Teven grabbed ahold of Van, dragging him from DaFaca's fallen Ouroboros blade. "Leave it, before it blows us apart."

Van pulled away from Teven as a low rumble began to shake the ground. "The thing hurt me but the skinwalkers will be upon us soon enough." He pointed at the diableros who approached the weapon with caution. "There's no way for us to escape."

Teven shrugged. "Not yet. And it didn't appear so in the Azov, but we're here, we survived."

The rumble grew, deep like distant thunder.

Van sat up. "We survived because we dared. Because of the magic of the wraiths." Van placed his free hand on Teven's. "I experienced something during the diablero's possession of my mind. It didn't fade away, I was bound to it, learned what it knew as it learned what I knew."

The resonant vibration rose through their feet and in their bellies.

Van reached out into the pulse of air emanating from the curious crystalline weapon. "Fragmented memories of both, but intense images like the battle at Azov against the Krasnodar Cossacks. The wraiths killing our shipmates and landing parties. We survived because we embraced the magic."

Teven released Van. "But you hate magic because of Azov."

Van nodded. "Hate is driven by fear and both lead to suffering." He stepped toward the vibrating weapon. His hair and flesh rippled in the force of the thunderous atmosphere around the blade. He forced his hand out toward the hilt. "Happiness is the avoidance of suffering and we came here in the pursuit of happiness, so I'll be damned if these bastards rob us of that dream!"

The rumble grew into a tremendous roar, the air and ground so disturbed by DaFaca's weapon, Van and Teven unaware of the arrival of a cavalry unit of Caddites led by the diableros' coal-black horses two miles out, obscured behind Nico and the diableros stalking toward the two friends with weapons raised.

*

Christian stood atop the highest point of the crimson outcropping with Teven's telescope to his eye. He watched as two vaqueros gathered water from melting patches of snow a mile to the northwest. Suspicious and cautious about ambush by the diableros, he insisted on watching their every move as they sought out water sources away from the group. Telescope held firm to his eye, Christian spoke as he continued to watch the vaqueros. "So how is it you and your cousins know so much about the Darkness?"

Sende sighed.

"Well? Was Day Long right to be suspicious?

Hernan bolted forward, restrained by Sende. "How many times must we make it clear to you?"

"Hernan, basta. Marcos, te importa?" Sende asked, but Christian did not see Marcos' reaction, as Sende continued. "My cousin Marcos left farming and entered a thieves guild as a child. Many who learn of the Darkness believe it to be nothing more than a guild or highly organized gang."

Christian nodded. The distant vaqueros now on their way back, he continued to watch through the telescope.

"But they are, like the darkness, endless and full of mystery."

Christian shifted his feet. A moment's silence passed.

"Juan found Marcos and brought him back to the family to serve as Rurales against cowboy gangs like the Croshans and other rustlers who entered Mexico to steal cattle and drive them north to sell."

The vaqueros rode at a steady gallop back to the outcropping and Christian surveyed the flat plain east and west of them. Satisfied it was clear, he sat and nodded at Marcos, who sat across from them among his fellow drovers. "Turned your life around, eh Marcos."

Marcos kept his usual, aloof, silence.

Sende smiled between the two. "Juan also fought against the Comanche when he was our age. They have started raiding south again with the War of the States drawing away American troops."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Yeah, like those Comanche what got killed by the skinwalkers. Shifter bastards who took my brother an' Van."

Sende nodded. "This is how Day Long became familiar with my family."

Christian leaned forward with interest. "Oh? An answer to a curious mystery about Señor Loco?"

"Juan and Marcos fought beside another group of Rurales, the Mascogo forces who drive back Indian raids for Mexico in return for citizenship and land to settle."

Disappointed, Christian waved his hand around. "What's that got to do with witches and shapeshifters?"

Sende shook her head. "The Comanche, Apache, and Navajo, they are not true Escuridado. The people of the Escuridado emerged from the Third World at the dawn of the Age of Motion. We live in this Age and it is ruled by Death."

"Death? You mean the Escuridon, uhh, the Darkness?"

She waved off the wary eyes of Marcos and the vaqueros. "No. Both the Escuridon and the Escuridado are ‘the people of the darkness'. The Escuridon, however, enforce the will of the Tezca Lords."

"What are they?"

Hernan leaned forward. "Some say they are the elder lords of the Ancients. Others say they are gods of the Underworld."

Christian sighed heavily, leaned back, and stared out over the plain at the returning vaqueros as they approached.

*

Struck by the sudden awareness of the sweat on his body, Van grunted through clenched teeth as he closed his hand around the hilt of DaFaca's Ouroboros blade. He cried out in pain as a sharp, cold impact stung his arm. His body weakened and quivered with the pain before his arm went numb with an abruptness that sent a chill through his shoulders and chest. Fingers of lightning played along his hand and forearm as his numb skin blackened, hardened and split. The black, rock-like growth continued to his elbow, forming a cracked ebony armor that very much resembled a gauntlet of rock. He placed his left hand around the hilt, the pain sudden and abrupt, he lost sensation as the molten stone erupted and hardened around his forearm.

A moment passed as he caught his breath, his body sore and weak. Studying the uncanny weapon, he marveled at its exotic nature. The unique blade was more an enormous handle for its unseen blades of distorted reality. Black such that light seemed unable to escape it, which formed a dark double image haze with its movement. At its heart, an x-like bucket guard encircled a two-handed hilt, and on each end were two rough and cracked crystal cones. Tornado-like vertices of distorted air extended from the pointed tips of the jagged cones, like mirage waves over the hot desert floor in summer, and unlike the dark haze around the body of the weapon.

The double-bladed hilt, reminded Van of the haladie of India, and the madu of the ancient fakirs. Yet this cosmic weapon was far older than either of the mortal blades and the weapons that influenced the haladie.

Realization hit him as he recalled his trip through the pueblo ruins - this weapon was the symbol of the x-man depicted on the rock face.

"Van!" Teven slashed through the arm of a diablero with a deft parry of the polished silver ash blade to avoid the lethal saw-toothed edge of the creature's macuahuitl. Focused on Nico and his diableros, Teven saw past them to the true source of the thunderous rumbling. Four-dozen or more horsemen galloped in from the south east behind the unnatural ebony horses of the diableros.

"Van, riders."

Van looked up at a large force of Caddite cavalry thundering towards them from the south east. He hefted and spun the weapon, surprised by its light weight in comparison to its seven foot length and crystalline structure. "I think this will help."

Teven felt the pulse of the weapon thrum though his body, a nausea grew up from his crotch, his voice distorted. "I'm not sure of that."

Van grinned, his lips and cheeks rippled in the power of the Ouroboros blade, his hair flowed in waves, his voice warbled. "Then we will destroy as many of these abominations as we can."

Teven glanced at DaFaca's silver ash blade and shrugged. Like brothers, he and Van, if they died together and defended the comatose Juan Semos the best they could, he honored his family and left Jessica the widow of a resolute man.

*

As the large force of Caddite cavalry reined in around the diableros, Vargos squeezed DaFaca with her tentacles, pulling him close. "My Caddite allies will be interested in…learning from you. Studying you, while I unlock the power of those ancient souls and the Ouroboros blades."

DaFaca coughed up blood, his face contorted, yet he restrained the demonic force within him, allowing it to sustain him through his wounds. As his grip on Vargos' stolen Ouroboros blade weakened, he continued to focus on the protective warding of the weapon, attempting to bind himself to the weapon. Unable to activate its dimensional sheath, where Watchers stored their weapons, he chose instead, to deactivate the usurped blade. Vargos didn't appear to have fully activated the weapon and DaFaca found he couldn't lock her out. His binding failed, he felt the link to his own weapon waning as well. This drew his attention to Van, before the thunderous roar of cavalry intensified and a force of fifty Mascogo irregulars, led by Day Long and Nathan, swept in from the south west, still two miles from the mixed diablero and Caddite half-troop of mounted troopers.

As the supernatural horses of the diableros galloped north and clear of the group, the Caddite horsemen deployed into lines of battle, the blades of their sabers glinting in the bright afternoon sun. With a shared moment between the Caddite commander and Vargos, the Caddites charged, headed straight for the Mascogo force.