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(( The Granary V2, An Ultra-Granular TTRPG ))

[[ V2, Core Rulebook ]] : [[ BUY HERE @ ITCH.IO!!! ]]

[[ The Trilogy, Expansion ]] : [[ BUY HERE @ ITCH.IO!!! ]]

[[ Kernels of Magic I, Expansion ]] : [[ BUY HERE @ ITCH.IO!!! ]]

[[ V1, Core Rulebook ]] : [[ FREE DOWNLOAD @ ITCH.IO!!! ]]

(( Blondie & The Smokestone March )) Currently @ Book 5, Chapter 5 (Epilogue).

[[ Book 1 ]] : [[ BUY HERE @ ITCH.IO!!! ]] [ Chapter 1 ] // [ Chapter 2 ] // [ Chapter 3 ] // [ Chapter 4 ] // [ Chapter 5 ] [ Chapter 6 ] // [ Chapter 7 ] // [ Chapter 8 ] // [ Chapter 9 ] // [ Chapter 10 ]

[[ Book 2 ]] : [[ BUY HERE @ ITCH.IO!!! ]] [ Chapter 1 ] // [ Chapter 2 ] // [ Chapter 3 ] // [ Chapter 4 ] // [ Chapter 5 ] [ Chapter 6 ] // [ Chapter 7 ] // [ Chapter 8 ] // [ Chapter 9 ] // [ Chapter 10 ] [ Chapter 11 ] // [ Chapter 12 ] // [ Chapter 13 ] // [ Chapter 14 ] // [ Chapter 15 ] // [ Chapter 16 ] // [ Chapter 17 ] // [ Chapter 18 ]

[[ Book 3 ]] : [[ BUY HERE @ ITCH.IO!!! ]] [ Chapter 1 ] // [ Chapter 2 ] // [ Chapter 3 ] // [ Chapter 4 ] // [ Chapter 5 ] [ Chapter 6 ] // [ Chapter 7 ] // [ Chapter 8 ] // [ Chapter 9 ] // [ Chapter 10 ] [ Chapter 11 ] // [ Chapter 12 ]

[[ Book 4 ]] : [[ BUY HERE @ ITCH.IO!!! ]] [ Chapter 1 ] // [ Chapter 2 ] // [ Chapter 3 ] // [ Chapter 4 ] // [ Chapter 5 ] // [ Chapter 6 ] // [ Chapter 7 ] // [ Chapter 8 ] // [ Chapter 9 ] // [ Chapter 10 ]

[[ Book 5 ]] : [[ BUY HERE @ ITCH.IO!!! ]] [ Chapter 1 ] // [ Chapter 2 ] // [ Chapter 3 ] // [ Chapter 4 ] // [ Chapter 5 ]

The Granary V2 is © 2021-2024 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

So, yeah. Just cleaned up some stuff for The Trilogy, our funny 3d1000 Item, since a bunch of shit had changed in the most recent Granary update. Here's the link, in case you're interested in checking it out; [[ HERE ]]

Like how The Granary V2 just got its first update! V1.1 is OUT NOW for all to Download, right [[ HERE ]]!!! How exciting! It’s got a couple new funny things to it, like the “Flavour & Function” overhaul of Ability descriptions, and it’s also redone the Grain Pools for the Branches. It’s taken us a while to get all this done with all the Life happening, but we’re still proud of it nonetheless! Additionally, we just released our first Expansion for The Granary V2, titled “The Trilogy”!!! (and subtitled “Three Thousand Effects and None of Them Good, Suck My Ass) It’s a fun Deck of Many-type Item, except maximalist in the way you’d expect from us at this point ;). It’s available for Download right [[ HERE ]], and it’s only a fiver! Any purchases are appreciated!! Now, talking about the Life stuff-- we’re not going to, haha. Personal business is personal business, though we do lament the fact that we haven’t been able to work as frequently as we’d like. From here on out, we won’t be announcing any kind of deadline / obligation until we’re stable again. Hope you’ve been having a great summer, and we’ll catch you on the flipside!

Piper spends the rest of her days continuing Blondie’s deadly legacy. She worked directly for the board members of Shepherd Gemstone as their right hand (with her squad of mercenaries being their left, no matter how much she despised it), lived happily with Janet and her children, and generally speaking, made the most of her corporately-funded adventures. Even if it means becoming more familiar with death than she ever had been before.

Harry Gilroy, in a similar vein, moved up on the Shepherd Gemstone ladder for a period of time post-success of Blondie’s post-mortem execution, managing the operations of multiple mining outposts across a few square miles— Smokestone, of course, included. Thanks to a couple smart foreman hires and the corporate suppression of any and all magical incidents in his jurisdictions (his paper shredder was consistently the fullest “section” of his office), he kept profits high enough for long enough for his superiors to take notice. He even was held in higher esteem than Hickory at the peak of his internal glory, something he absolutely dragged her through the mud over. Eventually, however, Gilroy’s head becomes a bit too big for his shoulders. He’s fired directly from the Board after news of an unprecedented number of magical afflictions, alongside a sizable number of employee uprisings in his jurisdictions, breaks to the overhead. In a drunken stupor, he blames everyone but himself, storms out of the Shepherd Gemstone HQ and pisses on their front lawn, where he is then arrested for public indecency. He becomes a washed up, former high-roller in his neighborhood, rumoured to have taxidermied Blondie’s head and hung it up above a fireplace somewhere private. He spends his hoard of blood money on expensive booze, golfing trips, and renovating his home in an attempt to gather the attention of the single women in his community. Thus, he is cast out from the one thing he knows, rich and bitter.

Though Honeysett is idyllic as it is, everyones’ plans eventually send them out of the small town, with Pickman’s Hope being far and wide the most popular ending destination.

Azariah and Roxanne leave first, planning to aid with any reconstruction that needs doing (though there wouldn’t be much by the time they get there, seeing as how the town is known for its building expertise). They instead get involved with Samson’s doings around town, organizing the unions for work and acting as the occasional carrier of goodwill to neighboring towns. It ends up being a challenging occupation, especially since they have to compete diplomatically with corporations looking to take jobs from them and their people, but Azariah’s wit usually helps bring home the bacon, and Roxanne’s organizational skills helps make sure they can eat it, too. Pickman’s Hope sees a steady increase in cash flow, and it’s not long before the couple have their own home built, courtesy of the town, with their own garden and everything.

 When they’re not working, they spend their time together indulging in the few, but substantial pleasures around the town; and, as everyone else trickles in, with them as well, acting as the guides they always have whenever something goes wrong. It’s not uncommon to find them filling the same role that Samson does, being everyone’s uncle or aunt and helping them paint fences, weed gardens, or settle minor disputes in bars. And though Azariah initially was tested by some of the rowdier locals about his capabilities (everyone knows Samson’s got it in him to stop scuffles, but this new Hare? and at his age?), but folks quickly realized that there’s to be no funny business with him around. What’s more, the rumour began floating around that Azariah liked the fighting— there was something about his eyes during the days when drunks would challenge him that burned those events into the memories of the sober. And, of course, if Roxanne was around in the case of these events, she was wicked accurate with her cane when she had it (and if she didn’t, you’d best believe she was going to pick up anything around and bludgeon your sorry ass with it), able to knock the buzz out of the most uppity of union workers.

Judith and Leon are next to leave, having decided that the best thing for them to do is just jump into a new life, leaving the adventuring business they’d been drafted into completely behind them. That means pursuing new business, the kind that would be calm, peaceful, and hopefully complimentary toward the skills that they’ve been building up. After a day or two of thinking while on the road, they decide to open a flower shop. 

Judith runs the economic end of the store, taking back the person she once was from the grips of an angry, bitter, corporate version of herself, by indulging in the simple, sweet pleasures of accounting. And it doesn’t take long for her to take to the front desk as well, committing to memory prices and tax ratios, and developing pricing strategies for larger orders such as weddings, feasts, or public events. Every flower, down to the petal, she teaches herself how to price. As the days go by, she feels herself softening more naturally in the presence of customers. Sure, she has a very low tolerance for bullshit, and she’s none too happy when folks take a long time at the counter thanks to their own incompetence, but she absorbs that annoyance with ease, instead of letting it stew in her system. It’s amazing what not letting grudges overwhelm your emotional system can do for your mental well-being! At some point, she considers writing a book about her physical and emotional experiences having escaped from an exploitative mining company, but in a way, she figures that she should wait until she’s not busy with numbers before trying to work some words.

Leon ends up the gardener, and though he’s only blessed with a literally green thumb and not a metaphorical one, a little help from the locals helps him to blossom into quite the flower expert. Arranging, however, is where he ends up finding out his talent is. His touch with colours is subtle, yet when the final piece has been completed, results in patterns that seem to shine the same way a polished gemstone would. It doesn’t take long for him to experiment with complex fragrance combinations as well, though, it doesn’t take off the way that he’d hoped. Instead, he finds himself satisfied with the scent of a particular flower, known as the Cinnamon Cup Rose, as it lets him laugh without coughing up a lung.

Olive and Cherry move down simultaneously, and for a short period of time end up living together in a single-level on the outskirts of town. It doesn’t last long however, as Olive gets tired of the noise from his mechanical work at all hours of the day and moves closer into the town square, where she instead gets to listen to the sounds of the sidewalks.

Olive’s reasoning for leaving what is ostensibly a fangirl’s fantasy villa was that she felt as though the power she was given by the Mountain Thing wouldn’t quite get used to its fullest potential if all she did was sit around Honeysett, which was filled to the brim with folks who could more than handle themselves. The burning inside pushed her toward humanitarian work, and so, she decided to learn the art of field medic-work from Roxanne. She slowly worked her way through the skills presented to her, at first getting stuck on the hurdle of being covered with blood (as that sort of thing is terrible to get out of feathers), but working through anxiety after anxiety throughout the years. Roxanne wasn’t the easiest teacher to work with but she’s definitely a thorough one, and with the incredible diversity of Pickman’s Hope and beyond, there’s a lot for Olive to learn, all while keeping track of her own condition as best she could— with the occasional check-up on her old pals.

By the time she’s learned everything that Roxanne has to teach her, she’s already been working at the local emergency response team, and has more than a few encounters under her belt where her power, and her medical knowledge, has come in handy. There were more than a few times where she saved a life by means of skilled hands and focused eyes, be it removing a bullet or deflecting one, and in time she became well-known enough among such circles to be offered permanent positions in adventuring companies and collectives, parties of many sizes and skills asking if she’d become their in-house medic. The answer she gave them, of course, was a “no,” though she was more than happy to patch them up if she was nearby, and was more than eager to pass her knowledge onto others in the field.

Cherry, on the other hand, realized that it probably wouldn’t be good for him to stick around his dads’ place for much longer. Though they love him dearly, they don’t love the amount of noise that his work and main hobby brings, so he picks up a job at the local mechanics’ Union in Pickman’s Hope and gets his hands dirty. It doesn’t take long for him to be promoted from a shelf-stocker to someone who actually works on vehicles, and his propensity for understanding models that nobody else had seen before turns him into the “I don’t know, ask him” guy for anyone in the know about cars, a label he happily upholds. With the blessing of Samson, Cherry also gets to work on establishing a racing club there in town, working to create a new breed of backwood valley-folk racers that can compete with even the biggest sponsors further out west. It’s another feather in the town’s cap; it’s a new and fresh way for folks to compete among themselves, all while attracting eyes. Aside from that, it means yearly events, and that’s just plain good for local morale.

Brie, of course, leaves last, having to hitch a ride to Pickman’s Hope to pick up her car, to then drive back north of Honeysett to meet up with her girlfriend. After months of being gone and with hardly any money left to her name, she treats her to a fancy dinner to drop the news about how the quarry with Shepherd Gemstone fell through, that she’s realized things about the line of work she’s in that she doesn’t like, and that she’s nearly been killed multiple times over the time she’s been gone (and that she’d like to not repeat this experience ever again). And so, after much talk over a couple glasses of brandy, a sizeable bill for the pork chops they ordered, and a few days to mull everything over, they decide to move down to Pickman’s Hope, where Brie not only knows people, but also where she could get a job doing something less actively perilous. And a job she did get after a brief talk with Samson— she now works as a local detective slash investigator, helping to suss out corporate interests and potential moles from Shepherd from the town, as the discovery of Hieronymus T. Thistle’s treachery was something of a wake up call for the union head. Though it’s not entirely out of the line of fire, it puts her in a spot where she feels truly confident that the work she’s doing is for the greater good. And, of course, the constant reassurance from her peers helps quite a bit.

Jules, Lucille, and Meat all realize that there’s something binding the three of them together, and that thing is their lack of ability to settle down in the place they’ve come to be so fond of. Pickman’s Hope is a no-go for them, because as much as they’d like to go domestic, Jules and Meat are both being hunted by the Carnevale, and Lucille figures that someone like her would be better off sorting out her issues on the road, rather than cooped up in a house somewhere. So, they buy a car from Pickman’s Hope, say goodbye to everyone (with many tears being shed on behalf of Meat having to leave so soon from Brie and Roxanne), and they set out west for new horizons. 

And though they’re not the newest of horizons, they certainly did find a new-er climate to work in. The three of them, collectively, set out as another independent contractor group, doing odd jobs here and there and taking advantage of Meat’s Notus powers to get them done quickly and efficiently. Their plans are to make as much money as they can so that way they can retire early and maybe set something similar to Honeysett up (or find someplace like it that already exists, build a place in the neighborhood, and live the good life). The process of getting there however, has only just begun.

It’s getting into the evening hours, and the first flakes of winter are beginning to collect on the lawn of Piper’s residence. Tanner is crowing about how much snow he thinks they’re going to get, Madrone has dug her nose into a book to avoid the walking annoyance that is her kid brother, and Janet has found a cozy spot right up against Piper on the sofa, their fireplace crackling softly.

After taking a sip of her tea, Janet stands up from her spot, walks around the couch, picks up a wrapped box, and places it on Piper’s lap. “Go on. Open it,” she coos.

“Aw, honey. You shouldn’t have.” Piper replies, ripping into the paper.

It’s a box. A box from the Quilting Club with her name on it, to be precise. And whatever’s in the box is heavy, heavier than the heaviest dumbbell Janet works out with for her calisthenics, anyways.

And when she opens it, it’s as though she’s cracking open a treasure chest of sparkling gold doubloons. It’s a replica of Blondie’s old pistol, the hand cannon that turns peoples’ heads into leaky cans of soup. In the glow of her awe, she nearly forgets to shoo away the kids, who are crowding around the “cool gun that Piper got” (as her children are still getting acclimated to calling her “mom”). Its weight, its design, its finish, all of it is pristine and new and exactly how she remembers it. And now it's hers. The final piece is hers.

“My god. You really shouldn’t have.”

Blondie & The Smokestone March End.

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[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is   © 2020-2023 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.  

Its most prominent features are academic and domestic in nature; it has quite the library and a sizable museum, the latter of which in most towns in this day and age would roughly translate to “a great big box full of shiny things people are going to steal,” but nothing really goes missing from the Honeysett Museum for the same reason that Cherry knows it’s safest if they head straight there rather than stop for anything.

It takes a very particular set of characteristics to take up a line of work where your starting equipment, entirely self-funded, tends to be something like how Samson had described it, that being weaponry which was obviously in its second life, having abandoned something kind and clean like acting as a fencepost to take up the dirty, underappreciated but wildly overpaying process of fighting Monsters. Not that every adventurer in the world makes their name by punching up, of course, but that’s usually where they start. Someone, somewhere, has a bad night or a bad day and ends up smashing something creepy or crawly that had intended to eat them and it’s all history from there. In a night they’ve either solidified their need for the normal or a hunger for that dreadful master known as adventure.

Some go the extra mile and sign up with a larger association, such as the guild school, or simply tag along with other freelancers in a party, as Samson did, as Steiner and Baker did. Not all of this work trends toward the humanitarian, as inevitably a burgeoning class of warrior drifters willing to fight for cash tends to lend itself well to clandestine operations, especially in the corporate world and its sister, the criminal underworld, as Lucille and Jules each show. Being good with a gun and willing to use it for whoever pays best, that sort of work has two ways out— early retirement or death.

There aren’t a lot of adventurers who die of natural causes; those that do die in Honeysett, in a specific set of suburbs where those looking to ride out their days coasting on small fortunes from a few hard jobs make their place. Typically these people have a large stash of whatever loot they’ve gathered from trips into dangerous and mysterious climes, often strange and esoteric, beyond that of the normal person’s day-to-day life. Even the very sewers beneath the bustling cities could hold all kinds of creatures, all kinds of treasures, if one is noble, stupid, or desperate enough to pick up a sword and take them.

In Cherry’s neighborhood in Honeysett are the folks who made sure a place like Honeysett can exist, who every night toss themselves into the depths of cave systems like that beneath Pickman’s Hope to take on Cave Shadows and Skitterbears of their own volition, if not to protect others then to earn something to make the world just that much more bearable for those around them— if not to rid the world of something as dangerous and consuming as living, hungering entropy and its kin. Now tired and living out some sense of peace, they were the noble, stupid, and desperate, brave enough to walk into the darkest, most dangerous places in the world with little more to protect them than some sheet metal on their chests, a fencepost in one hand, and some good friends at their back.

If it doesn’t kill them, if they make it to retirement and have stuck it out, they’re like Samson— wavemakers in their own right, the movers and shakers whose names might cause shudders of starstruck awe or muted terror, depending upon the listener, and Samson’s just one.

Another man like this, another product of the bad day, wandering slayer of Monster and man alike, is unable to move his body. The heat fueling it is dying, along with the glow inside. Blondie is getting cold.

Piper, by this point, has run the corpse over six times, give or take a few where she just parked the car with its tire right on the damned thing’s neck. Still, despite her best efforts, it’s done little but turn the body and twist it, though it has managed to get it to stop moving. It almost looks dead for a solid minute as she gets out and grabs her recently acquired best friend, the Doorman crowbar, before he’s working his jaws trying to gurgle something out between globs of what she assumes must be some kind of life fluid. She’d call it blood, but it’s thicker, like dense bile or magma.

Sundae’s got both Jack and Nancy shoved into the back of the car, and that’s at least a slight improvement. It’s not great to think about, given as Jack’s joints are halfway to melted together where they aren’t just busted to hell and back, but he’s an Android, that can be fixed. Nancy might almost be in a state comparable, but all the same, a Vampire’s a Vampire. A few good cuts from a butcher shop or from some random civilian on the way and Piper’ll have her healing up in no time.

“He’s still not dead?” Sundae asks, walking over to stand side by side with Piper, a knife the length of her forearm in hand. “Nancy handed me this. Said you asked for it?”

Piper snatches the knife from the Elf, then looks down at the still gurgling, faintly glowing body of Blondie. “Still not dead. You’d think such a professional would at least do his replacement the courtesy of vacating the fucking premises,” she snarls, striking him in the neck with the heel of her boot, forcing the heavy form onto its back proper.

Sundae pulls the shotgun out of Blondie’s chest cavity, getting one hand on the gun itself and her boot against the bulk of burned muscle. Once it’s out, for good measure, she pulls out her revolver and pumps a few shots into the head. More glowing fluid oozes from the wounds, but the gurgling and the frothing doesn’t stop.

“I ever tell you what my daddy does for a living?” Piper asks, crouching beside Blondie’s head, eyes fixated on the slow, thick trickle running along his broken maw. Slowly, she runs the hook of her crowbar along the crisp, fractured, bony jaw.

Sundae shrugs. “I didn’t know you had parents. I guess it checks out, you seem about messed up enough…”

“Cute.” Piper rolls her eyes before tapping the top of Blondie’s head, earning a soft thudding sound. “He’s a butcher. He likes hunting and fishing in his personal time, but professionally he’s got a butcher shop. For a while he wanted me to take it over, then he let me get that job at Shepherd Gemstone to get some wanderlust out of my system. Now look at me…”

“Are you monologuing at me or at the dead guy?”

“Not… dead,” coughs and sputters Blondie. Each roll of his jaw and tilt of his head is twisting, wretched, and erratic. He can feel the muscles hardening as the flames go out, as the embers smoulder and the smoke begins to fade. “I’ll kill you. I’ll- kill- you- all.”

Sundae nearly doubles over as she laughs, but her cackling finds its end as a bronze tail slams into the back of her head, sending her to the stone floor in a small heap. When she’s back up, she locks eyes with Piper, whose jaw is tense, shut, and threatening to put a snarling set of fangs out from between her lips any second. “Humorless bitch,” is all she gets out before a hiss sends her straight back to the car, lightly wiping a bloody nose and a split lip.

Once alone, Piper turns to Blondie again, staying crouched, white-knuckling her fists around the handle of the hefty knife, the crowbar clattering to the rocks beneath them both. “You’ve got some nerve,” she says. “In the end, it wasn’t enough. Just die already, just die. I’m not going to let some flaming piece of shit get in the way of what I want. Nobody’s getting in my way, not those idiots in the car, not those miner fucks, and not you. I’m finally doing it, just like you told me back in Smokestone, remember? Take what you want, right?”

His dull, glowing eyes linger on her for a time, jaw still and voice silent, before he says, “Who… are you?”

Piper clenches her teeth and stabs Blondie in the throat, driving as far as she can and pressing on the deer antler handle until it threatens to snap under her lycanthropic power. Once it’s in too deep to handle, she picks up her crowbar and begins smashing the blade even further, like someone trying to split a log with an iron wedge.

Half-hearted and vain attempts to bite her as she did this came, but are all the same ignored as she continues to ram the knife deeper and deeper, only stopping once she hears the awkward scrape of knife point against bone, which tells her it’s about time to get to the good part.

Though she has to reach into the wound, she grips the handle tight in one hand and hooks his head with the crowbar using the opposite. Then, she rips them in opposite directions. The charred hide cracks and gives way, and as she slashes the knife free from its prison, she removes the head from the body, severing the spine.

Without a body to give it the strength of a voice, the werewolf’s jaws work themselves without any noise save for the wet sizzle of glowing, magically infused corpse-fluid on stone and jaw on jaw. She tosses the knife away, the blade ruined from the heat and warped beyond belief, before picking the head up with her gloved hands to look into his eyes.

She can see the glow fading, leaving him. The thing in her hands stopped being Blondie a long time ago, but it’s only just begun to stop moving. “Shepherd’s got a crap taste in officers,” she says with a sigh. “I should get Janet some flowers on the way back.”

Sundae flinches in the passenger seat when Piper finally sits in front of the wheel again, the head of the werewolf getting tossed into her lap during the process. A scowl crosses her elfin features, but not a word is uttered until Piper initiates the conversation, her voice rising with the struggling rev of the engine. “Have one of the others bag it on the way if either of them can use their fingers. We’re going to go pickup my car and then we’re heading for Honeysett— and keep your mouth shut, Sundae, or I’ll break it.”

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There’s a moment of silence when Cherry finally parks the truck, dusty and covered in bulletholes, out in front of a quaint, red-sided two-level at the edge of the surrounding forest. Nobody but him gets out of the car (leaving the keys inside the ignition, mostly out of sheer exhaustion but also in case they needed to get going again), and nobody but him approaches the house. The front door is left open, with a screen door helping to keep the bugs out, and the smell of sugary, roasting vegetables wafts into his headspace before he even rings the doorbell.

“You’re always on time, Celica,” a burly voice calls out from inside. “You brought the wine this time, right?”

A large, bearded man sticks his head around the corner of the kitchen, working with something hot on the other side of the wall. His hair, a few weeks post-shaving, looks like it could’ve been a deep, rich crimson earlier in his life— it has since turned lighter, more gray-toned, with his long, well-kept beard reflecting this even more so. It helps to hide the wicked, messy claw scar wrapping up and around his right ear and ending at the edge of his right cheek. The glasses, thick-rimmed and square on his head, are fogged up from the hot kitchen work, and it takes him a couple tries of identifying the face at his door to realize who it is. “Cherry?” he asks, rubbing the condensation from his lenses. “Or am I scrambled from stickin’ my head in the oven all mornin’?”

Though he nearly passes out as he pushes the screen door open, Cherry finds himself grinning like an idiot at the sound of his dad’s voice. “I think it could be a little bit of both.”

The sound of a pan being set down on the table is heard, and his dad comes walking around the corner, apron still messy and standing only a few inches taller than his son, to give him a hug that lifts him clear off the hardwood floors of the foyer.

“My god, it’s so good to see you,” he starts. “You got some time off from the ol’ job? Actually, don’t answer that, I’ve gotta call your father inside. He’ll wanna hear.”

Cherry puts his hands over his ears temporarily, as the threat of losing his eardrums to the sound of “ASH! GET YOUR MUDDY BUTT INSIDE, CHERRY’S HOME!”, alongside the response of “WHAT IN THE HELL IS HE DOIN’ HOME ALREADY?! RED, THIS IS THE THIRD SURPRISE VISIT THIS WEEK, YOU GOTTA WARN ME WHEN YOU’RE DOIN THIS STUFF!” from the back of the house, presumably through an open window nearest the kitchen.

“Hey, dad?” he asks, voice muffled on Red’s shoulder.

“What’s up?”

“I’m not on leave. I quit, actually.”

“What?! Why?” “And I’ve got a couple friends to introduce you to.”

“Don’t tell me you’re—” Red begins, before looking over Cherry’s shoulder and into the front yard. There stands everyone from the truck, unwashed and tired beyond belief, some waving hello to him, some leaning up against one another for various reasons, and some working on adjusting the bandages on the others.

“Yup,” Cherry mumbles, passing out onto the floor of the foyer, leaving his Dad to reckon with the nine strangers that now stand in front of him.

“Uh,” he stammers. “I’ll break out the drinks.”

There’s nothing quite like trying to pack twelve people into a relatively small living room and kitchen combo. Though couples like Azariah and Roxanne are more than willing to sit on one anothers’ laps, there’s still a lack of seating / standing room in a house where two large, old men consistently bump into one another when preparing dinner. Cherry, having been wafted back into consciousness by a mug of tea, sits on the back counter in the kitchen (definitely in the way of his parents, but at the moment they’d feel bad making him get down). Red and Ash, the latter of which dons a mane / beard combo of long, curly, grey hair and who stands a few inches taller than his husband, busy themselves settling everyone in, learning everyone’s names, and making room in the kitchen for the surprise party that’s just now beginning.

A cask of Painted Pumpkin wine is brought up from the cellar, and things begin to smooth themselves out. Azariah, Olive, and Cherry’s Dads get themselves into a conversation about adventuring. Jules, Lucille, and Meat hang back from the rest of the crowd, simply taking in the good vibes (and the third of which having to stand near the stone-lined fireplace, as Ash recognizes what sort of affliction they have and knew what it does to wooden flooring). Brie, Judith, Leon, and Cherry all have themselves a few sips of alcohol to reflect on the happenings of the day, and to unwind a little, seeing as how high tensions have been recently.

Olive fangirls out over the fact that Cherry’s parents are somewhat legendary in the area for their adventuring accomplishments, from their Dragon-slaying to their town defending, going so far as to say that they were part of the reason why she took up the axe to begin with. And when Cherry mentions that the whole neighborhood is filled with people just like them, and when Celica Dahlstad, the unkillable robin-hood repossession artist who’s wanted in thirty cities, walks through the front door with a pricey bottle of local bourbon? She looks as though she might explode with excitement.

Meat is eventually approached by Ash, who points them in the direction of a couple only a block away who are similarly undead, but who work with extremely fireproof material, and could, theoretically, get them some proper gear. As the conversation continues, they bond over their experiences on the road, and Ash sympathizes with the feeling of never feeling at peace with the way things are, and always feeling on edge. The only thing that helped him, as he puts it, was falling in love and wanting to keep it that way.

In an awkward, but extensive conversation about the state of Pickman’s Hope started between Brie, Azariah, and Roxanne, Brie asks about when it would be a good time to head back down, since she’d very much like to pick up her car so that she can visit her girlfriend up north, let her know what had happened and that they’re more than likely broke as a joke. Roxanne informs her that if she needs a place to stay, she’s more than welcome down at the old mining town, since there had been talk between her and Azariah about moving there later in the year, since Smokestone is no longer an option (and because they realized that they had missed Samson more than they remembered).

And eventually, things quiet down. Hours turn into days, and those days are spent on recovery, alongside familiarizing themselves with the neighborhood. Many folks drop by to say hello (and almost everyone being recognized by Olive, though she hardly ever mentioned it), each one wanting to talk, meet the new folks, check up on Cherry, or drop off some extra food. It becomes incredibly apparent to the runaways that most folks in this place, regardless of their general demeanor, are willing to help with anything and everything. Everyone grows their own food, everyone helps out with one anothers’ upkeep, everyone looks out for one anothers’ backs. There’s nothing like knowing just how awful the world can be to straighten out one’s sense of community. And there’s nothing like the strength gained from adventuring that turns these sorts of communities into some of the most well-protected on this side of the Dividends.

==============================================================

Damn the calm and the quiet. Every minute since Blondie stopped making noise has been so silent that Piper’s largely left with her own thoughts for company, as even her own underlings have been hesitating to speak unless spoken to— a preferred change over Sundae blurting out whatever she pleases or Nancy giving her a migraine, but the sheer amount of nothing that goes on during information collection and paperwork processing is detestable.

When the three remaining of her squad are patched up, Jack’s joints are all fixed and moving again and Nancy’s up and about, Piper’s found the important stuff. Old admin records of addresses and letters of recommendation, all sent from a nice little suburb in Honeysett. She knew it had to be in Honeysett already, but Pickman’s Hope and Fusillade were each much easier to find anything in. Honeysett has this odd corporate-blackout to it that she doesn’t get, but that’s not as important anymore. If those fucks aren’t hanging around with Cherry’s family, then she can use them as bait.

Nobody’s gone anywhere yet. For all the talk of places to go and work to be done, they’ve spent a lot of time just recovering and discussing their plans without actually acting on them. Cherry’s dads are a fountain of hospitality, and the neighbors are all willing to give their own two cents every once in a while too, especially now that the neighborhood’s nephew, Cherry himself, has returned— even if it means there might be a lot more engine revving in the near future.

When the big, faded luxury vehicle comes to a halt just behind the truck in front of the house, most of the folks, if not all of them, are out on the front porch enjoying something or other. Some are locked in conversation, as Judith and Lucille are, over the tenable nature of a possible flower shop in Pickman’s Hope, with Leon and Jules offering small comments here or there as Lucille runs through some basics of entrepreneurial startups having at one point technically run a small mercenary band during her stint with Shepherd Gemstone. Others are a bit busy enjoying their time with their partners— needless to say Azariah and Roxanne are practically attached at the hip and half-dancing to nonexistent music in the yard, Leon’s practically spent the whole time acting as a glorified lawn chair for Judith (and he wouldn’t have it any other way), and Red and Ash themselves have been exchanging the occasional kiss between shifts handling the grill out front, much to the chagrin of their son Cherry.

Olive and Cherry were each the first to notice the driver, with Brie and Meat being close behind only because the two only just walked around the house to head out front again with arms full of disposable plates, paper cups, and some bottles of drinks both soft and hard.

Piper steps out, grinning near ear to ear, and offers a brief wave before stepping around the car itself to walk onto the lawn. Behind her, the three still living members of the unit exit as well. The general underlying hum of enjoyment halts altogether as the four step onto the grass, and the silence grabs more attention than the throng of life had; neighbors poke their heads out of their windows and stand in their doorways, suspicious looks on their faces, hesitation in their movements only due to a lack of understanding. Were Red and Ash expecting more?

Everyone drops what’s in their hands and puts them up not in surrender but in preparation as Sundae, Nancy, and Piper each draw their weapons.

“Y’all really are stupid, going and hiding here like we wouldn’t have this address on record.” Piper grows taller, meaner looking as her fangs poke out from between her lips and venom drips to the ground, sizzling in the grass as her tail rolls and coils behind her. “At least you’re all in one place. It’ll be hard to fit everybody into the one car, but I’m sure you can handle the luggage stacking, right, Jack?”

A soft, “Yes, ma’am,” exits the bot as he steps forward, raising his fists.

Azariah sighs. “Survived Blondie, got this far, and now…”

“And now nothing.” Red says bluntly, walking out from around the grill, a “Kiss the Cook” apron on and a very, very warm spatula in one heavy hand. “You put your weapons down or you’ll regret it.”

Piper laughs, but Jack complies, immediately setting his hands to his sides and stepping back. This, of course, causes Piper to go from laughing to hissing at him. “What are you doing? It’s an old man, beat the shit out of him.”

Sundae clears her throat and puts her gun away. “Boss, taking on miners is one thing. Care to look around?”

“Why? It’s just some fucking suburb—”

She stops when she actually does glance around, and behind her little group, on the sidewalk and on the street, a throng of neighbors have cropped up.

Cherry’s known just about all of these people his whole life, and a few for a little over half. He knows them as friends of the family, honorary aunts and uncles, but Olive, who’s having a hard time keeping it together beside him, knows them all from newspaper clippings and bar stories passed around in her old traveling merc circles.

In a wide semicircle around the back of the unit stand Cherry’s neighbors, including but not limited to, as Olive hastily describes to Brie, Meat, and anyone else willing to listen as her whispers rise and fall with her enthusiasm, the following: Celica Dahlstad, whose reputation for being nigh unkillable is only really beaten by the near fantastical knife gripped in one of her hands; the Hunter Brothers, a set of middle-aged men with pointed ears, graying slicked back hair, and revolvers that make even Sundae’s seem pale in comparison, with multiple barrels and other odd additions; Mountain Road, a craggled, rocky Golem taller than even Jack with a rifle that actually looks more like somebody put a stock on a medieval cannon, whose appearance is close to a statue of a lumberjack come to life; and of course the couple that Meat had gotten a pair of fireproof shoes from, a tall, strong looking, stern woman with white hair, grey skin, and electric blue eyes. A similar glow creeps up her arms and legs, her pointed ears and icy fangs snaggling slightly out from her cracked, mirthless smile. Beside her is a grinning skeleton in a polo and khaki shorts who only makes it up to her shoulder; they’re Bill and Renee Crawl.

Behind the lot of them is Ash, in whose hands is held something massive, like a log of wood made out of some kind of stone; Cherry knows it as “that damned piece of shit,” from what Red had called it once or twice due to it falling over and wrecking some of their nicer furniture in Cherry’s youth. Olive knows that to be a weapon of literally Dragon slaying proportions, a log of the same stuff Jules’ old stick had been made out of with holes bored into one end for easier gripping. To put it simply, Ash was swinging around about half a tree’s worth of wood strong enough to, even in walking-stick form, force a hard left turn from a careening, out-of-control motor vehicle.

And here he is, eyes blazing with unfiltered rage from under gray eyebrows, stepping from between his neighbors to lean in toward Piper and her cronies to say, “Get off my fucking lawn,” in a voice barely above a whisper.

Every neighbor there is clad in something casual, from jeans to shorts to polos to short sleeve dress shirts, the sort with floral patterns and exotic fruit plastered all over, but everyone is holding something that makes Sundae, Nancy, and Jack stand down. It all makes Piper angry, but more so, she’s deadly jealous of it all. The blatant, casual display of power— everyone here could whoop her ass one-on-one and make it back in time for a beer. It’s equal parts terrifying and maddening, seeing just how much further she has to go before she’s one of them.

She holds eye contact with Ash, having turned around, until behind her head there’s a soft click. She blinks; Brie has placed a semiautomatic pistol to the back of Piper’s head. With a surprising lack of malice, Brie says simply to her, “Leave.”

The set of four make their way back to the car without any pleasantries or goodbyes, tucking themselves inside with their proverbial tails between their legs, save for Piper. She’s marched to the car, personally, by Brie and Ash, the latter of whom has set his Dragon-smashing log down because, as Red shouts from across the yard, “I don’t want to have to pay the town for cleanup, you messy bastard,” with the phrase “messy bastard” somehow coming out very sweetly.

It’s only after getting in the driver’s seat that Piper rolls down the window and eyes Brie, scowling. “This isn’t over,” she hisses.

Brie lifts the gun again, “I would say it is.” The car takes off down the road again as everyone watches.

Ash raises a brow and asks, “I thought you ran out of bullets?”

“I did,” she replies. “But she did not know that.”

A smile presses its way out from beneath Ash’s beard, and as he lifts his club to go stash it away again, he gestures toward the yard. “Alright everyone, stick around! Red’s cooking ribs.”

The neighbors all walk in to mingle too, though most leave after a minute or so to pop back over to their own houses for a moment— it’s rude to not bring at least a side, after all.

Chapter Four End.

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[ Table of Contents ]

Brie points to the happy couple in the corner adjacent. “They had taken care of someone particularly frightening behind us. I believe they shot him.”

“Looked like someone’d thrown him through a couple sheets of glass.”

“He was glass, Azariah,” Judith rolls her eyes.

“That’d explain it,” he says, yawning. “Now, if y’all excuse me, I need to pass out. My legs feel like they’re ‘bout to disconnect from my hips, and my heart feels like an overfilled water balloon.”

He attempts to put his feet up on Meat’s lap, as a little joke, but they have none of it, pushing him away and standing up behind Olive, who is still in the process of blocking bullets from her knees, albeit slowly, as though Sundae’s firing pattern hasn’t gotten any more accurate, it’s certainly gotten more cautious about the random angles she chooses to fire at.

“Do you need help?” they ask, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“That’d be nice, but I ain’t sure what you’d be able to do,” Olive starts, but upon seeing Meat’s hand conjuring a magical fireball like a toilet flushing in reverse, she decides to just say, “Okay, that looks like it’ll do the trick.”

Piper, half-transformed and having to keep her frustration at a simmer, lest she go berserk and crash the car, grows increasingly worried at the prospect of being hit back by their targets, especially since the flaming corpse and the Hare had passed them in the tunnels, hopped on to the back of the truck, and the former decided to set their hands on fire.

Sundae, on the other hand, is still having a time just firing off her revolver. She’s having such a time, in fact, that her hammer-pulling thumb has gotten quite tired, and she’s physically slowing down, even though her heart tells her to keep firing.

Or, it might not be her heart at all— there’s a part of her that knew instinctively that when she met Piper, it was going to be in her best interest to do the things she says, but only to the degree of a lackey. From the way that she addressed the four of them, to the way that she kicked an old man while he was down, instead of finishing the job then and there. She’s cruel, overconfident, and most importantly, cowardly. The last of which meaning she’ll take any opportunity to put herself over others to ensure they can’t hurt her.

So, the plan had been simple. The others can bust their asses for the jobs, but Sundae was going to have her cake and eat it too. She was going to do her job to the minimum, so that she could revel in the presence of someone like Piper getting absolutely livid beside her. And boy, is Sundae feeling the revelry at this point in time. What’s the bet that Piper ends up getting her pay docked for all this? Ends up getting chewed out by one of her superiors? The last guy didn’t think he had any superiors, but at least he had the balls to act the way he thought. Maybe she’ll even get demoted. Getting her fired would be bad, but having her as a lackey? Sundae’s very own evil, cynical, violent, and insecure lackey? A couple hits every now and then would be worth the trouble in the end.

As she reloads her revolver, grinning from the state of her headspace, she takes another punch to the shoulder, causing her to spill a full handful of revolver slugs onto the floor.

Piper slams the dashboard in frustration, causing it to shatter like the windshield did earlier. “Fuck! Fuck, god damnit, shit,” she says, her defilement of the car’s interior taking the wind out of whatever she was going to berate Sundae for.

“Pick it up, quick. Get back to shooting, idiot.”

“Of course, boss,” Sundae responds, leaning over in her chair. She takes her time sorting out shards of the windshield from the bits of brittle dashboard from the shiny brass casings of her rounds, and time is exactly what she needed to take, as a hand-sized fireball hits her car seat headrest, showering the cabin with flaming dust and cushioning.

She has to muffle a snicker as Piper hiss-screams in surprise, rapidly trying to staunch the setting fires with a free hand. Quickly, she gathers up the rest of her bullets (she knew where they were all along, the effect was to keep the pressure up on the snake) and helps her boss put out all the fire, even if it means leaning up against a seat that’s missing its headrest.

“It looks like you made somethin’ explode in there, Meat,” Olive comments, still bracing herself for any stray shots that their chasers could muster. “But I don’t think you hit the person who was shootin’ us.”

“Fine by me,” they say. With a glance, they notice that the Owl’s leg has been bandaged with one of Lucille’s sleeves. “You should take a break. I’ve got it from here.”

She looks up at them, narrowing her eyes. “I’m not movin’ until we’ve lost’em.”

“Couldn’t Brie just shoot them?”

“My last magazine was spent on Judith and Leon’s plan, Meat,” she comments, holding her semi-auto out for them to see. “And it’s quite difficult to hit anything when the platform we’re on is moving at such a speed, much less in the dark, and of course, when you’re afraid for your life.”

“And nobody else can help?”

Everyone else in the truck bed shrugs.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” they sigh. “I’m gonna end this, then.”

They take their position behind Olive, and begin to charge up a fireball with the intent of hitting the driver square in the jaw. If the one that had missed had caused so much pandemonium in the passenger seat, then who can tell what one in the driver seat can do.

But, the plan is interrupted by Roxanne knocking on the sliding glass door between the bed and the cab, opening it quickly, and calling out, “Everyone grab onto the hand-holds, please. Cherry’s about to speed up, and we don’t want anyone falling out. This includes you, Meat,” she says before sticking her head back in the cab, after seeing that the Notus hadn’t done what she had asked.

==============================================================

It’s a hectic moment inside of the truck’s cab, somehow more hectic than the mess outside with bullets still flying by between Sundae’s reloads and the number of people having to get good handholds in the wood and metal bed of the vehicle. Meat, for added measure out there, has to make sure they’re holding metal, and only the thick parts they can find, avoiding anything delicate as though the truck itself might have some parts mysteriously made from tissue paper.

In front, Cherry’s hands are gripping the steering wheel tight enough to make his forearms ache and both Jules and Roxanne are staring straight ahead of them. On the map’s a chasm crossing, one of the largest in the tunnels and one of the most efficient vehicular shortcuts made during the heyday of the Shepherd operation here; in its original construction it ramped up to a higher ledge on the other side and should lead right outside, which while it means the chase would then be on open road, a place where Cherry assures himself he could definitely beat the car behind him, there’s a new problem. Whatever bridge was there prior had collapsed.

There is, however, a solid meter or so of bridge jutting up and out from their side of the chasm, terminating there in ragged, jagged edges as though ruined by great claws— or perhaps just time, but that’s something Cherry doesn’t have to waste on something frivolous like the why or how of an old, old bridge having fallen in the past five years. What he has to worry about is the logistical danger of trying to make that jump.

As Jules searches Cherry’s features, a fear pools in the hollow of his stomach, right on top of the lackluster meal he’d had of the last of Davey’s mushrooms. “You’re actually going to jump it? Kid. Look, we’re beat, sometimes that’s that.”

“We are not beat,” Roxanne snarls back at the Vampire, but when she sees the ramp getting closer she frowns and glances toward the driver also. “Perhaps we could just stop and overpower them with the truck?”

Cherry shakes his head. It’s hard to feel their voices in the thrum and thrill of the metal around him, the way the frame’s rattling and the engine’s roaring, the give and take of the wheel his fingers are curled around. His eyes don’t leave the ramp, but his mouth moves to offer, “We might lose people that way. We can do this.”

“We’re gonna lose all of us this way.” Jules’ frown grows deeper set in his face. “And here I go dying. I should—”

“We can do this,” Cherry cuts him off. “Everyone’s holding on. I was going to save this for any open road chase we might have, but we’ve got this. Besides, it’s like everyone’s forgot I’ve got magic.”

“Magic that allows you to take things apart, Cherry,” Roxanne points out, but pats his shoulder anyway with a resigned sigh. “You aren’t going to take the car apart, are you?”

Cherry’s right hand leaves the steering wheel to pick an object up off the dashboard; in his hand and against the wheel he holds a simple switch wired into the truck, which he rigged himself during the installation of that little gift he’d gotten in Pickman’s Hope. It’s a handle with a button on top, and from the bottom runs a simple wire into the machine, connected to the payload, the can of Pounder Nitrous.

He’s direly hoping that after all the checks and re-checks, after all the mechanical considerations, alterations, and nights spent poring over this engine like a surgeon, that he hasn’t forgotten something. Every single inch of this truck is rendered perfectly inside of his skull, vibrant and beautiful in its dirty, rust-bait junkheap way. The pedal beneath him is pressed near flat to the metal floor and the truck’s screaming to its top speed, setting the vehicle to rattle and screech between its joints, scraping metal on metal with the speed and shrill tones of a vengeful spirit.

Jules and Roxanne hold onto their seats in a literal sense. In the back everyone else does the same, but it’s only once an overly cautious Lucille looks ahead of the truck that she realizes what’s going to happen. “Hold on even tighter,” she says to the rest of them. “I think we’re about to jump the gap.”

Azariah’s still half-wheezing when he holds up a hand and tries to shout, “Kick it, Cherry!” And it does get out, at least a little, though he’s left sputtering and clutching not only the side of the truck bed but also his literal side.

As the truck beneath them accelerates to its top speed, they’re all shaking hard and watching as Piper’s car is losing ground, falling behind.

Sundae scowls and takes a few shots lower, attempting to hit the truck’s tires before she’s smacked with a bronze tail. “What the fuck was that for?” She screams. “I’m trying to win!”

“And have that truck kill us at the same time? Wreck while we’re both gunning it inside a cave?” One of Piper’s hands slams against the dashboard, balled into a fist. “Fucking useless trash— the plating’s slowing us down!”

“Do you expect me to do something about it? Crap, they’re still speeding up, they’re gonna crash in the gorge ahead at this rate.”

Piper scoffs. “Let ‘em. Anything worth keeping’ll survive the crash.”

“But that’s gonna kill them—”

“We can dig their bones out of the wreckage afterward. We can go find Jack and Nancy, those morons.”

Cherry’s thumb rubs the button, a nice, shiny red one, as his fingers curl around both the right side of the steering wheel and the switch handle. His brain feeds him images of straightaways and tight corners, an open road and a cloudy sky, somewhere to go, to drive, to fly. The world is silent around him as even the rattling and roaring of the truck goes quiet and all he can hear is his own heartbeat and the soft click as he pushes his thumb down on the switch.

A click and a soft hiss, something new being fed into the beast’s organs, life itself. Nothing so pure has touched this engine in a long, long time and it’s almost forgotten the taste of this special flame, burning bright and furious in the dark, longing to abandon the road and chase the sky. The old monster gives its all as it powers beyond itself, rumbling like thunder and speeding like lightning toward the ramp and then off of it, sending itself upward, angling like a shark breaching the water, pointing its blocky nose and roaring maw toward the higher peak.

The animal’s done its part, now comes the driver’s. Cherry hasn’t done it for something this big before, and all his practice hasn’t explicitly been about lifting, mostly figuring and reconfiguring and, even more so, deconstruction. His brow furrows and every muscle in his body tenses at once as, in his mind, he focuses on the whole of the truck, grasping with his mind at every dip and curve of the metal, more familiar to him now than even his own fathers’ faces, because it has to be. If it isn’t the most detailed thing in his mind he’ll lose his grip and they’ll fly into the chasm below.

His body wants to rip apart inch by inch, bone by bone and muscle by muscle. Every tendon wants to snap and his brain itself wants to become a ball of lightning. Luckily enough, his bones are made of rock now. They couldn’t come apart now even if he wanted them to. It’s an anchor of sorts as he feels, physically, like the amount of force he’s exerting is going to make him explode.

His mind is undergoing a similar duress as he takes it upon himself to perform a telekinetic deadlift, doing his best to make sure that the truck goes beyond the peak of the typical arc, having to essentially cancel out the factor gravity plays in this vehicle’s movement. In a single instance it’s like he’s trying to drag the car up with his bare hands, at the same time pressing his shoulders against a ceiling he cannot see pushing him down.

Gravity, wind resistance, friction, these are all just hands attempting to push the truck away from the further ledge. They’re arms of enemies, locking with him as he raises it, canceling them out. He’s taking the hits and suffering their forces as the truck does not.

Piper’s car screeches to a fast stop a meter or so away from the bridge-ramp itself and the two women inside stare, wide eyed and infuriated, confused, as they watch a Stallion Q “Mountain Screamer” model truck, half a step from the grave, fly. Every person in the truck bed is holding on for their lives, screaming, some laughing, some crying. The two watch as it flies in a perfect upward arc up to the higher ledge and over it, where it lands and continues on a beeline for the exit.

Roxanne and Jules are laughing wildly inside the cab, everyone is in the back too save for Brie, Meat, and Judith, the first two simply glad they're alive and the third halfway to transforming in Leon’s arms from the stress while he goes straight from laughing into a coughing fit.

The Fox slaps Cherry on the shoulder and grins over at him, shouting, “You’re incredible, Cherry. Even if you did quite nearly kill us all.” Her smile doesn’t last long, though, as they make their way down the tunnels and toward what appears to be natural light.

Cherry, glancing at her, smiles. Both of his eyes are bloodshot, and when he opens his mouth to speak he has to clear his nose, from which discolored blood punches out. “You really think so?”

Jules blinks. “Just to let you know, Rox, I don’t know how to drive. Just saying.”

“I’m fine, I’ve still got it. Why? Something wrong?”

Jules and Roxanne both shake their heads before she says, softly, “Eyes on the road, Cherry. We’ll worry about you when we’re safe.”

Brie looks down behind the truck behind them, then sighs. “Do you think we really escaped?”

“We didn’t escape, we’re lucky. They screwed up.” Meat’s settled beside her, rubbing their neck to crack it. “Not sure if we’ve seen the last of that asshole, though.”

Brie shrugs. “All things considered, I am sure that we at least have some time, or a head start. Besides, I am out of bullets.”

“Miffed you don’t get to put one between Piper’s eyes?”

“No. I do not like her, but I am not inclined to mourn not getting to shoot her. I am nervous about something else entirely.”

“Blondie somehow coming back again?” Meat’s head tilts.

Brie shakes her head. “We left my car in Pickman’s Hope.”

“Oh.”

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So many eyes. So many arms, so many claws, all reaching and ripping and clawing. And they go where they please, too— Blondie would rip one of them off, only for them to reappear somewhere on the Cave Shadow’s body a few seconds later, fending off one of the other two idiots who’re chasing him. It was all far too much to focus on. After getting pummeled and clawed and scraped from every angle imaginable, turning his brain into mush as he waited for his turn to fight back, he realized that he just had to muscle through the pain to hit it while it’s hitting him. And so, that’s what he did.

But as he fought, he began to feel a pulling. As though the thing was sinking hooks into his mind and slowly but surely tugging them in different directions. It would get worse with every slice taken out of him, and every time he’d try to conjure up some kind of flame to make some space, the fire in brain would start to get stomped out. And it was tiring. More tiring than anything he had ever imagined a fight could be. He was fighting infinitely regenerating sawblades, a box of mental fishhooks, and a magic-quelling, fire-retardant boot at once, and it wore him down better than his coat ever did, back when he wore it.

And the thing looked at him. Though the Cave Shadow isn’t a Monster known for its relative intelligence, this one, towering in comparison to even Blondie, had a devilish focus to its eyes that made him want to tuck his tail between his legs (the burnt stub it is), and hunker down into an emotional cage. It would look at the three of them simultaneously, sliding its eyes up and down its body instead of moving its pupils, collecting them and scattering them where appropriate. They were nearly impossible to hit, but when Blondie managed to get a hold of one, it simply closed a shadowy lid, and dissipated back into the black cloud that the Monster calls a body.

But, it had a weakness. Everything has a weakness, and Blondie knew that he’d find it eventually. Even though the assault the thing was harboring on him was brutal and aggressive, he saw that it only ever liked to keep a certain distance, pressuring its prey into corners to be chopped apart. And out of him, the tin man, and the crazy person with the shotgun, he was the one it focused on the most. So, in a half-enraged effort to stop himself from being sliced to pieces, he leaped forward into its body.

It was as though he had entered a dimension of death. The floor underneath him was a swirling shadowy purple, and in the center of the room, there was a spine running up the length of the Monster. And though he didn’t have much time to take in the scenery, as he could feel it writhing and screeching and turning its eyes and claws inward to locate the infection, he knew that as he began to tear chalky chunks out of its one internal weakness, that it was too familiar for comfort.

Cave Shadows do not stop growing in their lifetime, and they do not die of old age. The Magic that holds them together is unknowable to most, and entirely foreign to those Monster Folk who understand their own magical attunements. They chop and they slice and they will kill entire groups of unprepared adventurers without remorse, but they have never once been observed as feeding, as their eyes are capable of uncovering even the most well-hidden of investigations. 

But, the bodies always go missing. Only shredded rags (that were once clothing or armour), chipped, bent, or cracked weapons, and ruined equipment remain at the sites of attack. And of course, the Cave Shadow is always lurking right around the corner from these sites, as they appear to understand their prey’s natural curiosity.

They get bigger with every kill, the bodies go missing, and there’s no telling what Magic makes them whole.

As Blondie ripped another chunk out of the Cave Shadow’s spine, he crushed it in his paws, noting the presence of a Humanoid Skull. Another chunk, this time he noted a handful of ribs, leg-bones and arm-bones and hints of finger-bones, all calcified together into a grisly, limestone-like substance. He didn’t have time to classify everything he saw, or really even consider it— he saw a structure that he could grasp, that he could work at, and so, he did.

But the Monster fought back from the inside. As it screeched in pain from Blondie’s efforts to survive, it pulled more and more of its limbs into its body to hack at him. It shrieked and shook with every corpse liberated from its structure, and its attempts to stop him grew more frantic, more desperate.

He could feel the hooks in his mind begin to loosen, he could feel the fire begin to scorch the boot that stomped it. Even though he was certain it wasn’t the same, he felt something like a burning adrenaline surge through his body. It was hurting. The same way that the Wyrm, the one who was so confident, so sure of itself up until the moment where he had found a gap in its armour, hurt. It was crying in pain, screaming for the pain to stop as it flailed at him while he ripped its support out from under it, chunk by dusty chunk.

But it didn’t beg. And it didn’t ask for forgiveness. It was more like an animal, by the time he had torn through the bone and reached its sight-warping core. He could feel it wanting to run as he wrapped his claws around the center of the spine, wanting to hide from him as he began to pull at its abyssal power source. And in its dying moments, Blondie heard it release one last shriek of intense pain before he felt its core explode in his hands, and the spine that reached so tall into the darkness began to fall, like a beautiful, twisted house of cards.

And in that moment, he began to laugh. The veil of darkness dissipated around him, the hooks released his mind, and back in the real world, he was left in the blue brightness of the grotto, standing in a pile of stony death and wispy, purple remnants of his prey floating through the air. He laughed at the world’s attempt to put him down again, he laughed at the pain that the Monster felt before having lost its pitiful life. He laughed because he was stronger, because he was tougher than anything else in this world. No Dragon, no abomination, nobody could stop him.

His high was interrupted by buckshot hitting the back of his head. The other two were still alive. And they wanted him dead. And when he began to walk towards them, corpses cracking and turning to dust beneath his feet, he realizes that his arm, the one that had dealt the killing blow to the Cave Shadow, had been turned to a blackened, purplish twig from the shoulder down— and that it was nothing but a stump from the elbow down. In its last stand, it had taken one of Blondie’s tools for itself, understanding its power.

It was like being spit on by someone you were holding at gunpoint. And that made him angry. It made him very, very angry.

It takes them a while of frustrated driving through the silence that hangs in the cave system, but when they find the grotto, it’s not hard to tell that it’s the right spot. There’s only one thing left standing in the bioluminescence, and when Sundae is ordered out of the sedan to investigate, she wonders whether it’s going to be something that kills her. After all, the things that lurk in these caves are known to be vicious.

But, she bumps into something on the floor. And when she takes a closer look, she finds it to be Nancy. Scorched, bleeding, broken, and unconscious, but still breathing. She’s missing her shotgun, her clothes have been torn to shreds, and it looks as though she’s knocking on death’s door.

“What’s the holdup, Sundae?!” Piper calls out from the car.

“Can you see Jack?” she asks, hoisting the mercenary up onto her shoulder and working her way back toward the vehicle.

“What are you talking about? I want you to shoot that thing,” Piper yells, motioning violently toward the shape in the center of the room, “so we can go home already!” “Boss, these two aren’t going to live if we don’t—”

Piper blares the horn of the sedan, causing the thing to rear what appears to be its head toward the two of them. “Get on it, you fucking idiot!”

In a moment of horror, Sundae is forced to set Nancy’s body down on the stone, pull out her revolver, and begin firing at the beast, who though is attempting to make its way toward them, appears to be limping, using one of its arms to keep itself from falling over. The bullets don’t seem to do too much, only causing it to flinch here and there where they manage to hit. And Sundae herself is actually a crack shot with her cannon, it was taking effort back when they were actively chasing the fugitives to miss as much as she did.

But it didn’t stop. And as it got closer, the two of them began to realize what a state it was in. 

Starting from the top, its face brings to mind what happens when someone gets their skin peeled off, but what’s left underneath is a bright orange mass of glowing, pulsating magic. Even its maw, missing teeth and slightly broken in one direction, remind the onlookers of looking into a miniature sun, contained within the beast’s mouth.

Its body, if one could call it that, is disfigured beyond use. Deep cuts crisscross its chest, legs, and remaining arm, revealing more of the glowing, oozing orange substance to open air. The twig that’s left of its right arm seems still able to be moved, and the purple shadows that consumed it have begun to work its way up its shoulder, intent with taking over the entire torso. 

Except, of course, for the shotgun in its chest. A hole has been carved out where its breastbone should be, by unknown means, and Nancy’s shotgun, barrel angled up toward the thing’s spine, is wedged firmly into the cavity. That wound instead drips slowly with the same bright orange substance found elsewhere, leaving a trail of glowing material as it drags itself toward Piper and Sundae.

It looks dangerous, sure. Monsters always look dangerous, even when they’re hurt. The fact that it looks like it has a sun inside its body contributes heavily to that feeling. It also looks like it can’t feel a thing with the way it’s determined to cross the room, no matter how long it takes to drag itself. But, Piper knows better. It’s been beaten. It just doesn’t know it yet.

And in the cab of the car, Piper considers to herself what to do. Those miners escaped, but she can catch them later (hopefully without the intervention of these absolutely useless mercenaries). And speaking of the mercenaries, one of them died. At which point she decides that she’s going to leave the old fucker’s corpse where it lies, since heading back home with a body in the trunk would not be a fun thing to report. Especially since it’d have to be HER car, too. But, showing up at HQ empty-handed would be horrible for business. No bounty to claim, no bodies to show, no updates but “They escaped again Boss, so sorry Boss, I’ll have them to you by next week, Boss.” Nothing but a dead Sniper and a fucked up trio of mercenaries, assuming Jack’s still alive.

There’s the bounty on this thing, though. That’d keep Janet and her afloat for a long, long time, since Gilroy’s put out quite the sum on its head. So, that’s what she decides to do. She’s going to take its head, and claim what’s hers.

“What a waste of talent,” Piper says, before flooring it into what remains of Blondie.

Chapter Three End.

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