“Our world is not so different from the one before. Friends can turn to enemies, and only through exercising violence do we find ourselves again at peace. If we rezzers can be faulted for anything, it’s that we do so in the blink of an eye.”
–Hades, “Some Philosophical Shit”. 4 Years After.
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From dictator to revolutionary. What a week this has been.
Leah studied her allies. Like her friends up North, the Hunters in El Dorado wore many different outfits. Jackets and coats, ponchos and suits, tunics and dresses. They all had their own choice of weapons too, ranging from throwing knives to automatic shotguns. But what made them such a unique fighting force were the skull-shaped masks, all decorated with flowers and vines, each with vibrant colors. Red, teal, orange, violet. The more flamboyant, the better.
Meanwhile, Leah was alone as she sharpened a combat knife in the corner of the hotel lobby they’d taken as their temporary base of operations.
Shit had really hit the fan down here. Apparently, Mateo – or “Brother Mateo” as he’d really been known – had shown up with a small group maybe three or four months back. Unlike Pandemonium, there were fewer regulations against literature down here, and plenty of folks had developed their own religious inklings as a result. Those became the first marks. Next thing anyone knew, a bunch of “Hermanos” and “Hermanas” were running around. Their numbers exploded from there, and once they got a hold of Santiago and his team, it was game over.
Even the Hunters fought alongside the Beholders now. Of the seventy that served as El Dorado’s primary defense, only twenty were still with Flamingo. Some were full Hermanos, while the rest followed Santiago’s commands without question, lest they get thrown into the pool and be brainwashed themselves. Not that it saved them for long. From what she’d learned, more Beholders were getting made by the day, often under the flimsiest pretense of “stopping heresy.”
Leah sighed. A group of twenty was all they had to undo this mess, along with herself. Twenty-one Hunters against an outpost of thousands. How the hell were they going to pull this off?
At least she was no longer naked. As chance would have it, one of the surviving Hunters happened to be about her size and had plenty of clothes to spare. The vintage look wasn’t exactly her speed, but Leah adapted well enough. In the end, she’d found a black and red Gothic dress with a skirt that neither tangled up her knees nor dragged a mile behind. There were even skulls decorated along its length. With the wide-brimmed sombrero that sat above – a necessity to keep others from seeing her bone-white skin and distinctive Mark – she looked like a real El Dorado Hunter.
Wearing the giant hat made her wonder… Did I have one of these when I first came down here? That’d explain the shared memory from the locals, but she couldn’t say for sure. Hollowing was a bitch.
Flamingo closed in, a wire hanging from the earbud where his guitar music blared. As he’d reminded her, playing flamenco before a fight helped prime his muscles to move at their maximum speed, though Leah was convinced that he just liked to be dramatic.
“I do not think that knife could be more sharp if you try,” Flamingo said with a tilt of his top hat.
She twirled it in her hand, watching as the light danced on its edge before scraping another chink away. “I can do better.”
“How are you feel, senora?”
“Still not great. I think I got spared the worst of rehollowing, but I’ve just been… Off.”
He stared deep. “You think it is the Lord?”
Blessed be His name. Leah buried her face in her palm. She didn’t think those words. Not by choice. They just appeared in her mind the second she heard His name. Her hand instinctively stroked her scarf, but her fingers graced nothing but her exposed flesh and teeth. She buried the tears before they grew.
“He not real,” Flamingo said. “You say so yourself.”
“Except that He is!” she snapped. “Don’t you fucking get it!?”
The others were watching her now. Even behind the skull-shaped masks, she could feel the fucking pity leaking out. But the moment she made eye contact, they each turned away.
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Leah dipped her sombrero low. “I get that they were only reading from a book, but it’s more than that. There’s another power out there. Something I don’t understand.” She closed her eyes, feeling the Lord’s presence, even here. “I can’t explain it, Flamingo. Just… Trust me. We have to stop them.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder. “We will, senora. We have you for hope. You are only one to survive baptism and not lose yourself.”
You sure about that? It sure as fuck didn’t feel that way. “Let’s talk about something else.” Leah needed to get her mind off this subject. Now. “What’s with the masks, anyway?”
He laughed. “I can try explain, but my English not much good.”
“You’ve been doing fine so far.”
“Do you know of Día de los Muertos?”
“Memory’s been fucked lately, Flamingo, so maybe just give me the full rundown anyway.”
“It is ‘Day of the Dead’ in your tongue… A day in old world celebration when the spirits of the dead get to walk the world again.”
“Sounds a lot like the Hollowing.”
“Sí, senora. They believe in this tradition for many years before, but Día de los Muertos did not become true until the Hollowing. Humans had their lives, and then they die, and we were born, to walk these lands in their place. Like the celebration before, there is much beauty in that.”
Leah chuckled. “We are rotting corpses that feast on the flesh of the living, Flamingo. I wouldn’t exactly describe that as beautiful.”
“But it is true! This is a world driven by cycle of life and death. Creatures are born, they live, and they die, and new creatures are born from their death.” He plucked a flower growing from a crack in the wall behind and stroked its white petals. “You would say this plant is beautiful, no? Consider that it would not have lived if this hotel did not die. Only through its death could there be life for flower and vine.”
“Fair point.”
His red eyes twinkled behind the mask. “That is why we wear these masks. As Hunters, we have most responsibility to Día de los Muertos. We go through dead world to bring back life to other rezzer. The cycle must always continue.”
Leah mulled the thought. “We are the harbingers of death, sent to usher in new life?”
“Sí, senora Leah. That is what we do.”
She held the white-petaled flower herself. No one had ever articulated Hunting this way. Up North, they were just mercenaries who fought for the highest bidder. Here, Flamingo’s description practically elevated them to gods.
As she examined the flower, Leah wondered where in this cycle she resided. Was she like them in helping to maintain their race, or had her arrogance doomed them all? It wasn’t lost on her that she’d been asleep at the wheel while the Beholders rose in power.
“You made this possible,” Flamingo said. “Hades was strong, but you have always been first Hunter. We would not be able to bring true honor to Día de los Muertos if you no bring this gift to our land. Do not forget this.”
Leah’s eyes watered again. She’d had every fucking chance to take Abraham out early, but she let the moment slip, convinced that someone like him could never beat her. Now, there was no telling how long it’d be before Pandemonium fell under his spell, like the people in this country.
And yet, it did not seem to matter to these guys. Leah studied the Hunters of El Dorado with fresh eyes. They weren’t pitying her. Far from it. She was being revered. Leah was the Godmother of their craft, sent to them in their city’s most dire hour of need. They gave her distance purely out of respect.
“Thank you, Flamingo,” she whispered. “I needed to hear that.”
“It is you to thank. I had only ten amigos before you arrive.” He looked around the room himself. “Still does not feel enough. We have you, but they have armored trucks and machine guns.”
Leah nodded. “Anything in that convoy will eviscerate us as soon as it gets a lock. We decked them out with enough firepower to destroy groups twice our size. You don’t travel this far with anything less.” She scoffed. “And now the Beholders have them. What a fucking joke.”
“Sí. I do not think we can win without those trucks.”
“Maybe… Or maybe not.” She surveyed the room of desperate Hunters and thought through the options. Could that work? It has to.
“You have plan?” Flamingo asked.
“Yes.” She stood up and looked out the window. Even this far outside El Dorado, she could make out the spires of the parish, where Santiago and his friends were based.
“What will we do?”
“Exactly what I told my people in the first place.” She clenched her fists. “We’re going to burn that place down.”