I didn't always make the best choices in life, and I fear that attribute followed me into the unlife I now had. I’ve tried to be a better man now, sure. Not to rob people who didn’t deserve it, or hurt people who didn’t have it coming. But good choices don’t always mean doing right or wrong things. Especially when it comes to serving a Master like I do.
Most folks who see a demon beast like the Yeti tuck tail and run. They count their blessings, and find a safe place, hoping someone else will deal with it.
Problem is, I'm that someone.
I followed Otaktay, reloading my pistols as I went. I hopped from rocky ledge to rocky ledge down into the quarry, using scaffolding when I could. I could've jumped all the way down like the Yeti had but snapping my ankles would waste even more time in the long run.
Beneath my boots, the scaffolding turned slick. A thin veneer of ice formed, sending me caroming down the rest of the way. I rolled, bounced, and just about any other thing that would've killed a normal man. When I landed, it was with a splash. I may not have felt the scalding water, but layers of my skin bubbled all the same.
I quickly crawled out of the hot spring before it turned me skeletal and took in my surroundings. Caverns and workstations filled the impressive mine, all snaking around so Dufaux could siphon these lands for all they were worth. White steam from a dozen or more similar springs swirled all about, making it difficult to traverse with confidence.
However, I had no trouble locating Otaktay a few dozen yards ahead of me, standing in front of the totem, wheezing.
Black ichor leaked from wounds all over his bulky, gorilla-like frame. The silver was doing its damage, working through him like a poison, weakening the demon's hold. But it wasn't enough. Not yet.
"You're not yourself!" I called to him. "Push out the demon that has you. Reject him, and I won't need to kill you too."
"Why?" His laugh quickly turned to a hacking, expelling more black, bloody discharge.
"Because you've hurt enough people."
"Only who we had to. And you… bounty hunter… you're next." He let loose a primal roar that I'm sure could've woken Lucifer from slumber. Already, rocks and small boulders were cascading down the chasm from all the activity, but when he raised both fists and slammed them down, it was like a small earthquake.
A wave of ice radiated away from the impact crater, coruscating out and up the quarry. Rock shattered. Scaffolding and structures crumbled. One thing I didn't count on, however, was that every spring the ice touched exploded like dynamite the moment ice touched them.
The damage to the mines was extensive. It was like the sound of low, rumbling thunder as the tunnels caved in all around us. Entire portions of the cliffs came down in sheets, pulling those poor shanty homes with it.
I'd never seen anything like it. And then I saw nothing. The spring I'd just escaped went off, a flash of white enveloping me. I couldn't even open my eyes. Hell, I wasn't even sure I was on the ground still.
Before I could prepare myself, the Yeti's grisly nails were digging into my chest. That last expulsion of power had him somehow looking even more beastly. Gone was nearly any semblance of humanity in his facial features, and along with it, any hope I had of him reverting to whoever the Otaktay was who'd once roamed this earth. The man beneath the monster was reaching the point of no return.
He pinned me against rock, ready to pound my face in. I flicked my pistol's aim and put a bullet through his belly. He swatted it out of my hands before I could get off another shot.
We were so close, I could see the back of his throat as he roared. All his teeth were razor-sharp now. Then, with speed and agility that belied his size, he pulled me forward and slammed me back again with a full, massive palm. I was sure bones crunched under the impact, but it might've been the rock face.
Ice snaked across my chest, working to hold me against the stone so I couldn't move. But as much as I might've expected it, he never started pounding on my skull. He just kept holding me there, like he didn't actually want to kill me. Like, maybe, there was a shred of humanity left…
Gunshots crackled across the unnaturally chilly air.
My gaze moved to the ridge of the quarry where muzzles flashed. All of Dufaux's army had come to bear. Deputies and sheriffs, Pinkertons, bounty hunters still wanting a fight—everyone. Shots peppered the Yeti's back and the frozen dirt all around us.
"Hold him down, Crowley!" Dale's voice echoed.
None of them knew I couldn't be hurt by mere bullets. Yet there they were, all firing in my direction with reckless abandon.
Otaktay dropped me and swung his hand, sending a surge of ice that carved a line in the foundation beneath where many of the shooters stood. Dale and others slid down deeper in the quarry with us while all the rest kept shooting. Those who lived, at least. The tomahawk-lady was up there too, cutting through them, so quick none could hit her.
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I'll hand it to Dale. Holding the Yeti down was good advice and exactly what I planned to do. Only, I wouldn't do it alone.
Recovering quickly, I strung my lasso around the Yeti's neck. Light engulfed us as it went taut, and in an instant, unseen forces commanded him to his knees. He couldn't thrash or kick, the weight of the White Throne's judgment all too heavy.
His whole body vacillated, both him and the unholy entity controlling him. Two parts of the same whole, split apart. I muttered in Latin, words that came to me almost on a whim as if I were speaking the Almighty's vengeance into being. I guess technically I was.
Both man and demon resisted, each making sounds godless and inhuman. The bond was strong. Otaktay's face screwed up in a look that was one part fury and one part agony. My own boots sunk through ground that should've been solid as I held tight and kept chanting what amounted to a prayer or supplication of some kind.
Bang!
A gunshot echoed like a hammer-struck bell, reverberating through the quarry and demanding attention. A hole punctured my jacket, then body, and pockmarked the dirt behind me. The Mind-drifter skipped down into the quarry from the opposite direction of town, away from my reinforcements.
He couldn’t wield his rifle quite right with his injured arm, but he was still a dead-shot marksman. He fired again, hitting my neck. The force of it made my stance swing wider, but I gripped the lasso with two hands and kept devout to it.
"Ignore him, Ahusaka!" the Yeti shouted, eyes closed in pain. "Get the Piasa!"
A sinister, demonic voice filled the space around me. Almost like a snake hissing, but there were words beneath the trill. The demon possessing Otaktay was desperate not to lose its plaything. Trying to turn me too.
"Give in… Relinquish… You can be powerful too…"
It spoke and gave me chills. Hellish, awful chills. Now that I’d heard it, I couldn’t help but wonder who it was.
A hawk screeched. I spotted it just before talons slashed at my hands, desperate to pry them free of the rope. Losing purchase, I released with one hand to swipe at the bird. I got lucky and my fingers closed around its neck. Wings flapped wildly. It cried out, snapping with its beak but unable to make a connection. My grip on the Yeti loosened, and my feet began to drag.
Bird bones cracked as I had no choice but to squeeze. Its pained sounds transitioned to the distant cry of a man as the one Mukwooru had called Mind-drifter, and Otaktay had just called Ahusaka returned to his body. The suffering in his tone… the pain… I had no idea what to expect. Was it like when I Divined and experienced all those foul, awful moments right at the brink of another man's death?
"Why… are you… protecting him?" Otaktay rasped, his eyes granite. I could barely see his form, it withered so quickly within a whirlwind of frost and dust, between flesh and pure darkness.
"Nothing I do is for him!" I yelled back at the Yeti as the demon’s tempting persisted, a whisper that was somehow also loud enough to drown out everything around me.
"Don't you wish to be more than just a tool?"
I ground my teeth, trying to shut my ears, desperate to ignore the ethereal voice. The source of all this chaos.
“Show yourself, coward!” I barked.
"The White Throne has lost. The White Throne is lost."
With how intertwined Otaktay's soul was, breaking the possession was gonna kill him. There was no escaping that fact now. Rage had doomed him, as it dooms us all.
So, I went back to my chanting, losing myself in it. All the gunfire around me sounded like meek little ticks. There was only me, the taunts of whatever demon possessed Otaktay, and his host. I had him. I could almost taste Shar's satisfaction.
Then my lasso snapped. The shock of it sent me staggering back and the Yeti rolling in the opposite direction. The tomahawk-lady landed between us, weapon in hand. Her tan skin glistened with sweat and blood. She glared at me, eager for another fight.
"Now it ends, Łiga Ndeeń. The Piasa rises!"
She went to charge at me before stopping suddenly. A pinpoint of red spread across her chest like spilled ink. She slowly grasped at the wound, looking confused more than anything, before tipping over with a lifeless thud.
Dale aimed from a low ledge, his pistol smoking.
"Kill him!" Dale said, running toward me. "Kill him now, Crowley!"
Losing grip while so close to banishing the demon had me stunned, but I drew my silver-dusted knife from my boot. If bullets hadn't done the job by now, they weren't likely to. I'd exorcise this demon the old-fashioned way. A blade through the heart of his host first. The Yeti—Otaktay—was as weakened as I was, flailing about to find which way was up or down. This was the time.
Dale reached me and I used him to stand. He staggered but managed to hold me.
"We actually got them, Crowley," he said. "We got—" Half his head blew off, spraying the rock behind him with red mist. He didn't fall over. Was just stuck like that, grasping me.
Ahusaka aimed his marksmen rifle from the lowest part of the valley by the Piasa totem.
"You killed her!" he shrieked. He fired again, this one hitting Dale in the side and sending his corpse to the ground. A life traded for a life in this sick circle of death we call living. Pawn for pawn.
All the men shooting down from the ridge turned their attention to Ahusaka and forced him to quickly find cover. Bullets snapped and hissed. He must've been hard to see from up there with all the particulates swirling.
Otaktay and I caught each other's gazes as we came to—him from the power of the now inert lasso and me from watching a good man die. He growled. I think I growled too.
His blood-red eyes flitted between me, Dale, and the dying woman.
Like a volcano, he was about to erupt. But then, tomahawk-lady whispered something to him with her fading breath. I couldn't hear what it was in the chaos, but his monstrous features suddenly softened. He dropped to his knees and touched her forehead with his own.
Having no time for sentiment, I charged the exposed Yeti, knife ready to do my dirty work.
He acted like I wasn't even there, scooping up the woman's limp, dead body and bounding away, just like that. Landing beside Ahusaka, he conjured a dome of ice so even the young native couldn't shoot outward.
Ice chinked as bullets pounded into the shield, one after another, with no more ice reforming. The Yeti, it seemed, was too injured to summon any more.
I kept charging.
Otaktay regarded me with sad, lonesome eyes before he wrapped his arm around Ahusaka. After some protest, the Mind-drifter dropped his marksman rifle to grab the totem instead.
Otaktay took him, the totem, and their partner's corpse before he burst through the icy dome and cleared the quarry in a few bounding leaps. Together, they fled away from Revelation and into the badlands to the north.
The Frozen Trio was down to two.