by E. C. Myers
“We’re working on it,” Coco said. “Although maybe we should stay on the ground after all if we’re about to be attacked.”
“Everyone else will be safer up here,” Velvet said. “If we can’t defend our position, we’ll engage the Grimm and draw it away from the turtle and the group. But the most important thing is getting the others out of harm’s way.”
“Good call,” Coco said. “But are you really suggesting we fight a giant worm on the back of a giant turtle?”
Velvet steeled herself for Coco to shoot it down as another silly notion.
“That’s the idea,” Velvet said.
Coco smiled. “Sounds like fun.”
Fox was down.
He lay with his face in the sand, his head throbbing. His right eye was swollen shut. He couldn’t breathe.
Something heavy—someone heavy—had gotten the jump on him. And now they were gloating.
“Get up,” the voice said. “So I can finish you off fair and square.”
It was Bertilak Celadon.
Sand and wind roared around them. The sand was already piling up on Fox; if he waited much longer, he would be buried.
Fox pushed himself up on his hands and shook his head. The earbud fell out of his left ear. He scooped it up, but he could tell it was broken. His right earbud was fritzing, fading in and out as Ada tried to feed him information on the man who was trying to kill him.
“Opponent: Six feet six inches tall. Two hundred and seventy-five pounds. Very fit. Weapons: Ball mace. Update: Spiked ball mace. Update: Spiked ball mace with chain. Likely projectile capability.” A bang, and then the sand exploded in front of Fox.
“You think?” Fox muttered.
Fox’s Semblance was fading in and out, too, which explained why he hadn’t been able to detect Bertilak’s mind before he could attack.
Fox’s mouth was full of sand. He got up. He spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You call ambushing me ‘fair and square’?” Fox said.
“Over here.” Fox turned to follow the sound of Bertilak’s voice. The man was circling him in the sand.
His Scroll’s proximity alert was going haywire because of the sand blowing around them, decreasing visibility and messing with the motion sensors.
There was an old saying in Vacuo: “Listen to the desert.” It was meant on a philosophical level, that those who became one with the desert could survive in it. It also highlighted the fact that if you truly paid attention, you could hear—and see—that the desert wasn’t as lifeless as it appeared to be.
Fox tore the earbuds out of his ears and stuffed them in his pocket. He listened to the desert.
When he concentrated, he thought he could hear Bertilak moving. He even might be able to judge the Huntsman’s position from the sound of sand flying into him. Strangely, it reminded Fox of raindrops hitting the windowpane in his room at Beacon.
“What are you planning for Edward, Bertilak?” Fox asked.
Bertilak laughed. “Trying to keep me talking so you can keep track of me?”
Fox oriented on him again and confirmed that listening to the sand around them was effective as a crude sensor.
Bertilak rushed toward him. Fox backed up in time and brought his arm blades down in time to deflect a blow from Bertilak’s mace. He grabbed for where he thought the chain was, connected with it, and pulled, but it slipped out of his hands. Something sharp dug into Fox’s left forearm.
Bertilak’s mace dragged in the sand, splitting Fox’s attention and making it harder to pinpoint where Bertilak and his weapon were.
“Why would you kidnap a defenseless old man?”
“Defenseless?” Edward protested.
Fox turned slowly in the sand, following Bertilak’s motion, so the Huntsman would know he could follow him whether he was talking or not. Meanwhile, he kept trying to send a message to Edward: “Stop blocking our Semblances. I need to be able to see him. I need to be able to talk with you, mind to mind.”
“My boss is interested in people with powerful Semblances,” Bertilak said. “Like someone who can create mood bombs and trigger Grimm attacks. But it looks like I got the wrong guy. I thought something was up with those two. Well played, old man.”
“You work for me!” Edward said.
Bertilak laughed. “We only convinced you to hire us so you would trust us and we could stay close until it was time to deliver you.”
“You were taking him west. But you wanted to go to the city this whole time?” Fox said.
“Unfortunately, we got saddled with protecting every damn settlement we ended up at. We’ve been trying to get the Caspians away from the main group, but Edward is pretty stubborn.”
“Hey, who’s your boss, anyway?”
“You don’t know them, but judging by your team’s abilities, they probably have a nice fat file on you,” Bertilak said.
“That’s creepy,” Fox said.
“I don’t care about Edward,” Bertilak said. “But I can’t have you trying to stop me.”
“You’re going after Gus next,” Fox realized.
“Believe it or not, he’ll be safer with us, and all of you will be safer without him around. Don’t worry, we won’t even charge you!”
Bertilak lunged forward and punched Fox in his left side before he could react. Fox bent over and covered his side. He staggered away, spinning around to make sure he was facing Bertilak again. Where he had last heard Bertilak, anyway.
The problem was, he didn’t know the range of Bertilak’s weapon. He couldn’t dodge bullets, either. Right now, Bertilak was playing with him.
Fox’s legs were swept out from under him and he fell hard on his back. He rolled away, coughing on sand. Frustrated, he zipped toward Bertilak and slashed out with his arm blades. His left blade glanced off metal, but the right made contact, and Bertilak bellowed with pain and rage. Bertilak grabbed Fox’s ankle and flung him away.
“Have to save Gus. Have to save Gus. Have to save Gus.” It took Fox a moment to realize that he was picking up on Edward’s thoughts. The channel was open, which meant he could now communicate with the older man. Which meant—
Fox focused and fixed on Bertilak’s position, his consciousness a presence in Fox’s mind, easy to pick out in the barren wasteland. The only other person close by was Edward, his thoughts sputtering and sparking but holding together. Beyond, Fox picked up on other, smaller, slighter minds, a sort of background hum of the desert creatures sheltering from the storm under the sand, in hidden crevices and natural hollows in the rock. Farther out, Fox felt the faint suggestion of other people, that tiny, phantom connection with Coco, Yatsuhashi, and Velvet was enough to urge him on.
“Edward! Listen, it’s Fox,” he sent.
“Fox?”
“I need your help. If I can’t see what Bertilak is doing, I can’t fight him.”
“The storm is pretty bad now. I can’t see more than two feet in front of me.”
That was good to know. If Bertilak couldn’t see Fox, either, they were more or less on even ground.
“Hold on, I just spotted him,” Edward sent.
“What’s the range on his weapon?” Fox sent. He climbed back to his feet and headed toward Bertilak. The man had stopped moving. What was he waiting for?
“He can send the spiked ball on his mace out about seven feet,” Edward said. “Careful, though—it also fires bullets. But he can only load one at a time, and he’s low on ammo.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“Yeah, he’s a real bastard.”
“Even I can see that,” Fox sent.
As Fox approached Bertilak, it seemed to be getting hotter and hotter. The sandstorm was still raging around them, though, the sun all but obscured in the sky, so what was causing this heat? It was radiating in waves—from where Bertilak stood. The closer Fox got to him, the hotter it was.
So that’s his Semblance, Fox thought. He thought back to moments when the temperature insi
de had been more unbearable than outside, and Bertilak had always been close by. Apparently he could turn up the heat, especially when he was angry.
Fox gritted his teeth and pushed onward.
“So I’ll have to beat him quickly,” Fox said. “Before this heat knocks me out.”
“Good luck,” Bertilak said. Fox felt him approaching—as much from the ambient heat shield as from his mental presence and the sand blowing around them.
Fox and Bertilak circled each other. “You’re a disgraceful excuse for a Huntsman,” Fox said.
“It’s easy for you to say, with all those lofty ideas Ozpin and Theodore drilled into your heads. ‘Being a Huntsman is a calling and a privilege, not to be taken lightly.’ ”
Fox had heard his professors at Beacon and Shade give exactly that speech.
Bertilak spat. It was so hot, Fox heard the liquid sizzle and evaporate as it hit the sand.
“They’re just words. You think your headmasters and professors are model Huntsmen? They’re worse than all the rest of us. You want to know why I barely graduated? I was tired of being used as a tool.”
It was so hot, Fox was feeling feverish, weak, muddled. He couldn’t keep this up much longer before succumbing to heatstroke.
“You’re still a tool,” Fox said.
It got even hotter. Oops.
“On your left!” Edward said.
Fox dodged to the right, felt a wave of heat pass on his left side. He struck upward with his left blade and Bertilak bellowed.
“You got him again,” Edward said. “Duck!”
Fox ducked. Then he turned it into a forward roll, a handspring, and his feet connected with Bertilak’s face. Fox followed through as Bertilak fell backward.
He heard Bertilak hit the sand. The temperature dipped slightly, for just a moment, but even those two degrees of relief felt amazing.
“Come on, boy. I’ve seen you fight Grimm. This is no different,” Edward said.
Edward was right. If Bertilak had been a Grimm, Fox would have been done with him by now—sandstorm and heat notwithstanding. But there was one huge difference: He wasn’t trying to kill Bertilak. In fact, he was specifically trying not to kill Bertilak. He had to finish this differently. Had to draw him closer and lull him into a false sense of security.
“He’s behind you,” Edward said.
Fox turned his head left and right, as though he were trying to listen hard. He fired a shot from his weapon out into the desert, away from Bertilak and Edward.
“Can you hear me? Fox? He’s practically on top of you,” Edward sent. “Dammit.”
Fox felt Bertilak close by. He heard him swing the chain of his mace, and just as he expected, he felt the chain slip over his head. He brought his arm blades up just in time to prevent the chain closing around his throat. Bertilak squeezed. Fox pushed hard—and his tonfas helped him slip out of its embrace, slicing into Bertilak in the process.
Bertilak bellowed and shoved Fox forward, making him stumble headfirst into the sand.
“You’re going to pay for that,” Bertilak snarled.
Fox spat sand out of his mouth as he rolled and leaped back onto his feet. Then he did a handspring toward Bertilak, his boots colliding with Bertilak’s face. Bertilak groaned and fell backward with the motion until Fox was sitting on his chest, knees pressing the man’s arms down. Fox began punching.
Fox’s Aura depleted with the force of each blow, but so did Bertilak’s. And just before Fox reached a critical low, he felt Bertilak’s Aura shatter, followed a moment later by his nose shattering with a satisfying crunch.
Bertilak screamed and heaved Fox off him. He scrambled to his feet. Even without Aura, the Huntsman was still somehow on his feet, fight left in him.
Fox tried to recover as he braced for a blow from Bertilak’s weapon. One more hit and his own Aura would shatter.
Bertilak roared and then Fox heard metal clash against metal.
“Really, old man?” Bertilak said through his broken nose. “That’s a cool toy, but you’re no match for me.”
Fox heard the two of them fight. He lay in the sand, willing himself to get up, but every time he did, he got dizzy. He tried to vomit, but all he coughed up was gritty sand he had inadvertently swallowed. His head pounded and he kept forgetting where and when he was, reliving childhood memories of living in Vacuo.
A rainstorm was a special treat, not only because it provided much-needed water for the nomads and desert plants and animals, but it gave them enough water to make mud bricks for building. But they had to work quickly, shaping and setting the bricks before they dried in the heat and became too brittle.
“I want to help,” Fox said. “I can do it.”
“Darling, I know you can, but we don’t have time to explain how to make them right now,” Fox’s father said.
“It’ll be faster if we do it ourselves,” his mother agreed. “Why don’t you go play on your own for a while?”
Only the littlest kids played in the mud, making sand castles instead of doing useful work. Fox was insulted. So he went off to prove his parents wrong. He would make the mud bricks and make a whole house of his own. He would show them.
As he worked, the other kids came to watch and make fun of his misshapen bricks, the lopsided structure he was building. Fox’s face burned with embarrassment and anger, but he kept working. He would show them all what he was capable of.
While Fox worked, something terrible was happening nearby. The first sign he had that something was wrong was when the outer walls of his castle fell, and he felt the vibration in the earth. A quake? He knew whatever had caused it was big, and happening in the center of his settlement. He ran to warn everyone, but he was too late.
Later, when Uncle Copper found him hiding in the remains of his mud house more of a tomb-shaped mound, he learned that a giant sinkhole had formed in the sand, caused by the sudden, heavy rains. It had swallowed half of the settlement—including Fox’s parents and their home—before the sand finally settled.
Oddly, it wasn’t the fact that the desert had killed his family and friends that bothered Fox the most; that was what the desert did, and you couldn’t blame it for being what it was. Fox’s own father had told him that after losing his own parents in a sandstorm when Fox was four years old. Every Vacuan, from the youngest to the oldest, knew and accepted the risks and dangers and had felt loss—death was simply their way of life.
No, what bothered Fox most was that their deaths had been random, impersonal. Meaningless. And they had been powerless to do anything about it.
After grieving—a brief process in Vacuo, where you had to literally pick up and move on—Fox had vowed to leave Vacuo one day and live someplace where he could protect people who couldn’t protect themselves. Where you had a fighting chance to survive. And he swore that his death one day would have some purpose behind it.
A knocking sound woke Fox. A banging.
He rolled over and took a breath. He could breathe again. The temperature had cooled back to the desert’s normal range, perhaps a bit cooler because of the particles in the air blocking the sun. The wind had died down, so he was no longer taking in mouthfuls of sand.
Fox sat up. The banging sound that had woken him was metal on metal, accompanied by guttural sounds of pain.
“Edward?” Fox sent.
“Rise and shine,” Edward sent back. “Looks like I’ve still got it, but I wouldn’t expect it to last much longer,” Edward cried out. “Mostly because I wouldn’t expect me to last much longer.”
Fox climbed to his feet. He swayed, but his head was clearer and he didn’t feel like he was going to be sick again.
He staggered toward the sound of combat.
“How … strong is … this shield?” Bertilak yelled in between blows from his mace.
“My arm will break before it does,” Edward said.
“Works for me!” Bertilak picked up the pace.
Fox softly crept up behind Bertilak.
&
nbsp; “Watch out behind you,” Edward said.
“Like I’m falling for that,” Bertilak said.
Fox wrapped his right arm in a choke hold around Bertilak’s throat, pulling him off Edward. His arm blade prevented Bertilak from reaching up to grab at him. He struggled for a bit, then jabbed backward with the handle of his mace, knocking Fox backward. Bertilak coughed.
“Good one, kid.” From the sound of his voice, he had turned to face Fox. Fox heard the chain extend and went into his fighting stance. Arms up, blades out.
In the suddenly quiet desert, still recovering from the storm that had passed through, sounds took on a new quality. The creak of leather in Bertilak’s clothing, the sand shifting as he moved, the whirring of the spiked ball on its chain.
Fox listened to the desert.
When the whirring sound changed, Fox got ready. Instead of dodging the incoming weapon, he went toward Bertilak. He brought both of his blades up over his head and slammed them down with all his strength, cutting through the chain. The ball went flying off into the desert and Bertilak sprawled from the sudden shift in weight. Fox caught him and pushed him down as he brought his knee up, connecting with Bertilak’s chest and then knocking him back.
Bertilak came for him again, attacking with the handle of his broken weapon. Fox easily parried the blows and got a couple of punches in.
He heard Edward bashing Bertilak with his shield from behind. Then Bertilak was retreating while Fox and Edward traded blows with him, side by side.
“Two on one? What would Theodore say?” Bertilak said.
“He’d say it’s payback for ambushing a blind guy and an old man in the desert,” Fox said.
“Yeah, but you can fight,” Bertilak said.
“Flattery will get you—” Fox turned and delivered a roundhouse kick that made solid contact with Bertilak’s thick head. “Flattened.”
Bertilak did not get up.
“Finally,” Edward said. “Now I can sit down.”
Fox bound Bertilak’s hands and feet with rope from his own pack and then grabbed his Scroll. He wanted to find out who Bertilak was working for.
He collapsed next to Edward. The old man clapped a hand on his back. Fox winced—everything hurt—but it also felt good. He suddenly missed his uncle Copper. Fox hadn’t even tried to find his old settlement and his people, Kenyte, since moving back to Vacuo. He decided he would when they were done with this mission; he wanted to introduce his two families to each other.