"Oh lord, I'm not good with planning," The stick in his hand jumped between one and the other. He drew a circle and two stick figures in the sand, they were meant to be Floyd and himself. But looking down, he saw they were both too alike, and wondered who's who again?

He cleared the sand with his foot and scratched his head.

"I just don't know what to do," Dion said.

Thaddeus sat in a little plastic chair, with his white plastic table in front of him and the slew of bullets laid out. He polished them one by one.

"Planning doesn't come naturally to you, does it?" Thaddeus asked.

"No, Apollo is the one who plans. I just...kind of...you ever heard of jazz?"

He leaned his head to the side and rolled his eyes.

"Who hasn't?" He asked.

"Well, I don't know man," Dion said. "The point is, I just free-jazz everything. You know? If it feels good, I do it. It's all instinctual,"

"Then keep doing that? You're asking the wrong guy how to fight," Thaddeus said. "I c-c-couldn't fight my way out of a paper bag,"

Dion sighed.

"The problem is, I don't think 'jazzing' it out has got me anywhere. Last time I did that, I got stabbed in the abdomen," He said. "I need to figure out a way to beat him,"

"And here I thought I was the one doing the figuring out for you," Thaddeus laid down the bullet flat side down on the plastic table. Behind them was the van and even further behind was a small market hub. The wind blew indifferently, dragging dirt and rubble from the broken black parking lot. The vending machines were lightless. The soda stands and quarter toy-machines seemed so outdated that they were still selling Pepsi Crystal. The broken concrete floors led to a sandy lot where small creosote brushes grew (if it could even grow in this aridity). The line of stores, the compilation of a; laundromat, a tax-reviewer, noodle shop, and vinyl record shop, were void of any kind of employee movement. Let alone, actual customer movement.

It looked like the fading memory of a dying amnesiac. With each day removing some of the character and detail. The signs were withering. The bricks, corroded. The streets worsened, slowly devolving to the flat desert lands they hailed from.

Dion stood on his own little island of sand, he walked up towards the van. The broken asphalt rolled beneath his feet and skidded some paces off. Thaddeus bagged the bullets.

"I've restocked your dragon breath. You've got half a dozen of those," He said.

"What about the other two?" Dion asked.

"C-c-considering how quickly you wanted them, I could only give you one of each," He said. "And this green one? Be c-c-careful,"

"One of each? Jesus," He grabbed the bag and throw it straight into his jacket. It disappeared into the void.

"Where are you going to start looking for him?" Thaddeus asked.

"Who knows," Dion said. "Back where I first fought him?"

"That's not smart," Thaddeus mumbled. "Why are you even doing t-t-this? Can't you just hide until it's all over?"

"Maybe," Dion said. "Maybe I could go back to Apollo and convince him to take Aenea, and we can run and hide,"

Dion wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"But that wouldn't avenge everyone Floyd's killed, would it?" He asked. "And it wouldn't redeem me for letting them die, would it? I guess I want to fight him as much as he does,"

The following silence was palpable. That morose, almost eerie quiet before violence. And Dion didn't mean to seem too rude or to seem unconcerned with Thaddeus. But his face wore his anger well, the focus that comes before a fight. He looked up to where the sun had fallen, and the blood of the evening was beginning to go cold. Running from that quick-fall of dark.

"Good luck," Thaddeus said.

"I don't really believe in luck," Dion said. He started his way out, onto the street and looking for the closest rooftop. He put on his mask. The empty streets carried the sounds of drunkards and wife-beaters in the air, the choir of the impoverished. The lights went off one by one, at a dreadfully quick pace. It's like they knew.

Knew what?

Dion looked up, only a few steps outside the parking lot.

Like a damn flare, shot straight in the sky. A blue comet. A particular shade of blue, particular to Dion's pistols. Someone shot his gun. High up, the bullet rode the skyline and descended to some corner of the city.

"Is that normal?" Thaddeus came up behind him. He took out his cellphone and started clicking.

"That's westbound. I can't really tell how far. But if I had to guess? A few miles, eight? Maybe ten?" He searched through his cellphone, swiping and nervously tapping. "There's a refinery in that direction,"

"Refinery?" Dion asked.

"A foundry. They used to work with steel here before the casino, that's how Thomas Wolfe made his riches actually, precious metals and gasoline. After an accident...and when the wells ran dry, he shifted his focus to gambling," he said. "There's a foundry over there. It's not running or anything, but it's still kept around. I guess no one's demolished it yet,"

"That'd be a good spot to kill each other, wouldn't it be?" Dion asked. "If someone was there, that is,"

"Yeah, if someone was there," They looked at each other, nodding their heads.

"It's pretty isolated, there's a couple walls of gates to keep most people away, cops too," Thaddeus rubbed his chin. "B-b-but he'd also know the terrain better than you, I'm pretty sure,"

"I don't think that's going to stop me," Dion took a step up. He walked across the street, Thaddeus nervously followed.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"Do you know what you're going to do when you find him?"

"Try to kill him, of course," Dion stuck his hand into the red brick wall and climbed up.

"D-d-don't tell me that," Thaddeus said. And near the top, Dion heard the shrill voice once more;

"And be careful with the green one!" Thaddeus screamed, "It'll burn you good if you let it touch you,"

♠

I've come all this way, and I still don't know what to do.

He swayed left and right, looking for balance. At the edge of the roof, looking down, his stomach turned. He shook it off and walked down a steel pipe that ran across the roof. He stopped, and looked down. A small, beveled window pane. He dropped down, the thump scared him.

"Darn it," He whispered. He opened the pane a bit more, the dirty air slowly came out. The specs of dirt were obvious in the moonlight. They made him cough.

And coughing made his stomach turn again. All noises did.

I can't even tell the difference between excitement and fear anymore, they're both the same things. He stuck his head inside and looked side to side. And he sighed. He felt it swelling, all guilt and all anger and all urge to flee, swelling in his heart. Like his chest was about to explode. I could run, I could gun. But they only got me so far. And I need to be more. Much, much more.

His abdomen burned again. Astyanax had done him in once. Floyd had done it twice. It felt a scar ripped open, only to bleed again. A wound that never heals.

Inside, across one of the dark walls, the logo was painted green. It read; "Wolfe and Co."

The rest of the foundry wasn't nearly as well kept as the paint. The stone buckets that carried magma from one end of a line to another were tipped over, fallen from their hooks and chains. Their broken pieces littered the floor. Tiles, steel, concrete all cracked with age and within these cracks wandered centipedes and scorpions. In the silence of the room, Dion could hear them crawl.

There were factory lines that carried the precious metals and dumping deposits. Rocks with ores, veined and strangely luminous in the moonlight glowed atop broken treadmills.

Everything was broken. Abandoned. Ghostly, in a sense, as if that abandonment had been so immediate that it had left a vacuum that only ruin could fill.

He slunk his body inside, hanging by his hands before he could find footing on a pipe. It was hollow, stepping on it made the rust whine.

His head dragged from one end to another.

It's huge, and he could be anywhere,

Anywhere from the smelting stations to the refinery, to the damn train tracks, from the train tracks to the loading trucks. Some of those tr trucks were still here, carrying on their rears beams of steels and rods of copper.

He looked mainly at the trucks and the shipping area. The ceiling was charred black and the wood and steel dangled from their nails, weak and limp. He wandered a bit more, inching closer down the pipeline. When he heard a creak, he withdrew his leg.

Collapsed warehouse shelves, strange waves of cooled magma.

He scratched his beard.

The image formed clearly in his head. The people struggling to escape a growing fire, trying to run from magma. The machinery all failing and falling and exploding, wires and buttons and levers blowing off like celebratory corks. People trapped underneath the wooden columns. God. The weight, so intense as to almost sever them in half. A truck, desperate and afraid, crashing into another truck and sealing the garage doors with an engine fire. The people, covering their faces. Explosions, death everywhere. The trapped people, suffocating. The living - desperate - rushing for clogged doors.

He dropped down to a metal beam. It wobbled under his weight. And from there, he jumped onto a metal catwalk. The offices were right below him. Graffiti filled the exploded room. Bottles, cigarettes, needles were all blended with the charred remains of furniture...and other...things.

He walked down the metal runway, looking for the stairs. He heard a gasp somewhere, and it could have been anywhere given the size of the foundry. And perhaps it was divination, but he turned to look at the center of the foundry.

Of course, he was at the center of it all.

"It was a stupid accident," Floyd said, his body outline was all Dion could see. "Human error. A propane tank powering one of the forklifts exploded. Apparently, the tank was leaking, and someone was smoking. That's one and one, enough for a disaster. The smoker, a Mr. Wayne, was the first to die. Not the only one, just the one who went easiest. The rest - not so much,"

Floyd moved around in the shadows he dwelled in. And the sounds made Dion's handshake. Sounds of aching bones popping, the sound of crawling like the centipede.

"It was a mistake. One that made father reconsider everything. He bought the casino a few years later and shut this place down even sooner than that,"

Dion loaded his gun. Five normal rounds, the final being that dragon breath of his. It was weighty compared to the other rounds.

"Human error - the greatest killer of all, no?" Floyd said. "Then what a sad thing that so many of us make so many mistakes. How much do you think, we, individually kill? Perhaps not obviously as say, disease or planetary catastrophe, but we do kill. Don't we? Quickly, sometimes. Slowly, other times,"

Dion ran into a shadow, he felt his heart rate pulse rapidly. His breaths hastened. His pupils flashed red with a blink of his eye.

"Sometimes we make mistakes and don't realize them until they've already hurt us. Or worse, hurt the ones we love," The dirt dragged beneath Floyd. "I've made too many mistakes to count, and I've tried even more times to fix them. Tell me, Vicar, do you have regrets too?"

He felt the cold wall behind him. His posture straightened. And with a deep breath, Dion tried.

"It's not too late, Floyd. You can still leave," Dion said. "Repent for the people you've killed, help their families. You can do so much and go so far with your resources. It'd be a better use of your life than this, I wouldn't hunt you down if you promised me that,"

"You wouldn't? You blew my sister's head off," The shadow moved. A crystal flew past Dion's face. Blood slid down his cheeks. "But let's entertain your proposal. So I leave, I take Luanne and go. Then what? I attacked a Vicar. I killed dozens, no doubt your people would have me killed. Maybe not by you but by another. Is that not protocol? Is that not what your church does?"

"I killed your sister because she was about to stab Aenea, your other sister," Dion said. He ran from his spot, going down some stairs and hiding behind a smelter. His back touched the rough machinery, the knobs, and the levers. They felt like small hands as they scratched him.

All throughout the foundry, the chains rattled. They dragged, some fell. Glass shattered below something that did not sound like a footstep, something that sounded almost like a hoof and almost like a paw. Something rough, neither leather nor flesh.

"She did what she did for family," Floyd screamed. "You do what you do for vanity,"

The words stung. Much like the blade in his abdomen, much like any kind of injury.

"What do you know about Aenea or me? What do you know about anything that's going on?" Dion asked. "You're killing me because I killed your sister, fine. But to say she picked up the blade for family? Don't be so stupid, think,"

"It doesn't matter. The intention does not matter. Not to me. Not anymore, let the philosophers wrestle intention. I see actions," Floyd appeared. He hugged the floor, with a deep and slow crawl. Limbs extended out, his feet (were they even feet?) were blackened with blood, calloused. The glass stuck to his limbs, though did not seem to even penetrate let alone pain him. "Nothing matters but the action. Nothing matters but the fact that my sister died and if I don't kill you, I won't have any other sisters left,"

Dion struggled to find breath, it felt like drowning in fear. His head looked up as Floyd stood. And Dion didn't know when it would stop, when he'd be able to rest his neck, because Floyd kept growing, it seemed, until his figure covered the panes of broken glass on the ceiling and the moonlight. He must have been twice Dion's size. Thin. Angular, sharp, bony.

"What happened to you?" Dion asked.

A short day, that was it. That's all it had been, one short day. But what he saw was no natural evolution, no metamorphosis. What he saw was an abomination of black magicks and the steroid of wrath manifest; ungodliness.

Monster and man. Floyd's neck extended out some two feet. At the end of the line was his face, small, and lingering in the air. He was hunched, and his skull angled to the side as if curious. His green eyes bled his toxic blood, and his veins glowed that same toxic green. As if he was all radioactive, like the natural fission reaction of his rage.

"I was just a man who loved wrongly," Floyd's small voice was off-putting. Dion flinched, he took a step back. The chains rattled as he brushed against them. Then he touched a wall, he pointed the gun in front of him.

Floyd approached, voice morphed and deranged and hysterical almost.

"But that's the unfortunate part, isn't it, Vicar?" His body fell. He crawled towards Dion. "Wrong or right - we always do what we do for love,"

The black crystals grew out from the floor. The air snapped, and Dion dodged.