Being on the road, alone in my thoughts, no one but my equine partner for company for so long, it feels odd to be here. Wrong. Like there’s something missing even though there is more than I’ve known since the battle around me. Georgia, with the help of her sort of boss Alberto and the other craftsmen that made it out, had founded a small enclave up here in the upper peninsula. It did not take much to convince Mister Montez to join in on the four and my new endeavor. Since the Rise’s constant danger ended with a bang, the fourteen surviving Craftsmen in the enclave have been directionless. It helps that I decided to take off the bowler, at least for my arrival. I was just a wanderer with an offer of direction, of unity. The former Knights-Craftsmaster ate it up. It isn’t getting them to agree that made me stay. It’s overseeing the tower.
For our little endeavor to work, they need to be able to stay in touch with the four. Which means they need a transmitter and receiver strong enough and tuned to the right frequency. And because the knights are, even unaffiliated, weird about using full and proper soulbindings, even just in their technological workings, they have to construct a tower. Morality is a motherfucker sometimes. Or, at least, when they differ from my own and make my life harder, they can be quite frustrating. Staying in the enclave while it’s built has been rough enough, but being separated from my partner so much of the time for this long makes me worried.
As with every morning, watching all the people around, I take a deep breath and carefully make my way towards the main gate. I would never subject my horse to the hellscape of being inside the walls. He’s not the sort to like feeling trapped, even with food readily available. My limp makes the walk longer than I’d like, but it’s good to get the exercise. And, as much as it feels odd, the socialization. “Hey,” “Hi,” “Morning,” I say as I walk down the street, greeting the people going about their day to day lives. They greet me back with equally meaningless statements like “Hello,” and “Good to see you.” That part of civilisation, at least, remains the same as it did before the Rise.
I make it to the gate, and waiting for me there is Georgia. “Like clockwork,” she muses as she nods at the operator. The doors begin to open.
“What can I say, Miss Roberts,” I reply, “I like to check in on my most trusted advisor regularly.”
She smiles. “You know, if you’re worried about your horse, you can always bring him inside the walls.” I start to walk through the gate, and she follows.
“Oh, dear, you think I’m worried about him,” I begin, only half joking, “No no no. I’m worried what my good old partner will do to your lovely local ecosystem if I leave him alone for too long. Never can tell.”
“You mean like he’d overgraze or something?” Georgia muses.
I shake my head, grinning as we walk to the grass glade I go to every morning. My horse begins to trot out of the woods. “Not exactly. See, he may be an herbivore, but I think G’s got the soul of a sport hunter. He kills for the fun of it.”
I can tell she doesn’t believe me at first. Who would, that is a ridiculous thing to say about a horse. Then she sees that, wrapped up in his suit being dragged alongside my approaching horse, is a goddamned wolf. Or, more accurately, the carcass of one. I give him a look. “What did I tell you about hunting overnight?” I scold my partner. He neighs in objections, shuddering. Of course he’s being careful. I pat his flank, my shirt rising up past my hand and forming bristles so I can brush him. “I know, but you need to be careful. Hard to tell if it’s an animal or an amalgam sometimes.” My partner whinnies, and his suit drops the wolf carcass. “Don’t worry,” I tell him, “We should be heading back to new lands in no time.” My horse nods, nudging me towards the intruding mayor-slash-Knights-Craftsman. The idiot. I can’t help but chuckle. “No, it’s not that,” I whisper. He nudges again, more forcefully, and neighs. I chuckle again. “Alright, have fun, don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” He nods, gives a final look somewhere between evaluating and mean-mugging her, then begins to walk back towards the woods. I turn back towards Georgia. “Sorry about him,” I say with a straight face.
She looks at the horse walking away, then at the carcass, then at me. “That’s where all those animals have been coming from? We all thought you just went out hunting in the morning.”
I shake my head. “Not exactly,” I say. My suit begins to extend out from my shoulder to wrap around the wolf carcass. To my leaving buddy, I add, “Asshole, I’m not anywhere near recovered.” The horse neighs mockingly as he disappears into the woods, eliciting yet another chuckle.
“Do you need any help?” she asks as she watches the somewhat uncomfortable scene of a living, almost liquid being that, at the moment, looks like a flannel shirt stretching out and enclosing the corpse, and knowing about my not-entirely-functional leg and arm. Because, unlike G, she’s not an asshole. It’s why she would make a terrible traveling companion, or at least, one of the reasons.
I sigh and reply, “That would be appreciated, but I can handle it if you have anything important to be getting to.”
“Today? Not particularly,” she responds as she walks over and picks up the hind legs of the wolf. Between her help and the suit, it should be no problem carrying it in for them.
“Not particularly?” I ask.
“I shouldn’t say anything,” she begins nervously, “I’m sure Berto wants to tell you himself.”
I nod. “Of course. The construction is nearly complete, but you’re out of some kind of odd resource that you need or would help. So he has you buttering me up to send me out on some kind of fetch quest.”
“I didn’t say that,” she spits out nervously.
I look at her and smile. “And yet you didn’t not.”
She shrugs, hiding her face behind the carcass we’re carrying. “Sorry,” she says.
“Don’t be,” I reply, “I’ve done basically the same play in the past. We do what we feel we must to achieve our ends. I do wonder what you were planning on doing.”
“Honestly, I was scrambling after this. I was going to get you drinking and talk about horses, because I know how close you and yours are, and I was a bit of a horse girl growing up. But then I met your friend and saw you don’t actually have a horse. You’ve got a monster wearing one’s face.”
“You really think anyone could make it long surviving out there with me without being capable of protecting themselves?”
She looks at me, slightly judgmentally. The perfect way to look at me. “If it was just today, I’d buy that, but you said you don’t go hunting in the morning. And three days ago you brought in that dead moose.”
I laugh, a full laugh as we make it back to the gates. “I told you, he’s got the soul of a sport hunter.”
“I mean, with that last look he gave me, I think it might’ve been a serial killer,” she says just loud enough for me to hear.
I smile and look at her. “No, don’t worry,” I reply, “It’s not anything like that. He was just telling me you were manipulating me for some reason. Smelled your partial-deceit on the air.”
“See, that definitely sounds more like a serial killer than a hunter,” she counters.
I think a moment, slowing slightly as I limp through the gates. “You’re right, it kind of does,” I admit.
A couple of the enclave’s inhabitants approach with a cart. “Got another one?” one of them asks.
I nod. “Just a wolf,” I say. Together with Georgia’s help, I lift the body onto the cart. “You two alright?”
The one on the left, one Kevin Wilson if I recall correctly, smiles. “Can’t really complain.” They start to move to leave.
“One second,” I interject. They stop moving and I head to the wolf’s mouth. Sliding a knife out from my suit, I carefully dig out the carnassials. See, uniformed people often think of the big fang-like canines as what you want for mystical purposes. They’re obvious and therefore are often talked about in fiction. But the real power is in the carnassials and their ability to rend. Four massive teeth out, I nod. “Sorry about the delay.”
The other of the pair, Keli Jackson I believe, smiles at me. “Don’t even worry about it, babe,” she says, “Everyone has something.”
Georgia shoots Keli a look, then turns to me. “What was that about?” she asks.
I raise an eyebrow. “Kevin and Keli always stop by to collect my game,” I reply without answering what she actually is asking.
“I know that, Jim,” she says, shaking her head. So I remembered their names correctly. Excellent. She continues, “I’m talking about the teeth.”
I shrug. “Maybe I just like teeth.” She once again looks at me judgmentally. I smirk, adding, “Or maybe I think my serial-killer-horse would like a trophy.”
“You can just not tell me,” she says, “You don’t have to lie.”
I let my smirk fall away. “Are you honestly interested, or just talking somewhere between being polite and buttering me up?”
She takes her time, thinking about her answer. Eventually she admits, “Honestly? I think it’s a bit of interest mixed with hoping you’ll like my interest.”
“Thanks for the honesty,” I say. I toss her one of the four teeth. “Undamaged carnassials of an adult wolf hold great power in tearing holes in our world. I find them useful in the rituals that feed my suit, too.”
Her false interest falls away almost entirely and the tooth vanishes into her pocket. “What do you mean, tearing holes?” she asks. A movement and question showing legitimate interest in the mystic in ways that are beyond what was generally considered acceptable by the Knights.
“Well,” I say with a smile, “Why don’t we go get those drinks? We can talk about some far more interesting topics than horses.”
“Sure,” she says, matching my smile with her own grin, “But to be clear, I will also definitely be asking questions about your partner in crime.”
I feign offense. “We have never committed any crimes together,” I begin, add a pause for effect, and add, “We couldn’t’ve, we met after the government had already collapsed.”
She laughs. “Again, definitely going to have questions there.”
I nod. “Don’t worry, you can ask any questions you’d like while we drink,” I say, leaning in as I do and lowering my volume to a whisper. “I promise no answers and much nonsense, but I’d love for you to ask all of your questions anyways.”
She cocks her head. She asks, “When you say that, are you promising that you won’t answer things or are you not promising that you will?”
My smile opens up into a full, gleeful grin. “Yes,” I don’t answer her.
She pauses, waiting for more. I don’t give her any. “Well, that gives me some idea of what you meant,” she finally gives up hoping, “I guess we’ll have to find out if I’m right.”
I shrug. “I guess we will,” I repeat her sentiment.
“By the way, before we start drinking and I risk forgetting or insulting you, you are going to go on that fetch quest for us, right?” she asks.
“If the new organization’s going to work, I’ll need to, won’t I?” I answer, though I do so with a question.
She shakes her head. “You’re the worst, you know that?” she mutters in my general direction.
I smirk and shake my head right back. “Now you know that’s not true,” I reply with a jokingly stern tone in my voice, “You’ve met my partner, after all.”
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