The blue-haired swordswoman stood atop a flat iceberg she had conjured from the sea, sailing it passively across the bay harbor near Station Bay's cargo docks. Her arms were folded over her chest, half-concealing the crescent moon insignia she wore. Her eyes were pensive, senses stretched out to grasp a subtle pulse rippling from under the sea. Dawn would arrive soon, and the dark, moody clouds had begun to shake oddly, twisting and stretching, somehow giving the woman the impression of cracking glass. Huge movements were co-occurring from above and below. What did this mean? She sat to reflect on the mysteries, letting her cryokinetic watercraft drift her aimlessly, and smoked her silver pipe in silence. She almost thought she could see the livid red eye of the oni's glare in the glow of the bowl. Next to that club-toting brute, the goblin had been only a light snack. The assassin needed more souls - much stronger ones, and many of them - to close the gap between herself and her far off goal.
Elsewhere, Chelsea's luck had run out. The cobalt-cloaked figure who had visited Richie materialized out of the shadows of the darkened streets, snatching her in his frigid paralyzing grip and retracting down the throat of an alleyway like an appendage of some greater unknowable thing. Her choked screams were cut off, and although she had been saved from being hunted down by the clawed jester, she soon wished she hadn't. The cloaked figure glided with her into a grimy back wall of cobbled brick, and phased the both of them through its slick surface as easily as a partygoer's passing through a veil of decorative streamers. Within, the space between the earthly surfaces linking the interior of the aligned edges and corners of Station Bay's architecture was instead a cold empty void, subject to the cloaked man's whims. He chuckled in amusement that the ice girl who had been seeking him out had passed right over him none the wiser. If she wanted an audience, she would have to play the game, like Richie, the jester, and the others the Backyards were calling to.
"As for you" the man closed his grip like a freezing vice over Chelsea's neck, strangling and lifting her, struggling and pawing at the ghastly hand, off the ground. "You've seen too much. I would be remiss if I allowed you to go tattletail to your superiors, and upset the balance of my survival game."
The room around them was a nightmare collage of crumbling cyclopean ruins oozing dark green slime, poison mist-shrouded WWI trenches, ominous angled towers stabbing a churning purple sky, and mazes of twisting corridors made variously of moss-slicked masonry and rusted industrial grate. No one feature of the hellscape held dominance, and the physical dimensions of every detail couldn't all coexist at once. It was like a blurry kaleidoscope of nightmare visions and fever dreams, seeping into Chelsea's psyche and unconscious, plugging her senses into new, eldritch outlets that forced her human eyes to see the unseeable, and the incomprehensible. She began foaming at the mouth from the dark sensory overload, and the clammy corpse hand crushing her trachea.
"Unlike your wittier counterpart, I'm afraid you have no aptitude to participate in this survival game. The Backyards have rejected you, my dear." the Faceless Man crooned to Chelsea. "But you still have something I can make use of."
The infinite dark vista of his empty hood unfurled four thick, sucker-lined tentacles whose suction cups were lined with needle-like teeth. Each tendril stretched out a foot in length, framing the vertigo-inducing chasm of the humanoid abomination's bottomless throat. A hellish red glow lit the darkness within, a swirling light that stunk of sulfur. From within, the screams of thousands of damned victims echoed up. The voices of many humans were there, along with the voices of the trio of prehistoric beasts, O'Gravy, the bunyip, and the unicorn and goblin the Institute had executed.
"A tasty, tasty soul to whet my hunger." a resounding demonic growl vibrated up from the hellscape of the Faceless Man's maw.
Chelsea's eyes rapidly flickered, her sanity corroding as her consciousness began to be drawn down the monster's hooded maw.
Then, the hood closed, the face-tentacles retracting, and the cloaked wraith snapped his head to the side, as if looking on at something that had shocked him into a brief stupor. The stench of purgatory was suddenly away from her face, and Chelsea already began to settle back into her body, senses scrambled and reeling, momentarily poisoned by the taste of the fiend's bottomless stomach. The Faceless Man let go, carelessly dropping Chelsea without a second thought, fixated solely on some knowledge that came to him by way of alien senses unknowable to human minds. Chelsea hacked and panted for breath as her throat was released and she could suddenly breathe again.
"I see. So that's how it is." the wraith pondered. "It seems I underestimated the boy. Perhaps I've grown too comfortable in this city and become a slouch if one child with runes can fall outside the realm of my predictions."
Chelsea was scooting backward frantically, mindlessly, nearly pissing herself. One palm slipped over empty air, and she nearly tumbled over a moss-slicked edge of stone into a yawning chasm without bottom. She clutched, shivering, at an outcropping rock, mind racing through the nightmare quagmire to find an escape.
"Then again," the Faceless Man said to himself, "if he couldn't surprise me, he wouldn't be worth monitoring in the first place."
The towering figure of dark cobalt turned toward Chelsea again, tilting his head down at her with a subtle gesture of dry surprise, as if he had completely forgotten she was there.
"You're a lucky woman, it seems. A more pressing matter requires my attention, and I'd hate to dine in a rush."
Chelsea's luck had evidently restocked itself. She still clung to the rock, not really processing her reprieve from the consumption of her soul.
"All the same, I can't very well let you share your experience in my realm, so I'll be relieving you of those pesky memories." the man suddenly growled.
He swept his cloak over Chelsea, and her scream died in her throat.
Then she was face down in the cold dark gutter, unconscious and anemic. She would lie there until the sun rose a short while later, and when she awoke, she would remember nothing more than a faint gut feeling of some bad dream that had faded. In the Faceless Man's roused voracious appetite, denied a proper meal, he had overreached and devoured a bit too much of Chelsea's night than he strictly needed to. The memory of her friend's murder at the jester's hand would digest with those of her abduction to the Void.
Perhaps that was a small mercy.
-
The blue-haired woman, off in the bay, saw a faint swirl of air currents connect the sea and sky, invisible to the masses like a gossamer sylph. She let her gaze drift upward toward the watercolor sky streaked by the sun rising out of the bay, as though being born. Within the ephemeral air flow, she heard the soft fluttering of wings, and saw phantom outlines of drifting white feathers. She allowed herself the luxury of giving the vista the awed silence it deserved. Her katana vibrated in its sheath, and she touched a calming hand to the smooth grip.
“I know. I sense it too. Like a huge wave of relief encompassing thousands of psyches who’ve been trapped in an endless nightmare - all waking up at once. Or, more like passing into a better dream. A peaceful dream.”
She laid back down on the iceberg with a yawn, throwing her travel sack under her head and neck as an impromptu pillow.
“I wonder what that must be like.” she sighed.
Her sword spoke into her mind.
Are you asking for yourself, or is this a veiled attempt at empathy to those you’ve barred from their right to the everafter?
The woman frowned.
“You hush, Yukihana.” she touched her other hand to her chest, where she thought she could still feel the grudge of the slain putting a terrible pressure on her heart from within. “You knew from the beginning the path I walk passes through Hell. Only a demon can kill another demon. I have no right to feel regret, you don’t need to remind me of the burden I carry.”
Her eyes looked far-off and distant then. “The only due I can give to the dead now is to keep going and complete my mission. Whatever cold comfort that’s worth.”
Wherever you go, I am at your sash. I can only warn you from experience that,
“Yeah yeah. The sacrifices aren’t worth it.” the woman said. “I believe you, Yuki. I just…”
Her eyes looked vulnerable for only the space between blinks. Then they were hardened again - assassin’s eyes.
“I guess I just really don’t care. Come what may.” she said in utter resignation.
The spirit within the black katana didn’t have to be told that his master was looking for someone in that twisting veil of released souls.
…
At that same moment, Richie looked at the waters of Tide Town, thinking he saw some kind of ripple, and a reflection within it. Then, overhead, in the faux-dawn of the Sapphire in Silk, he saw dozens of swirling false ghosts - the bed sheet husks known as the phantom pains. A breath caught in his throat as the thought overtook him that they would have to fight again, but Leon merely nodded to him from the saloon doors of the tavern.
"You have nothing to fear from those remnants. You've encountered their like before, I can feel it on you. Whatever may have happened, they aren't dangerous to most people. You must have smelled like something they used to have and caught their attention." Leon said.
"Cause of these dragon runes, right?" Richie asked.
"If I were to guess, that's part of it. Magic like that certainly gives off its own aroma. But I think the real crux of their interest in you lies in your past. Whatever you're keeping under lock and key under that stoic facade, it must smell like a buffet to things that haven't tasted emotion in who knows how long. They're not too unlike the shades, really." Leon said.
"Why are they circling in the sky like seagulls like that? It's creepy." Richie said.
"Buzzards, more like. Poor bastards are looking for traces of feeling and psychic energy left in the wake of such a turbulent storm of emotions - terror, pain, panic, despair - and something the local scavengers probably haven't tasted before." Leon said.
Richie brooded to himself. That dark swell of emotion Leon described as having engulfed Tide Town on account of the shades fit his own mind like a glove too. Was that why the phantom pains and the shades both targeted him in particular?
"And what's that, dare I ask?" Richie eyed Leon.
"Hope." Leon clapped Richie's shoulder.
"Huh?" Richie blinked.
"Come on, if you don't get your butt inside and join the party, Kokumo's going to make you do a strip tease as punishment." Leon smirked.
"She what?!?" Richie gaped in horror.
Leon strode back into the bar with no further elaboration, leaving Richie's imagination to languish. "Hey! Leon! Explain!" Richie tailed him back inside.
He was met with warm cheers and the pounding of ale mugs on tables. The survivors of Tide Town were gathered together, drinking, singing off-key, playing cards and darts and roughhousing. The place was lit by a warm, cozy glow. Somewhere, a kettle of seafood soup was simmering, and the aroma rolling off of it made Richie's stomach growl embarrassingly loudly.
"Hey! There's the man of the hour!" Connie of all people was the first to break verbal bread - his face was flush and reeked of liquor.
Leon gave Richie a rough but playful shove into the gray-haired man's distressingly rugged chest.
"What kept ya? Hic p-hic, party's not complete without its star attraction!" Connie slurred.
Richie's eyes watered from the alcoholic fumes coming off of the till-recently hostile soldier.
"You smell like a beer bucket, Christ! Don't get all friendly after blaming the hordes of Hell on me!" Richie shoved him away by the face.
Connie tilted his head, looking lost. Evidently, that water was so far under the bridge that it was underground.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"Now when did I hic do something like that?" he scratched his head.
"Great. Can't even be bothered to remember you hate me." Richie rolled his eyes.
Connie pulled him into a headlock and gave him a playful noogie.
"Hey! Knock it off!" Richie started biting.
Nucchi clapped him on the back. "Gotta hand it to ya kiddo, you surprised the fuck out of everyone!"
Richie slipped out from between them and knocked their heads together. Everyone was in his space, touching him and smiling at him. This was uncharted territory, and his protocols defaulted to… being Richie.
A scuffle ensued, a dusty ball of violence erupting around the three of them. Patrons hooted and hollered, placed bets, and shouted cheers.
Richie, torn and scuffed and slicked with sweat, escaped the violent kerfuffle, panting and bearing fangs.
"Fuckheads! Who's next?!"
A hand touched his shoulder. Richie would never abide by anyone sneaking up on him - you didn't leave your back exposed in the jungle. He whirled around swinging.
He punched Kokumo flat in the face. He froze, shocked, his knuckles still planted in her face. She was visibly grinning under his fist, hands on her hips as though a cat had batted at her. Oohs and ahhs hung in the air.
"Oh fuck, I'm out." Connie gulped, suddenly sober. He and Nucchi vacated the mini-mosh-pit.
"I-" Richie didn't know where to start.
Kokumo gently placed Richie's hand back at his side, chuckling. "Accidents happen." she grinned, holding out her hand.
Slowly, Richie took it. Then, his legs were kicked out from under him and he was being choked out between muscled thighs.
"Little shit!" Kokumo growled.
The tavern exploded into laughter again, and the betting resumed.
Clark chuckled as Richie frantically tapped out. Leon was pinching his forehead, seemingly incurring a migraine headache from the ruffian's chaos. This didn't stop him from picking up on Clark commenting on the 'fight'.
"Go show her who's boss, tough guy." Leon gave a sly cat smile, and booted Clark into the nominal ring.
"Hey wait a minute, I don't-!' Clark began to panic.
Then he stopped, feeling eager eyes upon him. While he wanted nothing to do with tangling with a beast who tore shades apart like tissue paper, suddenly his pride as a man who had to stand his ground was on the line. The whistles only encouraged this.
"Ok, fine, get ready-" Clark cracked his knuckles - then he was laid out on the floor next to Richie too.
"First time?" Richie snarked to the man twitching on the dirty floorboards next to him.
A circle of patrons yanked them both to their feet.
"Three cheers for our brave gladiators!"
In the blurring vision of circles of Cossack dancers, toasts, food fights and drinking contests and other assorted antics, Richie struggled to weave in and out of the partygoers to hide in a dark corner.
Alicia found him at the punch bowl.
"Fellow wallflower?" she asked.
"What do you think?" Richie rubbed his temples.
"It's kind of nice though, don't you think? After such horrors, people can still come together and laugh like this?" she prodded.
"I just don't really get it. Why all the noise and nonsense? And why do people keep trying to rope me into the middle of it?" Richie asked.
"Don't you know? You're a hero here now. You've scored our first ever decisive victory against what everyone thought was an unstoppable terror." Alicia explained.
Richie looked down at his feet, and tapped his fingers together awkwardly. "I never asked for a party or anything like that. I wasn't trying to save this town in particular. Besides, people are still dead. Slaughtered like animals just several hours ago. Are we going to pretend like that didn't happen?"
"Quite the contrary." Leon joined them at the bench.
"Leon." Richie looked at him.
"Consider this a wake. Up until now, mourning the dead has been only an aesthetic act. When the enemy feeds on the vitality left behind after death, cross markers are just empty symbols. You've brought relief to those who've already lost loved ones to the scourge. Now they know that their friends and family can rest in peace, and that their sacrifices won't be forgotten by existence; erased. I think living it up now and celebrating life is exactly what the departed would want us to do. To carry on their spirit." Leon mused.
"That's why you're over here in the loner corner?" Richie squinted at Leon.
"Even us performers need to take breaks from the spotlight here and there. See? Sparta's got me covered." Leon pointed into the center of the tavern.
The lion was tearing up the dance floor, soon joined by the breakdancing Kokumo, to fevered rowdy applause.
"As for me," Alicia said, "it's enough to be a witness. Not all of us can be the life of the party, or even feel comfortable in a lively atmosphere for too long without privacy to escape to - but seeing people truly enjoy life is a lot like stopping by a bonfire to warm yourself." she smiled serenely.
"I'll drink to that." Leon raised a punch cup.
Richie was surprised to find himself participating in the toast, and immediately felt self-conscious about it.
Then more drunkards were ruffling Richie and dragging him back to the tables, dodging his bites and scratches all the while till they flipped him over onto a stool.
"What's the big-" Richie growled.
Someone stuffed a warm loaf of cheesy bread into his mouth.
"Eat!" they implored him. "There's no way you haven't worked up an appetite."
Richie half-choked on the bread, chewing by necessity to get it down his throat. He pounded his chest from the pain of overexpanding his esophagus. Someone handed him a tankard of spiced mead, and he unthinkingly chugged it down, clearing his throat. He belched loudly.
"And the crowd goes wild, a perfect score!" someone quipped.
"Cut it-" Richie began.
Someone shoved a plate of meat on the bone over mashed potatoes, drizzled with brown gravy and caramelized onions, onto the table. Another put a bowl of fried rice in front of him, and another offered up a steak and kidney pie - and the on-house fish soup of the day was around the corner on top of all that, generously poured out in great big wooden bowls, steaming nice and hot.
Richie heard his stomach growl again.
Fuck it.
He began ravenously tearing into the feast in front of him. A crowd gathered around, cheering him on and offering up drinks. Richie evidently didn't realize mead was alcoholic until he already felt dizzy.
"Why are you all blurry?" he asked, suspicion in his voice.
From the punch bowl, Leon allowed himself to look happy for a few moments. "Warming ourselves by a bonfire, eh?" he looked across the bar at ginger-haired Jenny, sipping at a mint tea in a glass jug. "You would know all about that, right, Jenny?"
The fire survivor methodically flipped Leon off before her cold stare dissolved into a grudging smile. It was kind of funny, in a dark, tactless way.
"I guess in the end that's all any of us really do. People, I mean. We're all looking for those flickers of warmth. Those without them… freeze." Leon looked melancholy.
From the attic rafters of the tavern, sitting in the open circle window frame open to the twinkling night sky, Wolfgang sat, polishing his Luger with a white handkerchief.
"They sure like to make a racket." he said to himself.
He had unexpected company a few hours later when Richie, stuffed to capacity and finally clawing his way back to sobriety, came up for some fresh cold air.
"Oh, shit, occupied." Richie grumbled.
"Sit for a while if you like. I think you're safe from the party animals here." the big German said.
"Uh, thanks." Richie said.
The phrase sounded awkward on his tongue. He found a cloth-covered wooden box to perch himself on and digest for a bit.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Wolfgang asked after a long spell of silence.
"Huh?" Richie asked.
"The stars, I mean. Silver lining to a world that never sees daylight. The view of the night sky is second to none." Wolfgang said.
"You almost sound like you're in no hurry to go back home." Richie said.
"Aren't you in the same boat? I thought I heard down the grapevine that you don't have much going on in your life where you come from." Wolfgang said.
"Talk spreads quick, I guess." Richie shrugged. "But I assumed most of you actually had homes to go back to - the whole apocalypse business aside - unlike myself. Honestly, I don't really have much tying me back to the world I come from. Just one person, I guess."
"Leon said you had a friend." Wolfgang said.
"Yeah. I don't know when I started reciprocating the sentiment. I guess running for my life from shadow monsters in a parallel universe put a lot into perspective for me. I don't have much experience recognizing good luck. Don't have enough of it." Richie shrugged.
"I can relate to that sentiment." Wolfgang looked at his Luger.
"I can't get a read on you like I can with the others. I never heard your story either - which was it? Void, Backyards, or train?"
Wolfgang looked down.
"Train." he said sullenly.
Richie digested the atmosphere a few moments, then looked horrified.
"Oh." he said lamely.
"I was paying my respects to my family's victims. When the world fell apart, consumed by those creatures, I didn't have time to sit and philosophize about my decisions like I do now. It was just another survival situation, do or die. I jumped onto the liminal train racing down rails that extended out of reality as I knew it, even as the earth itself crumbled apart under the tracks. But even though there was the instinct to escape, I can't say I looked on in horror as my home fell away into darkness. It seemed an appropriate end, really." he looked up at the moon.
"So what now?" Richie asked.
"Fight. Survive. All I've ever known." Wolfgang said.
Richie sank. "Yeah, I know the feeling."
"The shades are monsters, without question. Without conscience, they destroy the lives and happiness of others." Wolfgang said. "But even so, I can't say I'm thrilled to be exterminating another faction. History repeats itself, it seems."
"So. Does Leon know?" Richie asked.
"The Pole? What do you think?" Wolfgang gave Richie an incredulous look.
Richie chuckled. "Fair."
More silence. Then, Richie asked another question.
"What kind of a man is Leon, really? He seems to be some kind of a leader here."
"Some kind, yes." Jenny had joined them.
"Make yourself at home." Wolfgang said, deadpan.
"He doesn't have an official rank. I guess it's more that people are attracted to his charisma. He carries himself with a sense of purpose, even if we aren't really privy to it." Jenny said.
"He seems to keep cool and collected no matter the circumstances." Richie said. "Maybe a little too well." Richie grumbled darkly, still bristly about the gator incident in the marina.
Jenny chuckled. "You'd be surprised to find he was full of theatrical vim and vigor before he came here. Real showboater."
"Really? I can't picture it." Richie said
"You ever hear of the Valentine Family Traveling Circus?" Wolfgang interjected.
"Maybe? Should I have?" Richie held his chin.
"They were a nomadic family who traveled together across the country. Leon was something like their prodigal son. Circus royalty." Jenny said.
"I guess that explains his choice in wardrobe." Richie said. "...and pets." he blinked a few times, still unable to fully normalize Sparta's casual free-range dominion around town in his mind - a sassy, irritable foil to his owner or otherwise, Sparta was still a giant fucking lion, and that took a bit to get used to.
Having the shit scared out of me by looking the big lug dead in the eyes point blank upon arrival here probably got us started on the wrong foot. Richie admitted as much to himself.
Famed lineage or otherwise, something still felt vaguely familiar about Leon, even if he couldn't quite place it.
"That suplex technique he pulled on me when he was assessing my threat… that's not the kind of thing they just teach you in the circus, is it?" Richie asked.
"Keen observation. Leon had a few exhibitions in pro wrestling as The Lion Tamer here and there." Jenny confirmed.
"That's it." Richie realized.
He had passed the promotional banners once or twice - Leon, decked out in his full red coat and accessories, was gripping the traditional kayfabe metal folding chair as though it were the kind of wooden stool a lion tamer would generally incorporate into their act, warding off the beast.
"Poser. Not even a real martial artist." Richie rolled his eyes.
"He kicked your ass pretty perfectly." Wolfgang chuckled.
"I was handicapped!" Richie screeched defensively, blushing.
Jenny giggled a bit. "Before all this, from what I understand, he was always a performer first, and a fighter second. Nothing made him happier than seeing the smiles his theatrics put on people's faces. Especially kids." Jenny said. "According to Kokumo anyway."
Richie grimaced. "And her?"
"Kokumo? Oh, she's just crazy. Your instincts are correct, not much to that story." Jenny nodded. "Still though, I guess you'd have to be to come through the Void undamaged. I sure didn't. I don't think Leon did either." she said sadly.
"However we got here, the fact that we're all refugees crammed into another world we know nothing about, teeming with soulless wraiths, is enough to prove we all lost something coming here." Wolfgang said.
"That's why you're so popular all of a sudden." Jenny told Richie. "Smiles are something that've been in scarce supply. I think that's the real reason Leon's instincts told him to protect you. The people pleaser in him would have wanted anything to rally hope."
A final prolonged silence passed between the group none of them knew Kokumo and some others had already christened The Emo Trio.
"So - let's go celebrate while we can." Jenny smiled softly.
Wolfgang moved to argue, but Jenny fluttered her eyelashes at him and he held his tongue.
Richie let the two of them go on ahead, waiting in the attic by himself a few moments. He lifted his shirt and looked down at his abdomen where the shade bite had yet to fade even slightly.
What am I doing here wasting time partying? I have to get back to the city, ASAP. If time flows randomly between worlds, a thousand years could have passed already for all I know. Cuppy could have spent his whole life…
"waiting for me…" Richie said out loud.
Had he been waiting for someone - anyone - to find him once? He thought he had nothing of value to give anyone. Maybe that was no longer true. Maybe he could be the person he would have wanted - when he was all alone.
"I'm coming, Cuppy." Richie clutched his chest. "Bet on it."