by Eddie Patin
"Shit—help!" he screamed, his throat choked with fear. "Riley!"
His upper arms were held as if by vices. Wind flew through Jason's face and he looked at his shoulders—which were scrunched tight around his head—and saw the concrete-grey stony claws holding him.
The monster was flying straight up into the air. Jason looked up, craning his head back until he felt it grinding against the rough, stone chest of the gargoyle. He could barely see its grey neck and pointy chin. Two horns ran down from its jaws, forming a sort of carved goatee. Big, grey shapes of wings beat powerfully in the night around him.
"Shit!" Jason screamed, his whole body cold and crisp and buzzing with terror.
As he flew up and up, the thick, white mist suddenly cleared, and Jason could see the stars again.
Then the claws released him.
Jason's stomach turned upside down. The wind tore at his face. His eyes teared up. Jason felt a scream force its way up his throat.
As the cobblestone street and surrounding buildings rushed up at him—as Jason's ears were filled with the whipping roar of the night flying by, his stomach flipping and mind shocked from raw terror—he found himself reaching into his shirt...
He heard Riley's voice shouting something that he didn't comprehend.
Jason felt the smooth acrylic surface of the focus key and he flexed to open a horizontal rift to Cloudworld. He barely had to think about it. It just happened.
The wind rushing past his ears and face gave way to a snap and the roaring of a rift. There was a brilliant flash of orange and the light of a much brighter universe flaring in his eyes. Jason's right eye was suddenly blinded with intense greenish-white.
Jason felt his skin crackle all over as a wave of warmth flushed over him, then he nearly belly-flopped onto a soft, yielding ground that felt like he was landing on caramel. Jason sunk deep into the spongy mass for an instant, then his stomach flip-flopped again as he was launched back up—wherever the hell up was now.
He was flying again—to where Jason didn't know—and let go of the focus key in a desperate and instinctive move to catch himself and protect his face. The warmth was suddenly gone and his face became cold.
Then Jason's shoulder smashed into a stone wall and he landed on the hard ground in a heap, hurting one elbow and one knee. His hip smashed into the ground and the roaring of the rift suddenly disappeared with a pop.
Jason was in darkness again, his senses scrambled by terror, on the ground. He felt the cobblestone bricks of the road under his thinly-gloved hands. He hurt in several places. His heart was pounding rapidly in his ears.
Trying to shake the confusion from his head, Jason struggled to breathe. Everything was buzzing. Everything hurt. He tried to look around and get his bearings. Jason's right eye was still dazzled by the blinding light of the other world, but he saw the Crossroads gradually coming back into focus. He was on the street.
"Oh God!" he croaked, still terrified out of his wits. "Oh fuck!"
The gargoyle had tried to drop him to his death and Jason had instinctively opened a rift to Cloudworld so that he could bounce.
Jason shook his head once more and tried to stand then fell down again.
He shakily climbed to his feet, searching for Morgana. He looked down the street for Riley and Gliath, trying to orient himself—he was all turned around. In his night vision, he still saw a splattered, brilliant green seared over his vision, slowly was fading away...
Then there was a heavy crash on the street near him.
Jason heard the sound of rubble and chunks of rock falling as if a boulder had just landed nearby launched by a catapult.
But it wasn't a boulder.
Turning to face the crash, Jason opened his eyes wide—he had to see more clearly!—and watched as the gargoyle who'd just dropped him spun on all fours as quick as a cat, recovering immediately from its plummet back to the street. Its wings rapidly stretched then folded behind it. It sneered at Jason as its tail whipped back and forth.
Shit.
An instant later, the beast was leaping at him like a winged, stone tiger. Jason backed away on shaky legs, rapidly drawing his Glock 26. The tritium front sight glowed in his night vision.
The monster rushed in as Jason fired at its center mass. He emptied the entire fucking magazine, his muzzle flipping again and again as the gun let out a dozen sharp pops into the night. Jason watched in horror as sparks pinged off of the monster's stone form. Small chips of its rocky skin flew away, but the pistol didn't do much good.
When the slide locked back, the gargoyle collided with Jason like a ton of bricks.
The beast didn't try to knock him over. It just tore into him, ripping at him with its front claws, tearing at his arms and body. Jason expected to feel the searing pain of those stone claws tearing through his skin. He expected worse—to be torn apart—knowing the beast's strength. He recalled the sizzling pain of raptor claws slicing through him back on the Wilderlands.
Instead, Jason felt the monster batter the hell out of him. Its claws and stout curved hands smacked him and pulled at him, jostling his body roughly between the gargoyle's arms with each strike as if he was being thrown around in a mosh pit! When the beast lunged in to bite him, Jason tried to protect his head with his arms, then finally found his voice.
"Riley!" he screamed. "Help! Oh God—help me!"
Then, as if on cue, Jason felt a huge weight crash into the both of them and fell sideways to the street again. He fell, still protecting his head with his arms, and hit the ground hard with his right side, almost knocking the wind out of him.
Scrambling to his feet, Jason looked at the flurry of motion where the gargoyle had gone. He heard grinding and smashing. A wicked sound arose of snarling and gnashing that made the hair on Jason's neck stand up. It was Gliath.
The leopardwere and the gargoyle were locked in a rolling form, wrestling and clawing and bearing their fangs at each other. Gliath's black hands were gleaming with extended claws; one held one of the gargoyle's wrists while the other tore at its side, gouging the stone but doing nothing else. Gliath fought like a goddamned giant panther, snarling and bellowing at the monster with vicious, feline sounds and wild noises that shook Jason to the core. The gargoyle snarled back at the Krulax without a sound, trying to bite him with stone fangs. Jason caught a glimpse of its lashing, stone tail spearing through one of Gliath's black thighs around his armor. Its free hand clawed at Gliath's midsection, and the leopardwere let out a painful roar as red blood splashed across the road.
It happened so fast!
"Gliath, get its head up!" Riley shouted from right beside Jason. He was aiming his lever action rifle at the brutal melee.
Two heavy tumbles of monster vs monster later—another splatter of blood appeared in the street—and Gliath was suddenly under the gargoyle. The leopardwere pushed the beast up with both black hands on its stony shoulders. The gargoyle glared back down at him with a malicious grin, snapping both wings out into the air.
Riley fired. The rifle boomed and the monster's head exploded, showering Jason with bits of stone and crude, concealed meat.
Jason gagged.
He felt nauseous.
Then he heard the click-click of Riley cycling his Marlin's action.
Gliath pushed the monster off of him. The headless gargoyle fell to the street with a heavy sound. Then the leopardwere painfully climbed to his feet. Jason caught a glimpse of pink intestines peeking out from Gliath's sleek, black-furred belly, slipping between his clawed fingers. The Krulax pushed his guts back in and held a hand over the wound.
"Holy shit!" Jason muttered. "Gliath!"
The leopardwere looked down at him with his yellowish-green eyes that almost glowed in Jason's night vision. Gliath's armor was splattered with blood in many areas and his fur was wet in others, but he regarded Jason with the same impassive feline face as always.
"I will be okay in time, Jason Leaper 934," he rumbled.
Morgana sud
denly appeared from the intersection, her shining blade at the ready, face pale with fear and green eyes wide.
"Jason!" she cried. "You're alive!"
He took a deep breath and climbed to his feet. Jason hurt all over—he was going to have some serious bruises from the fall and—oh God! Jason checked his arms and chest. He pressed his hands all around his belly as Riley lowered his rifle and added another .45-70 round to his its mag tube.
It was the jacket! The jacket had saved him from being cut to pieces by that monster's claws!
As far as Jason could tell, his nice, new jacket was still in fine shape, too.
"The minotaur hide!" he exclaimed, smiling at all three of them.
"More than just that, Jason," Riley added with a smirk. "Good moves with the rifting, man."
The words warmed Jason's heart. He grinned and let his mouth drop open. "Holy shit! That's right! I opened a rift to Cloudworld when I fell!"
"You should have seen that shet, man," the soldier replied. "You opened that rift right above the fruking street and you bounced." He smiled and shook his head. "I don't think I've seen either of my past Jasons do that before."
Looking over at Gliath again, Jason searched with his eyes for the leopardwere's wounds, but they were already closing. He looked back down at the dead gargoyle.
"Holy hell," he said. "My Glock didn't do shit. Those bastards are tough. We can only take 'em out with the higher caliber stuff."
"Yeah," Riley replied. "Or your girl's sword apparently."
Jason looked at Morgana, whose face was still stricken with fright over him being plucked up into the air and dropped to his death. The golden light of her sword highlighted her face and eyes. He resisted looking away when she met his gaze and smiled. Jason might have blushed at any other time, but he felt totally frazzled from almost splatting onto the street then being beaten up by the gargoyle. Adrenaline still pulsed through his body.
He took a deep breath, trying to clear his blood. "Let's stay together," Jason said, staring at her.
Morgana looked back to the Crossroads, then looked at the Reality Rifters, then down. "Okay," she said. "I'm sorry."
Riley walked a short distance away, scanning for threats as Jason leaned against the wall of the nearest house and took a minute to let the waves of panic dissipate from his skin. He calmed his heart and the buzzing ice-water in his veins. He took a drink from his CamelBak's bite valve. His water bladder was just about empty. He swapped mags and holstered his Glock. He'd shot twelve 9mm rounds at that gargoyle and it didn't do shit.
Cloudworld, Jason thought. Fucking crazy.
"Thanks for saving my ass, you guys," he called out to the other two Reality Rifters. "I'm sorry for running off, too."
Riley looked across the street to him with his Marlin shouldered then smirked in response. Gliath approached and handed Jason his AK-47, which he picked up from the ground nearby.
With that, the team lingered around the Crossroads for a while as Morgana cut down the rest of the prisoners. Jason watched as she spoke firmly with the ones that were still conscious then helped revive the ones who were not. Riley watched with an annoyed expression as they waited, but Jason was thrilled to see the relief and satisfaction on the young woman's face when the freed rebels all ran away to the north toward the Soloster manor.
"Where are they going?" Jason asked.
"To a secret rendezvous," she replied. "There's probably a spy among us—among the resistance back before everyone quit—but the spy's not among those men."
"Wouldn't the spy know of the rendezvous?" Jason asked.
Morgana frowned at that, staring at a puddle of Gliath blood in the street. She didn't answer.
Shortly after the young woman was done with at the Crossroads, they decided to start harvesting the gargoyles that were already dead, starting with the headless one that had tried to drop Jason to his death. After several minutes of Riley bashing its stone chest cavity open and removing the first golem heart of the night, Jason had an idea.
They approached the other gargoyle Jason had killed in the Crossroads with his AK-47.
"Why does your sword cut through them like it does?" Jason asked Morgana.
The young woman held the brilliant blade in front of her. Its golden light cut through the fog like nothing else; its silvery edge gleaming through the sunrise-like glow. The red-gold handguard reflected the brilliance with a lustrous sheen.
"This was my father's sword, Dawnbringer. It is an heirloom that has passed through the Soloster family since before the building of New Bozeman and its walls. This sword can easily cut through any creature of darkness; any being with malice in its heart."
"Magical?" Riley asked.
"Yes," she replied.
"How does it cut through gargoyles?" Jason asked. "Aren't they constructs? They're supposed to be neutral. They're machines."
Morgana looked down at the monster body sprawled in the street. Jason had split its stone head open with several rounds of 7.62x39mm. Chunks of gooey meat had dashed out of its head like disgusting, rotten brains.
"I don't know what you mean by that," Morgana said, "but these creatures are definitely evil. They do terrible things. Most of my people who have been killed or captured by them have met horrible, tortured fates."
"Try to cut through it now; now that it's dead," Jason said.
Morgana stared at him in confusion for a moment, then shrugged and swung her sword casually down into its back. The glowing blade easily bit into its stony form, carving down halfway into its body. She grimaced then pulled the blade out as if doing so fouled it.
Riley smirked and scratched his beard. He flicked a bit of gargoyle stuff away from his shoulder. "That'll save some time," he said. "Good thinking, Jason."
With the help of Morgana and her Dawnbringer sword, Riley was able to get to that monster's heart much more quickly and without half the mess.
As Jason wiped clean the second golem heart of the night—noting how its warm, yellow glow shone through the fabric of his towel—the group was attacked by another roaming gargoyle. Between the three gunmen, they took it down fairly easily then harvested that one as well.
The night passed. Most of the gargoyle attacks came right in the beginning, when the fog had first settled over New Bozeman. That was the time that the townspeople feared the most; the coming of the Darkness. Attacks in the early morning hours were more sporadic. Sometimes they were able to draw a beast in close enough to shoot it out of the sky and finish it in the streets. Other times, the monsters swooped past at the edges of the mist and the Reality Rifters couldn't react in time. Riley was the quickest on the trigger, of course, but sometimes, his shots rang out in the night and the beast was gone an instant later with a.45-70 hard-cast lead slug stuck somewhere in its stony hide.
Twice over the rest of the night, Jason tried to use his AK's IR Illuminator, but found that it only turned the thick grey mist into a smothering, blinding white mist, so turned it off again.
The Reality Rifters with Morgana worked together to harvest the several gargoyles they'd killed near the walls and the courtyard. By the time the sky began to subtly lighten through the mist, they had twelve more gargoyle hearts.
"Only ten more to go!" Jason exclaimed.
"This isn't too bad," Riley replied. "We have to get a minimum of thirty, you know. We can get more, if there are more. If we're smart about this and don't go fruking wandering off—" He eyed Jason and Morgana with a smirk. "—then we can keep doing this and get more than the minimum bounty."
"Four ounces each," Jason added with a smile. He felt pretty good about that.
Jason also told himself that every extra dead gargoyle was one less monster to kill and torture the people of this village. That said, however, he found deep in his heart that he didn't care too much about the village. He cared more about Morgana having less gargoyles to contend with when they were gone later.
The fog suddenly began to recede. By the time Jason noticed, he
could already see the dark blue sky turning a little lighter at the eastern horizon. The nearly-full moon was low in the western sky.
All four of them looked up when three quick shapes swooped past overhead, flying quickly to the south.
"They're leaving," Morgana said.
Jason looked down at his compass. "Definitely south."
Riley stared off that way for a moment and scratched his beard, resting his Marlin rifle on one shoulder. Jason could see the wheels turning in his cybernetically-augmented head.
"Jason..." Riley said, trailing off in thought.
Watching the forms with beating wings become grey blips over the southern wall down the street, Jason thought about bed. He thought about a shower. What a freaking night.
He realized that he wasn't too tired. He could keep going...
"Dim Door time," he muttered. Those gargoyles were heading straight south. This might be a good opportunity to make this job even easier, if only they could hold out a little longer...
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" the cyborg asked, staring at the southern sky. Jason wondered if Riley could still see the beasts with that bionic vision of his.
"I think so," Jason replied. "Are we following them?"
"We can figure out where they're going," Riley said with a smirk. "Maybe they're vulnerable during the day somehow. If shet goes diagonal, you can always rift us back home and we'll finish up tomorrow night."
"Okay." Handing his AK to Gliath, Jason pulled up his OCS and navigated to where he could input coordinates for a new rift. He made sure that the sliders were set to the third and fourth dimension, then copied their current coordinates, adjusting 1000 yards to the south. If the destination rift appeared too high, or too low, or right in the middle of a tree or something, he could adjust and try again. Jason turned off his night vision to avoid being blinded by the brilliant, orange light that would come. "Here we go..."
Jason focused, flexed, and opened a rift.