Despite how creepy it was, Jed found himself smiling as he followed Gwen inside.
It probably helped that he could see the channels of warp that connected all the bits of the house, leading down into the basement like strings.
Even as they stepped inside, Mythlyn manifested. She took only look at one of the strings, manifested a small blade of warp-fire along her fingertip, then cut. The thread snapped, and the previously fluttering window shutter grew still.
A second later, so did all the rest.
“Well, that can’t be good,” Jed said, his other revolver held at the ready.
“Smart enough to scare away the locals using tricks and it stopped as soon as someone saw through it. This isn’t your average warp-demon,” Gwen said with a smile.
“If it hadn’t killed the former occupants, I’d almost say we should leave it,” Jed said, glancing about the empty room. Even years later, there were still signs of the lives that had once filled the home. The part that got to him was the doll and the little wooden dollhouse sitting just beside the table. The doll was worn, with stains on it, clearly a once dearly loved possession.
“Might’ve been another demon,” Gwen said with a shrug. “Or even a person who was trying to blame it on a demon. Demons don’t always kill each other. Or people.”
“Huh,” Jed said, lowering his revolver slightly. “So… we might not even be in for a fight?”
“Oh, no, we’re definitely in for a fight,” Gwen said, raising her gun in his direction.
Jed didn’t wait to find out what was behind him, dropping to the floor. Whatever it was, it let out a loud hiss as Gwen tore into it. And then it was gone.
“Okay, that was… a spider, I think,” Gwen said even as Jed twisted and aimed at the window it’d come in through. “And I think it mistook us for oversized flies.”
“Safe to say, that’s probably a warp-demon we should deal with, eh?” Jed said, picking himself up.
“Safe to say,” Gwen agreed, checking the windows. “You catch where it went, Lyn?”
“It seems to have returned to the basement. I suspect it will have a great many more traps waiting there, though the warp is too thick for me to tell clearly,” even as she sent the message, Mythlyn moved over to a small door near the kitchen. It opened into a small space with very steep stairs.
“Think they’d be upset if we just burned the house down?” Gwen asked, squinting at the spider-webbed entrance.
“They could’ve done that themselves,” Jed said, turning to look in the kitchen. A second later he stepped away, returning with a heavy metal pot. He dropped it down the hole, clearing the webs and earning them a hiss from below. “Definitely waiting for us.”
“I hate basement dwellers,” Gwen mumbled as she dug out her goggles.
“Hold on,” Jed said, moving back to the kitchen.
That seemed to be all the convincing Gwen needed, because she backed away from the door, keeping her goggles turned in that direction.
“It obviously didn’t come out that way. Not with the door closed,” Jed said as he poked his head out the kitchen window closest to where it had appeared. Sure enough, a pair of thick heavy cellar doors sat there, one of which was long rotted through. “Another way in. You cover this one?”
“Got it,” Gwen confirmed as he stepped outside.
Jed moved slowly, making sure to not to step on the warp enhanced web. “Okay, gonna see if it notices me opening the cellar.”
After receiving confirmation from Gwen once more, Jed used his toe to flip the rotten side open.
At least, he tried to. Despite its appearance, the rotten door was fixed firmly in place. A closer look revealed large amounts of webbing, used almost like glue.
“That’s terrifying,” Jed said as he stepped back. “Starting to reconsider the whole fire thing.”
Mythlyn appeared in the window, her finger still glowing as she cut yet another of the spider’s threads.
Which seemed to be the last offense the spider was willing to suffer, as it came flying up the cobwebbed stairs straight toward Jed.
He barely had to aim, putting two slugs deep into its carapace, knocking it around.
Despite that, its pure momentum meant it slid all the way to the top of the stairs, getting caught on the rotten wood at the top of the stairs.
“Think I got it,” Jed called.
“If we want to do this job right, we’re going to have to do a full sweep,” Gwen called back from inside. “I’ll block this door, then we can go down together.”
Jed looked at the rotten, webbed up cellar door. Then down at the spider at his feet. Then at the dark basement.
Finally, he shrugged.
“Guess they can’t all be winners.”
…Isekai-eh…
Clearing out the basement wasn’t pleasant. Both because of the cobwebs and the bones they found within those webs.
A lot more than belonged to a single family.
A little poking around, and they discovered tracks leading them to a man who’d been hiding in a nearby bush. The same one who’d tipped them off to the house to start with. He claimed to have been waiting for them but when they went back to his place, they found it stuffed full of other people’s possessions.
Normally, this would be something the marshals would handle. Technically, Mythlyn also counted as an Imperial representative, but between her being the archangel of death and the fact she’d fallen out of favor, they left actual judgment to the town’s magistrate.
The grizzled old woman listened to the evidence, called up a pair of men who served as her enforcers, and went to the man’s house. Afterwards she ordered him strung up by his arms and ankles for reckless encouragement of demonic life.
It left Jed a bit conflicted. On the one hand, she’d dealt with him as per their local laws.
On the other, he was still alive and would be free to go after a few days of hanging there.
His conflict was resolved when one of the neighbors took a rifle and put a bullet through the man’s head, screaming something about his missing son.
“That was weird,” Gwen said as they climbed on the warp-stallion.
“Little towns can be pretty weird,” Jed said in agreement before firing up the warp-stallion and riding off into the evening, regretting that Tersue Rend didn’t have sunsets he could ride into.
They could’ve stayed the night, but neither of them had felt particularly inclined to, even before the way the aftermath had played out.
A few hours out, they stopped next to a mountain lake with a waterfall falling into it. They considered setting up camp until realizing how cold and damp the location was. Half an hour later, they were much more cosily nestled amongst a tight bunch of trees, just off the road.
Which was when Jed had the brilliant idea to test if he could reload his revolver using his portals.
Setting out his spare ammo, Jed moved to the edge of camp. First he was planning to practice sliding bullets through without slicing off the ends.
The first shell slid through the portal easy enough.
However, something set it off the second it was through.
“The hell was that?” Gwen said, gun already in hand as she swept it around the small clearing.
“My bad,” Jed said, holding up one hand. “Was testing something. Not sure it’s gonna work though.”
“Hit me, partner, whatcha thinking?” Gwen said, coming over to squat down.
So, Jed explained his idea.
“While a useful concept, I doubt the RDR within your ammo is stable enough to handle such a transition. I am unsure if there is a balance that would allow you to push a bullet through and have it fire once you had done so.”
“Pretty sure there are guns designed to do pretty much that, though ammo is crazy expensive. Like, cheaper to buy our own buggy, expensive,” Gwen said, biting her lower lip while holding up one of his shells to the light. “Still, if you do figure it out, that’d be one heckuva trick.”
“I’ll keep working on it, though maybe I’ll give it some thought before my next attempt,” Jed said, already packing the ammo away. They didn’t have so much he could afford to waste too much of it anyway.
The next morning, they encountered their first travelers.
An entire convoy of wooden wagons, all pulled by elkheart, slowly rolled by. The figures atop the wagons all carried long barreled rifles, more than one of them pointed in their general direction, despite the fact Jed had taken them nearly half a kilometer off the road specifically to avoid spooking them.
Just couldn’t please some people, he figured.
They’d finished lunch by the time the convoy passed, hitting the road the minute the last wagon disappeared over the horizon.
Near evening they came across a small house next to a bridge that led over one of the many offshoots along the Infinite. An elderly man was sitting out front, blindfold drawn across his eyes. Still, the rumble of the warp-stallion was loud enough even a deaf person would be able to feel it.
It had been getting louder, and Jed was starting to get a bit worried. They were also starting to run low on RDR. If they kept the warp-stallion, he figured he’d want to figure out how to refine their own. He doubted it was that hard, since the Brewer had mentioned they could do it on board the Queen’s Gambit. The equipment was just expensive and finicky.
“Sounds like you need a proper mechanic, boy,” the man said, looking just a little to Jed’s right. “Come all this way on a stallion like that, might be you could use a little RDR too.”
“Might be you’re right. You got a mechanic that could handle her?”
“Might not be able to see, but hands are good as ever,” the man said, holding up his hands which Jed noted were missing two fingers off the left. “Well, what’s left of them, anyways.”
“How much?” Gwen asked, making the man jump up against the wall.
“By the Empress’ sagging tits, you didn’t mention you brought a woman with you. Are you mad, crossing hill country with a woman?”
“That’s not normally a good idea?” Jed asked, meeting Gwen’s frown with one of his own.
“Men about here like to take women. Lots of escaped slaves in these hills. Hard men, with harder thirsts. Best you watch yourselves, if you’re aiming to go much further,” the man said, pointing his finger past Gwen on the left.
“Before we do that, let’s talk price for the repairs, some RDR, and maybe a warm roof for the night,” Jed said, standing up the warp-stallion.
“Ain’t no fancy inn or anything, but I can make room for you by the fire, easy enough.”
“We’ve got fresh venison,” Gwen added, not noting that it had run in front of us a half hour up the road. “Be a waste for us to carry much farther, but we could trade.”
“Fresh meat’d do these old bones some good,” the man said, nodding. “Got enough salt to set it to rights. Let’s see what we’re working with, then we’ll talk price.”
In the end, the man agreed to just take the meat, along with three songs from Gwen, in exchange for his services and two nights stay.
With a caveat. If the work proved difficult enough to need an extra night, they’d have to negotiate for both. More than fair, Jed figured. It was Gwen’s immediate agreement to sing that had been the most surprising part of the affair.
Turned out, it was awful. Much as Jed wanted to say otherwise, Gwen could not, in fact, sing.
And yet, the old man ate it up.
“Just like my old wife,” the man said as they enjoyed a thick stew he’d made from the chopped up leftovers of the venison.
“Thanks. Learned from my grams,” Gwen said, blowing on her bowl as she took her place at the little table on the man’s equally little patio.
Mythlyn stood nearby, staring out at the sky, having remained mostly silent despite manifesting not five minutes after they’d arrived.
“Not many who sing the hills songs. Not the proper way,” the man said, wiping a tear from his eye. “Miss that woman, I do.”
“Yeah…” Gwen said, picking up her spoon then dumping the stew back into her bowl without taking a bite. “Knew I’d miss her, but figured I’d get over it. I mean, I’m traveling with the two most amazing people I’ve ever met. Figured the homesickness would just… go away.”
“It will,” the man said, blowing on his spoon. “What happened to your other companion?”
“Hmm?”
“You said two amazing people,” the man reminded her.
“She is referring to me,” Mythlyn said, having waited until the man set his spoon back down to speak.
Even so, the man clutched at his chest so hard, Jed was worried they’d given him a heart attack.
“Two women! On one warp-stallion?” the man demanded as he slumped back down in his chair. “You all sleep in the same bedroll too?”
“Actually, yes,” Gwen replied before taking another spoonful of stew.
“You poor, poor man,” the old man said, shaking his head as he turned his vacant gaze in Jed’s general direction.
“Hey!” Gwen objected even as Mythlyn chuckled.
“Got my best friend and partner at my side, along for the journey of a lifetime? Feels pretty lucky to me,” Jed said before taking another bite of his stew.
“Suppose you would be saying that, being fool enough to get into the mess in the first place,” the man said, shaking his head as he sat down. “Least you won’t get cold, long as you keep ‘em safe.”
Jed looked between Mythlyn, the archangel of death, and Gwen, who’d been hunting demons since she was a teen, shot a man down, then outshouted a marshal backed up by a dozen more.
He was unable to keep the grin from slipping on his face as he said, “I think we’ll be good.”
The next day, Jed was beside the man as he pulled the warp-stallion into his little garage.
“You planning to watch? If so, that’s gonna be extra,” the man grumbled.
“We’ll pay,” Gwen said as she came in from the other side.
“Both of you? Or is the other little lady here too?” he asked, looking about as though he’d somehow spot her.
“She’s gone to take a look at the falls,” Jed said, gesturing upriver, despite knowing the man couldn’t see him.
“Least one of you has a lick of sense,” the man grumbled, before pulling out a tray of old tools. Jed was surprised they were intact, given the amount of rust coating them.
As the man worked, Jed discovered he knew what he was doing. To the point Jed was having a hard time following along, since the man didn’t slow down or explain much. Not at first. But since Gwen was even more lost than Jed, he’d started narrating what the man was doing.
“That’s not… how do you even think that this has anything to do with energy distribution?” the man asked, poking towards Jed with a part Jed was certain was crucial to the running of the warp-stallion.
“Are you saying it doesn’t?”
“Course I’m not saying that. It does. But how do you know that if you don’t know how to fix it?” the man demanded.
“I mean, I know mechanics. And a little bit about warp alchemy,” Jed said with a shrug.
“You know… mechanics. And warp alchemy… the hell are you people, and how the hell did you end up in my garage?” the man grumbled.
It didn’t seem like a genuine question, given that the man had returned to work. Jed was about to continue his narration when the man did it for him, explaining what went where, and what the part was doing. In terms that were probably a bit easier to understand than the ones Jed had been using.
The man only got halfway through the repairs before having to stop. Because he need to effectively build an entirely new part, from little more than metal. Which to Jed was amazing. That the man not only knew how, but that he could do it with the rudimentary tools in his garage.
“Not all of ‘em, but most parts on a warp-stallion are built like that. Back before she dropped her brains near as far as her tits, Empress decreed they be designed that way,” the man said as he prepared dinner, still not letting any of them near the food.
Since the man had cleaner hands than he did, thanks to some strange blue bubbles he’d stuck his hands in, Jed wasn’t complaining. Also because he didn’t have to cook. He’d been doing a lot of the cooking lately, since most of it had been over a campfire. Apparently that was one skill Gwen’s grams hadn’t had her trained in.
“So, you could build most of a warp-stallion then?”
“All but the core-injection chamber, yep. And those things last longer than the sun,” the man said, coming over and setting bowls out on the table, including one for Mythlyn who hadn’t made it back yet. Jed had seen her standing on the hill nearby, so he wasn’t too worried about that.
Amusingly, before they’d started, the core-injection chamber was the part Jed had known the most about. It was standard Architect archeotech, after all, used in a lot of their machines. He might not be able to build one in the old man’s garage, but if he could ever get back to Metsa’s…
Well, it was worth thinking about.
“You’d need the tires and frame too, wouldn’t you?” Jed asked as he considered what it would take to build an entire bike of their own.
“Obviously,” the man said, snorting. “Frame’s easy enough, if you can get a proper RDR torch. It’s having to hunt down the right demons for the wheels that’ll be the tough part. Have to be on friendly terms with hunters, or have a lot of money to get those hides.”
“Huh. Didn’t realize they were reshaped demon hides,” Jed said, leaning back and looking out through the window to where he’d first parked the bike. Not that it was there, but he could picture the wheels. While he’d thought they were simply textured rubber… he could see it. Non-exploded Screechers, common, but annoying to kill in a way you could harvest properly.
“Yep. Have to ask a Hunter to know the type, but any who’s been around long enough’d recognize it, I figure,” the man said.
“Screecher,” Gwen said, waving her hand. “You can tell by the texture. All the tentacles have been lopped off, and the nubs give it the grip.”
The blind old man stared at Gwen for several seconds before relaxing back into his chair, a smile slipping across his face. “Ah, you’re hunters. Well, now I feel a fool. Who else would come riding up three abreast on a single warp-stallion, not a single concern about hill people.”
“Crazy people?” Jed offered, chuckling softly.
“Aye, and talked to you enough to know you ain’t that, much as it might’ve made it simpler for you. Should know, Hunters ain’t looked too kindly on by the hills people. Like to shoot you as not, if they recognize you for what you are,” he said returning to his meal.
“Glad we got your hospitality before we ran into them then,” Jed said, doing the same.
“And fuel. Sounds like it would’ve been annoying to run dry,” Gwen added.
“Annoying, she says,” the old man grumbled, shaking his head before snorting. “Hunters.”
As the evening wore on, Gwen ended up singing another set of songs, this time with accompaniment. Mythlyn had returned from her excursion right as her dinner had cooled to the perfect temperature. She’d been delighted to join Gwen. Leaning on each other, they sang an old anti-Imperial drinking song, involving saggy tits and a frog.
The old man loved it, and Jed had to admit, it’d been fun.
As they moved on to the next, Jed couldn’t help but wonder what Metsa and Sotas were up to. Would they be at the Down ‘n Dirty, enjoying what must’ve been their ten thousandth meal together? Or would they still be out in the country, helping to draw attention away from him and Gwen?
Clapping as the duo finished their next song, he shook his head. Much as he was looking forward to the idea of meeting up with them in Seven Falls, he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling they wouldn’t make it.