“I'm supposed t' just leave y'all t' deal with that thing?” Karzt walked over and picked up the hatchet, testing its weight in his hand. “I don't think so.”
“Karzt, th' townsfolk want ya dead. Ya can't protect 'em like this. Let me take care 'o this one for ya. An' besides... summer's over. Th' traders are packing up. Saw a fella on a bright red horse leavin' today, in fact. Headed northeast. Maybe ya can catch 'em an' give some kinda peace t' the dead. Maybe ya can’t. I'm thinkin' ya ought ta put all this behind ya. Start a new life. It ain't a job fer one man, not now that we know fer sure it's magic what done the deed. Th' Enforcers up in Sundale oughta be here soon. They'll give us th' time 'o day fer somethin' like this, they'll clean up this mess. Get goin'. I'll tell 'em ya got away. Go.”
Karzt stood and looked at his friend, then toward the door. He opened his mouth to argue but then realized there was nothing left for him here. Squaring his shoulders for the task ahead, he picked up the backpack and walked out the door. As he stepped out into the night air and began his long march northeast, his old deputy's face began to bubble and roil like boiling water.
✽✽✽
“Kehehehe…”
He was standing on an impossibly tall grey stone pillar. A dark, starless sky loomed overhead. All around him was nothing but an inky black expanse with a strange purple-toned haze permeating throughout. He felt cold rough winds battering him, threatening to send him tumbling into the abyss below. Far, far below, he could see an endless purple desert stretching out in all directions. Shivering, he struggled to remember how he’d gotten here.
“Kehehe… you killed them, Karzt. Karzt Coffington. COFFIN! You put them in COFFINS, just like your name! Kehehehehehe!”
It was a stupid joke – childlike, even. In the horrible tinny voice of the shapeshifter, however, it took on a sinister and disturbing air. The voice seemed to be coming from all directions at once, echoing around him. Here, in this ephemeral dream land, the sound was almost deafening; its force vibrated the hazy granules in the air and Karzt want to cover his ears and make himself small.
Karzt shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. A moment ago he had felt slow, groggy, and heavy. Now, the creature's mockery had roused him into a primal, masculine rage. He screamed out a vile curse into the nothingness around him, and the power and fury of his own echoing voice gave him succor in the night. The faces of his dead friends – friends he had wrongfully executed – flashed through his head as he thundered into the purple darkness. Amidst the curses, his voice carried the promise of that deadly and unmerciful justice which he intended to one day bring upon the shapeshifter. He felt bitter frustration at his own powerlessness but knew in his heart that it was possible for men to defeat such magic. How else could the Imperium exist in such a hostile world? He allowed his anger to continue to flow through him to suffuse his entire being. This anger would be the fuel that gave him the courage and strength to square his shoulders for the hard road ahead.
“Don't get mad! I did you a favor! Now you know what it's really like to murder. You're a real killer now.”
The cold wind blew hard and Karzt fell to his knees with the force of it. “Why did you do this?” he shouted, using the power of his own voice to battle the creature's overwhelming din. “Why me? Why Woodswood?”
“Be GRATEFUL, mortal-manling. I found you INTERESTING. Don't get BORING now. I saw the way you took those heads without remorse and I just had to find out more about you. Now we've started the game. My favorite game! Catch me if you can, law-man… kehehehe… hehe… heh…”
The tittering laugh faded just as before, echoing away into the endless purple darkness around the pillar. Losing control of his body, Karzt felt compelled to stand, take a step, and plunge silently into the abyss below.
He awoke with a start, clutching his chest and feeling the fast and hard thudding of his heart. Nightmares like this one had become common in the days since his escape from Woodswood. They felt so real that he was sure that the demon had cursed him; these were not dreams, they were visions.
He was grateful that the morning had come at last. As had become his habit, he had stopped for the night to sleep in some high brush far from any road. He was also glad for his tough work-boots which never seemed to degrade despite the long miles he had put on them. Inside the hide travel backpack, Karzt found his old, scuffed, bronze Hangman's badge with the symbol of a noose engraved upon it. It glinted in the sunlight as he pinned it to his chest – he planned on going far away from here, to a place where nobody would recognize him. Nor would they recognize his symbol of office. Woodswood and its customs were virtually unknown to those in the eastern half of the Imperium.
He had resolved to make a new life, but the shapeshifter was always there in the back of his mind. He knew that he must somehow track down the creature and exact revenge – no, enact justice – for all the men that had been slaughtered in jest at its demented whims. For now, though, the trail was dead. No travelers had seen the trader on the flaming red horse.
He eventually made it as far as the northern edge of the Ourolo desert. Karzt found work over the next few years as a mercenary. Lawless Ouroloan border towns dotted the sands anywhere a reliable well had been dug deep enough to hit the water table. He discovered in himself a natural talent for brawling – his stout lumberjack's body could overpower most would-be bandits with ease. As a result he made a habit of hiring out to mercenary groups protecting caravans from orc raiders or – his preferred job – hunting down criminals. He never handed out his given name, instead telling them only to call him “H.M. Taker.” He was not a terribly creative man, but what he lacked in imagination he made up elsewhere.
He had many opportunities to hone his skills as a mercenary. On one job, he was protecting an iron and gem shipment heading west from a mountain mine when bandits struck. One of them had a revolver. The Imperium was a place of high technology, but even here a rare piece of equipment like a firearm was usually only used by top ranking soldiers. They were extremely expensive and hard to maintain; ammunition was also a rarity, so the owners of firearms often learned to make their own. Indeed, one didn't remain a firearm owner for long without quickly becoming a veritable expert in maintenance or else inevitably breaking the tool for good.
Unfortunately for the gun's former owner, it had done very little to protect him from Karzt's hatchet. The bandit, the leader of his group, made the mistake of firing into the face of the driver of the caravan. He must have thought that it would scare the hired guards and teamsters into submission, but Karzt had other ideas. When the revolver thundered, the Hangman threw his own weapon. The brigand's life came to an abrupt end as a spectacular eruption of blood sprayed out of his neck. Karzt confiscated the weapon as payment for his services that day – it was worth far more than what he would have earned, and he didn't feel as though he deserved to take money from the teamsters after he had let one of them eat a face full of lead.
Over the next few weeks he traded for some technical schematics and painstakingly taught himself the care and maintenance of firearms, as well as the methods of crafting basic ammunition. Luckily for him, his work with the caravans had afforded him the opportunity to collect a considerable trading network – given enough time and money, he could have gotten almost anything. Even magical contraband was available in this corner of the Imperium, but his experience with Kanderu had left him even more averse to anything magical than your average citizen of the Imperium.
After several years of this work, Karzt began to feel comfortable in his new life. He applied, and was accepted, as a roaming constable for the Enforcers – what this meant was that, at least within the confines of the Ourolo desert, he was licensed to enforce frontier justice in the name of the Imperium. He began to feel more like himself; less of a vigilante or mercenary and more like the lawman he used to be. The position gave him access to more resources, and he found himself regularly taking Imperium sanctioned bounties for dangerous magical criminals wh
o often fled to the massive desert as a refuge against justice. He quickly found that most would-be wizards succumbed to a bullet to the head as easily as any other man.
Ten years had passed since the massacre in Woodswood. Karzt reflected that, if the Enforcers were still hunting for the man he used to be, they had utterly failed to find him even as he had worked directly with one of their adjunct offices. The nightmares persisted, but he had grown used to them – as used to them as any man could get. Karzt felt as though these visions were an extension of the shapeshifter himself. A weaker man might have accepted this state of affairs, this constant feeling of being hunted like prey. Karzt instead resolved to be the predator. For the most part he had simply put his old identity behind him. He was H.M. Taker now, nothing else.
He had become proficient with his revolver, both firing and maintaining it. With years of practice his skills as a tracker and survivalist had become nothing short of superb – he could even survive in the high desert when necessary. He had often spent weeks at a time in such rough terrain, stalking bounties. Eventually, however, he was met with a challenge that was too much for him. It was the first time he was forced to request aid from the Enforcers in his entire time in the Ourolo desert.
It started with entire caravan teams disappearing. The caravans themselves would later be found toppled in the high desert, empty of people but with their cargo wholly intact. Karzt first suspected that they were the victims of orcish slavers coming down from the mountains, but this sort of thing was fairly rare – orcs usually preferred to take “shinies” or “munchins,” not people. Victims of orc attacks were often left headless, their skulls taken as trophies and their bodies left to rot in the desert sun. Valuable goods would never be left behind.
Caravans began to hire extra security, and Karzt joined up with the largest one he could find. He hadn't taken a security job in some time, but he sorely wanted to know what was victimizing the teamsters. He had come to regard the people in this desert as his own – and, like all great men, he felt a strong duty to protect his people. It wasn't long until the nature of the threat revealed itself to him.
There was a storm in the desert a few nights into their journey. The sandy earth drank ravenously; the water disappeared as if it was falling into a bottomless pit. The desert became a horrible, muddy mire as far as the eye could see. The teamsters began hastily setting up tents, calming the camels as best they could – clearly, they would travel no further tonight.
Karzt didn't like rain. Lots of things could jam up a firearm, and water was one of them. The lack of visibility was also a problem, but he stood sentry anyway and did his best to scan the murky darkness for threats in the night. He stared out toward the west like a statue, the deep wrinkles in his face creasing even further as he scowled into the night. He raised a hand just above his eyes, sheltering them from the rain.
The rain had become torrential, but Karzt began to hear a low moaning sound amidst the din. A blurry, light green glow could be seen in the distance – it was hard to tell how far, but it couldn't be more than four hundred feet. The glow was beginning to separate into distinct figures. Karzt finally realized that – whatever they were – they seemed to be man-shaped. He turned to face the camp and yelled at the top of his lungs. “Something's coming! To me, to me!”
It was too late for his warning. The creatures had surrounded the caravan, having already closed the distance from the other side. Toward the eastern side of the makeshift camp, he heard the shouting of men and the singing of steel. The teamsters had drawn their sickle-swords, those curved metal khopeshes that ethnic Ouroloans were so fond of. In one fluid motion, Karzt drew his revolver in his left hand and his hatchet in the other. Sensing something right behind him, he swung around and caught it in the neck with the hatchet. It gurgled a low moan and green blood poured out of its neck and mouth, its whole body shuddering grotesquely. Karzt fell to his knees as the creature's body hit the ground, and, with effort, he retrieved his hatchet. He looked around – five more of the glowing shapes were approaching him from the west, much faster now. They had broken into a sprint.
He prayed to himself that the gun would work and pointed it into the night. He added his own thunder to the storm, two deafening bursts like cliff-faces collapsing under their own weight. Two of the glowing figures crumpled and fell. A third shot rang out, the muzzle flash briefly illuminating a monstrous, inhuman face. Gut-shot, the third creature fell. It tripped all over itself as stinking green goop sprayed out of its wounds across the desert sands. The final two were closing the distance now. Karzt took aim, but a big shirtless man with a massive two-handed warhammer – another mercenary hired to guard the caravan – came barreling out of the darkness hammer-first. The weapon's head connected with the skull of one of the creatures with a sickening squelching sound, like rotten meat being thrown onto a countertop. The other creature running next to it was taken down to the ground in the tumult. The mercenary was berserk, shouting with incoherent rage as he slammed the hammer down over and over. Chunks and viscera flew everywhere.
Karzt ran eastward, toward the main carriage. It was an enormous conveyance laden with desert-salt which was meant to be traded far to the west. The plan had been for the teamsters to gather here if they were attacked, and the area had indeed become a battleground. Red blood pooled together with green sludge on the muddy ground, and Karzt could hear the screams of many men in the darkness. Coming closer, he spotted a redheaded boy in plate armor – another mercenary. His longsword lay on the ground and he was missing his helmet. Three of the creatures were pulling him away into the night as he shrieked in terror. Seeing this, Karzt realized the utter strength of these terrors – the three of them were swiftly absconding with the unfortunate ginger despite the considerable weight of his armor. He took aim and out came another roar of deafening thunder. The bullet sailed right over the boy’s shoulder and burrowed deep into the skull of one of the green-glowing monstrosities. The other two didn't seem to care or even notice as they continued to pull the boy into the night. Before he could do more, Karzt heard a distorted, rage-filled scream to the left. He turned and found himself staring right into the gaping maw of one of the things.
It had two rows of jagged teeth, and its jaw was unhinged like that of a snake. Acting on instinct, he swung underhanded with the hatchet – he tore open the creature from crotch to chest, not quite in half but enough to expose all of its innards. One of the thing's arms grabbed him as it was going down, pulling him into the viscous quagmire which had once been a desert. He wrestled to free himself from the wet sands, struggling backwards like a crab. Adrenaline surged through his veins and his ears were pounding with the force of his own blood. He felt a stinging in his right arm and saw that the thing must have had claws – it had torn right through the sleeve of his jerkin. Blood was now freely flowing from the wound beneath. He didn't have time to see how bad it was; all that mattered was whether or not he could still hold his weapons. He worked furiously through the muck, which had become like quicksand, and managed to holster his revolver so that the mud wouldn't jam it. Eventually he got to his feet only to be immediately knocked down again. Some lithe, wet body had slammed into him from behind, causing him to fall face-first back into the sandy mire. The wind was knocked out of him and he struggled to breathe. The hatchet went flying out of his hand, lodging into the side of a carriage – on the front of it, a still-yoked camel screamed hideously and thrashed around in the muck, trying its best to get free. Still trying to catch his breath, Karzt felt lighter as he was lifted up off the ground.
The smell was horrible. It was like a combination of rotting teeth, animal scat, and sickness. His disorientation began to clear as he looked down and saw he was a few feet above the earth, parallel to it. Like the ginger before him, three creatures were carting him off. One held his right leg, the second held the other, and the third gripped his left arm fiercely. His right arm dangled limply until he came to his senses, at which point he began to writh
e and panic. Their inhumanly strong grip seemed unbreakable, and he felt a strange wet chill from where their clawed hands were holding onto him. Remembering that he had holstered his gun, he reached into his pocket with his free hand. The thunder cracked again twice in quick succession and the two things holding his legs were blown several feet away. Taken off balance, the third creature slipped and fell – Karzt was brought with it to the ground. He aimed the revolver directly into its horrible face at point blank range.
Click.
Damn, he thought to himself. He had lost count. The slimy thing scrambled up on top of Karzt, furiously clawing at his jerkin. Dropping the gun, he rolled, pushed hard with his arms, and flung the creature off him. It was far lighter than he expected, and the creature went sailing into the muck a few feet away. He grabbed the gun, which was now caked with mud, and holstered it. He wouldn't risk reloading and firing it again without cleaning it, as it could jam or worse.
Scrambling to his feet, Karzt ran back over to the main carriage and tore his hatchet free from its frame. He heard a nearby voice shout in a thick Ouroloan accent, “Haych Eem! Over here!” It was the head teamster. A few men were still gathered around him wielding khopeshes and fighting furiously. They had formed a semicircle around the tail of the main carriage. Karzt dashed over and joined their line. He was breathing hard from the brief but deadly melee and could now feel the strength leaving his injured right arm. Feeling thankful for his natural ambidexterity, he swapped the hatchet into his remaining hand. His relief faded quickly as many glowing green figures began to trail in from all sides.
The men’s blades swung for what felt like hours. Occasionally a man would be forcibly yanked out of the line by a mass of glowing, gangling arms, but for the most part the creatures couldn't force their way through the now-organized defenders. As the storm began to die down, so did the stream of attackers. The moaning of the creatures faded away into the night. When the battle was over, the surviving teamsters and mercenaries huddled together in the main carriage, weapons drawn. No one was able to sleep; instead they sat in silence, wide-eyed and wary.
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