The Wastelander

by Tipsy Wanderer

  This answer took Hyena by surprise. “How could that be?!”

  The shapeshifter fixed Cloudhawk with a searching look. He saw a young man around fifteen or sixteen, scrawny due to years of malnutrition. His rough wastelander features were revealed since his mask was removed, and a mop of long and messy hair sat atop his head. His face was crusted with either mud or dried blood, but in contrast, his eyes were sharp and clear.

  The dark grey cloak he wore was so dirty that it might as well have been a blanket of filth. The trousers he wore were so tattered that they could barely count as clothing. Almost every inch of skin that was exposed was wounded. The belt that held his pants up housed a handful of throwing daggers and a revolver, and strapped to his back was a crudely-made wastelander rifle.

  Demon hunters didn’t use firearms. Everyone knew that.

  The mystical tools they used were often far superior, and besides, wastelander guns and bullets were recovered from the ruins of the ancient days. People of the Elysian lands felt such things were evil and viewed them as taboo. Demon hunters, as well as ordinary folk, were forbidden from touching them. Any member of the holy order seen traipsing about with one was in danger of being severely punished.

  Hyena had never seen a demon hunter, but if they were all like this hobbling mess of a kid, the Elysian lands would be no place to fear.

  “So we’ve made an error?”

  “Yup. I’m not a demon hunter, and I have something important I need to do. So if that’s it, I’d appreciate it if you let me go.”

  Hyena’s melted features twisted into an awkward and irritated glower. “Ms. Hellflower, this – “

  The Academician’s assistant glanced at the exorcist rod strapped to the young man’s waist. Her lips slowly curled into a grin. She threw Hyena a quiet glance, and the Seeker seemed to understand and dropped into a combat posture. He fixed his hard, merciless eyes on the kid.

  When the sense of danger washed over him, Cloudhawk balked in surprise, “What the hell is this?”

  “The Academician was expecting a demon hunter as his distinguished guest. If that’s not you…” Her lilting voice was easy, as though she were speaking with a friend over a cup of tea. She made her way over to a sink and dipped her slender fingers in the water as she continued, “I do happen to be short a test subject for this compound.”

  This hateful woman!

  As Hyena came swooping down on him, his body rapidly changed. Once again, that coarse black hair slithered from his pores, and he became half man, half dog amidst the sound of popping joints. He groped for the boy with claws several inches long at incredible speed.

  How fast was this mutt!?

  Cloudhawk didn’t have time to grab his staff or draw a gun. He only had time to dodge to the side, whereupon he vanished from view. Hellflower, though her back was turned as she washed her hands, seemed to know something happened. Her lips spread in a small smile.

  Hyena was stunned at the suddenness of the boy’s disappearance, but only for a moment before finding his target again. He dropped on all fours and then launched into the air like a spring. His right hand reached out and snatched something from seemingly empty air.

  “Let go!”

  Cloudhawk involuntarily shimmered back into view. His throat was caught in Hyena’s iron grip, and he knew the shapeshifter could crush his larynx with the slightest effort.

  How did the guy do it? Until now, no one had been able to pick him out of invisibility so easily.

  Hellflower turned back around to regard Cloudhawk. “Hyena’s nose is keener than a bloodhound’s. He could track you through the scent of your wounds.”

  Cloudhawk scowled. Smell, then? The invisibility cloak could mask sight and sound, but moving caused blood to drip from his wounds. For a creature like Hyena, that was easy to track.

  “Then, I’ll make you let go!”

  It was getting harder to breathe. His vision was becoming hazy. In his anger, he awakened the exorcist rod he still kept on his waist. It released a blast of energy towards Hyena’s head. It struck the Pathfinder, who shoved the young wastelander away. Cloudhawk stumbled back a few steps and then caught his balance but not before aggravating his injured leg. He collapsed onto his back, pale-faced and gulping air.

  “If you aren’t a demon hunter, why do you have a demon hunter’s relics?” Hellflower looked at him with eyes that seemed to know all. “Your weapon is an exorcist rod, a standard armament in the Elysian lands. If you didn’t have the talents of a demon hunter, you wouldn’t be able to use it – how do you explain that?”

  Cloudhawk just scowled at her. He actually didn’t know how to explain it.

  “He has to be a demon hunter without a doubt.” Hyena slowly returned to human form. “Only, he is pitifully weak. I’ve never fought the Caliph of the Sands, but I suspect he was much stronger than me. If he really did fight the demon, there was no way he could have survived.”

  “That’s one explanation. There are other demon hunters out in the wastelands. In fact, half a year ago, I learned there was a particularly talented one who came from the Elysian lands to search for the Caliph. If he is truly dead, my suspicion is that that demon hunter was the one who did it.” Her voice was gentle and calm. It was as though the violent encounter hadn’t happened at all. “This boy, however…”

  “The both of you are woefully disrespectful.” Suddenly, a quavering and hoarse voice interjected. Its owner was an elderly man in white who hobbled along with the help of a cane. He approached, flanked by two robust lizard guardians. “He is our guest. Why are you making things difficult for our young friend?”

  Immediately, Hyena’s face dropped its fierce expression, and he bowed low to the waist.

  Hellflower, in contrast, didn’t change the indifferent look on her face. However, with the appearance of this old man, she promptly shut her mouth, visibly restraining herself.

  The wrinkled and unassuming old man was perhaps only about 1.5 meters tall. Even Cloudhawk was a head taller.

  If this geezer weren’t a hundred years old, he would still be at least seventy to eighty. He was so emaciated that he looked like skin stretched over bone, and he tottered along as though he might topple over at any moment. He kept his balance with the help of his cane. Sparse white hair sprouted around his head, but a bald spot had claimed most of the territory. Rheumy eyes peered at them from behind thick glasses. His already frail form stopped visibly like he had one foot in the grave. Was this half-dead geezer the Academician? The leader of the Seekers?

  Based on all his experiences in the wastelands, Cloudhawk knew that a leader had to be strong. This old man looked like he’d be bested by a strong breeze. Yet, the likes of Hyena and Hellflower worked diligently for him. It was certainly unexpected.

  “You’re the Academician?”

  “Actually, I have a name.” The skinny fossil chortled at him and pushed his glasses up his nose with knotted fingers. “You can call me Roste.”

  Cloudhawk got the sense that though this Academician Roste was the leader of the Seekers, he was exceedingly gentle. He had the bearing of someone who had experienced much in his life.

  “And the reason you brought me here…”

  “Young man, don’t be in such a rush.” Roste stopped to relieve himself of a few feeble coughs. He didn’t appear to be in the best of health. “I know you’re in a hurry to do something, but as far as I can tell, the whole wastelands are out to kill you. If you leave here now, you’ll only be trudging towards your death. Don’t you agree?”

  Cloudhawk couldn’t say he was wrong.

  “Blackwater Base is very safe. You can hide here for a while. Now that the Caliph is dead, no one would dare to trouble us here.” The Academician looked Cloudhawk over. “You may discover that you’ll learn a lot if you stay among us. Of course, there are also some things we will need your help with. I hope we can assist one another.”

  Cloudhawk thought for a moment.

  The old man Roste made a g
ood point. Continuing his journey now with no friends and potentially thousands of enemies would be difficult, to say the least. What would be the harm in staying here for a little while, out of sight? At the very least, these Seekers were very interested in him, though Cloudhawk wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. At any rate, if they really wanted to keep him here, it was too late for Cloudhawk to resist. It made more sense to keep calm and capitulate for now.

  “Hyena is my most loyal agent, and Hellflower is my most competent assistant. If you should need anything, you can go find them.” His words were interrupted by another series of coughs. The effort made him weak. The old man waved to those around him. “You lot tend to his wounds.”

  107 The Deal

  Academician Roste watched Cloudhawk as he left. His turbid but astute gaze was infected with a fanatical light as if a fire were lit in its depths. It lasted only a moment, however, and then, it was gone like nothing had happened.

  He coughed and leaned on his cane for support. His bodyguards escorted him into the laboratory.

  The old man’s lab looked like a devious slaughterhouse. It was covered in blood and bits of flesh, which a small coterie of workers was busily trying to scrub clean. The air was thick with the cloying scent of gore, and tied to a table was a beefy bald man.

  A man approached, full of deference. “Shall I start?”

  Roste coughed at him then answered, “Begin.”

  The man was the same bald-headed mercenary leader that had chased Cloudhawk through the bog. After taking the beating from Hyena, he had not died and instead was brought into the base’s laboratory. By now, he was awake and stared at his nightmarish surroundings with wide eyes. He looked half mad with fear, unsure of what fate awaited him.

  A pipe had been inserted through his abdomen and into his stomach. Some inexplicable substance was being pumped through it, making the bald man feel like his insides were on fire. He didn’t know what these assholes were filling him with, but he knew it couldn’t be anything good.

  Several more Seekers surrounded him and jabbed more transfusion tubes into various parts of his body. Liters of unknown substances were pumped into him, making the unfortunate mercenary twitch and jerk. To him, it was like they were pumping him full of fire, acid, or a hundred sharp knives. A pain he could not put into words wracked every inch of his body. The cruelest punishment he could imagine paled in comparison to this torture.

  He wanted to scream, but no sound would come out. He wanted to struggle, but he couldn’t move a muscle.

  Every pore was tearing. Every muscle was being ripped apart. Every bone was breaking. His eyes were flooded with blood as the capillaries couldn’t take the pressure and burst. Blood leaked from his pores, and in a matter of seconds, he was covered in it. As the inhumane torment continued, his bones popped audibly again and again, as though he were being remolded from the inside out.

  If he were given a choice, he would have gladly asked for death!

  “This process may cause you some pain.” Roste watched the poor man suffer, his face an expressionless mask. “Don’t be afraid. Take it easy. We are building you a new life, and when you are reborn with the power I am bestowing upon you, it will all be worth it.”

  The Academician and his fellow surgeons ignored the subject’s plight and focused solely on the data. The evidence indicated their chance of success was roughly thirty percent. This bald headed mercenary was a doughty patient.

  He was a good test subject for their important work.

  Roste absent-mindedly fiddled with a string of bones around his neck. The ornament was a string of finger bones fashioned into a necklace. Gruesome though it was, the bones didn’t appear special in any way.

  Hellflower walked ahead. She moved with graceful poise, and her white lab coat outlined her ripe figure, especially her backside. Each swing of her hips was like a metronome, and the men watched her sway with rapt attention. She was a contradiction, being both modern and classical, modest yet enchanting. She was as dizzying as she was a fascinating distraction.

  Cloudhawk was no longer the young and naïve child he used to be. The allure of the opposite sex had dimly begun to intrude on his thinking so he couldn’t keep his eyes from stealing peeks. However, as appealing as she was to look at, he was more curious about the Seekers and their influence throughout the wastelands. “What makes you all different from other wastelanders? Why are you called Seekers?”

  A distasteful expression crossed Hellflower’s face. “We are the ones who carry the flame of the old days. Every true Seeker is loyal to our mission: to scour the ruins for the truths and secrets left behind by the ancient civilizations. Most wastelanders are savages, subsisting on whatever they can get their hands on. Meanwhile, we have spent years researching medicines, weapons, and tools that were once thought to be lost forever, all in order to change the dire fate of the wastelands. If not for us, the world outside would be ten times more barbaric than it is now.”

  Carry the flame of the old days. Scour the ruins for truths and secrets. This was the purpose of the Seekers? This was what made them different?

  Cloudhawk couldn’t understand. “But the world is already like this. What’s the point of digging up some long-dead society’s garbage?”

  “Every day, the world becomes more deformed, more twisted. The wastelands are becoming deadlier, not safer. The Elysian lands, meanwhile, are a place of deceit and hypocrisy. Our goal is to learn everything we can about how this all came to be. What was the world like before everything collapsed? Where did the gods and demons come from? Clearly, humanity had become lost down the wrong path. That is why Seekers are needed, to guide humanity back down the road we were meant to travel. Isn’t that what we’re meant to do?”

  Hellflower’s ideal was a simple one. She wanted to see the world as it had once been.

  Cloudhawk was intrigued. “Interesting. I knew an old man once. He liked to collect things from the old world. He even taught me how to read their language.”

  He mentioned it offhandedly, thinking little of it. However, Hellflower stopped dead in her tracks. Cloudhawk nearly collided with her shapely rump.

  Her expression changed little, but the light in her eyes glimmered with doubt. “You can read?”

  Was that somehow special?

  Wastelander language and the language of the old days were two different things. Over the several hundred years since civilization’s collapse, wastelanders created their own scripts, which differed from region to region. Usually, they were close enough to one another that one could get their point across. However, Cloudhawk had been born with an innate curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and since the life of a scavenger was often spent idly in dark holes, he had learned the ancient words.

  “Come with me.”

  Hellflower turned and led him down another hallway.

  A few moments later, she pulled open a door to a large apartment; it had a living room, bedroom, bathroom, and several auxiliary rooms like studies. All in all, it was a very all-encompassing setup. The living room alone was quite large, and many tables had been pushed together within it. They were covered with medicine vials, specimen jars, test tubes, and so forth.

  Cloudhawk’s keen senses picked out the odd scents wafting through the air, which included strange pharmaceuticals and unidentified materials. Another thing he could pick out was the musty scent of books intermingled with a delicate fragrance that matched the one coming from Hellflower.

  This was her room?

  Hellflower didn’t say anything at first. She brought Cloudhawk through the apartment and into her study where she picked out a decrepit tome from a bookshelf. Only when she opened it did Cloudhawk see that it wasn’t a book, but rather a collection of papers glued together into one large volume.

  “Do you understand what’s written here?”

  “There is a lot I haven’t seen, but I think I can understand the general meaning.”

  He began to translate a paragraph. His trans
lation was jerky, difficult and sometimes inconsistent, but he was still able to get the general gist. Hellflower was truly taken aback by this revelation.

  Yet, she was still suspicious. “And you’re telling me that the man who taught you this was an old scavenger?”

  Cloudhawk never had any reason to suspect the old man was anything other than he appeared. “How could he be anything else? We lived together for seven to eight years.”

  Her face tightened as though she was carefully considering something. “No, that can’t be right. That means the old man… is he still where you came from?”

  “He died a long time ago.”

  “Dead? What a pity!” Her face fell with regret.

  As Cloudhawk watched her, his own suspicions began to form. Were there really so few people who could understand ancient writing? If these Seekers, who knew so much, didn’t understand it, then how could the old man read the words?

  Hellflower continued to press him before Cloudhawk could ask his own questions. “Tell me about yourself. Your history.”

  There wasn’t a lot Cloudhawk thought to hide, so he gave her a brief explanation of what had happened to him. The first fifteen years of his life were uneventful, and he spent most of his time picking through the ruins and hiding in holes. They were long years marked with thirst and hunger as he struggled on the border between life and death.

  The last few months were more eventful than all those previous years combined.

  Hellflower was stunned that this unimpressive child could have experienced so much. She was also interested to discover that he had been traveling to the Elysian lands when they picked him up. When his tale ended, her erudite eyes flickered. “Let’s make a deal.”

  “A deal?” He replied inquisitively.

  “You are not prepared to make your way to the Elysian lands.” She spoke to him slowly to make sure he understood. “On the one hand, you’re too weak, and on the other, you don’t understand the language they speak. What sort of life do you think you could lead under these conditions even if you make it there?”