“No, really, what are they doing?” responded Haxabalatnar.
“If I had to guess, I’d say they were getting ready to fight in parallel...”
The cultists started screaming again. It sounded more like rage and bloodlust than the searing pain I would’ve expected, but who knows what fortitude lurks in the nerves of a chthon? The bound two used their free arms to unsheathe previously hidden swords, and if it weren’t for the fact the snowfall kept getting heavier and heavier, I would’ve been completely entranced by their ever more ornate sword dance, complete with blasts of gratuitous magical fire from the third cultist. Was he conducting? Was anyone watching besides us?
“We can’t stay out here much longer. We’ll freeze to death!” I suddenly heard myself whisper to the others. Hax’s sudden look of fear suggested he’d been just as entranced.
“There’s no shelter for you two out here, and there’s crazy cultists down in the valley. What do we do?” Azure asked.
That was a tough question.
“They’ve got fire. You guys can fight, you should take it from them,” she suggested because apparently her mind just works that fast. I didn’t have the heart to actually tell her that approaching the cultists’ whirling blades of death would probably get us instantaneously gibbed. Hax didn’t like it, either.
“We need to turn back. There were some caves a few miles back that we can shelter in. It should only take us an hour or so if we hurry and keep warm,” he told her. That sounded better for a moment, but a huge blast of freezing wind made me reconsider. I wasn’t sure we could survive a whole hour in these conditions. Maybe at a lower altitude? Conditions were bad enough that I couldn’t think straight. For all the weather unfolding around us, though, we were still dressed for the season, and we had access to magic that could potentially help us survive the storm. And then, the second my mind hit upon magic, I had an idea.
“Azure, can you read these cultist’s minds?” I suggested. “See if they know anything that might keep us alive, really.”
“I’ll try, but I think I can only pick up their actual thought processes, not their memories.” Azure closed her eyes and touched her fingertips to her head like a psychic from a movie.
“Okay,” she began. “Burning heat on a chilling night, fates bound together…all I’m getting is cultist gobbledygook. If they don’t think about something else soon, I’ll have to pull out before I get brainwashed.”
I couldn’t confirm that or deny that, but after a few seconds, the cultists stopped their macabre sword dance, and Azure’s expression changed ever so slightly.
“Finally! They’re thinking about going home now. Apparently, they’ve got a nearby cottage with a fireplace and other amenities that’s currently not used by anyone else. Not sure how that helps us-”
“Azure, can you figure out where the cottage is?” Hax interrupted.
“Dammit, you broke my concentration! I...uh...okay, got it again. It’s closer than the caves, that’s for certain. And now their thoughts are muddled again. One of them is thinking about roasting marshmallows-”
“Why won’t they concentrate?” I was scared for a moment that Hax would’ve drawn the cultists’ attention, but instead they just shuffled off into the distance.
“They want something else... What is it? Companionship? No, manpower…”
Another idea! You get creative when you’re desperate.
“We’re following them,” I announced. “We’ll find their shelter and decide what to do from there.”
Azure and Haxabalatnar looked at me like I’d gone as batty as the cultists in the valley.
“Look, I know how to deal with cultists. I ran a coven, remember?” I continued. They relaxed slightly, but it was obvious I needed to do more to persuade them. I was wondering how I could do that, when yet again the wind deposited another blast of ice and snow on our bodies. We couldn’t just stay here – Haxabalatnar’s beard was frozen again, and I’m pretty sure those things can get frostbite.
“If we don’t get out of the cold soon, we die, right?” I asked. Azure shrugged. She was handling the cold well, but I don’t know how long she’d last in the Chippewas without one of us to keep an eye on her (and maybe a hand on her shoulder, too).
“Okay, fine, lead the way,” Haxabalatnar said. “But if the cultists kill me, I’ll haunt you,” he quickly added. Azure silently nodded at this, and we were soon on our way.
It was only a few blessed, brief minutes before we came across the chthons’ cottage, just as the sun (yes, there’s usually a sun in hell) dipped below the horizon. Even blanketed in snow, it looked inviting, and the cultists guarding it hadn’t even crossed the threshold and turned on the lights.
“Okay, how do we convince them to do anything? Do we intimidate them? Do we pretend we’re hapless rubes? I’m just throwing out ideas,” I told Azure and Hax as we lay in wait. The cottage’s windows gradually began to glow red, and then suddenly a pleasant, incandescent yellow. I suspected they had both electrical lighting and a fireplace. Maybe there was a gasoline generator somewhere.
“They’re already roasting marshmallows now. Their mouths are watering, and it’s making me hungry,” Azure informed us. This seemed less important to me, somehow. Not that I dislike marshmallows, but in the interest of maintaining my figure, I don’t go out of my way to eat them. Not only that, but I’m also fucking cold. So much for my Minnesota bravado.
“I’m leaving this in your hands, Charlotte. If I were in charge, we would be on our way back to the caves,” Hax suddenly interjected.
“Keep your weapon ready, but hidden,” I told Hax. After a moment, I had a thought. “Do guns work in snowstorms?”
“They should,” he responded. “I haven’t tried myself. Just make sure the barrel isn’t packed with snow.”
“Okay then, we’re going in.”
We crossed the last few hundred feet to the chthons’ cottage. I suspect we didn’t look especially militant, or gullible, or like anything other than motley travelers trying to find shelter from the blizzard. But in our defense, we weren’t especially trying to look like anything. Soon, we reached the door, and I reached out and knocked on it three times. Sure enough, I heard a few bursts of unintelligible Borean speech. Within moments, the door creaked open. Haxabalatnar awkwardly rushed to conceal his gun, and I subconsciously felt around for my own, hoping that I wouldn’t immediately need to use it.
“You are far from home, human. What in Amdahl’s name brings you out here?” said the horned welder chthon in surprisingly clear English. At this distance, it was obvious that the horns weren’t just fancy headgear. The cultist was staring at me with a concerning mix of contempt and longing – the last time I’d seen that expression was on Nicholas. I had to come up with something before he tried to do something unsavory to us.
“Whom other than Amdahl himself? My followers and I travel the Chippewas seeking those who would worship the true god, so that we too may join in his rightful worship,” I said, in the most pompous, magisterial voice I could muster. Back in my earliest days with the Aux coven, I’d spoken many a phrase in those awkward, stilted tones. Then Edgar had told me to snap out of it and speak like a human being, and I was quick to find out that Aux really didn’t care either way. Apparently, it was enough to impress the horned chthon, though – he stepped back and bowed. I had to jump back myself to make sure his horns didn’t poke my eyes out.
“If you continue down the path, you must be ready for unimaginable suffering and torment,” he said. “Once you have passed through, the paths to transcendence will be revealed unto you, so that you may traverse them as quickly as possible-”
What the fuck was this guy going on about? Let’s get one thing straight. In all the years I’ve spent practicing magic, I have never heard anyone spout this much mystic nonsense. I guess it’s a side effect of humanity’s chosen school falling into
in the hands of computer scientists for so long – if you want to be a computer wizard, you have to be as precise as possible (and you also have to know when to try rebooting, but that’s another story). In hell, though, the average person’s approach to magic was less rigorous.
“I think we can handle three initiation ceremonies in parallel. Do we have the stuff back at our home base?” One of the bound chthons was apparently trying to get some sort of situation report from the welder. It reached into a bag of marshmallows and neatly skewered one on its sword.
“We could initiate three hundred into the ways of Amdahl if we could only find a willing corpus. Perhaps the forsaken followers of Hyperion would be receptive,” responded the second chthon, who promptly removed its own sword from the fireplace, revealing a marshmallow that had almost completely burnt to cinders. What is it with this place and marshmallows? By human standards, this wouldn’t be very appetizing, but the chthon apparently preferred it that way. It licked the searing hot blade clean with its forked tongue. Something about that seemed oddly contrived, but I couldn’t quite place why.
“Whatever we shall do, we shall only be able to achieve once the storms have lifted,” said Weldy. That probably wasn’t his name, but unless he introduced himself properly, “Weldy” was going to stick.
“Damn straight! These mountains are cold, yes sirree!” shouted an unfamiliar voice that turned out to be Haxabalatnar. Was he putting on some sort of persona?
“Your lady friends’ appearance in the Chippewas is odd enough. How can one of your kind survive these harsh temperatures, son of Selassie?” Weldy asked. Haxabalatnar visibly twitched at this turn of phrase. As far as I can tell, he almost pulled out his gun right then and there; to be fair, I briefly felt the urge to brandish my own.
“Do you have food and water? We kind of need these things to survive until the initiation,” I interjected.
“More than just marshmallows and candy,” I quickly added, remembering what the others chthons were doing.
They did have extra provisions. Weldy opened up a large cupboard in the back of the cottage to reveal a well stocked, if unfortunately refrigeration-free (winter doesn’t count) pantry. We were soon dining on cured meats, crackers, and bottles of beer. A bit rustic for my usual tastes, but a nice switch from the wild game and wild salad we’d been relying on in the foothills. If there’s one thing I liked about Weldy, it was his skill at coordinating food and drink. The rest of his background I could do without, but the silver lining was that we could at least learn more about his fanatical cult. On closer inspection, it looked like Azure didn’t have much patience for my strategy. Maybe she didn’t like sausages? She had a look on her face that I’d never seen before: an urge to kill. After playing around with Terminal’s berserker script so many months ago, I figured that I could recognize it. Either that, or she was trying to beam commands into my head again.
*That’s exactly what I’m doing!* said a voice in my head. Sure sounded like Azure, maybe with a hint of bonus static. The murder face abruptly subsided. *Did that get through? I’m still trying to figure out how to transmit telepathic messages green square blue circle yellow triangle-*
*I don’t know how to distract them for long enough to pull a gun on them. Any advice?* I thought, hoping Azure would somehow receive the message.
*I’d recommend you wait until they fall asleep. They seem tired. And bored, too. Definitely bored.* As if on command, Weldy yawned, which set off everyone except for Azure. The chthons started preparing for bed. I was not entirely sure how the welded ones were going to deal with the chain, but Weldy pulled out an absolutely hideous set of pajamas and a fuzzy nightcap, disappeared into a side room for a minute, and came out wearing them. They didn’t quite fit, the colors clashed, and I noticed that he had quite the potbelly.
“We have a long trip ahead of us, novices. Try to get some sleep, and may Amdahl smile on you,” he said. Our party had to at least appear to prepare for bed for about an hour. We didn’t really have the luxury of ill-fitting pajamas and nightcaps, so it didn’t take us as long to prepare ourselves, but for the first time in several weeks, I managed to thoroughly brush my teeth. The chthons out here had it surprisingly good – they had spare toothbrushes that they not only offered, but insisted we use. I asked one of Weldy’s companions (I forget which) why they went to such trouble to take care of their teeth.
“It beats having to get a filling,” they said; not a particularly original answer, but it would pass for reasonable in most societies. Soon, our teeth were as pristine as they could be in hell (turns out they don’t have a lot of cosmetic dentistry specialists), and I was feeling nicely hygienic…although the inevitable bloodshed was going to undo that sooner or later. Weldy was about to turn out the lights when suddenly, he seemed to remember something.
“A pox upon me for forgetting! We must brand our initiates so that they may taste the power of Amdahl,” he told the other chthons. Suddenly, they didn’t look so sleepy.
“We’ll be sure to tell everyone you nearly forgot when we get back,” responded one. I didn’t like where this was going and tried to discreetly feel for my gun. Where had it gotten to? Weldy was pulling out some sort of branding iron, puttering around the cottage looking for his welding torch.
“Oh, good lord, where did I put it? Is there no other way that I could heat my branding iron? My folly knows no bounds! Underlings, assist me!” And they were gone.
“Is this guy fucking serious?” Haxabalatnar hissed at us. “When they get back in here, I am pumping them full of lead.”
It sounded brazen, but it also sounded like it could work if we were quick on the draw. What do you know? My (hopefully) trusty Walther was in my hands. It was still loaded, too. If Agnus’s firing range daemon knew we’d kept our guns loaded and had kept the safeties off the entire time we were in the chthonic cottage...well, that might’ve dented its composure ever so slightly.
“What is the meaning of this? Is this a betrayal?” Looks like Weldy was finally here. He wasn’t taking the guns we were pointing at him very well. He did have a red hot branding iron (which means he must’ve found his blowtorch), but he wasn’t in any position to use it against us. This was the moment where Haxabalatnar lost all patience with our chthonic hostages.
“Jesus Christmas crap, man! A human points a gun at you and the first thing you ask is, ‘Is this a betrayal?’ You’re so thick headed that the only way you could’ve been born is by cesarean section!” Not the Haxabalatnar I knew, really, but as long as he could keep his gun steady, I was not strictly opposed to such bravado and machismo.
“I will not go down without a valiant struggle! Raise your swords, my brethren-”
Three quick shots later, it turned out that Weldy was, in fact, going down without a struggle. He looked at the holes we’d pierced in his chest. Then he slowly looked at the holes in the other chthons’ chests. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead of saying anything else, he simply coughed up blood and dropped to the floor like a stone. The other chthons soon followed.
“Charlotte, do you think we should give them a few more rounds just to make sure they’re dead?” Hax asked me. It sounded like the sort of trash talk you’d say if you were having a bad day, but he definitely had a point. I fired some more rounds into the chthons instead of responding; Hax got the hint and emptied his own sidearm. Weldy and company weren’t even so much as twitching when we finished. I noticed a pool of dark red blood spreading out from the chthons’ bodies and quietly took a few steps back – cleaning this up was going to be awful. Honestly, though, did we really have to? The idea of keeping dead bodies around in the house was pretty creepy, but they were going to be heavy, and I was tired.
“We should get these things out of the house before they start to smell bad or catch fire or something,” Azure told us. In my exhaustion, I hadn’t thought of that.
We hastily dragged the corpses out
a few feet into the snow and soon were left with only their blood to clean up. Haxabalatnar found some spare towels in a side room, so we mopped up what blood we could and tried to ignore that the rest would dry onto the floorboards. After that, we finally went to sleep. I personally stole Weldy’s bed for my own use; it was surprisingly mundane for a cabin in the mountains, but the sheets were a pleasant shade of dark blue, and that was what mattered. We woke next morning to find it had stopped snowing, although the sky remained a dismal gray. After a breakfast of waffles with maple syrup and candied fruit, we layered up and checked on the corpses. Azure’s fear that they’d catch fire was as of yet unfounded. They were beginning to cryopreserve quite nicely in the snow, but we quickly buried them before they could do anything else. After that, it was time to go.
We soon came upon a miracle in the mountains: a slight downward incline that we could easily walk down! After weeks of ascending endlessly to higher heights, this was a welcome change. If we continued in this vein for long enough, we’d probably leave the mountains entirely, but our excursion to Las Médulas meant we couldn’t yet afford such luxuries.
However, we were beginning to see signs of civilization as we edged closer to it. At some point, someone started paving the incline we were on, and then some enterprising soul painted lane lines on the nascent highway. By the time a guardrail joined the road, it was clear that someone was going to great trouble in an attempt to make useful infrastructure. As far as I was concerned, this was a good thing, and every second it shaved off our transit time also shaved a second off of Sigmar’s life.
As we closed in on Las Médulas, I resolved to research just how much Earth-style economic activity was going on in hell. Judging by the road project, it had to be on the rise. When we’d left Agnus’s court to go on this mission, he’d just started an experimental farm for staple crops – wheat, barley, corn, maybe potatoes. It was going poorly because he’d yet to fully clean up Floating Point’s death throes. Still, I made a mental note to check for straw hats and pickup trucks when we returned.
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