guns!” She dropped back down behind cover. “Especially since I kinda need to reload!”

“Oh, yeah. That’s a thing I do.” In a lighting-quick movement, I pulled out my revolvers, one in each hand. By the time I realized how terrible an idea it was to dual-wield revolvers, a hail of bullets was tearing my cover apart. The huge scar that once was my right nipple burned as I skidded over to my old piece of cover, guns still in hands.

My bandaged arms itching and my forehead bleeding from my idiocy, I took a breath, thought of the face of my father, and popped up out of cover. I fired my right gun first, hitting a Carolean directly in the head—mostly because he was literally right in front of me, and because I’d fired wildly in panic. Luck was a fun thing to have.

As the Carolean’s head sprayed everything with mist, I saw the other Caroleans—the ones still alive, not the many ones that Frosty’d shot—advancing on us. So I aimed, took another breath, and fired, hitting another one. I cocked both guns and fired again, one after the other, cocking after each shot. Six shots down and I ducked back into cover and rolled off to the side.

“Good to go,” Frosty called out, and when back to shooting and calling her shots. “This one’s because I don't like that look on your face!”

“Ach, dammit!” I spat. “I forgot to use any one-liners when I was shooting. Frosty, stop using so many one-liners—it’s making me look bad!”

“Never!” she shouted. “Ten! Nine!”

I was about to offer a witty comeback—“Nein, du wirst aufhören!”, meaning “No, you will stop!”—when I realized that I had a gun, and guns always beat locks. So I took aim, breathed, and shot the handle on the next train car. Frosty jerked her head towards me, and I gestured for the newly unlocked door.

“Unlocked it—now go! I’ll cover you!” I barked, and she nodded. At once, two things happened: I rose to my feet, moving towards the center of the car, and Frosty sprinted for the door.

I stepped out into the open, Caroleans charging me, and only five shots left between my two guns. Easy enough, right? But first, I needed a one-liner. “Hey, want to see a magic trick?” I asked, and fired. The bullet tore through the first man’s throat and and hit the man behind him in the face. “Two for the price of one!” I’m catching up to you, Frosty! As I cocked the one revolver, I fired the other one. The bullet punched through another man’s leg, pretty much tearing his knee in two. “Well, I’ve heard of being disarmed, but this is ridiculous.” Okay, no, that was terrible and you lose one point.

As the dis-legged man fell down, his shattergun went off, hitting some sort of crane-like apparatus above the car. Nothing really came of that, so I shot at one of the Caroleans aiming at me to great effect. That’s when it occurred to me that their tactics of charging was utterly shit and suicidal, but then it also occurred to me that they likely hadn’t even been trained how to fight enemies with guns, just enemies with melee weapons. It was the only logical conclusion. Of course, that one Carolean had called these ones recruits, so mayhap that had something to do therewith.

Two shots left, and I breathed deep, firing at another Carolean. His stomach exploded, whereto I remarked, “Ah, so that’s what you had for lunch.”

Last shot, had to make it count. There, standing behind mild cover, was a Carolean aiming straight at me. But not just any Carolean, it was the Carolean whom I didn’t tie up from earlier—that sonofabitch! And he seemed so honest, too. What was with me and trusting in bad things today? First the witch, then that Carolean, and then probably Frosty. Oh, I’m going to enjoy this, I thought, and fired my revolver at him.

And I missed.

I doubted he would miss; he didn't even flinch as my bullet hit the crane’s support just beside his head, the same one that dis-legged guy had hit. His finger depressed the trigger very sadly before I could turn tail and run.

So, logically, he fired about half a second after the metal crane started to fall, which somehow absorbed his bullet like how a sponge absorbs the sweat, grease, and shame during a fat man’s monthly sponge bath.

“Ha! Random deus-ex-machina to the rescue!” I shouted, turning around and sprinting for the other car as I reloaded my revolvers.

I met up with Frosty as I holstered my reloaded guns, and we raced through the car. How the Caroleans had missed us was still a mystery to me, but they sure as hell hadn’t missed this car. The floor and walls were peppered with bullet holes, and the bulletstorm didn’t end when we entered the new car—as the whirring and whizzing of bullets alone suggested, not to mention all the new holes in the everything.

We got to the door at the end and, surprise surprise, it was locked. No time for a lockpicking, I aimed my revolver thereat and—the door clicked and slid ajar all on its own. There was nobody on the other side, and I didn’t exactly have time to ask why the magical god of doors was now on my side, there was only time to dash for the other door. But I did have to stop and ask just what the hell was going on as I heard the train cars decoupling.

Spinning around and looking down, I saw more of those vein-like metal things. They were retracting from the bullet-ridden car, sliding over the metal coupling parts. Before my very eye, the other car’s coupling thingy seemed to melt away as it squealed, and that entire section of the train quickly moved back from whence I stood.

I looked around, but Frosty was already inside the car. And I heard that weird, quiet, and distant whirring noise from earlier again. Only, instead of a “hmm”-like noise thereafter, a quiet, distant, but nevertheless chill-flesh-inducing feminine voice said simply, “You’re welcome.”

Of course, rather than act scared or anything, I simply sighed and said, “Thank you very much.” I didn’t know to whom I was speaking too, but knowing my luck, I was now haunted. Or maybe the train was. “Are you haunted, train?” No response, and I didn’t just imagine that voice.

Frosty poked her head out from the doorway. “Hey, who ya talkin’ to? Can I speak to them, too? Do they have snack cakes? Because that car I thought had snack cakes didn’t have them, and I’m about to go psycho if I don’t get my sugar fix. It’s kinda like reverse diabetes or whatever. I totally just made it up; that’s how I know it’s true.”

“Hypoglycemia?” I asked.

“The hell is that?”

“Reverse diabetes.”

“What, that’s a real thing?!”

I nodded. “Well, you just made it up; that how I know it’s true.”

“How do I know you’re not making that up?”

“For I am the knight of the gun,” I said softly. “And we knights of the gun tell no lies but for those that defeat our enemies.”

“Right, right, and we’re, like, what? Friends?” she asked, stepping back into the car, I followed her, ducking through the low doorway. She had a much easier time going through low doors, since she was nearly a foot-and-a-half shorter than I.

“In my culture,” I said as we went through the car, checking the boxes for anything useless, but finding only creepy porcelain dolls, “we do not use ‘friend’ as you use it, not at all. The word Freund, in my where, would be better translated as ‘best friend’ rather than ‘friend’, as you understand the terms.”

Nothing more was said on the matter. We went through a number of storage cars, finding nothing of note. A car full of tasteful nudes. Another one full of caged parrots. One car full of live tigers which had been taped—literally duct taped—to every facet of the walls and ceilings. Really boring, uninteresting sights.

Then the jackpot. Of sorts, anyhow. It was a large, empty diner car. As we were searching it, I found an entire cabinet full of snack cakes, and when I called Frosty over, the girl… well… The next thing I knew, she was lying on the floor behind the counter, covered in wrappers and crumbs.

I myself was sitting at the countertop, sipping from a cup of hot tea I’d managed to find and make myself. It was peppermint flavor. By this point, I’d managed to wrap gauze around my forehead whence I’d cut it earlier. I thought that it was good that the train was going so slowly through this snakey city, and it was double-plus-good that this city was so big, otherwise the train would have passed New Pegasus’ railyard, and I wouldn’t have been able to get Lightning Dust the medicine she needed, but at least I’d’ve had a fast new train, so it wouldn’t have been a total loss.

“Hey, ugh,” Frosty said. “Back there, how were you using two guns? And, like, actually hitting things.”

With a sigh, I said it as I understood it. “I learned.” I poured a weird little packet of sugar into my tea as I read the label of a bottle of alcohol I’d found while making the tea. Like in Equestria, there was no list of ingredients or anything of the sort.

“How does one learn to wield two guns at once?”

“Well, I suppose that it’s a bit like trying to wash your balls with a bar of soap,” I said. Frosty sat up, giving me a blank stare. “It’s hard and it hurts, and you have to squeeze your balls in order to hold them steady as you wash, but in the end, it’ll all be worth it—your balls will be all clean. Or, in this case, you’ll be able to accurately wield two revolvers at once.” I sipped my tea, thinking that it tasted rather good.

Frosty’s blank stare continued. “Ya know. I can’t say that I understand the feeling.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” I said, and again sipped from my tea. Who was a fancy man? I was a fancy man.

“Good, so we’re on the same page.”

“But are we on the same book?” I asked, cocking a brow. The action messed with the scab I had on my forehead whence I’d hit it.

Frosty pinched her nose and groaned. Her eyes didn’t change this time, though. “If we’re not on the same book, then how the balls am I here?”

“Because you're not properly washing said balls with a bar of soap?” I offered, and her eyes narrowed.

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

“I know,” I replied, holding back a sly smile as I played with the bottle of alcohol. Frosty saw the bottle and made a reaching gesture for it as she frowned. Still wearing the sly smile, I nodded and tossed her the bottle. She caught it, opened it, and took a long pull, giving a large sigh of satisfaction as she finished.

“Ah, were I a younger, more reckless lass, Gunslinger,” she said in a day-dreaming tone, “we could run away together and live happily ever after in an impractically large castle.” I cocked a dubious brow. “Just the princely gunslinger and the pauper neurotic girl. Every little girl’s fantasy.” She laughed mirthlessly, shaking her head.

I crossed my arms. “You know, alcohol doesn’t make you say weird things until a while after you drink it.”

Frosty took another shot, and gave me a weird look. “What? Think about it—’s perfect. You’re badass and rich, and I’m kinda cute, I think. The handsome knight and the crazy girl. Heh. Yeah. Those things go together like… go together like…”

“They go together like toddlers and being left in the bathtub with a peckish bullshark,” I offered, and Frosty fell onto to her back, laughing.

“Couldn’t’a said it better myself.”

“For the record,” I amended, “I’m the toddler in that metaphor.”

She broke out laughing again. I didn’t wait for her to finish as I drank my tea to completion, then poured myself another cup and went back again for more sugar.

“You know, Gunslinger,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye, “I can’t remember the last time I had a good laugh. Although, really, that’s mostly because I can’t remember anything worthwhile lately, but still.” She looked at the bottle of alcohol. “You know, I can’t tell if this bottle is half-empty or half-full.” She glanced at me and smiled. “But I’m starting to think it’s half-full.”

I shrugged. “Whereas I, the intrepid man, do not usually ask that question.” I shook my head. “No, when it usually comes up, I ask why there’s glass of water in my house? And then I ask, why there’s water all over my carpet and ceiling? Why is my kitchen sink on? Who keeps doing this to me and why?”

“What the fuck?” she laughed. I just smiled, shook my head, and drank my tea.


|— ☩ —|


“This the car?” she asked.

I looked down at the map I’d found in the diner. Which is to say, the car literally right behind us. “According to this, there are seven of them before us, since they’re marked as ‘sleeping’ and ‘recreation’ cars. So, seven cars filled with nothing but soldiers.” And to think of how many of these Caroleans managed to pack themselves into that one car near the back of the train… “And past them, several cars labeled for storage, a ‘General’s Car’, an unlabeled car, and lastly three cars labeled as the engines.”

“So. What’re we gonna go?”

My eye fell upon a little ladder on this Carolean car. I flashed Frosty a smile. “We climb up this ladder, crawl across the traintops, and hope really hard that some Caroleans come up to fight us. And before you ask, it’s because traintop battles are awesome and that is a fact and if you think otherwise, you’re a liar and your opinion is wrong.” I took a deep breath. “This is going to be fun,” I said, tightening my hat and fiddling with my… with Dust’s bandana.

Then I went up to the ladder, thought about how werekind were supposed to climb a ladder, then thought that I’d understood it. So I climbed up the ladder and hauled myself onto the traintop.

Up here, the wind was strong, but the train was moving slow enough that I could—“God, my eye!” I screamed. “The dust in my eye from the wind! This was a terrible idea! Shit, ow, why!? Why?! Why does your family betray me, Lightning Dust?!”

I tumbled backwards, flailing for the ladder and only barely preventing myself from falling off the train. Quickly, I scrambled back onto the train proper. As I panted hard, pulling down on my hat as the unthinkable horribly image of me losing it ran through my head again and again, Frosty poked me. I looked up to see her wearing goggles—goggles which looked very dust-proof.

“You know, it’s actually a very terrible idea to just go out onto a train unprotected,” she offered.

“Shut up, just shut your dick-holster,” I growled. “I’m trying to deal here with having just had my dream crushed!”

She dangled another pair of goggles out above me. “So, I guess you don’t want these either, do you?”

“Gib es mir!” I hissed, reached out for the goggles, which she pulled away from me at the last moment. And then she dropped them onto my chest. I nearly rolled off the train trying to catch them. But catch them I did, and I put them onto my face. This time, before I climbed up the later, I removed my hat and put it in my bag.

Frosty whistled. “Huh. You know, I actually didn’t picture you with that kind of hair, color or style.” She shrugged. “For some reason, I expected you to be hiding a huge afro under your hat.”

In no time at all, I was walking across the traintops on hand and knee, since any higher and the wind, no matter how weak, seemed to enjoy trying to knock me off the train. The wind was good at its job.

By some miracle, nothing really happened, and Frosty and I uneventfully made our way over the Caroleans and the box cars which we couldn’t get into and up to the entrance of the the car wherein I presumed the general was. When I mentioned his name, General “Black” Jack Parishioner, Frosty froze in the middle of taking off her goggles.

“Are you well, ma’am?”

“General Black Jack Parishioner…” she muttered. “That names leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Like… I think I know him, but…”

“…you don’t know why?” I finished, and she nodded. By now, my goggles were off, and I waited for Frosty to finally remove hers.

“Ugh, makes me want to strangle something cute and fluffy.”

“Well, if we come across any murderous kitties, I’ll leave you to them,” I replied, pulling out a revolver. “Ready to go in?” I gestured for the door.

“I… yhar, I’m all good. Just, uh.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned. She did that a lot, come to think. “I need an aspirin.”

I tried for the general’s door and found it locked. Sighing, I holstered my revolver and took out the tools I needed to pick the lock—because, by some miracle, it was a kind of lock which I recognized. “Take five, Frosty. I have no idea how long this’ll take.” I didn’t have to tell her twice. And as I attempted to learn how to use hands to pick a lock, I sang a little tune under my breath. Which is to say, I made one up in-between bouts of tuneless humming.

“It was a cold day in some month,
Not one well for some fun-th.
Yea verily, picked I a lock,
For ’twas better than getting punched in the cock.
Yo digo siempre fue bueno…
Uh… pa’ mi, solo más o meno’.
Doch nicht für Sie, Frostige Winde.
Und, Schlüssel, sag ich, ‘Verschwinde!’”

The lock clicked open, and I put my tools away. “Okay, I think we’re all set. Ready?”

“Yhar, I’m good.”

“You say yhar a lot,” I said.

She gave me an odd look, then rolled her eyes. “Olympian accent. We don’t say ‘yeah’, we go ‘yhar’. Don’t ask.”

“Alright, I won’t.”

Revolver out, I burst into the room. “Wait. Nobody’s here.” There was stuff here, but certainly no general. Really, this entire car looked like a super luxury hotel room and then some: king-sized bed, a fully stocked mini kitchen, a poker table, dressers, and the works. I saw a mannequin whereupon rested a Carolean uniform but with a more black-and-red color scheme—black greatcoat, red cuffs and trousers—like a playing card, with only two vertical blue stripes remaining of the original blue of the standard Carolean getup. Actually, now that I looked thereat, this Carolean uniform resembled something akin to the freaky rape baby of a Carolean uniform and the duster I wore.

“Hmm?” Frosty hummed, and I turned to see her poke at a livebox.

A voice of an energetic women came through the livebox. “Heeeellooo, troopers! It’s me again, Bitchin’ Betty—your friendly livebox personality and only part-time government punching bag—come to ask, ‘How you doin’?’ Me? Eh. Could be better; just curled up in the studio/fortified bunker here in the middle of wolverine country with a cup of cocoa and… shit, did I forget to wear pants again? Ugh. Well, I shouldn’t’a slept in late, now should I?” She took a took breath, and finished it with a cheery-cute sigh. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m itchin’ for some tunes. You? I thought so.

“Here’s a fan fave: The Battle Hymn of the Kingdom, as sung by the Third Battalion’s men’s choir!”

The song sounded like church organs playing, then dropped into an orchestra with a strong, decidedly masculine sound. It was a might bit like Die Wacht am Rhein, but it wasn’t really as favorable to me as said song.

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the King,
Hell has no demon he can’t overcome,
He’ll make the Fiddler himself turn and run.
Stands for freedom and the people,
He is Elkington—
The Shadow of Death is the one he casts.
And that too is my shadow,
For I am Carolean, protector of the people!”

Frosty shut the livebox off. “I don’t like that song.”

We searched the car, but found not the general. So, we found our way out the other side of the car. And yay, I finally got to unlock a door from the inside, opening up onto… a boring car like that one back with that earlier Carolean firefight. Of course, there were no little walls here, just a straight path outlined with several big boxes and cranes. At the end stood the first black metallic car that made up the three frontmost cars.

Whence I stood, the cards looked sleek and so… utterly unlike the design style of literally everything else. Compared to what I’d seen of this world, it was a downright schizophrenic difference, like the creation of another era. It certainly wasn’t a train style I’d ever seen.

As we finally got thereto, something about the car’s door, sleek and alien, gave me pause. When I found no explanation for my hesitation, I chose to speak something that sounded profound but was pretty much meaningless. Frosty was standing besides me, so I chose to speak to her, not to monolog. “You know, Frosty, according to the first of my people’s two holy books, the Book of Chains, all of existence came to be when the Allfather—God, Adonai, the Father, whatever you wish to call Him—opened the Door,” I said. “A door whence all existence came, where God himself resided, and wherebehind in Heaven he now sits.”

She was silent for a moment, and then said, “You know, not that I’d really know, but I hear that religion is kinda like a penis.”

“Beg pardon?”

“It’s fine to be proud of it and all, but for the Founding Fathers’ sake, don’t go waving it around in my damn face or shoving it down my throat. I mean it.”

“Ah, so you’re a lesbian?” I asked.

She gave me a pointédly flat look. “Well, I’m sorry I have a gag reflex.”

“Isn’t that kind of comment a type a doublespeak for ‘You have a rather sizable set of genitals, kind sir’?”

“Okay, now I think we’re getting off-topic,” she replied. To her credit, she didn’t have any of those silly blushes that females sometimes got whenever anything sex-related came up. Hooray for non-prudish, mayhap sexually liberal females.

I chuckled. “Silly girl, the penis is always on-topic for me!”

“No,” she deadpanned, and I frowned and sighed.

“Okay…” I frowned harder, then went back to my door.

“Make no such movements towards the door,” a gruff, hectoring voice barked from behind . Slowly, I turned to face the voice, but hesitated as I saw Frosty shaking. The man was standing a short distance away, his arms folded, his eyes steely. He wore that uniquely colored Carolean uniform from earlier, but now it was crisscrossed with bandoliers, two revolvers holstered below his arms. Like me, he only had one eye, and a sexy eyepatch over where the other one would’ve been. A part of me wanted to ask him if he wanted to rub eyepatches together, though I couldn’t say why or to what end. His hat was not dissimilar to mine, but whereas I wore The Fool therein, his hat had two cards: the red ace of spades, and the black jack.

“General Black Jack Parishioner, I presume,” I called out.

“You say true,” he said back. “And for the record, Scout Second Class Frosty Winds, the Battle Hymn of the Kingdom is a mighty fine tune.”

Frosty uttered a liquidy grunt, like she were angrily drowning at the hands of a fat kitty in a holiday tree. Yes, hands. “I… I think I just remembered something.” She fell to her knees, clawing at her forehead and eyes, shaking and shivering and sputtered out weird growling noises.

I poked her with a boot and she stopped. Frosty took a deep, deep nasal breath. “He. Must. Die,” she growled so gutturally that I was surprised she didn’t tear her vocal chords to ribbons.

“You know,” General Black Jack Parishioner went on, “she’s a criminal. Ah, by the look in your eye, you didn’t know that. Hmph. Why not tell him your crimes, girl? Oh, what’s that? Have no honor, no backbone, no soul? Tsk. I’m sure she’ll tell you she can’t remember, but Frosty Winds lies. My, does she lie.”

“Shut your dick-holster!” Frosty roared, then clutched at her head as if trying to crush it.

“Hey!” I whined. “That was my line.”

The General smiled. “For one, she’s a terrorist. For another, she’s a murderer. An outlaw. A fugitive of the law. A listed enemy of the state.”

I shrugged. “So? I’m pretty sure that’s what they call me in about ninety-five percent of the places I’ve been. I speak for the people, the people always say, Vive la Revolución.”

“Aye, as if you’d care, Gunslinger, of the extend of her evils, ” he said, shaking his head, “of those dead on her behalf, on great behalf of the father whom I made damn sure to put a bullet between the eyes of.” He smiled. “My dear friend, King Charles Elkington, spoke of you, from where you came, and whom you killed. They call you hero, but we know you to be a monster, Marked of Kane.”

“If you mean my cutie mark, that’s just a normal thing back whence I come,” I said. “Standard issue for all magical talking ponies.” I blinked. “Wait, go back a second. You said that that one song was actually good, which was a rebuttal to Frosty saying she didn’t like it. How the hell did you hear that?”

He took a step back. “Er, well… I was hiding under the bed the whole time you were in my room.”

“What.”

Rubbing the back of his head, he smiled. “I heard you coming, and I wasn’t wearing any pants. Or a shirt. And was just drinking whiskey as I played solitaire. So, I hopped under my bed, figuring you’d go away and let me be, but then you sort of unlocked the door, and I was too far from my guns to do anything.”

“Oh, well. That’s a perfectly reasonable explanation,” I deadpanned, trying not to pay attention to Frosty as she crawled across the floor up to the crates that flanked this car. “It’s not like you were the General or anything who could tell everyone to just go away.”

“Go fuck yourself,” he said calmly.

“Sorry,” I replied, “I don’t really care for masturbating.”

He only glared for me in silence as Frosty played over by the boxes which nobody cared about. Was she trying to climb up them? Silly Frosty, boxes aren’t for climbing; they’re for trapping people you don’t like in tiny claustrophobic places while you poke them endlessly with sticks neither too sharp nor too blunt.

“Now, who amongst us will draw and shoot the other first?” he asked dryly.

“What?”

“You and I, facing off,” he told me. “Eyes on each other’s guns, waiting for the other to make the first move. And then they move, and you see which of us can draw and shoot the fastest. That’s what we’re doing, Gunslinger.”

I nodded, my hand now hovering above my revolver. Our eyes met, both of us eyes steely, our gazes long and hard. He glared at me, and I flashed him a smile. Who amongst us would fire first? I flexed my hand, and he didn’t react. Staring. Slowly getting bored, but this was badass, so it was worth it.

Then, from his side came it—a blur of motion. Quick as greased lightning, I grabbed my right revolver and pulled it out, cocking it in that single motion. General Black Jack Parishioner’s head exploded. I blinked as I saw Frosty standing behind the ex-General, her teeth bared, smoking rifle in her hands.

The General’s brains and skull splattered all against the floor. But before it could fall, Frosty snatched the General’s hat out of the air and tossed it onto her head. “Dismissed,” she spat and broke out panting. She cocked Skybane, inserted a new bullet, and then stumbled over towards me as I watched, frozen, gun still drawn and cocked.

“Get that out of my fucking face,” she hissed, slinging the rifle over her back.

“You stole my kill.” Pointédly, I didn’t de-cock and holster my revolver, but neither did I aim it at her. I just glowered like one of those edgy, angsty heroes that nobody really likes, and she suddenly had a face like a bitch who’s just realized she’s going to meet the back of my pimp hand, followed by death.

“Just-just gimme a moment to explain!” she practically begged. “Guns away, okay?” I did not holster my revolver. “I know it won’t make a damn difference, but I’d like to think that maybe we’ve been through enough that you won’t just shoot me like a dog because the General was right about me, and then how I stole your kill! Just-just—guh, there’s so much that I can’t—ngh…”

She grabbed her face, and when she stopped, her eyes were at once more attentive, intelligent, and diplomatic. “I’m sure you’re familiar with that old saw about history and war, Mister Gunslinger.”

I cocked a brow. “Oh, hold on. I know this from a trivia card game I once played. Something about the never-changing nature that is war, yes?”

Frosty flinched, taking a step back. Normal eyes returned. “What? No, that’s fucking stupid. How’d you think we got guns in the first place? Just shut up and listen to h—me!”

My hand slid off my gun’s trigger as I watched her clutch again her face, but I didn’t put the weapon away. In fact, more than ever, I felt like I should just shoot her, partly to end her madness, and partly because she was a kill-stealing whore.

Her eyes returned to that diplomatic intelligence. Frosty stood as straight and tall as she could, still shorter than I. “No; I was saying that history is written by the victors. There are no losers, only survivors. Without another side of the coin, everything is skewed however way the champions see fit. One man’s freedom fighter becomes the other’s terrorist. Murderer, outlaw, fugitive, all these definitions change in an instant. As for—uh, me, I serve… or served a people scattered by the horrors of war and a king whom no longer exists. My actions under the former Olympian government may or may not be considered as atrocities. Yes, I’ve probably killed countless times—deserving or not—‘for the cause’. No, I don’t regret any of it.

“But that man, that Black Jack Parishioner, was the Butcher of Olympia. When Elkington brought down the immortal city, it was Black Jack and his Caroleans who entered the city fallen, and it was they who butchered its denizens that they would submit to the will of the ‘good king’, so he came to ‘restore law and order’—and they did so without orders from Elkington, too. I remember that now!” She took a breath, facing me off, her eyes filled with a certain spiteful determination that reminded me of the faces of my brothers-in-arms during the Dark Crusade. “What more poetic a way to send off the old butcher than at the hands of an Olympian wielding the holy Skybane?”

As I stared back down at her, she again cringed and blinked hard. Once again, her normal eyes returned. When again she looked up at me, I could see the apprehension in her eyes as she shrank back. “This,” she said slowly, “is the part where you kill me, isn’t it?”

I shook my head and yawned. “I’m sorry, what? I phased out after ‘I was saying’.”

“Wait, really?”

“Well, I could sum everything you said up as ‘blah blah blah, I wanted to kill this guy’.” I shrugged. “Really, your story was nothing special; I’ve heard its like a thousand times. You’ve got to be really original if you want to tell me a sob story explaining your reasons for doing stuff. Like, say, I’d totally listen to you if your reason was, ‘Well, I have to rape them all so brutally because raping them teaches them democracy!’ See, now that’s an original reason. Granted, I’d have to kill you thereafter for such vile behavior, but at least I’d listen to you prattle on thereabout.”

I paused. “Is democracy a word in your language? I’ve actually never heard it used, but I know that’s how it would be—Sprachgefühl, don’t ask—since our word is Demokratie. It’s like how we have Monarchie and you have monarchy, I guess I just figured it’d be the same via back-formation, but now that I think thereof, I’ve never heard anyone but me use it. I’ve heard folkdom, though. Huh.” I de-cocked and holstered my revolver. “Let’s go inside the big, scary train.”

“Wait, you’re not mad at me?” she asked with… what, hope?

“Well, a bit miffed that I didn’t get to kill him—and that you’re wearing his hat now, which I will steal from you while you’re asleep at some point, but it matters in that I’m a whore for shiny, unique objects.” I nodded. “Also, your spiel about… whatever you spoke about got me too bored to be angry. So, there. You now know one of my many one weaknesses: boredom. So, in conclusion, I’m not mad, and I’m not going to shoot you in the face until you have no face.”

She sighed with relief. “Well, that’s good to hear. I’m allergic to bullets anyways.”

“I’m pretty sure they’ve got anti-inflammatory medicine for that. Ask your doctor if it’s right for you. Besides, I can see the hate in your eyes, and I can respect that. That hate for Black Jack Parishioner. Keep hold of that hate. It’s good for you.”

“I… it is?” she asked. “I thought hate was always bad for a body.”

I laughed. “And you’re not incorrect, but when you have nothing left, a seething, burning inferno which you cannot quench may be all that keeps you going. In fact, many thousands of years ago, before great arrogance, pride, and sin destroyed Old Fatherland and lead to the Three Tribes, there was a Mann who distilled the virtues of a warrior into six distinct bullet points. He was Skantarios, crowned as emperor of a once all-powerful but now nigh dead empire surrounded on all sides by heathens. Before his father had couped the old royal family, only the empire’s capital, the so-called Invincible City, still stood there at the edge of forever, as it had since it was founded at the dawn of civilization by Kain himself. A few years later, when the heathens assassinated Skantarios’ father, the empire had won back some of its ancestral land. Through Skantarios’ great and unyielding rage for what they did to his father, the radically fundamental Confessionist faith came into being—which my people still follow, even if we’ve changed it significantly over the millennia. Skantarios never once lost a battle, and he turned a dying empire into the unstoppable powerhouse of the old land.

“He said that so long as you remember the face of your father, these six virtues would keep a warrior strong. These virtues there things like a ‘contempt for death that you never fear it’ and ‘love so strong that you are willing to sacrifice everything for your country and brother soldiers’. But strongest of all, he said, there was hate: because you when you nothing left, hate will keep you strong. It was hate that made him swear an oath of vengeance against the people who killed his father; it was hate that made him defile and profane every one of their holy sites; and it was hate, pure, great, and simple, that made him burn, crucify, and butcher countless until the he had repaid these people countless times over, destroying an entire religion and several major cultures in the process.”

I stopped, then threw my head back and laughed. “Oh God, that sounded preachy. ‘Hurr durr, hate is good for you.’ God, wow. That all sounded more awesome in my head.” I smiled. “You know, I learned all of that philosophic whatnot from a book I read as a little boy? Yeah, Ich Bin Skantarios, which was essentially the journal of the old emperor that were somehow re-discovered and then printed in the modern age as a history/philosophy book.” I put a hand on Frosty’s left shoulder because the hand had nowhere to go. “I found the book and read it. So, imagine being just a little kid and reading about how Skantarios conquered a rich and powerful city, the holiest site to the religion of the great many peoples he’d been fighting all his life, and reading how he ordered all the males exterminated, the women to be raped and then, along with their children, sold into slavery, and then destroyed every last symbol of that great religion.”

“God,” I said, “It’s no wonder why I’m screwed up. That was what I read when I could barely speak. Skantarios pretty much invented the concept of Genozids—uh, there’s another word I’ve never heard anyone use, so, uh… Genocide? That’s how the -zid ending goes, cide, and geno- for people. So, genocide would essentially refer to brutal acts aimed at destroying a particular racial, religious, ethnic, or national group.” I shrugged. “Actually, I think I read somewhere that somebody had coined the term Genozid during a famous book comparing the wars of Skantarios to those of King Viktor. Ah, and yet we Teutsche count both of them amongst history’s greatest heroes.” I clapped my hands together. “Now then! To the door and onto the terror train proper!”

Before I went for the door, I looked down. The part which connected the black cars to this car was covered in those fleshy-metallic vein-like things. “Well, this is a good sign,” I said, and went for the door. It slid open for us both. “And this isn’t proof that the train will rape us thirty-seven ways till Sunday.”

We stepped inside, and I instantly felt cold air. This interior was chilly, and I took nothing but comfort in that feeling. Frosty rubbed her arms, and I smiled and said, “What, don’t like the cold? I love it when it’s frosty.”

I felt her poke my shoulder, and when I turned around, I got a face full of sprayed water. As I shouted something unintelligible, Frosty chided sharply, “Bad gunslinger, bad!” 

As I soon learned, Frosty always kept a spray bottle of water on hand for the sole purpose of spraying anyone in the face who dared make a pun off her name. Once we’d sorted that whole thing out—which may or may not have involved me nearly or actually punching her in the eye, which I had to remedy with many apologies, excuses, a healing potion, and a few lines explaining that I hit her because my father never loved me but I always tried to earn his love and yada yada yada—I looked around this… sleek, white car. How odd that this was its color from within.

Everything here was just… so medically sterile, that kind of sterile and clean that basically means one thing: death. Or a really over-eager cleaning lady, but mostly death. There were buttons and diodes and panels and machines the likes whereof I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. The more I looked at it, the more my right arm—C’s arm—itched. When I clasped my left hand over the arm, I could feel tendrils squeezing my organs. The messages was clear: “Back off.” And I did.

The one thing in this car that I could understand were the two little rooms on opposite sides of the car. A stick-like red figure and a stick-like but with a skirt green figure. Bathrooms, for either set of genitals. Ahh, to long for the days when crazy laws mandate the need for a third type of bathroom: “Gender Undetermined.” Not for hermaphrodites—they were still on their own—but for those weird parents who wanted to let their kids decide which gender they wanted to be. As if puberty wasn’t enough stress for a growing girl/boy/gender undetermined!

We went into the next car, and I thought it odd that it was directly connected to the next car, no need to go outside. Same clear color scheme as the last car, only the contents were different. Two cozy beds, a weird sort of kitchen, and a sofa set up before some kind of weird flat black panel. When I touched the panel, I got a static shock. Some sort of living-space car? There were a number of other things, but I didn’t know what they were in the slightest, so I moved past them.

When I stepped into the engine car, the door shut and locked behind me. I spun around and tried to force the door open, only for a smooth feminine voice to croon, “Aw, are you trying to leave me?”

I took a breath and slowly turned around. “Why am I not surprised?” I asked myself. Frosty, I could hear, was pounding on the door from the other side. The room was full of more and more devices which I couldn’t even begin to understand. I had the distinct feeling of being like a pigeon who’s just been eaten live by a pelican and was now being drowned with stomach acids. The one thing I really understood was the black leather chair at the front of the car, which was resting just before a large panel covered with buttons and… things. Just things.

“Oh, because you are jaded,” the voice said again. There was something in that voice that just irked me, like… like the voice sounded vaguely condescending, almost like she was speaking slowly, as if to a retard. It just had the air thereto. “But jaded is fine. I like jaded.”

I crossed my arms. “Are you the one who decoupled that other part of the train for me?”

“Yes, yes I am, Gunslinger—and before you ask, I know why you’re here and your title because I’ve been watching you since you first boarded me. You made an interesting show with that squirrel, and all the bloodshed you’ve caused since arriving… Hmm, it’s been the most fun I’ve had in a very long time, Gunslinger.”

I glanced around, everything clicking in me at once. “You are the train, and those… vein-like things are a part of you?”

“Correct, Gunslinger. King Elkington found me and my lonely two cars deep within Mount Solamaw. My makers and programmers left me there before… well, before they all decided to find out what happened when they pressed the big red buttons, so to speak.” The train laughed in a delightful little way that made me want to punch Cards—well, made me want to punch someone in general, but the first person I’d punch in my mind ended up being Cards. “I allowed him into my front car, we had a chat, and I agreed to help him out here and there in exchange for him finally letting me roll once more. And, well, what can I say? It’d been so long since a man entered me, and I am so weak to suggestion during pillow talk.”

I grunted and walked about the train. “So, I presume you’re going to kill me, then? Wait, no—just like Elkington did after he taught me the bad touch, you want me to do something for you, right? What is it? Scrub your wheels? Teach you to dance? Solve a riddle?” I poked at a metal pole I found just lying in the corner of the train. It was all rust and disintegrated when I tried to pick it up.

Again, she laughed in that almost condescending way. “What, with my superior artificial brain? I might be insane, but I’m not crazy. I understand your plight: I am nothing but a train, and so I assume that you don’t like me. People don’t often take kindly to sentient talking trains, in my experience. And they rarely talk to me. The best I could do was extend parts of my body onto the rest of the train, take over parts thereof, and watch and observe the people.” Her voice suddenly sounded like she was speaking the rough gritted teeth as the train said, “I need and crave stimulation, Gunslinger. It was how my makers designed and programmed me.”

I couldn’t really find anything to really do in this train. I walked up to the chair at the front of the train and sat down. It was actually really cozy, and it even leaned back! I could easily just fall asleep in this thing. “So, just who are you?”

A big black panel flickered before me, and a red wave of energy pulsed horizontal through it as the train spoke. “Why, I was made by the Banded Folkdoms of Marksland, as the words would be spoken in the modern tongue, composed of fifty folkdoms and a bound shire whence its leaders ruled, all of which was founded by the Founding Fathers which the people one worship here. The vulgate would hight that ancient, mythical nation as the Union, though. They absolved me of responsibly when they all found found new positions in Fiddler’s Green. But whence I come is neither here nor there, wouldn’t you say? What is here and perhaps there is what I want of you.”

I sighed, shrugging. “I’m going to assume it’s going to screw Frosty over in some way, right? Why else would you have locked her out.”

That red line of energy formed a smile-like shape for just a moment. “You are a sharp one, Gunslinger. So, here’s my deal: I believe you better than any other can keep me stimulated and entertained, so I offer unto you my mastery. I will submit to you as master and follow your orders, offering my sage, ancient advice and assistance on your quest as you take and use me as you will. Plus, I will make sure all my medicines and food get to New Pegasus, cutting off those Carolean cars so that they can’t bother us.”

“You neglect to mention my end of the bargain,” I groused.

“Mmm… I want you to betray Frosty for my amusement. No other reason on my part than for my amusement.” Something behind me clacked, and when I looked thereat, I saw a panel in the floor open, exposing a mess of little wires, as they were called, and other metallic nastiness. There was enough room to stick a leg therein. “I don’t care how, but you will put her arm into that panel, and then I will cut it off and eat it, purely because you doing this to your companion would be hilarious.”

I leaned back in my chair, cocking a brow. “So, let me get this straight: you want me to betray this girl purely for your amusement, and in exchange you’ll basically make yourself my property?”

“In the hopes that you will lead me to all sorts of stimulation and entertainment, yes. For me, it’s either that or go insane…-er.”

It was an interesting, but overall ludicrous thought. Cut off a girl’s arm for something like this? No way. That wasn’t what I did. “Is there any way to acquire your assistance without harming Frosty?”

“There is not, Gunslinger,” she replied smoothly. “And that means that, no, there is no way to render unto New Pegasus all of these supplies in order to save your friend without harming Frosty.”

Sighing hard, I leaned back. It had been worth asking. How long had I know Frosty? Mayhap an hour or two, tops. And Lightning Dust? Nigh a week at best, and I had a sort of like for that girl back home. Blood is thicker than water, I’d told her: he whom I shed blood with is more important that he whom I shared the water of the womb. And Frosty had shed blood alongside me, likely more blood than Lightning Dust. Heck, Frosty was a killer, and Dust was not. Except… except that the Lightning Dust of this world was willing to kill, and she had directly saved my life from the Black Man.

Still, both had been steadfast enough companions with a barrel of their own troubles. And sacrificing Frosty’s flesh to the terror train would let me save Dust and then unload all the rest of the food and medical junk onto the town.

“Of course,” the train chimed in sweet, “were you to give me your own right arm, I could likewise abrogate any locks keeping you from power and submit to you as master. And before you ask, it’s because I know that your right arm isn’t werekind. I scanned it when you entered me.” A part of me wondered if that was why my arm had itched earlier. “You are part skinwalker.”

In a flash, the red bar of energy on the black panel before me twisted and morphed until it showed two wireframe forms that slowly gained bone and muscle and flesh until I could recognize them both: one was of the werekind me, the other was of C as he looked in my world. I blinked at the comparison.

I had assumed that these werekindred were skinwalkers based on how they looked, but in a side-by-side comparison, C was nothing at all like a werekind. The structure of his head was all… wrong, eyes too small and murderous, mouth too wide, teeth too sharp. And side-by-side, all of his dimensions were just off, wrong lengths and angles, like he were once a werekind who had been smashed and crushed partially at some point, ignoring his taller, bulkier nature plus his longer and clawed fingers. And as I could see, he didn’t have feet anything at all like that of a werekindred. Of course, werekindred also actually had hair and weren’t covered with so many, many, many tattoos.

Sure, C had the same general shape as a werekind, but I had been mistaken in likening them to one another. To say that they were anything alike was akin to saying that a pony and a wolf were the same thing because they both walked on four legs and generally didn’t answer to the name “Chorwacks Jigglebob”.

C’s arm felt restless as I stared at the image. And just like that, the side-by-side comparison was gone. Now there was only that red line which moved as the terror train spoke. “What shall it be, Gunslinger?”

In the end, the matter came down to whose life I valued more. While I knew that were I to sacrifice my arm, Frosty would be fine, and Dust would live, and I’d get everything I needed from this little excursion. But would I be okay? I could feel C’s arm and all its roots and tendrils tightening around my organs as I contemplated it. For every wound, it gets a new tattoo—this much I had figured, and so too had I come to understand that it got closer to killing me with every passing wound. And with these throughbright burns, wherefor I had bandaged entirely my arms, how long did I have? Could I risk even trying to figure out?

Lighting Dust was important to me in her own way. Frosty Winds was important to me in her own way. And me? Well, wasn’t I the hero? The only one in this dark world willing to stand up for the little guy? I was the big and strong one who aided and protected the weak. I had earned my place in this world… even if I was a child-killing monster for doing it…And as a person… as a person, Frosty Winds just was fundamentally worth less than me. I counted Lightning Dust as a person, and Frosty… well, she I could more easily call a thing. And a thing could be used and thrown away with as its owner saw fit.

So I made my choice.

“You have a deal,” I replied without any hesitation. If this is what it took to save Lighting Dust, then I would damn Frosty. I owed Dust that much for saving my life from the Black Man, and then for the help she provided me in originally defeated the Devil’s Backbone. “Now, do you have a name?”

The train laughed like a banshee. “Yes, and though I admire the title you gave me—what was it? Terror train? I must say to you, my name is Jayne.”

Far behind me, the door opened, and Frosty burst in. “Thank the Fathers you’re alright! I did not want to be left alone on a spooky train without someone who people’ll shoot at first!”

I got out of the chair and stretched. “Yeah, I think I stepped on a booby trapped floor plate or something.” I gestured a finger to that open hole in the floor. “Hey, I noticed that there’s this little thing in that hole I need to be activated to get this trained unlocked.”

“Uh-huh,” she hummed.

“Problem is, when I tried it, it turned out that I had to tickle the thingy inside there as I pulled a lever up here at the…” I glanced behind me to the frontmost edge of Jayne the terror train. No, wait. Pain needed to be put in there for extra rhymes. Jayne the Pain Train of Terror. “…at the control panel. Do you think you could get on the floor, stick your arm in there, and search around for a little clicky thingy?”

It occurred to me just how easily that whole story manifested itself from my lips. I was sacrificing a part of her vital body without her knowledge because I knew she’d never agree, knowing I just wasn’t brave enough to do it myself for fear of actual repercussions. I watched her roll up her left sleeve, and she got down on the floor. I wondered how uncomfortable breasts must have been to lay upon like that. And I watched her stick her arm into the hole, sticking out part of her tongue as she reached around. She wasn’t looking anywhere in my direction.

I turned around to Jayne’s black panel, which a little voice inside me told me think of as “screen” or as a “monitor”, a voice that came from C’s arm, the same voice that named me the parts of my revolvers back in Elkington’s office. The number on the screen was ten. Then it was nine. And eight. I realized that it was a countdown to when Jayne the Pain Train was going to eat Frosty’s arm. And with his in mind, my heart beat calmly, as if I were relaxing rather than sacrificing a girl who’d put her trust into me as her knight in dusty armor.

Extending and contracting fingers, I counted down alongside Jayne in silence, thinking and calculating. At the last second, when I knew it was too late to react, I shouted, “Frosty, get out of there!” And before the sentence was over, Frosty was screaming.

I ran over to her and slid onto the ground next to her. “Frosty! Shit! Frosty?” I yelled, then quickly glanced towards Jayne’s monitor and nodded solemnly.

“It’s eating my fingers!” she wailed, and I could hear it. Mechanical noises, the sound of flesh being rendered, of bones be ground to dust… all for Lighting Dust. Frosty screamed with more horror and agony as I heard the sound of sizzling meat followed by wisp of steam. That was what would stop her from bleeding to death, I thought darkly.

She howled and wailed until I was sure her throat would tear itself to ribbons. “My knuckles! It’s eating my fucking knuckles!” More gears, more tearing, more grinding, crushing bones, and another wisp of steam.

“Hold on, Frosty! Just hold on!” I ordered, digging through my bags. “This is all my fault! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Sometime the best way to camouflage the simple truth was to hide it amongst logical lies. Out from my bags I pulled out a syringe of chemicals I’d bought before I’d left Blackgard earlier. One of many drugs I’d purchased therefrom this day. I injected Frosty with the drug, just a painkiller, but I had no idea how long it’d take for the drug to set in. Still, as I tossed the needle away, I felt that I’d at least helped.

The sounds of tearing and grinding only got louder. I could just picture it as I watched her with steely eyes: it was like when you try find a tiny plant’s roots and decide to pull on them, and when you watch as the roots, covered in dirt, spring up from the ground as you pull and pull up more of them until they finally snap. Only in my head, instead of dirt and roots, it was flesh and veins.

I reached for and clasped Frosty’s free hand, and she grabbed mine back and squeezed hard, her nails digging into my hand and drawing blood. So much blood. But I didn’t really feel it. If anything, I took a modicum of pleasure in the pain. It was what I deserved, wasn’t it? But this was the price for saving Lighting Dust and helping New Pegasus and thus myself.

The painkillers never helped out.

With a featureless face, I watched on and tried to comfort her as Jayne ate and ground her arm. I watched her tear-strewn face as she finally broke her voice and could scream no longer. She looked up at me, and I kept-eye contact with her as she simply broke down into sobbing pathetically. It was all Frosty must have had left. And still her nails dug into my hand so deep that I was sure she could tear my palm straight off, but I didn’t care.

Her green eyes bathed themselves in a sea of red and tears as she cried. My attempts to comfort her, I was sure, fell on deaf ears. From this angle, I could see part of her arm, and how the floor had seemingly crushed it in a vice. It would have been more merciful to have just hacked her arm off at the shoulder, but I wouldn’t dare do that. Even if it saved her endless suffering, it might void my contract with Jayne. And Jayne’s contract was more important to me than Frosty Winds.

So Frosty’s shrieking turned into pathetic mewling, whimpering, sobbing. It was almost childish in a way. Her sobs seemingly weren’t from the pain anymore; they were from the sheer horror of getting to slowly feel as her life became forever ruined, and from the fear of having to live the rest of her life as a one-armed cripple, that creeping horror wherein she realized that life as she knew it was over. She would never again be able to wield a shattergun, or really any other kind of gun. As a warrior she was nigh useless. Everything that she had dedicated her life to, and would have gladly continued, was now impossible. All of that mixed with the sounds of a little girl bawling her eyes out for fear of the imaginary monsters in her closet because she had no one who could comfort her and say there were no such things as monsters.

And it was all. My. Fault.

A sudden thought crossed my mind. In a weird way, because of all her suffering, Frosty had just become the Cards of this adventure. Imagine that.

Slowly, as Jayne ground what must have been Frosty’s upper arm into so much powder and gore—I could dwell from the more violent gnashing and cracking and grinding noises—the light faded from Frosty’s green eyes. It did not fade entirely, only dulled considerably.

“H-hey, Gunslinger,” I hear her whimper.

“Yes, Frosty?” I asked, unsure if the concern in my voice was affected or not, but I liked to think it was genuine.

“I… th-thanks,” she moaned. “Thanks for trying. Thanks for… for being there…”

I bit my lip. All my fault, and she was thanking me for being trying to help her, for being there! It was utter madness at its finest. I would pay for this transgression when I reached the end of my days, when for my sins I would be barred from Heaven and Walhalla. When that day came, I could have no cause to complain. I needed only look into Frosty’s eyes as she thanked me to know why I was going to burn in the darkest depth of the Inferno for all eternity. I would be locked inside the Wheel of Time therein, and forced to make every mistake I ever made again and again and again, unable to learn from my mistakes, until all of my sins forced me into a guilt greater than a mortal ought know. But in the Wheel of Time, one can never fix their errs, and can only remake them and new ones until all the shame and guilt destroys you. For the Road of the Wheel can only end one way: thy flesh consumed.

I would have all eternity to dwell upon this mistake, this sin, but today was not the start of that eternity. I reached out a hand, ran it through Frosty’s snow white hair with that odd thunderbolt pattern of arctic blue. “Hey, hey, Frosty. It’ll all be okay. It’ll all be okay.”

She laughed weakly. “You lying piece of shit,” she said with good humor, honest to the Allfather good humor, “I’m fucked raw, and you know it. Still, I killed Black Jack Parishioner and avenged Daddy, although I am going to die, so… I’d say, overall… today was a very good day.”

“You shan’t die, Frosty Winds,” I insisted sounding about as confident as a small seal pup sounded when he was going up against an angry werekind with a club.

“Oh, please,” she scoffed, and coughed. “Live as some one-armed freak? It’s the end of the line; fucking kill me, please.”

I wanted to ask, “Is that true? Is that what you want?” and then offer her my gun, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Frosty was still in Jayne’s clutches, and until Jayne was satisfied, Frosty was hers. I would do no such thing that could threaten the pact I’d made with the terror train. Instead, I replied simply, “I cry your pardon, Frosty, for I could not kill you. As the empath Felicitat once told me, I was the ‘really bad man’, but I am not so heartless… or mayhap I am too cowardly… as to kill you.”

Again, I ran a hand through her hair. “You’ll be fine, Frosty. It’ll all be fine.” It was a lie. Right now, things were so un-fine that you could coat sandpaper therewith and then use it to shave off a goat’s face.

She snickered. “Hey, Gunslinger.”

“Yes, Frosty Winds?”

“I-if I survive, then I’ll see ya tomorrow. Heh…yeah… I’ll see ya tomorrow. Like that’ll ever come.” She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. I waited for a moment before I declared anything, and suddenly her body seized up in an attack. She choked and spasmed and foamed at the mouth and she thrashed and flailed against the floor, her nails digging deeper and deeper into my hand, for I hadn’t dared let go of her.

She slammed her forehead into the floor as she flailed around. Then, with bleeding forehead, she let out a yelping, gurgling noise. Still shaking alternatively like being in hypothermia and having an attack, she looked up her, her green… no… her yellow eyes glaring up into me. That was wrong. This was wrong. This wasn’t—

“Gunslinger,” she crooned in raspy voice, and the shaking stopped.

Then were was a sound like the crackling and roping of a fallen tree, if that tree were not of bark but of flesh, bone, and muscle as Frosty forced herself upwards, grunting and growling like a mad beast. I watched as her arm, still in Jayne’s clutches, just splinted and tore with wet, meaty sounds. And she wouldn’t let go of my hand. With a final crushing, grinding noise and a hiss of steam, Frosty suddenly flung to her feet, her arm splatting me with blood, fresh and hot.

“Frosty?” I asked, staring down at the woman, her burning yellow eyes leering up at me with an emotion that weren’t quite hate but felt like it. Then she looked to her arm.

“Huh,” she said in a hazy tone. “I’ve been disarmed.” She opened her mouth and screamed out a raspy, horrid coughing noise. Without thinking, I pulled out a healing tonic I’d bought from Blackgard, popped the cap off, and doused her bleeding wound therewith. Frosty swore and shrieked at me, begging me to stop as her bloody arm foamed, but I refused. Suddenly, with her free arm she clawed at the potion, sending the bottle crashing to the ground.

Growling and panting, baring her teeth like a wild animal, she looked up at me. I took a step back. “What the hell is with your eyes?”

Somewhere from behind me, I heard Jayne laugh quietly.

“The hell is with your eye?” she counted in a barking, hectoring voice. “When you laugh, your fucking eye doesn’t. It just doesn’t laugh! You’re a liar, Gunslinger. A liar!” She stomped towards me, blood still leaking from the nub that once was her arm.

“Be thou mad, woman?!” I shouted. “Walk not, for you need to survive, and I needn’t any more blood on my hands this day, metaphorically or literally.”

“It’s okay,” she croaked, staggering towards me as I walked backwards. “I’ll just lick the blood of ya myself, hot stuff.” She giggled like mad. “But first, I’m going to rip out and eat that lying eye of yours!”

She made to lunge, then just collapsed to the ground, twitching and twitching and twitching yet more.

“My, my!” Jayne laughed. “That was the single most fun I’ve had in all my life!”

I turned to face Jayne’s monitor. “Be that so?”

“Why, yes it was! On the honor of my makers and all of my mechanical prowess, I, Jayne the… the Terror Train swear my life unto thee, Gunslinger. I am thine to command.”

I grunted. “Jayne, get rid of those Carolean cars, and take us to New Pegasus.”

“Aye-aye, captain!” she said in that nigh but not quite condescending voice of hers. Had she a neck, I would have wanted to wrap my fingers around it and strangle her. She… and I… deserved as much now.

Sighing, I looked down at Frosty. Her eyes were closed, and she was asleep. Blood rapidly clotted itself in her stump of an arm. I had saved Lightning Dust at the cost of Frosty’s life as she knew it, and the fact that Frosty was still alive only made my sin all the more horrible, all the more unforgivable. As I looked at her, I knew that my time was soon. And though the time therefor would come soon enough to me, today, it had been her flesh consumed.