//------------------------------//
// Chapter 33 — Decked 
// Story: Jericho 
// by Crushric 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 33: Decked


“You little foal! Thinking you could defeat me? Now you will never see your princess, or your sun! The night will last forever!”


Deck.

It was a fun word. As a verb, it might mean to punch somebody, for instance. Or it could mean to decorate. With boats, it could refer to the top level, or a few other levels on massive ones. But most importantly, a deck was something wherein you found Cards.

Here in her bed, Cards snoozed snugly under the covers. There was even a little smile on her sleeping lips. I sat besides her. Or, well, so I had been before I fell to all fours and partially crawled under bed.

When I got back from under the bed, I had in hand exactly what I’d been expecting. Sort of. Sitting up in the chair beside her bed, I looked at the magazine cover. It depicted a woman with flowing pink hair standing there, clad only in her flesh and a long-worn thong, with a logo “Olympian Skyhouse” obscuring her breasts.

Out of curiosity, I flipped open the pages. This book had a certain… smell to it, I dimly noted. Now then, would Eveslander porn basically be women naked save for socks, like it was in—“Holy shit, that’s Lighting Dust!”

I froze as I looked at the page, Cards stirring beside me. There, on the left page, was Lighting Dust, same dusty eyes but different haircut, wearing what I’d hight her “Chainmail Bikini, -4 cold resistance.” She was in a nigh fetal position, her head turned sideways and facing me as she appeared to be pulling off her armored stockings.

On the next page, she was just standing there before a forested background, shyly waving. The little blush on her cheeks helped emphasize all the white flesh showing, save for the red bandana around her neck. The one which I now wore in her honor. And there was a lot of flesh to see. Her nipples poked out from the bandana, as it failed to cover them, and I could see down to her naked groin, and the little… lightning bolt pattern she’d shaved—well then. Turning the page now!

No use! The next two pages were also her in different sexy positions! Feeling sick butterflies in my stomach, I turned the page once more. And this was… odd. On the right she was standing there, arms behind her back, with a little blue jacket, unzipped, which just barely hid her nipples, her other bits now covered by a skimpy white pair of panties. She still had that badanda on, and she looked like some kind of pornographic cherub. The page on the left was, of all things, an interview.

I fidgeted with my banana, which was about the moment I heard Cards stir, groan, and say in a groggy voice. “Huh. I thought your bandana looked familiar.” She looked at me, and her eyes widened. “I mean—oh shit oh shit oh shit!”

I set the book down, kicking it under the bed. “Do you recall my story of the train, and the girl Lightning Dust for whom I did all of that?”

She nodded, her cheeks red.

In a toneless voice, I said, “That was her. Five pages of her. Naked. In a magazine I found under your bed.” I touched my bandana. “I now feel dirty wearing something someone has worn as you’ve touched yourself to them.”

“Nnngh!” she yelled under her breath, which I just learned was possible to do. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m s-sorry I’m such a fuckup. I know! I’m dirty. I’m filthy. I’m useless.” She grunted in frustration, refusing to meet my eyes. “How can you even stand to look at me?” Despite her words, I just gave her a blank look. “And you’re just, looking at me like that. That disapproving look. Emotionless. She was your friend, and—and you know what I…” She swallowed. “I-I just wish you’d get angry. Hit me—”

“Spank you?” I offered with my best attempt as a mischievous smile that probably came out more like ‘I am a pedophile; would you like some candy, little girl?’

Cards flushed a deep, guilty red. Her face looked like she was a super nerd who’s just gone out into the sunlight for the first time. Flaky, flaky sunburns! The woman gave a single, deep, remorseful sob as she held her head in her hands. “I just want to give up. Give in. Let someone else take this all away so I don’t have to keep being this little fuckup anymore. A-and then Daddy came back, and even he doesn’t want me. Why would he? No one wants me. I’m… just a fuckup.”

I brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Be that as it may, know that I would never think ill of you, Cards of Sleepy Oaks.” Except how I always make fun of you, that is. “If you think you need to change, you are mistaken. You may be flawed, Cards, but know that your flaws render you beautiful.”

She blinked. “Wha’?”

“Perfection is a sin; perfection is hideous. You are deeply flawed, Cards, and that’s what makes you worth fighting for, in a manner of speaking.” I patted her on the head. “You have your metaphorical demons, Cards, but understand that we’re all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours.” I slid my hand down to her cheek. “If you think you’ve got it bad, Cards, you should see the unholy demons which infest every corner of my flesh. And mine don’t play well with others.”

She simply stared up at him. I could see her try to speak, but nothing came up. She only looked up at me with… understanding? Hope? A mix of vague arousal and shame? Hell if I knew.

“You know, Cards of Sleepy Oaks,” I went on, taking my hand from her, “I have now watched you demean and destroy yourself in two worlds.” I smiled. “And it was far more adorable when you were a tiny unicorn.”

Her brows furrowed. “I… what?”

“Whence I hail, Cards, there are no ‘werekindred’. I was born a unicorn. You were too. As was your father. But there were three equine breeds. Lightning Dust was a pegasus, for example. Ditto for my ex. My old comrade, Rosen, was an earther, neither unicorn or pegasus.” I nodded as Cards mouthed ‘What the fuck?’ So I explained to her the vague story of how I came to kenn her in my world, leaving out the parts where I murdered her best friend and cut off part of her ear, but filling her in. “So, now I am here to get back that magical book, Calêrhos, that I may go home therewith and heal my ruined flesh. Any questions?”

She raised a hand. “So… you’re a unicorn?”

“Aye.”

“And if I went through the mirror, I’d also be a unicorn?”

“Probably.”

“Huh,” she said in a dull voice, resting her head against her pillow. “I’ve always wanted to be a magical unicorn.” Then Cards uttered the most utterly, vile, and un-Cards noise i’d ever heard, and it shook me to the core: she laughed. “Well, that’s just how today was meant to go. I’m a unicorn in another world. Wee!” It was so horrendous that I had to murder it! Cards laughing was not okay!

“Also, C isn’t a horse,” I said. “He’s a skinwalker.”

“Skinna—what now?”

C chose that moment to burst into the room. “We have a problem, and it has nothing to do with pushing Timmy down in that well!”

“Talking horse!” Cards yelped.

“What of it?” C grunted. “Look. I just found out what those boxes scattered around town were for!”

“Wait. Fuck, skinwalker!” Cards screamed.

“Bitch, deal with it!” C hissed. “Amigo mio, look—they’re not boxes per se. Each box is actually hiding a demonic rune painted in white.”

I came here to see my beloved once before we sacrificed the town to the Backbone, Stronghold had said. And suddenly my heart was pounding in my chest. “Scheiße! C, we need to destroy all those boxes! I don’t know to what end, but I know what he’s doing! Come on, let’s go!”

“W-wait,” Cards said. “What about me?”

I jabbed a finger at her. “You just stay here! I’m declaring the rest of today an Angst-Free Zone!”

Cards looked at C and then to me. “You’ll… you’ll be back for me, right, Gunslinger? After you save the town and the world and get that book back?”

C whinnied. “You know, I bet that clinginess is one of the main reasons nobody likes you.”

I said nothing to either of them. If anything, I practically stormed out of the room.


|— ☩ —|


Galloping down the streets upon my steed was easy. Jumping off C,  hitting the ground with a roll, and then springing back up just before Sheriff Blackout wasn’t easy. So, I mostly just fell and rolled around awkwardly and landed at her boots.

“Gunslinger?” she asked, looking down at me.

I jumped up, clasping my hands to her shoulders. God, I was a giant as a werekind. “Blackout!”

“What, are you here so we can shout each other’s name really loud at each other?” she asked, frowning.

My hands fell down to her waist, finding nought. “Where are your guns?”

“What are you—?”

“Verdammt noch mal, Frau!” I hissed. “Where are your revolvers!”

“Back in my office. Why?”

“Scheiße!” I growled. “Look, woman, I need you to get them right now, I need you to round up Glasses and whomever else is willing to help you, and destroy any of the big boxes that litter this town’s dark alleys—okay?”

“What, why?” she demanded. By now, there was a crowd gathering around us, people asking questions not unlike Blackout’s.

I stepped back and shouted, “Hey!” That got them to listen well. “Folks, those weird boxes around town are part of some ritual the Backbone is planning. Now, Blackout, gather anyone you can and destroy them, and we might live!”

Blackout blanched. “Wh-what about you?”

“Me?” I flashed her a winning smile. “I’m going to find some corn.”

“Bu—why…? We’re out of corn!”

I pounded fist into a palm. “Dammit-all! Then I guess the only choice I have is to…” I took a deep breath. “Is to do whatever it is that the hero does to save the day!”

“Um, fight the bad guy?”

“Exactly! I am going to do that posthaste! And also destroy those runes of sacrifice on those boxes.” I drew my revolvers out in a flash. “Because nobody boxes me in!”

That was bad and you should feel bad.

And guns in hand, I sprinted down the street.

With everything I knew, it occurred to me that the center of all these white rituals of sacrifice would likely have a nexus of power at the center of town. I reasoned this entirely out of my ass, but it sounded smart. And when the people started to mess with all of the runes, no doubt the Backbone would react to save his resources. I knew not wherefor he wanted the runes, but I knew that I didn’t want him to have them. Although, well… As I sprinted down the street, guns in hand, and jumping over at least one dog to look cool, I figured that many people would die to the Backbone’s legions.

But blood for blood, teeth for teeth, eyes for eyes. To defeat the Backbone, people were bound to die. If they were lucky, they’d die hilariously. But probably not. The best I could do is draw the Backbone and fight him on my terms. Standard Teutonic military tactics. Never face the enemy on his terms if you can help it.

So I reached the center of town, that grand plaza under shade of great trees. I faced towards the west, the direction whence I’d come when I entered Ponyville. West, the direction ever to be behind me. West, whence the Devil’s Backbone would come. This called for a dramatic monolog, but as I was panting so hard that I had to cough—stupid lung wound!—I couldn’t think of anything to say.

I struggled to fully catch my breath, but I did manage to force the chokes down. Breathing hard, I looked out at what would be my battlefield. The word was spreading fast, as i could see from all the people running around and shouting orders to others: destroy the crates, destroy the crates, destroy the crates.

Once again, I’d lost sight of C. After I’d hopped off him and rolled to Blackout, he’d probably gone off to eat a burger or something. Where I stood, I could see straight down the streets and to the edges of the swamp. I checked my guns: both fully loaded, ready for bear.

The Backbone had been mortal in my world, having been downed with a few sword wounds. With these revolvers, I doubted I’d need nearly as much as they had within them, but there was no kill like overkill.

It was nigh high noon, and no bird sang. It was now that I saw it far in the edges of the swamp. A bolt of flaring bright bolt that lit the water red with its reflection and glow as it raced thereover. With blind speed it came nigh to the central town plaza before it scattered into a hundred pieces which flew to the four corners for all I could see. But the biggest flare fell straight down at the edge of the plaza.

The form materialized from a cloud of sparks exactly like how dead cats didn’t. I watched as it came into view proper. Tall, bipedal, three sets of arms, leathery wings, and a mouth within a larger mouth. The Devil’s Backbone, ladies and gentlemen.

“Howdy there, pardner!” I called, and he looked at me.

“So. You are the one who has forced my hand by attacking my sacred runes,” he said back, his gravely voice carrying smoothly to my ears.

“Yeah, I guess that’s me. See, the local folken are currently destroying your white ritual, and so you’re totally out of luck. Real sorry thereabout, buddy.” I shrugged. “But if it’s any consolation prize, you look scary when underground, but up here in the light? Nah, you’re just a cuddly leather huggy bear, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t taunt him were I you,” Stronghold singsonged, stepping out of a nearby building.

“Let him do as he will, it matters not,” the Backbone said. “It is the final day and soon final night of the Nightmare Moon, and what we are to need happen under the Black Erelith’s moon. Might as well happen sooner rather than later.”

“Riiight.” Stronghold approached the Backbone with an almost bored gait. “So then, Mister Backbone, should I?”

“Yes, you should,” the Backbone replied. “And in exchange—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. You just keep your end of the bargain and we’ll be golden.”

“A demon always keeps his end of a pact. It is the utmost sin amongst us to betray those with whom we’ve signed a pact.”

Stronghold pulled out the book and read aloud from a page. The words sounded like gibberish, but then everything suddenly went to shit. Columns of red erupted from all across the town, and then came the explosions. And the shrieks that sounded as if souls were being wrenched from still-living bodies in a hail of fire and death magic.

I drew a gun and shot Stronghold, but it missed. No, no, it didn’t miss! He’d moved to the side with impossible speed. As I stared at the former Sheriff, I almost didn’t notice the ribbony, transparent bands of red flowing into the Backbone.

“Nyoh! That’s a bad kitty!” I admonished, and fired at the Backbone. The bullet stopped in midair before the demon and just fell to the ground uselessly. “Hey, that’s no fair! Cheating! He’s cheating! Someone stop him!”

“Tell me, Gunslinger,” the Backbone rasped. “What is the single most terrifying thing in all reality?”

“The thought of Cards ever having a shot at getting laid?” I replied, and even Stronghold let out a single snicker before catching himself.

“Nay, ye Knight of the Gun. The most terrifying thing in all creation is a skinwalker.”

“Well, I suppose, but so far he’s been mostly cuddly, if a bit of a deranged psychopath. But mostly cuddly.”

“And so what do you see before thee, Gunslinger?” the Backbone asked, and more hellish explosions went off, more beams of red light into the sky. More and more red ribbons of energy flowed over the buildings and poured into his flesh.

“A pansy ass bitch,” I said. Then, in a song: “Oh, I see a bitch, do you see a bitch? For I see a bitch, and I aim to shoot him deaaaaad. Sing with me. It’s funny!”

“Joke as you will, warrior, but you are about to witness that which all thought was impossible before providence sent unto me Stronghold. Witness and behold—the death of hundreds, and the birth of a skinwalker!”

“Boo! Boo! You’re just playing copy-cat!” I said, trying to ignore the pounding in my heart as another fired bullet stopped dead in front of the Backbone.

The Backbone laughed as Stronghold flipped to a page of the book and read the words. He finished, closed the book, and said, “Right, well, that’s that. I do intend to see you on the other side. But for now, I have my beloved to find and return.” I shot at him, but he just… sidestepped the bullet and calmly walked into the nearby storefront. “Do take care now, will you?”

My eye returned to the Backbone, and holy shit was his skin always so grey and his muscles so bulky? I blinked. His wings were gone, the two smaller pairs of arms were gone, his body was more in like with C’s, and his face was like a werekind. “It is a start, but the casket-husk of the ancients forms!” he roared with a laugh. “Remarkably fast, be it not? But, ’tis but a cocoon of sorts! Yet even with this infant skinwalker’s succulent flesh, I am stronger than even the Devil! I am second only to Our Lady, the Queen of Graves herself! And I will serve her will with your death!”

“I’ve seen bigger!” I called out.

He snapped his fingers, and flares of red erupted across the rootftops all around me, and likewise I imagined for most of the town. Monsters, demons, werewolves, and all manner of things which should not have been sat atop the town like frosting that was made of pure awful. As more energy flowed into the Backbone, more and more of his body changed.

“Brothers and sisters,” he said, “I bid you to kill!”

“Shut up!” I said, and fired at the Backbone. The bullet hit him this time, destroying his left arm and—Scheiße, it just reformed itself in a nebulous mass of teal and black  As the monsters lurched off their rooftops, the screaming started in earnest. Screens of women, men, and children. Of pure, primal terror.

“This is how it all begins, my brothers and sisters!” The Backbone laughed. “It began with a dramatic monolog, and it ends with the blood of countless millions!”

“Scheiße!” I shouted, spinning around and darting for the nearest building for cover. Far too many monsters, far too few bullets of mine.

Without fail, three wolven beasts slowly ambled out of the malt shop I was darting for. These ones were bigger and thicker than the ones from last night, with huge claws and teeth that could double as steak knives; if the wolves last night had been the runts, these ones were the overly masculine jocks who walked around with their chests puffed out and did drugs. And winners didn’t do drugs!

The biggest of the tree wolves looked at me, looked at the Backbone, and dropped his ice cream cone with a roar. He decided that my ass was a tasty treat to make up for his lost ice cream, so I presumed, which was why he and his two brother-wolves charged for me.

The Backbone was too busy powering up or whatever, so he just sat there. And a voice inside me said that my bullets wouldn’t mutilate these wolven buggers like it had the wimpy wolves from last night. Logically, I did the most heroic thing ever and I just scrambled into the building nearest me.

I didn’t bother wiping my boots as I stormed through what must have been some sort of pet store. Well, I half-assédly tried to wipe my boots, but, you know, wolves! Then one came in right through the window, its maw slavering and teeth bared, freaking out tens of small birds and dogs and cats and at least one probably illegal howler monkey.

“You didn’t wipe your paws!” I shouted, and fired thereat from the hip, which missed most heartily.

Arm raised to strike, the wolf lunged. Trigger pulled, and bullet straight into his spine. The wolf yelped, its momentum carrying it into a large fish tank. Glass shattered from the impact, sending a flood of water and a very confused-looking octopus onto the wolf. I could see where the glass had gashed upon a part of its head by the ear as the wolf rose from the ground and shook itself off like a dog. The action sent droplets of water flying, and also launched that octopus off into an iguana’s exhibit, where it quickly proceeded to strangle the lizard. Goddamn, what I wouldn’t have paid to have been able to watch Iguana vs Octopus wrestling!

Blood leaked from the wolf’s mouth, torso, and head as it smiled at me. It wasn’t going to yield, was it? It was all-in or nichts for these guy, it seemed. I was imaging that bad guys must have had some really great employee health benefits when the wolf roared and lunged for me, literally scaring the shit out of a gaggle of puppies.

Backing up towards the rear wall where I knew I’d seen some sort of emergency exit, practically jogging, I fired two more rounds into the wolf’s upper body before it gave up and died.

Seven bullets down, I counted. Only five left between my two revolvers. Still moving to the back of the large, empty, dusty store, I couldn’t help but wonder why the other two wolves hadn’t—and then the wall to my left exploded. Because super termites or whatever—but also because of a flagrant infestation of werewolves! Man, this place was not passing the building code, assuming Evesland had such a thing.

I coughed from the dust and went to cover my eyes, but I remembered that one of my eyes was a machine. It felt no pain. So I clenched my right eye shut, and stared out into the mass of dust and debris. The wolf had seen me first.

Trigger pulled, cocked. Trigger pulled, cocked. The twin bullets tore through the dust, leaving trails as they impacted the wolf once in the leg and once in the shoulder. Like Cerberus himself, the wolf howled with rage. Two bullets to the chest solved the howling problem. The wolf tumbled to the ground, and the final bullet destroyed its head.

As I compulsively went to reload, I looked out at the plaza and saw a scaly man-beast rushing for me. Could I reload in time? No. But, there was a third wolf, so where was… Oh, that made sense. I knew where the last wolf would most likely be.

Quickly, I holstered my guns, took out my sword, and rushed the back door. I charged out with a warcry, weapons at the ready,

The werewolf was exactly where I thought it’d be: hiding just outside the door into the alley.

With a quick swing, the sword gouged out its throat. I didn’t wait for him to die; I only had time to see the look of surprise on the wolf’s face as I pulled my sword out and ran. First door in the alley I saw, I bolted through.

It was a house of some sort, that much was clear from the glimpses I saw as I shut the door behind me and sprinted through and into a living room. Grinding to a halt, I found four pairs of eyes on me: one from a battered woman, one from a bloodied man, one from an injured boy, and the last from a bony, skeletal creature of white flesh and spikes with the boy in its savage maw.

The bony beast dropped the boy and lunged for me, its many claws sinking into my left arm. The damn thing might have torn the limb off had it not been for the protective nature of my duster. It grabbed my sword in its maw, trying to pull my steel away. Arms and sword being grappled away from me, I jerked my head forwards and sank my teeth into its throat. It screamed, trying to pull away as I pulled back in kind. In a moment, the monster was clutching at its bleeding neck, spraying dark blood across the floor before it fell onto the ground, dead. A quick scan revealed no other monsters, I heard nothing else from within the house, and the front door was closed tight. It was a wonder how the monster even got in here.

There was still a chunk of bloody flesh in my teeth. But, it was demonic flesh, so I grabbed it and took out a solid bite from the slab of meat, chewing and swallowing, the rest in my hand. This fresh, there was no need to cook it. I wolfed the rest of the meat down, licking away the blood. My stomach growled as the little boy groaned in bloody agony, his parents still frozen, locked in each other’s arms.

“Has the boy eaten today?” I asked, and the father hesitantly nodded. With that in mind, I pulled out an Olympian healing potion and gave it to the boy. As he healed, I removed my knife and cut away a chunk of the demon’s chest; while the thing was mostly skin and bones, one such as I knew where the best cuts likely were.

My hands were covered in dark blood, as was my mouth, by the time I’d finished savaging and chewing more of the beast. I smiled at the family as they stared at me with wide eyes, my teeth dark with blood. “Demon is good for you,” I said. “Eat it, for this is how we assert our dominance over Hell and its denizens.” I licked my lips and my hands. “It’s also really tasty. Like, really good and its blood tastes like a good sauce, if a little coppery.”

Suddenly as I watched the father pull his son close and the whole little clan cowering in fear before me, I thought of the pink-eyed arms dealer and the idea of “Wholesome Family Values”. Then I remembered the thirty-five javelin rounds I still had from him, and quickly fished through my bags and loaded them into my guns. It was slower than usual, and I had to replace the bullets in my bandolier with javelin rounds, too, for faster future reload.

I took a breath, needing just a light breather to get my thoughts in order to formulate a plan. If the Backbone was apparently now super hard to kill, then… then I’d be a fool to take him head-to-head, and his legions of monsters would only make things a problem for me. So, logically, I needed to go after Stronghold, for he was mortal, if apparently now super bullet avoidant. Were I to find him, I was sure something in his book would show me what needed be done to stop the Backbone, though it was mostly just a lot of hoping on my part.

Question was, where would Stronghold be?

Wherever Blackout is.

And of her. Where would she be?

Gathering the revolvers from the police headquarters?

So, there was my goal. I holstered my guns, clasped my hands together, closed my eyes, and dropped to the ground in mediation. Father’s face at the back of my mind, I remembered everything I’d seen of this town, forming a perfect map thereof in my mind. It was different from in my where, but close enough for my purposes.

With the map pictured well in my head, I stood up, picked my sword back up and sheathed it, thanked the terrified family for their time, and reminded them to eat their demons and vegetables before I rushed out the front door.


|— ☩ —|


The center of town was, as I’d seen, a messy nexus of monsters. Logic dictated that I ought avoid such a place, so when I stepped out of the house, I darted to the left. Fires and smoke raged off in distant parts of the town, and I could hear the folks screaming and shouting like they were the damned. Really, though, that wasn’t exactly unreasonable. Had they only had more corn products: demons were weak versus corn, goddammit!

I ran through the first intersection, feeling a vague urge to cough but suppressing the hell out thereof. Guns still in my holsters, I focused on making it to the next intersection. And when I hit it, past the short row of buildings, I took another right. To either side of me were rows of houses, shops, and a few warehouses.

As I vaulted over a barrel lying on the street, I noticed just how many front doors looked as if they’d been torn off. Now I could smell the aroma of burning wood as I glanced at all sorts of makeshift barricades set up in alleyways and on parts of the road: wooden boxes, carts, and junk. None of it particularly impeded me or the demon’s forces, I figured. In fact, the stuff on the street looked more like debris, and it likely was. Because when you killed and ate someone who was just minding their business, you usually weren’t the courteous sort who’d clean after himself. Oh, kids these days, no respect, I tell thee…

The town center passed by on my right for a moment, and I dared glance towards it. Hellish minions walked about, dragging screaming people and gathering them up like a shepherd does his sheep, if said sheep were sentient and really wanted to just live. Haha, stupid mindless slave animals. The Backbone was there, I spied, still doing that sucking-up-energy schtick.

My legs felt as if on fire as I reached the next intersection thereafter. My gut and arms felt worse; they felt wet, not moistened with sweat, but a weird wet as if they had become… runny, like my ex’s poorly cooked eggs. There was a reason why I could cook a damn fine meal, although it was mostly because I enjoyed defying stereotypes.

Suddenly, I heard a gunshot to my left, down a street whose next intersection was cordoned off with a large wooden cart and a dead horse. The horse was the stuck-up bitch who’d refused C’s advances, it seemed. Figures moved on the distant side of the cart, though I couldn’t make them out.

Regardless, I sprinted towards the cart: if there were gunshots, that meant Blackout was there. And if I had her, I could lure Stronghold to me.

Another gunshot, then came the the voice of an angry girl shouting, “Leave them the fuck alone!”

Revolvers drawn, I hopped up onto a barrel, up onto the cart, and jumped over its top. My boots landed upon something hard yet furry, and it went down under my weight. I didn’t bother to look down as I pointed a gun and fired into the chest of a lupine horror to my left, the javelin round exploding its lungs out from its back. Jerking to the left, another javelin round eviscerated the intestines and stomach of another wolf.

I crouched down, set my guns on the ground, and pulled out my knife. The wolf below me struggling to get up, and would have if I’d not lifted its head and slashed out its throat, jugular vein and carotid artery both.

I picked up my revolvers and reloaded them with more javelins as I looked out at the small gaggle of children standing there, staring at the bleeding woman on the ground before them. She was holding up one of Blackout’s massive revolvers in hand, a trickle of blood running down her mouth, claws marks over her chest.

“Wee!” Jayne cried out in orgasmic glee. “I knew Cards would look adorable with a stomach wound!”

“Hey there, Gunslinger,” Cards said with a cough. “I was just, y’know, doing stuff.”

I knelt down and gave her two of my healing tonics, whereof I was beginning to run low. In a few moments, she was up and capable of walking. “Blackout brought home the guns last night, and when the screaming and explosions happened, I grabbed one and… came across these kids, and… I’ve been trying to get them to the chapel.”

“Chapel?” I asked.

“Your horse can taaaalk!” one of the boys whined at me, pointing.

“Aye,” Cards said. “A big, strong stone church built by a Confessionist missionary a while back. He’s helped protect folken before, so he’ll do it again. He’s a nice man, too, that Priester.” I tried not to grit my teeth as Cards’ Equestro-Eveslandish accent touched my proud teutsches word in its no-no place. Rape-Cards was the worst! “Really, he’s one of the few people who’re nice to me, even offering to help me learn Teutsch. With any luck, he’s still there, and if I know Father Bart—err, Vater Barthlolomäus, then he’s helping Sheriff Blackout get folken into the shelter he has in the chapel.”

“I never saw a church,” I said blankly.

She gave me a lopsided look. “Then I guess you weren’t looking hard enough. It’s kinda hard to miss.”

Suppress the urge to slap. Suppress it!


|— ☩ —|


Silently, Cards peeked over the crate. Here in the alley, with about seven wee tykes behind me, I let her lead. To get to this place, I had to basically go back the way I came, although from a different angle. Cards said her mother would likely be there, so I had to follow her there. Really, she’d shown me a little map. Well, she’d drawn me a map in the dirt, and I knew the vague location of the chapel. Cards seemed to want to skirt by the edge of the lake first, though. All in all, I could have gone there on my own, but… for some reason, I was allowing Cards to lead the children and me there.

God, Cards was leading me. Screw it, maybe Stronghold had a point about these not really being people. In a world wherein Cards could lead, there was only death.

“Couple of big, ugly fuuu—n-hating guys out there,” Cards whispered. “They pass by, we make a break for it, and then cross the alley and take a left at the town hall at the alley’s end.” She smiled reassuringly, though I could see through it like thin, wet panties.

I nodded, and she hunkered down. Then I thought that I’d just thought of a panty line involving Cards, and that thought made my skin crawl. Wait, no. My skin was already crawling around my arms and gut, as it had been now for a great many minutes, although even thinking of Cards in any vaguely sex-related sense was just… unholy. It didn’t help that, with the way Cards’ shirt and little armored vest had been torn, from just the wrong angle, I could see a bit of nipple, and since werekindred thought that swollen mammary glands were the sexbomb, that… just didn’t work very well.

Still, Cards took everything in stride. It gave me cause to wonder: if I hadn’t basically destroys Cards’ life, murdered her only friend, and made her pants-wettingly terrified of me, was this how she would have been? Could she have actually had a shot of competence without me? And for that matter, just how badly had I hurt Cards in my where?

When one the tykes, a little girl in a dirty pink dress, sniffled, Cards forced a smile and said, “Hey, wanna hear a joke?”

“I guess,” she said.

“So, a man and a woman meet at the funeral of a guy they both work with, sorta. The guy and the girl fall madly in love with each other, but the guy leaves before the girl can get his name and address. So, the next day, she kills the man’s sister. Why?”

There was a pause.

“You suck at jokes,” the little girl said.

Cards let her head fall. “I know…”

“If she knew his sister, how come she didn’t ask her?” a boy asked.

“I don’t know!”

The kids, one by one, heckled Cards about her lack of joking skills, and poked holes into her joke. I sat there in silent thought, my skin crawling. Against my better judgment, I pulled up my left leg and watched as something sloughed off. Slough was a fun word, too—for some reason, I always pronounced it like der Schlauch, though, which was the teusche word for “hose”. And though I tried to distract myself with banal thoughts, I couldn’t ignore that my arm was runny.

The forrot’s blackness wasn’t what was oozing out, though; if anything, it was helping hold the limb together. But, it was still something to think about, something much better than the fact that I recognized this alleyway.

Nigh a month ago, although hardly more than a few days ago in terms of days I was properly conscious for, I had stopped in this alleyway. Then I’d turned around and, with my sword, slew the rest of Sleepy Oaks, drowning the mule baron in a pool of his own stomach acid. I couldn’t even remember my sword killing all those foals, but I knew I had.

And of these children before me… how many of them had I personally murdered in the world whence I came? It was… an uncomfortable feeling. It was a feeling foreign to me… and I suspected that it was regret.

No! I barked in my head. Gott verfluche das Gesicht seines Vaters! God curse the face of your father if you dare break down with regrets now! Think of something, anything, else, but feel and think no regret. So I did. Because listening to the voice in your head was a great way to make friends.

I tapped on the box, making a noise. Two fingers raised, I said softly. “I know why she killed them man’s sister. In your joke, that is.” They all fell silent. “She killed the man’s sister because she knew the man would be at her funeral and where it would be held.”

Cards nodded hesitantly. “Heck, that’s… that’s actually the answer, though a bit wordy.” She glanced at the kids. “It’s, uh, a weird little joke I heard this one time, and they said only a sociopath would be able to figure out the answer.”

I cocked a brow. “Then I guess I must be a sociopath.”

She laughed, though she had to force it down. “Oh, I can see that. As we know, all sociopaths are nice, like to save people, and… and refuse to take advantage of sad girls.” Cards forced a smile. “Thanks for that, by the way. N-never really thanked you. I mean, I… I want to thank you for being nice, Gunslinger. I just… kinda wanna say that… I…”

I raised myself slightly, checking over the box and into the streets before Cards could finish her sentence. “Coast is clear, let’s move!”


|— ☩ —|


“Okay, go!” Cards hissed as she lead the troupe of tykes across the street and at an angle into a barber shop. I recalled that it had been boarded up whence I’d come, but must have been in more active service in this Sleepy Oaks “There’s a way through here!”

I brought up the rear, and to my left I could see the town square some two or three blocks away. And as the last of the tykes went into the building, my heart sank in my chest. It felt like I was going to vomit the organ out like a frog being crushed under the weight of an enormously fat child whose mother insists it’s a glandular problem, but she wasn’t fooling anyone.

I looked down the road, past the wreckage and debris and junk and at the thing which Cards couldn’t have seen. My throat felt dry as I then looked at the ground wherebefore I stood.

She was alive enough to watch the impeccable steel dig into her little body. Her bright eyes darkened as the sword dug out a massive trench in her little body, no-doubt breaking her young, underdeveloped bones.

This… this was exactly where I’d killed Blossom. Where I’d broken the Code. This was whence my issues of self-loathing had come. Because I was a monster. Standing here, I could see her body. And to this day, I lacked the wherewithal to fix the Code, to make myself whole, to cleanse myself.

“Gunslinger, get inside!” I heard Cards shout from the barbershop.

I looked up at Cards as if in a daze, and then I looked back down the street. The thing which had first taken my attention was there. I no longer saw dark red wisps of energy coursing into the town center.

And then the entire center of town suddenly erupted with an unholy white and bluish light, bathing the rest of Sleepy Oaks in its ethereal colors. Even Cards now took notice of it, the aura shimmering off her red irises. Though I know not for sure what it meant, I was pretty sure I could guess with great accuracy: the Devil’s Backbone had completed his ritual transformation, and was now a monster not unlike C.

In other words, prepare your anus: the rapening begins!

“Cards,” I shouted, suddenly turning and bolting for the doorway. “We need to get the tykes to safety, stat! To the chapel!” And because that’s where Stronghold must be, I didn’t add.


|— ☩ —|


White stone composed the thick-looking walls of a building taking up its own block, surrounded by houses and other such constructs. It was a church alright, with steeple and bell tower and everything. It beat me how I hadn’t noticed such an obvious thing, especially a building not generally seen outside the East, where Konfessionismus ruled with an iron fist.

Before the building’s front doors was a great garden and fountain, and in this sanctuary of nature was a clear path straight to the entrance. We checked the streets, then raced across and to the doors.

“Lets us in! It’s Cards, and I’ve got children!” the woman called out, banging on the evidently locked and likely barricaded door. Moments passed, and I kept watch for any monsters. The white and blue glow had vanished, replaced by a sense of unease. The screams of people were dying down, and I didn’t think that meant that the folken were safe, so to speak.

Sounds of a ludicrous amount of loud unlocking noises and a hard scraping came from the door before it creaked open. “Fräulein Cards?” came the voice of what must have been a middle-aged gentleman.

Cards bowed her head ever so slightly. “Grub disch, Vater.”

I had to bite my tongue to prevent myself from screaming. No, no, no! Bad Cards! That was not how anything was pronounced! But as I nearly had a seizure of hate, Cards herded the kids into the slight opening in the door, graciously following after them.

Then a tan-skinned man poked his head out from the door, squinting his golden eyes at me, a smidgen of ash on his salt-and-pepper goatee. When he saw me and the Iron Cross hanging around my neck, his eyes widened.

“Servus und grüß Gott, Vater,” I said in a short, clipped voice, squeezing past him and into the building. I looked around the pews and altar and create cross of Laurentia. But at the same time, I dipped my hand into the holy water and performed das Kreuzzeichen, saying aloud, “Im Namen des Vaters und der Prophetin und des Maschinengeists. Amen.”

When I turned to the Priester, I found that he’d locked the door back up. It was an impressible array, truth be told. “Spricht Ihr Teutsch?” he asked.

“Yes, for I a Teutscher am,” I replied in Teutsch. “And I remember the face of my father.”

The man in the dark priestly robes with gold and purple highlights nodded. “Whence come you? Your accent, are you from Zentrum?” He grit his teeth, then hesitantly went on with, “Or perhaps you hail from one of the more Southern regions. Are you from—”

“Neuorléans, in a manner of speaking,” I said, cutting him off with a horizontal slashing motion as I continued to look around. “I spent a fair amount of time in Zentrum, however, whence my father hailed. Graduate of the Universität zu Neuorléans, too,” I went on with a shrug, “before they burned it, that is.”

He nodded. “So you’re a Southerner?” he asked, and I shrugged.

The Vater opened his mouth to respond. But just then Cards darted up to us and said, “Isch kann spreken klein Teusch—er, Teutsch auch!”

I gave Vater Bartholomäus a dry look, proceeding to say in Teutsch, “She says you taught her this. How in the Allfather’s name have you let her go on thinking she’s good? Look at that smile. She thinks she’s not all that terrible!”

The Vater gave a sheepish shrug. “She may be… beyond subpar, but she tries hard. Even though her hard is rather soft.” I uttered a chuckle, and he continued shortly thereafter. “But, you have to admit, it is sort of adorable seeing her try. A-and I lack the heart to really tell her that her Teutsch makes me want to grind my teeth till they are nought but dust.”

Cards said something to the effect of “I am a jelly doughnut”.

I patted her on the head and she smiled so wide as I said in a proud voice, “Sehr schön, Liebes, könntest du jetzt aber bitte aufhören, meine Ohren mit deiner Stimme zu vergewaltigen?”

The girl frowned, looking at the Vater. “Uh, my Teutsch isn’t all that good. What’d he say?”

Vater Bartholomäus glanced at me, then replied, “He said your Teutsch makes him proud, and you will one day bring him much pride therewith.”

Cards beamed just the cutest, girliest smile I’d ever seen. And, by God, happy Cards looks all sorts of wrong and unholy!

I had, in fact, said, “Yes, that’s nice, sweetie, now could you please stop raping my ears with your voice?”

“In any case, Vater,” I went on in Teutsch, not wanting Cards to understand, “I am here because I’m looking for Stronghold and Blackout.”

“But Stronghold is dead,” he replied, walking alongside me down towards the altar.

“So Blackout has not passed through here?”

“No, she has. Was here, actually, but she left to help round up others. In the crypts and catacombs and shelter beneath the church, where she went after saving as many townsfolk as possible.”

“Such space exists beneath the church?” I asked. Looking around, the lack of many people up here now made a lot more sense. I spied Glasses, who was helping Cards get the kids into what I could only presume was the basement area. There were a few other folken besides Glasses, but he and Cards stood out most in my mind. A dull part of me noted just how much Vater Bartholomäus was taller than the others, like me, though not by such a degree. Hooray for Teutonic tendencies to be taller than other races.

“Yes,” he replied as we reached the altar. “I built this place atop an old temple of the Founding Fathers. Slowly, my flock has been growing, a great deal in part to my philosophy and kindness.”

“Philosophy?”

The man hesitated, then crossed his arms behind his back and stood up tall. “Yes. Before the Backbone, I offered the great space under my church as a refuge to those persecuted by the Confessionists of this land’s easterly cities.”

I blinked as I thought back to what King Elkington had said about witches, both Black Erelith and that one who’d recently caused such a commotion in the coastal cities of the region. “You… you mean to tell me that you… you offer sanctuary to those who practice magic?”

He swallowed and nodded. “It is my interpretation of the Book of Keys that the Frau Laurentia spoke on knowing and controlling magic, treating it with care, not to murder those misfortunate enough to be born therewith, or those seeking to simply learn of the world wherein we live.”

In that moment, my face must have bore a vicious, murderous expression, for the Vater noticeably flinched. “Of course you’d think that, heathen Priester,” I spat. “It’s no wonder, really. Just like Social Grace: if someone is nice to Cards, it’s a clear mark that they’re evil and corrupt. I used to work in the Reichskriminalamt! I know your kind, and you’re as dangerous as a witch, spreading dangerous lies as though gospel.” The Vater stood his ground as I pressed up against him, glaring down at him. “You are a disgrace to the cloth, and you should be burned.”

But I took a deep breath, putting distance betwixt the man and me. “Lucky for you, some idiotic bastard masquerading as a Priester is the least of my concerns right now. Tell me when Blackout will return; this knowledge may well save us all.”

“I know not. My recommendation is to hunker down, sit tight, and wait for her to return. I have a spotter up in the bell tower. Good day, Gunslinger.”

I nodded at him. “Auf Wiedersehn, Vater.” Then, after a moment’s thought: “May your first day in Hell last ten-thousand years, and may it be your shortest.”

Sighing, I left the Vater and walked over towards a pew and took a spot thereon. Sure, I could go out and try to find Blackout and thus Strong, but a part of me was sure it was a better idea to let her come to me, and thus to be the one holding ground when Strong did whatever he was going to do.

“Curious situation we’re in, hmm, Gunslinger?” Jayne asked.

“You could say that,” I muttered. When speaking to the train in your head, no matter how real she was, it was best to keep low your voice, that others didn’t hear you. “Were C here, I bet this would be easier for me; he’d make a dandy scout or something. Stupid horse.”

“C said some odd things,” Jayne added as I looked around the pews. Myself watching the Vater as he helped attend to Cards and the types, she went on. “He spoke of working for an angel, and being on the hunt for flesh.”

I snorted. “C is a liar. And he is a person-eating hellspawn. A part of me is sure he said the angel-working-for part simply because he was trying to seduce you or something.”

“Well, being that I lack a vagina, he’s free to try to seduce me all he wishes,” Jayne said calmly. “Although,” she went on in the tones of one whose finger is up to her face as they thought, “had I genitalia, that might actually be sort of awesome. It’d have to be super sensitive, likely turning into a twitching mass of pleasure with but a few touches, and I’d offer it to be used after some particularly riveting bloodshed, while the gore is still exciting my circuits.”

“That… is a very uncomfortable thought, and I wish you to never again mention this to me. Ever.”

“Well, I—did you see that?!”

I blinked. “See what?”

Then came what was arguably the single most unnatural and skin-crawling sensation I’d ever felt: the feeling of having mine own eye moved for me. My left eye looked far up and to the left, my right eye still facing forwards. A wave of vague, dizzy nausea hit me, and I quickly adjusted my right eye to match up with my left.

Up there the high windows I could just barely make out bright lights of white and blue. Angelic, heavenly colors so favored by demons and whacky suicide cults alike.

I touched Skybane on my back, my sword, and then set my hands to my revolvers. The feel of the steelbark grips and the texture of the gunmetal helped keep my thoughts level, my heart at rest.

And now to play the waiting game.


|— ☩ —|


As it turned out, with enough focus, it was entirely possibly to make a bullet dance betwixt a werekind’s fingers. I watched, transfixed, as the bullet moved like water through them all, then back and to dance again. I was pretty sure I should have been thinking up battle plans, but this was just sort of trippy.

So when someone so rudely banged rather loudly at the church’s door, snapping me out of my trance and making me drop my bullet, I immediately took a dislike to that poor, desperate soul. How dare they try not to be eaten by demons or turned into magic force via white magic! These people, ever inconsiderate.

Dimly, I heard someone from high above, likely that guy up in the bell tower, shout something about Sheriff Blackout. Of course, as soon as I heard that, I was on my feet, my heart suddenly racing so hard that I could feel my blood pressure skyrocketing. I momentarily considered changing my diet before shaking such thoughts out of my head and readying myself to draw my revolvers.

“Blackout?” Cards cried out somewhence unknown. Glasses said something inconsequential as I watched Vater Bartholomäus head for the door. I walked down the aisle as the Vater went about the arduous process of opening this church’s only real defense.

When the door’s last bolts and whatnots were down, it nearly exploded inwards as a small flock of men, women, and children came in. Blackout, I could see, was standing behind them with a frantic look on her face.

“Let’s, go, let’s go, let’s go!” she was shouting. “Bart, this is everyone I could find, I don’t think there are any others!”

Through the church’s high windows, I saw a flash of red. It came somewhence and went somewhither. That in mind, I reached the doors. “Blackout, there you are!”

Blackout looked at me with a mix of several emotions, none whereof were pleasant. “Why are you in here, not out there?!”

I glanced up for any more odd colors, and only say that white and blue light from the center of town. “I was looking for you, and I knew you’d come here. Theretofore, I was helping your daughter rescue children.”

For a moment she wrinkled her nose in disgust, but a strident shriek put that on pause. At the far end of the church’s gardens was a man with toothy mouths were his eyes should be. Though she had her gun out, I drew my revolver, cocked, aimed, and fired before she could so much as get a good look at the thing. Something under the flesh of my arms felt like it was slithering as I reloaded, cursing myself for having wasted a javelin bullet on something that looked so frail.

“Shit!” Blackout spat as I heard footsteps rapidly approaching me from behind. Probably Cards and Glasses. “Was that thing following us?”

Above us came again that flash of red. I could see dark stormclouds in the sky, and I was positive that therewith came the light trickle of rain getting its footing. Quickly, I reloaded the missing bullet as I said, “I think it was following you, Blackout. You’re the prize Stronghold wants, and he’s willing to let everyone else die therefor. And since I’m really, really tired of this where—”

“Look, that’s fine!” She stamped a foot. “Now would you just move outta my fuckin’ way so I can get in there?” She moved to push past me, and I grabbed her and held her at bay. The thought of using her as living bait was tempting. “I don’t wanna just be standing here with my thumb up my ass!”

I shot her a dry look. Then I glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough, there stood Cards and Glasses, the Vater off to the side. Cards had her hands clasped together under her chin as she gnawed on a lip corner. “Cards, Glasses, Vater Bartholomäus, we need to ensure that a certain bastard doesn’t get his hands on Blackout. That’s imperative.”

“Fathersdammit, just let me in!” Blackout shouted. She glanced over her shoulder, down the street to the distantly moving column of light round a corner. “Shit, okay, what is that?”

“Well, it’s technically the demonic equivalent of using a tasty worm and dangling it from a fishing rod into a pond of sex-starved tuna,” I said, still holding her back, not letting her past me. She struggled to get past me, but, well, she failed, suffice it to say. “Although supplant worm for ‘vile bitch’ and likewise replace ‘sex-starved tuna’ with ‘sex-starved ex-husband’ and we came to what’s really going on here. I suspect now that he knows where you are, he’s come to collect you.” Without warning, I pulled her into the church. “You’ve been out here long enough for my purposes. Folken, protect this women. Bitch may she be—”

“Stop calling me that!”

“—if Stronghold gets her, there is no doubt he’ll run off, and thus I’ll have no shot of getting the book, Calêrhos.” I smiled. “Also, I just plain don’t want her anywhere near me when she’s fighting. Something tells me that in a big fight, she’d be about as useful as a condom full of tiny teeth from some indeterminate animal.”

Why hello there, use of humor to suppress stress. Yes, I could go for a pile of beaver pelts at this moment. Hold the mayo. And the sense. Cents, too. I’ll have none thereof.

I nodded. “You lock this door, and you lock it tight, and you do everything on this earth to protect this woman, else we all fail. She is still our bait, in a way.”

“Wait, what are you going to do?” Cards asked, almost pushing her mother aside to stand before me. I say ‘almost’ because when she tried, her mother shoved her away and I had to catch her so she didn’t fall. Of course, I had to nudge her back into the building proper.

With a dark smile on my bleak countenance, I simply shut the big doors. Turning around, I faced out at the approaching mass of light. “I’m going to do as I always do: save the day.” As I stepped forwards through the garden, bits of rain hitting here and there sparsely, I amended myself with, “And hopefully without killing a whole bunch of kids this time.”


|— ☩ —|


The street seemed so silent as I stood there in the middle of the road, the rain still short of a drizzle, but nevertheless noticeable. I could feel hundreds of eyes upon me, monsters hiding in the alleys and on rooftops, watching with interest as everything came down to one, likely overdramatic fight.

There he stood, just walking around like it were nothing, his skin grayed, his body twisted and corrupted into the skinwalker-like form, and his mouth far too large for his beady eyes. When he saw me, he gestured to a pair of imp-looking things behind him, who quickly fiddled with the cart they were hauling. They flipped a large switch, and off went the light, which had been coming from a weird thing in said cart.

Huh. Suddenly, now that I knew this big light wasn’t because he glowed, he seemed far less badass. Of course, he could probably still rip me limb from limb, but I wouldn’t be cooly ripped limb from limb.

“If you are here,” came the Backbone’s voice, loud and throaty, “then Blackout must certainly be within yon church.”

I shrugged. “What, you’re looking for her too, now? I mean, I guess she’s got, uh, whatever it is that folken here think is hot, but is she really worth all the trouble? Think thereabout: she’s a shitty mother, I don’t think she can cook, and the only thing that ever came out of her womb was Cards.”

“It’s not so much that I’m looking for her as I am merely providing a distraction, for I intend to hold up my end of the bargain.” He shrugged.

“But while we fight,” I went on, “Stronghold is no doubt going about his nefarious business. Were I to turn to go off and stop him, you’ll murder me from behind.And since you know where she is, so does he. So, I am on a sort of timer. I’ve got to defeat you, get Stronghold, nick the book, and then save the day, I suppose. Stop me if I’m wrong.”

He only smirked, slowly sauntering towards me, his movements like that of a werekind but exaggerated and heavy. “You stay, you die. You go after Stronghold, I kill you, and you die.” He blinked. “Because killing you doesn’t cause you to die, it seems. I need to hire a speech-writer. Or enslave one. Hmm, yes, that does sound pointlessly nefarious, doesn’t it?” He laughed. “Ah, yes, because being so pointlessly—”

I sighed, massaging the bridge of my nose as he went on. “Difficulty level?” I mumbled to myself. “Invincible skinwalker beast with a penchant for murder and with a look in his eyes that says he’s going to rape me in the nostril. Okay! Can-do spirit, let’s save the day—but first, a one-liner!”

My eyes fell to my hips. “But my guns are still… something scary.” I looked up. “You know, since I can’t figure out how to make this line make any sense in context here, I’m just going to say it.” He didn’t seem to hear me; rather, I think he was probably going on about his tragic backstory or whatever. I really didn’t care at this point.

Quicker than greased lightning, I drew and cocked the weapons which a now-dead man had once hight rapecannons and shouted, “My guns don’t even know the meaning of ‘consensual sex’! They are the Cherry Berry of guns!”

The bullet fire tore off half his face before it exploded. Twice. And it destroyed most of his head. His jaw kept moving as he went on his villainous monolog, his legs wobbling forwards, almost stumbling.

C’s body reformed via nebulous shadows of black and red with the occasional twinkling star within. The Backbone? Several tear-like holes opened in the thin air around him, and from each reached out a hand clasping a surgeon’s needle. They stabbed into his mutilated face, and dug out strings of blackish red therefrom. Before mine very eyes and with a supernatural speed, they reached down and picked up the biggest chunks of the Backbone’s head, showing themselves to be far, far longer than any arm should rationally be. They sowed chunks of skull and face onto the mesh before stabbing the needles deep into the chunks. And the hands grabbed at the chunks, clawing into them, and literally dragged the rest of the Backbone’s head and face back into existence around the mesh before slinking back into their tears in reality, leaving no trace of their presence save for the now-smiling abomination standing hardly five meters before me.

“Well then,” I said in the kind of high-pitched voice I never spoke in because I was smart enough to always wear a codpiece.

“Hey,” the Backbone prompted with a slowly, honey-like voice that gave me chill bumps and made my balls scramble as deep into my body as they could get away with. “Wanna see a magic trick?” He held up his right arm as if flexing, and the skin twisted and undulated and convulsed and turned into a boney lance.

Before I could depress the trigger of my leftmost gun, he charged out me with a hellish roar, his distant minions cackling for him a chorus. The javelin round hit his shoulder and nearly blew it off, though he took it like a total trooper.

With every ounce of force in my body, I threw myself at the right and rolled on the road as he hit where I’d been mere seconds ago, scoring a deep furrow in the dirty road. Because obligatory environmental damage meant serious business. When he turned to me and charged again, I could see his damaged arm was literally hanging on by surgical, blackish-red threads.

Even as two bullets hit him in the chest and probably destroyed his lungs and liver, ensuring he could never breath or drink alcohol again, he laughed, which was sort of impossible without lungs. But, when you’re an invincible skinwalker-demon, you probably did three impossible things every morning before breakfast.

“Nope!” I shouted, jumping back as he stabbed at the ground. His aim really was shit, wasn’t it?

The damaged arm had regenerated well. I knew this because he reached out and backhanded me therewith as he pulled his lance out of the ground. He hit like a bitch, like my ex-girlfriend. Which was to say, he hit hard enough to make me want to hide and cower in the closet and hope that she—that he never found me.

Before I could make a witty and ultimately really annoying response, he twisted his leg around and kicked me straight in the ribs. Trying to jump back might have saved me from something, but it didn’t stop the rush of agony followed by the rush of rolling for no small distance end-over-end over a road and into the church’s garden, hitting my head something hard and knocking my hat off.

I looked up, feeling blood leaking down my head, around my head bandages I still had from my failed dive-for-cover back aboard the train with Frosty, and down into my ear. Although the Backbone was coming for me again, my primary concerns were, in order, to find my hat, and to make the little Lightning Dusts stop flying around my head. Seriously. The fact that at least two of my ribs here probably broken? Pff! Hats were more important than ribs.

When I found my hat and put it back on, I found the Devil’s Backbone standing there. “Howdy,” I said, and shot him one in the leg and stomach. He wasn’t amused by this, a fact conveyed to me partially from his expression, and partially by the way he pretty much broke my leg with a side-sweeping kick.

Arms from the nether stitched his body back together piece by bloody piece as he stood over me. That didn’t stop me from shooting him twice more. Although it did stop me when he jammed his lance deep into my lung, and I reflexively dropped my guns and tried to curl into a little ball, like I used to do when either Father or my ex was angry with me. And though they’d never stabbed me in the lung, I was pretty sure that Maiya had wanted to.

In any case, I realized that thinking about my terrific love life was precisely the wrong thing to do about the time where he twisted the bone-lance, and I coughed out blood. By some miracle, he’d stabbed me exactly where I’d gotten impaled back in Songnam, so… well, at least I couldn’t get a new scar.

“You really piss me off,” he growled down at me.

I tried weakly to raise a lecturing figure. “That’s telling.” I coughed. “Instead, show how you feel by action—” He twisted the lance in my lung like he were trying to use my lungs as a frying pan wherein he was scrambling eggs. I tried to commend him, but all I did was cough out more blood onto Dust’s bandana and soak the edges of my Iron Cross.

My neck went limp, and my head lolled onto the ground. Vision now upside down, I could see a man in a black jacket standing outside the church’s doors, a book in hand. Seemed as if Stronghold had ditched the white robes for something more stereotypically evil-looking. Glancing betwixt his tome and the door, he made a gesture and touched it, prompting a loud snapping sound like thunder but with far more wood. Thunderwood? No, wait, that just sounded like something Lighting Dust would insinuate her sexual partner had in a failed bid to try to sound sexy to said partner. Speaking of terrible sex-related insinuations, I didn’t see what happened next, because the Backbone resumed his massive bone-lance’s penetration into my moist, quivering body.

Once cackling, the Backbone’s minions had all gone silent, though I wasn’t sure how long this had been the case. It didn’t seem to bother the monster before me. “I asked you what you saw before you once prior,” he said in dark yet liquid tones. “And I’m going to ask you once more. What do you now see before you?”

Weakly, I raised my head, blood leaking from everywhere save my genitals at this point. “Huh,” I muttered. Not that anybody but me and the train-lady in my head could even hear it. “Seems like there is a reason for the silence.”

“I ask it of you!” the Backbone howled. “What see ye before thee?”

The sound that came out of my mouth was almost like a laugh. “I see a horse.”

“What?”

He didn’t even have time to frown before C crashed into him, sending the Backbone skidding across the ground and into the garden’s central fountain. Without the lance in my chest, blood flowed freely from the now trench-like wound with alarmingly speed. C the Horse glared at the Backbone with an expression that I wanted to flinch from—it was such an expression of pure malice, hatred, and ill-intent that only the twisting, unholy countenance of a skinwalker could even form it.

“Howzit, gents?” C asked, his voice thick and heavy, like a mountain collapsing into itself a thousand times over. He reached a hoof forwards, and I watched as the skin and fur cracked and popped. With the sound of a hundred somebodies biting into particularly juicy pieces of fruit, the skin sloshed and twisted until the hoof was now C’s clawed hand. He moved the hand towards my bags, and from the fingertips came hundreds of little black tendrils which seeped into my bag and pulled out a pink potion.

The tendrils put the potion, uncapped, in his hand, and he poured it into my lung wound. My focus went solely to the feeling, burning trench, listening to the sizzling and hissing sound of the flesh healing. When I looked up, the last of the horse parts of C were twisting and rendering themselves asunder, sloshing and splashing until they were the mottled, tattooed flesh of the skinwalker proper.

“You know,” he went on in that dark tone of his, “I’ve spent a lot of my time here, between searching for the fallen angel’s exchange, just sitting around and doing some soul-searching.” The liquid running down C’s naked body reminded me of afterbirth, the water of a womb. “As ’twere, I’ve tolerated so many offenses against me and mine own. Yet you just crossed the line.”

The Backbone stumbled to his feet. “You… you… you are…”

“I am skinwalker, a skinwalker, the skinwalker,” C offered, glaring at the Backbone, his fists clenched. “And you are not. You are some broken facsimile created by the moderator’s book, the coding of the wordmaker, the destruction wrought by the codebreaker. You think yourself true.”

“I am a skinwalker!” the Backbone spat back, and I heard a gunshot from within the church.

C shook his head and smiled. “Oh?” He raised his left arm, and I could see that nigh every inch of its skin was taken up by wide-grinning maws of sharp teeth. He lunged forwards which such speed that he was almost invisible, biting hard the upper arm of the Backbone with his original maw. Though the demon tried to grab at C, his fingers ended up in the arm-teeth. All the while, C dug his own fingers into the Backbone’s collarbone. The dozens of toothed maws twisted and reached forwards with long, black necks of their own, latching down on the demon, holding him nigh still.

The skinwalker jerked his head back and, with the sound of a hundred smashed branches crushed by a snapping tree, ripped the Backbone’s arm uncleanly off. What came out of the Backbone’s mouth was a sound so shrill I had to grit my teeth. C stepped back, the Backbone’s arm in his original maw. His arm-mouths unlatched from the Backbone and instead moved to devour the demonic arm like so many piranhas. Nothing, not even the bones, remained within seconds of the voracious biting and chewing.

“Because,” C said, “you don’t taste like a skinwalker. And I should kenn.” He poked himself in the naked breast. “For I have eaten many a brother.”

The tears in reality came again, arms with surgeon’s needles. Almost every inch of C radiated with a smile. Literally. Though his feet now were like a raptor’s talons, and his legs up to his knees were armored, bony plating, everything else smiled. There was a huge, skull-splitting smile of his face. The smiles of his arms. The toothy maws of the likewise fanged maws grinning from his chest. Those on his back. His sides. His legs above the armored knees…

C licked his face-lips with a long, pointed tongue before growling, “I have hunger. Such hunger!”

Though I bled all over, and though I was trying to stand up, I still watched. The arms from the tear—I thought of them as nether-arms with nether-hands—stabbed into the Backbone’s body with their needles, pulling back out therefrom strings of blackish red. There were so many nether-hands on so many nether-arms.

C charged into the mass of hellish limbs, his face-mouth chomping down on one of the nether-hands and ripping it off with a wet crunching sound. When nether-limbs tried to retaliate, all they did was smash into the many grins of C. His many maws bit down hard on the nether-arms, many of his mouths reaching out on their black necks to grab fleeing prey, and many just content to rend chunks of flesh free for feasting. C even reached into one of the tears, pulling out a nether-arm that’d managed to successfully flee. It too became more food for the skinwalker.

Leg probably broken along with at least two ribs, I watched him work as I gathered up and reloaded my guns. Then I still watched as I attempted to hobble past him and through the open doors of the church. There’d been a gunshot, and that didn’t fill me with confidence.

When it was over, C licked his facial lips before bending and twisting himself to lick clean the bloodiest parts of his body with almost motherly care. “While a lovely nostalgia trip to see such arcane methods of holding a supposéd skinwalker together, I am afraid there was a reason such techniques never made it into mass production. See, now that I’ve eaten them, you can’t regenerate.”

All his unnatural mouths smiled once more before closing, their lips sealing with an almost comic but entirely literal zipping. They were like little scars, and then were gone. Now there was only C and C’s tattooed flesh alone, his one true mouth giving the on-his-knees Backbone a lopsided grin.

“Now,” C said, still grinning, “can you yet see why inferior races are forever unfit to wear the title of skinwalker? Because that is what you and all your ilk are: biologically inferior by a degree which you can’t even comprehend. But that’s okay. That’s nature.” He leaned in towards the Backbone, and the demon fell onto his back, trying to scramble away. “But you are at its bottom, whereas I stand at its pinnacle, it supreme apex.”

“Th-the apex of what?”

His voice was calm and fatherly as he said, “Why, of the food chain.”

C grabbed the Backbone’s face in his long, clawed fingers and twisted him around. Quickly, he shifted so that he now held the demon by the back of the head, fingers digging into the skull. C slammed the Backbone’s face into the ground, and through gritted teeth growled, “Here, let me rub it in!”

Pressing the demon’s face into the ground, C raced forwards into the church. I heard a scream as C’s sprint knocked me to the ground. There existed now streaks of blood, pieces of mottled skin, little balls of rolled up flesh and gray matter along the places where C had been grinding the demon’s face into the ground. Where he’d been rubbing the facts of life in. And there were a lot of those places, if all this gore was anything to go by.

When I got back up, I felt like I might vomit. But I forced that feeling away—mostly ignored it and prayed it’d vanish, really—as I limped into the church. Distantly, there was another sound of gunfire.

The scene within was a mess. Pews stood broken and smashed, chunks of the stone floor ripped out, and blood everywhere. The Vater was on the ground off in a corner, and I didn’t care enough to try to figure out if he was alive or dead. Really, my main concerns centered around C, on all fours as he very loudly tore chunks of flesh out of the Backbone and shoved them into his maw, his one maw.

That concern quickly shifted over to the side as gunfire erupted past a thick-looking door. It burst open and out came Blackout, tumbling and rolling on the ground. She coughed and spun onto her back, raising her gun as the man in the black jacket calmly strolled through the doorway, humming to himself a little tune.

“Get away from me!” Blackout hissed, aiming her gun at Stronghold and firing. It clicked. “Shit!” Blackout pressed the trigger again and again as fast as she could cock it, but since doing the same thing again and again wasn’t known for new results, the gun just kept clicking uselessly.

“Oh come now, dear, it’s not like you must play so rough,” Stronghold said in a jovial tone, smile on his face. Blackout resorted to crawling backwards to get away from the man, but he just kept walking towards her.

Then, panting hard, Cards ran out of the door. She nearly doubled up, sweat dripping from her brow. Cards saw her father and mother. “Stop it! Stop it, Dad!” she cried out, her eyes wet. “Whatever I did, I-I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I can be better than-than that other Cards from wherever you’re from, just stop hurting her!”

Blackout actually took the time to stop crawling in order to say, “For Geremiah’s sake, you stupid little girl! He doesn’t want you! Nobody does!”

Judging by the jerking motion Cards suddenly made, she’d just been hit with an invisible warhammer to the gut. Then she froze as a stray glance ended with her locking eyes with the skinwalker.

C finished with the bloody piece of meat he was chewing and licked most of his face clean with his sharp tongue. “I wasn’t counting on guests, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t have much to share.” He smiled that toothy, fanged smile of his that was larger that most people’s faces as he held out a gorey chunk of flesh with an eyeball therein to Cards. “But what I have I share.”

Cards looked at the offered meat, to the mutilated but still recognizable Backbone he was crouched over, and then over towards me. By this point, I was limping as fast as I could over to Stronghold and his beloved, but, well, a part of me was sure that were I to take the time to finding a healing potion, I’d be wasting too much time and would miss something.

She looked back over to C, eyes wide. I recalled that skinwalkers were the epitome of horror in this where, or so implied Lighting Dust. Even the mentioning of their name seemed to cause discomfort and anxiety. So I could only imagine what Cards was feeling at this moment as she doubled over and vomited.

Although, it didn’t take much for me to realize that she needed not a towel wherewith to clean herself. For some reason, that struck a chord within me. She’d pissed herself in sheer terror when first we properly met in my where. So… was I literally scarier to Cards than the skinwalker was?

Had I a magic eight ball, a part of me was sure it’d say yes.

“D’aw, that was such an adorable face!” C crooned. “You know, before you shot all that vomit out of it.”

“Holy shit!” Stronghold exclaimed, looking up at C.

“Yes, I’ve been here for a while,” C stated in a dry tone. And with a little wave: “Hello, least attentive man in the world!” He wolfed down a huge mass of flesh exactly like how a wolf wouldn’t. The skinwalker licked his hands clean before slowly standing up on his two thick legs. “Stronghold, you have abetted a grave blasphemy ’gainst me and mine own.”

“What the hell are…?” Stronghold said before trailing off. “You’re… you’re a skinwalker. You’re just like those monsters in the book!”

Fists clenched, C very slowly, deliberated walked towards Stronghold. There stood a great distance betwixt them, and much of this place was now in ruins, but I doubted that C cared. “You speak true, he of the book, moderator-taius.” Though calm and even, his voice sounded like the fury and hatred of a mountain of accidentally racist postcards. “And know that I shan’t countenance your transgressions.”

He stopped suddenly, his talon-like claws scratching on the stone floor. “But likewise know that though I am to sever the wicked, I am here on business first and foremost.”

Quickly, Stronghold opened Calêrhos and flipped through it, muttering what sounded like “Come on! Come on!” under his breath. “Celestia! How I wish I was a mage!”

“Sad then that you picked up the moderator’s book, Calêrhos,” C added, tilting his head to look at Cards, who was spitting out the last bits of vomit from her mouth. “You shall do, aye, so she shall. Flesh is well and potent, nay?”

“Wha’?” Cards asked weakly to the skinwalker.

“C, what are you doing?!” I bellowed, tripping on a broken statue and falling onto the floor. “Get the bastard! Apprehend Stronghold!”

“He has the book of he who moderates,” C said calmly. “It is a sad fact of my reality that though you have it, the capability to do him grievous bodily harm is beyond me here.”

“What?!”

“Domôrhin!” Stronghold shouted, crouched down to grab Blackout by the belt as she scrambled away from him. In a flash of black light—not that made much sense to me—Stronghold and his wife vanished.

“Dammit, C!” I shouted, slamming a fist onto the ground. The action netted me a nasty splinter in the side of the hand.

“Should be only local. He doesn’t quite know his role in this world.” C shook his head, the mouth on his face actually a normal-sized maw. “He has taken her, I think, to this where’s equivalent to the house they shared back in our world.”

“Then we need to go after them!”

Cards blinked hard, peeling her eyes off C with noticeable effort. Almost as if trying to ignore the giant skinwalker over yon broken pews, she looked at me. “Oh shit, you’re hurt!”

“No!” I shouted. “I’m just getting really into character for this part I’m auditioning for tomorrow!”

She looked at C and jumped back when she saw how creepily close he was standing next to her now. By the Lord, C must have been a good seven feet tall, and compared to Cards, his body just looked all sorts of screwed up. His flesh made the hair on the back of my neck stick up. Werekindred now looked so natural, I supposed, that this abomination seemed unholy.

Cards quickly darted over to me. She brushed aside bits of debris so that she could kneel down and rummage through a little pack she was wearing. From this angle, I could see that little pink tip of flesh on her chest, and I took some solace that without large bosoms, Cards was seen as less desirable. And Cards’ failings and inferiority always filled me with a certain comfort.

“Here!” she said, pulling out a big pear-shaped bottle filled with a crimson liquid. It was the kind of healing potion, I knew, made from the extract of the Doktorkäfer, the doctor bug, which mean it was a non-magical Teutonic potion. “I was saving this for a special occasion, but I guess this will have to do.”

“For the love of the Allfather!” I snapped. “Stop trying to sound cool and just give it me!”

“I’m sorry!” Cards sputtered out quickly, flinching back as though I’d just slapped her. And since I’d slapped the Cards of my where across the face on at least two occasions, I would know.

“’Tis said as ‘give it to me’ or ‘give me it’ in this language, Gunslinger,” C added helpfully.

Hesitantly, Cards slid a hand under my head and lifted it slightly as she gave me the healing potion. When it was all swallowed, I grunted and jerked as the potion burned and healed my ribs and leg. At first she again hesitated, but she still ended up putting my head in her lap, running her fingers through my hair, and shushing and calming me.

“We really shouldn’t be wasting so much time,” C commented. “Every second here is another second closer Stronghold gets to figuring out how to properly dominate Blackout and flee from this world, forever denying you your eye and horn back.”

That thought sent a jolt down by spine. I had the sudden urge to move, despite the healing burning my still-injured bones. Soon enough, however, that was over, and I ambled to me feet. “I thank you, Cards.” And I smiled, ignoring the figure of C looming darkly behind her, leering at her. One nice thing, just one nice thing, and we’d charge after Stronghold. “Healing potions help. You actually did good this time. See? Not a total failure.”

Cards absolutely beamed with such childlike joy that I wanted to take a photograph of her sparkling eyes.

In an instant, her beaming smile became of grimace.

Slowly, like rusted clockwork, she turned her head from me, so slowly, to her right side, just at the base of her ribs. A large, clawed hand gripped her tightly there. C’s hand. I think that both Cards and I realized that, without warning, it wasn’t the only hand at that exact same moment. Hands on her shoulders, sides, legs, over her mouth, even over her breasts—all reached out from behind her.

It felt as if my blood were ice as I looked above Cards and into C’s grinning countenance. With a sudden roar, the clawed hands gripped Cards fast and tore. Blood and torn fabric scattered everywhere. My mouth seemed to fill with cotton, my tongue felt as if utterly absent.

C smiled wider and wider at me, leaning forwards and licking his lips. “Like I said, I’m here on business first and foremost, Gunslinger.” He reached down and dragged his long, sharp-ended tongue up from Cards naked thigh, up her bare chest, and up to her ear, leaking a thick, wet stream of saliva. The liquid dripped and ran down her side as Cards let out a muffled mewl.

“Shh, shh, shh, lovely Cards, crying’s no way to behave,” C cooed. “The taste of your flesh satiates another checkmark. I do think I have chosen well, no?” He smacked his lips. “Although I wonder what she’d say when I remark about its virginity. Will she care, even? I know not.”

My voice found me rather than letting me find it. “What the fuck are you doing, C?!”

He laughed as tears streamed down Cards face, over one of his many hands, and onto her breasts. “There are very few things a man such as I needs or even so much as desires. So when the opportunity arises to acquire something I desire most desperately, I am willing to bargain.”

Hands and legs shaky, I reached for my guns. I had a hard time finding even where my revolvers where. “What the hell are you going on about, C?” I asked in as threatening a tone as possible to make when your voice was shaking. When I realized so much of me was shivering like a sad, cold dachshund, I willed myself to calm down. A façade if need be, but to seem calm all the same.

“I came here because I took a deal from the fallen angel herself,” he said in calm, liquid tones. “I was on the hunt for flesh. And now through Cards, it is the fallen angel’s time to rise, and I will get what I am so desperate for. I don’t need to explain myself any further, now do I?”

The hands over Cards bosoms squeezed. She shivered and mewled.

“I don’t have the time to exposite like some stereotypical bad guy,” he went on. “Because we’ve mere minutes before Stronghold gets what he wants and wins, and you lose forever. All this work wasted, gunslinger.” He removed the hand from over her mouth.

“Gunslinger!” Cards exclaimed, trying to writhe out of C’s many grips but to absolutely no avail.

“You promised me you’d never hurt me or those whom I cared for!” I blurted out.

In a voice exactly like mine own, he replied, “She’s not the emotionally scarred Cards I kennt and helped create. This is a Cards, not the Cards I really care for.” His replication of me stopped. “And there you have it; you said it yourself. Near as I can tell, this particular Cards is fair game.”

“That was earlier!” I shouted. “I don’t wish for any harm to come to her! Goddamit, C, you made a promise!”

And C only smiled that smile of his at me.

Two-seven-two-five-four-two-seven. Those had been the needed numbers for the Cœur. C’s a liar.

“But regardless of such matters, you’re on a timer, tsaius.” Outside, there came a huge crack of thunder, bathing the church with a dark red light. “See what I mean? He’s going to do a lot of damage and he’s going to win. All your work for nought. Funny how such things work!”

I wanted to shoot him, to blow his head off, though I knew it’d do no good. But this close, firing would just as likely harm Cards, for all my bullets were still the twice-exploding javelins.

“This is how I make my fun, tsaius. See, I know right now that were you to try to stop me, you could and would. However it’d also take up a lot of time. More time than you have. Because should you try to stop me here and now, you wouldn’t have enough time to stop Stronghold and get back the book.”

Another flash of red lighting, too near for me to even be able to count the seconds till its sound battered me.

“So, tsaius,” he said with a smile. “Shall you live life as a cripple, broken, without eye or horn and with dying arm, saving the life of some bitch whom you’ll never meet again after this day, since she’s by now far too different from the Cards of your world; or will you stop Stronghold, make whole your flesh, and be able to use Calêrhos against Korweit for whatever he’s planning to use it for?”

“You utter bastard!” I shouted, heart racing but my body running dry on adrenaline. “You can’t do this!”

“Decide, Gunslinger,” he stated in a rock-hard tone. “Every second you waste, the less you have to save yourself and the book. You have some twenty minutes till it all comes crashing down on you, I suspect. But is that enough time to run to Blackout’s house and stop him? I wonder. Times does so fly, does it not?”

Cards looked at me with wide, pleading eyes, her face stained with tears.

My breath was hot, heavy, and fast. I wanted to stay and fight, but a traitorous part of me knew that though C was a liar, this was an utter truth. It was like a cold knife pressed deep into my pack, the blade of truths you didn’t want to accept.

I cursed C’s name, cursed the face of his father, but there was no avoiding it. The bastard was right. I had to decide. The book, or the girl. Without the book, there would be no healing myself in the Crystal Kingdom. Without the healing, C’s donated arm would kill me. My one chance to restore my arm, eye, and horn. Really, it came to this: to save myself, or to save Cards.

It was simple, really.

I smiled, wondering if, like Frosty, this Cards could tell how my eyes didn’t smile when I did. Frosty, whom I sacrificed to save Lightning Dust. Lightning Dust, who died anyway. Taran, whom I was too slow to save. Even Blossom, that little girl, was probably dead by now.

God, but I hated this world.

I shook my head. There was only one thing to do.

I looked her straight in the eyes. “Cards, I… I am sorry.”

Now look who’s the liar.

Cards swallowed. She didn’t hang her head in defeat; instead, she actually smiled at me. I could see her fighting not to choke herself with tears. “I-it’s okay. I understand. You have… hero stuff to do. And someone like me…” Her voice was getting smaller and quieter, so much that I had to strain myself just to hear her. “Someone like me just isn’t worth saving.” I grit my teeth, yet onward she spoke through her honest smile. “You know, I heard a lot about you over the livebox: how you ended the threat of the Cœur, defeated the Black Man, freed all those slaves, killed Black Jack, and gave those people all that food and medicine for free. In my darkest days, you were an inspiration, proof that there were still heroes out there, Gunslinger.” She sniffed. “A-and even if it was just for a day or two, I’m so glad to have met you.”

My knees felt weak. Like jelly. It took every ounce of willpower in my body to so much as take a step back.

“This is fun, is it not?” C remarked with what sounded like boredom. “Now then, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take her back through the—”

“Wait,” Card said, and we all looked at her. “All this time, I’ve known you as the Gunslinger. But before I die… before I die, I want to know your name.”

I blinked, frozen.

“I like how you’re just so willing to waste time with such trivial nonsense,” C commented, and then his hellish arms extended, pushing Cards towards me. “Please, spend our time wisely and tell her all sorts of things. I think you choosing Stronghold and failing to stop him all the same would be hilarious.”

This close, I could feel the heat of Cards’ stripped-naked body. I fumbled for words. “My name is forsworn. Never trust a man refusing to give his name.” I hesitated. “My name is Chorwhacks Jigglebob.”

She gave me just the strangest look for what felt like ever. Finally, in a tiny, tiny voice, she muttered, “That was a joke…”

Cards laughed. And she laughed. And laughed. And laughed until they turned slowly into sobs. And Cards laughed until her sobs and laughs were indistinguishable. And she laughed until there was nothing left but sobs.

I offered her a smile. “It’s Jericho.”

With that, I turned and ran like I’d never ran before in my life. Time had been wasted, but what of it? If I was doing this to Cards, then… then it was the least I could do.

Sprinting hard, I listened to the chorus of her sobs and the new rain pounding hard outside. I had chosen myself over her. My flesh over hers. That was the way of my world. Yet, deep inside me, I felt nothing of the intense regret I knew I should have felt. In the darkest pit of my heart, nothing beat for Cards.

My loathsome heart thumped only for my blood; it was calm in the knowledge that I had made the right choice, and if given a thousand times to re-choose, I’d make the same choice every time. Because that was what I did: I sacrificed people for mine own desires and greed. That was the Tao of Jericho: help everyone and be a hero, but if it comes down thereto, sacrifice them if it furthers your goals.

Cards let out a sudden shriek of indescribable agony that made me want to curl my toes, grit my teeth, put a gun to my head, and make like Taran.

Then all was silent.

All but the loathsome beat of mine own heart.