But somehow he doubted they were listening.
A sea of cracked, moonlit earth spread out before their wagon. At first it looked almost peaceful, welcoming. But the façade quickly crumbled as dust devils and elemental clouds stirred in the distance.
“A ripe waste indeed,” Drexil mumbled.
Ancient fortifications slowly drifted past the wagon: fallen towers, ramparts, twisted balustrades, and enormous, shattered galleries. Entire towns and keeps buried and broken like forgotten toys in a vast sand box.
Michael leaned over the edge of the wagon. Pieces of rusted armor and scrap lay scattered atop the sand, glittering in the moonlight. “Why don’t we stop?” he asked.
Waypman yawned, his eyes still shut. “Too dangerous. Nagra are everywhere. Besides, there’s plenty more where we’re going.”
On either side of them, shattered battlements littered the desert: broken siege towers, crumbling forts, and sand-choked pillboxes. In some places, sun-bleached arrow shafts still littered the sand, most likely uncovered by recent sandstorms.
In the distance, atop a small hill, several catapults loomed against the eastern sky. A group of men stood beside one, poised and ready to fire.
“There’ are men out there!” Michael said.
The gob chuckled. “Nothing but dead men, kid.”
As they drew closer, Michael realized what he meant. Ice encased their bodies, cracked and covered in sand. “By the gods,” he whispered.
Within the call the Balastrand spread out before them. A belt of ancient farmland, it had once been home to over a quarter million souls. But now only blackened soil remained.
Michael shivered as the desert wind cast fingers of sand across the cracked ground. Since departing, the temperature had dropped to near freezing. “And it’ll get colder, count on that,” Waypman told him when he noticed Michael’s chattering teeth.
Michael tightened the collar on his laptane suit, salvaging as much body heat as he could. Beside him, the gob and Garfaxman snored peacefully, indifferent to the frost now crusting their blankets. Michael sighed. Sleep had eluded him thus far; whenever he closed his eyes, he was back inside that stinking shack.
Frustrated, he turned his attention to the north, where dozens of hovels sat nestled atop a small ridge. As the wagon drew closer, he noticed more figures encapsulated in ice. Like macabre statues, they stood in various poses: One had its arms raised above its head, and another knelt beside a child, shielding it from whatever horror approached. Dozens more loomed within the structures, frozen in silent repose as they slept or ate.
Michael tensed as they crested the next rise. Hundreds of hulking shadows dotted the frozen landscape below.
“Bison,” the Garfaxman said.
Michael turned to him. The mutant sat staring across the desert, his eyes wide, diligent.
“I thought they were all dead?”
“They are,” Waypman replied. “These have probably been frozen since the war.”
Michael stood up as they passed the ghostly herd. In the moonlight, they looked like relics left over from a sculptor’s dream. Does the same fate await us? he wondered as the dead herd slowly vanished behind them.
Inside some of the closest hovels, shadows shifted and slithered like living oil. More than once, Michael noticed pairs of glowing eyes winking in and out of existence as they rolled past.
“Get lower, you damn fool,” the Charger hissed. “Things dwell here best left undisturbed.”
Michael hunkered down beneath his blanket, drawing his knees to his chest. The wraith was right, of course. And of all the dangers lurking out there, it was the one unseen that frightened Michael most.
Nagra, he thought. That mindless organism that lay in wait beneath the sand, its massive jaws opened like a bear trap. Step on one and you’d find a slow and agonizing death deep beneath the sands. For the creature infused itself with its victim, drawing life from it like a Tritan battery until its dying day.
Michael shivered at the thought. Not more than a week ago, a man had been found inside a male nagra dating back almost sixty turns. The poor bastard had been a vegetable, of course, but his body had thrived inside the beast.
It was one of the worst legacies from the Meridium War. A weapon concocted and loosed by Tritan breeders for mere profit. Even now, a hundred turns after the war’s end, dozens of souls were lost to them every month. And that’s just a number culled from witnesses, Michael thought. Many went to their deaths unknown and unaccounted for: scrappers, nomads, exiles, and plunderers. How many of those still lived entombed beneath the sands, forever bound to a slumbering, sucking parasite?
To the north, an enormous black field slowly spread out beneath the horizon.
“Ahhh,” the gob whispered. “We are here.”
Michael’s chest tightened. “So soon?”
Drexil chuckled as he slowly scraped a dagger across a piece of scratched, orange rock. “You feel it, too, don’t you?”
“What?” Michael asked.
“The reaper’s scythe,” Drexil said. “Swinging closer with your every breath.”
Waypman awoke with a yawn and took in the ominous surroundings. “Not the most welcoming of places, now is it?”
“Black gold, squiddy,” Drexil mumbled. “Don’t knock it.”
Thousands of charred trees stood twisted and tangled before them, their leafless, black silhouettes clawing at the moonlit sky.
“Looks like a low level elemental to the east,” Harold said as a crimson cloud rolled past the moon. A dull thunderclap rumbled within, followed by a vein of blue lightning that streaked across the sky, illuminating the dead forest below.
“Amazing!” Harold breathed. The young mystic warbled clumsily to his feet, his bamboo staff clenched in a white-knuckled hand. “Over a hundred turns old, and still the storms roam free.”
“Petty magic,” the Charger grumbled. “Probably cast by one such as yourself.”
Harold’s cheeks blushed with anger, but he remained silent. He was too awestruck to speak.
Drexil spit on his sharpening stone, rubbing the blade harder against its course surface.
“You gonna keep that up all night?” Waypman asked.
Drexil looked up from the rock, his watery eyes glinting silver moonlight. “What’s that, squiddy?”
“It’s grating. I can’t hear myself think.”
Smiling, Drexil ran the blade harder across the rock.
Waypman shook his head. “So what’s your story, then, eh, gob? Shouldn’t you be sitting up in that tin shell you call a city instead of scraping by out here?”
Drexil lowered the rock. “What business is it of yours?”
Waypman shrugged. “Just curious.”
“Curiosity isn’t a trait valued by my kind.”
“Is that so?” the Garfaxman replied. “Don’t you want to know who’s watching your back?”
Drexil laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“You think I’ll be watching out for you, squiddy?”
“No more than I for you,” Waypman replied.
Grinning, Drexil kicked his legs up onto the bench. “Very well. If we must chit-chat, I’ll tell you this much . . . I worked as a smithy on Tritan. Apprentice level on the eve of my Grimwa.”
“Grimwa?” Michael asked.
The gob frowned. “You know nothing, do you boy?”
“It’s a rite of passage,” Waypman said.
The gob nodded as he withdrew a gleaming blade. “Took me three turns to perfect this.”
Michael stared at the knife in awe. It was at least a foot long, and its blade glowed a deep purple. When the gob raised it, veins of electricity danced across its surface.
“When our kind reaches fifteenth turn, we must face our greatest test. Whether a smithy or engineer, one must create his legacy: a device that will be passed down from father to son until the metal city falls. This was to be mine.”
“What does it do?” Michael asked.
Drexil sat back, his shoulders noticeably slumping. “It was meant to cut through metal. Steel, iron, any known material on the planet.”
“Does it work?” Michael asked.
Drexil sheathed the blade and tucked it back inside his pack. “No.”
“Well, let’s have a look at it,” Waypman said, leaning forward.
Drexil sighed. “It grows late, and I tire of this talk. We have a long day ahead of us.”
“Come on,” Waypman said.
“Piss off, squiddy.” And with that, Drexil pushed his pack beneath the bench and pulled his lead blanket over his head.
For a time after, the wagon rolled on in silence. The tangle of petrified trees closed in on them, a thousand black shadows scraping across the wagon. Michael shivered and glanced at the Charger. He sat motionless, staring off toward the black sky as if drawn by some unseen beacon. Behind him, the gob slept as Waypman and Harold stirred anxiously beneath their blankets.
“Gonna be a bad one tonight,” Waypman mumbled.
Michael rolled over, his back aching. He had tried sleeping, but the constant jostling forbade it.
“So what about you?” he asked the Garfaxman. “You from the Culver?”
Waypman shook his head. “Jarka. A small fishing village on Garfax’s eastern shore. My family fished laptane and krumisks from the Bay of Miln.”
“I’ve heard of that place,” Michael said. Another polluted hellhole just like this.
“Many have,” the Garfaxman replied. “It was once the ripest fishery in the entire eastern swath. The waters used to teem with schools of krilln and laptane.”
The gob cleared his throat. “Last I heard the place was hit with plague.”
Waypman stared across the moonlit sand. “We moved south before it got too bad. Laptane wasn’t the same there, though; waters weren’t warm enough to attract the big ones. But we did all right.”
Michael sat up, his boredom quelled. “Is it true that the sharks can get as big as felltowers?”
Waypman laughed. “Bigger. And far more dangerous. But it weren’t the sharks we worried about. It was the scags who trolled the coast.”
The gob glanced in the mutant’s direction. “They took them. Your family. Didn’t they?”
Waypman remained silent, his gaze distant.
“Hard luck, fish man. Hard luck indeed.”
Michael watched Waypman as the wagon lumbered on. The mutant’s eyes were trembling, and the gnarled end of his tentacle had curled into a fist.
“It was quick for them,” Waypman said. “That much gets me through the day.”
Michael lay back and closed his eyes. Almost immediately, his parents’ faces drifted up from the void, plague ridden, mad, broken. If only it had been quick for you, Mother, he thought as pain stabbed at his heart. Their faces transformed into a bloody horror, twisting and writhing until they became a single mask: the plunderer. A river of blood trickled down the brute’s forehead, coating his face and eyes. Michael’s heart skipped as the gory mask splashed down into a bottomless, black hole.
Sitting opposite him, the gob continued to sharpen his blade. When he noticed Michael watching, he winked knowingly.
Will it be as quick for me? Michael wondered.
The gob continued to grind his blade, the scrape, scrape going in time with the jostling wagon.
I doubt it.
At first, it began as a faint mist, tiny gray droplets slowly beading atop their suits. But as the thunder grew louder, black rain began splashing atop their backs, sizzling as it interacted with the laptane flesh.
“An anticamouflage elemental,” Harold shouted, his palm outstretched.
Michael sat up, coughing. The black rain covered him and was peppering his lips and face. He spat over the railing, gagging. “Tastes like shark oil.”
“Poison, more like it,” the gob said.
Thunder grumbled overhead as the elemental swallowed the surrounding desert. Seconds later, the wagon was lost in a thick, crimson mist.
Michael stood, horror and amazement churning his guts. Veins of blue lightning erupted overhead, striking the ground at random intervals as swirling red clouds coiled atop the sands.
“Black oil and salt water,” Waypman said. “I saw one of these two turns back, near Incuman’s Vale. It hangs in the clouds until it senses organisms below. Then it falls and kills whatever brush lies underneath it.”
“Wonderful,” Michael mumbled, wiping the oily mess from his face. “I suppose that’ll have to be cleaned up, too?”
“Not in our time,” Waypman replied.
Harold tugged on a flaccid laptane mask. There was a small glass port for his eyes and a large brass nozzle for an air tank. “Put your masks on. We’ll be within sector limits in a few moments.”
“Why do we need those?” Michael asked as the mystic attached a small, brass tank to the nozzle.
“Burn clouds,” Waypman replied. “They’re mostly invisible. One breath and your lungs will blister for a turn.”
Michael quickly pulled on his mask, fumbling with the clasps as he adjusted it to his face. The interior smelled bitter, the laptane oils slick and acrid. I wonder what happened to the last man who wore this? he thought as he sealed it to his collar.
“Don’t forget to connect the canister,” Harold said, his voice muffled by his mask.
Michael picked up the steel tube. On one end, there was threading, the other sloppy remnants of the weld that bound the cylinder shut. When he attached it, compressed Tritan air rushed into his mouth, a foul, coppery tasting wind.
“Breathe shallow,” Harold said. “These storms can last for calls. Men have been known to suffocate during them.”
Michael slowed his breathing, but his heart only beat faster. A hand then tapped him on the shoulder, startling him. When he turned, he saw the gob’s yellow eyes staring at him through a foggy mask.
“Welcome to the Culver, boy.”
Morning sunlight blazed across the sand, its heated, orange rays baking the trash-strewn landscape.
Michael stood at the base of a large dune, wincing as sweat dripped into his eye. This is hell, he thought before driving his cleansing rod into the filthy sand. A dull hiss resonated beneath his feet, as the rod reacted with the contaminated sand. Michael stepped back and watched as steam rose in a wide, twenty-foot arch around him. He didn’t know how the rod worked or whether the effects would last. And I don’t care, he thought. As long as that Charger is satisfied, that’s enough for me.
When the transformation was finally complete, he leaned against the rod and stared off across the shimmering horizon. For as far as he could see, oily residue bubbled and steamed atop the tainted sands, remnants from the night’s elemental storm. In time, it would evaporate back into the atmosphere, only to return when the elemental reached its time lock.
Pointless, Michael told himself.
The rest of the ramshackle party stood in line before the Charger. “Move it,” the wraith shouted as he handed out fresh rods and collected the expended ones. When they were done, Nicodemus knelt before the muddy devices and closed his eyes.
“Arnum trey nix. Ney didan coswa pertax!” he chanted in a hushed voice.
He speaks the forbidden tongue, Michael thought, shocked. Few were allowed to practice such magic. Especially those of the Black Order. But these were sad times. Sad enough that the Overwatch turned a blind eye to the Circle’s past.
Michael watched as the dented driver rods glowed at Nicodemus’s feet. They were their most important tool now. Tritan steel forged for deep contamination purges. A few calls earlier, the mystic had stood atop the wagon with one in hand. “At their core, they hold twists of meridium infused with low-level elemental power,” the boy had said. “Once driven into the sands, the cores release a hundred-foot burst that purges the soil of contaminants. Watch.” With a grunt, he pounded the device deep into the sand. Seconds later, oily steam rose around his feet. “Upon contact with spell traps and
elemental fallout, negative fusion occurs, thus canceling out the contaminants’ power.” The sand surrounding the wagon had hissed and sputtered as thick ribbons of orange smoke curled into the air. When the mystic finally removed the rod, a hundred-foot wide swath of sand laid tan and steaming. “That’s all there is to it,” he said. “Thrust, pull, thrust. Simple as that.”
Michael scratched his mask as he moved toward another patch of sand.
“Could be worse, you know,” Waypman bellowed, jarring Michael from his thoughts. The mutant stood a hundred footfalls to the east, toiling atop a steep dune. “We could still be on those damn lines!”
Above them, the gob lazily prodded the crest of Tribat Hill. When he noticed Michael watching, he lifted his mask and cracked a nefarious grin. “I wouldn’t listen to him!” he hollered. “There’ are nagra signs all over the place!”
Michael halted. “How do you know?”
“I counted ten empty nests already! And there’s bound to be more that the storm’s covered up!”
Waypman waved him off. “Don’t listen to him! He’s just trying to mess with your head.”
Michael nodded. But when he thrust his rod back into the sand, a high-pitched screech emanated beneath his feet, followed by a strange vibration.
“What in the hell was that?” Michael shouted.
Drexil laughed. “One less nagra.”
They broke at noon for lunch of stagnant water and moldy bread. Michael chewed slowly, savoring every meager mouthful as he rolled his driver rod across his lap. If not for the strange, orange glow emanating from its core, the rod would have looked like any other piece of scrap. But how deceiving you are, he thought. With that meridium, you could probably fetch 3,000 coinage on the market. It was something he guessed every Culver worker had thought about one time or another. But few ever dared. For like so many things here, it was an offence punishable by death.
Drexil looked at Michael’s rod and grinned. “These are of my clan, you know.” He gestured to a mark etched at the center of Michael’s rod. “See that there crest?”
Sand and Scrap Page 6
