Cowboy Necromancer 5: Devil's Garden Novella
Author: Harmon Cooper
Date: 2023-03-30 07:00:00+00:00
Description: Sterling and the Sunflower Kid are back in the second Cowboy Necromancer novella! While the alien monoliths known as Godwalkers may be gone for now, there are still plenty issues in the post-apocalyptic southwest. Now in California, the Cowboy Necromancer and the Sunflower Kid need to make it back toward the west as they continue to repair their damaged powers. Sterling's initial saga may be over, but the adventure has just begun... About the Series: Immerse yourself in a one-of-a-kind LitRPG western set in the post-apocalyptic Southwest. Expect classes, leveling, and skill trees that will fee
Publisher: Boycott Books, LLC

Devil’s

Garden

Novella

(Cowboy Necromancer Book Five)

By Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2023 Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2023 Boycott Books

Edited by Andi Marlowe

Art by Sekhar Falnama

Font by Shawn King

www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

Twitter: @_HarmonCooper
Harmon Cooper’s Patreon

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Table of Contents

Contents

Table of Contents

Cowboy Necromancer Recap

.Chapter One.

.Chapter Two.

.Chapter Three.

.Chapter Four.

.Chapter Five.

.Chapter Six.

.Chapter Seven.

.Chapter Eight.

.Chapter Nine.

.Chapter Ten.

.Chapter Eleven.

Author’s Note

Cowboy Necromancer Recap

**Contains spoilers**

Book One

Five years ago, an event known as The Reset killed ninety percent of the world’s population, wiping the memory of anyone left alive. Alien monoliths known as Godwalkers appeared and took humankind off the electric grid. The people left were given video game-like stats, and are able to level up through combat. A select few were given enhanced mancer classes, allowing them to perform incredible feats.

Three years ago, Sterling Monedero and a band of superpowered mancers tried to do something about the Godwalkers.

They failed, ending in the death of a pyromancer named Liam and a hydromancer named Karina. Those still alive, including Sterling, went their separate ways. Zephyr, an aeromancer, and the Sunflower Kid, a biomancer, headed to Albuquerque. Rowayton the Indestructible, also known as Roxie, headed to whereabouts unknown, and Sterling, the necromancer, moved to the outskirts of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, to retire and start a pepper farm.

Three years pass in relative peace until a group of bandits known as Killbillies show up to collect a chili tax from Sterling, at the same time that a Godwalker appears in the sky and destroys his pepper farm. Deciding it’s time to get the old team together to deal with the alien monoliths once and for all, Sterling seeks out the mystical wisdom of a shaman named Don Gasper, which sends him to Las Cruces into the middle of a turf war between the Killbillies and the White Sands Militia.

It isn’t an easy trip south, and along the way he ends up being taken prisoner by the Killbillies, and later crucified while their leader, a man named Commodore Bones, taunts him. Sterling escapes and reaches Las Cruces. Through the shaman Don Gasper and a coyote, he learns that the Sunflower Kid is north. He also discovers that his former teammate Roxie is being held by the militia, and is encouraged by Don Gasper to look for the Sunflower Kid first.

Setting off toward Madrid, New Mexico, Sterling encounters a group of Hopi natives who are protected by a solimancer named Paco. Paco points Sterling in the right direction of the Sunflower Kid, and Sterling discovers that the Kid is being held captive by a cult known as the Culto Demente Sagrado. Due to a powerful telemancer, Sterling is unable to get close to the cult.

He heads even further north to find a man named Raylan, who is a flectomancer able to craft incredible items such as Sterling’s magical revolver and his sickle sword. Sterling learns that a bounty hunter named Ram is hunting him, but ignores the man as he makes it to Madrid. In Madrid, Sterling meets a female pyromancer named Sierra, and Raylan promises to craft some technology for him that will prevent the telemancer from affecting Sterling so he can rescue the Sunflower Kid.

Disaster strikes the following morning in the form of Ram, the bounty hunter using his control over ice to cut Sterling’s arm off. Raylan and Sierra are able to run Ram out of town. After using his mancer power to graft a skeletal arm to his own, Sterling leaves as well. He rescues the Sunflower Kid, and in doing so ends up finding an enormous amalgamation, which is the word locals use to describe the strange creatures with skeletal heads that have appeared after the Reset. Sterling is once again assisted by Paco the solimancer, whom he promises to meet again in the future, perhaps letting him join their group.

Now heading south to meet Don Gasper, Sterling reconnects with the Sunflower Kid, and learns that Zephyr, one of his original teammates, is in Albuquerque. As much as he doesn’t want to go to the city, mostly because it is the site of gang warfare, he knows he needs to at some point.

Throughout his trip, Sterling has been uncovering information about his family, and while he doesn’t know if his wife and his child are still alive, he does have a lead in Albuquerque in the records at an old insurance company.

Reaching Alamogordo, Sterling reunites with Don Gasper, who has fallen under the spell of a female witch named Magdalena. Don Gasper and Magdalena, alongside the Sunflower Kid, convince Sterling to join forces with Commodore Bones to take on the White Sands Militia, so he can free Roxie from imprisonment. He has also heard that the militia is holding a technomancer, which he’ll need on his team if he ever wants to take down one of the Godwalkers.

As they assault the military base, freeing Roxie and a technomancer named Maron, a Godwalker suddenly appears in the sky. Deciding not to run this time, Sterling gets over his fear of heights as he flies into an opening on the Godwalker provided by Maron, where he is able to bring the towering alien monolith to the ground.

Upon waking after a series of explosions, Sterling finds Don Gasper in front of him, impaled on a spike and begging for forgiveness. Magdalena, Gasper’s lover, has betrayed him and is secretly a telemancer. She has escaped with Commodore Bones to Las Cruces alongside the technomancer.

Now that he has the start of his team back together, Sterling decides to ride to Las Cruces first, to be followed by Albuquerque, and then later Utah, where the Godwalkers are rumored to have a Terminal that is key to bringing them down once and for all.

Book  Two

Sterling appears in Deseret, an unknown location which later turns out to be post-apocalyptic Utah. He is saved by a miniature Godwalker, whom he names Beep, and meets a pair of boys riding in the Bonneville Salt Flats in their dune buggy. They take him back to their leader, the Elder of Nauvoo, who tells Sterling he will point him in the right direction if he rescues a child that has been kidnapped from their tribe. The Elder is part of the Serpents of Paradise, which is led by someone named the Oracle who lives in a place called Saltair.

In rescuing the child, Sterling is reunited with Roxie, where he pieces together that his entire crew has been inexplicably transported to Deseret. They also learn that the Elder of Nauvoo plans to kill the baby he’s been tasked with rescuing. They return to the Elder’s compound with the child, and along the way they notice a faint glow on a nearby hilltop. After dealing with the Elder, which leads to a brutal fight and a mass suicide, Sterling, Roxie, a survivor named Lily Gray, and the child he’s rescued seek refuge in a summerhouse. They reunite with the solimancer Paco the next day, which explains the glow on the hilltop. From there, it is straight to Saltair.

Along the way, they encounter a group of bandits known as the Angels of Woe. After the fight, they reach Saltair and stay with one of Lily’s acquaintances. They meet the Oracle, a telemancer, and Sterling’s enhanced cowboy hat prevents the telemancer from disrupting his thoughts. After a talk, they agree that he will investigate the appearance of a biomancer on Antelope Island, and she’ll let him level up at the Gauntlet. The Oracle also wants him to meet a researcher named Dusty Hill, known as the Chronicler.

Levels gained, Sterling, Beep, and Roxie join the Chronicler, who tells them about the ancient native peoples of the state of Utah and how they first fought the Godwalkers. The Chronicler is still trying to understand the Anasazi’s petroglyphs, but he thinks that there is something there. They reunite with the Sunflower Kid at Antelope Island, and from there head toward Nomadland and Monument Valley, where the Godwalker’s Terminal is located. They are also still searching for Don Gasper, the aeromancer named Zephyr, and the technomancer named Maron.

An ambush leads them to Zephyr, who readily joins the group. The Chronicler finds the ancient answer he is looking for in a petroglyph outside of Morgon, Utah, and he now believes that he understands how the Utah natives fought off the Godwalkers so many years ago.

On the outskirts of Midway, they meet a group of people that live in treehouses high above the woods, who tell them about two enemy necromancers that have taken over the nearby town. Sterling promises to investigate, and that same night, a zombie sent by the enemy necromancers comes for Sterling. He promises to meet with the enemy necromancers as long as Roxie can come along. Roxie and Sterling travel to Midway, Utah, and actually end up fighting Remuda and Matilda, killing the two enemy necromancers.

Sterling’s full group continues their journey into southeastern Utah, where they plan to go to Moab to meet the Elder of Icaria, who may have information on Maron. The Chronicler has already heard of a shaman at the Hole N’ the Rock, which will be their next stop after Moab.

In Moab, Sterling and Roxie have a night where they almost feel normal, which only makes him want to finish off the Godwalkers even more. The next day, after doing another Gauntlet for additional levels, they head to the Hole N’ the Rock and are greeted by Don Gasper, who promises that he can help them find Maron, but it can only be through a hallucinatory ritual.

Sterling consumes the hallucinatory cebil seed and is told that technomancer Maron is on Mount Tukuhnikivatz. The next day, he heads to the mountain with the group sans Don Gasper and the Chronicler, where they find Maron.

At first they think Maron is dead, but then they realize once they turn on a nearby radio that the technomancer has transferred what he refers to as his electric soul to the radio. Maron communicates with Beep, now named Strawberry by the Sunflower Kid, but the revelations of what he has learned are saved for later.

Sterling’s group heads back to the Hole N’ the Rock to find that it has been attacked by the post-apocalyptic Comanche. Sterling first learned of the modern-day Comanche from Paco, and later learned more about the territory they were expanding known as Comancheria, their ancestral lands, which was already pushing into Utah. This was why they were at the Hole N’ the Rock, and after a battle, Sterling finds that Don Gasper died protecting the Chronicler. Three of the Comanche have escaped, and they fear that they may return with larger numbers so they leave the Rock after burying Gasper.

That night, Sterling learns from Maron that Beep is inhabited by the soul of his wife, which correlates with information he has already learned about Beep, that the small alien craft brought all of them to Deseret to accomplish some task. Sterling doesn’t know how to process this, and ends up not being able to fall asleep.

Later that night he wakes up and hears motorcycles, and Roxie and Sterling head away from the campsite to deal with a trio of Comanche. They don’t end up having to fight them as an amalgamation kills two of the men, Roxie sniping the other. They learn through using Sterling’s Death Whisper power that the Comanche are two hundred strong in the nearby town of Monticello. They make a plan to disrupt their operations, but not go to all-out war with them, which Sterling cross-checks with Don Gasper’s blood to see if he agrees. After a day of rest and relaying this information back to Moab, Sterling and his team, sans the Chronicler, rescue thirty hostages from the Comanche in Monticello. They also disrupt their operations by causing a few explosions and ruining some of their motorcycles.

The former hostages are sent back to Moab, while Sterling and the others head south to meet the Chronicler at a rest stop. It is here that Maron delivers the second revelation that Sterling’s wife in the body of the Godwalker has relayed to him. The Sunflower Kid is Sterling’s child, but Beep doesn’t want him to say anything to her before the operation in Monument Valley. This troubles Sterling even more, but he reluctantly agrees.

The group heads toward Monument Valley the next morning and find it filled with Godwalkers, large and small. The plan they have devised is to disrupt the Terminal, which is beneath the ground and used as a charging station. Sterling still isn’t certain of how the Godwalkers are powered, but he is aware that it has something to do with human energy through souls.

While Sterling and the others lay down distractions, Zephyr and Paco create a heat vortex that burrows into the ground, destroying the Terminal. In the process, Sterling almost thinks that he has lost the Sunflower Kid, but he miraculously finds her in the fight and rescues the teenage biomancer. Isabelle’s soul, however, has left the miniature Godwalker, leaving any remnant of his wife gone for good.

They head back to the meeting point, Sterling and his group victorious. The plan now is to head south to Arizona, and loop back around New Mexico, to Chaco Canyon, where there is another important site for the Godwalkers. They will also need more information about this location, which the Chronicler and Paco will seek out once they reach what is left of Navajo country. Sterling also has a few things he would like to deal with back home, including Commodore Bones and the Killbillies, and the cryomancer bounty hunter named Ram.

Book Three

With one Terminal destroyed, Sterling and company plan to travel back to New Mexico by way of Arizona. Along the way, they pass through Kayenta, Arizona, where they learn the locals are being terrorized by the Comanche. An agreement is made with the town sheriff to fight the Comanche in exchange for an introduction with the Navajo Nation, who may know more about the origin of the Godwalkers. While protecting the town, Sterling and his group are joined by a Comanche who has decided to switch sides, a telemancer named Harjo. Before setting out the next morning, tragedy strikes when a Godwalker appears and kills Roxie, whose soul is transferred to Beep’s body. Roxie can no longer communicate easily with Sterling and his team without the use of technomancer Maron as a medium.

After regrouping, they head toward the Navajo Nation, where they meet with two elders. The elders don’t have any new information for them, but they do tell them of the Acoma Pueblo’s leader, who has retained her memory of the past. Along the way to the Acoma Pueblo, they encounter a group of Comanche and discover that their new leader, Quanah, is in the area. Upon a visit to the border city of Gallup, New Mexico, plans are made to spy on the Comanche once they reach the Acoma Pueblo the next day. Once they reach the pueblo, the leader of the Acoma tells them of the ancient charging grounds for the Godwalkers, one being in Chaco Canyon, which they’ve already heard about, and the other being in Bryce Canyon.

They attempt to spy on the Comanche with the hopes of perhaps meeting their leader, Quanah, or simply learning more about their forces. Zephyr takes a shot at Quanah, which leaves them scrambling to escape the Comanche camp. They manage to flee, and as they do Harjo the telemancer plants an idea in the Comanches’ minds that it was the Killbillies that have attacked the Comanche, not Sterling and company in a botched trip to uncover information.

They arrive in Madrid the next day and surprise Raylan the flectomancer and Sierra, the pyromancer that Sterling almost had relations with in the past. A plan is hatched for Sterling to go to Moab to get levels, then for a couple of them to head to Albuquerque to try to find Ram the bounty hunter.

Sterling gets ten levels the next day by farming XP, and reaches a point where he feels he can’t really grow stronger without taking on incredible enemies or figuring out a new way to farm XP. Now leveled up, Sterling, the Sunflower Kid, Zephyr, Harjo, and Godwalker Roxie head to Albuquerque. They learn that the Killbillies have infiltrated the southern part of the city and taken territory from the Barelas Glyphs.

Zephyr decides to pay her ex a visit, a woman named Nazarena who happens to be the leader of the Old Town Toros. This leads Sterling and his companions to get ambushed by the Kirtland Airmen, another gang of the city. Upon revisiting Nazarena, they are ambushed by the Killbillies, but the fight turns out to be relatively easy for them.

Sterling and his companions return to Madrid with plans to intercept Ram, whom they’ve learned is on his way to parlay with the Comanche. They move to intercept Ram and the Airmen that have joined him, but in the process, Harjo gets killed by sniper fire.

After talking to Harjo’s spirit through Sterling’s blood magic, they decide to try to have a conversation with Quanah and see if they can’t reach an agreement with the Comanche. The idea would be for the Comanche to ambush the Killbillies in western Albuquerque and seriously put a dent in Commodore Bones’ forces. After a tense standoff, their meeting with Quanah is a success, the new leader of the Comanche not the man Sterling had originally imagined him to be.

To solidify their strategy in Albuquerque, Sterling and the Sunflower Kid then meet with a member of the Alta Monte Homecidos, the fourth gang that runs the former capital of New Mexico. The Homecidos agree to squeeze the Toros in the west, at the same time the Killbillies attack, which will add confusion to the fight. Satisfied, Sterling and the Kid return to Madrid to call it a night.

After some modifications, Roxie is now able to communicate as a Godwalker, which will make things easier going forward. Raylan and Maron have also worked up an idea for Sterling to use his new ability, known as Soul Absorption, to deliver a soul-charged bomb to the underground terminals in Chaco and Bryce Canyons.

Before they get to the Godwalkers, and now in new armor crafted by Raylan, Sterling and his team go after Commodore Bones. They are easily able to kill Magdalena, the telemancer working with Commodore Bones. They take the Killbilly leader hostage. Upon portaling to the western part of Albuquerque, Sterling makes sure that the Commodore sees Comanche bring the heat. The Commodore assures Sterling that he is trading one warlord for the next, but Sterling doesn’t care. Roxie kills the Commodore as Godwalkers appear, Sterling and his team portaling away.

Sterling learns that the Sunflower Kid has known she was his daughter all along, and while he is happy about this, happy for them to both finally know, he senses something is still wrong. The Kid, whose real name is Angel Monedero, confesses to Sterling that she didn’t tell him because the man he once was wouldn’t have accepted her for who she is now. Sterling apologizes for this, and he hopes to learn more about the past through the teenage biomancer, who never lost her memory.

The next day, they test Raylan’s new device, a canister that Sterling is able to charge with soul energy. It creates a massive underground explosion that they plan to use in Chaco and Bryce Canyons, to stop the Godwalkers at their charging point. Before they can do that, they need to visit the canyons so they can portal there quickly. They also need to make sure that Quanah doesn’t think it was them who brought the Godwalkers to Albuquerque. They meet with Quanah again and learn that he doesn’t blame them. The Comanche leader offers to help after revealing to Sterling that a Navajo man he once worked alongside traced his origins to Chaco Canyon, and that Quanah would like to build a Comancherian city there. He also agrees to create a distraction in Chaco Canyon, and let Sterling absorb power from some of his people.

The assault begins the following day, first at Chaco Canyon and then at Bryce Canyon in Utah. The Chronicler is able to pinpoint the direct location of the Terminal due to documents they uncovered at a gift shop in Chaco Canyon.

The first drop goes as planned, even if Sterling loses power afterward and has to be rescued by Quanah. Upon reaching Bryce Canyon, Zephyr, Paco, and Sierra start the hole and the distraction while Sterling charges the weapon in the sky above. They succeed here as well, but just barely, Sterling saved at the last moment by Roxie, who teleports him away from the blast zone. While it hasn’t been easy, Sterling and his team have managed to destroy three Terminals in the Southwest which have been powering the Godwalkers, a feat that will hopefully lead others to do the same.

A few months later, Sterling is back in Truth or Consequences with a newly built ranch house. His group has disbanded. Maron, Raylan, and Sierra have stayed in Madrid. The Chronicler has gone back to Moab to join the Elder of Icaria, and Paco has returned to his people. Zephyr has gone to work as an advisor for Quanah in Albuquerque, joined by the Sunflower Kid and Roxie. Sterling doesn’t know when or if he’ll see them again.

One day, on his way home, Roxie appears with the Sunflower Kid. After he shows his daughter the room he’s built her in his new home, the Sunflower Kid agrees to stay as long as he promises to travel with her. She wants to go to the botanical gardens in Washington, DC, and mentions Sterling wanted to see the Pacific Ocean. He agrees, and also gives her some watermelon seeds, an item she had sought for some time now, which Sterling’s friend Kip was able to find in Las Cruces.

Book Four (Novella)

The fourth installment starts off with Sterling, the Sunflower Kid, and Roxie bidding farewell to Zephyr, who is in Chaco Canyon helping the Comanche rebuild. With Maron’s help, the Comanche are using repurposed Godwalker parts to create pueblo-like buildings. It is quite the project, but Sterling and his companions don’t stick around to see it to its completion. Instead, they teleport to Kayenta, Arizona, where they find that the town has been completely burned to the ground.

Using his Death Whisper power, Sterling finds out that a new type of Godwalker, one that the locals called an ‘Inquisitor Godwalker’, attacked the city. The new Godwalker appears and zaps Sterling, Roxie, and the Sunflower Kid. The Godwalker disappears, leaving them confused as to what just happened. The Sunflower Kid alerts Sterling to the fact that she no longer has some of her special powers. Neither does Sterling.

Not knowing what they should do next, the two ride away from town on the Kid’s buffalo and contact Don Gasper, who tells them he knows a shaman named Lisa who lives in Flagstaff. They decide to head in that direction.

While camping out that night, they are attacked by a snake amalgamation. Sterling and the Kid flee and are rescued by a team of rebel fighters led by a man named Guillermo, who is affiliated with the group loosely running Arizona known as the Hashknife Outfit. Guillermo explains that the Angels of Woe have taken Flagstaff and they intend to get the city back. Sterling agrees to help because it will put him in contact with Lisa the shaman.

They camp with Guillermo and his people in bunkers in the mountains. Sterling and the Kid are given flectomancer-enhanced crossbows the next morning before they set out. They take a tunnel created by a gaiamancer that lets out in a Cracker Barrel in Flagstaff. A scorpion amalgamation fights them in the tunnel and they’re able to kill it with an avalanche.

Upon reaching Flagstaff, they meet a flectomancer named Granny who is part of the resistance. She gives Sterling silencers for his weapons, and they set out the next evening to retake the city.

Dividing their forces, Sterling, the Kid, and Roxie take a church used as a forward operating base for the Angels of Woe. They rendezvous with Granny and Guillermo at a library, where they encounter a stray dog that they name Buster. Once the library is taken, the group spots explosions taking place over downtown Flagstaff, signaling that the locals are fighting back. They join the fight, and are able to defeat the Angels of Woe and meet the shaman named Lisa, who promises to help them after she talks to Don Gasper that next morning.

Lisa’s talk with Don Gasper doesn’t go well and she kicks Sterling and his companions out of her flat. Granny says she can help them get to California, and she does so by calling in a favor with a Hashknife helicopter pilot named Omar. Omar tells them that there’s a strange vortex of energy beyond the border and it is worth investigating.

They fly to the vortex, located in the Trona Pinnacles. Upon approaching it, Sterling is able to animate the dead again. The Sunflower Kid also regains her power to control plants. After a talk with Roxie about looking to unite the Comanche, Hashknife Outfit, and the Serpents of Paradise, they leave the Pinnacles for the California coast the next morning.

As they near the coast, the Inquisitor Godwalker appears in the air and disrupts Omar’s helicopter, leaving them freefalling toward the beach below. The Sunflower Kid helps Sterling fly, and they’re able to safely land on the beach. Their next stop is back toward Arizona, to work out a treaty between the various power players of the Southwest while continuing to search for vortexes that will return their powers.

“Our world goes to pieces; we have to rebuild our world… We learn courage from art work. We have to go where no one was before us. We are alone and responsible for our actions. Our solitariness takes on religious character; this is a matter of my conscience and me.”

-Anni Albers, German textile artist

.Chapter One.

Phoenix, Arizona

Not too distant future.

Arizona dust devils could tear through anything, from the towering Saguaro cacti to the Desert Lily and its hardy white flowers. The wind remained relentless. It whipped about like there was a storm a-brewing, it whipped about like it had a bad attitude, a bone to pick.

Maybe it did.

Somewhere outside of Phoenix, home of the Superstition Mountains, once the HQ of Hohokam, along the drained Salt River now filled with skeletal ocotillo, somewhere between Scottsdale and Tempe, Sterling Monadero ignored the howling wind outside as he locked eyes with a drunk seated on the other side of the bar.

It wasn’t the first time the drunk had looked over at the cowboy necromancer and cursed in his general direction.

“Damn good-for-nothin,” Sterling mumbled.

All Sterling wanted to do was enjoy a nice cold beer.

It had been a long trip back from Californ-I-Ay, one made easier by the fact that Omar the pilot had another helicopter-like craft in his inventory list, a dune buggy that had been repurposed. Yet it did the job, harrowingly so. Talk about death-defying heights. Talk about a flight that Sterling was still reeling from. Talk about a reason to drink himself into a stupor.

That was why he needed the beers. And the last thing Sterling wanted was confrontation with a hammered local.

But as he had found out numerous times before, showing up in a random tavern unannounced dressed in head-to-toe black and with a chip on his shoulder—even though it was his chip, one that he didn’t share with others—was often the recipe for questionable looks and good ol’ fashioned fisticuffs, Southwest style.

“Shee-it.” Sterling finished his beer and looked back up at the drunk to see that he was now standing. He was a fairly large man, but not the type of large that would lead Sterling to assume he was a bully. That meant it was probably something else. Maybe he was a mancer. He couldn’t tell yet.

Rather than ask, Sterling casually lit the cigarette that had been tucked behind his ear. He glanced over to the bartender, an older woman, likely a Native, with dark hair and beady black eyes. She continued cleaning her glass as she nodded toward the exit.

He got the picture.

Sterling smoked a cigarette calmly as the drunk approached.

“You got a problem, mister?” the man asked.

Sterling took a moment before answering. “No, but you’re about to have one, peckerhead.” He pointed at a bar stool on the other side of the room. “If I were you, I’d sit my happy little ass down before things get serious. I ain’t here to cause no trouble, and I certainly didn’t come to whatever the hell this place is called to pick fights with sons of bitches drowning their post-apocalyptic sorrows in alcohol. If you knew the day I’ve had, boy, you would sit your sorry ass down on that stool right there and buy me a drink. Hell, maybe two. But no. You insist on giving me the stank eye like I done took a piss on your mother’s grave.”

The man spat.

“Not in here, Barney,” the bartender said. By the tone of her voice, Sterling could tell that she had dealt with the drunk before.

“Barney, huh? Let me ask you. Are you part of the Hashknife Outfit?” Sterling asked him.

The drunk spat again.

“Well, in case you are wondering, I’m here with them. So if you ain’t part, I guess that’s even more reason for me to stomp your ass out and be done with it.” Sterling put his cigarette down in the ashtray and sighed. “You clearly ain’t stepping away.” He gestured toward the door. “I guess there’s only one other place we can take this.”

“Are you serious right now?” the Sunflower Kid asked, interrupting Sterling’s train of thought. The teenage biomancer had been sitting next to him through all of this, drinking some honey concoction.

“This ain’t about you, little whore,” the drunk told the Kid.

Sterling laughed. Normally, he would be offended at something like this. That was his daughter. But Sterling knew that if she wanted, the Kid could split the drunken idiot in half in a matter of seconds.

The shitfaced local truly was barking up the wrong tree.

And after the day that Sterling had suffered through, the fight with the Inquisitor Godwalker and the long flight, he was ready to expend some energy.

“You’re gonna regret this,” the man told him, his words slurring together.

Rather than say anything, Sterling pressed away from the bar and took his hat off. He handed it to the Sunflower Kid. “Just hold tight. This’ll only take a minute.”

The wind continued to whip around Sterling as he brought his fists up, his opponent doing the same.

The first punch took him by surprise, especially with how drunk the man was.

The second fist had Sterling falling backward as the heel of his cowboy boot got caught on a crack in the asphalt. He went down hard. He kicked at the man to give himself a little space so he could get back to his feet.

Damn, he’s fast.

Once he was ready, Sterling brought his fists up again.

“Come on, cowboy! Fight me like a man!”

He noticed that his opponent was now lightly hopping from foot to foot.

Must be some kind of boxer, Sterling thought.

“Not so tough now, are you?” the man asked, his words so slurred together now that they were hard to make out. “Go ahead and run off if you want. This can end now, pussy.”

“Nope,” Sterling said under his breath. “This ain’t over here.”

He rushed forward and slipped to the side as the drunk went for his next jab. Sterling managed to return fire with an uppercut that caught the bottom of the man’s chin. He followed this up with a punch to the back of the drunk’s shaved head.

The boozer stumbled forward, seemingly seeing stars.

Sterling got back into position, his fists up near the sides of his face to protect himself.

The adrenaline.

It made him feel alive. It made him feel whole. It made him feel human.

Sometimes it was hard to feel human. His life had been stripped away from him, and now he had a new one, a different one, but one that was less human than the people of the past. Fighting got Sterling in touch with his primitive side. And for some reason, this reminded him of his roots.

Truth or Consequences in the most literal sense.

Sterling chose consequences as he dodged the next punch. He kicked at the man’s shin with the heel of his boot.

Or was it truth?

The drunk slugged Sterling in the arm, doing little damage. He tried this again and nearly lost his footing. Sterling brought both fists down onto the man’s back, sending him to his knees.

Things got scrappy.

His opponent lunged for Sterling’s legs and managed to bring him down.

The drunk was able to scramble on top of the cowboy necromancer, grunting as he sunk two quick fists into Sterling’s face only to be bucked off. Kicking up dust, Sterling crawled around and pulled the man into a headlock with one arm.

They scrambled some more.

Sterling began punching him in the side with his other fist. A couple kidney punches had the drunk moaning, yet he still had fight in him. He managed to tilt his head down and bite down on Sterling’s arm.

“You filthy son of a bitch!” Sterling naturally responded by driving the man’s forehead onto the asphalt. This meant his arm took some of the damage as well, but he didn’t care at this point.

He was ready to end this.

His opponent managed to flip Sterling onto his back.

Sterling rolled to the left, his blackened clothing covered in dust and grit by the time he got back to his feet, the wind roaring again in his ears.

He looked forward to see the man’s face drenched in blood, the whites of his teeth and eyes visible. It was dark out, but he could see through the faint glow of the bar that the drunk had summoned a pretty big knife.

“You sure you want to take this there, amigo?”

The man spat blood on the ground. “I’m gonna string you up, cowboy.”

“Nah, you ain’t.” Sterling thought about summoning one of the many weapons he carried with him. In the end, he went with the mana-powered crossbow that he had received from Granny back in Flagstaff. Sterling fired a bolt directly into the man’s chest just as he approached, piercing his heart.

The drunk fell backward, soon to be dead.

Sterling looked back to the bar, glad that no one was watching him at the moment. It was a cowardly way to end a fight, but he’d had just about enough of the drunk.

After looking the other way, Sterling sent the man to his inventory list like a good necromancer.

He had a feeling that having a few spare bodies in the near future would prove to his advantage. It was part of who he was, and after having the power taken away from him, he knew better than to take it for granted.

“Necromancers gonna necromance,” he said. He wished Roxie wasn’t in his list right now. She’d get a kick out of a statement like that. “Heh.”

Sterling looked around once more and turned back to the bar.

It was time for another beer.

.Chapter Two.

Sterling sat in what was once a veranda, a place where desert shrubbery and blooming succulents held court in the spring. It was morning now, the sky crystal clear, the clouds vamoosed as the day started up.

Gonna be one of them days…

Sterling finished his cigarette and looked down at the blank page of his leatherbound notebook, the one where he kept his desert haiku. He let his pen take over.

Arizona fight

Fight like there’s no tomorrow

Fight because you can

It wasn’t the best desert haiku he’d written, but there was a vibe to it, and it did sum up his previous night. Writing these haiku was good for that. Through them, an act of remembrance became proof of existence.

<I heard you got into it last night.>

“I did,” Sterling told Roxie, who floated next to him. The miniature Godwalker had been in his inventory list last night during his brawl, and hadn’t said anything about it until now.

<Can I ask why?>

“You can. But does it matter?”

<It doesn’t. I just think there are better ways to conduct yourself considering what you’re here to do. You are here with a purpose in mind, you know.>

“Maybe. But we don’t even know if it’s possible or not.”

<Why wouldn’t it be? You’re friends with Quanah, and you’re friends with the Oracle.>

“Friends? I’m friends with Dusty and Zee. Dunno ‘bout them other folks. More than acquaintances, but sure as hell ain’t friends.”

<We already discussed this on the beach.>

“Shit, that wasn’t a bad afternoon after all.” Sterling laughed at his own statement.

He remembered looking out over the rolling Pacific Ocean, how relieved he was to be on solid ground. They’d been attacked during their flight by the Inquisitor Godwalker and Sterling had done the mancer version of parachuting to safety. He hadn’t enjoyed one moment of it. But he had enjoyed the peaceful roar of the ocean waves after, the sand beneath his feet, the fact that he’d made it all the way west.

And now, he was back where he belonged.

Aside from the vortex they’d found at the Trona Pinnacles, the one that had given Sterling his corpse animation power back, their trip to California had been short-lived. Pinnacle, flight to beach, ambushed by Godwalker, beach for a spell, and directly to Phoenix via Omar the pilot’s backup aircraft.

A blip on the radar of his life in what was supposed to be an epic journey.

Sterling almost rolled another cigarette just thinking about that last flight.

Cutting through the air in a glorified dune buggy with a propeller overhead was something he didn’t plan to do again anytime soon. Nope, the cowboy necromancer was someone who wanted to travel by land only from here on out, which would make a potential journey to Saltair up in Deseret a long one.

Maybe this was why he was pushing back.

“Rox, alls I’m going to say about this is let’s see what they say, if they’re even looking to parlay, then we will figure it out from there. The Hashknife Outfit got hold of Arizona. No doubt about that. But who knows if they’re looking to expand their territory, sit here nice and tight, or form some kind of alliance. Shee-it, I get the way you’re looking at me, I get it, but it don’t mean I agree with you.”

She shifted toward him, presenting Sterling with his own reflection.

<Which way am I looking at you?>

“You’re looking at me like you’re thinking, you never know what a pig is gonna do until you poke it. I’m just trying to say that this here pig might not be something we want to start fiddling with, if you get my drift. Won’t be pretty when it squeals.”

<You’ve already said you want to do this. Why are you going back on your plan now?>

“I ain’t going back on it, just being contemplative. Shit like that happens in the morning sometimes, ‘specially when I get writing.”

Roxie shifted closer to Sterling. She tilted backward until she began to force his seat over.

“Hey. What the hell, Rox?” Sterling took off his cowboy hat and swatted it at her. “Don’t go trying to tip me over.”

<People are counting on us.>

“Who? Zee? She’s just doing what she does. If you’re talkin’ about Maron or Raylon, they’re in Madrid doing God knows what. You can’t mean Sierra; that little fire queen’s got enough on her plate without adding peace in the Southwest. Besides, you never liked her. Wait a dang minute. Is this about Paco? It shouldn’t be. He’s back with his people doing what the Hopi do best, survive and lay low until the time comes for them to pounce.”

<You know what I mean. Now, get ready. The Sunflower Kid is waiting for you. Omar is with her.>

“How do you even know that?”

<I know.>

“Fine, fine.” Sterling huffed for a moment, even though he knew it wouldn’t do any good. “I just don’t want to do no more flying. Maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to say all along.”

<Suck it up, cowboy. Flying is the only way we’re going to do this quickly. And Omar isn’t a bad pilot.>

“Nah, he ain’t. I’m just a bad passenger, an ornery one.”

< Finally, something we can both agree on.>

The Sunflower Kid wore all white. Her platinum blonde hair dropped down to the small of her back, where it was finally tied off in a short ponytail. Not only was her clothing and hair colorless, her eyes and eyebrows were bleach white too.

She was quite the contrast to her father in his black get-up.

Sterling was used to this by now, the cowboy necromancer merely happy to have her by his side on the strange little journey called life. His daughter. What were the odds? Five years ago, they’d randomly encountered each other after the Reset and had banded together, only to disband later and rejoin forces.

Now, Sterling knew the truth.

He knew who she was, who she once was, and the role he played in her life.

He only wished she’d told him sooner.

Like most people after the Reset, Sterling’s memories had been stripped away from him. This wasn’t true for the Sunflower Kid. From what he could tell, all biomancers were able to restore their memories.

If only all of them could get together and get this here thing rebuilt, he thought, referring to the world itself.

If only.

There were advantages to what he could do now with his necromancer powers. But a world whole, a world restored, would be something worth dying for.

For some reason, seeing a picture of the Eiffel Tower in the conference room he was seated in sparked these memories, memories he didn’t even have. His memories were ones tied to humanity itself, of the past triumphs, legendary monuments, and last-minute breakthroughs.

It all started somewhere.

The Hashknife headquarters was in a former golf resort, one with an attached hotel. It was quite the affair, with security, nice rooms, and even a dining hall. Sterling was certain that people must have paid good money back in the day to be a member of something like this.

Sterling looked across the table to the leaders of the Hashknife Outfit. “Gentlemen,” he said as he tipped his hat at the pair. “Been a long time coming.”

“Sterling Monedero and the Sunflower Kid,” said a fellow named Jimmy.

Jimmy was a heavyset man, with a belly that hung far beyond the confines of his belt. He wore a collared Under Armor shirt and a pair of cargo shorts, even though it was technically winter. His beard was freshly trimmed short, his skin with red patches like he had eczema.

Jimmy looked nothing like his brother, Stuart, who wore khakis and a button up, his hair nicely combed back, not a blemish on his face. It was Stuart who picked up the conversation: “What my brother is trying to say here is that we heard what you did in Flagstaff. Omar, here, has told us all about it.”

“They were the real heroes,” Omar said, the pilot seated between the two groups. “Them and Granny.”

“Don’t forget Guillermo,” Sterling added.

“That Granny. I offered her a role here, but she wants to stay in Flagstaff. Oh well.” Stuart made a gesture as if there was nothing he could do about it. “Now, Omar has indicated that you have other plans. We’d like to hear those plans now.”

“Hold on a minute,” Jimmy said. “We’re just going to get right down to business like that? Hell, I was saving some gin I got for a special occasion like this.”

“Not now, Jimmy. But maybe after.”

“Dang, Stew, these here folks did the dirty work for us. Least we can do is offer them a drink.”

“Little early for that; do y’all mind if I smoke?” Sterling asked. The two brothers had been bickering in their own way since he’d entered the room. He was already starting to wonder how they kept something like the Hashknife together.

“Later, Jimmy.”

That’s how, Sterling thought as Jimmy grew quiet from his brother’s short command. Jimmy had an annoyed look on his face, but it was clear that Stuart was the brains of the operation. This left Jimmy to be the muscle.

Sterling focused on Jimmy again.

He didn’t look like he had much muscle on the surface, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have a mean streak.

“Let’s hear it,” Stuart told Sterling. “What’s your proposal?”

Sterling went ahead and lit his cigarette even though neither of them had given him permission. Jimmy fanned the smoke away. Stuart didn’t seem to care. “Now, I know the three of us showing up has been a little out of the ordinary.” Sterling motioned over to Roxie and the Sunflower Kid. “But we’ve been into some shit that y’all would probably like to hear. Most importantly, we’re here looking to parlay on behalf—”

“Parlay? You trying to make some sort of treaty or something?” Jimmy asked.

Sterling took a long drag off his cigarette. “We sure are, amigo. How many more people need to die because of bandits and assholes parading around the Southwest like they own the place? Now, I know we got Godwalkers. Hell, that’s a thorn in everyone’s side. And I’ll get to that, the things we’ve done. But I want to talk about the human side of the equation first.”

“And what the hell have you done, exactly?”

“Jimmy,” Stuart said, growing annoyed at his brother’s tone.

“We’ve brought down a couple Godwalkers, for one. We’ve destroyed several of their terminals, their charging points.”

“You got proof of that?” Jimmy asked.

<I can shoot him now or later, your choice.>

“Easy there, Rox. Heh.” Sterling smiled over at the ruddy-faced man. He’d dealt with bigger assholes than Jimmy before. “You see that we’re traveling with one, right? Is there any more evidence you need? You ever met someone that was traveling around with a Godwalker?”

Neither man said anything.

Buster, who had been resting on the ground near the Sunflower Kid, lifted his head and barked.

“Shee-it, he’s a good pup,” Sterling said. The stray they had picked up in Flagstaff was often good at breaking momentary tension. “Don’t worry about ol’ Buster here. Anyway, I’m going to level with you boys. We have good connects with the Comanche and the Serpents of Paradise. You work out something with them two, and the Southwest would be a lot more secure. There will always be assholes, conmen, and rogue mancers, but something tells me if y’all were united in some way, it’d be a lot easier to deal with shit like that. Not to mention the Godwalkers.”

“I thought you destroyed them all.”

Sterling ignored Jimmy’s snide comment. “They’re still a threat, most notably this new one that has been showing up obliterating the place. Ask any of your people that have been through Kayenta what that town looks like,” he said, not getting into the fact that the Inquisitor Godwalker had stripped Sterling and the Sunflower Kid of some of their powers. “A united front against these Godwalkers would be a good thing. The Comanche and the Serpents both know what has to be done if more terminals are discovered. They’d be good allies is all I’m saying.”

“We’ve battled the Comanche for several years now in the east. Why would we suddenly partner with them?” Jimmy pursed his lips together. “As for the Serpents, the Angels of Woe are from Utah—”

“Deseret.”

“Whatever. If they’re so strong, why didn’t they stop the Angels before they could cross into our territory?”

Sterling ashed his cigarette. “Maybe that’s something you can ask them your-damn-self. I can tell you this, though. The Angels got loads of mancers. The Serpents have a mix, like y’all do down here. The Serpents also have their little enclaves scattered throughout Deseret.”

Jimmy pressed away from the table and crossed his thick arms over his chest. “Nope. None of this makes any sense to me.”

“It makes perfect sense to me,” Stuart told his brother calmly. “If there is unity here, and it’s not unity with bandits—that’s why we never partnered with the Killbillies—it’s good for everyone.”

“Killbillies, huh?” Sterling snorted. “You’re looking at the main reason the Killbillies are out of commission. I took out their leader in Albuquerque.”

“They still have forces in New Mexico.”

“Not for long, they don’t,” he told Stuart. “The Comanche are seeing to that. Quanah and his boys consider all of New Mexico part of Comancheria. Either join up, or get out. Now, I know that sounds harsh, but we’ve been scrambling for five years with our dicks in our hands trying to figure out who is in charge and who to trust. I see it as a good thing in the end, even if I don’t like having to sit through it while it’s going on.”

Stuart examined something between his fingers and flicked it away. “I think it would be good if we met with these people. But before we agree to anything, and before you get on your way—you said you wanted to head to Deseret next, right?”

“I did,” Sterling said, even though he’d never told Stuart this explicitly. He glanced over to Omar.

Must have been part of the debriefing.

“We’ll get you Deseret, easy. That I can assure you. Omar here can take you. So your trip there is covered. But before we agree to anything else, I want to see what you all can do.” Stuart pointed from Sterling to the Sunflower Kid. “I want to see if you can live up to your own reputation. You mentioned rogue mancers…”

“You’re giving us an assignment? Shee-it, I ain’t no task rabbit.”

“Think of it as an offering of good faith. We got a death cult running people out of their homes south of here in Casa Grande. Causing quite a storm too. Deal with that, and we’ll meet with these other leaders when the time is right.”

“When the time is right?” Sterling put his cigarette out slowly. “If we deal with these cultists, as you called them, you’ll write a letter stating your intent to meet with the Serpents and the Comanche. Two letters. I’ll deliver them, and then their advisors and whatnot can make it happen. Y’all got wings.”

“We do,” Stuart said.

“Then that’s the agreement.”

“Now wait a minute—” Jimmy was cut off by his brother.

“This is my decision, Jimmy, and it’s final.”

Jimmy’s nostrils flared but he didn’t say anything.

“So we good then?” Sterling asked Stuart.

“Handle the death cult in Casa Grande, and we’ll honor our end of the bargain.”

Sterling stood. He walked over to the other side of the long table and shook Stuart’s hand.

“Why did you call them a death cult?” the Sunflower Kid asked.

“Because the one in charge is a necromancer, sort of like your boy here,” Jimmy said, his arms still crossed over his chest.

“He’s my father.”

This statement seemed to shut the fat man up.

Before loading into the back of a pickup truck, one set to whisk Roxie, Sterling, and the Sunflower Kid south, Sterling quickly scanned through his stats.

Class Ranking: Death Artist

Level: 90

Fortitude: 142

Strength: 117

Resolve: 229

Mana: 215/215

Current Armor Rating: 50

XP: -

XP to Next Level: -

Stat Points Available: -

Technique Points Available: -

They remained frozen. He had, however, regained the use of his resurrection skill, something he planned to use.

Necromancer Class Skills

Death Whisper: Class Proficiency Level 4

Casting Cost: 6 Mana Points

Description: Can communicate with the deceased; blood needed to do so.

——

Resurrection: Class Proficiency Level 8

Casting Cost: 5 Mana Points

Description: Can summon at will, but doing so takes a cut of MP until the animate is relinquished.

——

Enhanced Durability: Null

Grafting casting cost: Null

Description: Enhanced durability and grafting.

——

Death Sense: Null

Description: Able to sense the bodies of the dead around you. Higher levels allow for wider ranges, including remote animating.

——

Mold Manipulation: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Able to manipulate and conjure mold. Higher levels allow for stronger and further reaching creations.

——

Osteomancy: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Description: Able to get an exploratory vision when coming into contact with bones.

——

Soul Absorption: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Description: Temporarily absorbs the soul energy of living things.

——

Nothing had changed about his Techniques either, but at least he still had them.

Techniques:

Combat:

Sword Expert Level 8 - 56 Technique Points to Level 9

Marksmanship Level 9 - 73 Technique Points to Level 10

Melee Expert Level 5 - 34 Technique Points to Level 6

Stealth:

Sneak Proficiency Level 4 - 26 Technique Points to Level 5

Assassination Level 3 - 17 Technique Points to Level 4

Cover of Night Level 3 - 12 Technique Points to Level 4

Disguise Level 1 - 4 Technique Points to Level 2

Perception:

Persuasion Level 7 - 52 Technique Points to Level 8

Awareness Level 8 - 59 Technique Points to Level 9

Regaining his Skills was one of the reasons Sterling was keen on heading north after their little side mission. He had a feeling that the Chronicler would be able to point them in the right direction. As much as Sterling didn’t like the fact that they would be flying to the Great Saltair soon, he also knew this gave him a chance to look for other vortexes.

Or at least, the Sunflower Kid could. Sterling would likely be keeping his head down, bottling his fear of heights the best way he could.

But first, the death cult.

“My kind, I swear,” he mumbled just before their truck started up, Sterling seated with his daughter in the back.

“Necromancers?” she asked. The Sunflower Kid was seated across from him, one arm around Buster. The dog extended his snout toward her and licked the Kid’s face.

“Yup. Why are necromancers so damn screwy? Makes no sense.”

“Maybe there’s a reason this necromancer has formed a death cult.”

“A reason? I reckon there’s always a reason, but that don’t mean it ain’t creepy as hell. Shee-it, here we go,” he said once the truck started up, the vehicle driven by Omar. Roxie was with them as well, the miniature Godwalker currently in Sterling’s list so she wouldn’t draw attention to them as they drove through what was left of Phoenix.

It was quite sprawling, the highway brittle and dusty, everything with Southwest patina to it. It was dangerous being on the outskirts so people had moved closer to the main thoroughfares, repurposing buildings and adding on to what the Before People had constructed. It still was a mishmash of sites, but there was some kind of strange unity to its and overall look.

Sterling decided to hold off on his cigarette once Omar pulled onto a bumpy feeder road covered in craters and beaten to hell by the sun. They were going to have to go slow for a little while.

Eventually, the truck pulled back onto the highway and headed south on I-10 toward Tucson. The Hashknives had beaten the death cult back, and the necromancer was currently holed up in Casa Grande, apparently at an old Walmart.

Them places are usually big, Sterling thought.

To hold a Walmart meant that the death cult certainly had members.

This raised another question—dead or alive?

If most of the members of the cult were dead, all Sterling would need to do is find the mancer. If there was a mix, or if they were mostly alive, things would be a bit harder. He certainly felt confident that they’d complete their task. After all, they’d taken on what he assumed was a much larger force back in Flagstaff. Not to mention the fact that this wasn’t his first rodeo when it came to dealing with necromancers.

But that was precisely the part that made this little mission somewhat of a wild card. There was no telling how that part would play out.

Looking across the bed of the truck to the Sunflower Kid replenished his hope. Even if the two of them didn’t have all their skills, she’d regained the use of her power over plants and would be a force to reckon with in any fight.

Then there was Roxie.

Memories of who she was before her transformation came flooding to Sterling. He wished that she hadn’t died. He enjoyed her company even if it was just her voice, but he missed the looks on her face when she knew he was talking out of his ass. He missed seeing her move into action against any foe, no matter how powered. He missed being intimate with her.

Sterling wished he could somehow relive the night they’d had in Moab, their last date.

If only he could have prolonged it in some way.

If only he’d known then what he did now.

The truck rumbled to halt, snapping Sterling out of his reverie. He spotted activity ahead. It looked like a convoy was coming their way. He relaxed some once he saw Omar roll the window down, a friendly smile on the pilot’s face.

The convoy stopped and a woman spoke to Omar for a moment, the two shouting over the roar of engines.

Omar continued on. Sterling removed his hat and stuck his head through the back window of the truck. “What the hell was that about?”

“That? That’s Felicity. She was just saying that the necromancer and his death cult are still in the Walmart. Still within range.”

“Range of what?”

“Bombs being dropped from our aircraft. We have a limited supply at the moment. We have flectomancers making more, but Stuart wants to preserve them.”

“And Jimmy?”

Omar laughed. “That crazy fool wants to drop them on any and everyone in the vicinity. But Stuart has him under control. Don’t you worry.”

“So Stuart is sending us in instead of bombs. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Pretty much, cowboy. The city of Casa Grande has some good bones. He’d probably like to maintain that and turn it into an outer settlement, or a rest stop along the way to the border, the trading stations.”

“With Mexico?”

“That’s right.” Omar bent his neck forward just a bit as he gassed the engine. The truck started going faster. “We should be there soon. Sit back and hold tight until then.”

.Chapter Three.

Approaching at night was the way to go. Sterling could benefit from some of his Techniques, and it gave them the cover of darkness.

Nothing wrong with that, he thought. Nothing wrong with that.

Now outside of Casa Grande, the Walmart in clear view, Sterling and his small crew waited for the sun to set. The temperature drop of the desert at night didn’t bother him in the least. The Kid, however, ended up going with her puffy white jacket just to keep warm as she sat in the shade of a boulder shaped like a lump of whipped cream. There were others like it in the area; Sterling was fairly certain they were petrified sand dunes.

While they waited, Omar pored over maps he had of Arizona and Utah, the pilot pinning them to the ground with stones he had gathered. “And you think you’ll recognize Saltair from the sky?” he asked Sterling.

Roxie, who floated near the pilot, shifted closer to the map as if she were examining it.

<It isn’t hard to recognize from the sky.>

“I can recognize it,” the Sunflower Kid assured Omar. She motioned to her father. “He’ll probably have his eyes shut.”

Sterling snorted a response. She ain’t wrong, he thought as he went back to resting with his back against the rock, his black cowboy hat over his head.

He wasn’t an assassin. That was the thing bugging Sterling at the moment. He had a certain skill set, and sure, he had the kinds of weapons that made it look like he meant business, but he wasn’t a hired gun. And he damn sure didn’t like being tasked with killing someone he didn’t even know.

If he wanted, Sterling could summon Manchester and head north now toward Deseret. It would take him some time, but at least he’d avoid what could be a gnarly fight and a pending helicopter flight. Just watching Omar do math based on the maps he had, the pilot calculating their future trajectory, made Sterling’s skin crawl.

Sterling shifted his focus to his charms after the rattlesnake tail hanging from his belt caught his eye.

It had been a while since he’d received a new charm, but, if he was being honest with himself, Sterling hadn’t really paid much attention to these little bonuses as of late.

The Inquisitor Godwalker, and how it had stripped him and his daughter of their powers, had been at the forefront of his mind. But now, as he examined his charms, he made a conscious decision to find more if and when he could.

His Rattlesnake Tail provided an additional Stat Point per five levels gained. The Leather Bracelet he wore granted one additional Technique Point per level, and his Topaz Necklace gave him one additional Resolve Point.

His Arrowhead Rattlesnake Necklace gave him a serious boost of eight Technique Points per level. There was also the Dreamcatcher he had in his pocket, which gave him a ten percent mana boost. On the same necklace he wore an Amber Ring, the caramel stone with a scorpion inside. This granted him a Class Proficiency Bonus per three levels gained.

Then there was his Carved Bone Bracelet, which provided a thirty percent XP boost per kill. This had been one of the ways he’d leveled so quickly. Finally, there was his Copper BYU Ring, which gave him another ten Technique Points per level gained.

Thinking about these things reminded him of an issue he’d yet to really consider. Most of his charms had to do with gaining levels, something he couldn’t do now. Sterling remembered that he needed something like a hundred thousand XP to reach Level 91.

Even with the thirty percent boost, nothing he’d encountered yet really paid out that much.

Then again, there was always farming XP…

You’ve been sitting here quiet for too long, Sterling thought as a smirk traced across his face. Your thoughts are starting to get funky.

He lit a cigarette. As he smoked, Sterling tried to shift his thoughts to something else. He ended up on peppers, one in particular known as the Barker’s Hot Chili Pepper. This made his mouth water.

“Might need to eat something before we head on down there,” he said.

“Sure.” The Sunflower Kid produced several fruits, apples, oranges, and a watermelon, Buster wagging his tail as she did so.

Sterling wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but he wanted meat, something that would go well with a pepper. “Guess I got to get some of my own.” Sterling summoned some jerky from his list, the last of what he currently had, and ate it with a Jalmundo pepper. This was followed by fruit, the cowboy necromancer satiated once it came time to begin their assault.

<I wish we knew what this necromancer had in store for us down there.>

“You and me both, Rox,” he told the floating monolith. “If Maron was here, we could send a drone or something.”

“If I had more of my powers, I could gather intel as well,” the Sunflower Kid said.

“We could always send one of my animates. I recently got one, as you all know.”

<You did?>

“Yup, that fella from last night.”

<That would certainly give us away.>

“Not if this necromancer’s got himself a truckload of animates already working for him. This death cult of his, or whatever. Hell, that hotshot from the bar last night would blend right in, the damn peckerhead. It’s worth a shot. Send him in one way, see if he can’t get a little something-something, our eyes on the ground.”

“You really think your animate is smart enough for that?” the Kid asked.

“Hell no, I don’t. Especially not this guy. But it could work. And then we can come in guns-a-blazing. Don’t forget Granny gave me that mana grenade launcher. No sense in doing things quietly.” Sterling stood and dusted himself off. “Yup, let’s do this. Omar, you wait right here.”

“You sure?” Omar equipped one of Granny’s mana-powered crossbows. Sterling noticed it had a sight on it.

“Shee-it, you never said you had one of them. How far out can you hit something with that thing?”

“Depends. But a couple hundred yards at least. The scope really works well.”

“In that case…” Sterling looked back at the abandoned Walmart. An orange light flickered on, one strung up over what was once the entrance.

“Is there someone sitting there?” the Sunflower Kid asked.

Sterling equipped his monocular, the same one he’d used earlier to scout the place.

Sure enough, a man was now seated out front. Sterling couldn’t quite see his face due to the man being backlit, but he could tell that the guy was rather large. He wore a duster, not unlike Sterling’s, and from what Sterling could tell, his hair was slicked back.

It was clear that the necromancer had spotted them. Or at the very least, he was looking in their direction.

“Guess we don’t need to sneak up now,” Sterling said. “Stay frosty, Kid. And Omar, keep that son of a bitch in your sights.”

<What about me?>

“Good question. I’d say hold off for just a second. In fact, Rox, maybe it’s best I send you to the ol’ invo list as a last-minute option. Buster too,” he told the Sunflower Kid. “Let’s just you and me stroll down there, and see if we can’t get this sorry bastard and his lackeys to leave of his own accord.”

“I doubt it,” Omar said. “They’ve already tried negotiating with him.”

“Maybe he just hasn’t spoken to the right person. Anyway, worth a try. And if that don’t work, Omar, or hell, Roxie if I need ya—take the shot. I ain’t trying to let this fool get a leg up.”

Sterling and the Sunflower Kid approached the necromancer, his supposed death cult nowhere in sight. At least not upon first glance. There were numerous mounds around him, even more than Sterling had noticed earlier. He assumed they were graves, but they didn’t quite look like them. It was like someone had used a wheelbarrow to move dirt from the desert into what was once the Walmart parking lot.

“That’s far enough, stranger,” the necromancer said once Sterling and the Kid were about twenty feet away. “Now, I’m only going to ask you once. What the hell are y’all doing trying to run up on me here? You hungry? Or you looking for trouble?”

“Neither of them things,” Sterling said with confidence.

“Heh. So you’re just stupid then.”

“Not that either. Someone sent us. The word is that you’re causing lots of trouble for people around these here parts, so they’ve asked me to come and ask you kindly to get scooting.”

The man shifted forward, his face finally illuminated.

A scar traced from his left eyebrow, over the bridge of his nose, and down to his right cheek. There were enough teeth missing in his mouth that Sterling assumed it would be hard to chew something. The necromancer had a bandana tied around his neck, and while the sides of his hair were long and slicked back, the top was thinned out.

“So you’re the peace brigade.”

“We’re more than that.” Sterling swept the ends of his duster aside, revealing his two revolvers.

“So it’s like that, huh?”

Sterling watched as vines rose from the ground beneath the man. As he sneered at Sterling, they silently wrapped around the chair legs and twisted toward the enemy necromancer.

“In that case. It’s best I stand my ground.”

As soon as their opponent said this, mounds around Sterling all shifted at once as the undead tore out of them.

They were much faster than he expected, the zombies reaching him before he could even get a round off.

Bang! Bang!

Sterling began firing at a breakneck pace as more zombies appeared out of the mounds. The Sunflower Kid tore through two of them with one of her plant constructs.

Sterling swiveled right and shot another necrotic summon in the face.

Bang!

As viscera hit the air, Sterling was struck by a fist he didn’t see coming.

He went up and back and landed on his ass, losing one of his revolvers in the process.

In his scramble to retrieve it, the enemy necromancer kicked Sterling in the chin. He now stood over him breathing heavily, holding Sterling’s revolver. “Been a while since I’ve seen one of these,” he said as he pointed the weapon at Sterling. “Cut your shit unless you want your partner here to join my army,” he quickly told the Sunflower Kid.

The Sunflower Kid’s vines all began to lower, panic tracing across her face as she locked eyes with her father. “What should I—”

“What the hell are y’all now? Some kind of couple? Biomancer and a necromancer come here to snuff me out? Hell naw.” The man snorted. “Hell naw,” he said as more of the undead gathered around him, all of them menacing. “That ain’t how this here is gonna play out.”

Thunk!

A bolt fired by Omar struck the man in the trapezius. He moved upon impact and fired a shot that clipped Sterling in the arm. The cowboy necromancer fell backward, and as he did he summoned Roxie.

“What the hell!?” the necromancer cried as the miniature Godwalker formed into existence.

He fired several shots, all of which plinked off Roxie’s smooth surface.

She leveled him in a matter of moments, her attack cutting a grapefruit sized hole through the center of his chest.

The enemy necromancer took one lumbering step backward and fell, his animates all losing their life alongside him.

“Are you alright?” the Sunflower Kid asked as she rushed over to Sterling.

“Goddamn that thing packs a punch,” he said as the pain bloomed within him. He had never been shot by his own gun before, but as he often learned, there was a first for everything. The Kid helped Sterling take off his duster. She pushed her hands onto the wound. “Shee-it, I’ll heal,” he said. “Just gonna be a moment.”

The grimace on his face morphed in a smirk as he recalled the time he’d used his grafting power to repair his arm. It had been a while since he’d had to do something like that, and now, as he sat there bleeding out, Sterling remembered why they needed to find more vortexes. He needed his Enhanced Durability Class Skill back just in case he actually lost a limb.

Even though he’d been shot, Sterling had gotten lucky here.

Real lucky.

“Damn, Omar done did us a solid.” He summoned a bottle of tequila. Sterling took a swig from it, thought about offering it to the Kid, and sent it back to his list instead.

<You need to hold on to your weapons better. You could have died.>

“I’m still here,” Sterling told Roxie, instantly feeling the effects of the alcohol. Maybe it was the adrenaline or being shot, but the tequila seemed to be hitting differently now. He felt like he’d had a lot more than a simple pull of the bottle.

Omar approached, the pilot a little breathless after bolting over to them. “Sorry I didn’t shoot him sooner.”

“Nah, Omar, you done real good. Real good. I mean, them Hashknife boys could have just sent you.”

The pilot grinned at Sterling. “They could have, but who would have been bait?”

Sterling laughed, which caused his shoulder wound to hurt. “Damn, I gotta not do that.” He summoned a cigarette he’d rolled earlier and sparked it up. As he sat there healing and smoking, his back pressed against the stinking body of a corpse, Sterling stared up at the night sky.

<You’re seriously going to just lie there and smoke a cigarette?>

“What the hell else is there to do?”

<Get back to Phoenix for one. We need to go to Deseret tomorrow.>

“Tomorrow, huh?” Sterling reached his hand out to Omar, who helped him up. “You done real good, Omar. I’m going to tell Jimmy and Stewie that.”

“It was the least I could do. It was the Godwalker that killed him.”

“You can call her Roxie. That’s her name. If you’re nice, she may even let you hear her voice.”

<He can already hear my voice.>

“I can,” Omar said.

Sterling ashed his cigarette. “Welp, in that case, let’s leave this mess for the Hashknife boys to clean up. The deal is done. We’ll get that letter tomorrow and—I can’t believe I’m saying this—fly to Deseret. I might need another drink. Kid?”

“Yeah?”

“You good?”

The Sunflower Kid looked from the scatter of bodies to the dead necromancer. She slowly nodded. “I’m good.”

“Welp, in that case, let me collect a few of these here before we continue on.” Several of the bodies stood once Sterling approached them. As if he were a drill instructor, he had them line up and examined them.

The smell wasn’t great, but he needed soldiers.

.Chapter Four.

Another hazy morning in Phoenix, the sky the color of sand. From what Sterling had learned, Phoenix had always been a dry place. From the time of the Hohokam onward, people had battled with the elements here. Human ingenuity had won to some extent. But with most of that knowledge lost, nature had started to revert back to its original state.

That was, until the Hashknife Outfit came to town, or more appropriately, took over town.

Using mancers, the Hashknives reworked water supplies and found deep reservoirs. Flectomancers engineered ways for this water to run and operate through existing pipelines, something that was certainly on Sterling’s mind as he washed his face that night at the hotel.

Through hydroelectricity, the lighting also worked. It was dim, but that was mostly so they didn’t attract the attention of the Godwalkers. If the Godwalkers were actually targeting people based on their electric usage or not was anyone’s guess. The post-apocalyptic Southwest operated under a ‘better safe than sorry’ policy.

It truly was a mystery what actually provoked the alien monoliths.

None of this was on Sterling’s mind, however, as he got a full night’s rest and managed to heal himself up.

At one point, well after midnight, he thought about using his blood magic to speak with Don Gasper, or maybe Harjo, but the shaman and the telemancer could wait. With the day Sterling had ahead of him, it was best to get some rest.

After a morning cigarette and leafing through his desert haiku, Sterling joined Stuart and Jimmy for breakfast. As they had been before, the Sunflower Kid, Roxie, and Omar were there as well, as was Buster, who rested at Sterling’s feet as he sat across from the two argumentative brothers.

Their breakfasts were delivered to them by the staff that ran the hotel HQ. Each plate had a trio of over-easy eggs, salsa, and scrambled meat with vegetables. There were a few tortilleros passed around as well, which was a nice touch. Ain’t spicy enough, Sterling thought as he summoned some of his peppers and placed them on the table. He smiled at the two brothers. “Feel free to dig in, y’all.”

Jimmy, who reeked of alcohol, strong enough that Sterling could smell it from his side of the table, scoffed at this statement. He didn’t say anything, however, as Stuart took over the conversation. “We aren’t really pepper people, unfortunately. But thank you for the offer. Now, I must commend you, both of you.”

“All of us.” Sterling nodded to the pilot. “Couldn’t have done it without Omar here. Kill shot goes to him.”

“Yes, I’m aware. But what is important is that the necromancer is gone, as is his death cult. We confirmed this earlier this morning. Which means we have a deal.” Stuart reached down and retrieved a snakeskin leather briefcase. He placed it on the table and smiled. “We are ready to meet with some of these other leaders, starting with the Oracle.”

“It’s kind of funny, you know,” Sterling said as he wiped some of his egg up with a tortilla. “Been thinking a lot about it.”

“What’s that?” Stuart asked.

“You telemancers all seem to start societies. The leader of the Comanche, Quanah? Telemancer. The leader of the Serpents of Paradise? Well, wouldn’t you know, the Oracle is also a telemancer. And you, sir, are a telemancer.”

“This guy is such a fuck—”

“What gave it away?” Stuart asked, cutting Jimmy off.

“They way you control your brother here.”

“He doesn’t control me.”

“Now, I’m guessing you haven’t used your powers on me and the Kid here. It would be hard to considering some of the gear we got,” Sterling said, referring to his hat and the bracelet they both wore that prevented telemancy. “But even if we weren’t wearing them, I’m guessing all you’d do is check to see if we were lying about some of our known associates. And you’d find out we weren’t.”

“So you find it interesting that those who can control the minds of others have restructured society as they see fit? What’s interesting about that? It seems more logical to me than interesting,” Stuart said in an even tone. “What would be interesting is to see how they restructure it. Which is another reason I’m interested in meeting these leaders. I am aware that their organizational structures are much different than ours. Neither of us will be able to control the other, so it will be up to us to work things out in a way that benefits ourselves and those around us.”

“I reckon,” Sterling said as he cut into a pepper. “So where should I tell them you want to do this? To meet? Y’all trying to bring these people down here to Phoenix?”

“No.” Stuart tapped on the briefcase. “It says in the letters. I’d like to meet them in New Orleans.”

“N’awlins?” Sterling gave the telemancer a funny look. “Come again?”

“Jimmy and I have visited New Orleans several times now. It is a good, neutral place for a meeting. Far enough away from our territories that no one will be able to influence the meeting.”

“The Big Easy, huh?” Sterling asked, without knowing exactly why he’d called it that.

“The krewes there have set up quite the society in the French Quarter and the surrounding areas. They even have some of the levies operating.”

“And how would everyone get there?”

“We have helicopters, dumbass,” Jimmy told Sterling, annoyed.

“Yeah, but…” Sterling focused on his telemancer brother again. “How ‘bout you and me just communicate? I don’t know why Jimmy gots to be involved in negotiations. Hell, I’m going to be real frank with you, Stewie. The next time your brother here mouths off to me, I’ll make sure he doesn’t have the means to do so again. Maybe you get what I’m saying here, probably don’t need to read my mind to get my point neither.”

Stuart nodded. Jimmy stood and left the room, a blank expression on his face.

The Sunflower Kid glanced from Sterling back to Stuart. She was trying to tell him something, but Sterling didn’t know exactly what she was hinting at.

Stuart spoke: “We can provide aircraft. Omar will go with you, as will Cedric.”

“Cedric? Who the hell is that?”

“A friend of mine,” Omar told Sterling. “He’s the one who taught me to fly in the first place and repair the craft.”

“A flectomancer?”

“Believe it or not, he’s a pyromancer,” Omar told Sterling. “He lives in Kingman.”

“Actually, Cedric is here now, in a different room,” Stuart said. “I wanted to confirm with you what was happening before I had him join your group.”

“So you want us to fly to Deseret, make some deal with the Oracle, and do the same in Chacho with Quanah, a deal contingent on the three of y’all meeting in N’awlins?”

“Have you been?” Stuart asked.

“To N’awlins? Hell no. I rarely leave my own backyard here.”

Stuart smiled. “It’s different, but that’s why I like it. Jimmy and I go every three or four months.”

“And no one bats an eye at a pair of brothers coming in via helicopter?”

“No. Do you think we are the only group that has expanded their influence and used the strategies and infrastructure of the past to consolidate power? There are others.” The grin on Stuart’s face remained. “This is one of the reasons I’m interested in an alliance. The Southwest has nothing like this. If it did, we could begin to rebuild even with the threat of Godwalkers. And regarding them, it seems to me like you have figured out a way to stop them. That information should be something that is celebrated, spread far and wide. So that’s what I’m suggesting.”

“When? When would you want to meet there?” asked Sterling.

“How about a week from now, give or take. I realize with these things that planning can be difficult. But let’s set the date for around a week from now. We will be there anyway. Now,” Stuart motioned to their food. “We should finish the meal before breakfast gets cold.”

Sterling kept his eyes glued shut. He could feel this shift in gravity as their helicopter rose into the air. This was followed by the roar of wind, the drop in his stomach. The fact that Omar and his counterpart, Cedric, were speaking with relative ease didn’t comfort the cowboy necromancer in the least.

He could take on a Godwalker a hundred times his size. He could stare into the vacuous eye holes of a snake amalgamation. The toughest, most dangerous mancer could be standing across from him ready to mow Sterling down and he wouldn’t flinch.

None of that was like flying.

He kept his head down. Sterling tried not to think of the fact he was in the air. He did his best not to think about just how far away from the ground they were. He could fly. Get it together, dammit, he thought. Even if the craft was hit, Sterling could hover to the ground.

This thought still didn’t mitigate the fear he felt.

“You alright back there, cowboy?” Cedric called to him. Omar’s co-pilot had a bit of a country twang. In terms of appearance, he looked like he could be Omar’s brother, both men with dark curly hair and slightly olive skin. The only difference was Cedric’s eyes, a bright blue, so blue that they made him look magical. That, and he was tall, much taller than anyone Sterling had encountered recently.

“Just get us to Saltair in one piece,” Sterling mumbled.

“Be ready for some turbulence,” he said, his voice loud and clear in Sterling’s headset.

They were in one of the Hashknife Outfit’s newest crafts. It was sleek, and even more updated than the last one Sterling had been in. How their mancers had come up with a mana-powered aircraft was beyond Sterling. He figured that the Oracle’s people would like to take a look.

Hell, who wouldn’t? he thought as they continued onward. This notion caused a smirk to trace across his face. That’s how civilization had done it in the past, and that’s how they were going to do it now.

The grin dissipated, replaced by a gasp as they hit their first wave of turbulence. This seemed to grow worse as they flew over the mountains of Deseret, the craft shaking for hours before it finally started to lower.

Sterling could feel this as well. An easing on the brakes, a subtle shift in the way he was seated, his ears popping. Soon, they were pressing out of the clouds.

“Look,” the Sunflower Kid said as she tapped on Sterling’s legs.

Sterling moved his cowboy hat back and opened his eyes. The rush of light caused everything to go white. For a brief moment, he thought it was on the Inquisitor Godwalker. But then things returned to their natural color, Sterling now looking out over a large city with towering buildings, most of which were in disarray.

Salt Lake City.

He didn’t know if this was what it was, but he was nearly certain of it considering they weren’t set to pass any larger cities along the way up from Phoenix.

How fast were they going?

From his position in the helicopter, it seemed like they were clipping along at a steady pace. But when he focused on the wispy clouds around them, how quickly they pressed away, it seemed like they were going much faster.

Sterling took another look at Salt Lake City.

The roads alone were some of the widest he’d seen, only beaten by the highways he briefly saw in California. He noticed that there weren’t too many buildings in Salt Lake City now that he got a second glance, but they were much higher than the ones in Albuquerque and Phoenix. He could see the remnants of a church and numerous businesses long abandoned. There were tents in some of the streets, visible because of their bright colors.

As soon as the city was there, it was gone, replaced by a thick gray cloud.

That fast.

They came out on the other side to find themselves surrounded by mountains, a huge lake beyond edged in white. It was there, near the shores of the lake, that Sterling spotted the Great Saltair.

It was surrounded by vehicles.

“What the hell is going on down there?” Cedric asked Omar. “Day-um, looks like an all-out war.”

“The Angels must be attacking,” Sterling said, even if he couldn’t be certain. Not at this distance. The Oracle ran much of Deseret. If there was an attack, it was either the Angels of Woe or there had been a mutiny. “Lower us to the outskirts. The Kid and I will make our way in. Omar, you can snipe along the perimeter. Cedric, you good with a gun?”

The other pilot looked back at Sterling, his blue eyes flashing with fire. “I’ve got other powers that may be of use.”

“That’s right. Well, in that case, let’s light these fools on fire once we know what’s going on.”

Sterling summoned Manchester, the cowboy necromancer glad to be on solid ground. Friendlies and enemies identified, he took off toward what he knew was a brewing battle, Roxie zipping behind him. It was evident now, from the way the land in the distance had shifted to the sheets of ice and large plant constructs battling it out that the Angels of Woe had brought their A-Game.

This was an all-out war.

Sterling now had his sickle sword at his waist along with one of his revolvers. The mana-powered grenade launcher was in his hand as well. It was clear who the bad guys were. The oracle’s forces wore all white. The Angels of Woe were in modified armor made from various sporting goods and anything else they could get their hands on.

The grenades would help with that.

As Sterling charged toward them, he saw a spiral of turquoise energy twist down the frame of the weapon as it formed into a shell.

Ka-thunk!

His first shot caused several of the Angels to fly forward. It killed a couple of them too. Sterling slid down to the side as Manchester charged right into the fight, his skeletal steed trampling one of the Angels.

Back on top again, Sterling guided his bone horse away from the fight.

Mancers began to pursue him, Sterling far enough ahead that they couldn’t attack him.

As they chased Sterling, Roxie picked off a few with blistering beams of energy, her blasts shredding their legs and torsos.

Sterling reached the Sunflower Kid, who summoned a couple plant constructs that quickly wrapped around their legs and arms. Others were scorched by Cedric, who summoned fire from the palms of his hands.

The smell of burning flesh had Sterling ready to turn back to the battle.

Before he did so, he summoned all the animates he had gathered up until this point, seven zombies in total. They took a few Mana Points, but he had plenty to go around. And they certainly made his charge back into the fight intimidating. Sterling planned to use this to his advantage as he came to the main theater of the fight again and fired off another round from his mana-powered grenade launcher. He sent it to his list as Manchester reared up and went for a different weapon.

Click click, boom!

The shotgun Raylan had made him packed quite the punch, enough to send an approaching aeromancer backward, the guy swept up into his own turbulent winds.

A bolt of electricity was what ultimately took Sterling down.

The lights went out as he fell from his skeletal steed.

Sterling hit the ground, rolled twice, and couldn’t remember anything that happened next until he awoke to an intense heat around him.

<Get out of there!>

“Rox…?”

Fiery plumes rising several feet from the ground surrounded the cowboy necromancer, Sterling’s face hot, his skin already blistering.

After hastily making sure he had his weapons, Sterling charged out of the fire, only for the flames to dissipate as soon as he reached them. He spotted Cedric nearby, the pyromancer still in his one-piece pilot get-up as he torched bandits left and right. Omar was around as well, sniping Angels that came too close to them. Roxie skidded around him, the front part of her body open as she fired bolts of power at various bandits.

<Get your shit together!>

“Dang, Rox, I’m trying!”

“Thought you could use some help!” Cedric called over to Sterling.

“You damn near barbecued me back there,” Sterling told the pyromancer as he equipped one of his jugs of water. He quickly drenched his head in it and moved back to the fight, his hair dripping wet.

The Sunflower Kid had also done her part to build a barrier. Thick roots now rose from the ground, twisting into a partition that gave Sterling a little cover, and better, a new vantage point.

Sterling floated up to the top of one of the partitions. He saw Manchester on the outskirts of the battle—“Good, Pingo”—and dozens of Serpents rallying. It was clear they were close to driving the Angels out of their territory through the help of a gaiamancer, who cut deep channels through the fight. These channels sucked up bandits and crushed them.

All was looking well until dark clouds swarmed overhead. Bolts of electricity fired from the sky, spawning dozens of miniature alien monoliths.

“Ah, shee-it,” Sterling said.

Godwalkers had appeared.

.Chapter Five.

His grenade launcher in one hand, shotgun in the other, Sterling charged toward the miniature Godwalkers. The animates that hadn’t been shredded raced ahead, providing distractions while Sterling summoned Manchester.

Once he was back on his skeletal steed, Sterling made a wide arc around the alien crafts, who had already started firing on the Serpents. He’d seen a real Godwalker attack before; he’d seen what hundreds of them synced up actually looked like.

This was not that.

These little bastards are being controlled by a technomancer, Sterling surmised. And knowing what he knew of technomancers, what people like Maron had shown him, they had to be in the vicinity.

Find the mancer to eliminate the Godwalkers.

Click click, boom!

Sterling fired his shotgun at one of the crafts, throwing it off its trajectory just as it released a blast of power. This sent the Godwalker up into the air, its own beam of energy slicing through one of its neighbors.

He fired another grenade—ka-thunk!—obscuring the air to some degree as the white dust of Deseret added dust to the battle.

Sterling remembered what Maron looked like when he was controlling electronics. It was like he was channeling something, the man with his shoulders rolled back, eyes white.

A mancer has got to be around here somewhere, Sterling thought as he came over a hill to find a small group of bandits huddled around a woman.

“Bingo.” He bent forward, moving even faster on Manchester now.

Sterling jumped from his horse just as Manchester crashed into the group.

A man with his hair covered in spiked ice moved to engage him, the cryomancer conjuring spikes from the ground. Sterling blasted one out of the way with his shotgun. He fired another shot directly at the man, his attempt going wide and just managing to clip him in the shoulder.

Sterling sent his grenade launcher away and conjured his sickle sword, which he used to cut down the first bandit to reach him. He fired another slug from his shotgun into another.

He felt a sudden cold.

The coldness seemed to latch onto him, Sterling only noticing how bad it was once he felt a biting sensation in his foot.

He fired his shotgun directly into the face of the cryomancer, killing him for good.

His next slug went into the chest of the technomancer, who was so focused on controlling the Godwalkers that she hadn’t fled.

The woman slouched forward; Sterling was too far away to hear the Godwalkers fall on the other side of the mound, but he was certain this was exactly what happened.

He had done it.

The sound of a victory cry caught his attention as he turned back to the main theater.

Sterling noticed something else as well. It felt like his right foot was completely asleep. Sterling lowered his two weapons and looked down at his boot. From there he glanced up to the Sunflower Kid, who came rushing over the hill.

“Are you alright?” she asked as she reached him.

“I think.” Sterling examined his boot for a moment. “Something ain’t right but, welp, I guess that’s just the way it goes.”

“What happened?”

“A cryomancer got me, but I’ll be fine, Kid, I’ll be fine.”

People clad in white clothing and modified flectomancer armor surrounded Sterling and his companions once they reached the outer rim of the Great Saltair. He’d already put Roxie up, but showing up in all black, limping like he’d been shot in the foot, with a biomancer, a pilot, and a pyromancer with him, had a way of drawing unwanted attention.

“Hands where we can—”

“That ain’t necessary,” Sterling told a woman, who had a flectomancer-modified assault rifle. “We’re here as friends of the Oracle. Hell, if you don’t believe me, see if you can’t find Dusty in there and tell him that his old pal Sterling has come to save the day. Or already saved the day depending on how you look at it.”

“D-Dusty?” she asked with a stutter.

“You might know him as the Chronicler,” the Sunflower Kid said.

Something flashed across the woman’s eyes. “Right this way,” she said, Sterling certain that a telemancer, likely the Oracle, had taken over her mind.

This led him to wonder how many people the Oracle could control at once.

The Great Saltair had several thousand residents if not more, the districts around the main building continually expanding. It had satellite branches, like Moab, and even smaller groups like the people Sterling had once encountered west of the city.

That sure had been something.

The woman led them through the settlement, people parting around them to let the group pass. Omar caught up with Sterling. “Day-um, these people always like this?”

“The Oracle is a telemancer.”

“No one told me that,” the pilot said.

“I thought I told you.”

“Should we be staying out here?”

Sterling shook his head. “Nah, y’all are with us. Just get ready for some weird shit.”

Upon entering the Great Saltair, they headed up a spiral staircase to a room partitioned off with white drapes. It was there that they found the Oracle seated on a glorified ottoman, her face obscured by a veil that dropped all the way to her feet. The Chronicler stood near her, maps spread out on a table, a nervous look on the portly man’s face until he saw Sterling.

He sighed with relief. “That was you out there?”

“She didn’t tell ya?” Sterling asked as he came forward to shake the Chronicler’s hand. This turned into a hug, the researcher patting Sterling on the back.

“Boy, am I glad to see you all.”

“Same, amigo. Looks like we arrived at the right time.”

“Yes, you did,” said the Oracle.

“Oracle, I see you’ve been up here micromanaging things.” Sterling tipped his hat to the woman. “Ain’t you lucky we showed up?”

“We are very lucky. To what do we owe the pleasure?” she asked, the woman not moving from her seated position. The oracle had her back to them currently, facing a window on the opposite side of the room. “I can check as well, if that’s what you’d prefer.”

“Instead of peeking in their heads,” Sterling said, referring to Cedric and Omar, “how ‘bout you read this letter first?”

“Please hand it to the Chronicler.”

“Yup.” Sterling produced the letter, the cowboy necromancer increasingly annoyed with the Oracle’s strange behavior. He expected that much by this point, but to not even turn to them? Damn mancers, he thought. They’re all fucked in the head.

The Chronicler read through the letter. By the look in his eyes, it was clear that it was actually the Oracle reading it. The change was subtle, but Sterling had been around enough telemancers to recognize it.

“An alliance?” she finally asked.

“That’s right,” Sterling told her. “A Southwest alliance between y’all, the Hashknife Outfit, and the Comanche. The Hashknife Outfit is suggesting y’all meet in New Orleans in a week from now. They’re willing to share tech to help you get there. That’s what Cedric and Omar are here for, well, that and to caddy us around.”

“You didn’t teleport here?” the Chronicler asked.

“Nope. We flew in via helicopter.”

“Helicopter?” The researcher peered at Sterling over the rims of his glasses. “You aren’t serious.”

“As a heart attack, Dusty. And trust me, flying like that ain’t all that great, but it’s fast, and until we can get teleportation up and running again, it’s the way we have to travel.”

“You are without Roxie?”

“Nah, she’s in the list. She can’t teleport at the moment. The Kid and I have lost the majority of our powers too.”

“How?”

“An Inquisitor Godwalker. Heard of that one?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“It’s a different breed,” Sterling said, “about the size of one of them medium ones, but shaped sort of like a cross. It appeared in Kayenta when we were heading west.”

“Why were you heading west?”

“To see the ocean,” the Sunflower Kid told him. “Sort of a bucket list thing. He wanted to see the ocean—”

“I did see it, and it was nice.”

“—And I want to see the Botanical Gardens in Washington, D.C.,” the Sunflower Kid said. “We were attacked along our way to California. But the Godwalker didn’t injure us. It simply stripped us of our powers.”

Sterling cleared his throat. “It later attacked us near the beach there in Californ-I-Ay, but that’s a story for a different day. That sort of brings us to something else, something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. But maybe that can wait until later. I’m guessing the Oracle here might have some more questions about a potential alliance.”

“These aren’t questions I need to ask you,” she said. “But I will meet with my advisors over the coming days and reach a consensus.”

“So… you’re interested in an alliance?”

“I’ve never been to New Orleans before.”

“Same here. But…” Sterling figured he’d get into the negotiations himself. He didn’t want to, but it made sense. And he believed in an alliance. It had been something he’d wanted for some time in the Southwest. “The tech they have, sharing it is contingent on meeting with the Hashknife Outfit. So that’s, um, something to consider.”

“Is it, now?” she asked, as if she knew he was bluffing. Stuart hadn’t mentioned this part, but it made sense. “We have our own tech too, you know.”

“I bet y’all do. But if that’s the case, and no offense here, maybe y’all should have used it in the fight earlier. It looked like your people were getting slaughtered down there.”

“They were. But the tides were about to turn. I was aware that we’d receive outside assistance.”

“How?” he asked the Oracle.

“My powers. Do you think I merely have the ability to read and control people’s minds? There are higher levels, you know. And as you know, my people have worked to perfect ways to farm XP. It was one of the last powers granted to me, the ability to see glimpses of the future.”

“Then…” Sterling cleared his throat. He really wanted a cigarette at that moment and wished he’d smoked one after the fight. “Then do you see yourself in New Orleans, Miss Oracle?”

“Yes, I do. But I still must consult my advisors. That is the way I operate. Now, I believe you have something to tell the Chronicler.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sterling offered the Chronicler a short smile. “So we were able to gain a portion of our power back after reaching a vortex of mana. Just a big ol’ spiral of energy in the desert of Californ-I-Ay. Figured I’d mention that. But this vortex, I’m wondering if you’d encountered anything like that in any of your research. Some kind of energy point. There’s got to be more.”

“An energy point, you say? A spiral?”

“Yup.”

The Chronicler considered this. “There are numerous spirals used in native petroglyphs. That said, I have seen certain things that resemble more of a tornado in some of the art outside of Moab. These could simply be tornado depictions, but they don’t look like any I’ve encountered in the past. Also, these people rarely chronicled weather phenomena in their petroglyphs. So that may be worth checking out. But there may be something else. We received a report a few days back from the Elder of Icaria that a Godwalker actually crashed in what was once the national park outside of Moab, in a place called Devil’s Garden. Perhaps that would be worth exploring.”

“Sounds like it. So, we head there and wait for the Oracle here to have a word with her people?”

The Chronicler puffed his cheeks out. “A trip on a helicopter to Moab? Yes, yes, I do believe that is what we do. We can leave first thing in the morning. I think it’d be best if we stay in Saltair tonight, just in case there is a retaliation. Also, it’s important that the citizens here see that the Oracle is looking out for them, that she has their best interests at heart. Including summoning some of her friends to help with the fight and the clean-up.”

“Shee-it.” Sterling shook his head, knowing full-well that it was the Oracle speaking through the Chronicler now. “Lady, you got a pair on you.”

“In the end, it is all political,” she said. Sterling glanced from the Chronicler to Omar and Cedric. He could tell by the looks in their eyes that they hadn’t heard this comment, the Oracle controlling their minds. The Sunflower Kid, however, still had her protective bracelet.

“For someone who sees the future,” Sterling told the leader of the Serpents of Paradise, “you missed a key detail.”

“What’s that?”

He nodded over to the Kid. “She’s my daughter. Wish you had told me that earlier.”

The Oracle, who still had her back to Sterling, spoke after a long pause: “It wasn’t the right time.”

.Chapter Six.

Sterling summoned thirty animates chosen from the casualties to help with clean-up. The people of Saltair welcomed the help, only a few of the younger ones scoffing at the fact the undead were assisting in debris removal and burial. Once they finished, Sterling selected seven of the ones in the best shape for his inventory list, to be used for later.

Sterling dusted his hands off. “All in a day’s work.”

He limped back to the Great Saltair, where he would join the denizens of Saltair for a feast, one that saw the large hall filled with tables where people shared a meal family-style. If Sterling and his companions had arrived at this point, it would have seemed as if a battle hadn’t even taken place.

They sat with the Chronicler and the Oracle for the feast, the latter of which never removed her veil and never took a single bite of the meal.

I wish you could read my mind, Sterling thought to her as the bread came. He never was one to appreciate the kind of behavior she exhibited, this ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude. Are all telemancers screwed in the head? Likely.

It was hard not to scowl at the woman, but the food eased his mood.

The bread was warm and smelled great. It tasted even better with butter, which was dished out in thick bricks and used for almost everything. Sterling saw some of the kids using the butter on their meat, most of which consisted of beef and lamb.

“Mister.”

Sterling instantly recognized the woman’s voice. He put his knife and fork down and turned to find Lily Gray, whom he had once saved from a wicked Elder of Nauvoo in western Deseret. She looked better than she had the last time he’d seen her, the woman with a bit more weight to her frame.

“I just wanted to come over here and say thank you.”

“Ain’t no need to thank nobody. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time,” he said, referring to both his sudden appearance in the Salt Flats and his current presence at Saltair.

“Well, thank you anyway.”

After the meal, Sterling and the Kid were given a large space with two rooms, one that was used for visiting elders. Finally, Sterling could take his boots off.

Grumbled to himself once he looked down at his right foot to see that it was black from his toes up to his ankle. Why wasn’t this foot healing? Any of the other nicks and scrapes he’d received were usually healed by this point.

“That doesn’t look good,” the Sunflower Kid said after she peeked her head into the room. Buster came charging in after, followed by Roxie, who seemed to tilt toward Sterling’s foot.

“Don’t y’all go bothering me about this here,” he said as Buster sniffed his boot.

<It can spread, you know.>

“Rox, ain’t nothing spreading—”

<Frostbite. If you can’t heal, you may have to amputate your leg.>

Sterling summoned a bottle of tequila, one that was about half-full. “Y’all are worrying over nothing.”

The Sunflower Kid sat on a chair near the bed and watched him take a swig of the bottle. He wiped his mouth and let out a deep breath.

“We need to get to another vortex.”

“I know that,” Sterling told his daughter as he naturally placed his hand on Buster’s head. “But what’s that have to do with this here?” He motioned to his foot. Sterling knew the answer to this, but he wasn’t about to say anything about it. Sometimes it was in his nature to be ornery. “We’ll see how it is in the morning. And that vortex is probably out there beyond Moab. Maybe that’s why the Godwalker crashed.”

<You really think that?>

“I don’t know what I think,” he told Roxie, “I’m just saying.”

<You stubborn old fool.>

Sterling laughed. “I ain’t that old, Rox. The Reset has kept me young. Just need a fresh shave, you’ll see. I’ll look like a damn twenty year old.”

<Keep dreaming.>

She slowly drifted out of the room, leaving Sterling with the Sunflower Kid.

“We’ll monitor the leg, Dad.”

“I know we will. Sorry. Ain’t trying to bark at ya, Kid. Just don’t need none of y’all fussin’ at me. Been a day. A long ass day. Just like yesterday and hell, the day before that. I can’t tell you what I’d do for a short day, mostly because I don’t know what I’d do. I’d damn sure cherish it, I can say that, though. Damn sure.”

The Sunflower Kid smirked at him. “Try to get some rest, old man.”

Sterling laughed. “Ain’t hard for an ol’ necromancer like me,” he told his daughter as she left the room.

What followed was much needed rest, Sterling sleeping in the next morning. By the time he was up, the Sunflower Kid had already gathered with Cedric, Omar, and the Chronicler. He could hear them as he sat at the edge of the bed the next morning, looking at his blackened toes.

His foot wasn’t healing.

“Damn thing.”

It didn’t appear to be spreading, but the numbness he felt when trying to stand on the foot told Sterling that things might not turn out the way he hoped they would. Rather than join the others, he rolled a few cigarettes. Sterling knew they were waiting on him, but he wanted a moment to collect himself before trying to stuff his frostbitten foot into his cowboy boot.

“Get you fixed yet,” he said, wincing through the pain. A knock at the door caught his attention. “Just give me a damn minute.”

“It’s me.”

“Come in then,” he told the Kid, his voice softening.

The Sunflower Kid now had bright pink hair that framed her face in curls, her cheeks flushed. She looked nothing like she had during the day, the shape of her face entirely different, rounder, with a flatter nose. “Is it still bad?”

“Well, my foot ain’t dandy. I can tell you that. I’ll survive. Let’s just get to Moab.”

The Kid came forward to help Sterling but he shooed her away. “It’s all good.”

“Until it ain’t,” Sterling said. He was a bit wobbly, but he soon made it out to greet the others. There was the Chronicler in his khaki shorts even though it was cold out, Cedric and Omar in their flight suits, and Roxie. As he often did, Sterling caught a glimpse of himself upon seeing the Godwalker.

“You ready to fly, cowboy?” Cedric asked, beaming over at Sterling, his blue eyes gleaming.

“Hell nah. Never will be neither. But I suppose this is what we got to do. Y’all know where you’re going?” Sterling leaned on his good foot. “‘Cause I sure as hell don’t.”

“We’ve confirmed everything,” Cedric said as he pointed his thumb at the Chronicler. “He was quite helpful in that regard. His maps of Deseret are second to none.”

“I do pride myself on my maps,” the Chronicler said, the researcher currently nursing a pipe. “A couple other things. For one, here’s this.” He gave Sterling a bag of tobacco. “Figured you could use some. Got you some other things too.” The Chronicler stepped aside to reveal a bottle of tequila on the table and a bag full of dried meat.

“Shee-it, looks like Christmas came early. What I need to do is get the Kid here growing some tobaccy for me and then dry it out myself.”

“No, thank you.”

“Come on,” he told the Kid. “I know we are in the pepper game doing business under the name Skeleton Man and the Sunflower Kid Peppers, but dang, if we really want to get all the jewels, we should be in the tobacco biz.”

The Sunflower Kid smirked at him. Instead of saying anything, she crouched and began petting Buster, who stood near her wagging his tail. Roxie, who floated near the Kid, was the next to speak.

<You would be a terrible businessman.>

“What the hell, Rox? Why would you say something like that?”

<You’d go through most of your product. You already do with peppers.>

“Well, I mean, we got to set some aside for research purposes and whatnot. Call that a write-off. And then there’s marijuana. Don Gasper would love it if we got into that game. Peppers, tobaccy, and Mary Jane. The holy trinity, if you ask me.”

<Now you’re just being crazy. Can we go?>

“Um, sure,” Cedric said. By the look on his face, this was the first time he’d heard Roxie’s voice.

Soon, they were on the outskirts of Saltair, Cedric and Omar preparing their helicopter. Sterling joined the Chronicler as the older man admired the craft. “Flectomancers are truly a unique breed.”

“They sure are,” he said as he ashed his cigarette. “And so are telemancers. Any word on the Oracle? She gonna play nice or what?”

“She has yet to meet with her other advisors. These things take time, you know.”

“Do they need to, Dusty?”

A hint of humor traced across the Chronicler’s eyes. “No, they don’t. But that’s how humans operate. If we simply did everything that needed to be done when it needed to be done, we’d have nothing to do.”

“Might need to write that epithet down. You got a haiku version?” Sterling grinned at the researcher. It was nice to see one of his friends again.

This grin was soon replaced by a grimace, one that had his teeth pressing together as the aircraft lifted into the air.

Sterling tried to cancel everything out, his eyes clenched shut. Nothing on the periphery, just pretend…

He didn’t know what to pretend, but he eventually settled on this feeling that he was riding Manchester up and down a series of rocky hills. That seemed to help to some degree, Sterling trying not to think too much about the shifts in gravity, or how his stomach kept churning the higher they flew. He also tried not to think about his numb foot. That was going to be a problem. He knew it, but he wasn’t ready to admit it.

They tilted toward the ground a few hours later. Sterling felt a rush in his head, his limbs tingling as everything shifted around him. Sterling kept his eyes clenched shut, and didn’t open them until they were on solid ground again.

“Moab is gorgeous,” Cedric said as the blades started to slow.

“It really is,” Omar agreed.

“Wait until you all see the park,” the Chronicler told them. “That’s where the wrecked Godwalker is.”

The Chronicler was greeted with a warm welcome at the Moab entrance, the guards surprised to see him. “You were just here,” the one on the left said, a woman with a gruff voice.

“I was, I was. And I’m back. Is the Elder in her home?”

“Where else would she be?” Sterling halfway joked. His leg was really starting to get to him, making him irritable. He tried to soften the bite of his tone by going for a question. “Y’all don’t got a movie theater around here or something, do you? Feel like catching a flick.”

“Actually, they do. Well, it’s in the old theater that they’ve repurposed. It’s where I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the Chronicler told him as they continued down the main road of the town.

“Third Kind, huh? Never heard of that one.”

“It’s about aliens,” the Chronicler said. “Apropos, yes?”

The Sunflower Kid laughed.

<You really need to get out more.>

“What the hell, Rox? What does seeing movies from the Before People have to do with getting out? Dang, I just came from Californ-I-Ay. Ain’t that enough getting out?”

<Do you need to use me for support?>

“Use you for what?” Sterling bit his lip. He turned behind him and saw just how much he was dragging his foot. It was extra visible in the red dust of Moab. “I’ll be alright, dammit. Y’all stop fussing over me.”

While Sterling could technically float, he summoned Manchester instead. He tried to mount up and failed. “Just keep going,” he told the others. “I’ll goddamn catch up. I know where the Elder lives.”

“Come on,” the Sunflower Kid said, the teenager a true barometer for Sterling’s mood.

They moved ahead, leaving Sterling standing there next to his skeletal steed. “Don’t you worry about them, Pingo,” he said as he placed his hand on what once was Manchester’s cheek. “Don’t you worry about them none. That foot will heal, hell, and if it don’t… Well, I’ll figure it out.”

Sterling hovered high enough in the air to mount his bone horse. Soon, he had joined the others, the now salty cowboy necromancer keeping to the back of the group.

There were red cliffs beyond, the city of Moab well protected from the elements. The settlers had built the place into a valley, one that was as hidden as it was comfortable. Sterling knew. One of his best recent memories, his night out with Roxie, had taken place in Moab.

What a night…

They reached the Elder’s home, which was quaint and tucked away along the main street just as Sterling remembered it.

The Elder of Icaria was seated on the front porch—Is she always here?—when they approached. The dark-skinned woman wore light blue robes that were kimono-esque and covered in hummingbirds. It was an incredible get-up when combined with her poofy hair, the Elder much more colorful than the boring drapes that the others in the Serpents of Paradise often wore. Near her, currently resting on a cushioned dog bed, was her chihuahua, Evan.

The chihuahua started barking, only to be shushed by its owner. “Short time, no see,” she said to the Chronicler. “And long time, no see,” she told Sterling, Roxie, and the Sunflower Kid.

The Chronicler gestured toward the two pilots. “This is Omar and Cedric. They’re from the Hashknife Outfit.”

“Down south, huh?”

“That’s right, ma’am,” Cedric said.

“They have business with the Oracle.”

“So why are you here then, hmmm?” the Elder of Icaria asked Dusty. “Not that I mind your company. Anyone in Deseret will clear their afternoon for a conversation with the Chronicler, scheduled or not.”

“You flatter me. As to why we are here, the Oracle needs some time to consult her council about a matter involving a treaty. I can catch you up on that later.”

“Yes, I would like that.”

“In the meantime, I figured we would investigate the recent Godwalker that has crashed.”

“We have done some investigating ourselves, mainly Maurice, our best flectomancer.”

Sterling lit a cigarette, the cowboy necromancer still perched on his bone horse. Maurice was the flectomancer who had concocted the XP farm in Moab, the one where someone could repeatedly face off against a bull amalgamation. That had been the main way Sterling had made it to Level 90, gaming the system.

“Ol’ Maurice was out there at the site?” he asked the Elder as he exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“Sure was. He put something together too, based on the weapons he uncovered.”

“You don’t say. Shee-it, looks like we need to pay Maurice a visit.”

“He isn’t at his shop right now,” the Elder of Icaria informed him. “He left for the park earlier, but should be back in the morning. In the meantime, why don’t you all catch me up on everything that has happened since we last met? I feel like you’re skipping over some things.”

“Since we last met, huh?” Sterling took a drag from his cigarette. “I hope you’re sitting down.”

She smirked at the cowboy necromancer. “I believe I am.”

For the next hour and into the night, Sterling and his companions did just that, catching the Elder up on what had happened in Albuquerque with the various gangs there, how the Killbillies had gone to the wayside, the expansion of Comancheria and how they had brought down the terminal in Chaco Canyon. This shifted to a conversation about what had already happened in Arizona, from the discovery of the Inquisitor Godwalker to running the Angels of Woe out of Flagstaff.

It was a lot to take in.

And by the time they finished their meal that night, Sterling was ready for a good night’s rest.

The last thing he expected was to be woken early the next morning to the sound of screams, Sterling pulled from his reverie as the walls came tumbling down.

The Inquisitor Godwalker had appeared.

.Chapter Seven.

The Elder’s home split in two as a beam of energy cut right through it.

Sterling gasped awake to find the ceiling coming down on him, tiles and wood splitting and splintering as everything collapsed. He was buried in the rubble just as another blast brought more cries, the beam of energy strong enough to melt any metal it touched.

“Goddammit!” Sterling burst into the air, the debris flying off him.

His trajectory changed as soon as he was free of the rubble, Sterling going sideways and straight into a chimney. He hit the ground, and finally caught a glimpse of their attacker, the Inquisitor Godwalker, floating defiantly in the middle of town as it charged up for another blast.

Its next attempt seared right past Sterling as he looked around frantically for his daughter.

<We’re here!>

Roxie’s voice to the left brought a wave of relief to the cowboy necromancer. They weren’t in the clear by any means, but the mere knowledge that his daughter and Roxie had made it out alive inspired him to turn back to the Godwalker.

Sterling’s grenade launcher appeared in his hand.

He raced toward the alien craft and fired his first shot. It landed just beneath the Godwalker and did little to disrupt its next attack, one that shredded many of the buildings that lined downtown Moab. He wasn’t the only one to engage the Godwalker, Sterling entirely surprised to see a burst of flames indicating a pyromancer was on the scene as well.

“Cedric, no!” he shouted as the pilot grew too close to the Godwalker.

Sterling all but expected him to be incinerated, yet Cedric managed to bolt out of the way just in time. Why wasn’t the Godwalker leaving?

In his last two encounters, the Inquisitor Godwalker seemed to leave quickly, yet it now seemed hellbent on ravaging Moab.

Rather than fire a single, concentrated beam, the Inquisitor Godwalker released a sphere that produced numerous lasers, all of which cut through the Elder’s incoming forces with relative ease. Insult to injury came in the form of the floating sphere’s final act, an explosion that not only shook the ground but also coated anything in the vicinity in liquid fire.

“What do you think we should do?” asked the Sunflower Kid, who stood near Sterling now with her plant constructs at the ready. “Run?”

“I’m not really the type to—”

The Inquisitor Godwalker tore through more buildings with a blast that left the air writhing with static.

Feeeeeyooooom!

A massive fireball came in from the west and struck the Godwalker.

This tossed the alien craft to the ground, one of its appendages breaking through the side of a brick building. Sterling swiveled around to figure out what had fired the blast only to see another one.

It came from a man with some sort of rocket launcher. The Inquisitor Godwalker disappeared by the third time the man fired on it, the alien craft leaving much of the city in ruins.

“What about the others?” Sterling asked his daughter, breathless, his thoughts immediately going to Omar and Dusty as he tried to settle his troubled breath.

“I don’t know—”

Cedric landed, the man’s fiery form quickly dissipating. He was in his pilot’s suit again, but Sterling was certain that for a brief second, he’d been naked to take his full fire form.

“Did you see that?” Cedric asked, wild-eyed.

“Saw it? Hell, I fought it,” Sterling told the pilot as he took a painful step toward him. “Where’s your better half?”

“Omar is with the Chronicler. They were with the Elder of Icaria.”

“Good. I guess, yep, I guess we best find out who the hell fired that rocket. Kid?” Sterling started to float. It’d be easier to do this than to walk considering the condition of his leg.

Sterling and the Sunflower Kid soon reached the person who had fired the rocket. He recognized the man instantly. It was Maurice, the town’s flectomancer.

“Dang, amigo, where’d you get that thing?” Sterling asked as he admired Maurice’s weapon.

“Made the launcher out of scrap that I found at the crash site in the park. You’d be surprised what’s out there, but to really answer your question, I was able to find some of the parts that these damn things use for their laser cannons. Did a little modding of my own, and now I have this.” Maurice glanced down at the rocket launcher, which was about twice the length of Sterling’s shotgun, a lot thicker as well.  It was made of a blackened metal, and Sterling could see the mana-powered missile inside, the shell with a soft turquoise glow to it.

“And you tested it out?” Sterling asked as he summoned a cigarette he had rolled up earlier. He lit it. “Let me try that again: what I’m trying to ask is how you knew it’d do that much damage.”

“I didn’t know, but I did test it out a few miles from here. That’s what I was doing yesterday. It seems to have done the trick.”

“Do you think you can make another?” the Sunflower Kid asked, surprising Sterling.

He grinned in the direction of his daughter. It made him happy to see that she was just as interested in killer weapons as he was. At least he took her statement this way.

Maurice shrugged. “Make another? I have two.”

“Think you can spare one then?” Sterling asked.

The flectomancer puffed his cheeks out. “Depends on what you got to trade.”

“What if I showed you some tech? I ain’t got much in the way of turquoise and silver, but I got some tech from down south that may interest you.”

“Tech works. I’ll—”

Another of Moab’s guards landed, a woman with a distraught look on her face. “The Elder has been killed,” she reported to Maurice.

“Are you certain?” Maurice asked her.

She nodded.

Maurice settled his breath, the flash of distress vanishing from his face. “Then we must begin the Ward Protocols. Let’s go.”

The Chronicler, who normally wore a tan bucket hat, was holding it over his chest when Sterling and the others arrived on the scene. They found the Elder of Icaria lying on a slab of wood, her chihuahua next to her, her body bruised and bloody. The dog alternated between sniffing and barking, something that the Sunflower Kid took care of as she brought the little animal into her arms.

“Damn.” It was a lament for her death as much as it was a curse for their collective bad luck, the word coming before Sterling could say anything else.

“What the hell happened?” Cedric asked the Chronicler. “I thought y’all escaped.”

“We did. It was that last attack.”

“Last attack?” Cedric looked at Omar.

“That sphere. One of the lasers hit her,” the pilot said. Omar had smudges across his face and his hand seemed pretty bloodied up.

“What happens now?” Sterling asked Maurice.

“Ward Protocols. The next in line takes over the settlement.”

“And who would that be?”

“Me,” Maurice said firmly.

“Dang, I don’t know what to tell ya.”

“No need to tell me nothing, cowboy.” Maurice sent his rocket launcher to his inventory list. “This is the way of our world.”

Evan the chihuahua barked.

“Ward Protocols,” he said as he licked his lips, the flectomancer talking to himself for a moment. “And I’ll have to find someone to give the dog to. Never was a fan.”

“Shit, tell me about it, amigo. I guess…” Sterling took a quick look around at the smoldering rubble. “I guess we can get started on clean-up here.”

“First, we see who is still alive,” Maurice told one of the guards. “We need everyone on deck here. Then, we’ll send a group to the Oracle to let her know of the leadership change-up.”

“I think we can help with that,” Cedric said. “We have helicopters.”

“Is that the tech you were trying to trade me for the rocket launcher?” Maurice asked Sterling.

“Not that, well, not yet, anyway. That’s contingent on something with the Oracle. I do got a few weapons you might want to take a look at though.”

Maurice let out a deep breath through his nostrils. “That makes sense. I would like to see them, though, the helicopters.”

“We’re free to share the tech, or will be soon,” Cedric told him. “The three biggest groups in the Southwest may be set to forge an alliance, and this here is the ringleader.” He nodded to Sterling.

“Shee-it, I ain’t no such thing.”

<You sort of are.>

Sterling smirked at Roxie. “You always were stirring up the pot. Anyhow, after we sort through what’s been done here, the Kid and I can continue on to the wrecked Godwalker in the park. Y’all two can head back with whatever envoy Maurice can muster. We meet back here when it’s all said and done. Hopefully, the Oracle has agreed to parlay on your end, and the Kid and I have more of our powers back on our end.”

“You’ve lost your powers?” Maurice asked Sterling.

“That goddamn Inquisitor Godwalker. That’s what they call that one, likely ‘cause it’s shaped like a cross. It took some but not all of our powers back in Arizona.”

“Why didn’t it kill you?”

“Hell if I know,” he told the flectomancer. “It should have. Been attacked three times now and it keeps sparing us. Damn thing. Anyway, the Kid and I were hoping that there’s what we’re calling a vortex there in the park, some sort of energy point.”

“There’s definitely some energy there. I have never felt mana like that before,” Maurice said.

“That’s good to know. We could really use some of our powers right about now, at least I could.” Sterling gestured to his bad foot. “It ain’t healing.”

“You can’t heal?”

“I can, but I think this one went too deep. You know how it goes. We can heal most things, but some things just don’t work that way. If I had my powers, I could just get myself a new leg.”

Maurice tilted his head a little to the side. “A new leg? How?”

“Grafting, part of my necromancer repertoire.” He swept his hand over the rubble. “Looks like I got a number of legs to choose from. It ain’t pretty, but it takes, and after a while it’s just like it was mine all along. Look here.” Sterling pulled up both his sleeves. “One of these arms ain’t mine. Bet you can’t tell which one.”

Maurice shook his head. “They look the same to me.”

“So, that would be my plan. Get this grafting sub-power back, amputate what needs amputating, and get something new going.”

“I might have something that can help in the meantime. Two things, actually. First, there’s this.” Maurice summoned his mana-powered rocket launcher. “I think the lady here was requesting this one.”

The Sunflower Kid stepped forward and took the weapon. Roxie immediately came to her side to examine it.

<What a great piece.>

“And this is for you, cowboy.” Maurice produced an augmented crutch, one that was clearly the work of a flectomancer. “Made this for an old friend. Well, he died before I could give it to him, so consider it yours.”

“I don’t need a damn crutch—”

“Take it,” the Sunflower Kid told Sterling. “Unless you plan to float everywhere.”

“I don’t like floating neither.”

Maurice stepped closer to Sterling with the crutch. “You really are as stubborn as the last time I saw you. Take this, and let’s get started here. I’ll give you all the info you need to locate the crash site. That said, once you get into the park, it shouldn’t be very hard to find. I don’t know what the hell that thing was that just attacked us, but them real Godwalkers are kind of big.”

.Chapter Eight.

Something told Sterling it was time to see if the little treaty he was working up, the so-called alliance, was going to pass muster with the Comanche. He had gone into this assuming so, but that didn’t mean he was right.

It was night again in Moab. Those who had survived now in homes along the canyon walls of the city. It wasn’t a large place by any means, which led Sterling to yet again imagining what it would be like to the Before People, a desert oasis of sorts perfect for those who loved the outdoors.

He didn’t see any reason to come to Moab otherwise.

Now seated on a metal bench outside of a burger place called Milt’s Stop and Eat—long since abandoned—Sterling equipped the bottle with Harjo’s blood in it. He had a cigarette raring to go, one tucked behind his ear, but figured he’d give his bad habit a rest for a moment as he spoke to the dead Comanche telemancer.

Once Sterling felt comfortable, he focused on the bottle of blood.

Harjo’s face squeezed out the other side. “Sterling?”

“In the flesh. Heh. Barely.”

“What’s happened?”

“Aside from the fact I may lose a leg unless I find another one of them vortexes, not a lot. Scratch that. A lot. A lot is happening, amigo.”

“Where are you?”

“Moab, Deseret, a bit north of where I first met you. Just dealt with an attack from the Inquisitor Godwalker. Came in early this morning and leveled most of the city center. Shit wasn’t pretty. Killed their leader as well.”

“Is that what happened to your leg?”

“Nah. We battled the Angels out past Salt Lake City and a cryomancer got to me. Damn bastard. Hoping to find me a vortex so I can reactivate my grafting power and then find me a new leg. Actually, I already got the leg. It’s in my list.”

“You have a human leg in your inventory list?”

“I sure do. Got a good half dozen dead bodies as well. I’m trying to embrace my necromancer side more these days. Kind of hard without access to my full list of powers.”

“And the rest of your stats? Did they improve any?”

Sterling accessed his information just to check. “Nope, nothing has changed, unfortunately.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Harjo’s form began to waver. Sterling strengthened it.

“Now, aside from catching you up, there’s another reason I’m contacting you. So we’ve got ourselves a potential alliance going here ‘tween the Hashknife Outfit and the Serpents of Paradise. I’d like to hear your thoughts on looping the Comanche in seeing as how I’ve been tasked with bringing everyone together in New Orleans in the near future.”

“Have you spoken to Quanah?”

“Not yet. That’s the next stop on my little shitshow here. You think he’ll be game for something like that?”

“Most of Comancheria has been restored. Now, he’s in the civilization-building phase considering what he’s doing in Chaco Canyon. I don’t see why he wouldn’t.”

“That was my reasoning. Anything to stop the banditry and assholery that seems to run rampant in the post-apocalyptic Southwest.” Sterling lit his cigarette. “Ain’t nobody got time for any more of that nonsense. People are just trying to live. And we’ll do better if we can band together. Civilizations of the past done figured this out. Don’t know why it’s so hard for us to get it together.”

“You seem hopeful.”

“Heh. Something like that. I think this will work out. Then again, if we get these three leaders together you’ve got yourself a trio of telemancers, which, no offense, ain’t something I’m a big fan of. I guess it makes sense though.”

“You’ve become a diplomat.”

“I’ve become someone just trying to figure this shit out and live long enough to see the fruits of my labor. If that makes me a diplomat, I’ll take the title. But I prefer farmer.”

“Pepper farmer.”

Sterling flicked his cigarette, ash falling to the ground. “Shee-it, you know me too well, amigo. Too damn well.”

“And the Kid?” Harjo asked after a long pause. “She good?”

“She’s damn good. Happy as a clam, whatever that means. I don’t know much about her powers, but she seems to have the one that she was missing the most.”

“Roxie?”

“Rox is Rox. Floating around and getting snippy with me, as always. I miss her human form, you know. And I ain’t talking about carnal reasons here.”

“I didn’t assume so.”

Sterling lit his cigarette and strengthened Harjo’s form just for the hell of it. “We used to, you know, Rox and me. I was hoping we’d get to again. Best woman I’ve ever had.” This statement caused Sterling to grimace. Even though Isabelle was no longer there, he still had a soft place in his heart for his wife, whom he hardly knew. “That I can remember,” he finally said.

“And the Chronicler?”

“Dang, you gonna ask for an update on everyone?”

“Yes?”

“Dusty is doing alright. Lost his friend today, so he seems a bit down about that. Can’t blame him there. Didn’t know the Elder of Icaria too well, but I wish it had been her dog that had bit the dust and not her. Speaking of which, we got a dog. A nice one. His name is Buster. He’s over here.” Sterling whistled. Buster approached. “This here is Harjo.”

The dog turned to the blood apparition and cocked his head to the side, his nostrils twitching as he sniffed the air.

“Yeah, I guess it don’t make much sense. Anyway. Harjo, Buster; Buster, Harjo. For more updates, I can’t really help you there. I haven’t seen ol’ Paco since we took down the Terminal. Zephyr is with your people, Quanah’s right-hand lady. Last I heard, Maron is in Madrid with Raylan. Perfect pairing, if you ask me, a technomancer and a flectomancer. You know them two are having a ball.”

“Cool.”

“That’s it?” Sterling asked. “You just wanted an update? What about you? What’s your update? How are things hanging on the other side?”

“They are crowded, but I don’t mind it. Some people can’t handle it. I feel like it’s better than being in your world in some regards.”

“Which regards are those?”

“No Godwalkers here, for one. People aren’t trying to kill me here, and I don’t have to fight them. I don’t have to eat. I can just drift off if that’s what I want to do. That’s what I often do. I feel like I’m dreaming sometimes. It is all so vivid. Back in your world, our world, but before it was destroyed.”

“Are you able to remember your past?”

“Not fully, but I have an understanding, a feeling that I can’t quite place. I wish there was a better way to explain it than that. You said you were in Moab.”

“I am. Currently sitting near an old burger joint.”

“Do you wish you had a burger?”

Sterling looked over at the partially intact sign. Someone had shot it full of holes, and five years had done a hell of a lot of damage to it, but he could still make out some of the burgers and something called a Wagyu Beef Hot Dog. The one that really interested him was the Hatch Chili-Chipotle Fries, that and the Santa Fe Cheeseburger which was topped with grilled green chili, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, and chipotle sauce. Damn near everything looked good. Sterling licked his lips. “A burger? Who doesn’t wish they had one? You?”

“Same.”

“Heh. You’re a good dude, Harjo. Don’t let nobody tell you different.”

“Thanks. And tomorrow? You’re off again?”

“Always, amigo, always. Gonna do a little excavating on a crashed Godwalker. I hope it is worth the trip.”

.Chapter Nine.

The snow the next morning was unexpected. It came sweeping in from the west, little flurries that soon grew into a wall of white. It blotted out the sun, but it ultimately couldn’t hold in Utah’s high desert. By the time it had finished up, the ground was dusted in slowly melting powder. Everything seemed more vibrant than it had been earlier, the air fresh and crisp, the sky gray.

Snow comes falling down.

A layer atop the dead.

Graves buried for now.

Sterling finished his desert haiku and shut his leather journal. He looked out at the others, who had gathered in a hastily constructed building with three walls and a stove. The Sunflower Kid ate an apple, Buster at her side. The Chronicler spoke quietly with Cedric, Omar, and Maurice. Roxie floated nearby, a thin layer of snow on top of her rectangular body.

Sterling approached, the cowboy necromancer using the crutch that Maurice had given him. “Rox.”

<Are you done writing in your diary over there?>

“You best watch what you say, young lady,” Sterling told the Godwalker in a playful, yet stern tone. “And to answer your question, yes, I am. What’d I miss?”

<The pilots are about to take Maurice to Saltair. They’re waiting for the snow to clear up. It doesn’t seem like it’ll be much longer now.>

Sterling squinted up at the sky.

He could see the sun trying to peek through the gray. The first ray of light came a few minutes later, followed by several others. Soon, there was no indication that it had snowed aside from the bit that was left on the ground, most of which had started to melt. The sky had shifted toward a color blue that Sterling had only seen at higher altitudes.

“Welp, best get going.” He summoned Manchester and floated to the top.

The Chronicler went with a dune buggy, the Sunflower Kid joining him. “You sure you don’t want to ride with us?” the older man asked.

“I’m good, Dusty. Ol’ Pingo here can keep up.”

They headed out of town, the Chronicler in front, followed by Roxie and Sterling on his skeletal steed. They passed some of the buildings on the outskirts of Moab, including a modern hotel that had been completely stripped of its parts. Even portions of its concrete walls were missing.

From there it was straight onto a weather-beaten road, where they came to the entrance of the Arches National Park. Adjacent to the Colorado River, the park had more than two thousand sandstone arches, at least according to the park brochure that Sterling had borrowed from the Chronicler. They stopped at the entrance to the park, which consisted of several lanes for cars that fed onto a road that wound its way up the cliff face. The Chronicler got out and poked around.

“Dang,” Sterling said, the cowboy necromancer remaining on his mount. He’d seen the park before in one of his trips to Moab, but he’d forgotten just how unique the entrance was. To someone passing by, it would appear as if the park rangers had simply set up some checkpoints for no apparent reason. Sterling knew this wasn’t the case. As soon as someone made the climb up the cliff face, a whole new world opened up, one thousands of feet above sea level.

The Chronicler approached and looked up at Sterling. “You coming down or what?”

“What for?”

“I was going to go over the map with you.”

Truth be told, the Chronicler had already briefed Sterling. Yet he could tell by the excitement in the researcher’s eyes that he had more to tell him.

“It’s more comfortable up here, but sure, anything for you, Dusty.”

Sterling floated down to the pavement and equipped his crutch. Grumbling to himself, he hobbled over to the small hood of the dune buggy, where the Chronicler had a park map laid out. “Devil’s Garden.” He tapped on his map. “This is where the Godwalker went down. This area has a different significance than just being a place for a resting Godwalker.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I suppose I should back up. We’re on holy land here, and we should treat it as such. The Freemont, the Ute, others—all have left evidence of inhabiting this area. Ten thousand years, if you can believe that. That is how long humans have been around here. You wouldn’t be able to tell it now.”

Sterling looked back up at the solid wall of sandstone ahead of him, one with deep red hues and mineral veins. It seemed harsh, alien, Mars come to life.

The Chronicler continued:

“But Devil’s Garden has a bit of an interesting story. I’m sure they all do, all the stone monuments in this park. In the 1920s, a railroad worker and a photographer visited the area by invitation from a prospector, one from Hungary.”

“I’ve been hungry before,” Sterling joked.

“This prospector had discovered—we’ll use that term, but he didn’t really discover anything considering how long people have inhabited this region—the part known as Devil’s Garden. He impressed the two railway workers, who used photographs to convince Park Services that the area should be a national park. It took a couple years, but by 1929 it was a National Monument, and later, a park.”

“Well, Dusty, I can’t say I needed that history lesson, but I’m glad for it. I missed your historical musings—”

“These aren’t musings!”

“What I meant was, without you around, I just got to figure everything out on my own. That, or ask Rox here. And she’s never been a history buff.”

<Thanks for the compliment.>

“And the Kid here? Welp, she’s quiet. Unlike her chatty-ass father. Anyway, carry on, Dusty. What else do we need to know?”

“Once we get up to the park, you’ll see the La Sal Mountains on your right. Just follow me from there and I’ll lead us to Devil’s Garden. I might need to stop once or twice to reorient myself.”

“Or we could just look for the giant Godwalker sticking out of the ground,” said the Sunflower Kid.

The Chronicler cleared his throat. “Yes, that too. That too. But there is a road, and perhaps we should keep to it, lest we stir the ghost of Edward Abbey. Although Abbey probably wouldn’t mind if we did a little off-roading. One last thing.” He fished in his pocket for something. “I keep meaning to give this to someone, and you seem like the perfect person to give it to.”

The Chronicler produced a small patch, one that was likely sold in the gift shop of the park. It featured a sandstone arch on it and read I Hiked Delicate Arch.

Item: Delicate Arch Patch

Item Type: Uncommon

Description: One Additional Technique Point per level

“It doesn’t do much,” the Chronicler said, “charm-wise. But I figured you should have it.”

“I appreciate that, amigo. I really do.” Sterling put the patch into his pocket. It would be fine there for now.

Sterling thought about taking Manchester up the winding path that scaled the cliff wall, but ultimately decided against it. He swallowed the shame he felt in limping over to the dune buggy and climbing in the front, the Sunflower Kid now seated in back. Even though Roxie hadn’t said anything, he assumed she was judging him.

Y’all just wait, he thought as he settled in the front passenger seat. I ain’t a gimp quite yet.

The dune buggy puttered along, the Chronicler in full-on professor mode as he explained the geography of the park and how it existed because of an underground salt bed, which was the main cause of the park’s strange formations, from its numerous arches to its spires and foreboding sandstone fins.

Cretaceous Mancos Shale, salt domes and anticlines, debris from an eroded plateau known as the Uncompahgre Uplift, layered sheets of Navajo and Endtrada Sandstone—the Chronicler used every word in the book to describe how such a beautiful place could exist.

Sterling would have used different words to describe the park. Breathtaking, beautiful, bold, a home of behemoths and forgotten lore, a skyline made unholy by the Godwalker visible on the horizon, light reflecting off its mirrored surface, the monolith as alien as alien can be.

But the Chronicler’s description worked as well.

“I forget how big them things are,” Sterling said as their dune buggy skittered off the main road and down into a dry riverbed.

“Can you feel the power?” the Sunflower Kid called up to him.

“Actually…” Now that she mentioned it, Sterling could certainly feel something. There was an electric vibrancy to the air, and it seemed to be emitting from the area where the Godwalker had crashlanded. “Same thing in Californ-I-Ay. We’re definitely close.” He looked down at his arm to find the hairs standing up. “Definitely.”

Roxie, who was a few yards ahead of them, came to a grinding halt.

Sterling’s heart leapt into his throat as he saw one of the medium-sized Godwalkers fizzle into existence ahead of them.

“Dang!” The Chronicler yanked the wheel to the side, the dune buggy skidding and kicking up dirt and stone before it finally stopped.

The enemy Godwalker opened at the front, the craft producing a laser cannon.

Roxie had already done the same, but her smaller blast did little to disrupt the floating monolith. Her shot did, however, buy Sterling, the Chronicler, and the Sunflower Kid just a bit more time to get to safety behind a large boulder.

“I really wish I’d had a chance to test this out,” Sterling said as he equipped the mana-powered rocket launcher that Maurice had given him.

He exchanged a wild glance with the Kid, hers a visage of worry, his of someone about to play with their new toy that they had no idea how to use. He’d received an explanation from Maurice, but had yet to test fire the weapon.

“I’ll distract it.” The Sunflower Kid summoned her plant constructs, which tore out of the ground beneath the monolith. One smashed a fist-thick stump into its side, making the Godwalker’s next shot go wide. The blast hit the sandstone butte near them, sending a huge boulder tumbling in their direction. The Kid also managed to catch the boulder.

“Here goes nothing!” Sterling aimed the rocket launcher at the Godwalker and squeezed the trigger.

Feeeeeyooooom!

Sterling flew backward and hit the ground at roughly the same time the Godwalker tilted forward and came down as well. He scrambled to the side to get the rocket launcher again, Sterling’s progress inhibited by his recent injury.

Roxie laid down suppressive fire as the Chronicler came out of hiding, lifted the rocket launcher, positioned it on his shoulder, and aimed at the Godwalker.

Feeeeeyooooom!

His shot did the trick as a top portion of the Godwalker exploded. The top caught fire as the rest cratered the ground, disturbing the normally peaceful park. Sterling got to his feet and leaned on his crutch. He glanced over to the Chronicler and winked. “Not bad, amigo; not bad.”

The Chronicler lowered the weapon. “I never expected to fire something like this.”

“You and me both.”

Sterling hobbled over to the Chronicler, the two joined by Roxie and the Sunflower Kid. The Kid summoned Buster from her inventory list. The dog sniffed the air, and cowered away from the crashed Godwalker. In the meantime, just to get his heart rate down, Sterling rolled a pair of cigarettes and placed one behind each ear. He also took a shot of tequila.

He poured up another. “Dusty?” he asked the researcher.

“I shouldn’t…”

“You should. It’s a goddamn celebration if you ask me. We got one, and did it fast to.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

Sterling poured the Chronicler a shot. “¡Salud!”

“You’re a bad influence,” the Chronicler told him after he’d taken the shot.

“I’ve been called worse. Mostly by her.” Sterling pointed his thumb at Roxie.

<Funny. Are we going to stand around drinking or are we going to the vortex?>

“Just give me a moment, Rox.” Sterling smiled at her. “I’m savoring this. Ain’t often you take down a Godwalker. And I ain’t trying to jinx us here, but next time ol’ Inquisitor comes poking around…” He showed her his palms. “I’ll just leave it at that.”

.Chapter Ten.

The vortex was easier to see once they got closer. Energy spiraled around the Godwalker, partially hiding the bright rays of the high desert sun. Sterling knew what it was immediately, and he could tell as he approached, as his body naturally lifted into the air, that something grand was about to happen.

Brightness swelled around the cowboy necromancer and twisted into a center point, one at the apex of the horizon. By the time he landed, Sterling’s Enhanced Durability, and most importantly his grafting power, had been returned.

Necromancer Class Skills

Death Whisper: Class Proficiency Level 4

Casting Cost: 6 Mana Points

Description: Can communicate with the deceased; blood needed to do so.

——

Resurrection: Class Proficiency Level 8

Casting Cost: 5 Mana Points

Description: Can summon at will, but doing so takes a cut of MP until the animate is relinquished.

——

Enhanced Durability: Class Proficiency Level 5

Grafting casting cost: 15 Mana Points

Description: Enhanced durability and grafting.

——

Death Sense: Null

Description: Able to sense the bodies of the dead around you. Higher levels allow for wider ranges, including remote animating.

——

Mold Manipulation: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Able to manipulate and conjure mold. Higher levels allow for stronger and further reaching creations.

——

Osteomancy: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Description: Able to get an exploratory vision when coming into contact with bones.

——

Soul Absorption: Null

Casting Cost: Null

Description: Temporarily absorbs the soul energy of living things.

Of the powers he still needed, the most crucial was the last one, Soul Absorption. It was still an ability Sterling didn’t fully understand, but it had been what he’d used to charge the mana-powered explosive devices that had destroyed the Godwalkers’ terminal.

But that could wait. Now was the time for celebration.

“Kid?” he asked his daughter, who stood next to him, her head slightly bowed.

“All good.”

“Rox?”

The miniature Godwalker flashed in front of him, excitement in her voice as she spoke:

<I can teleport again.>

“So you mean we don’t have to take that damn helicopter anymore? Hot damn! Count me in.” Sterling nearly took his cowboy hat off and tossed it into the air. “I hate that damn copter.”

<Remember, we can only go places I’ve been before. Unless we have a technomancer and a telemancer combo. So there are still helicopters in your future.>

“Shee-it.”

Roxie pushed ahead toward the Godwalker. <Let’s check out what’s inside.>

“Lead the way,” Sterling told her as they grew closer to the towering monolith. There were reflective panels that had been pried off, likely by Maurice, which created an entrance large enough for a person to crawl through. Once they were inside, they journeyed up in a diagonal direction, their steps amplified by the long corridor. “How far are we going?” Sterling asked the Chronicler, who seemed hesitant.

“It’s important we go deeper, yes, I believe so.”

Buster charged ahead, the Sunflower Kid soon following after the dog. The first thing Sterling noticed once they were deeper in was how cold it was. He’d assumed the paneling outside would at least warm the interior, but it was frigid to the point that he could see his breath. They reached a circular opening, one rimmed in lights that were all off at the moment.

“It’s a cylinder,” the Chronicler said as he peered up at the top. “We can float through it.”

“Float through it, huh?” Sterling motioned his hand upward. “Lead the way then, I suppose.”

The Kid returned Buster to her list and started hovering once it became too steep, the others soon joining her. They were finally nearing the top of the long cylinder when the Chronicler gasped. “The writing. Do you see it?”

“The what?” Sterling stopped floating and looked down at the Chronicler. The alien text on the wall, something he’d overlooked on his float to the top, looked similar to the petroglyphs etched into sandstone across the Southwest. “Whoa. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Whoa is right.” The Chronicler equipped a headlamp and a notebook. He began furiously scribbling down what he was seeing. He glanced up to the top of the chamber. “This could take hours.”

“I mean, we don’t got nowhere else to be aside from supper in a few, so take your time, Dusty.”

“Then we’ll do that. I’ll copy down as much as I can before it gets dark. If I can’t copy them down, I will pry them out. We can do that. You could help,” he told the Sunflower Kid.

“And we should just float here?” Sterling glanced at the Sunflower Kid, who didn’t seem to mind either way.

“Or you can wait for me at the bottom,” the Chronicler said. “Perhaps you could explore some more. There are other chambers.”

“I’d say we could wait outside, but I don’t want to leave you in here alone just in case it’s haunted. Sure is cold as hell, though. So maybe—”

Sterling heard some commotion outside.

<We have company.>

“What kind of company?” Sterling whispered to Roxie. “Friendlies?”

<I don’t think so.>

“Mancers?” Sterling asked.

<A mixed bag.>

“Likely the Angels of Woe, then,” said the Chronicler, his voice with a slight echo to it because of the long chamber they were in. He lowered it as he spoke again. “They have been making advancements in this part of Deseret for some time now. They’re holed up somewhere mid-state. They keep moving between spots; been hard to track them and simply put all of our forces into rooting them out that way.”

Sterling looked to the top of the inner cylinder. “In that case, let’s give ‘em hell. Here’s what we’ll do.” He detailed the first idea that came to mind. “And one more thing.”

“Yeah?” the Kid asked.

“Let’s keep one alive. See if we can’t figure out where their HQ is. I’m not saying I’ll be the one to lead the raid ‘cause Lord knows I’ve got other shit to do, but it’ll be good to know what the Angels are up to. As for all this, Dusty, well, I hate to say we’re gonna have to cut our little research mission short, but that’s what it looks like. Shit, maybe we can have the Kid here strip a few of them panels off before we skedaddle.”

“Yes, that would work.”

“And you could always come back after.”

“And miss the chance to go to New Orleans? I think not.” More noise outside. This time, it sounded like someone was cutting into some of the Godwalker’s metal innards. “We’ll figure it out later.”

Sterling hovered in front of one of the outward-facing panels. The one beside it had been carefully removed by the Sunflower Kid, who floated next to him.

It took quite a bit of mana to fire the rocket, and there seemed to be some recharge time. Firing out of the panel they’d removed and handing it off to the Kid to do the same gave them two chances to really do some damage outside.

A part of Sterling really wanted to head down by himself and clean up shop like he’d done countless times in the past. But this wasn’t going to work. Not with his bum foot, which was something he’d see to after the journey back to Moab.

Nope, he thought as waited for Roxie to get into position. Gonna be a preemptive shock and awe campaign.

Sterling didn’t know where the terminology for his idea came from. Like many of the things he said or thought, it made sense in context but he didn’t exactly understand the context. The phrase worked though, and it would certainly shock and awe the Angels that were stripping parts from the entrance they’d gone through earlier.

“Go get’em, Rox,” Sterling said once the miniature Godwalker flashed into existence a few paces behind the Angels. The front of her body shifted open as they all scrambled to address her.

Her first shot tore through the body of what Sterling knew was one of the mancers.

“You’re up,” the Kid told him.

“I know, I know…”

As the Angels tried to regroup, Sterling fired a mana-fueled rocket out of the open panel at the top of the Godwalker. To do so, he had to halfway shift out of the opening, which meant his lower back took some damage as he was thrust backward into the siding. It stung, but he was more interested in watching his attack do its damage, the explosion taking out two or three more of the bandits.

He handed the weapon to his daughter. “Do your daddy proud,” Sterling told the Kid as the remaining bandits scattered.

“Okay, Daddy,” the Sunflower Kid said in a mocking tone as she took aim.

She waited a moment and then squeezed the trigger, the rocket zipping straight toward the ground. Sterling reached past her with his grenade launcher and fired a round, just to be sure.

As the explosions went off, the Sunflower Kid slipped out of the open panel and swam into the air. She bolted downward, much faster than Sterling would travel, where she was able to ensnare one of the remaining bandits.

Keeping to the side, Sterling floated down to the bottom to find the Chronicler holding one of Sterling’s guns. “I guess I didn’t need this after all,” he said as he handed the weapon back.

“Yup, we got ‘em good. Let’s do a little interrogating, then you can pick out your favorite petroglyphs and we can get moving.”

Sterling and the Chronicler soon joined the Sunflower Kid outside the Godwalker. By this point, she had used her plant constructs to wrap the legs of the last remaining bandit, pinning him to the ground. His arms were pulled back, and vines traced up his neck and cradled his head, their points pressing into his flesh and drawing droplets of blood.

Sterling placed the muzzle of his weapon under the bandit’s chin and lifted his face. “I’d hate to be you right now, amigo.”

Roxie floated behind Sterling and the bandit gasped. He tried to look away, but the Sunflower Kid’s vines prevented him from doing so.

Like the Killbillies in New Mexico, the members of the Angels of Woe seemed to have a thing for bad face tattoos. This guy had plenty, enough that they’d run together into an unintelligible mess.

“That thing is with you?” the bandit finally asked in a gruff voice.

“Rox?” Sterling kept the muzzle of his weapon just beneath the man’s chin. “Yeah, she’s with us. Now that I answered your question, I do believe it’s fair if you answer one of mine. Seems right, anyway.”

The man’s face hardened. “I ain’t saying shit.”

Bang!

Sterling shot through the vines that had ensnared the man’s foot.

The bandit moaned in agony. “What the hell? Let me go you, you—”

“I’m only going to ask you one more time. After that, I’ll shoot your other foot. If that don’t work, I’ll have the Kid here do a number on your arms. Ever had an arm twisted off? I’m going to take a wild guess and say you haven’t. I sure wouldn’t want to experience something like that. Now, what’s it going to be? The foot or some answers?”

“You’ll just kill me anyway.”

“You’re damn right about that. Can’t leave you around to tell the tale,” Sterling said as he put his gun away. He lit one of the cigarettes on his ear. “You smoke?”

“I do.”

“Well, in that case.” Sterling placed the other cigarette in the man’s mouth and lit it for him.

The bandit took a big puff from it. “So, you’re going to kill me.”

“Yeah, one of us will. But how painless we make it is purty much up to you. This is something that could take hours and then days, depending on how we leave you, or it can take just a few more minutes and we can be done with it. Your name?”

“Harmon.”

“Harmon, huh? Ain’t never heard no name like that.” Sterling ashed his cigarette. “I suppose it don’t matter. Now, Mr. Harmon, where y’all holed up at? Clearly you and your angelic buddies love disrupting the peace of Deseret—”

“The Serpents are a cult,” the bandit named Harmon said through gritted teeth as he continued to puff his cigarette. Sterling flicked some of the ash away for him.

“Yeah, I’ll give you that. They’re definitely a cult, but I’ve seen worse, and it ain’t like your group of assholes is any better. So, where are y’all holed up? I heard y’all like changing locations, so give me all three. Do that, and I’ll end this the easy way.”

Desperation flashed across his eyes. “You will?”

“I got no reason not to. I might seem like a son of a bitch at the moment, but I’m not a sadistic bastard. Hell, believe it or not, I’m actually a pepper farmer.”

“A pepper farmer?”

<You aren’t seriously going to tell him your life story, are you?>

“Relax,” Sterling told Roxie as he smiled at the bandit. “That’s right, Harmon. Name is Sterling, and I am indeed a pepper farmer, a good one, too.”

“Sterling.”

“Yup, like silver. Now, where y’all holed up?”

“And if I tell you—?”

“Then you get to say goodbye the easy way. Hell, I’ll even bury you and yours respectfully,” Sterling said, which was a task that he could assign his animates.

“You will?”

“Sure. Now, the locations, Harmon. I ain’t got all day.”

The bandit took another drag off his cigarette, to the point that he nearly finished it. He spit it to the ground. “Thanks for that,” he said, his mouth full of smoke.

“Least I could do.”

“As for the locations…” Harmon steeled himself by sucking a breath in through his teeth. “Yeah, I’ll tell yah. I ain’t got nothing left to lose.”

“No, you don’t. Dusty, you got a pen?”

“Standing by,” the Chronicler said.

“Good. Nice and slow now. We’ll get you sorted out after.”

.Chapter Eleven.

Arriving in Moab reminded Sterling of what was really at stake. To simply appear via teleportation and see what the Inquisitor Godwalker had done lit a fire within, an anger, one he hadn’t felt in a while. Eliminating the Godwalkers had been one of his original goals. He’d done a good job of dealing with most of them, at least from what he’d seen at the Terminals, but they still had a ways to go.

There was also information to share. That was one thing he looked forward to in heading east. How had the rest of the survivors dealt with the monoliths? What was there to share or to learn from the people he would meet in the near future?

Sterling thought about all of these things as he sat on a rocking chair, the sun setting, a local beer in hand. He figured Maurice and the two pilots would be back soon, and he wanted to be out to greet them when they arrived. The Kid didn’t feel the same way, the teenage biomancer retreating to one of the rooms they’d been offered, where she planned to rest with Buster.

The Chronicler was also in one of the rooms, going over the panels covered in petroglyphs he had stripped from the Godwalker. There were several dozen in total, the researcher able to keep all of them in his inventory list. Sterling didn’t know what he’d discover through them, but he hoped it would help. He hoped it would rid the world of Godwalkers for good.

<I’m surprised you’re not writing a haiku.>

Roxie, who hovered near Sterling, shifted toward the cowboy necromancer. He was met by his own reflection in her mirrored outer surface.

“I don’t write my desert haiku at night,” he told her. “That’s a morning thing. You should know that by now.”

<You can write them whenever.>

“I sure can, but I don’t. Gotta be in the mood, Rox.”

<It seems like a great time to be in the mood. I’ll help you.>

“Shee-it, this oughta be good.”

<Waiting for my friends…>

“Too many syllables. Also, well, I guess they’re my friends. I mean, they ain’t my friends friends, but sure, we’ll call them friends, maybe amigos. Maurice is good people, though.”

<You ready for him to fix your leg later?>

“If you are referring to the ‘getting rid of the bad one’ part, hell nah, I ain’t ready. Ain’t nobody ready for something like that. But it’ll have to do.” Sterling looked down at his foot, which was now exposed. It had become too swollen to fit in his cowboy boot. “I’d do it myself, but I want the cut to be clean.”

<You wouldn’t do it yourself.>

“Sure would, Rox. Why you gotta go stirring me up?”

<You stir easy.>

“Heh.” Sterling lit a cigarette. “I’m not letting you get under my skin tonight, not before my surgery. Got to stay positive.”

<At least you have skin.>

Sterling felt a bit of sadness wash over him. He’d grown used to the fact that Roxie’s soul was trapped inside the small Godwalker’s body, but thinking about it made him miss her.

“I like you just the way you are.”

<You’d like me more if I were human.>

“Hell, I’m barely human. This arm here belongs to another man, and now, this foot will be the same. Who is that guy the Before People used to be afraid of? I saw the Halloween costume a couple times.”

<You mean Frankenstein?>

“Yeah, that’s starting to be me, more monster than man.” Sterling saw a glint of something in the sky. He watched it become larger, the sound soon reaching him. “Looks like the boys are back in town.” He used his crutch to stand and removed his cowboy hat.

Soon, the wind whipped all around him as one of the helicopters landed. Omar hopped out and opened the door for Maurice. After the sound died down and the propellers had stopped, Omar sent it back to his inventory list.

Just like that.

“Cedric is staying back in Saltair to teach them how to make these helicopters,” Omar told Sterling in lieu of a greeting. “He’ll be here in a couple days.”

“That’s plenty of time. Well?” he asked Maurice as he approached. The flectomancer had a stoic look on his face that he had come to recognize from the man, a true poker face.

“The Oracle has agreed to parlay,” said Maurice. “She will be in New Orleans.”

Sterling gave the flectomancer two thumbs up. “Hot damn, that’s exactly what I hoped to hear. I mean, she alluded to the fact that this was set to happen, but good. All that’s good info. And now all we gotsta do is get Quanah on the up-and-up, and I suppose deal with what’s left of the Angels of Woe at some point, which I got info on. Regarding the Comanche, shouldn’t be too hard with Zee in his ear. At least I’m hoping.”

Maurice’s eyes dropped to Sterling’s swollen foot. “Did you get your power back?”

“I did. Once we get this one off, we’ll put the new one down there and I’ll graft it on. Then it’ll take a moment for it to set, but eventually, it’ll be like my arm. When do you want to do it?”

“When do you want to do it? I’m not a surgeon, but we do have a guy who can help with that. So it’s really up to you,” Maurice said.

“After supper?”

“Did the Before People eat before or after surgery?”

“Hell if I know. They couldn’t heal like I can though, and they sure as hell couldn’t graft on their own.” Sterling flicked his cigarette to the ground. “Full stomach works for me.”

There was nothing sanitary about the worktable. They did, however, cover it with fresh white linens. In this way, it sort of resembled a hospital, a very post-apocalyptic one.

Maurice stood in an apron next to a British man named Jez, who had some experience when it came to severing limbs. The Sunflower Kid was there, as were Omar, Roxie, and the Chronicler.

<That’s really all the prep they’re going to do?>

“What the hell else should they do?” Sterling asked her.

<Maybe some pain medication? There has to be something left over from whatever old pharmacy used to be here in Moab.>

Sterling took another drink from his bottle of tequila and settled back onto a pillow. At first, he’d been propped up so he could watch the surgery in action. He had decided otherwise, figuring it’d be smarter to bite down on a bit he’d made out of a bandana instead.

It was going to hurt.

Using a permanent marker, Maurice and Jez drew a line just above the infection, halfway up his shin. They would use Sterling’s sword to sever the limb, another reason Jez had joined them. He was a strong man, big as the bull amalgamation that Maurice used to farm XP.

“Just hold still, cowboy. You’ll be one leg less in no time.” Jez lifted the severed leg, the replacement one that had been in Sterling’s inventory list. He brought it up to his ear like it was a phone. “Nah, he’s not in at the moment. Can I take a message? I’m kidding. Grim, I know. But what else do ya want from me at this point? Didn’t think I’d be cutting a man’s leg off today.”

“Let’s just get on with it,” the Sunflower Kid said.

Jez set the leg down. “Right, shouldn’t be too long now, love. I’m fairly decent with a sword, but I guess I’ll save that story for another day. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” Sterling said with the bit still in his mouth.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m goddamn—”

Schick!

“—Aw, shit!”

“Bloody hell, mate, get that other leg over here!” Jez said. “Put it right there.”

“Shit, shit, shit!”

<Focus. You’re losing a lot of blood!>

“Hold it still, you wanker!” Jez told Maurice, or possibly Sterling. “Yeah, right there. Steady now…”

The pain was so excruciating that Sterling barely heard the Brit’s next instruction. “Do your thing, mate. Oi! You paying attention? Your leg is ready.”

The Sunflower Kid helped Sterling sit up. Once he was in position, he looked down at his bleeding stump of a leg and then to the replacement leg that he had stored in his inventory list.

Even as the pain bloomed his power took hold.

Turquoise mana swelled in the air between the two pieces and soon, the skin was stitching together, the bone inside grinding and grafting.

“Fucking ‘ell,” Jez said as he took a step back. “Didn’t expect the grinding.”

“It’s the bone,” Sterling said, the bit now out of his mouth.

“It sounds like it.” Jez glanced around. He shrugged. “Another round of tequila?”

Sterling nodded. Soon, he was nursing the tequila bottle, watching his leg in action. His new toes were still numb, but it was clear that it had taken.

Sterling had survived, he had lived to tell the tale, and he now had a new leg.

All in a day’s work.

The end

Author’s Note

The Cowboy Necromancer series is kept alive by your reviews.

Yes, this one was shorter, but I did this so I could continue the series between some of the other stuff I’m tasked to write. I didn’t want it to simply die at three books. I have more novellas planned, and the next one is up for pre-order. The plan is to get four novellas out total and then see where we can go from there.

I’d personally love to take Sterling all across America (and the world?) battling Godwalkers. We’ll see how that plays out, but I couldn’t do this without your support, your reads and ratings. Thanks for continuing the series and get ready for the next one. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve! – Harmon Cooper

Other Books by Harmon Cooper

I have written over seventy books (!). Here are some of the highlights.

A relic hunter unlocks the power of a dragon in this epic cultivation fantasy!

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GameLit before it was a genre, The Feedback Loop was published between 2015-2018. Volume One collects books 1-4 and has a ton of extra content. If you enjoy audiobooks, it is performed by the legendary LitRPG narrator Jeff Hays.

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