Chikita clutched at her right leg, trembling. A halo of bruising marked her flesh where a long barb was embedded in her shin. The agonizing neurotoxin that coursed through the manticore's tail was trying to make its way into her system, struggling against a desperate gate where the cryomancer slowed her blood flow to a standstill with sheer cold. The effort was unsustainable, and she couldn't concentrate on both repelling the venom and parrying the manticore at the same time.
I expended way too much cold putting that lake on ice. Shit, did I gamble and lose? Don't tell me I'm going to die here when I'm this close to my target!
Chikita jabbed at her paralyzed leg with the hilt of Yukihana.
"Wake up!" she hissed at the seizing appendage.
The ground in front of her cracked as the manticore trudged forward, scorpion tail flitting about like that of an irritated housecat stalking an insect.
"Is that the limit of your strength already, swordsman?" the felid horror boomed.
Chikita forced herself to give a dry chuckle. "I never expected you'd be able to talk. Really shocked me there."
"I don't see why not. I share some of your same physiology. Are you saying that if I hadn't surprised you with my speech, you would have dodged my sting?" the manticore mused.
"Who knows?" Chikita shrugged.
She held Yukihana in her teeth and gripped the barb with two hands, shaking and grunting as she pried it loose from her leg. The wound was ripped open wider by recurved hooks lining the barb designed to keep it embedded wherever it struck. A gout of blood spurted from the open wound like a red fountain.
Great, it's an anticoagulant too. I can't even freeze the wound closed. If the tail had hit me just a little higher…
Chikita shuddered as she thought of how close the barb had been to striking her femoral artery before she leapt back.
"Looks like you have a little fight left in you after all." the manticore said, hanging its tail in front of its face and sharpening the newly emerged replacement barb in its fangs.
"You're talkative for a monster." Chikita said.
"I am a cat. I prefer to play with my food." the manticore chuckled. "However, I'd be sorely disappointed if I expected any real challenge."
Chikita cracked out her neck, pulling her sash from her waist and tying it about her leg. The red fabric kept the blood loss relatively out of sight and out of mind.
Chikita, we need to retreat. Yukihana spoke into his master's mind.
Trust me, pal, I'd love to. But I'm not about to turn my back on this thing and give him the chance to pounce, especially while hobbled. Buy me some time to work the poison out of my leg.
"Your eyes tell me you have something on your mind." the manticore grinned.
Chikita tried to stand up straight. "There's something that I don't get. That Institute chick was in a big hurry to find an intelligent feral to talk to, and the basilisk I took out was the closest chance she'd got. If we agreed on anything, it was that extra dimensional exotic imports like you were clueless guard dogs let off their leash. Yet here you are, siding with the Faceless Man of your own free will. Why? What do you get out of it?"
The manticore chuckled. "What a braindead question. It's only natural to fight for the strongest side, isn't it?"
Chikita clicked. "Typical. You have a human face, but your logic is hopelessly Darwinian. Just a wild animal after all."
The manticore's mane bristled. "Look who's talking… little mercenary…" he purred dangerously, and puffed out his chest.
Chikita locked her gaze on those burning feline eyes. She couldn't get Richie's face out of her mind for some reason, and her own answer she had given Yukihana before was echoing in her mind now, about how she knew the path she walked was soaked with blood.
I just don't care.
Chikita smiled grimly. It took a monster to kill another monster. If she was the one selling her soul to revenge and hatred, then surely she was at least saving someone else from walking that path in her place. She came from a time of war and suffering, and was baptized in blood. This era, so far into the future, deserved a better chance. Killers like her weren't meant to linger. If she had already thrown away her innocence, then she may as well take the demons walking free back to Hell with her. That was the only apology she could give to those whose lives she had claimed.
If I fall short… if I die now… I'll never be able to face them in the next world… I'm so close, I only need to pile on a few more sins to break even… a monster like the Faceless Man must die no matter the cost! Even if I have to become a demon myself, I'll gladly dive into Hell with a cackle and a grin, just to ensure it ends with us!
The manticore's tail swung back and forth like a hypnotic pendulum. Chikita's eyes tracked it, hyperfocusing to gauge when it would strike and from what angle.
The manticore growled and lunged. Chikita pistoned the sheathed Yukihana up in her left hand, catching the tail under the base of the sting to deflect the tail strike. She intended to flow seamlessly from this action into a quick draw, pulling the katana from the black lacquered sheath to slash in one swift stroke.
Instead, the redirected sting slid off and kept going. The armored appendage wrapped around Chikita's arm like a coiling segmented snake and wrenched her arm. Her wrist sprained under the imposed torque, and she was left wide open as the beast snapped its gnashing teeth at her. Unable to escape the bind, Chikita blocked the bite, throwing her arm into the oncoming path of the manticore's crushing jaws. Spiky, jagged teeth sank into Chikita's bent elbow, forcing a shrill scream from her. The jaws closed down with greater and greater pressure like a nail-studded vice. Blood sheeted Chikita's arm and soaked the cuff of her white sleeve as her veins popped out under her skin from the pressure, and her bones began to crack.
There wasn't a moment to lose. An ordinary fighter would have reflexively pulled back and had their arm torn right off. Like a swimmer caught in a rip tide, struggling against the current was useless.
Chikita slid the blade free of the sheath, her left arm still strung up by the scorpion tail. She caught Yukihana in a reverse grip with her free hand, even as the beast crunched down on her elbow. Relying solely on wrist strength since she couldn't move her arm, Chikita plunged the tip of the blade through the manticore's mane, into its chest. It didn't penetrate far.
Not deep enough, I don't have enough momentum!
The manticore grunted, blindsided that its quarry had actually managed to strike it. Chikita planted her heel in Yukihana's hilt, driving the katana deeper into the monster's chest with a desperate kick. It worked, and the manticore involuntarily opened its trembling jaws enough for Chikita to yank her arm free. However, she shredded her flesh on the return, drawing the deep bite marks in her elbow and crux open into ragged furrows on the teeth's serrated edges. Her arm fell uselessly at her side, joining her stung leg as another crippled appendage that only weighed her down. With her left arm still bound by the scorpion tail, that left only the left leg Chikita had kicked her sword in deeper with.
The manticore buried its scowling, snarling human face in its chest, grabbing the sword and wrenching it out of its sternum; the point had missed the heart.
Chikita flexed her bicep with all her might and pulled herself up in a single-arm curl, lifting her body toward the manticore's tail using her own bound wrist as an anchor. She hooked her legs around the tail, straddling it - and bit down hard.
The manticore yelped as the armored appendage crunched in and dented a bit. It felt like the equivalent of having a pinky toe perpetually slam into the corner of a heavy cabinet, the moment of impact frozen in a singularity of all-consuming, flaring pain.
The python grip on Chikita's arm loosened as her retaliatory bite clamped down hard on the segmented limb, but even as it veered toward releasing her, the tail rose and lifted Chikita high, hanging over the stone nearly fifteen feet off the ground. The manticore dropped its tail with the force of an elastic sledgehammer, whiplashing Chikita by her captured arm into the ground and knocking her breathless. The impact was a smashing force against her face, chest, stomach, forearms, and thighs. The drop had actually bounced her off the ground a little in an aftershock of the initial impact. Blood splashed the floor from her nose, lip, and above the eye. Matching twin imprints knelt into the ground where her road-rashed knees had struck. Pain exploded through her body and rattled through her skull. Forcing her bleary vision through the stars dancing in the murk, she turned over on her back and stared up. The barbed tail was poised directly above her now, arcing and about to strike her in the face or chest.
Chikita gave a subdued gasp and rolled on her side out of the way of the stinger's plunge. The barb stabbed into the stone ground, punching a perfect hole with such grace that there weren't even cracks left around the point of impact. The tail retracted, rose, and fell again, plunging toward Chikita over and over again in a mad flail to pierce and fully envenomate her. Chikita raggedy twisted and turned, rolling frantically to dodge each sting by a hair's breadth. As the tail receded again, Chikita saw the clear venom dropping from the hypodermic needle point like overclocked salivary glands. Dozens of stabs in a few seconds.
Chikita rolled backward onto her leg, kicking off to reclaim Yukihana and his sheath. The blade was at the manticore's feet, and the beast reared back its tail like a compressed spring. Chikita saw the barb retract into armor segments, which in turn retracted into each other, exponentially multiplying the tension of the appendage. The
spring loaded tail aimed at Chikita as she slid for her sword, her numbed leg giving out.
She retook Yukihana the moment the sting jet-propelled out of its compressed form, aiming for her heart. She blocked the barb with the broad side of Yukihana, her arm trembling under the strain, her shoulder bruised where the end of the sheathed katana braced against it for lack of another functional arm to hold a proper position. The tail fully extended, soaring Chikita across the sewer chamber as though she'd been slammed by a truck.
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Cuppy recoiled from the soccer ball that had struck his face, stumbling over a thick patch of grass. His hands went to his face, clutching his nose.
"Sorry man, didn't see you in the line of fire. You ok?" a young teenage boy with short, spiky blond hair and an athletic build strode up to him. His open silver vest put rock-solid abs on display.
"I'm fine." Cuppy nodded, rubbing his nose. "What is this place?"
"Huh?" the athlete cocked his head. "This is the Misty Glen apartment complex. Technically private property, I assumed you were visiting someone."
"I got lost, memory's a bit hazy." Cuppy said.
"I'm sure nailing you in the head didn't help. My bad." he chuckled awkwardly. "Uh, my name's Shunpei. And you are?"
"Cuppy. Do you live here?" Cuppy asked.
"No, but a friend does. I was actually on my way to pick him up. I saw you and my leg moved before my mind did. See, we have kind of an ongoing game of sneak attack, to heighten our reflexes. Been working toward a big battle game hosted at the end of the year. Most out of towners only flock here in summer to see the festival, and the games. Did you get lost looking for Main Street?" Shunpei said.
"Yeah, I guess I did." Cuppy nodded.
"Just follow the wall-" Shunpei gestured to the stone wall running the length of the uncannily identical grass strip to Station Bay's own, "and you'll be able to drop down into the parking lot by the boat launch. Main Street dead ends in a cul de sac by the river. You'll see a commemorative plaque with a whale on it, dumb thing who got lost way up river taking a wrong turn at the Pacific."
Pacific? Not Atlantic? If Cuppy was in range of the spot where a whale swam into fresher waters from the Pacific Ocean, then Cuppy wasn't only in a different settlement, he was entirely on the wrong coastline. He had somehow warped from one side of the North American continent to the other. He couldn't just ask what state he was in without drawing attention to himself. Still, he waved goodbye, and cat-walked along the wall until he came to the boat launch, dropping down into the gravel. A long white dock extended from a sloping path into a wide, powerful-looking river, seemingly as deep and blue as Station Bay's own namesake.
A grassy path curved to the left of the launch, leading to a cul de sac with squat little shops, a miniature field of flags, and a chained side gate across some rocky bank leading to what looked like the over-water wooden balcony of a club lodge. In the center of the glistening lawn, running parallel to another dock, this one horizontal and rusty red, crowded with fishermen, the stone monument sat exactly as described.
"What am I doing in California? Did Richie get warped somewhere far away like this too? Maybe even farther? No, that was different. He passed through the Backyards, and either sold or repressed his memories. Come to think of it, which happened to me before I came to Station Bay? In either case, I have a feeling I'll remember this." Cuppy sat on the monument.
His legs were too short, so they just dangled from his perch, kicking in the air like a little kid. The shadow of a looming building grew over him, and he cast his gaze toward a slanted stone structure supported with faux-marble pillars. The letters "City Hall" marked the arched roof above the lobby entrance.
"Now there's an idea. Census records, reports, junk like that might fill me in on where I am and if it has any connection to what's going on back home. More than anything, I'd like to know why the apartment complexes look identical. Maybe there'd be something about the construction company or whoever owns the units filed away under city planning?"
Cuppy dropped onto the lawn and cracked out his knuckles, then began strolling toward the glass doors.
"You won't find anything in there." Cuppy heard a small voice beckon him.
"Hmm? Hello?" Cuppy swirled around, looking for the source of the message. His leg brushed dew-slick grass, and he felt something stick to his pant leg.
Looking down, an ornate silk web stretched across the corner outside the stone steps, little dew drops caught in their strands and glistening. At the web's center was the unmistakable glossy form of a black widow spider, marked with that alarming red hourglass.
"Was that you, tiny girl?" Cuppy asked, kneeling down on the wet lawn and looking at the arachnid up close.
"Aren't you a bold one?" the spider asked. "Not worried I'll give you a little bite?"
"Should I be?" Cuppy asked.
"You aren't well-acquainted with fear. It exists for a reason, you know. You could stand to exercise more caution, if you mean to survive any appreciable length of time."
"Not my style." Cuppy shrugged.
"Quite." the black widow sighed.
"What did you mean I won't find anything in there? Are the cabinets cleared out or something? Is management renovating the building?" Cuppy asked.
"Why don't you peek and see for yourself?" the spider said.
Cuppy did, pressing his round, owl-like face up against the glass. It was entirely empty within. Not just devoid of furnishing or markers, but literally, utterly empty, as though Cuppy were peering outside the bounds of reality.
"Oh, I see." Cuppy held his chin. "So basically, it's a mystery."
"More like a fragment of something that was once whole. You are the only actual person in this town, which itself does not exist. The eternal dream extends solely from the memory of one lost soul, and that memory cannot recreate every detail of a town that was never mapped in full." the spider said.
"Only actual person? What does that make you?" Cuppy asked.
"Another figment. An illusion, like the rest. But I'm marginally more real. The true me beyond the boundaries of this looping dream can peer deep into the well of possibilities. In this well, anything that can be is but another strand that will weave itself one way or another into the fabric of the cosmos. She can see handfuls of the threads, if not follow each one to its conclusion. The avatar you see before you is merely a piece of information clinging to one of those stray threads. To a thread that drifted here." the spider said.
"I take it to mean you are something like deja vu for your true self then. An abstract extension of a real person's being." Cuppy worked out.
"Separated from the other caricatures walking this hallucinatory plane only by awareness. I cannot predict when the dream will end - I am too remote from the clairvoyant who embodies myself - but I know that I and this place are only shadows meant to fade. Yet you are clearly a human soul. You do not belong here. This place isn't supposed to exist in the first place. You must go back to your own world." the black widow said.
"I don't think that's an option anymore. I don't know where I came from. But Station Bay is my home now. I'll be content just getting back there. I'm confused though, I thought I was shot. Hey, you said this is a dream? Is it still my dying dream? Or someone else's?" Cuppy cocked his head.
"A dying dream? Hmm. No. A dream - a record - of one whose identity is already dead."
"Their identity?" Cuppy asked.
"Oh yes. You can live without yourself, you know. But you would be an empty vessel. The passage of a lost identity, fading into oblivion, can still leave its stain on the boundary between worlds. Such a stain is no true soul, though it may desperately try to emulate one."
Cuppy remembered Richie's story of the encounter with the phantom pain.
"These stains - can they move freely?" he asked.
"Freely? I can't say if any of us can truly move freely. But if you want to know if they can exert influence on the living world like other tangible spirits or living beings - then yes. Not just any shard can evolve to such a state, though. When someone loses themselves, the stain they leave is deepened by the weight of their last emotions. For most people, under the terror of losing their immortal souls, these last feelings are of despair or curses to the gods."
"And in the tiny incidence of those who lose their souls defiant to the end?" Cuppy asked.
"Why, they leave an imprint in the shape of determination. Want to hear an old proverb?" the spider asked.
"Yes." Cuppy nodded.
"Long after the riverbed has dried, the soil bears the memory of erosion. So long as those furrows remain, the memory of the water and the faith in the falling rain shall revive the river. Existence and its absence are tidal forces, like the light and darkness and everything between them. The orbit of the solar system is the spin of the particles around the nuclei which are the seeds from which reality grows. Across all stars and the voids in between them, in the swirling mist of the galactic rim, and in the glimmer reflected in a child's eye - all is part of the cycle of the tides. Death is an illusion. Lives are but different crests to a wave." the spider said.
"Could you repeat that? I didn't have a pen." Cuppy said.
"Goldfish." the spider sighed. "Just follow the rain, my child."
"The rain?" Cuppy wondered aloud.
He heard the misty cascade of a light trickle collect off the leaves of trees, and turned toward the barrier he had crossed, marking the boundary between the apartment complex and the forest edging the river. The woodland properties were separated by that brown picket fence, and the narrow space between it and the brick wall seemed to go on endlessly, covered under a tarp of low boughs and blanketing mistletoe. The trickle gathered in the crevice like a small stream cutting a channel through the littered detritus. Cuppy fit easily between the walls and trudged through this incidental alley, disappearing under the cool shade of the leafy cover. As he followed the stream at his feet, the litter and decayed foliage gave way to a deep autumn tunnel of falling leaves. The stream had become a babbling brook, and it cascaded down a series of short rocky ledges. Coming out of a coil of red leaves where the tree limbs curled like a static wave, Cuppy realized that he had somehow warped from one side of the town to the other. Looking back, the dirty passageway between the walls was nowhere - only a grove of shedding trees.
Now he was in a shaded trailer park whose steep bank dropped suddenly into the river. The great body of water was wide and powerful, and may have run as deep as the Congo for all Cuppy knew. Dimly, he was aware that the geography of locations here was a moot point, and that the path between the walls was a schism in the frames of this memory. Whoever's phantom pain had generated this simulation, they must have thought of that alley as a secret passageway too, although its physical course would never change. Perhaps that made it a proto wandering corridor. Piqued curiosity, a childish and illogical fixation on novelty and the suspension of disbelief in impossible things all seemed to be the prime ingredients in generating that fabled rabbit hole.
Amidst the whale-shaped forms of motorhomes left stranded on cinder blocks, Cuppy sensed a great marshland somewhere nearby, where innumerable sticks and pieces of driftwood had beached themselves in shallow, soupy water, forming a permanent pond of debris. The friction of the floating sticks against each other was a melody like creaking planks in a rope bridge.
Phantoms danced before Cuppy, predetermined empty puppets on a stage of the transcendent mind. The mirage called Shunpei, and a handful of his peers did battle with the neighborhood ruffians, among them a girl with dyed silver hair, and led by a wiry boy with frosted blond tips and an eye-catching blue ascot. A venomous scowl undermined his handsome features as he steamrolled the younger boy. On the sidelines was that same patchwork gas mask costume, a younger boy presumably breathing underneath the layers in the real world outside this dream. Within it, however, these were merely memories, stylized by the perceptions of whoever had lost their soul and left this dream as its memorial. As if experiencing that person's feelings secondhand, Cuppy felt a minor creepy vibe from the gas mask boy, and an ugly undercurrent of scorn for the older blond bully beating down Shunpei and his friends. They dueled with sticks and blunt weapons children could reasonably obtain, interspersed with liberal improvisations of eye-clouding thrown dirt, and ballistic rocks.
Moving through the facets of this dream felt like a guided tour on rails, or one of those dark rides he had learned about, where a cart or boat slowly took you through a darkened warehouse brought to life with props and ambient noise. Ceilings could be painted black and dotted like the night sky, and tall swamp houses might stand on stakes rising out of the cloudy marsh while insects could be heard buzzing, and gators bellowing. This dream town was like that, but didn't exude a sense of being insincere for it. That sensation of wonder and suspension of disbelief was an omnipresent background radiation, the same way a young child riding one of those dark rides might be totally enraptured by the ambience, giving themselves willingly to immersion.
Cuppy could walk a thousand miles, had the borders of this dream town permitted, and never feel his legs grow sore. His bullet hole and dysregulated heart were forgotten, and even the recent blow to his philtrum that might have made him tear up was already fading away.
It would have been meaningless to interfere in a children's brawl, knowing that no one in this place except for himself and that spider avatar were truly aware, yet Cuppy's gut still spurred him to announce himself and enter the fray. Gravel crunched under his shoes as he stepped from lush grass onto loose, empty lot space. This was as good a time as any to take advantage of awareness inside a dream - whether his or some stranger's - and practice attaining lucid control. This place was close enough to the territories of the Backyards Chikita had described, in basic principle. He would practice on these mystical holograms.