The Real Treasure was the Friends we Made Along the Way
In the ink-black streets of Oxford, William slips between alleyways. No less frequented by lurking monsters, but less likely to be spotted by a group than the main streets. Singles he can handle. Usually. Flicking his firearm open, he checks his ammunition. Two rounds left. One laced with silver- why not? And the other one of his special experiments. Not something he’d want to rely on in a pinch. Clicking it shut, he spins the chamber until it’s ready to load the silver bullet when cocked.
Oxford is different than he’d expected. London had been all about exporting its culture, colonizing the world and spreading the glory- he rolls his eyes- of the British Empire. This isn’t that. It’s a wealthy town, meaning it has wealthy investors, and they’ve seen to it that Oxford has tastes of other cultures from abroad. Mostly Asians. Fucking Asians, of course they’ve got the University in their pocket. That’s this part of town. Oxford’s own little Chinatown, though you’ll find other little enclaves on the fringes like the Japs or the Indians. The real Indians, not the natives.
The front windows of the little sushi restaurant are smashed in. William slinks behind into the alley, flicking his wand into his hand. Drawing a line of intent between himself and the door, he taps it with the and, switching places. It vanishes from its hinges, and he gently leans it up against the wall opposite it along the alleyway. “Nice and quiet now, don’t need any freaks on my tail.” He steps into the kitchen.
Blood and death. There’s dark stains on the carpet out front, past the small, open kitchen. Dead bodies lie in the floor on or else covered in broken glass. Two of them are dressed like employees. Neither of them look like the shaggy man. Reaching into his coat, he draws out the photograph. Already, many of the connections it draws are stained with the tint of death, men and women who would never live to appreciate its return. Still. This place is far from wealthy, and this photograph is something important to them. William hates taking from poor people.
William had been on the trail of a person of interest. They happened past one another by circumstance, on the day this all started- but before the city went to hell. Wandering Chinxford with an eye out for anything unusual, under the light of day, William had come upon the sushi shop. Good luck reading the name, but he doubts anyone would have had to say more than ‘the Asian fish place.’ It’s not that huge a neighborhood. People were at tables eating, playing some kind of Japanese game, or both.
As luck would have it, a shaggy-haired Jap was making the fish that day. William would have said cooking, but, sushi. At first just stopping in to try some on a whim, William took note of inkling he had while he was there. The man wore gloves, but his sleeves were rolled up, and from a certain angle William could make out the edge of a brilliant red tattoo. Tingling in the back of his head urged him to follow an invisible line with his eyes, leading to the alley behind.
A connection like the one between William and Assassin. This man has a Servant. No way William was going out back to confront whoever was out there alone, or risk being caught peeping. So he ate his fish and left, only to return later that night.
That’s when he stole the photograph. A metaphorical scrap of cloth for the metaphysical bloodhound in his head.
Reaching up, William hangs the photo on the hook he took it from. In it stand the employees, perhaps family or friends who founded the shop together. All standing together in front of it posing for the colorless beige memorial that would now be the last trace of most. “There. Deed of conscience done for the day.” Maybe it’ll make the dead rest easier. Catching a glint in the corner of his eye, William turns to look down. Something is lying underneath the counter. Squatting, he picks up a goddamn seven-foot-long spear. The tip glows red hot, like it just came out of an oven. It’s not the first of these weapons William has found squirreled away in forgotten corners, or carried by the menacing menagerie in the streets. “Lucky find. Maybe good deeds pay off after all.”
Just had to jinx it.
A loud hiss from the doorway sends a chill down the spine, and a rush of adrenaline to William’s limbs. He stores the spear for the element of surprise and twists to face the opening. A towering reptilian biped slinks in, with a crest like an iguana and the physique of a gorilla. Long, lanky crawled alongside its legs, one of them gripping a metal dagger that looks humorously small in its hand, but would be as large as the better part of William’s forearm. A reptilian eye swivels to William, and his opens its toothy jaws to greet him. He doesn’t wait to hear what it has to say.
“Let’s meet out on the dance floor,” rolling over the front counter onto the wider dining area, William jogs backwards, putting a table between himself and the lizard colossus. He- trips backwards and strikes his back on the floor, shards of broken glass failing to puncture Hassan’s suit. Managing not to bang his head on the floor, he twists to the side and finds a hand gripping his leg. One of the corpses on the floor bares a set of fangs up at him, from within a gaunt, sunken face. Several more are in the process of getting up from their positions, laid in ambush. “Shit. I could use some help here!”
Lunging over the countertop, the lizard stabs is dagger through one of the fangers’ skulls. The brawl ensues.
Her eyes shoot open. Around her wrist, the braided length of silk warms up and vibrates. It’s not intentional communication but, attuned as it is to William’s personal foundation, the material reacts to the partner’s emotional state. Hassan’s muscles coil and prepare to spring, like a jumping spider posed to leap. But the swap she anticipates never comes. Huffing in annoyance, and worry, she leaps from the smokestack that has become her most frequented perch. “Disgruntled. If you are in trouble, you should not fight alone,” she chastises her Master, complaining to an audience of spiders nestled within her hair. His misplaced pride may get him killed yet.
Thanks to her cuffs, she can sense where he is. Oxford is not a large city, not compared to the likes of London. Springing lightly through the air in a series of deft leaps, Hassan traverses its interwoven streets, following the vibrations along its web. One could forgive her for believing that she is the only spider that lurks in this cobweb.
Facefirst, Assassin impacts into a lattice of invisible threads stretched across an alleyway. Camouflaged against the dark off the night by mystical properties, her sharp eyes did not catch it before her own speed caught up to her. The force of her impact stretches the web, and then it snaps, and she twirls through the air. Cords remain stubbornly stuck and wrap around her, leaving her in a bind on the grimy alleyway floor. She is not hurt by the landing, nor is she much hindered by the threads. But her pride, that suffers a dire bruising.
Where her arms would be two, they split in half, their false joining coming undone. Claws at the tips of her fingers slice into the cocoon as they stretch in several directions, splitting the pale white hairs with a snapping sound. Then, she sees the black shape crawling towards her from the eaves of the rooftops on either side.
As tall as she is, but larger along the horizontal axis. Covered in a sleek black exoskeleton, a torso that appears almost human emerges from where an arachnid face should be, eight red eyes gleaming in the light of a lonely still-burning streetlamp bouncing around the corner of the alley. An image conjuring to mind cursed Arachne, who engendered the spite of a god. What Arachne viewed as curse, Hassan well may have seen as a blessing. To be closer to her precious ankabuts.
“Affectionate. Was this web your doing, Shaqiqa? Most skillful craftsmanship.”
With a rush of air from between dripping fangs, the arachnid beast hisses her reply. Blue lights dance around her head like fireflies, and the spider looks around, confused. Aggression fades from her stance, and moves closer to Hassan. Sharp-pointed fore legs, designed for impaling, tap against the stone street. Then they reach up, and begin softly slicing their prey free from the cocoon.
“Welcoming. Trouble yourself no more with the commands of that awful man. You are home, sister.” Kipping up from the ground with one fluid motion, Hassan poises herself for another leap. “Urgent. We must go.”
[Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SffcQ26ats ]
Thrown like a discus, the top of a round table smashes into a twitching ghoul, slamming into the wall and bisecting the undead monster. William is just glad that wasn’t him. In a questionable decision, he turns his back to that half of the room, allowing the hulking lizard monster to engage with the fanger-spawn closing in from that direction. Three more lurch towards him with movements as quick as they are clumsy. Even to his untrained eye, these are no true vampires. Just their lower lackeys, here to lay a trap and gather victims for their master.
Disorganized visions play out, tugging at his hands, and William struggles to keep lucid in the middle of the storm. There’s no time to become lost in what might be, so he commits. Shifting his foot back, William thrusts his arms forward. A spear unfurls into his grip to meet the foremost monster head on, driving into its chest. He initially hopes that shoving the wooden haft through will count as a stake through the heart, but the best laid plans of mice and men often blow up in their face.
The tip of the spear blows up in his face. The blast of fire and force ripples outwards from the point of impact, blowing the first ghoul apart and spraying an absolute inferno across half of the restaurant. Heat singes the false eyebrows from William’s face, and sets embers alight in his wig that he hurries to pat out before they catch and ignite. If he wanted to knock himself lucid, that blast certainly did it. His staggering steps backwards are pursued by two remaining ghouls, who advance heedless of the flames that engulf them. Grabbing his spear in both hands again, William brings it up horizontally to fend them off, pushed back by their weight and their grabbing arms.
William is slammed backwards into the wall. Or- no, the wall wasn’t this close. Then, the wall starts moving, it heaves in a menacing breath, and William feels his stomach drop. More than anything, he wishes he had some backup right now.
Somewhere across the city, Hassan weaves her enchantment subtly and swiftly into the essence of a spider beast. Sensing the happening through a shared bond and following the will of their host, a pair of gleaming blue tendrils snake out of the back of William’s skull. They find the hard, scaled surface on the other side of a small gap of air, and burrow within. Spiritual flesh. Barely more intelligent than a single celled organism following its microbial impulses.
Simple enough to follow the pathways and overwrite with a new program. Inhumanly and with a will that belongs not to him nor indeed to them any longer, the trailing circuits split from their original host, connection maintained only on a plane below the real. They stretch out into the space available within this new body. A rudimentary nervous system, with illusory consciousness crackling between their connections. A memory of a memory, and even then scattered pieces. A neural-ghost belonging to a corpse several eons and light years dead, within the neural-ghost of a far fresher corpse. The image’s name and language would not be familiar to any of this world. But violence is the universal language, sublime in its simplicity.
Inexplicably, when it should be wheeling around to pulp William with its arm, the lizard seizes and falls forward onto its elbows. Maybe one of the other fangers got it. Squaring his back against it, William raises a boot and kicks one of his aggressors away. Then he pulls the spear back into his hands and extends it out of the chest of his suit. The remaining ghoul’s momentum carries it onto the tip, which doesn’t explode this time.
The red-hot metal now looks normal, William notes. A little tinge of red creeping up into the speartip from the haft. Recharging.
Gripping it with both hands, he thrusts forward, pushing the haft through the heart of the ghoul. And perhaps his theory about stakes was correct, or perhaps the fire still reducing the living corpse to charcoal has burnt enough away that its muscles have started to shrivel up and die. Either way, it collapses, and he pulls the weapon back within his personal space. Blisters sting his hands from proximity to the fire.
And the fire is spreading. Across boards and rafters it trickles upwards, like water flowing in reverse, consuming everything it touches. Sparks dance in the air, like red fireflies. The structure creaks.
The remaining fanger, shoved away by William’s boot, has righted itself and charges at him. A colossal limb that dwarfs the burning rafters sails over his shoulder and reduces the thing’s face to smoldering pulp. Twisting away, William looks up at the lizard. Its own foes lie fallen around it, reduced to bloody chunks, and now it looks at him. But when he looks into its eyes, something has changed.
It tickles in the back of his skull. A connection that manifested on its own. Like Assassin, his mana flow is now sustaining this creature, usurped from whatever power once held it in sway. With an urgent grunt, it plants a foot against the flaming restaurant counter and cracks it apart, opening a brief route to the back door. William isn’t about to question it, and seizes the moment to leap through. Flames on either side lick his elbows, reddening the skin under his suit with contact burns. But water excreted through the suit’s storage wets it and prevents the silks from catching fire. William is left looking soggy in the kitchen.
With a moment’s thought to spare, he snatches the picture frame from the wall and tumbles into the alleyway. A towering shape emerges behind him, and plugs the hole with its body. Just in time for the structural integrity to fail, and the interior collapse. A rush of sparks and hot air washes around the reptile’s body, the conflagration leaving its front scorched by painful burns.
William slumps against the other alley wall, and the colossus shakes the surface when it does the same. All soot and burns down its front. “No idea why you did that or who’s behind the… the reins, but thanks,” William pant, coughing smoke out of his lungs. He can feel Hassan on the move again, speeding towards his position. Hopefully she knows how to treat burns. If not, they can just abduct a doctor or something in London.
Only a moment’s peace, then the sound of a scream pierces the night air. Two voices, both women. Letting out a sigh, William pushes himself towards the street. Someone else under attack by monsters. To folder full of documents he’d been given claimed this war was supposed to happen in the shadows, hidden from normal people. But between the monsters and the fangers it’s been nothing but collateral damage.
Heavy, tired footsteps follow behind William’s as he peers out of the alleyway. As luck would have it, he’s not the first one to answer the call for help.
[Soundtrack 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0HbGmMjKFM ]
A girl wearing a rough apron that would look more at home on a burly blacksmith, with a pair of goggles pinning her hair to her forehead. She’s wielding a saber in her hand, dancing and pirouetting around a swarm of angry goat-men. Satyrs, with the legs of a goat and the body of a man, though the latter is so hirsute the goat may as well not end until the head and neck. Then, a pair of large curved horns. One lashes out with a kick, and the girl spins out of the way like a dancer, skewering it through the neck with her blade. William knows for a fact it takes a lot to puncture the skin of these things, even the weaker ones like the goats. The ease with which she tears the blade from it and sends the head flying suggests she’s enhanced herself.
Alongside her is a thin, towering man in a ragged cloak and wide-brimmed hat. He wields a massive paddle, cutting arcs through the herd with the blunt tool like a farmer scything wheat. Their fists pound against his shins, to no effect save to let him know where the next target is.
Further down the street, a pair of minotaurs is tromping towards the fight, one carrying a huge maul and the other a battleaxe. “Mr. Rider, sir!” the girl calls out. “Could you prevent those big ones from their approach? I… I can clean up these leftovers!” Falling back to keep the remaining four satyrs in front of her, she stands guard in front of the stairway of a brickwork tenement. For all that her posture speaks confidence in her sword arm, the girl doesn’t sound very experienced.
Cowering behind the stairs is a woman, with a young girl sheltered protectively behind her even as she trembles in fear. The would-be victims, had the girl and her Servant not stepped in.
In a voice with a metallic ring to it, the towering man grunts his acquiescence. Legs like stilts, he languidly approaches the two giant bulls. Yet, like a steam engine getting going, he picks up speed the further he moves, gripping his oar in preparation to strike.
Hassan’s scouting has spied these ones before, in the chaos that is Oxford. Internally, William debates whether to step in or leave the situation to them and disappear. For now, he watches, taking his own mental notes of their capabilities. And where is the third one?
One goat charges the girl from the front, while two move in on either side to hem her in from the flanks. The fourth, possessed by some sadistic will or perhaps a stratagem to divide her attention, wheels further afield to try and get at the civilians.
William’s gun is in hand.
Bending backwards, the girl ducks below a punch. Her leg kicks out and sweeps the charging goat off of its feet, sending it tumbling to the ground behind her. The blade of her weapon lands in the shoulder of the third, swiftly slicing his underarm and severing the tendons that grant him control of the now-dangling limb. In a smooth motion, she uses her arm to cartwheel back and strike the would-be murderer through the eye socket. William recognizes the way she moves; mechanically precise, the fruit of years of muscle memory and a natural intuition, despite the wide-eyed look plastered on her face. As if another’s will is guiding her.
So that’s what the third is doing. The question is, how much active control does the puppeteer have?
One down, three more advancing. The homunculus is up against a wall now. Not really, there are two people between her and the wall. But despite her quaking legs, something urges her to stay. Again, William wonders, is the heroic one her own will or the other’s?
The goats do away with careful strategy and charge her as one group. Mobility is limited by her space, but the girl kicks off the ground and then off of the wall behind her, spiraling over their heads. Another drops to the ground, neck agape and pooling strange ichor out between the cobblestones. The other two show remarkable alacrity, and manage to grab hold of her legs on the way down. They slam the girl into the ground, and the sword is knocked loose from her grip.
William steps forward and raises his arm. It’s automatic. The fruit of muscle memory and intuition, and at least some of it earned. The shot goes off.
Like lightning, a flash goes through the air. A red blur appears and beheads one satyr. Her blade comes around to thrust into the chest of the other, but it impacts a corpse. A silver bullet through one eye. The skull is thick enough to stop a bullet- still gives them a nasty headache, William likes to imagine- but the eye socket is a weak point. The blade is twisted free of the body’s chest, and the swordswoman looks up at William. He’d been standing so still that the robes, partially emerged from within his suit, kept him hidden from her otherwise occupied focus. Another red blur lances towards William- no, not William.
He steps in the way, and her blade stops at his throat. The burned lizard looms behind him, heaving labored breaths. A young woman’s face looks at him, the crook of her nose like an iron sight trained on his eyes. Hers’ narrow. William draws the handgun into his palm and holds up his open hands. “We mean no harm.”
“Ne me parle pas de salades,” with a tip of her head and of her blade, the woman directs William out into the open.
“Huh?”
She finishes her thought without heed of his blank slack-jawed look. “No harm, yet you come with one of the beasts that plague these streets following in tow. What is your game, gunman?”
A menacing hiss breathes hot air into William’s hair, but he tries to motion the lizard to be calm. Swallowing, he remembers to put on his faux-cockney accent. “He’s nah one of ‘em, spite appearances, I assure ya. I’m like your boss there, see,” his eyes look to the girl, who’s getting up and rubbing the back of her head where she hit the pavement. The towering tinman creaks back to her side, dropping a minotaur’s head to help her up. Past them, the woman is at the door to the tenement building, ushering the younger one in. Daughter? Sister?
“An enemy Master? Not a very wise way of begging for your life, monsieur,” the Frenchwoman tells him politely. For all the humanity he sees in her eyes, there’s a cold intent as well. Hassan always warns him that people will go to mad lengths for their wishes. But the humanity is there, and some sympathy softens her severe expression. “Nor very wise to step forward and save the life of your foe. So I hope you understand, I have to wonder about your true intentions.”
“Look ‘ere,” William puts on his best sales-pitch smile, trying to look on the loveable side of smarmy. “I was just hired for a job, see. Proxy Master for some other proper wizard fellow. But I didn’t sign up to watch ah,” he nods his chin towards the woman again, who is hesitantly approaching the girl and her towering bodyguard. “To watch normal folks get gutted inna street by monsters, you see wha’ I’m sayin’?”
“So you came to our aid for their sake?” the woman’s voice is softer, now, but her blade is still at his throat.
“What I’m saying is,” William raises his voice, “Miss?” The rescued woman just finished shaking the girl’s hand and offering her a place to stay in the tenement building. William had been picking up a few bits and pieces of the conversation past red-hat here, and apparently it’s a refuge for those displaced by the monster invasion, now. The girl is awkwardly polite, like a welcome mat. “Miss?” William repeats. “You there, in the street.” She looks up when he calls to her, this time. “I got a proposition.”
All of William’s muscles get tenser when the tin man walks closer, with gravitas far beyond his already considerable size. And that’s with a hunch in his step. The woman departs into the shelter, and the girl approaches behind the shield of her Servant’s side. “Yes?”
“I take it neither one’uv us is too keen on watching these folks get slaughtered. What say we call it truce ‘till whoeva’s doing the monster summoning is put outta commission?”
“We,” the towering one’s voice rasps like rusty metal, “Are already in a position of power by virtue of our numbers. What do you have to offer?”
Good question. “Well,” William jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Assassin here is a shapeshifter. She can infiltrate the monsters, get to the bottom’uv where they comin’ from. Hey? Ain’t that a plan? Then we go cut the head off the snake, so-to-speak.” Complete fabricated bullshit, but he wonders if that might work. Some of the best plans emerge under duress.
“Show your Command Seal.”
“Oh,” William sniffs, “It’s under my clothes-”
“Show,” the old man repeats, “Your Command Seal.” William swallows. The red-clothed woman lowers her blade, but he knows full well she can move faster than he could react. Turning around, he closes his eyes and focuses on making the ‘invisible ink’ less invisible, then lifts up his jacket and short to show the bottom half of the sigil painted across his back. “So he is a Master,” the Rider concludes. “And… an imbecile. To step between Saber’s sword and his Servant… when it ought be the opposite.” Waving a hand, Rider dismisses the idea of alliance, “We do not need him.”
“I believe,” ‘Saber’ sheathes her blade, “That we can trust him.” She turns and approaches the girl, taking her hand gently. “Master, anyone may claim they have come to give aid after the fact. This man stepped in front of my blade as readily as if it were second nature, for the sake of an ally.” Not William’s brightest moment, in retrospect. “This devotion speaks to one’s character. We can trust him with our back.”
The old man makes a dismissive sound, like a steam engine puffing out smoke. “Trust an Assassin with our back… would you?” He leaves it at that, as if no more need be said.
“Well,” the girl says, caught between two opposites and no longer able to sway politely in one direction or another. She pulls her hand away from Saber’s and walks cautiously towards William. “Every build starts at the start. It’s nice to meet you. My name is Sabrina,” she nods her head and performs a curtsy with her decidedly unladylike apron.
“William. Pleasure’s all mine, miss,” he extends a hand, which she looks at briefly and then shakes. William suppresses intrusive thoughts of manifesting a poisoned dagger into her palm. The duelist would put him down instantly.
“We can keep this simple for now,” she goes on to say. “Not teaming up, necessarily. Just a truce, a non-aggression pact. You don’t attack us and we won’t attack you. Does that sound like a place to start?” Sabrina looks around her at all involved.
“A fair proposal,” Saber nods.
“You know my position,” Rider states. “But I do not care enough to… argue this, Master.”
Clapping his hands softly together, William licks hips lips. “That’s settled, then. I’m sure this old tenement will be safer with you around, but ah, we should probably see about putting out that fire.”
The blazing sushi shop has started to lick tongues of flame against adjacent buildings, as the wind picks up the wrong way. Sabrina’s eyes light up. “I have just the thing.”
Minutes later, the rubble is coated in a thin layer of white flame-suppressant foam, and William sets a nearly-empty metal canister down next to Sabrina’s. “Pretty slick invention there, missy. Stay safe out there now,” he wishes her, and they part ways.
Traversing another set of alleyways, William waits patiently for enough space to be between them for Assassin to reveal herself. He’s confident she’ll step in if he’s about to walk into more trouble. What he isn’t expecting is to see another dark shape stalking out of the shadows with her when she steps lightly into view. “Admonishing! That was the most reckless behavior I have seen from you, Master.”
“I mean, I got us an alliance out of it,” rubbing the back of his head, William looks behind him up at the looming green giant. “Two alliances, I guess. And I’m not the only one who brought home a stray.” As Assassin is about to speak and resume admonishing him, he adds, “Your spiders are like family, right?”
Folding her arms, she replies, “Exasperation. Where are you going with this, Master? You only just met this creature. Confusion- I do not understand how you have tamed it. What I have observed paints them as little more than automata designed to create chaos.”
Conjuring his new spear into hand, William admires the blade. Now it is fully charged, glowing red hot again. “A city in chaos. Forbidden fruit tempting those within the kill or be killed,” he reminisces. “… Anyways. Whatever is possessing the lizard feels familiar, somehow. Like a distant half-brother I only just met.” One ghost come loose from a stockpile behind his skull. Maybe there are still survivors in that ancient mausoleum, things that are alive by some standard of living. Even if it’s the same illusion of living as those corpse puppets from earlier. Assassin lets her folded arms fall back to her sides, and her hairs flick like a cat’s tail. She’s calming down, but still searching for what to say next. “What happened, happened,” he concludes for her. “Let’s go home. I could use a rest, and you can introduce me to your new friend.”
“Hopeful. If the force that creates the monsters produces more spiders, I can gather them as our soldiers,” Assassin talks over the fire, turning over a set of blades with meat skewered onto them. While she talks, William rubs burn ointment onto his many, many sores. Similar ointment is being spread across the blackened chest of the Lizard (capital L) by Shaqiqa, the fruit off a quick little heist at a London medical clinic. Though William’s not sure how much it will actually help. He’s hoping they heal naturally, and as quickly as Servants do. Beside them, the large dagger the Lizard had been wielding rests on the floor. As far as William can tell, it strikes with several times more weight than it appears to possess, while being as light as a feather. Simple but effective.
“I’m hoping they can lead us to the source of the monsters somehow,” William answers with his own plan for how to angle this as an advantage. “Whatever it is, it’s seeding these weapons for people to use. I think it wants people to fight the monsters. And each other.”
Picking one of the finished kebabs from the fire, Hassan holds it out for him. “Curious. How did you come to that conclusion?” William takes it. Meat, mushrooms, vegetables, grilled just right.
“A hunch,” he admits. “But I’ve found items like this in places nobody would leave them unless they were running some kind of demented scavenger hunt. And all of them are designed to be used as weapons, maybe the occasional shield, never once seen anything that’s good for living. Just killing.” William tests some of the pieces to see if they’re the right eating temperature, then backs off to let them cool more. “Well, they wouldn’t seed the competition with anything that could beat them, right? But we’ve managed to steal treasures that were never meant for the competition.” He looks at their team’s two newest acquisitions. “Let’s get ready to steal more.”