by Ren Cummins
Cousins and Favo sprang to action; Cousins drew out a deck, fanning four cards into his hand while Favo readied one of the small vials he kept secured in his vest for such occasions. Nodding at the older man in his left periphery, Cousins half-turned and flung the cards into the beast’s face. Each card exploded with a small pop; not doing much damage, but startling the xanos into rearing back its head and away from Kari.
Favo called to Kari to let go and jump away. As soon as she was clear, he threw the vial at the tail, causing it to erupt in an arc of liquid that instantly shifted to stone, trapping the xanos’ tail again. Favo took Kari by the wrist and led her back into the relative security of the trees, while Cousins tossed another three concussive cards out to conceal their escape.
With a half-smile of satisfaction, Favo was just about to turn and move under cover himself, when he saw a flash of a ruffled black dress and white hair appear from nowhere to collide with the xanos’ massive head, Rom’s sword ringing from the jarring impact. The xanos roared again, tearing its tail free of the stone entrapment and moving quickly back towards the temple.
“What was that, Cousins?” Favo asked, as he and Kari came back out from the shadows.
Cousins checked the available cartridges in his spellshot pistol, and slapped the cylinder back with a loud snap. “That was Rom. Come on, we’re not done here yet.”
“Trust that girl to not give us the option of sneaking off,” Favo responded, drawing his own long-barreled pistol from the holster on his thigh. “Let us see this through, then.”
* * * * *
Rom’s arm throbbed from the impacts of the sword against the xanos’ thick carapace, and she growled with frustration. She simply wasn’t getting the blade through the scales to do any actual damage. Her attacks seemed to be at least irritating the creature, because it recoiled slightly with each strike, but after five solid connections, she hadn’t even managed to cleave a single scale free.
Mully flew overhead and called down to her. “What’s wrong, Rom?”
The xanos pitched to the left, forcing Rom to hold the sword in her left hand while she held to one of its horns in her right. “It’s too tough! I can’t get the sword past his armor!”
“The scythe! Use the scythe!” he suggested frantically.
Rom growled again at her own blindness. Of course, she thought. The scythe was unlike the other forms of her staff, in that the blade itself did not completely exist physically. Whenever she used it, the cutting edge only passed unimpeded through the body to cleave a creature’s soul from its life. The xanos was still thrashing about, so she paused, waiting for it to reach its present apex, and then released the sword, quickly tapping the gem twice and catching it again in her left hand as it disappeared and reappeared as a long, bone-handled scythe.
She positioned her feet evenly and let go of the xanos so she could swing the scythe with both hands. “No more,” she spat, and brought the scythe down to bear on the creature. The long unpolished blade sunk into the xanos’ body, unhindered by the scales, until the cap of the handle rang out against its armor.
The xanos flung its head about, dislodging Rom and sending her flying up and off its neck. “Hang it!” she muttered, spinning in the air and managing somehow to land on her feet before somersaulting backwards several times to absorb the momentum. Mully alighted on her shoulder.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did you miss him?”
The xanos whirled about, looking for his next target. Rom shook her head. “I hit him square on, but nothing happened. I don’t understand…”
“Ah,” Mully said, looking from the scythe’s blade to the xanos’ neck. “It’s too short.”
“What do you mean? Whoa, look out!” She held on to him with her free hand as she jumped up and out of the way of the xanos’ next attack. Its teeth clamped down on the patch of stones where Rom had just been standing, and screamed out in pain and anger as it spat out crushed stone and a bit of blood from its injured mouth.
Mully caught his breath. “The blade must pass between the head and heart of its victim, correct?”
Rom looked at him briefly, bewildered. “It does?”
“I’ve told you this many times.”
She jumped again before responding. “You have?”
“Rom, you never listen to me. Oops, he’s coming around.”
“I see him,” she said, offhandedly. She continued to jump around, staying just out of its range. Above her, Yu did the same thing in the air, distracting the xanos and forcing it to focus on both of them in two different places. Eventually, it would have to choose a target, leaving itself open for the other combatant. “I’m sorry, Mully, I try to listen to you, I do. It’s just that…” She avoided his heated gaze. “Well, I’m just not very good at listening.”
His voice softened somewhat, even as he pointed to her next leaping destination.
Rom nodded and landed there, forcing the xanos to turn his entire body in order to keep her in his sights. His tail spun behind him, causing Yu to deviate from his angle of attack.
“I just want you to remember the things I tell you,” Mulligan explained. He held tightly onto her shoulder, now guiding her only by applying slight pressure on her shoulder to one side or another. Their years together had forged them into a strong partnership, allowing them to fight together almost without specific instructions. He signaled her again, and she responded with a full vaulting mid-air somersault, her knees bending just in time to avoid a potentially crushing blow by one of the serpent’s feet.
Rom frowned. “I know, Mully. But even if I forget, at least I’ll have you there to remind me.” She laughed a bit at that and jumped again, landing on the main steps that led into the temple’s courtyard. The stones behind her had been torn down by the xanos’ fury, and she noticed that some of the statues themselves had been knocked over or damaged.
“I might not always be here, Rom, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
The sobriety of his voice distracted her enough that she didn’t see the xanos’ lunging attack until he was almost on top of her. His angle of descent gave her no room to jump clear; so she did the only thing that she could think of in the seconds she had before being engulfed by the rows of sharp teeth. Her hand went to a pocket of her dress and squeezed around the small circular device in her pocket; and, in response, time slammed shut to a complete stop around her.
“Good timing!” Mulligan yelled out above the oppressive constrictions of the air. If one didn’t move while time was frozen around you, the world looked like a serene and flawless painting – all life around them was as if rendered with a precision impossible by human talents, paused and unmoving. But with a single movement, it was like struggling against a rushing wind that fought to hold one in place – Mulligan had tried to explain why this was to her, but Rom had lost interest after the first or second sentence, as usual. She knew it had something to do with the understanding of what the pocket watch actually did.
As he had tried to explain it (on more than one occasion), the pocket watch did not actually stop the flow of time around Rom so much as it slipped Rom in between moments of time. He’d once used a book as an example – he pulled back the thick span of pages by a single corner and let them flip past his paw, one page at a time. They’d flown past so quickly that Rom couldn’t make out the words on any one page. Then, he slipped a paw into the pages to stop them from moving.
“This is where the watch takes you,” he’d explained. “It slips you in between the pages. But the rest of pages are still flipping, so when the watch brings you back, you slip right back in where you stepped out.” He’d gone on to say more, but at that point she’d realized that she was bored again and had probably gone down to the kitchen for some cheese.
Rom looked ahead into the opened mouth of the xanos, less than a meter from where she stood. Behind him, she could see Cousins and Favo moving in with their guns drawn. The image made Rom smile. Even now, they thought she was in dange
r. How cute.
“Boys,” she laughed. But behind them, she saw Kari – Rom had to blink several times before she was certain it was her. “Mully?” she asked, pointing through the crackling, fracturing air towards Kari.
“Oh, is that Kari?” Mulligan asked. “It looks like she’s found some kind of defensive system from the gloves. I can see it from here, it’s the same stylized metal scales and gearworkings.” A moment later, and he inhaled sharply. “Ah, I know – it was when she touched the Morrow Stone upstairs! It must have taught her gauntlets how to do that!”
Rom nodded appreciatively before looking back into the xanos’ mouth. Inside, its skin was light pink, and looked very soft. His jaws were opened wide, tall enough for Rom to stand on her own head and only have to crouch down slightly once she got past the tongue.
“Plenty of room,” she muttered to herself.
Mully was horribly afraid he’d heard her correctly above the chaotic rush of noise that filled their ears when in between seconds. But before he could ask her to repeat herself, she was lifting him from her shoulders with her free hand. “Here, you need to get out of the way – this guy’s pretty big, I don’t think he’s going to be able to stop in time.”
“Wait – Rom, stop!” he protested, but she shushed him with a curt shake of her head.
“Don’t worry, this will work, I just need to get in there low enough to pull his soul out, then I’ll come right back.” Without giving him time to reply, she threw him to one side, seeing him eventually lose momentum and rest, suspended in the thickly immobilizing air clear of the xanos’ trajectory. Satisfied that he was safe, she turned her attention back to the xanos.
“Okay, little guy, I hope you don’t throw up easy, or this is going to be really gross.” Raising one foot up and over his lower teeth, she took a deep breath and climbed up into his mouth.
* * * * *
The xanos plowed into the statuary garden, casting stone and grassy soil alike into the air with a generous burst of dust, took a single, staggering breath, and fell still. Its tail gave a brief, erratic series of twitches until it, too, lay unmoving upon the blasted paving stones.
Mulligan rolled in the air before his wings managed to level him off and turn him back around to see Favo and the others running towards him. He spun quickly back towards the xanos.
“Rom!” he yelled, and flew back to the fallen beast as fast as his wings could move him, coughing and making his way through the blinding cloud. He fluttered around the snout of the xanos, which now lay in the center of the old statuary. The teeth were all but closed together, too closely aligned to let Mulligan squeeze or even look past.
Yu alighted behind Mully as Cousins, Favo and Kari approached. Cousins and Favo kept their weapons drawn on the beast, not yet ready to believe in its demise. It only required a few additional flaps of Yu large wingspan to clear the bulk of the detritus from the area, giving them all a good look at the xanos.
“What happened, Mully?” Kari asked, walking to him from behind the two others.
The little feranzanthum pointed at the xanos’ mouth. “I think she went in there. She was trying to take its soul, but couldn’t reach it from outside his body.”
“She went into its mouth?” Kari’s voice rang out metallic from behind the mask, filled with incredulity. Then, she seemed to remember who they were talking about, and shrugged. “Yeah, that figures,” she mumbled, clearly irritated.
“Is it dead?” Favo asked, still unwilling to drop his guard.
Cousins kept his pistol trained on the xanos but slipped his deck of cards back into a pouch of his vest so he could adjust the aperture of his glasses. Slowly, he nodded. “Yes, it’s undeniably a deceased beast.”
Favo cocked an eye towards the younger man. “Poetry? Truly?”
Holstering the pistol, Cousins shrugged. “Mood breaker. You’re right, poorly timed.” He massaged his wrist; it was still sore from their initial encounter, but nothing appeared to be broken. His head was throbbing, but all in all, he was thankful to be around to complain about it.
“Perhaps we should rescue Rom first,” Favo offered.
“Good point,” the lad conceded, sliding the glasses back up into his disorderly blonde hair. “Let me see what sort of spells I have available,” he added, drawing one of his decks out and flipping through them carefully.
Favo looked over his shoulder, glancing at the spell sigils as they sped past, but not seeing any directly helpful for opening the mouth of a dead xanos.
Suddenly, the xanos began to move again, causing both men to jump back in shock and draw their pistols.
“Oh calm down,” Kari said, lifting the upper jaw higher in the air. “It’s just me.” One of her boots, covered in the same protective scales as her gauntlets, stood upon the lower jaw, allowing her to pry the mouth open with the inexplicable strength with which the gauntlets endowed her.
Being the shortest of them, Kari couldn’t raise the mouth high enough for either Favo or Cousins to do more than look in, but Mulligan flew past them all and down the darkness of the creature’s throat.
In her surprise, Kari nearly let go of the jaw, but Favo placed a calming hand on her shoulder. “Just keep it open, Kari. He’ll find her and bring her back.”
Sure enough, a few tense moments later, Rom came stumbling from the narrow orifice with Mulligan leading the way. Kari pushed as high up as she could, and leaned to her right so that Rom could climb past the rows of teeth and onto the ground again. Once they were both free of the mouth, Kari pulled back her arms and legs, letting the head snap shut again with a great crash.
Rom grinned triumphantly until she looked down to see her dress. She dismissed the scythe and stomped one foot. “It’s ruined!” she whined.
Chapter 31: The Aftermath of Battle
“No. I’m not wearing that.”
Kari crossed her metal-encased arms, one foot tapping idly on the mostly flattened remains of her airship. “It’s fine, Rom, it’s just a jumpsuit. You wore worse in the orphanage.”
Rom frowned at the wrinkled and folded grey fabric as if it, too, had just crawled out of a xanos’ digestive tract. Her eyes went from that to the matted pleats of what had been, and still mostly remained, her favorite black dress. Lifting the jumpsuit up by the lapels, she let it unfold so she could get a final decisive look at it. She sighed. “Ugh. How do you wear these?”
“One leg at a time,” Kari giggled. “I’m really too busy working on stuff to worry about looking pretty. Besides, your only other choice is smelling like that.”
Rom’s normally white hair now had a sickly green tinge to it, and was matted against her head. She touched it gingerly, shuddering at the sensation of her fingers touching the slime that encased her hair. “Fine,” she said, “But I’m going to go clean up.”
Nodding, Kari waved Favo and Cousins over. “We’re going to go into the temple for a bit,” she yelled to them as they left their examination of the xanos’ body.
“Mully,” Rom said to her small friend, who was sitting nearby, keeping a watchful eye on the end of the canyon. “I want you to stay with Favo and Cousins, just in case they need us.”
Mulligan’s eye whiskers flickered nervously. “That’s fine, but what if you need them?”
Rom considered his question for a moment, shrugged. “Then I’ll send Rickets. Besides, I’m going to be with metal girl, here. See? Nothing to worry about, we’ll be back soon.”
Kari hefted a toolkit over one shoulder and a smaller travel pack over the other. The two girls walked past Favo and Cousins and towards the temple, leaving a concerned Mulligan watching them until they disappeared into the temple’s courtyard.
“Who’s worried?” he asked rhetorically, no small amount of sarcasm evident in his voice.
* * * * *
The two girls made their way past the rubble of the courtyard entryway and the many crushed statues near where the xanos had fallen. The statue of Force was now missing her right arm, and
Memory had a long, thin crack from the base of the statue up to her abdomen. The remainder of the statues of Sheharid she had recognized was far enough towards the main doors to have been spared any appreciable or noticeable damage. Her eyes fell again to the unmarked statue of the man with the pocket watch, and pulled out her own to compare it to the one in the statue. It was hard to make out any details from the carved chronometer, as it was mostly concealed in his hand; any identifying designs were concealed by the manner in which he held it.
“Wait a moment,” Rom muttered, and looked back to the statue that resembled her, down to the frilly fashion of dress she had preferred to wear ever since leaving the orphanage to live as a ward at Goya’s apothecary. Her eyes looked more closely at the front of the dress, looking for an indication of the watch she now carried. “That’s weird,” she said.
Kari walked back over to her. “What’s weird?” she asked.
Rom pointed towards the small bulge on the lower right side of her stomach, where the thin silver chain from the opposite side of her dress disappeared into a partially-hidden pocket. Then she pointed back up at the statue of her older self. “No watch.”
Her lips pursing up in response to the small puzzle, Kari scratched her head, the gauntleted fingers resonating sharply on the metal covering her head. “Maybe you don’t use it enough that whoever saw you thought you’d really care?”
“Maybe. It’s just…” Rom shook her head. “Maybe this isn’t even me,” she said.
“Right,” Kari shrugged. “I’m sure there’re a lot of people going around looking like that.”