Cobo was deep, deep inside a forest. The trees were tall, smooth pillars of black and grey, nearly identical to the ones he had encountered in his long trek east.
But unlike those trees, which had twitched and shivered the moment you turned your back, these ones stood perfectly still regardless of how much attention he was giving them. He would have thought them dead, if not for the full crowns heavy with leaves hanging far overhead.
It wasn’t just the trees playing dead, either; the entire forest was still and silent. Not empty – there were things moving around in the distance, hiding or fleeing before he could identify them – but it was like the landscape was holding its breath, hoping for him to pass by without noticing it.
The only thing that held any life at all was the scent of blood on the wind. He had been following it for… hours, maybe. Years? Forever?
Not important. What mattered was that the smell was, at long last, becoming thicker. He turned past tree after tree, the forest growing denser as the plants crowded around each other, only a narrow gravel path winding through the brush. It’s thick as jelly. Any moment now…
He turned the last corner, knowing it was the last even before the open space came into view, and stepped into the clearing.
Two beasts were there, one crouched over the other. They were identical; long canine snouts beneath bright white-ringed eyes, fur the color of long-dead wood. Shaped like men, vaguely, but even from a distance there was something bestial in them that stood out to his eye. They wore clothing, black fabric smoother than any Cobo had ever seen before, though the one on the ground’s was torn and caked in blood.
The crouching one, the hunter, lifted its snout from the other’s clawed-open abdomen. It opened its mouth, exposing startlingly flat teeth for such a predatory skull.
“You’re here.”
The thought of drawing his gun entered his mind, but it was immediately overpowered by a sense of peace. For whatever reason, all his instincts were telling him that the thing in front of him was perfectly safe.
“I am here.” A pause. “Where’s here?” He could remember that he had been somewhere else before, but the specifics were hazy and far away.
“The dark wood. Death,” the beast replied. A shudder ran down its body – both its bodies; the one that was being eaten and the one that was eating.
“I’m dead?” Already? No, it’s too soon, I can’t… I haven’t done enough. It’s lying.
“No.” The beast reached down and pried a rib free with one sharp-nailed hand, its other self not reacting to the damage at all – it just stared at Cobo, its chest gently rising and falling. “You aren’t dead yet.”
I’m not dead? He tightened his jaw, feeling the pressure as his teeth locked together. No, of course not. That would be stupid. “Are you dead?”
Another shudder. “Yes.” It put the bone in its mouth, gnawing almost desperately. Its teeth weren’t at all up to the task; they could barely do anything to the hard bone.
Suddenly, fear spiked in Cobo’s chest. Not of the beast, at least not directly, but rather of what the beast had been when it was alive – here was something that had been a proud warrior, reduced to… whatever this was. I feel like if I stay here, the same thing will happen to me.
He turned, but rather than the narrow gravel path he had come down, there was only a solid wall of trees and undergrowth. He whirled back around, drawing his Junk pistol in a smooth motion. “Is this an ambush? Who are you, what do you want?”
The beast twitched, muscles spasming is its twin looked on serenely. “I am…” It made a sound from the top of its throat, halfway between a sob and a dog’s whine. “I was told to give you a message. To wait here, until you arrive. It was so long ago…”
As the hunter writhed, the prey with its splayed guts opened its mouth for the first time. “Remember the stone,” it spoke in a whisper. “When the time comes, you’ll know what it’s for.”
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Something cold as ice splashed his face and neck. Instantly he was wide awake, the fever dream already receding in his memory as he reflexively inhaled.
Water went up his nose. It felt putrid, wrong in a way he couldn’t describe – it certainly didn’t seem off to his tongue, didn’t taste or smell any different from normal, pure water. But there was something in him that recoiled, as though he had stuck his head in a latrine.
He swallowed it anyway; water was water. “[Blah! What the fuck?]” He exhaled with a snort, the moisture expelled from his face becoming steam when it touched the ground – but not mid-air, which was a big improvement compared to how it was yesterday.
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“[The Scorpion sees.]” The mostly-a-sentence issued from a figure crouching above him, face slightly obscured by shadows and hair. His mind conjured a long muzzle and grey fur for a moment as the dream-dregs passed through him, but then he blinked and it was just a man – albeit a fairly ugly one. Actually, he kind of looks like he has a muzzle if I look from the right angle. Was that what I was dreaming about?
Shaking off the thought, he put together the seemingly nonsense words into something intelligible. “[Stingy saw something?]”
The man’s face looked uncertain for a moment, before he shrugged and nodded. He opened his mouth, but though his lips formed a handful of alien words all that came through was a vaguely affirmative grunt.
This is the shittiest telepathy ever. We might as well be making faces at each other. But if what the man said was translated even slightly accurately, it was a good thing he had woken him up. Cobo grunted back, then manoeuvred himself up into a crawling position.
The sled had changed a lot over the course of the last day. Instead of being a wood platform with a few barrels and a rope, it was now a wood platform with a few barrels and a rope… which had a little ice castle built over the top of it.
Castle probably wasn’t the right word, but if there was a better one Cobo didn’t know it. He stuck his head out the front air-hole, wincing at the light, and took in Stingy’s muscled back.
“Hey Stingy, I’m awake. You see something?”
The rhythmic motion of the sled faltered as her head turned. “Oh, hey Cobo. Not quite saw, but…” She gestured with her chin. “You feel that?”
I feel..? His brows came together as he scented the air, craning his neck around at the same time to take in the horizon. There’s… Oh. Now that he had stopped for a second, he was amazed he hadn’t noticed it earlier. “Is that Junk Dog?” No, there’s too much. Even for him. “Is that Big Joe?”
Stingy answered with a shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine. There’s some other stuff underneath too, I think? It’s all mixed together and drowning itself out, but it’s probably something.”
She turned back, and he kept looking at different bits of the horizon, trying to spot a pair of massive feet coming towards them. It was absolutely dumb – they would feel Joe’s footsteps long before he was anywhere near visible – but there wasn’t exactly much else to do with his time anyway. Just sand. Sky’s a funny colour, but at least the clouds are where they should be.
They were still heading west, though their angle had skewed more to the north. Unless their compass was fucked – not impossible given all the weird bullshit going on, but whatever – they should hit the lowlands road and get within sight of the Junk Pit before going further up towards the no-man’s land between swamp and mountains.
Yesterday, that route would have been an absolutely suicidal move. They hadn’t had nearly enough water to swing around; their only hope was running into warriors they could loot or join up with, hence going straight for the Pit.
But today, they had a secret weapon: a weirdo foreigner who could seemingly spin infinite water out of thin air. Shitty energy-depleted water, but still – water.
And if his story isn’t entirely bullshit – and if I’m understanding it at all how he’s telling it – he shouldn’t be too bad in a fight, either. So there was a good chance they’d have meat, too, not even including the stuff he had brought.
A source of hydration, another pair of hands, and maybe a little bit of scrambled info about Lu on the side. Yeah. For the first time in a while, things were looking pretty okay.
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Bull felt his teeth grind together as the alien woman’s speech caught his ears. Even through the ice, it was like someone was trying to carve a glass sculpture with a rusty sword – and his shield didn’t protect him from it at all, at least as far of the headache was concerned. Lu had that sound shield, right? Should have memorised the spellform when I had the chance.
Well, no point whining about it now. The scruffy alien – he was nine-tenths of the way to certain it was Lu’s student, Cobo, for all that the coincidence seemed heinously lucky – pulled his head back in, blinking from the sky that had been shining brightly for about half a day now.
“[What’s happening?]”
Cobo’s jaw worked, before he shrugged. Lot of those going around. “[Nothing much. Might die.]” He flashed a grin. “[Like always.]”
Bull snorted. “[Yeah, that’s about right.]”
They lapsed into silence, one that was wasn’t friendly, but neither was it unpleasant. He didn’t really know how to feel about his new… companions, yet. It just seemed too much of a stretch that he happened to run into two people Lu had met, out in the middle of the endless desert.
Feels like I’m being jerked around on a leash.
At least the pair themselves weren’t too bad. Cobo, assuming he was Cobo, didn’t seem nearly as stupid as Lu made him out to be. His spellwork, at least, was competent enough to pick up Telepathic Bond in less than an hour. Kind of prickly, but not too bad. Like a porcupine. Maybe there was actually a real ass hiding under Bond’s protective nonsense, but he didn’t get that impression.
The other one, who was almost certainly Stinger-Tail, was a lot harder to get along with, not that that was anything to do with her personality. Just being near when she raised her voice made his eyes water, so he hadn’t spoken to her much at all – but from what little interaction they had had, she seemed to match Lu’s descriptions pretty accurately.
Again, assuming that’s actually the same person. Lu said his swamp friend was only a few years old, so it doesn’t seem too far-fetched that she’s grow over the last year… Doesn’t seem as monstrous as Lu described the women looking, though. Is she not fully grown, or is she just abnormally normal? Not that she looked human, with her bruise-purple skin or long tail, but she was far from the pictures of centaurs and worms that Lu had painted. If I had to compare her to something, it would be a salamander. Yeah, a big soft-skinned reptile.
The ice-covered shelter lurched as they went over a particularly high dune, and Bull allowed his head to clear. Just a few weeks of travel, living off whatever we run into, and then they’ll drop me off near the swamp. Assuming the peace talks had ended at all favourably, there should be a portal he could use. Assuming the talks happened at all, and the sect didn’t get spooked by the kidnapping…
But there was no sense worrying about it. Either there was a breach waiting for him, or there wasn’t.
All he had to do was get there and find out.