By the time Sterling finished, he was covered in blood, out of breath, his arm muscles pulsing, practically begging for mercy. The amalgamation was dead, and Sterling knew he had likely received a fair chunk of XP for killing it, which was something he could handle later. For now, they needed to get to the treasure, if it even existed, and call it a night.
“You got it, you got the son of a bitch,” Kip said, still holding onto its tail, prepared for it to come alive again. “Man!”
“You’re getting mighty friendly with it back there,” Sterling quipped.
Kip let go of the tail and shook out his arms. “The damn thing.” As soon as Sterling hopped off down from its body, Kip charged the armadillo and kicked its dead body.
“It’s already dead,” Sterling said as he whistled for Manchester. “If you want to kill it again, I can animate it for you…”
“Nah,” he said, laughing nervously. “Ain’t nobody in their right mind would want that.”
Sterling’s skeletal steed came trotting up to him, and he placed a hand on his bony muzzle. “You did good, Pingo, real good,” he said as he let out a deep breath, one that sent a chill down his spine.
“Now about that treasure,” Kip said, clearly in the same mood as Sterling: ready to be done with it.
“About that treasure.”
Kip took a quick look around to figure out where he was, and headed toward the northwest.
“You think we’re close?” Sterling asked.
“Think has nothing to do with it. I know we’re close. I can practically smell that turquoise and that silver,” Kip told him.
“What’s it smell like?”
“It smells like tequila.”
The two came upon the Rio Grande River, which was a pitiful sight at the moment, as New Mexico was suffering from one of its yearly droughts. Sterling could hear the trickle of water, just a bit of wind drifting over it, he could smell it too. It made him thirsty. He equipped his jug of water, and as he took a swig from it, he reminded himself to fill up before he left T or C tomorrow.
“Found it!” Kip shouted.
As if it had been dropped from the sky, the ship sat before them, the water vessel much bigger than Sterling had expected it would be. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said as he took a look at it, noticing how it sat on its trailer, the vehicle that once carried it nowhere in sight. It wasn’t quite a yacht, but it was certainly larger than any of the boats that Sterling had seen floating aimlessly on Elephant Butte Lake, their owners long gone.
“You just stay here,” Kip said. “I’ll get in there and I’ll get the treasure.”
“I got a flashlight.”
“I got one too,” Kip said as he equipped it and flicked it on, the light a subtle shade of orange. While Kip rummaged around in the boat, Sterling smoked a cigarette. He then remembered that he was covered in armadillo blood and decided it would be best to clean it off.
After announcing to Kip where he was going, Sterling headed back down to the Rio Grande and washed his face and hair. He would need to change clothing, but that was a possibility—he had a couple of extra sets in his list. Manchester was just joining him when Sterling heard some commotion above.
“Got it!” Kip called from the boat. “Whooo-ee!”
“Let’s go see what this crazy bastard found,” he told his skeletal steed as he turned back toward the ship. Sterling clicked his tongue, and Manchester followed.
“I can’t believe it,” Sterling said once Kip hopped down from the boat with a beer cooler in his arms. Kip set it on the ground and kicked the cooler open.
“Goddamn,” Kip said as they saw the sparkle of silver, bits of turquoise as well. He started rummaging around through the treasure, the beer cooler half-full of jewelry from God knows where, some of it native, some of it professionally crafted.
“Goddamn is right.”
“What do you say we climb up that ledge right there,” Kip said, nodding about three hundred feet ahead, “and camp out. I got all the supplies. We have a little fire, sleeping bags, dish out the treasure, sleep under the stars. We can hit Ingo’s Café tomorrow for breakfast, followed by a trip to the hot springs, like you said.”
“That sounds like the perfect way to start my journey,” Sterling told him.
“Hell yeah, it does. Didn’t I tell you?”
“About the treasure?”
Kip nodded. “I told you, didn’t I?”
“And you were right. I never doubted you for a minute.”
Kip started to laugh. “Like hell you didn’t.”
.Chapter Two.
The Sunflower Kid was a biomancer, the exact opposite of Sterling. Where Sterling could animate the dead, the Sunflower Kid could conjure life in an instant, and was able to heal others and form plant constructs. Sterling thought about this the next morning as he took a piss on a cactus patch, a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth. The Kid’s power was a sight to behold, the earth parting, a plant growing, a person recovering from a wound; the sky was the limit.
“Sunflowers grow on the airy side of the mountain. Head north,” Sterling said as he finished up. He still had to figure out the riddle, but in the meantime, he figured he’d hit the Turquoise Trail in search of Raylan the flectomancer, that they would be able to figure out the riddle together. Either way, he was going to find the Sunflower Kid. It was just a matter of time.
He had assigned the Technique Points he had received from his last level up, using six of them to up his Persuasion technique, and three to improve his Cover of Night technique. He never quite had the gift of the gab, unless it came to cussing, and he thought it would come in handy at some point.
While staying low at night came naturally to him because of his black clothing and his general demeanor, he figured it was worth three points to level the technique up as well. Arranged into three categories—Stealth, Combat, and Perception—techniques would be one of the things he focused on with the charms he picked up along the way, especially now that he had money.
Sterling had also received a new class skill yesterday, one called Mold Manipulation, which was something he’d yet to test out. It was weird how these skills came to him. He suddenly just knew them, and could easily summon the power as long as he had the Mana. He also had a sense of how the power was used, almost as if it had been ingrained within him all along.
Crouching, Sterling extended his hand to a cactus set along the outer rim of the patch. A white mold, which quickly turned to a dark green, began to spread across the plant. It metastasized quickly, nearly making its way to the other side of the patch when it began to slow. Mold Manipulation ain’t too shabby, he thought as he examined his handiwork. He got the sense that he could keep juicing it and that it would spread even further, Sterling wondering how he would make use of this new power.
He stood, and took a quick look at his stats:
You have received 1880 XP!
Name: Sterling Monedero
Race: Human
Mancer Class: Necromancer
Class Ranking: Bone Sculptor
Level: 60
Fortitude: 117
Strength: 35
Resolve: 152
Mana: 148/159
Current Armor Rating: 28
XP: 306,704
XP to Next Level:7,220
Stat Points Available: 0
Technique Points Available: 1
He then shifted to his techniques.
Combat:
Sword Expert Level 4 - 30 Technique Points to Level 5
Marksmanship Level 6 - 36 Technique Points to Level 7
Stealth:
Sneak Proficiency Level 3 - 14 Technique Points to Level 4
Assassination Level 2 - 9 Technique Points to Level 3
Cover of Night Level 2 - 7 Technique Points to Level 3
Perception:
Persuasion Level 3 - 9 Technique Points to Level 4
And from there to his class skills:
Necromancer Cla
ss Skills
Death Whisper: Class Proficiency Level 4
Casting Cost: 6 Mana Points
Description: Can communicate with the deceased; blood needed to do so.
——
Resurrection: Class Proficiency Level 3
Casting Cost: 5 Mana Points
Description: Can summon at will, but doing so takes a cut of MP until the animate is relinquished.
——
Enhanced Durability: Class Proficiency Level 3
Grafting Casting Cost: 15 Mana Points
Description: Enhanced durability and grafting.
——
Death Sense: Class Proficiency Level 2
Description: Able to sense the bodies of the dead around you. Higher levels allow for wider ranges, including remote animating.
——
Mold Manipulation: Class Proficiency Level 1
Casting Cost: 6 Mana Points
Description: Able to manipulate and conjure mold. Higher levels allow for stronger and further reaching creations.
“Better than you were a few days ago, I’ll give you that,” he said as he walked back over to Kip. Manchester stood nearby, looking like he was grazing. Since the horse couldn’t eat, the skeletal steed simply nibbled away a desert shrub, the food destined to never reach his belly.
“We going to Ingo’s or are we eating out here?” Kip asked as Sterling kicked at some of the ashes of the fire he had made the previous night. “I got me a can of beans I’ve been meaning to fire up, and some bacon. A bearded loco out of Hillsboro brought it through town a couple days back.”
“I told you Ingo’s, my treat.”
“Suit yourself. You got another bone horse for Yours Truly?”
“Just the one, unfortunately. We can walk.” Sterling collapsed Manchester and sent the bones to his inventory list, his saddle too.
Kip had been up early skinning the armadillo, and even though he had washed up in the river, there were still specks of blood on his hairy arms and his legs. The armadillo’s hide was now in the man’s inventory list. Sterling was well aware that it was worth a small fortune. But he had plenty of turquoise and silver now, and he’d got what he wanted from the amalgamation anyway in the form of XP.
All in all, a good deal.
After they packed up camp, Kip simply sending everything back to his inventory list, the two headed to town and straight to Ingo’s Café. They each had huevos rancheros, Christmas for Sterling, green chilis for Kip, the German owner of the restaurant providing light conversation peppered with the occasional ‘Jah’ as they ate and sipped coffee. From there it was straight to Riverbend Hot Springs, Sterling grinning from cheek to cheek when the short Hispanic woman named Veronica led him to his personal oasis. He had enough money to pay for a stay in the hot spring for a couple days if he so wished, but he decided to only hang for a little while, Kip in the room next to him, occasionally talking to him through the wall.
“How’s the water over there?” he asked for a second time.
“We’re bathing in the same hot springs,” Sterling called back to him.
“You got a cigarette I can borrow?”
“Hell no, I don’t,” he said as he lit one up.
He settled deeper into the water, nude now aside from his cowboy hat. He finished his cigarette, removed his hat, and dipped his head under the water as well. He stayed there for a moment, enjoying the temperature and what it felt like to be submerged. Once his hands were dry, he rolled up yet another cigarette, lit it, and went for his desert haiku book.
As he looked out at the Rio Grande River, which ran in front of the establishment, a few birds moving along its shorelines, Sterling thought about change. He thought about the Sunflower Kid, and Zephyr, two of the three living members of his former team. He also thought about Don Gasper and Raylan the flectomancer, his thoughts eventually settling on Roxy. It was something he tried not to dwell on, the relationship he’d had with the woman falling apart three years ago. But he needed her, and if she really was imprisoned by the White Sands Militia, maybe he could get in good with Roxy by rescuing her. Then again, it was Roxy; the woman was tough as bones and generally itching to fight. Sweet when she wanted to be, but her bite definitely matched her bark. It would be an uphill battle.
Sterling began writing his desert haiku. It took him a while, and he was interrupted by Kip a couple times, but he eventually got the poem to where he liked it:
A cactus flower
Rocks on the edge of a bluff
Tumbleweeds tumbling
After looking at one of the sketches he’d made of a Godwalker, he put the book of haiku away and relaxed even further into the tub. Sterling used a finger to bring the rim of his cowboy hat down over his face so it cast shade across his eyes and his nose. He could smell his own sweat on the inner rim of the hat, but it didn’t bother him.
This was the good life.
Sterling knew he was in for an all-day ride. With this in mind, he bid farewell to Kip, took a raincheck on a round of tequila shots, and headed north on I-25, keeping to the side of the highway as he always did, watching out for things like vandals on dirt bikes or ATVs, roaming groups of people, supply trucks, or any other signs of possible enemies or amalgamations. Constant vigilance. He definitely wanted to get more levels, but he also wasn’t the type to go looking for a fight, not right now anyway, not while he was a man on a mission.
As he rode, Sterling went over the riddle the coyote had given him. As thoughts often did, one connected to another, and soon he was wondering about Ava and her demented son Hector, the Truth or Consequences locals who lived near his now-demolished ranch house. He recalled all the rumors he’d heard around town that Ava could turn into a coyote; he had never really believed it, yet now, Sterling had seen something similar with his very own eyes. While part of him wanted to just accept what he’d seen, another part wanted to figure it out, to dissect it. Was there a mancer that could shapeshift? What if Don Gasper was in on it the whole time? And what did the riddle mean anyway?
“Sunflowers grow on the airy side of the mountain. Head north,” Sterling said, his cigarette slowly burning, balanced on the corner of his lip. The sunflower line was clearly in reference to the Kid, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what the second part was in reference to.
“Damn riddles,” he told Manchester. “We’ll figure it out, won’t we, Pingo?”
The landscape remained the same, long stretches of beautiful monotony, wheat-colored shrubs, shadowed mountains in the distance acting as silent observers. There were pockets of crimson lining parts of the highway, the caliche adding red swells to the flatness around him, as if he were riding directly into the belly of the beast, which in a way Sterling was, considering he was heading in the direction of Albuquerque. Duke City had enough gang warfare to make Las Cruces look peaceful.
The heat was a haze on the horizon, the crumbled road seeming to stretch into infinity. When he saw hints of activity, Sterling would move away from the highway, riding through dried up riverbeds, sometimes scattering gazelles, an occasional pronghorn heading in the opposite direction. At one point, he rode over a patch of blackened lava rock, which contrasted with the burnt orange sandstone and the white-blue expansive sky above, his eyes eventually settling on a mesa about twenty miles out that looked as alien as the Godwalkers themselves.
Those damn Godwalkers, Sterling thought as he chewed on a bit of jerky. It irked him to no end that they had finally come after him after three years. If they had just let him be, Sterling would have continued to do what he did: run a pepper farm outside of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. That would have been it. That would have been his life. But they had provoked him, and sooner or later they would incur his wrath for doing so.
“Maybe you’re right,” he told Manchester, as if his skeletal steed was part of the running dialogue in his head. “The Killbillies would have continued giving me hell, especially if I killed a couple of them. But what c
an I say? You know me. I wasn’t fixing to pay no goddamn chili tax. And why should I? What tax did I owe them fools anyway? Damn sons of bitches…”
A bird circling overhead caught Sterling’s eye. There was a flock higher up in the sky, migrating south, the glint of something in the distance leading Sterling to once again move away from the highway. He didn’t want any trouble, not today, not at the start of his journey north.
At some point he hopped off Manchester to stretch his feet, a couple peaks to the west sitting majestic over the landscape, Sterling wondering if any natives lived up there. He had Don Gasper’s seal, which would help him with some of the pueblo tribes he might encounter. Many of them could be hostile toward a stranger like himself, with good reason. They’d had their land taken away long ago, some receiving worse treatment than others, all suffering from European diseases and the side effects of Manifest Destiny.
Nowadays, the natives didn’t play games when it came to outsiders, and because they were such a tight-knit group before, many of the pueblos had miraculously flourished after the Reset. Sterling had seen this firsthand in places like the Acoma Pueblo, which sat on a mesa about sixty miles west of Albuquerque. It was an intimidating structure, and the Acoma had maintained it for hundreds of years. The Reset was no different. They banded together, they kept outsiders away, and they prospered in a limited capacity.
Even if the natives had done relatively well since that tragic day five years ago, they still had suffered. Everyone had, those who had survived joined by never-ending string of shared horror stories all revolving around that fateful day.
Every now and then, Sterling had a flashback to the bar he’d been in when it happened. He was someone else, and then he was a necromancer, everyone in the bar was dead, their heads exploded, viscera and brain matter splattered across the neon vest Sterling wore at the time. He’d stumbled out, thinking it was some kind of dream, only to find cars crashed in the parking lot, horns and lights going off, headless bodies staining the pavement, those left alive with bewilderment in their eyes. He tried to get into a random car and drive away, only to realize he didn’t have a key, and subsequently knocked himself out when he tried to exit the vehicle.
Cowboy Necromancer: Infinite Dusk Page 23