“Cursed yourself to keep fighting even though the fight is over,” said Jack. “That’s rough.”

“What do you know about war?,” asked the Rider.

“I have done some things,” said Jack. “Not as bad as you, but I have fought for my country and killed people who didn’t like that. But this isn’t about me, it’s about you. You can’t keep coming down into a country that doesn’t exist any more killing everything in your path. That has to end.”

“How do you propose to stop me?,” said the Rider. “Your theatrics have only slowed me down. I can continue my ride at any point.”

“So you are going to take revenge on people who don’t know who you are?,” asked Jack.

“They deserve what I am going to give them,” said the Rider. He drew his sword. “So do you.”

“You don’t want to settle this peacefully?,” asked Jack. “I can give you eternal peace in the afterlife.”

“Why would I want that?,” said the Rider. “I would rather bathe in the blood of my enemies.”

Jack flicked the dial on his watch. He should have known that he couldn’t talk his way out of this. It was a good thing he had something that would handle the ghost on his list of personas. He pushed the button.

An angel appeared in the forest, wings spreading like fire in the sky. A giant fist came down and crushed the Rider and horse. The spirit retreated back to its crypt to be recalled later thanks to his curse.

The watch dinged and Jack returned to his normal body. He shook his head as he went over what he had found. He needed to break the curse.

He needed to let his watch recharge first.

Jack sat down and looked at the hole in the ground. He checked his watch. It was recharging faster than he thought it would. That meant the energy was flowing into the hole, like at the lake. He had to disrupt everything without letting the Rider come out and try to deal with him.

What’s the plan?

Jack knew he hadn’t destroyed the Rider for good. He hadn’t got the ding for quest completion. He knew the natural energy of the world was recharging the curse as fast as it could. He knew moving the rocks would draw the Rider out. And he needed something to stop the flow and end the curse to get rid of the Rider for good.

Could he do an exorcism with Brother Voodoo? Did he have someone on his watch with a blessing that did the same thing?

He felt like the Crypt put the Rider in suspended animation. Maybe he didn’t exist before he started trying to gather his army. How did he disrupt the flow to the rocks?

If he knocked down the platform, would that put a stop to things? The rocks would have to fall in a perfect straight line to set up the flow deeper in the cavern.

If he wanted to do that, what could he use?

He wondered if Nitro could blow the platform apart like Josie’s Human Bomb. Would that stop things? Letting everything fall into the dark seemed the best thing to do.

He knew he couldn’t move the rocks one at a time since they seemed to automatically trigger the Rider’s existence to defend their standing.

Maybe he could hex everything from up top.

Jack liked that thought. One hex on the platform might be enough to counter the spell the Rider had come up with to keep coming back to life to fight the invaders of his country. It seemed easy and doable. The only real problem was what happened if he was wrong.

He decided that he had to try. He couldn’t come up with anything better. He wished Josie was there. She would have a better idea than he did.

He decided to at least try. He couldn’t let this keep going on. Any invasion into a populated center would end in the deaths of hundreds, thousands, depending on the route the Rider took.

And the fact that he had already destroyed his own country spoke volumes about the damage done.

How many people knew about the old country that had been subsumed by Goshawk at the end of their war?

He needed to get the women moving south and hope they could do things on their own for a bit. If he failed, he didn’t want them to be the first victims of the new Hunt. He doubted they would return to normal when the Rider was finally put down again.

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Then he could try to hex everything and see what happened.

Avoiding responsibility was usually the way he liked to do things, and now here he was responsible for saving part of the world. He gave a mental hats off to the Reed Society for this.

Not many people could con someone into doing things for them to save themselves and others while they sat back and did nothing.

Unless they were rich.

Jack gathered himself together. He had to get to work. He could take a nap later.

He walked back to the wagons. A couple of the women were on guard. They regarded him with suspicion. He supposed he wouldn’t be trusting if some random guys dragged him out in the woods.

“Could you wake up your boss?,” asked Jack. “I think I have some bad news for her.”

“Is this about the giant that suddenly appeared and vanished?,” asked the guard.

“A little yes,” said Jack. “Saw that, did you?”

“The whole forest saw it,” said the guard. “The people at Hawk Ridge probably saw it.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Jack. “Maybe the next town down the road.”

“I’m here, Jack,” said the headwoman. She pulled her hair in a pony tail held by a knot. “What happened?”

“I had a talk with the Dark Rider,” said Jack. “I think I put a temporary stop to him, but he’s going to be back. I need you to move your camp down the road while I try to make sure I can exorcize him. I might not be able to do that before he grabs you guys up.”

“Do you think you can stop him?,” asked the head woman.

“I have no idea,” said Jack. “And I don’t want to risk all of you. You should be okay the rest of the night, but come sunrise, you should break camp and roll south as fast as you can.”

“I understand,” said the woman. She looked at the wagons, and animals. “What about you?”

“Either I save the day, or I go down like a chump,” said Jack. “I need to get some sleep before I try to come up with a solution to the problem.”

“You are more than welcome to sleep with us,” said the head woman. She waved at one of the wagons.

“I don’t think that will be good for either of us,” said Jack. “Be careful heading south. If I solve this, I’ll get you where you want to go.”

“What if you can’t?,” asked the guard.

“My partner will be irate and use me for batting practice,” said Jack. He swung his arms as an example of what he meant. The women winced.

“Now I’m going to sleep, and I need you to think about what you have to do in the morning,” said Jack. “Then I’m going to try and save the day.”

“If you can’t?,” asked the guard.

“Go east,” said Jack. “That should be okay unless he veers.”

“We will look for you, Jack,” said the head woman. “We should start cooking and getting the animals ready.”

Jack walked into the trees. He checked his watch out of habit, glad that it was full. He needed to recover from using the Angel. He needed to fix this one way, or the other, tomorrow. He needed someone with knowledge of magic other than Druid.

Maybe he should look up what Doc Strange could do in this situation. Maybe there was a medical component he could use.

He thought he could use the Angel as a last resort if he had to do that. One giant fist down that hole might be enough to blow things apart.

He called on Druid to get him a bed for the night. He vowed to be home for a night on his real bed that night. He was tired of sleeping out in the middle of the woods with grass as his blanket.

Tonight he was sleeping in his own bed, or know the reason why he couldn’t. The quest list dinged at him.

“Someone has a sense of humor,” said Jack. He settled in and set his internal alarm. He probably needed food. He could take care of that tomorrow. He supposed later today would be better.

Jack slept off his exhaustion and woke up slowly. The sun shown down on his bower. It was time to figure out what to do.

Jack stepped out on the road. He used Hawkeye and nodded at the wagons moving south. He didn’t know how long they had been moving, but they were away from the battlefield.

Now he had to do something about the Dark Rider before he caught up with the train and headed home.

The first thing he needed to do was consult everyone on his list he thought would be a magic user. After twenty minutes of this, he nodded at the information he had been able to gather.

The aptly named Magik had given him the most. He nodded at the conditions he had been able to sus out with her powers. The most obvious one was lifting the curse and moving the rocks so they didn’t gather energy. He didn’t have to move them far.

And he had the perfect persona for that if it worked like he thought it would.

Lifting the curse required more work with Brother Voodoo. He was the expert on ghosts and how to fight them. He drew the required symbols around the hole in the ground. He let his watch charge up as he went because he needed full power to do what he had to do.

He summoned the power and cast it down in the hole taking over the network that fed the Dark Rider. He felt something trying to stop him, but he chopped through it. As the watch ticked down, he yanked the curse up and rendered it to pieces before the Rider could come back.

Part one of the plan was done. The quest hadn’t cleared. That meant the Rider could keep coming back.

Jack called on Avalanche, a guy vibrating against the ground in his black and yellow Deadpool shirt. He realized that his power didn’t work the same. He couldn’t cause rock to flow like water.

Instead he was the avalanche.

He poured down in the sinkhole as a wave of rocks, pushing the markers out of the way and off the platform. They fell into the darkness below as he piled more of his new body on the ledge. He pulled himself on the platform and let the persona go.

He became the Scarlet Witch and hexed the crypt, ripping it to shreds with his power. That finally caused the mental ding he was waiting to get. He collapsed the tomb with a wave of his hand.

He checked his watch. He had a couple of minutes. He became the Falcon and flew out of the hole. He landed on the road and became normal long enough to switch to Storm to fill the hole with water from the giant rain cloud he became. He lost power and fell on the edge of his shallow lake.

He waited until he was at full power before becoming Storm again and raining on the hole until it was full. He lost power as he dropped down to the road. The water roiled for a moment as the wind died down.

Time for him to catch up with the train to let them know he was headed back to Hawk Ridge, and they should decide what they wanted before meeting up with him at the Silver Coin.