by Sean Davies
They had been to three other ghost towns in western Desem beforehand, all of which had been on the corruption Demon’s list, and all of which had been empty.
However, as they looked out onto the village of Singedale (denoted on its faded, half-broken signpost), it was plainly obvious to see that Corriztis had been to work in the long-abandoned settlement.
The ground in and around Singedale was a sheet of lifeless white earth, broken only by pools of black tar and the dark shadows hugging the old wooden buildings that had turned a drab shade of grey. To the two leaders of the Highway One Hellions, it felt as though they were staring into an eerie black and white photo, and even the air felt lighter and unsatisfying to breathe.
A tremor shook the weird village, and Lynette looked around, expecting to see the ghosts that people had been talking about.
“See anyone?” Lynette asked, referring to the spectres of the past.
“Nope, only more Demon sludge,” Kavarne said, dismounting his motorbike and unclipping his battle-axe.
The feisty Werewolf Swiftpaw pouted and leapt off Merv. “You coming, boy?” she asked her sentient bike.
The fearsome Gloom motorcycle seemed to shrink in stature, and it whimpered as it backed away slightly.
Lynette frowned; if an ex-resident of the grim and grimy Gloom was worried about the monochrome village, she knew it had to be bad news.
“It’s okay, Merv—we’ll be right back,” the Werewolf Swiftpaw said with a strong pose and a reassuring thumbs-up.
Kavarne had already walked off to inspect the closest shack and watched as a puddle of Corriztis’ latest creation tried seeping into the cracked, bleached soil around it.
“The ooze looks like it’s trying to get into the ground,” the muscular Brutebeast said, “but it’s getting repelled or something.” He coughed, feeling a dry tickle in the back of his throat.
Lynette jogged over to her lover, but soon slowed to a brisk walk. Her legs felt heavy and stiff.
She joined Kavarne and looked down at the shuddering sludge, and then at the other pools around the black and white ghost town, and saw that they were all obsessed with the ground. Truthfully, Lynette was just glad that it wasn’t interested in them or hiding mutant Alternatives ready to ambush them. She cleared her throat and wondered if she was getting a cough, until she realised that she hadn’t been ill since before her hulk of a lover had turned her.
“Let’s do the rounds and report in,” Kavarne said, trying to hide a sniffle.
Lynette shook her head. “We’re getting ill—Supernaturals don’t get ill! Let’s get out of here, we’ve seen enough!” she said, afraid of what the corruption Demon had left behind.
“We should’ve borrowed some hazmat suits,” Kavarne chuckled, wobbling slightly as he walked.
Lynette knew that it was intended as a joke, but she actually wished that they had done. After a lifetime of enjoying Supernatural resilience and marvellous alchemical cure-alls, simple things like protective clothing and gas masks were easily forgotten.
“Oh, that wouldn’t have stopped me getting in,” a sweet female voice chimed from above. “That quaint technology has so many work arounds, you know. I could even program a virus to eat away at the material itself…”
The Werewolves looked up and saw a young woman with strawberry-blonde hair sitting on a rickety old rooftop. Her eyes were black, and dark tears were streaming down her light grey face.
“Corriztis?” Lynette asked apprehensively, already knowing the answer.
“The very same,” the woman answered amicably.
Kavarne went to run forward but staggered drunkenly, and Lynette tried to fire her revolver but by the time she’d aimed the woman had already slumped to the ground in a coughing heap.
The strawberry-blonde host pulled herself off the ground, ignoring the scratched-up face and broken arm she’d acquired from the fall, and squinted at Lynette as the ground shook violently.
“Lynette, isn’t it?” the corrupted stranger asked out of genuine curiosity. “We met once, inside a warehouse in Gloom City.”
The Werewolf Swiftpaw remembered back to the time where she had escorted Winston Reynolds through the Gloom, so he could create a portal directly into the Triumvir of Sorrow gang’s headquarters. The plan had been to unleash Mortissa Aurorana, the hideously beautiful half-Alt half-Demon, into the complex to make way for a Shadow Circle assault in the real world, leaving Winston, Lynette, and the late Xavier to return to safety. However, the corruption Demon Corriztis had bubbled up from the drains and thrown the whole plan into disarray.
“Yeah, I remember,” Lynette grumbled as she aimed her revolver. “You’re the pile of sludge who tried to kill me and my mates.”
The woman giggled and wheezed. “No, no, no—I wasn’t trying to kill you. I was under Omniosis’ compulsion to shepherd his pet Book Wielder Winston into the firing line, so that he could get more experience as a cold-blooded killer under Mortissa’s protection. But in all honesty, if I hadn’t been under the Omni’s control then I probably would’ve tried killing you still.”
“Well, you stunk back then,” Lynette said with a scowl, “and you still stink now.” She squeezed the trigger.
The Werewolf Swiftpaw’s aim was off-target but she still managed to hit the Demon host’s arm, sending a blast of black coagulated blood splattering along the white ground behind.
Kavarne tried to swing his axe, but had barely lifted it above his shoulder before the woman had hopped a few metres away.
“Ouch,” the woman said in an offended tone. “First I have to bear witness to my latest failure, and now you shoot me up? Well, that’s just plain rude!”
“What have you done to us?” Kavarne growled. He tried to transform into his Werewolf Brutebeast form but was unable to even grow the hair on his arms.
“Me?” the woman said, putting her bloody hand on her chest. “Nothing at all. That’s the Creator’s doing you’re feeling now. It’s what I’m trying to fix.” She paused to let the latest tremor finish, before continuing. “You see, this world is facing its end, and I, the greatest scientist in the Archmage community, shall save you all… in a manner of speaking. I do miss the Gloom’s simpler ways—those that hold the power hold the puppet strings—and in my new improved Mydia, I shall be the puppeteer. Not that arrogant fool Omniosis, or his host Winston!”
Another earthquake rippled through the village, knocking the dried out old buildings into piles of kindling, and everyone struggled to stay upright.
The fingers of Corriztis’ female host darkened and cracked like they were made of stone, and the corruption Demon snapped a few off for curiosity’s sake before shouting over the shaking earth.
“It looks like the test subject from site three has arrived!” the strawberry-blonde host yelled. “I’m glad at least one of my experiments worked today! My accuracy and efficiency will improve tenfold once Alice is mine, allowing me to complete my greatest work yet! So, we’ll have all of eternity to play together—if you survive today, that is!”
Before Lynette or Kavarne could even begin to fathom the Demon’s strange words, the strawberry-blonde woman disappeared in a pillar of white soil that sent them sprawling backwards.
A corrupted sand worm pierced out of the ground where the woman had been standing, stretching its lumpy pallid body vertically upwards for several yards before coming to a stop. It roared at the sky with its gigantic round maw—which was wide enough to swallow a bus whole and filled with rotating rings of black teeth—and it spat clouds of mud, black slime, and muck into the air. The front half of the massive creature flopped down, leaving the rest of its coiled body below ground, sending a shockwave of white dust throughout the ruined village of Singedale.
Merv sped to the rescue of his beloved master and her lover, shooting green flames from each of his exhausts; by the time the demonic Gloom bike reached Lynette and Kavarne though, its engine was chugging and rattling unhealthily, and its speed had diminished
drastically.
Kavarne groaned as he lifted Lynette onto her bike, and she then helped her lover climb on behind her and assisted him with holding onto his prized axe. As the enormous blighted sand worm smashed towards the fleeing Werewolves, chewing its way through the lifeless dirt with its spinning fangs, Merv used every ounce of its energy to speed them all to safety. They passed by Kavarne’s custom chopper, but he knew he was too weak to swap vehicles and drive it away in time, and he watched on in misery and horror as it was shredded by the worm’s churning maw.
The leaders of the Highway One Hellions held onto the Gloom motorcycle for dear life, struggling to remain conscious as the worm’s tunnel-like mouth grew closer and closer, but Merv’s engine sighed sadly and it began to shut off. The demonic bike’s front tire slowly crossed over the threshold of the forsaken village, once again touching properly coloured, warm ground, and in a flash the bike was reenergised and roaring forward, almost knocking Lynette and Kavarne off as it wheelied across the dusty Desem plain while the mutated sand worm chased them relentlessly.
The two Werewolves were also revitalised as soon as they were away from the monochrome ghost town, and they both leapt off Merv and transformed mid-air to dispose of the ravenous worm before it reached civilisation. Lynette ran on all fours in her shaggy-haired Swiftpaw form, keeping up with her turbo-charged Gloom bike, whilst Kavarne stood his ground in his ferocious Brutebeast form. He narrowed his feral yellow eyes and snarled savagely as he watched the gargantuan creature rapidly eating its way closer to him.
Kavarne, wielding his massive battle-axe in one bestial claw, sprang onto the charging worm’s head and clamped down on its thick leathery hide with his foot paws while he chipped away with his weapon. Thick jets of black blood sprayed out from the worm’s wounds, and it let out a distorted wail as it tried to throw the Werewolf Brutebeast off its head, but Kavarne sunk his axe in deep and held onto it for support.
Lynette doubled-back and sprinted towards the worm, leaping out of the way right before she was devoured. As the worm smashed past, the Werewolf Swiftpaw raked a spare claw along the creature’s body, tearing open its side.
The infuriated sand worm thrashed side to side and rolled its massive pale form around, throwing both Werewolves back, before tunnelling into the ground. The wolf version of Lynette tilted her head to the side and lowered her furry ear to the ground, while Kavarne, in all his dark-furred Werewolf splendour, paced back and forth on his hind legs impatiently.
The tremors began again, and Lynette howled sharply and bounded back towards the crater where the worm had burrowed into the ground while Kavarne stalked away in the other direction, just as the sand worm resurfaced.
Just like in Singedale, the sand worm burst out of the earth in a vertical tower of carnivorous fury, sending a cloud of dry dirt and sand into the air, but the Werewolf couple were ready.
They squinted their yellow wolf eyes against the blast of coarse dust and forced themselves towards the worm’s disgustingly bloated body. Before the monster could slam itself down again, the Werewolves set about their bloody work. Lynette darted around its circular form and slashed away at its hide with lightning-fast attacks, while the massive Kavarne held his battle-axe with both of his clawed hands and swung away at the oversized worm like a lumberjack tackling an especially tough tree.
The mutated sand worm squealed and roared an ear-shattering cry. Oversized human arms started to sprout from its fatal wounds, along with angry grey eyes, as the mutagen began to combine the sand worm with the digested DNA of Corriztis’ unfortunate host. The two Werewolves were ready for the unexpected, however, and didn’t let up their assault for a heartbeat, and by the time the worm slammed down it was long dead.
As the worm’s black blood flowed across the sand, Lynette and Kavarne returned to their human forms and joined up with Merv. Lynette dug out some spare clothes from a duffle bag strapped to the Gloom motorcycle, threw some to her lover, and then pulled a long white t-shirt over her grubby naked body.
“Why can’t everything from the Gloom be as nice as you, Merv?” the Werewolf Swiftpaw sighed, tugging up a pair of hot pants and slipping her feet into a pair of old boots. She wondered if the others had managed to stave off the Demon’s third attack.
Kavarne slipped a black vest top over his muscular body and put on a pair of baggy jeans and tough brown boots. He threw a few rocks at the sand worm’s corpse to ward off the large meat-eating malorbeetles and carrion birds who had moved in to gorge themselves on the easy meal.
“Babe, we need the big guns to toast this place before the locals dig in to the worm feast and mutate,” Kavarne said, smiling as he hit a disgusting purple and yellow malorbeetle right between its shiny black eyes, killing it instantly.
“On it, hunky,” Lynette informed him, already tapping at her expensive touchscreen mobile phone with her grime-encrusted fingers. She paced around until she had at least one bar of consistent signal, and dialled in the number code for the secure Justiciar line. “Maybe I should ask them to bring a big tub of bleach, just so we can feel half clean,” she added in jest.
Kavarne chuckled. “I think it would take a vat of Sanctium to get rid of this stink.”
“Don’t suggest that around the Lord Imperator, she actually might dunk us for real,” Lynette laughed.
A Justiciar operator from the closest outpost answered her call, and Lynette began to rattle off everything that had occurred from start to finish in extensive, hyperactive detail. She then asked about the rest of the continent, and her post-battle elation faded when the operator filled her in on the grave news.
✽ ✽ ✽
Alice had kept up on the dire news spreading across Desem via her HCD, and called out the highlights to Chloe as their Raptorkors sprinted directly northwest from Smithston to Barraham. It had been clear from the moment they’d left the shipping yard that they’d be too late to make a difference, but Alice had to see what had befallen the town with her own two eyes.
The Lord Imperator had left Karamo and most of the Justiciar squad behind to handle the investigation and interrogations at the shipping yard. They weren’t sure what the truck drivers had stolen, if anything at all, but all of them had gone missing by the time the battle with Darkheart had finished. Alice was sure that at least one of the containers held something of worth to the Darkheart Organisation, as the attack on the yard seemed to have had no other purpose.
Shortly after Alice had mounted her second Raptorkor of the day (and Chloe had burnt the name ‘Biscuit’ onto hers with a small flame spell), the reports of insurrection across the continent had begun coming in thick and fast. It seemed as though the Darkheart Organisation had started a full-blown rebellion on Desem, fighting in the streets with conventional guns, stolen energy weapons and explosives, but they had been quickly outmatched by the Justiciars and their many allies. The fighting had died out almost as quickly as it had begun, and the number of casualties among the Darkheart rebels was ridiculously high. Alice didn’t understand their suicidal move, but she ordered the survivors to be interrogated to the fullest, hoping that they would reveal crucial intel about their elusive leader. Then she’d received a personal call from two elite Book Wielders, Juan and Rosetta, who had been stationed within Barraham. They’d claimed that three rebels had exploded in a cloud of toxic gore, and that the town had gone mad soon after. They had also informed her that Corriztis’ main host vessel, Theodore Miller, was taking on the uninfected defenders personally.
The Lord Imperator had clenched her hands around the reins and spurred her mount on. She willed it to sprint as quickly as it could across the dry lands and hot roads, easily surpassing a hundred miles per hour, but then she’d received a call confirming that the fight had already finished. Corriztis had escaped, and Barraham was lost.
She had kept the pace up until the moment she saw the town on the horizon, and her mount’s speed had dropped off as it sensed Alice’s bemusement rather than her will to run forward. The
town of Barraham had been completely encased in a gigantic half-sphere of ice.
“Fuck me sideways…” Chloe gasped as she studied the perfectly rounded bubble of frosted ice. “They weren’t exaggerating.”
“No. No, they were not,” Alice said, quickly regaining her composure. “Let’s rendezvous with the survivors.”
Gathered around the perimeter of the frosty barrier were armoured Justiciars, uniformed NDR militia, rowdy Highway One Hellions, Supernaturals, Alternatives, and regular humans, all testing themselves for Gloom exposure in small groups and talking loudly. A few Mages fired slow-moving swirls of blue and white magic at the real-life snow globe that Barraham had become, to help refreeze the slowly melting ice. Alice even noticed a group of heavy-type Autons, encased head-to-toe in thick armour resembling that of the ancient Imperian legionaries of old, but the humanoid robots looked completely inert.
Two Conclave Book Wielders dressed in smart black greatcoats shouted to Alice from beside a nearby troop truck, and the Lord Imperator and Chloe dismounted their Raptorkors and headed over on foot.
Juan and Rosetta were Book Wielder siblings from northern Tropica who looked strikingly alike, and had even dyed their spikey hair the same shade of pale turquoise. Before joining the Justiciars in the new world, they had lent their powers to the Tropican Furies gang where they had both decided to be turned into Mages. As their skills had grown after training on Central Isle with Winston and their fellow kind, their irises had turned a calm shade of lavender rather than pure white. Alice had worked with them before and found them to be exceptionally professional, despite their strange choice of hair colour.
“Ma’am. Chloe,” Juan said, saluting. “I am afraid he got away,” he explained before they could ask about the corruption Demon.
“We did our best,” Rosetta interjected after her own salute, “but he slipped away when we gained the upper-hand. He’s definitely grown weaker since he became more lucid,” she added, trying to scrape at least one positive from the ordeal.