Mary Yule tumbled out of the overgrown brush lining the basin of a low hill. She slumped against overgrown tree roots that blocked her momentum from dropping her into a winding river moving an incredible volume of deep, murky waters. She shook herself off, dazed and confused, before she realized where she was. The towering treetops above threaded into a solid ceiling of twisted branches casting the area into gloom. Further up ahead, she heard the sounds of a struggle.
An offshoot of the river swapped the scenery for that of dark mangrove swamps for as far as the eye could see. There was precious little actual soil here, mostly in clumps stuck to the end bits of exposed root tips. The tangled roots and overgrowth provided tricky walkways, hovering a few feet at most above a sudden plunge into the cloudy waters at any given time. The blue-haired woman was moving about through this maze of roots and undercut stream banks, back pressed against the trunks for cover periodically as she scanned the dense jungle for any signs of the pursuing basilisk.
A hiss alerted her to its presence behind her, and she whirled in time to dodge a great lunging strike that sank the serpent's fangs into the mangrove tree trunk. Circles of purple envenomated splotches blossomed outward across the wood from the point of impact, corroding and contaminating the tree. Its exposed neck made for a tempting target, and the woman rushed to bring her katana down to behead the snake. A king cobra-like hood unfurled from the beast's neck, shielding it with hardened armor scales, and the serpent's tail ricocheted unexpectedly through the trees, careening into the woman out of nowhere and throwing her dozens of feet. She tumbled across the river's surface like a skipping stone, crashing into roots and submerged rocks, incurring cuts and bruises as though put through a wash cycle with shrapnel in it. Mud plastered her form, clotting in her blue hair and turning it a dark maroon. Wet grit blinded her eyes, and she dunked her face into a shallow pool at the river's edge to clear it. She looked up in time to see more scattershot venom meteors falling through the wilderness, and ran to duck and cover. The titanic snake sidewound after her again, snapping at her heels.
The woman threw a shimmering ball of frost plasma from her offhand, nailing the beast's jaws and freezing them snapped together. A venom spit went off inside it's sealed mouth, and it's eyes watered with visible pain as the venom fumes steamed out of its nostrils. The woman threw herself out into the open from behind a tree now, and gripped Yukihana's hilt with both hands, raising the sword high to perform a vertical cut that would travel through the vector of the air to slash the basilisk from a distance. Her eyes met the snake's as she did this, though, and in that moment she felt the shadow of death upon her. Her body began to seize up, and she felt herself foaming at the mouth in intensifying convulsions. She averted her gaze, turning her head away and clenching her eyes shut.
She had forgotten that basilisks were infamous for their lethal gaze. Clumsy, clumsy, clumsy!
The snake was not crippled for its ice-welded jaws. It focused its eyes, projecting the deadly cognitohazard of its gaze as dual beams of shimmering air that caused whatever they hit to seize up and freeze in place - animals, exposed limbs, even individual blades of grass were petrified in its wake. The woman retreated, fighting through the darkness swirling in her head, and darted in and out of trees and tangled brush. A petrification beam grazed her right arm, and the limb locked in place from shoulder to fingertips.
Mary Yule saw the treetops moving from the hidden serpentine mass displacing them, and she knew that whatever had killed the rabbit from across the barrier was making that racket. She also overheard the beast's malicious thoughts as it projected its mind into its prey's.
Where are you hiding, little mouse? I can still smell you. it said.
Mary realized this question had been intended for whoever was fighting it now, and that she had inadvertently picked up on the telepathic signal like a radio.
"That way." she told herself, ducking through vines and low branches. This Feral is intelligent. This one can talk. This is my chance to get a lead in my search.
The basilisk released a colorful, aqua-marine plume that stood up straight on its head as it sensed someone else's interference, but refocused itself on its current goal.
Come out, come out wherever you are. You belong inside me, to make me stronger. I'll swallow you whole and wash you down with the Black Rain. You cannot escape me. the snake mentally cooed.
The woman was panting, back up against a tree. She regarded her petrified arm, grimacing as she tried to move it and failed, feeling as though she had dislocated her shoulder and her muscles were spasming in freeze frame. Her arm had taken on sudden weight when it was caught in the basilisk's line of sight, becoming as hard and heavy as a fossil. She looked both ways to determine if she had time to mend herself, then, satisfied, pressed her palm to the afflicted limb. She channeled intense cold into her petrified arm, coating it over in a thin layer of frost from which little snowflake crystalline structures bloomed. Ice crystals formed deep in her layers of flesh, muscle, blood vessels, and the marrow of her bones. After a few seconds of putting her arm under deep freeze, she mentally snapped her fingers, and the ice shards within her arm shattered. Flecks of sleet and blood erupted out of her pores, which she luckily could not feel pained by at the moment on account of the momentary nerve damage and cold-induced numbness. She wiggled the fingers of her freed arm, then froze the internal ruptures within it back together.
Fight freezing with freezing.
She began coughing suddenly, and felt a tingling sensation spread through her body. Focusing her stinging eyes, she saw that purple vapor was being carried her way by the wind direction, still wafting from the static puddles of venom the basilisk had left throughout the wilds. Pulling her shirt collar over her mouth and nose, she scurried on up higher, out of the low wetlands and back into the hills in search of clean air to breathe.
Now she stood on a hill by a cherry blossom tree whose vibrant pink petals swirled about a crystal clear blue lake. An angular red pagoda stood framed by a marble courtyard with intricate wooden gates, familiar and calming in the distance. Too bad it was no better than a mirage.
The woman heard a slithering sound, and scanned the vista warily. She heard the rattle of the hybrid snake's tail shaking behind her, and gasped as it shot out and wrapped around her torso, squeezing tight and choking the breath from her body. Then the basilisk threw its tail back off the hillside, slamming the woman by her back into the ground at its base. She felt the wind knocked out of her body as the tail's snare loosened, and she went sprawling heels over head backward across the grass. Blood fell down over her right eye when she took to her feet.
Bastard damn near broke my neck!
The basilisk circled her with its sixty foot body, rearing up with its fangs gleaming and its cobra hood unfurled. Its jaws had either thawed out or broken free of the ice, and its rattlesnake rattle shook enthusiastically in the climax of the thrill of the chase. The woman spat out blood with a look of contempt, then swung her blade up at the snake. A compressed edged current of cold air struck the monster's eyes, and it shrieked in agony.
"Slink off somewhere to regenerate, if you think you can escape." she growled. "Your stare of death won't work on me now. You can't see my body heat anymore either."
She formed a large boomerang of ice over her shoulder, the length of a curved surfboard. Spinning the frozen construct, she tossed it at the beast's head. The rattler shot up and deflected the boomerang, knocking it away.
I can still hear you, vermin! it projected into her mind.
There were horizontal gashes in its eyeballs, weeping tears of blood that spread grisly war paint over its snarling face. It lunged at her, and had an iceberg shoved down its throat for its trouble. The broad base of the glacial ice stuck out of its overextended jaws, trailing ice vapor as it gagged and choked. The woman slashed her katana across the iceberg, shattering it inside the basilisk's mouth and throat, lacerating it with shrapnel. It recoiled backward, wavering side to side in the air. Then, the boomerang returned and knocked the serpent by its head into the side of the hill. The crook of the boomerang pinned the snake by the neck like a fork, the ends of the throwing weapon dug into the earth. Its belly turned upward in its daze as the basilisk pitifully mewled and hissed.
The woman jumped onto its neck and affixed her katana and its sheath together as a scythe, melded by a circle of ice freezing them together at a right angle, Yukihana's cutting edge forming the scythe's blade. With a protracted war cry, she plunged the improvised scythe blade into the giant snake's neck, slinging the haft over her shoulder and crouching. Gripping the handle in both hands, she sprinted down the entire length of the snake's body, slicing it open from neck to tip, just short of the rattle. As the blood gushed freely, the rattle shook feebly, then fell still.
The blue-haired woman cracked her back out, looking over the slain basilisk that was now nothing more than a large scaly sock split open at the seams. She thawed Yukihana and his sheath free of each other, returning them to her waist, and fetched her pipe. The sound of crunching dirt startled her in the direction it had come from, sending an ariel cut flying at the source of the noise. The equally-panicked Mary just barely ducked under the compressed air current as it passed over her head like a horizontal flying guillotine blade. A deep gash was chunked out in the hill behind her, leaking ice vapor like the residual smoke of detonated grenades.
“Fuck! Don’t do that!” Mary shrieked.
“Who are you? State your business.” the assassin demanded.
“Quit pointing that sword at me and I’ll tell you.” Mary said.
The blue-haired woman narrowed her eyes, then begrudgingly acquiesced.
“I picked up a signal from a creature trying to breach into the real world, and accidentally rode it here. But this is strange, up till now every invader has come out of the ether fog. I didn’t think they could move through the Backyards, or that’s how they would have flocked in regularly.” Mary held her chin. “Unless… maybe they do, and that’s exactly why the Tracer system hasn’t been able to catch so many of them? Hmm, questions to puzzle over later.”
The swordswoman tapped her foot. “If you’re done talking to yourself, do you think you could get to your point anytime soon? I don’t wish to linger here.”
“My apologies.” Mary sarcastically curtsied. “I heard crashing. Have you subdued the Feral?”
The swordswoman swept her arm in the direction of the basilisk carcass, laying just under Mary’s line of sight on the opposite slope. The school teacher and Institute agent walked over to the spot and tutted at the sight of the fresh corpse.
“I needed him alive. This was a rare opportunity to capture an intelligent Feral capable of speech for my own, to interrogate in privacy before it could be terminated. Now I’m back to nothing.” she said.
“Interrogate? What were you hoping to hear from an overgrown snake?” the swordswoman asked.
“I’m seeking the Faceless Man.” Mary said.
The swordswoman swung her katana at Mary, who jumped back, throwing up her hands to ward off the attacks. “Woah, wait a minute!”
The assassin pressed on, continuing the wave of slashes and thrusts, moving with a noticeable sluggish impediment from the stamina she had exerted taking down the basilisk. This gave Mary room to breathe, and time to react and dodge. She leaped back several times, distancing herself from the aggressor, and withdrew a large microwave pistol that unfolded itself into proper form from a concealed carry mode it had been hidden in on her waist. Mary fired a shot at the woman’s raised katana blade, and the microwave heat set the steel glowing red hot and warping. The burning heat radiated down through the katana’s grip, scorching the swordswoman’s hand. She grunted and dropped Yukihana, clutching at her wrist and looking at the first degree reddening of her palm. She had no time to process the effect before a follow-up beam of focused microwave radiation punched a phantom hole in her torso, the diameter of a roll of toilet paper. A red burn mark branded the circle around the woman’s navel, and her lower back where the radiation had exited.
The microwave shot left no puncture wounds, but it dropped the assassin to her knees, clutching at her burnt stomach that felt like her insides had been subjected to a raging grease fire. She gripped the heated flesh and injected freezing cold into her core, working to cool her insides as quickly as possible. Even as she did, the swordswoman felt the air of her hollow organs build up pressure like a steam cooker, and come rushing up her throat. Hot steam, like that from an overbaked potato, rose out of her mouth like exhaust.
“I’m not looking for a fight.” Mary said, still keeping the microwave gun trained on the writhing, agonized swordswoman.
“A fight found you!” the swordswoman growled, and rushed Mary.
The assassin brought her black lacquered sheath, frozen over into an edged blade of ice, down overhead on Mary, who blocked it with her unprotected forearm. The blade stopped dead in its tracks.
“What the?” the swordswoman asked.
“Just hear me out, goddammit!” Mary yelled, twisting her hips and whirling on the swordswoman with a powerful backfist that struck her in the chest and tossed her into the side of a green slope.
Stolen story; please report.
The swordswoman dropped her sheath, and held her bruised sternum.
“That didn’t feel like your own natural strength, nor magic. What kind of trick did you use?” she asked Mary.
Mary folded and pocketed her microwave gun, dusting and brushing herself off.
“Biomechanical form-fitting power suits created from harvested Feral proteins. They enhance the natural strength and abilities of the average hominid body. This is only a prototype, but it’s better than coming into a warzone with monsters unprotected. As you can see, my uniform is unique in that its defensive properties extend beyond the visible range of its sleeves. Makes for perfect stealth armor, and it’s nearly weightless too.” Mary explained.
“A biomechanical armor suit, huh? You must be one of those eggheads over at that organization making an extermination war on these monsters. You’re the only ones who call them Ferals, so that gives it away pretty quickly, just so you know.” the swordswoman said.
“We call ourselves the Institute. My superior opposes the invading entities, yes. The standard protocol mandates termination.” Mary said.
“How heroic of you lot.” the swordswoman said.
“From what I understand, we’re in the same business.” Mary argued.
“Well you’re wrong. It’s nothing personal, but these heavy hitters are a means to an end. I need greater and greater strength. I’m not enjoying this.” the swordswoman said.
“And you think I am? I bear no ill will to the Ferals either, but the Institute has resources at their disposal that I require access to. The persecution of those breaching the dimensional barriers is the Director’s obsession, not mine.” Mary explained.
“So then we both have our own reasons for picking fights with monsters.” the swordswoman sighed. “You said you were looking for the Faceless Man. How do you know that name?”
“How I know it is of less importance than what I’m after.” Mary said, straightening out her collar. “That figure took something very important from me and stranded me in an alien world some time ago, and I have been looking for a way to take back what is mine. But the Faceless Man is an enigma, who comes and goes as he pleases throughout the realms. His sphere of influence seems focused most powerfully in Station Bay, and the Ferals seek the byproducts he and his wraiths leave behind. I believe this means the displaced denizens of other worlds are no more than his pawns, but even if they don’t have any conscious connections to the Faceless Man, that doesn’t mean they can’t be unknowing fonts of information. Communications have been difficult, and a specimen like the one you just killed would have been the first step in the right direction.”
“Finders keepers.” the swordswoman said flippantly. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but even if I didn’t have need of blood, I’d still be putting myself in way too much risk trying to take something like this down nonlethally.” she gestured to the dead snake.
“I can sympathize with that. I’ve been tracking you for some time. You’ve inadvertently been something of a secondary containment measure, scooping up the Ferals the Tracer system misses. I’ve scrubbed the recordings caught of you from the database routinely, to keep this between just us girls.” Mary said.
“You’ve been stalking me.” the blue-haired woman put her hand on her hip.
“I’ve been studying you. You and I share the same target. I don’t know what kind of history you share with the man in the cobalt cloak, but two heads are better than one, right? Let’s track him down together. I think our skills could help each other.” Mary suggested.
“I don’t think so. Whatever he took from you, chances are it’s already gone. Finding him is difficult as it is, I’m not pulling my punches so you can extract your shit from him. Your vested interest will compromise my mission. I can’t afford that risk.” the swordswoman said.
“I can’t let you kill him before I have the chance to steal my belongings back.” Mary said.
The swordswoman formed a sharp icicle in her palm. “I could kill you now, and make sure you don’t get in my way. The Faceless Man is my target and mine alone, I won’t allow anyone to interfere.”
Mary eyed the dead basilisk. “Perhaps a compromise can be reached, if you’ll allow me to inspect that serpent over there.”
The swordswoman looked from Mary to the basilisk and back again in confusion. “In case you’ve forgotten, it’s still dead.”
“Those who say dead men tell no tales are fools. This isn’t the ideal situation, but I can still make use of it. I need to take part of that snake.” Mary said, walking toward the carcass.
The blue-haired woman rushed in between them, holding the sharpened katana sheath in Mary’s way.
“Back off, this is my kill. I worked too hard to let you take it. I need the energy inside that thing.” she growled.
“I can’t make use of the animal itself. I only need the rattle, an object affiliated with the snake and tied to its history closely enough to provide context, but inanimate enough to qualify as a non-living object. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, ‘if the walls could talk’?” Mary said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” the blue-haired woman said.
“Objects and locations have their own rhythm, like anything or anyone else. We encode our memories in our brains, but an inanimate object is a simpler vessel that is colored by the events and circumstances surrounding it. You can read the aura leftover in abandoned artifacts if you know how to look. May I?” she gestured toward the snake’s rattle again.
The blue-haired woman relented and moved aside.
“Thank you.” Mary moved to the tail, and gripped the hard cone-like scute in her gloved hands.
“If the snake was still alive, could you have just read his thoughts? Without, you know, him thinking them at you?” the blue-haired woman asked.
“No. Living, conscious things are too difficult for me to parse through. It’s like the difference in solving a stationary hedge maze, and trying to escape the Minotaur’s labyrinth that constantly changes and disorients the explorer. Far too many mental combinations to decrypt for someone like me to achieve telepathy. I work with my hands. I’m a surveyor, and an archeologist. My study concerns people, but I draw conjecture from material culture and leftovers. I don’t excel in interviews. In essence, it’s the same concept. Psychometry is just a natural extension of my discipline.” Mary said, ripping the rattle from the snake’s tail, leaving the tip raw and bloody in its absence.
“Psychometry?” the blue-haired woman asked, tilting her head.
“Yes. You can take auras, but I can interpret them, like a translator doing the same with hieroglyphics. Translating the aura of an object bearing a psychic stain - that is psychometry.” Mary said, intensifying her focus on the rattle.
The thing felt warm in her grip, and began to pulse. She consumed the memory it had shared with its host, the basilisk, of how they had both spent a century or more in the clammy, dank depths of an ancient underground cave system, feeding on huge prehistoric wooly mammals and the like until the new scent of the coveted Elixir of Life lured it through an aperture that it had never seen before. While the snake had begun to lose its memory in the boundary between worlds, directed to its ultimate destination by the Faceless Man’s silent pointing when and where it strayed, the rattle that was now a separate object from the snake itself had no mental processes to manipulate and shape to the Faceless Man’s liking. A barrier could not be created in a mind that was not there.
Mary scanned the recent history of the snake rattle up until the point it had traversed the outer edge of the Backyards area where it and the two women had converged just now. She sensed, through it, that cracks had begun to form in the roof of the wandering corridor. She saw herself through these cracks, like slots in the sky. She saw her own face, peering in through the fog in the rabbit pen, and she saw the rabbit she knew now had fallen victim to the basilisk’s refracted lethal gaze. She realized then that the subtle, parapsychological entrances that drifted in and out of existence were distinguished from the chaotic ether fog leaks by the magnitude of the dimension-quakes. It was the difference between cave entrances and cracks that were localized, small, and stable, and the violent sudden fissures formed by the collapsing of the ground beneath one’s feet. Where two universes ground against each other in deadlock, mini big bangs coalesced from the metaphysical crusts accreting together.
That was useful information, something that confirmed the Director’s theory, and explained why the general public at large could see the fog leaks, but only a select few could perceive the corridors. But it was not what Mary was looking for.
Come on, show me what I want to see, damn you! she thought desperately.
Ultimately, she saw the basilisk distracted from the scent trail of the Elixir of Life by a new scent, one that was closer and of a more concrete nutritional value. The giant snake was waylaid from its journey to the treasured liquid by the lockdown it had gotten on the blue-haired woman traipsing through the liminal space between the caves it had called home, and the concrete jungle to which it was migrating. Its primal hunger was its undoing.
Mary dropped the rattle. “Interesting.” she said.
The blue-haired woman retrieved her katana and wiped it off with a white cloth. “Care to elaborate? What do I get out of that little moment you just had with yourself?”
“Information. I don’t care to make myself your target by competing for the same bounty. You know where to find me. My best option now is to place my faith in you, that you’ll catch and bring down the Faceless Man. Fate willing, I’ll be able to retrieve my stolen treasures from his tattered remains. Your luck is my luck, in that case, so it benefits me to give you the best chance possible of finding him before anyone else does. With this in mind, I’ll offer my support.” Mary explained.
“I’m listening.” the blue-haired woman said.
“The Ferals aren’t mindless, but the external influence clouding their judgment may make it appear so. They are after a substance they call the Elixir of Life, a name and image I think has been artificially placed into their minds by the Faceless Man. They are drawn to it by the promise of rapid evolution, and a great concentration of this Elixir has been seeded somewhere in Station Bay, if my reasoning is sound. The deadly clashes that ensue mean recurring fatalities that the Faceless Man and his ilk can exploit. They’re farming monsters and people alike for their souls. That’s my hypothesis.” Mary said.
“So then he and his minions must pop out of somewhere to feed, then, right?” the blue-haired woman asked.
“Yes. They’d liken you to a scavenger. Yet, if the Faceless Man hasn’t confronted you about edging into his feeding grounds, then there must be a good reason he’s concealing his presence.” Mary said.
“He knows I’m looking for him.” the blue-haired woman looked down, pensive.
“You might be able to draw out wraiths to beat some answers out of by snatching more and more of their kills, but the direct approach would be to locate the source of the Elixir and hold it hostage. Better yet, the place where the Faceless Man produces his brew may also be where he makes his nest.” Mary said.
“Then my objective is clear. Now stand back, I need to inhale that snake.” the blue-haired woman said.
Mary stepped back and gestured to the basilisk.
“He’s all yours.” she said.
The woman lit her pipe and aimed it at the fallen snake. A gray vortex swirled around the basilisk and sealed it within its haze. The blue-haired woman took a deep puff, and the cloud retracted into her pipe with the basilisk, absorbing it. Mary watched with a raised eyebrow.
“What a fascinating process. You yourself lack the ability to steal souls, so you’ve outsourced the task to something you’ve bound to that pipe. I’ll bet it and your katana both have some interesting histories.” Mary said.
She walked to the withdrawing smoke cloud and nonchalantly tossed the pilfered basilisk rattle into the last wisps, watching it shrink into them and vanish inside the bowl. When the red glow died down, there was nothing left where the basilisk once stood. The blue-haired woman tilted her head toward the sky, looking at a crescent moon peeking its way through the clouds that were now stretched to thin rainbow streaks. She exhaled and watched the smoke rise to join the clouds so far up above. Within her body, the basilisk’s form and power were broken down and integrated into herself, becoming part of her; becoming one with her.
“I’ve gorged myself. I must rest.” the blue-haired woman said. “When I’m gone, this part of the Backyards will lose its form. I suggest you escape before you get stranded.”
“I never did catch your name. Care to give me at least that much?” Mary said.
“Only if you give me yours first.” the swordswoman replied, pipe dangling in her clenched teeth, a single sharp canine poking out of the corner of her mouth and catching the moonlight.
“Didn’t I already? It’s Mary. Mary Yu-” Mary began.
“No. Your real name.” the woman growled.
The agent looked at the assassin, then smirked.
“Holly. I am called Holly. How do you do?” she bowed her head.
“What a dumb name.” the blue-haired woman said.
Holly twitched. “Rude! And you?!”
“Chikita.” the swordswoman said.
“Chikita? That name fucking sucks!” Holly accused.
“How’s it dumb?!” Chikita snapped back.
“It sounds like you botched trying to give yourself a Spanish name. Did you pick it off the side of a fruit truck?” Holly said.
“It is Spanish! I’m adopted!”
“That answers nothing!”
“At least I’m not crawly!”
“Holly!”
“Well you’re dumb, Holly!”
“No you are! Dumb icecube with attitude!”
“At least I’m not playing with toy guns!”
“What’s wrong with my microwave pistol?! Who uses a katana anyway?!”
“I do, cause I actually have talent! Real confident in that comfy power suit, aren’t you?!”
“I’m smart enough to make one, you neon neanderthal!”
“Four-eyes!”
“Blue-hair!”
“I’m Japanese!”
“Most Japanese people don’t have blue hair!”
“Racist!”
“Bullshit!”
The arguing continued on for some time, going nowhere slowly. Chikita eventually stopped trying to argue back concretely, and just blew smoke in Holly’s face, inducing crippling coughing attacks every time the latter tried to talk.
“Knock it off!” Holly growled.
“The Faceless Man is mine. You can have the leftovers. Just watch quietly from your little Institute.” Chikita sneered.
“Fine, I’ll do that!” Holly growled, then started coughing uncontrollably again.
…
When Holly was clear of the Backyards once more, she lingered at her office desk back in the school, pensively staring at her wrist-com. The signal indicated a positive connection to the Telescope Dragonfly she had smuggled into the basilisk’s severed rattle when Holly tossed it into the devouring smoke stream. The robotic insect proved Holly’s theory that it qualified as both a living creature and an inanimate object, meaning that it could both be inhaled into Chikita’s being, and be read by Holly. The devices that connected to that signal, additionally, counted as extensions of the drone, and allowed Holly to read the construct from a distance. Within Chikita, amidst the merged presences of the oni, the goblin, the basilisk, and other unidentified creatures that had already melded into Chikita’s essence long before Holly met her, the telescope dragonfly’s own minute soul was undetectable so long as the assassin didn’t know to look. When it completely merged into Chikita, it would probably cease to function as a lifeless object that Holly’s psychometry could read. She had until then to use the connection to track Chikita’s movements and hope that the assassin’s own grudge against the Faceless Man led her to someone that would talk.