by Eddie Patin
But it doesn’t have to be this way, he thought. If they really zap it out, they could be back to regular adventuring in no time. It didn’t have to be like starting over...
Jason wandered back down the hall, grinning at Riley.
"And if we get seven more like you want to, Riley, that would make it like ... over a hundred thousand dollars! That’s a ridiculous amount of money for one adventure! This is amazing—you were right! I’m so into this!"
"Did you stash your gold?" Riley asked, taking a swig of his beer.
"Yep," Jason said, running one hand through his hair. The guy's hair had looked so long and messy to Riley before he clipped it off after returning from the Wilderlands. "I put some in my gun safe, some in my sock drawer, and some in a box behind my electronics stuff in my computer desk."
"Okay, good," Riley replied. "We’ll figure out something better soon. Jason ... uh ... are you sure you want to go back for more? We could just..." Riley trailed off, feeling too embarrassed to finish.
Jason stared at him then laughed.
"Of course! What are you thinking?! We can get—even if we only get a few more, it’s worth going back."
Riley looked down at his beer.
He’d never had to use one of those two potions before. Yeah, he had a third one that he'd used up years ago, but in these last few years with Jason 113, those two healing potions had ridden safe and sound in their pouch on his phase belt.
Jason 934 was gored, flipped, and would have been fubar if it wasn’t for Gliath jumping on the bitch. They were lucky. Riley couldn’t shake the worry that if they went back, their luck just might run out...
In the morning, Riley and Gliath emerged from Jason’s parents’ old room to find Jason 934 in the kitchen, filling up his backpack’s water bladder in the sink. The soldier smelled fresh coffee and Jason seemed full of energy and raring to go.
"Coffee?" Jason offered, turning to Riley with a smile. "I made something called Shock coffee. It’s supposedly the strongest coffee there is, but they all say that. I like it—it’s pretty good."
"Yeah, sure."
"Hungry," Gliath rumbled, striding across the kitchen to the fridge.
After stocking up on food, water, and ammo again, then letting Gliath have his fill of meat, they all made their way into the garage. Riley looked up at Gliath and the leopardwere gazed back down at him, stalwart and without expression. His Krulax friend held his railgun ready, standing by. Riley looked at Jason, who stood fidgeting with the straps of his pack while holding his father’s heavy slug gun on one shoulder. Jason looked nervous but excited. There was a sparkle in his eye that Riley hadn’t seen before. Not since ... well ... not since seeing Jason 113.
"You ready?" Riley asked.
Jason nodded. "Yeah. Let’s go get seven."
"Okay. Open it up."
Jason pulled up the OCS. "Um ... should I rift us to the focus key area, to that weird ruin where we started? Or to the coordinates next to your friend’s camp?"
"Going to Rush’s camp would be good, but ... I didn’t think the OCS could bring us there, right? Isn’t it out of tolerance of 113's blockage?"
"Oh yeah," Jason said with a laugh, then let the OCS drop back down to his side. Reaching into the pouch he had fashioned on his belt, Jason rifled through focus keys then pulled out the metal shard they’d bought from Skinner, unwrapping it from a thin, white strip of cloth.
Holding the focus key in one hand, Jason stared at the open ring of Riley’s portable gate, focusing intensely...
"Through the ninth..." Jason breathed quietly to himself—so quietly that Riley only heard him because of his enhanced hearing.
After a few seconds, doubt started swirling around in Riley’s belly again. He felt worried that they might not make it back there after all...
Maybe this was a good thing. If Jason couldn’t open the rift, then they’d just miss out on the rest of the job and he and Gliath could hang out here for several days while Jason practiced with—
There was suddenly a loud fluttering, then a snap, and the rift to Maze World unfurled in a spinning swirl of sputtering sparks. Jason broke his concentration and turned to look at Riley with a broad smile.
"Good job," Riley said with a smirk. "Two times now."
Jason nodded, pale eyes lit up in the orange glow, and carefully re-wrapped the focus key and returned it to his pouch. He zipped the pouch closed.
"You lead?" Jason asked, nestling his slug gun up against his shoulder.
"Okay," Riley replied, unslinging his Gauss rifle.
He stepped through, followed by Jason, with Gliath coming through last.
As soon as Riley stepped through into the bright yellow atmosphere of Maze World, smelling the weird trees and feeling the mild breeze on his face, his visual HUD lit up with several forms on the ridge around them. Lifeform indicators appeared over outlines of creatures hovering around up there and Riley immediately realized that it was the damned bugs.
"Release the rift!" Riley snapped, flicking the safety off of his Gauss rifle but keeping his muzzle low.
Jason looked surprised for a moment by Riley’s order but quickly reacted and let the rift collapse. The roar in the air stopped quite suddenly and Riley could hear the low buzzing of the Nothrix’s wings.
As the rift closed, Jason and Gliath noticed the Nothrix as well, and all three Reality Rifters looked up at the sandstone walls around them.
The bug-men started descending toward them...
Chapter 18
"What do we do?" Jason asked. He didn't know where to aim his rifle. Eventually, he decided to keep the Rigby Magnum Mauser tight against his shoulder but let the muzzle point down. That’s what Riley was doing.
Three of the Nothrix descending from the high purple-grey sandstone ridge in front of where they appeared, their weird, fleshy wings making a low buzzing sound that made Jason think of giant mosquitos. Against the strange yellow sky, it was clear that the bugs were carrying long rifles. Did Riley say that they were ... railguns? Like Gliath’s?
"Relax," Riley said. Jason could see tension on the soldier’s face. "Don't make any sudden moves."
Even though there were several hunters on this world all going after the same bounties, Jason was immediately slammed by a sense of danger as the Nothrix Reapers approached—even though they and the Reality Rifters hadn’t shared anything other than harsh language so far.
With the roar of the portal snuffed out, Maze World was fairly quiet. A breeze swept through the canyon, tickling Jason’s short hair around his temples. He could hear little bits of sand and rock falling down from the eroding labyrinthine walls around them.
The three bugs landed, their buzzing wings coming to a stop and folding behind their backs. Jason couldn’t tell if one of them was Ghrag or not. The central Nothrix spoke up, choking on its attempt to speak English with its strange, clicking and flapping mouth and throat.
"Riley Wyatt!" the bug spat, glaring at all three of them with jerky movements of its flabby head and sharp, insectoid eyes. "Where you come from?! Where your ack ack ack hides? You steal kill—where the hide?"
"Ghrag Chaukchew," Riley replied with a smirk, visibly steeling himself and suddenly standing taller. "What the fruk do you want now? How about you mind your own business...?"
So it was Ghrag. The Nothrix leader clicked and flapped his throat, narrowing his compound eyes. The animated, meaty brow over the bug-like eyes appeared really strange to Jason. Insects back home never had muscles and skin on the outside. These Nothrix creatures seemed to have a really weird combination of exoskeletal limbs and more humanoid torsos and heads. Even with hard, spindly arms and legs, it was so odd that their wings were fleshy and soft, flexing in behind their backs. Jason eyed Ghrag’s railgun in the yellow light and saw that the weapon was dirty and scuffed up. It reminded him of something that the Sand People from Star Wars would carry: crude and neglected.
"How you three appear here?!" Ghrag spat. "Where your port
able gate?"
Riley shifted his weight, and Jason caught a quick glance of the soldier’s eyes darting his way before returning his gaze to the bug leader. "I don’t see how what we’re doing is any of your fruking business, bug-man."
"Where your hides? How many ack ack ack you have?!"
Why was Ghrag so intent on their activity?
This creature was weird and intense. Maybe that sense of danger Jason was feeling—warning bells and red flags going off even now—was just something subconscious and malfunctioning; his brain filling in the lines where there was nothing more than mere interspecies miscommunication...
"None of your damned business, Ghrag," Riley replied with a hard glance. Jason felt Gliath shift behind him. The leopardwere definitely radiated danger.
The three bugs stared at Riley with their insectoid eyes, their hard, chitinous claws and fingers scraping uneasily on their weapons.
"Ugly shit-human," Ghrag spat at Riley, glancing up at Gliath then back. Jason felt a chill when those compound eyes flowed over him briefly. "Stupid, soft human. We get all the mino-taurs." Ghrag struggled with the word. "All bounty! You ack ack ack get out of Nothrix Reaper hunting territory before we kill you. We Nothrix Reapers are many!"
"You know," Riley replied with narrowed eyes, "I’m getting pretty tired of you nasty bugs threatening to kill us. You’d best be careful, Ghrag, or I’ll stop being so fruking civil."
Ghrag looked at the two bugs flanking him, then they all bounced and guffawed, making a strange and unnerving sound of clicks and belches that Jason figured was some sort of laughter.
"Riley Wyatt!" Ghrag replied with a hiss and some trailing clicks, "You move or I call in Nothrix Reapers. This our hunting territory. Not for puny, stupid shit-humans." The bug let out a series of clicks that mildly resembled a chuckle. Then he casually waved one spiky, slender hand through the air, gesturing at the surrounding ridge.
Jason looked up and bit back a gasp as he saw several more Nothrix forms up there—lumpy shadows with wings like fleshy ferns and long sticks that had to be their crude railguns...
Riley’s eyes flashed up too, Jason saw. Then the soldier smirked, glaring at Ghrag again.
"You know what, you nasty bug? We were heading somewhere else anyway. But hey—you’d better hurry. There are only sixteen hides left until the job cap..."
Ghrag’s compound eyes widened.
"How many you turn in, ugly Riley?"
"Eh," Riley replied with a shrug. "That’s our business."
The bug shook his bizarre head and his insectoid eyes flashed. "We ack ack ack already have sixteen!" Ghrag replied quickly, clicking and glaring. "We Nothrix Reapers great hunters. We go turn in hides now—you go. Nothing more for you on this world." The bug twisted his flabby, segmented face into something that Jason figured was a smile—very strange indeed surrounded by grimy feelers and pedipalps.
"Well ... we’re gonna get ten more," Riley said with a smirk. "Even if you already hit the cap, we’ll try to sell 'em anyway. We’ll see what happens, Ghrag."
The bug leader made a heavy clicking and guttural sound at that, glaring daggers at Riley through his glittering compound eyes. Jason felt a sudden clamp of cold fear on his stomach and stared at Riley. Is he nuts?! he thought. Why the hell—?!
"You go, Riley! Go away!" Ghrag shouted with a belching sound. The creature's wings fluttered low behind him, and his chitinous claws gripped and flexed at his rifle.
"Come on, guys," Riley said to Jason with a smile. He turned away.
Jason and Gliath followed as the soldier led them along the canyon in the same direction they had passed the day before. Jason listened to the gravel crunching under his boots and tried not to look back at the bugs. His throat was tight, and he was determined to take a long drink of water once they were out of sight...
"Go, stupid human!" Ghrag shouted after them. Jason felt that pang of danger again. "Go away! Get out of Nothrix Reapers territory!"
"There's no such thing as 'territory' here!" Riley called back, then clapped Jason on the shoulder as they walked away. "Now be nice, Ghrag!"
Jason realized that his heart was beating a little too quickly. He took a deep breath as they left the annoyed, buzzing Nothrix behind.
"What the hell is with that guy?!" Jason hissed quietly at Riley as they walked into the wind. "Are we gonna move somewhere else?"
Riley smirked at Jason then sighed and looked up at the maze-filled sky as they walked. Gliath quietly padded along behind them, his entire body pitch black under the yellow atmosphere.
"Nothrix are not pleasant," Riley replied, checking the controls of his Gauss rifle before letting it settle back down into low ready. "They’re kind of stupid, very aggressive, and total thieves and backstabbers. I’ll bet that Ghrag was upset that we'd already sold what we had. If we were carrying around our hides like most other planeswalkers do instead of rifting them back home, he might have killed us for them ... if he had a good chance to."
"They have railguns?"
"Yeah, that’s what they were shooting yesterday. Admittedly, it looked like Ghrag has his bugs a little more organized than typical of Nothrix."
"They look like crappy guns," Jason said.
"They’re shet," Riley replied. "Nothrix tech is bottom of the bucket and scavenged for the most part, but they can still kill us if we’re not frosty."
"So where are we going?"
"Let’s head to Rush’s camp," Riley said. "Let’s see how they’re doing, then we can continue hunting on the other side of their camp."
"Want me to rift us there with my bookmark?"
The soldier sighed, looking up at the yellow sky, then cast a glance back. Jason looked back too and saw the three Nothrix hovering and slowly climbing through the air back up to the other bugs on the ridge. There had to be at least eight of them. How many Nothrix were on Maze World right now, anyway?
"Better not," Riley replied. "They’ll probably follow us for a while and Ghrag doesn’t seem to know that we—you—can rift at will."
"I guess he doesn’t know you that well, huh?"
Riley smirked. "A lot of planeswalkers know who I am. I’ve been around, man. Last time I saw Ghrag was ... when I was with Jason 113, I think ... so not that long ago. I guess the bug never figured out how we do things. That’s good. Gives us an edge if we need it."
"Yeah..."
"Jason, take the shot!" Riley shouted as the huge minotaur charged his way.
The soldier was in the middle of the canyon, firing his Gauss rifle at a huge male that was thundering toward them. Riley’s long, lithe limbs moved like lightning after he took several rapid, cracking shots. The length of his hellhound-hide duster billowed out like a cape as he sprang into action. Holy shit, Riley was fast!
Jason put the front sight of his Rigby on the monster’s muscular neck. This time, Riley had directed Jason to the wall of the canyon—it made a lot more sense and gave him a clear shot to the minotaur’s vulnerable throat—while Riley acted as bait on the ground.
Letting out a long, hissing breath, Jason tried to ignore the pounding of the monster’s hooves on the sandy canyon floor that shook his bones—even from here—and followed the beast with his front sight. Leading a little, Jason carefully squeezed the trigger...
The Rigby boomed, smashing Jason in the ears and rocking against his right shoulder. An instant later, the minotaur was struck, reacting as if hit by a cannonball! It fell slightly to its left, stumbled, then crashed down to the sandy ground.
Jason automatically cycled the bolt, careful to go all the way back this time and avoid a short stroke.
His ears rang. They hurt.
Putting the front sight on the beast again, Jason sought out the neck through the mess of muscle and fur as the monster writhed around on the ground, trying to get back to its feet. A heavy flow of blood—bright and tinted orange under the yellow sky—surged out into the sand as the minotaur bellowed and choked, grabbing at its throat, kicking aroun
d with its powerful legs and flopping like a monstrous, fur-covered fish.
"Good shot!" Riley exclaimed, dancing around the beast and aiming his Gauss rifle down at its head and neck. The soldier backed away, keeping his sights on their prey.
Gliath descended from his own hiding spot, approaching the dying monster. The leopardwere with his big, fancy railgun hardly ever took a shot. By now, Jason had figured that Gliath stood by mostly as an emergency measure. Maybe his railgun was slow to reload or he didn’t have much ammo—Jason didn’t know—but he’d seen Gliath again and again waiting, sights on target, only shooting a few times so far.
It must be a good tactic when hunting individual monsters. Jason thought back to the female minotaur that ended up goring him. They had no idea that the big, black alpha was charging in behind her. If Gliath had taken a shot at the female, would he have been ready to drive off the alpha like he did? That alpha minotaur getting involved could have changed things in a hurry...
Eventually, the fallen monster stopped struggling and Jason hiked down from his sandstone perch partway up the canyon wall. He joined Riley and Gliath standing as they stood around the dead beast. Probably dead, Jason thought, making sure that he still had a round in the chamber. The minotaur's fur was shaggy and long. The monster lay face-down in the sand in a mess of its own blood. Its horns were long and black-tipped, looked sharp as hell, and spread from side to side as wide as Jason’s coffee table back home.
"That’s a big one," Jason said. "Is it an alpha?"
Riley shrugged, looking around the ridgelines all around them.
"I’m not detecting any Nothrix. Let’s get this fruker back home and keep going."
Jason thought about the huge body in his garage. Blood, meat, hide, and a deboned corpse to be sent to the Wilderlands.
"Hey, uh..." he said, "why send it home? Why not just skin it here like Rush did and send just the hide home. Wouldn’t that be easier?"
Riley blinked.
"Faster this way," he said. "We'll deal with the bodies there instead of here."