[EVENING]

Will

Progress was slow. They picked their way across the city a one short stretch at a time, stopping frequently so Will could rest his mangled leg and mangled everything else and get his bearings while ADAM fussed over the little girl, as neurotically paranoid about her catching a splinter from some fraying woodwork or an ash flake in her eye or a bit of gravel in her shoe as he was about her getting abducted and/or murdered if they failed in their task.

Not that he wasn't paranoid about that last one. He was just paranoid about everything else, too.

Though initially very reluctant to drag Will along, ADAM's attitude changed somewhat once he realized that Will's sensory capabilities allowed them to avoid contact with the commandos still infesting Darkside like lice on a mangy dog. Not that the robot admitted it out loud.

The remaining soldiers in the entertainment district had evidently caught onto the fact that something was amiss. They had split their squads into smaller fireteams of two and three and were systematically combing through Darkside.

On their way east, ADAM dispatched one pair of scouts with two crisp headshots. They had a near run-in with Brimstone, who had at last settled down from his temper tantrum and was now stalking the streets like a vengeful spirit, muttering about the pain he would inflict on everyone who had wronged him, sounding like he thought that was just about everyone in the world.

He came upon them suddenly, unnoticed because Detect would not pick him up. They hid in a small hollow beneath some rubble while he prowled past, his heavy armor letting off jets of steam that hissed like a bouquet of serpents. He rounded a corner and was gone, never taking notice of them.

Will allowed himself to relax a little once they were across the river. He did not think Thorpe's people had expanded their search beyond Darkside yet. Hobbling into the Academy library behind the tall robot and the little girl, he fell flat on his face as soon as he was through the doors. All his artificial strength had been expended. The floor beneath him swam like syrup, fingers sinking through, and voices all around him bled into a terrible, high-pitched whine that threatened to blow out his ear drums.

There was a feeling of weightlessness. Being carried. Then lying down. Then pain. Then numbness. Then a tensing of his entire body so overwhelming he felt his bones creak, lasting several minutes. Then people speaking to him—he could only make out a word or two, and they were forgotten almost as soon as they had been spoken. Then, somehow, he was standing in front of a window, unsure if what he was seeing was dream or reality or some nightmarish blending of the two.

He saw Sheerhome devoured by conflagrations, as far as he could see in every direction. Nothing was spared. Great firestorms raged through the streets and up into the dirty brown-black sky, tornadoes of greedy orange flame two hundred feet high. The heavy ashen snowfall had only grown thicker, drifts of it layering rooftops and piling up on street corners.

What he saw could hardly be called a city anymore.

It was nothing less than a madman's vision of hell on earth.

One single cohesive thought flickered by while he gazed upon Sheerhome's violent unmaking.

My fault.

He could not say if he had been standing by the window for seconds or hours when someone grabbed him from behind, pulled him away, yelled in his ear that he had no business being out of bed. Will opened his mouth to say something in protest, but when he turned his head no one was there. Then his weight lurched sickeningly, world spinning, and he was suddenly lying down again. Aware of a persistent itch in his midsection, he craned his neck to look at himself, and found someone digging both his gloved hands through a wide open hole in Will's stomach. Saw his own squelching, sliding intestines, yellow and pink and red, pulled out and stuffed back in.

He screamed, but the sound was swallowed by an infinite darkness that dove on top of him and smothered him until he felt nothing more.

* * *

"Mister?"

He looked over. The little girl—Sunny—was there frowning at him. Someone had cleaned her up and brushed her hair and gotten her new clothes. He tried to say something, but found his throat glued shut. Orange light flickered. Long shadows crept over the walls, taking the shape of beasts.

"Look what ADAM gave me." She held up an ugly monkey stuffed animal with long dangling limbs, then lowered it uncertainly when he gave no response other than a slow blink. "I've named him Scrungleberry."

"Urgh…" Will grunted, not sure what he wanted it to mean.

The girl leaned in closer, bringing her chubby face and the monkey's frightfully misshapen one up to his. "I'm not supposed to be here," she whispered. "The people said you're really sick. Mommy used to sing to me when I was sick, but I'm not good at singing like she was." She laid the monkey out on the pillow next to him, and posed his unwieldy hard-jointed limbs so he looked like he was sleeping. "You can have Scrungleberry for tonight."

The little girl vanished in a puff of smoke. So did everything else, save for an encroaching horde of disembodied monkey heads that reared up in a great wall of eyes and teeth around him. Hundreds of them, then thousands. They shrieked and spat fire and washed over him to gobble up his arms and legs.

Will found that he still could not scream. When he tried, a black spidery thing with the head of an ape yanked his tongue out of his mouth and held it up cackling with cruel laughter.

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* * *

He stood over a carpet of butchered corpses, panting, sword dripping blood. A hundred voices howled at him, telling him to do terrible, glorious things. A monkey perched on his shoulder, nodding along and gleefully clapping its hands.

* * *

He was drowning in inky blackness. When he opened his mouth to suck desperately for air, fingers crawled down his throat and pried him open from the inside.

* * *

Sam was there. She told him everything would be all right. He believed her. She hugged him, and her warmth was the only thing that made sense. Then she unraveled into a pile of tiny threads that fell through his arms and vanished, and he was left with chill darkness once more.

* * *

Only darkness…

* * *

[DAY THIRTEEN…]

[MORNING]

Sam

All things considered, they were making great time.

Near the start of the return journey, Sam had mentioned her fourteen-day promise to Buck. He'd latched onto it instantly, though for entirely different reasons than her. It slotted perfectly into the storybook fantasy he had of himself—the miraculous, fated, prophesied return. On the fourteenth day, he would arrive in all his glory to defeat the villain, liberate Sheerhome, and claim a beautiful princess for his reward.

Sam wondered what he would think when he found out that his princess had been badly disfigured by torture. How would that fit into his fairy tale? She kept that to herself, though. She didn't want to tell him anything that would deflate his motivation to see the quest through to the end.

In three days of traveling from dawn until well past nightfall, they had made it all the way to just outside Greensby, the last stop before Sheerhome.

Sam's opinion of Big Deal Buck had not brightened any in that time.

Before meeting him, she wouldn't have thought it possible for a man's ego to grow so enormously large. He was madly in love with himself, and took no great pains to hide it. The sort of fellow to keep a full-length mirror in his bedroom so he could fawn over his own reflection during sex.

Aside from his fighting skills, which he'd had ample opportunity to show off with all the monsters they'd been running into, the one thing she had to grant him was that he certainly knew how to inspire people. Three days of no rest stops and barely any sleep had left everyone exhausted to their bones, but morale was higher than ever. No one had the energy to sing or caper about anymore, but they still looked to their leader with wonder sparkling in their eyes.

Sam did not think there was any real malice in him. He was generous with his friends to the point of excess, as eager to pay someone a compliment as to accept them from others, and empathetic to the needs of those around him. The kindly benevolence might have been an act, just a way to convince people to love him all the more, but her gut feeling told her it was genuine. His bandits turned questing adventurers adored him, and he, in turn, adored them right back.

That didn't make him any less insufferable to be around, of course.

The company reached Greensby in the very early morning, and Buck called them to a halt in the wilds just beyond the town while he sent Artie and Gutsy in to buy animal feed and gather rumors. They came running back almost immediately, bearing dire news.

Greensby was in chaos; filled to bursting with refugees from Sheerhome. Brimstone had gone insane and was single-handedly tearing the city apart, killing anyone he could get his hands on in the process. Buck's men hadn't been able to get any reliable information on the exact scale of the disaster, but apparently the refugees had made it sound positively apocalyptic in nature.

Sam went all cold inside as she listened to the men recount a long list of gory details. Will had been working for Brimstone. He was often in close proximity to the lord. What if he'd been caught up in it? What if he was hurt?

"Isn't there some way we could go faster?" she asked, pacing through the underbrush. "Get there tonight, somehow?"

Buck sat cross-legged on top of a boulder, shirtless, looking fashionably troubled as he nursed a light frown and rubbed thoughtfully at his jaw. Troubled, but not the least bit surprised.

"I'm afraid it's impossible," he said after a brief moment of consideration. "If we push the animals any more than we have been, they'll fall down dead before we get halfway. We're going hard as it is."

Artie added: "No horses to be bought in town, either. It looks like the militia's been confiscating them. We could try to steal a couple, but then we'd have to wait until nightfall, so there'd be no point."

"Yeah, but…"

Buck lifted his gaze, met hers evenly. "Don't worry, Sam. We'll arrive on the morning of the fourteenth day—exactly when you predicted. Exactly when we're meant to. It's fated to happen this way. I feel for the people of Sheerhome, but there's nothing we can do to help them right this minute. I promise we'll get there in time to make a difference."

"No! No, this doesn't feel right. We have to go faster. Will is in trouble. I have to help him."

"One-Eye? That's who you're worried about in all this?" Buck thumbed absently at the tiny scar on his cheek. "If you know that man at all, you know he's got ice veins and a steel heart. Trust me, he can handle himself."

Sam found it difficult to argue with that. He wasn't wrong. Still, it all felt terribly off to her. "Will isn't as strong as he likes to pretend." She was walking faster, three dozen pairs of eyes moving silently to track her up and down the makeshift camp. "Something like this, he'll push himself too hard. He might even try to confront Brimstone himself. If we don't get there soon, something terrible is going to happen."

"What do you suggest we do, then?"

"I don't know! I get that the animals are tired, but maybe we could…" She gave a sharp shrug of frustration. "Run there? I dunno."

"Run there? Greensby to Sheerhome is over forty miles. That's a marathon and a half. How do you expect me to clear that and have enough juice left in the tank to fight Brimstone?"

Mongrel came and put a hand on Sam's shoulder, and she let herself be pulled to a halt. "You need to have faith in the kid," he murmured, and gave her a fatherly squeeze. "I bet you a million bucks he's down there doing his part to keep this disaster from spiraling out of control. We need to do ours. That means playing things smart, not going off all half-cocked. If Brimstone's got his militia in on this, there'll be more than enough fighting for all of us, not just Buck. We need to be ready to do business. Feel me?"

"I could go on ahead—let you catch up."

"Kid, I know you're tougher than most, but even you're worn out after everything we've been through. Don't burn yourself out before the finish line."

Sam chewed on her lip for a long minute in silence, staring off into nothing, then realized that she was the one holding things up at this point. She gave a reluctant nod, deflating. "Yeah. I… I guess you're right."

Will just needs to keep himself safe until tomorrow morning. That'll be enough.

Right?

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