Richie startled awake, spasming on the floor and kicking off his ruffled mess of bed sheets. He rolled out of his bedroll like a shed cocoon, still dripping the sweat of larval fluids. His mess of spiky ginger hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, his pupils dilating. He was breathing hard. Freyja? Where was Freyja? He looked at his trembling hands, letting it sink in that he had failed to take hers in his and save her from the pit of darkness. Then, the dream began to wash away, and he found himself sitting up in the familiar living room of the abandoned apartment, letting his breaths slow back to normal. His dragon runes were faintly glowing, as though they had been glowing full-power and then suddenly began to flicker and fade as Richie woke. Were they dreaming too?
“Hey, wake up!” Richie slapped at his arms.
His inscrutable dragons, which talked to him only when they felt like it, remained silent, eyes drawn closed.
“Mooches.” Richie growled.
He held his forehead, head bowed, gathering his strength. Cuppy was on the couch across from him, a new table pulled up beside it to prop up his innumerable books, most of them research and study-purpose literary volumes on a wide range of topics spanning archeology, chemistry, engineering, and, at the moment, biology. A glossy-covered doorstopper of an advanced critters book was open in his small hands, his owl-like eyes pouring over the wisdom of mother nature’s design recorded within. Richie pulled himself blearily up beside Cuppy, and gandered at the page. Front and center was a spherical-shaped black spider with yellow stripes, knitting together a perfectly round web that, combined with the glistening dew caught in its threads, somehow reminded Richie of a pearl or an opal of some kind.
“Orb weaver spider.” Cuppy said, taking a moment to mark down a few choice lines with a yellow highlighter, and commit some notes to paper. “Arachnids are the natural masters of the string, we only imitate them. You’d be surprised how much you can learn just from taking a peak outside at the lawn.”
“Why the sudden interest in nopes?” Richie scratched his head.
Cuppy gestured to Cuppet, propped up in his favorite bean bag chair, head lolled to the side as he ‘slept’. The ragged hole Luchesi had opened in the marionette’s torso had not gone away just because some time had passed.
“My brother doesn’t heal like we do, he has to be repaired. Each time I patch up his wooden body, like when O’Gravy did the mambo on him, it takes a bit more out of me. I still don’t have the grasp on sewing certain things together yet. It’s easy enough to lash a rock to an enemy by a bungee and let it fly, or to throw up a net spread apart by some helpful tree limbs to act as hooks if I need a sudden shield or soft landing, but the mechanics are relatively simple. More complex patchwork takes skill, experience, and understanding that I don’t have. Yet. I can rewire the neural connections in my own think lump with my threads, but I don’t even understand how I do it. That needs to change. At the rate things are going with all the things out for our blood, we’ll drop like flies. I need to do better with the tools I have to heal us. Flesh -” Cuppy looked over his own hand, soft like veal. He looked to Cuppet - “or otherwise.”
Richie folded his arms and nodded, listening. “And how’s that going?”
Cuppy shook his head. “I need to run some experiments. It isn’t just our bodies I’m working with either. The poop keeps seeping into the reservoir. We can’t use it anymore, not like that, and it could attract more buggers like the walrus to keep overstepping our boundaries and making hassles for us. Worse, if monsters crowd into the forest, it's going to bring that Institute jerk and his goons knocking on our back door constantly. We can’t wait for him to make a move. We need to clean this up ourselves - and then we need to clean them out.” Cuppy clenched his fist.
Richie backed up a little, uneasy and not sure why. Not immediately - but he was in a few seconds. He had never seen Cuppy look angry before. It was uncanny. Like the look on a tiny pyromaniac looking on with rapt eyes at the barn fire they started as it became an unstoppable inferno and spread across the land.
“Are you ok, Cup? You're not your usual carefree self today. Being the moody one is my job, not yours.” Richie laughed awkwardly.
“People like Mason make me so mad. People who think throwing their weight around and picking on others who are different from them makes them heroes. That is not how grownups should act.” Cuppy glared.
“Well duh, of course it’s not. I don’t know what happened between you and that Dean guy, but news flash, the average guy with authority credentials isn’t your friend. I never got to go to public school, so I missed out on that old fairy tale they tell you about going to a policeman or some random-ass adult if you’re ever in danger. The Institute, or whoever they are, are people, like anyone else, with their own agenda. The only difference is they get to pursue their agenda in secret, off-books, with a blessing from some dude in a tie at a desk in an office miles away who’ll never have to look at them, or the fuckups they end up being responsible for.” Richie growled.
The mistreatment he had suffered from the cops here in Station Bay, and throughout his entire life since he lost his mother and home was far from forgotten, and farther still from forgiven.
“I don’t like bullies.” Cuppy repeated.
“Well, the world’s a cold shithole, sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” Richie grunted.
“I suppose you preferred I left you there in the woods with your broken ribs and your death wish?” Cuppy gave Richie a cheeky grin.
Richie punched the top of Cuppy’s head. “Like you left me in literal shit creek, sans a paddle?!?”
Cuppy stuck his tongue out at him.
“So, say you figure out higher levels to your weird-ass string abilities - freaky little puppet creature,” he grumbled, “- what then? You’re going to plug up the holes in the bottom of the reservoir and clear the waters?”
“And heal my brother too. Speaking of which.” Cuppy handed Richie a woodsman’s hatchet.
“What’s this for?” Richie said, looking over the archaic red-riding-hood prop.
“Wood. Enough wood to carve into a new torso for my bro.” Cuppy said.
“Why the fuck would I do that?” Richie asked.
“Because I put another string in you when you slept, and I think you want to avoid learning what happens if I happen to let it swim into your bladder.” Cuppy said through an unnervingly innocent-looking smile.
Richie’s eyes widened. “You’re the devil’s son, you know that?”
“Daughter, and that’s Freyja you’re thinking of. Cuppy-” Cuppy said.
“Cuppy is Cuppy, yeah yeah, I get it.” Richie said, sighing and scratching the back of his head. He slung the hatchet over his shoulder. “Fine, I’ll go get spare parts for your horror prop, but I’m chopping you up later, you got that?”
“Absolutely.” Cuppy smiled and made the ‘ok’ sign.
Richie halted at the door. “Speaking of which - I think I had a dream about Freyja.”
“Is that why you were sweating so hard?” Cuppy said.
“I think so, yeah, I - not that kind of sweat!” Richie said defensively, blushing.
Cuppy only cocked his head at him, lost again.
“Right, no sense of entendre.” Richie remembered. “Yeah, I think I had a nightmare. We met once before, in the Backyards, but I don’t remember much of it. Except, in the dream, I think I did. Like I revealed more of it to myself.”
“Letting yourself remember, you think?” Cuppy asked, licking his thumb and flipping a page.
“Maybe. Whatever happened in there - the Backyards or the dream, or both - scared the piss out of me. I think Freyja might remember more than I do, and if she’s staying here against my will, I’m gonna grill her about it a bit. We’ve been wandering around in the dark like blind dodos for too long now, and I want some answers. If she knows something about that place - how do you put it, in your dumbass Cuppy-speak? Sharing is caring?”
“Sharing is caring.” Cuppy nodded.
“Then we need to trust each other, the three of us. For example,” Richie said, pointing the hatchet at Cuppy. “Not putting magical string parasites in your so-called friend’s internal organs when you want a favor.” Richie said.
“How else do you get a horse to drink before it hatches?” Cuppy asked.
“Not how that saying works.” Richie said. “But, for the sake of argument - you can just ask me next time. Nicely, or whatever.” Richie averted his eyes, wanting to puke for even thinking about something as alien and revolting as common courtesy. It just didn’t feel right coming out of him.
Cuppy nodded. “Ok. Please and thank you.”
“Fuck you.” Richie said, and left the apartment.
Cuppy chuckled to himself. He never put a string in Richie’s body while he slept, but collecting data on Richie’s paranoid reactions was its own reward.
For science.
Freyja crept out of the kitchen on all fours, her wolf form whining curiously.
“He’s gone.” Cuppy said.
Freyja assumed human form and stretched, yawning.
“Are things going to be awkward like this forever?” Cuppy asked. “You looked ready to eat him up last time.”
“He’s cute, but a bit choleric to be my type. That was before I started -” Freyja said.
“Remembering?” Cuppy asked.
“Yeah.” Freyja nodded.
“So he’s right. You do know more than us. When did they start coming back to you?” Cuppy asked.
“The other day, at the picnic. Punching Holly felt so familiar. Like it wasn’t the first time I let myself cut loose and go animal on someone I felt had it coming. But while that moment felt triumphant in isolation, it came mixed with a bunch of other things I didn’t want to think about. Dark things. Scary things.” Freyja shuddered.
She felt at the scar on her back.
“Do you want to do show and tell on that scar you have with us, yet?” Cuppy asked.
“I don’t know. I’d like to. But, I’m not so different from Richie. There are a few cards I want to keep close to my chest for now.” Freyja cast her eyes down.
Cuppy nodded. “He’d understand.” he smiled.
Freyja smiled back, her wolf tail poking out and wagging a little.
Cuppy put the book down, leaving it bookmarked with a ruler. He lugged a box of tools and scavenged mechanical parts from a cubby he had carved out in the hall closet. “Richie is a terrible forester, so we should have a few hours to finish fixing the generators. Let’s finally get the lights on back in here, it will be a nice surprise for him when he comes back all sweated up and angry.”
“You mean distract him with the achievement so he doesn’t make good on his threat to ax you to pieces.” Freyja said.
“That’s the idea.” Cuppy chirped happily.
-
Richie sized up a younger tree with a thinner trunk, one that would be relatively easier to chop down without causing too much of a mess or wearing himself out. Growing up on the streets as a thief taught him a lot of skills - woodcutting was not one of them.
“I feel like I’m going to end up shinning myself with this fucking thing.” Richie said, sweating nervously at the ruggedly sharp edge of the woodsman’s ax. He tested it in his grip, keeping his left hand held down lower toward the axhead to support his control and aim. He took a few practice swings without hitting anything, reminding himself uncannily of his homerun with ‘Excalibur’, and half-wondering if he could as easily cut wood with that baseball bat as anything else, depending on the Backyards’ recognition of it as a sword.
Now wasn’t the time to test such a theory.
The wind whooshed around the axhead as it cleaved smoothly through the air, and Richie was able to half-convince himself that this wouldn’t be too difficult after all - but boy would it be tedious. He gauged the width of the tree. It wasn’t old and stout, but it wasn’t exactly a sapling either. It was the kind of tree he could climb on had the childhood inclination struck him, but which he might have to be wary of the sturdiness of certain branches he stepped on if he did. He parted his feet, adopting a solid stance, wound up, and sank the blade into the outermost layer of the wood. It left a decent gouge in the trunk, exposing chipped white wood-flesh inside. Not too green, not too brittle. Perfect material. He dislodged the ax and took another swing. This cut was a bit off the mark, by an inch or so. Richie furrowed his brow and tried again. His shoulders were the first things to start getting sore only a few minutes in, and he made a mental note to himself that, crapfest though much of his life was, at least he hadn’t been a lumberjack. He’d have gotten himself killed on his first day.
As he tried to adjust his aim and get the hang of manipulating the tool, his dragons started making little rooting sounds, and slithering about under his skin, roused by the scent of Richie’s sweat they usually associated with peril. Or encounters with scarily pretty girls.
“How nice of you to join us.” Richie said to his runes.
What are you doing? they asked him in unison.
“Trying my hand at being amish, what does it look like?” Richie said.
He botched a swing and sent a splintered chunk of wood rebounding off the trunk, flying at his face. He dodged aside before it could hit him in the eye, giving a startled “shit!” in the process.
You’re an idiot. they said.
“When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.” Richie growled. “Besides, we share the same body, so that makes us an idiot.”
That is not what we meant. As you’ve said, we are one. Why are you wearing yourself out without tapping into our shared abilities? they asked.
“I can do that?” Richie asked.
You’ve been doing that this whole time, whenever we’ve been in a dangerous or trying situation.
“Well yeah, but I thought it was kind of a situational thing, like you were activated by my life being in danger.” Richie said.
If you die, we all die. It is imperative we protect your body, yes, and while it doesn’t please us to be relegated to mundane tasks as though we were novelties, it is far more painful to watch you make a fool of yourself. We are vicariously embarrassed.
“Leave me alone!” Richie yelled at them. “Besides, you didn’t come with instructions! Instead of criticizing how badly I’m misusing you, how about you flap those gums in the direction of actually telling me how it all works to begin with? It would save us all a lot of time and bullshit if you weren’t so fucking cryptic!”
We weren’t intended to coddle you. Part of the activation requirements for drawing out our power was asserting your own will and fighting your own battles, to demonstrate worthiness to inherit our spirit. Beyond fulfilling those criteria, we have only been permitted to act on your behalf when absolutely critical to protect your life in situations you would have otherwise had no chance of surviving. The one who grafted us onto to you did not do so unconditionally.
“Sink or swim, huh?” Richie asked.
Precisely. Watch your foot.
Richie had thoughtlessly dropped the - thankfully blunt top - of his ax on his foot when his grip went lax, distracted by their conversation.
“Ow!” Richie grunted, clutching at his foot. “How come you couldn’t dragon-sense that one for me, huh?!”
We SAID to watch your foot. they retorted.
“You’re awful chatty lately. Finally deciding to come out of hiding?” Richie said.
No. We have only recently been permitted to do so. You have broken the seal binding us to the other side of your soul. they said.
“Does this have anything to do with what you were saying about fighting my own battles?” Richie scratched his head.
Everything.
“In case you weren’t paying attention during your five-year nap, I’ve been fighting my own battles. Where were you when I got jumped countless times before?” Richie asked.
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Reacting to a meaningless assault, or a thousand, and fighting a battle are not the same thing.
“The hell they aren’t! Want to see the scars that prove you wrong?!” Richie growled.
Calm down. We don’t like it when your blood pressure is high.
“I’ll chug a bottle of soy sauce and burst both our hearts right now if you don’t get to the point, you dumb fuckin’ lizards.” Richie said.
Further proof that you are yet a hatchling, nowhere near a proper dragon. You react at the slightest provocation or challenge to your self-worth. If it’s that fragile, you’d do best to keep it hidden out of sight.
“Living on my toes constantly afraid some batshit crazy cult are going to run me down kind of trained me to be reactive, is that such a shocker? I thought I said to quit dancing around the point. What do you want to say to me?” Richie folded his arms, the ax laying against the tree trunk, a quarter of the way chopped through.
Don’t be so entitled. Figure it out yourself. they dismissed him, and then faded their glow, going back to sleep.
Richie twitched and started pinching at his arms.
“WE AREN’T DONE HERE, YOU FUCKING COCKTEASES!!!” he roared, scaring a few birds and assorted forest critters out of hiding and scampering off.
Unbelievable.
All that chatter to go nowhere slowly. Richie’s hands trembled as he clenched the handle of the ax in a white knuckle grip, and began madly hacking and slashing at the tree to vent his fury, not unlike he had beaten one before with his baseball bat when the gateway to the Backyards eluded him like a transient butterfly on the wind. Halfway through the trunk, a sudden calm cut through the rage, and there was a feeling of uncanny calm running through Richie’s mind, as though something had somehow become clearer. He couldn’t identify exactly what, but it was best compared to the color settings on his surroundings growing a few notches brighter. The fatigue in his arms was distant, and the glow of his azure dragons returned, emanating from their heads at his wrists and enveloping the ax, from shaft to blade end, as a thin layer of translucent aura. If he had been there to see Dean’s badge become a mystical shield to protect Cuppy from his own explosion back then, he would have compared the color of both lights.
The ax felt nearly weightless in his hands as Level 1 winds lifted the heavy end from below, guiding his swing like fairy train tracks. The ax split through the trunk the rest of the way in one perfect stroke, the compact power of his air ball projectiles honed into a static enhancement circling the cutting edge. It was as though a hurricane had been pressed flat and thrown with great force in order to cut. Richie was reminded of how such windstorms could lodge pencils to the hilt in tree trunks.
His latest moment of dilated time perception ended, and in that same moment, he remembered that he was standing in front of - or rather, under - a tree that he had just cut down.
Next came “timber”.
“Uh oh.” Richie gulped, and dove out of the way as the tree crashed toward him, sinking itself into the grassy forest floor.
He lay with his back in the grass, thankful that it was surprisingly cushy, and sat up, scratching at the back of his head. As the shock of the close call faded, he bowed his head and sighed. Then he threw his head back and brayed laughter.
“Well that was something! Ahaha!” Richie clutched his belly.
The ax lay forgotten next to him. When he composed himself again, he picked it back up and examined the blade.
“I did that, didn’t I? These bad boys at my wrists have some kind of aerokinesis schtick going on. I never thought about extending their wind to objects in my hands. I wonder what the range is? This changes the game. What exactly are my Levels? Can I do other shit with them?” Richie looked at his dormant dragons.
“Twerps. You riled me up knowing I’d tap into some more of that power you’ve got a chokehold on, didn’t you? Is that what you meant by me figuring it out?” he said.
If he had broken the seal they spoke of, allowing them to begin coming into their own and talking to Richie directly, then when exactly had he done that? It wouldn’t have been when he broke out of the child kennel by their logic, that was just their pre-programmed protocol to protect his life. And whatever they had sensed in the wandering corridors, as with the big scary gator waiting in the sewer catacomb, that was their own agenda distinct from his, as far as he could tell. Rivals, they had said. They growled and hissed and tugged at Richie to make him walk where they wanted when they smelt out other powerful beings they apparently felt territorial hostility toward. That made them feral too, in a sense. He supposed it went hand in hand with his own life as a street-hardened urchin. He’d been on both sides of muggings, if someone wanted to call him feral too, he couldn’t really blame them.
But all that was in the past now. Now, things were going to start looking up. He’d cracked the first encryption on understanding the nature of his magical gift, he had a home off the grid, and for the first time ever since his mother - the only person who had truly loved him for so long - he had people who cared about him. Maybe there was room in his heart to care back. If he could just let go of the past.
He continued chopping at the fallen tree, splitting it into chunks that Cuppy could sand down and square off into cubes that could fit into Cuppet’s torso and become his new flesh and bone. Richie, to his stifled delight, found that he could freely trigger his Level 1 response to enhance his ax with cutting air pressure, as he had before. The only other times he had known - for lack of a better term - how to activate his Dragon Sign levels, it had been on instinct in life or death conflicts. The huge gap in his memory of wherever he had been - in whatever world he might have been in - when he had been swept away into the dark belly of the sewer was tickling at him. Did something major happen while he was there? Something that would explain the growing symbiosis between himself and the tattoos adorning his body? He felt much stronger than he had been when O’Gravy crushed him, his already-cracked ribs at the time notwithstanding. A better example might be to say that, compared to when his runes first sprung to life to help him fight, and he had killed the phantom pain in short order, he felt like a brand new man. Whatever happened behind the veil had pushed him past his old limits, and he could see new ones to break floating like clouds on a distant horizon.
“I can still get stronger.” Richie realized happily. “I’m mom’s proud dragon.”
He whistled to himself as he chopped away at the wood, and then felt a cold chill go down his spine. His dragons nipped at him - that dragon sense Richie had requested when he dropped the ax on his foot - was back in full effect, and ringing in his ears. He turned his head around in a gesture that felt like a standard startled reflex, but which in truth instantly tapped into Level 2 to grant him enhanced speed. He would have needed it to see what was coming before it could take his head off.
A blue, sleet-flecked wave of compressed air was flying at him, stretched thin and blade-like as the wind coating of Richie’s ax had been. The edge was keen and razor-sharp. He had seen this technique before in a dream, and knew from experience that it could cut through chain-link like tissue paper.
Richie gulped and ducked under the projectile slash, heard it crash through the woods and chunk out deep gashes in the tree trunks it grazed until it had run its course and fizzled out. He beheld his ax, saw that it had been in the firing line Richie had just barely slipped under, and felt his stomach drop as the upper quarter of the shaft bearing the ax head fell clean off, severed perfectly. He could look at the remaining stump of wood and marvel that it was ridiculously smooth, a flawless slice.
Richie looked up to see the battered, debris-strewn form of Chikita, her katana outstretched and gripped in both hands, her legs at a wide stance. Her chest was heaving as though she had been the one to suffer a great shock, and her face was set in pissy glare. Bits of twigs and leaves stuck to her blue hair.
“What the hell?!” Richie asked, gesticulating wildly at his chopped ax and the gashed out tree trunks at his back. “Why are you attacking me?!”
“That’s what I want to know!” Chikita growled, and rushed Richie down, swinging her blade at him in practiced, dance-like iaijutsu strokes.
The wind whooshed past Richie with every blow he dodged, the keen edge and point of the antiquated feudal blade inches from his chest, stomach, neck, and face at any given split second. He backpedaled wildly, worried that at any moment he would trip over a rock or exposed root. A vertical cut came down upon him, and he blocked with his right forearm, suddenly coated in Level 3 protective scales. Sparks flew from the friction between the katana’s point of contact with the hard, crystal-like reptilian armor pieces. Richie pushed back, his heels digging trenches in the dirt, and tried to shove Chikita away, but her subzero cold energy shot through the katana like an injection, painfully chilling his blocking arm and numbing it. His guard fell away involuntarily.
“Oh geez!” Richie gasped, shivering, and Chikita planted a full-body roundhouse kick in his side, throwing him back-first against a tree trunk. “Ow! Fuck! Why is it always in the ribs?!?”
Chikita pointed the tip of Yukihana at Richie’s throat. “Explain yourself!” she demanded.
“What are you talking about, Lorax?! Was that your special tree or something?!” Richie said.
“I was sleeping in that tree!” Chikita said.
“Huh?” Richie blinked.
Chikita pressed the stabby bit against his jugular.
“Ok ok ok, sorry!” Richie said.
“The wind was nice and cool up there, and there was a comfy crux in the limbs to lay back in and enjoy the view. I had a few glasses of sake and guess I just dozed off. I was having such a nice dream when, suddenly, my eighty foot high bed tumbles out from under me!” Chikita growled.
“Well what were you doing in my forest anyway?!” Richie barked back.
“Your forest? I don’t see your name on it!” Chikita said.
“Look harder! I carved my initials in another tree here. Somewhere.” Richie said.
Chikita sighed and twirled Yukihana back into his sheath. “Stopping to smell the roses. My own tracking mission is going nowhere slowly, I don’t have the first clue where to find the freakshow encampment the Faceless Man is operating out of. This world is alien and distant from my own, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like a fish out of temporal water.”
She sat herself against a tree, took her long silver pipe from her bosom, and began stuffing it with tobacco. “You wouldn’t believe my frustration.”
“Try me.” Richie said, cracking out his neck, and reflecting on how every possible obstacle the universe could throw at him as of late, it had chosen to do so with a skip in its step.
As both of them talked, they were unaware that they were being watched from a distance behind the trees, a familiar figure suppressing his presence and keeping his breaths low as long claws dug eager gashes in the trunk he hid behind.
It's my lucky day. I have bones to pick with both of you, my friends. Luchesi thought darkly. He began skulking toward them, dragging his claws against the tree trunks, the scraping sound buried under the commotion of Richie and Chikita's argument. Today, he would not be careless and let his bloodlust spill out of him. Last time he lost his composure, his waves of killing intent were so powerful that ordinary people with no perception of aura could feel them, and tremble under their weight. But now, Luchesi held that intent like one holds their breath, and crouched low, his eyes fixed on the two brats like a lion preparing to pounce.
Unfortunately for Luchesi, he was not the only one who could conceal his presence. The cold muzzle of a microwave pistol pressed against the back of his skull.
"Come along quietly and we'll have a nice little chat. Otherwise, you can take a swipe at me if you want, but then I think those other guys will hear you. You may fancy yourself a boogeyman, but I don't think you want to fight all three of us at once, now do you?" Holly said.
"Maggots keep squirming out of the woodwork." Luchesi grumbled, standing and retracting his claws. "I don't understand why you pests are so insistent on getting in my way constantly."
"Maybe because you're a psychotic murderer who's made it clear in no uncertain terms that he'll kill everything that moves, and a lot of things that don't. Gums up peace of mind, not stopping you, I'm sure you can reason that out. Move." Holly bade him, and Luchesi walked with her, contemplating how far he would walk, playing along, until it was safe to claw her guts out.
"So is this an arrest?" Luchesi asked.
"I'm not here on Institute business." Holly shook her head.
"Good, because I'd be sorely insulted if the good Director didn't consider me worth any more trouble than one of his maids could handle." Luchesi chuckled.
"You done? Back to what I want. Chiki was my link to the bastard who took my eye, but if she could have caught him, she would have already. We both have scores to settle with Mr Faceless Man." Holly said. "She asked you once where he was, and when the last time you'd seen him had been. It's a new day, and there's no telling where you've been since admitting you haven't seen your sugar daddy in a while yet. If you've met since then, I-"
"want to know, naturally." Luchesi shook his head. "What am I, the city informant now? Why don't we just cut out the middleman and send you to my friend directly? I'll put you in Hell to meet him face to face!" Luchesi sprung his claws when they were a decent ways away from Richie and Chikita.
They exchanged strokes, Luchesi leaving shallow blade cuts on Holly's collar, and Holly firing a microwave beam through Luchesi's cheek. It burned red and swelled grotesquely, eliciting an angry, pained grunt. The sounds of the fledgling fight were choked off along with the would-be tussle itself when a dome of silence encased them both, and a deathly chill like the breaths of the underworld graced both their backs.
The cobalt-cloaked figure emerged from a maelstrom of shadows at the floor, rising up out of the Void-layered ground as though he were on an elevating platform concealed under the darkness. His hands were clasped behind his back, and his hood was inclined downward at a slight angle, obscuring the empty expanse within.
"You beck and call, demanding my presence. Well, here I am." dry scorn echoed from his hood.
"You!" Holly froze up, glaring, her microwave gun clutched close to her chest, shaking as her white knuckle grip fingers trembled with restrained fury.
"My Lord." Luchesi bowed his head in reverence, then knelt upon the ground, eyes averted.
"Give me my eye back. Now!" Holly growled, training her weapon on the cloaked figure.
"If you want anything from me, you'll have to take it yourself. You've not earned this encounter, our meeting here and now is simply coincidence. Consider this a sneak preview of the survival game to come. We are still in the elimination rounds for mere entry into the contest." the man said.
Holly opened fire, eyes widening and mouth agape as the plasma-like shots passed through the figure to no demonstrable effect. A seventh shot froze in the muzzle, held there under the man's mere thought, and the gun exploded to bits in Holly's hands, painfully scalding them. She hissed and shrank back, flicking her fingers.
"Hey! He's over here!" Holly tried to call to Chikita and Richie.
However, no sound reached them.
"I did say this was only a preview, didn't I?" the faceless man said. "I didn't come here to humor your request, and even if I spared a few more minutes for you, you are only fighting a shadow. A nesting shadow, reflected, refracted, and ricocheted through many prisms into bands of darkness - just like light. One of these outlines was set to autopilot elsewhere, in a place called Tide Town. Imagine my surprise at learning its own shadow puppets had been pushed back? Despite his naivety, the dragon boy is a more worthy candidate than you, I'd wager."
He looked across the forest at Richie. The psychic barrier between them was enough to conceal his presence - as well as those of Holly and Luchesi - from any outside observers, but he still sensed Richie's dragon runes sniff the air once or twice.
"My Lord, why have you come here, then?" Luchesi asked plaintively.
The figure lifted a clammy, pale blue hand from his curtain-like sleeves, and pointed it toward the jester.
"To have a word with you." he intoned, dripping scorn.
Waxy fingers melted into huge skeletal claws extending on the end of an inhumanely long arm shrouded in skin-tight jet-black latex and encircled with spiked belts. It had a visibly exposed elbow joint, as though a compound fracture was sticking through pitch black skin. The length of the arm was such that those curved, gleaming white claws would surely drag on the floor at a standing position. The limb jittered and jerked about uncannily, making gut-wrenching popping and cracking noises.
Luchesi shrank back, cold fear in his eyes, and made it as far as turning around before the shadowed hand closed like an ice-cold vice around his body, squeezing his arms and chest as though he were a chew toy caught in a solidified blizzard's clutch. The wraith lifted his protege high overhead, squeezing hard enough to make ribs groan.
“Do you want to know why the Backyards have been closed off to you since your miserable loss to the warlock in green? Hmm? It is because the garden of the chosen few is a privilege - one that I have revoked pending demonstrable evidence of your worthiness. Twice I have been surprised in so little time - one pleasantly, and once to a sinking heart. You are the latter.” the man said.
“Lover’s quarrel?” Holly asked, holding her hand and still working out the fingers.
She clutched the shaken fist and crouched before the man in cobalt.
“Spare the rod, spoil the child.” the man said.
Despite this, he released his grip and dropped Luchesi, wheezing and trembling, to the ground in a rattled heap. The jester shook there, coughing and hacking as he decompressed from the pressure of the demonic entity’s crushing grip.
“Hey! Don’t ignore me!” Holly growled. “Are you saying you’re the one who opened up that place to Station Bay to begin with? And what are you planning to do with so many Ferals?”
The wraith barely tilted his head to acknowledge her.
“Are you sure you should be questioning me right now? I’d think you’d be more worried for your partner I put in the hospital. I understand she’s suffering anemia quite badly, and comatose at that. I imagine she won’t have much to say when - if - she wakes.”
Holly grit her teeth. “So you’re the one who attacked Chelsea too? You’re just a regular prince charming, aren’t you?!” she flew at him. “SAY SOMETHING! FACELESS MAN!”
Darkness engulfed Holly, up to the shoulder. Her arm was swallowed up into the empty, bottomless void of the man’s hood. A flaring sheet of hellish agony shot up her arm from fingertips to shoulder joint, and spread like a virus from there, racking her body with what felt like freezing electricity. She would have fallen on her knees if height permitted, but she had had to jump to aim her futile punch at the man’s hood, and his ten foot height - which seemed to have grown to a dozen - meant that she hung there from her snared limb, as though she had been caught in a tangle of consuming ivy masses below the armpit.
“I have a face, child.” he said. “I don’t think you’d want to see it, though. The Faceless Man is just something some of you call me. Boogeyman, Wraith, Demon, Dark Lord, so on and so forth. I am not so singular a concept as the Void or the Backyards that only one overriding impression comes by instinct to all those who look upon me. But you cannot reach me from where we stand. A shadow puppet cannot strike the one who casts them.”
Holly was merely screaming at the top of her lungs, not really hearing or processing anything the figure said. Had she been able to compare her own predicament to the anguish Richie had felt when the shade elephant trapped his arm in its python trunk, it would have been like the difference between lemon juice in a cut, and full immersion in hydrofluoric acid.
There was simply no meaningful way to connect the levels of pain to each other.
However, the man deaned to release Holly from his hold, and she dropped to the ground, moaning in agony just like Luchesi seconds before her.
“As I said - a sneak preview you were lucky to be graced with by virtue of my whim. I don’t have any more spare time to play with you. I have discipline to dispense.” the man growled, turning from Holly to Luchesi, who whimpered and shrank back, still not daring to get up or make any overt gesture of self-defense.
The figure raised his other arm, still bound in human form and draped in the heavy sleeve of his cloak, and Holly was telekinetically lifted into the air, as though by a chokehold around her neck. The phantom sensation of being strangled was paltry in comparison to having lost her arm for even a few moments in the gate of hell that was the man’s empty hood, and she only hung there limp, arm still shaking and spasming. It looked unnaturally pale, as though the nutrients had been sucked right out of it. However, enough self-awareness and anger had returned for Holly to glare in defiance back at the Faceless Man, now that she had not passed out from the pain.
“If you think your third eye hasn’t been digested yet, then you are more than welcome to try and take it back at a later junction. However, I must insist that you wait your turn like everybody else. As it stands, there are six Candidates here in Station Bay that I can see.” the figure said. Then, he inclined his head as if thinking, and waved his off-hand; Holly rose and fell a little bit with the motion, as though the entity’s poltergeist-like grasp on her was akin to her being dangled at the end of a giant invisible riding crop. “A possible seventh will arrive before Halloween, I think. Then, the opportunity will present itself to whoever is left to step into the blurring edge. Remember this - when the heavy fog is lifted, the veil will lift with them. Seek me out then. If fate leads you to cross paths with me among thousands upon thousands of possibilities throughout space and time - then, and only then, will I grant you the possible dignity of bothering to devour you myself. If you’d like to improve your odds, whittle each other down, here in the city and beyond. The chosen few who qualify as Candidates will be gathering in and across the Backyards, and the realms that connect them, sooner than you think. I wonder who will be left in the end?”
Luchesi knew that this was facetiousness on his master’s part; he didn’t wonder at all. He knew everything. He could see a thousand moves ahead of everybody else in advance. Although Luchesi was the star upon the stage, he was not the muse or the playwright, of which the Faceless Man was both in one. He hoped upon his soul that he wasn’t about to be axed from the script. The Faceless Man’s favor was as fickle as the wavering shadow he cast in three dimensions upon this fleeting world of physicality and defined matter.
“Off with you until then.” the Faceless Man said, and flicked his wrist with the indifferent effortlessness of someone warding away a bothersome fly.
Just like that, Holly - trapped in an enforced bubble of silence about her face that sealed off her screams from reaching the other Candidates just thirty or so yards away - was sent flying over the forest, to the ends of Station Bay.
As for Luchesi - he was dragged with the Faceless Man back down through the swirling portal of darkness that closed to swallow them both up before fading away entirely as though it were never there. If anyone had witnessed this, they would have been given the uncanny impression that the circle of shadow had been like the eclipse of something far more monstrous and titanic than the robed illusion cut from that same cloth, as though the hand of a cruel angel had passed over the Earth.